August 2022

 

The coffee shops are still closed so Charley Ferguson keeps walking. Past Moray Place Gardens and up the hill towards Queen Street.  In an hour, the early quiet of morning will be eclipsed by the imperceptible, gradual fusing of life in the city: chittering of tyres on cobbles, cold engines spluttering, pedestrian crossings beeping, red, green men flashing, metal shutters rumbling, phones ringing, breaks yelping, dogs barking, heels clicking, horns,  sirens. Until the city roars. Flushing out the dense, empty, six a.m. stillness she craves.

 

People will start to queue in coffee shops, zoning-out with the grind and hiss of a coffee machine. They will nod at folks they know - if they look up - preferring their meditative moment, enjoying their temporary passive role. They will walk to work, eyes on the horizon, resolute. They will hold lidded take-away cups steaming with their morning fix. All familiar and regulating. Like rituals.

 

Charley knows her life here is on borrowed time. That’s how it works. People are beginning to talk. An outsider from the start, she found herself in Edinburgh by marrying James, her successful husband, twenty-nine years ago.  Now she is a regular at charity events, dinners, lunches, coffee mornings. So-and-so requests the pleasure of Mrs Ferguson to this; so-and-so requests the pleasure of Mrs Ferguson to that. Mrs Ferguson…

 

But for now, she is on her own. Almost. She shares this stolen hour from the night with the seagulls still shaking last night’s chips from their scrunched-up, fish monogrammed containers. A whiff of urine makes her glance round at the entrance to the narrow mews lane. Evidence that only a few hours ago, a fellow wanderer made their way home after a big night out. No matter, she loves the way the morning light captures the solitude of the empty streets. She loves the way the emptiness drives away any residue of loneliness, the connection with the city a comfort. She loves the Mary Celeste stillness of abandoned streets before the city stirs. She loves how their transient mysteries distract the eye from its housekeeping. 

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An overflowing bin casually mocks the mundane and excitement of the lives of sleeping Edinburgh folk. She slows down to peer into the mess.

Pizza boxes.

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A torn used tea bag. Tea leaves spell-bound, captured, cold and cast in the act of escaping its fragile skin. She glances up at the windows of the soot-stained almost handsome terraces sullied with drainpipes and loose wires.

She smiles at the myriad of hidden, playful possibilities alive in the

rubbish and the flats she passes and picks up the pace.

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Focusing on the wet shine of the pavement, the subtle

displacement of dampness and the shift of light beneath her feet as her trainers connect to the hard tarmac, her eyes fix on the ground. The sound of flowing water echoing in ravenous drains, rumbling and gurgling as last night’s rain forces out the city’s dirt, dust and forgotten excesses, to make its way underneath the streets to the Water of Leith and the Firth of Forth beyond. A reminder that things move on.

 

Pulling the edges of her jacket together, the sudden rise of North Castle Street becomes a workout. Distracting her thoughts with the sound of her quickening breath and the feel of cool air at the back of her throat, she settles into the rhythm of her steps as she walks along Prince’s Street with its closed, graffitied rolling metal shutters, circling down Broughton, past Pickles, left onto London Street, Great King Street and into Stockbridge past the St Vincent Bar, through Circus Lane with its pretty mews houses, and

finally turning left onto North West Circus Place just

as Patisserie Florentine opens its rustic double doors.

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She sits in her favourite corner, placing her iPhone on the round table in front of her and rearranges the familiar flat, worn-out red and yellow cushions. She looks around as people come and go with their coffees, filled baguettes and croissants. Her iPhone silent but its presence reassuring. She cannot be entirely alone. People are wary of loneliness. Wary of those with no purpose. Especially in Edinburgh.

 

She picks it up, clicks the Notes app and types:

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Hello! What can I get for yooou? Same as usual? Tea? The waiter comes to Charley’s table, eyes down, looking into his notepad. Pen poised he looks up briefly as he moves away. She nods and smiles, disappointed not to make her first proper eye contact of the day.  She looks around and starts typing again:

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She’ll give herself ten minutes. Ten minutes before heading home to see James off – he likes her to be there. She’d better not be late. Just one poem then. She clicks on safari and searches for Emily Dickinson and reads:

Hope is a thing with Feathers – that perches on the soul –

Here’s your tea. Anything else? – No, but thanks, she looks up and smiles before looking back at her phone.

And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –

The dog jumps up as the ladies shuffle round their table and walk towards the door. Charley looks up, patting the dog as it scrambles and scratches the wooden floor to catch up; the ladies, on their way out to the cobbled street, glance back towards her, their muffled gossip lost in the thunder of tyres on stone, the screech and squeal of bus brakes and blustering diesel engines.

 

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Charley looks at her iPhone as it darkens. Tapping it back to life, she sits up

straight. Closing her eyes, she switches off sleep focus and sits back on the bench. A string of pings punctuates the ambient noise announcing texts and missed calls as her iPhone lights up, splashing the screen with grey:

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