Hidden Faces

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Thursday. And it was raining. Not a particularly auspicious day. It had rained yesterday and it would probably rain tomorrow.

Bannerman remembered a cartoon he had seen once in an old Punch magazine. Two crocodiles basking in a jungle swamp, heads facing each other above the muddy waters. And one of them was saying, ‘You know, I keep thinking today is Thursday.’ Bannerman smiled. It had amused him then, as it amused him now. What bloody difference did it make... today, tomorrow, yesterday, Thursday? It was ironic that later he would look back on this day as the day it all began. The day after which nothing would ever be quite the same again.

But at the moment, so far as Bannerman knew, it was just a day like any other. He gazed reflectively from the window a while longer, out across Princes Street, the gardens beyond, and the Castle brooding darkly atop the rain-blackened cliffs. Even when it rained Edinburgh was a beautiful city. Against all the odds it had retained its essential character in the face of twentieth century change. There was something almost mediaeval about it; in the crooked hidden alleyways, the cobbled lanes, the tall leaning tenements. And, of course, the formidable shape of the Castle itself, stark and powerful against the skyline.

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