Edward Kane and The Voice of the Spider. Chapter 7: None So Blind

The manservant rubbed his stubbly chin for a moment, then: ‘Clearly off her nut!’

Kane flopped down onto the wing-chair by the fire. ‘She is certainly of…of a “singular” temperament, I’ll give you that.’

The Advocate raised his leg so that the manservant could pull off his boots: ‘I’m not sure that the girl was any less eccentric. Turning down an opportunity like that.’

Horse tugged off the boot: ‘Ha! There weren’t no opportunity there, sir.’

‘I clearly heard…’

‘No, sir. You clearly heard with your ears. But look with your eyes, Mr Kane. What did you see?’

Kane frowned as his manservant shoogled off the second boot: ‘I’m not quite sure, Horse, that you appreciate…’

Horse stood up, lifted up the boots together between his thumb and forefinger and carried them into the hall, speaking over his shoulder as he went: ‘That poor little nipper. The girl is trying do an honest day’s work and who turns up but a bunch of toffs – one of them a decrepit old bat sat in a wheely-basket – and they say…’ (at this point, Horse adopted his interpretation of an upper-class voice): ‘Oooo moi deah – do come and live with me and be the daughter what I never ‘ad.’

‘It wasn’t like that…’

‘It were exactly like that, sir.’

‘We just thought….’

‘Yes – well, you know what Thought done, sir: pissed the bed and blamed it on the blankets.’

Kane considered this for a moment, then: ‘And what would you have us do, Mr Horse?’

Horse scratched his cheek: ‘Dunno, Mr K. Maybe write the wee lass a letter, sir?’

Kane groaned: ‘Oh, Mr Horse – a child of that station. There is a high likelihood that such a a child cannot read.’

Horse took out his old clay pipe: ‘Read? Read??? ‘Course she can read! Did you see nothing while you was there, sir? Who do you think runs that bloomin’ factory?’

‘Her father, of course…’

‘And what was he doing all the time that you was there?’

Kane thought for a moment: ‘He was…he was…well, we met Mr Boylan as soon as we arrived. He was no doubt tending to his duties as foreman during our visit.’

Horse struck a match and lit his pipe: ‘As my old nan used to say: there is none so blind as them what will not see…’

The master frowned: ‘Your meaning?’

‘When you got there – he weren’t working, sir. He were sleeping it off. Did you not smell it off him?

‘He was certainly somewhat, um, discomfited…’

‘He were absolutely scammered, sir.’

‘Drunk?’

‘As a lord, Mr K. ‘Sozzled every day’ is what the other workers said.’

The Advocate began to rub his temples: ‘But if the foreman of the factory is, as you say, incapacitated by strong liquor, and daily to boot, then who is running the operation?’

Horse grinned: ‘I’ll give you a clue, sir.’ He pointed his palm at the floor. ‘She’s about two foot tall and runs about the place like a little elf…’

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‘Do you know Wordsworth. Mr Kane?’

‘Um, I don’t recall ever meeting him, my lady…’

‘No, no!’ The old lady was cross now. ‘Not the man – the poetry. The poetry! The poet is dead. The poetry lives on.’

Kane did not know what to say, so reached for a stock response: ‘It was ever thus, Lady Carmunnock.’

The lady looked out of the window for a time, then: ‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.’

‘I’m glad to hear that, my lady…’

She frowned: ‘No, no – as in the poem. The one by Wordsworth. The one about being a child. A child looking at a rainbow.’ The crusty old Lady Carmunnock began to cry. She dissolved into sobs, then held up her hand, absent-mindedly. Her solicitor handed her a handkerchief. ‘Thank you, Mr Blane. The thought of my little girl, my little spider, trapped inside those horrid glass-works. Never seeing the sun. Never seeing the rain. Never seeing the rainbow. It breaks my heart.’ She leaned forward and was intense now: ‘We must do something, Kane, we must do something.’

Edward Kane knew that it was only bad news to tell the client, so proceeded with caution: ‘I’m afraid, my lady, that I have studied the situation with great care, and…’

The old lady dabbed her eyes: ‘You began your sentence with the words “I’m afraid”. Trying to soften the blow, are we?’

That was precisely what Kane was trying to do – but denied it. He attempted a smile: ‘Not precisely, my lady. But my reading so far has not been able to discover any case, any case, that resembles yours in the least.’

‘But I am offering the child a better station in life.’

‘That is irrelevant…’

‘She would be much better cared for by me.’

‘It doesn’t matter, my lady.’

‘But her welfare…’

‘Is irrelevant to the court. As I have been trying to explain, you have no standing in the matter. No right to ask the court for what you want.’

This last statement quietened the lady for a moment. She volunteered: ‘The very house she lives in is a measure of my generosity.’ Kane did not understand and looked at the solicitor. Blane leaned in: ‘The child’s father, Mr Boylan, is the foreman of the works. His position also grants him tied accommodation. There is a set of rooms beside the factory allocated to any foreman working there. This is a grace and favour arrangement and forms a perquisite of Mr Boylan’s employment as foreman.’

The old lady pointed: ‘The very roof over that child’s head is a measure of my care for her.’

It struck Kane that the ‘roof’ had, in fact, been allocated to the child’s father long before the lady had ever seen the girl. He tried to lower the temperature in the consultation room: ‘Thus, I am afraid that there is nothing in the books of law…’

This was a lady used to getting what she wanted: ‘Damn your books of law – look harder!’

‘My lady, there is nothing…’

She pointed a crooked finger at him: ‘You’re meant to be a lawyer, Kane – what am I paying you for – make something up!’

Silence for a few moments, then the young lawyer spoke in a calm voice: ‘Lady Carmunnock, as you say, I am Edward Kane, Advocate. I am not, for example, William Wordsworth, poet. I have a duty to the court. I leave the act of creation to others.’

This seemed to pacify the lady in the chair. She looked out of the window: ‘I met him once, you know. Wordsworth, I mean. Must have been, oh…’ She narrowed her eyes in concentration, ‘…fifty odd years ago. My husband took me to some rooms at the White Hart in the Grass Market and there he was. Visiting Scotland. The great William Wordsworth. A great poet. A very great poet. But an odd little man. And do you know – when we met – he had nothing to say for himself. Nothing. And his sister too. Dorothy. She was there. I didn’t take to her either. That woman was a fidget…’

Tomorrow in The Scotsman: What Have I Missed Here?

Edward Kane and Mr Horse: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories. Available from Amazon and Kindle