Nor Will He Sleep Read Free Page B

startling moral tale to hear,
    Of Pirate Rob and Chemist Ben,
    And different destinies of men.
    Indeed. Different destinies.
    They had arrived and for two days the old man had stared at Stevenson as if he had sprouted from the moon.
    Then Thomas passed over to that blessed veil where along with the Almighty, various Presbyterian dignitaries would no doubt be waiting to hail him for a life well spent, consult their pocket
watches and congratulate the devout traveller for arriving bang on time.
    Pre-destined.
    Or an empty space.
    Faites vos jeux.
    Louis shivered suddenly; someone had walked over his grave. To see that face empty of meaning, eyes dilated, jaw agape, made a brutal mockery of conscious existence.
    In many ways he had feared his father, especially the irrational rages that contrasted with the decent generosity and kindness shown to his wayward son.
    The dark forces he rode like a rider in the storm, in his father had been buried under pillars of rectitude.
    And at the end, had they not taken vengeance?
    Put his senses to fire and pillage, destroyed the inner essence, gouged out the soul and left a vacant carcass to rattle and creak like a haunted house.
    Ahh!
    Tobacco had burnt to the stub and singed the tapered authorial fingers. Stevenson swiftly extracted another cigarette from his case and passed the immortal flame from one to the other.
Cigarettes without intermission, save for when coughing and kissing –
both of these carry sufficient danger by themselves, wouldn’t you say, old chap?
    He flipped the stumpy remnant out through the open window and watched with some malicious glee as it sparkled like a sinful firefly upon the respectable flagstone before a drenching rain put
paid to further adventures.
    Edinburgh rain was like no other. He had returned but a few days and already his body ached, nose constantly dripping.
    How could this hero, creator of
Treasure Island
,
Kidnapped
, and
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
into which it was rumoured that Queen Victoria herself had
inserted royal fingers to ruffle these pages of charted depravity, how could this hero stand before his household gods with a snottery nose?
    Louis caught an errant nasal effusion in a large white handkerchief and regarded himself in that part of the window pane not covered by the heavy curtains. It was a ghostly image: pale, long
face like a disappointed donkey; drooping but sly moustache; prominent bony forehead; and dark eyes that darted right and left before settling once more into a fixed perusal of the countenance,
heart-shaped; the hair long and brushed back from the somewhat large ears.
    Earlier that day, in his father’s desk, he had come upon some cached photographs, posed formally with Thomas who stared at the camera as if preparing for a life of filial disenchantment
over the doleful creature with an old man’s head on a young body standing there beside him.
    Stevenson had felt a sudden piercing to the heart, replaced the images and closed the drawer.
    Enough. Enough regrets for this night.
    He struck a sudden comical pose, cigarette held aloft like a holy relic, and pranced like one bereft of wits before inhaling once more with bravura.
    That’s more like it. That’s the ticket.
    A wry smile spread across the other’s face in the window pane – what a fool to behold.
    A dolt. And a workhorse.
    He ignored the faint sneer that had appeared in the visage opposite and peered past it into the dark night. The young men who had gathered earlier to jostle in Heriot Row for a glimpse of
ghostly legend at the upstairs fenestra, had been driven away by the incessant rain, or perhaps they had better mischief in mind.
    As a law student he had prowled the streets in licentious drunken gallivants, but these medical boys would seem to have codified their pursuits into tribal lines.
    Somewhere in the house a clock chimed midnight and in the silence each separate sound spread dark vibrations that permeated one after