At least it was warmer here. But he couldn’t find anything that looked right. What he’d really like to find, he thought, was a big out-of-town-style Barnes and Noble, lined with books, with a fat Starbucks coffee shop on the end of it. You’re getting parochial, Henry.
He came to a shop called The World Store. It was just the kind of place you’d expect to find in a mall like this: full of bead necklaces, wooden carvings, bamboo curtains. At the back there were shelves full of rocks: sparse metal frames lit by spot lamps, the merchandise glowing.
There was a girl behind a counter at the back, blonde and slim, sorting through some kind of box of samples.
On impulse, Henry walked in. The girl looked up, took him in at a glance – so it seemed – and went back to her rocks.
On her desk, there was a card. THE WORLD STORE. S Kapur & J Dundas, props. Telephone, fax and e-mail.
Dundas. He remembered the rocks in the car, Mike’s crystal-gazing sister.
Henry drifted past the wooden elephants and pan pipes and other New Age crap, and made for the racks of minerals. It was mostly the usual eyecatching commercial stuff, sliced geodes and quartz crystals and pyrite clumps. Some of it looked native, but most of it was polished, even dyed and carved. Here was a necklace of bottle-green beads, for instance. And he found a tiger carved from a shining black rock, covered in pale grey blotches.
He looked sideways at the girl.
She was older than Mike, maybe as old as thirty, but she had the same Nordic colouring. Blonde hair tied back, revealing a composed, thoughtful face. Strong hands. Blue eyes you could swim in. One hell of a set of cheekbones, the essence of beauty. No body parts pierced that he could see, which was a good thing. She was eating something. A rice cake, maybe.
She glanced up and caught him looking at her. She put down the rice cake.
He was holding the tiger; he fumbled and nearly dropped it.
‘You pay for breakages,’ she said. Her accent was the same as Mike’s – soft Scottish – but her tone was cold.
‘Sorry.’ He put the tiger back. ‘I was just thinking.’
‘What?’
‘You ought to put a best-before date on that tiger. Ultimately it’s going to turn grey all over –’
‘I know. In sixty million years. It’s snowflake obsidian.’
He nodded, surprised, approving. ‘You know about rocks.’
‘I know my job.’ Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. ‘You’re an American. And you just arrived.’
He faced her. ‘Is it that obvious?’
She looked him up and down. ‘Look at the way you’re dressed. It’s only February, for God’s sake.’
‘You don’t like Americans?’
‘I don’t dislike them. I don’t know you well enough to dislike you. Yet.’
He glanced around. ‘You like rocks. I know about rocks.’
Those eyes narrowed again. ‘You’re a geologist.’
Strike two, he thought. ‘Is that bad too?’
‘If you’re with one of the oil companies, yes.’
He shrugged. ‘Edinburgh may not like me, but maybe I’ll like Edinburgh.’
‘Why?’
‘Volcanoes and a river sound. It reminds me of Seattle.’
She snorted. ‘Seattle in three hundred million years, maybe, when the volcanoes have died.’
He was impressed; that was about right.
She said, ‘What have you seen?’
‘Just the walk from the hotel. The Balmoral.’
She went back to her rocks. ‘This is the New Town. You need to go see the Old Town before you decide you like us.’
‘How new is the New Town?’
‘1760.’
‘Older than my whole damn country. I should have known.’
‘Most things in life are older than your country.’ She studied him. ‘Look, are you going to buy anything, or –’
He shook his head. How do I get myself into these situations? He turned to go. The girl didn’t acknowledge him.
He stopped at the door and turned back. ‘Look –’
‘What?’
He went back to the mineral racks and picked up the necklace of bottle-green beads. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘Peridot,’ she said.
‘Well, yes. The gem form of olivine. And that’s what the lithosphere and asthenosphere are made of. That is, the solid layers that hold in the liquid interior of the Earth. So olivine is important stuff.’
She took it dubiously. ‘You want it wrapped?’
‘No,’ he said. He dug his hands into his pockets, seeking money. ‘Take it. As a gift.’
She pushed it back over the counter. ‘Stuff it up your jacksie.’
‘I mean it. No strings. I want to apologize. I’ve done nothing but make enemies since I landed …’ He had no British money; he pulled out what he had, a crumpled roll of dollars. ‘Will you accept this?’
‘Christ. Dollars. You Americans.’
Strike three, he thought. ‘Here. Fifty bucks. I’m sure that’s more than it’s worth. Please. On me.’
‘Stuff it,’ she said again, but he thought he could see a smile in her face.
He left the fifty, and got out while he could.
When the door had closed and the shop was empty again, Jane Dundas picked up the fifty dollars, and the necklace, and ran the bottle-green beads through her hands.
5
Mike Dundas lived with his father, in the western shadow of Arthur’s Seat, to the east of the city centre.
It was a fine spring morning, the sky clear and deep blue, and the air off the Firth was fresh and cool, even this far inland. So, before getting the Rover out of the garage to drive into work, Mike put on his walking shoes and set off to the Seat.
He walked east around Queen’s Drive, the road which skirted Holyrood, the park that contained the Seat. He reached the entrance opposite the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Edinburgh seat of the royals. Holyroodhouse was a twee picture-palace, shut away behind railings; Mike had grown up in Edinburgh but had never been tempted to go visit it.
He set off up the Volunteer’s Walk to the summit of the Seat itself.
Everyone but the tourists knew the Seat had nothing to do with the English King Arthur, but was named from Gaelic: Ard Tor – the Height of Thor.
The climb, he knew from a lifetime’s experience, looked a lot stiffer than it was. The grassy ground was dark, still in the shadow of the turning Earth, even though the sky was already bright; and the dew made it a little slippery underfoot. The path was heavily eroded – too many visitors – but the climb was one Mike had been completing since he was a kid, and it didn’t take long to reach the broad, flat summit.
He stood on the red-brown, lumpy rock here. The rock was agglomerate, the exposed neck of the old volcano. There were two summit monuments up here, sparse concrete blocks.
He