Free Blackstone's Pursuits by Quintin Jardine

to convince her that I really am responsible and self disciplined, I steered the conversation back on course.
    ‘Why did you leave the hospice? Had you just had enough?’
    ‘Yeah; as much as I could take. One thing more than any other finished me, though; I had this pal on the staff. She hit the compassion wall, and left. A year later, she was back as a patient We couldn’t tell her anything about what was happening, of course. She knew it all. The day she died, I resigned, to give myself a chance to forget. I never will though. I’ll never go far enough to forget that.’
    ‘Is that why you went to Africa? To forget?’
    ‘No. I had reasons, two of them. First, I was overcome by a sudden inability to sit still. It didn’t matter where I was, I felt shut in. Second, I wanted to help people live, not die. I got very grand, and decided to go on a personal crusade. So I answered an ad, and went to work for a UN-sponsored agency in Central Africa. I thought I’d be teaching nutrition, working with babies, that sort of thing. So I was, for two months. Then a Civil War started, and the casualties started to arrive.
    ‘I had no idea what modem armaments can do to the human body. Now I have. I’ve patched them up, and helped cut bits off. But there’s worse; you have no idea what people can do to other people. That wee man yesterday, he had a quick finish, believe me. The story I told Dylan was true, but ...’ Even in the night, I could see her shudder, suddenly,‘... what they did to the women!’
    ‘Was it like that for a whole year?’
    ‘No, I couldn’t have taken that. We were rotated. Most of the time we were in a hospital in a safe zone, but every so often we were asked to go up front with the troops.’
    Now it was my turn to shudder. ‘Weren’t you in danger?’
    ‘I don’t think so. We had UN soldiers as our escort. They taught us to shoot, too, and gave us handguns.’
    ‘Christ, I must remember that!’
    ‘You do that! I’m a crack shot.’
    ‘Me too,’ I murmured, too quietly for her to hear.

In which the Earth moves ... again.
    Back to back like old school chums, we dressed ourselves in heavy sweaters, jeans and boots ... Primavera seemed to have everything in that vast holdall.
    I drove us down Holyrood Road and into the Queen’s Park, up the hill to the wee loch, where, thanks to the trippers, no ducks ever had it so good. The moon was long gone, but there was a hint of daybreak in the east as we set off up the steep slopes of Arthur’s seat, so that we could see the path well enough. Prim took the lead; gallantly, I thought, I allowed her to go ahead. It took me around three minutes to realise that she had mountain goat in her ancestry. Our conversation dried up as I saved my breath to keep up with her brisk pace. Up and up we climbed, scrambling hand and foot up the final stretch, until we came to the summit of the old volcano, to stand beside the Solstice cairn.
    At our backs, the street lights of the Old Town shone softly, and the floodlit buildings stood out on the hill, with the Castle at its summit. Before us, as we looked east, recovering our breath, the day was beginning to assert itself. Around twenty miles away, we could see the outline of North Berwick Law, a slightly scaled-down version of the hill on which we stood. All down the Forth, in the mouth of the estuary, lighthouses still sent out their signature beams; on the great seagull’s head that was the Bass Rock, away across at Barns Ness in Fife and most distant of all on the Island of May.
    I took out two Mars bars which I had secreted about my person, and handed one to my lady. ‘There y’are, Springtime. Our first breakfast together!’
    She looked and laughed, ‘Did you make these at the same time you made those tuna rolls yesterday?’
    ‘Aye. I’m a dab hand. They’re not a patch on my Curlywurly though!’ See me, see sexual innuendo!
    We looked eastward again and saw the line of light along the horizon