The Christmas Bookshop(57)

Rather stiffly, they both went on further upstairs. They found themselves inside a large turret with doors either side leading out onto a narrow turreted balcony. Once more, there was nobody there, and outside it became clear why: the sky was bright blue but the air was utterly freezing cold.

Carmen forgot to be cross. Right there, straight up was the castle, bold and terrifying as it must have been, designed all those years ago to strike fear into anyone considering attacking the city. It was strange, she was so used to looking at it as abstract, symbolic, just something colouring the background of this extraordinary place. Carmen found herself leaning away from it, so overwhelming did it appear.

But everything from the turret seemed extraordinary, leaning in over her, bamboozling her sense of perspective. A church, its steeple almost bending over her. Absurdly high ancient buildings around courtyards and squares.

To her right, the higgledy-piggledy Royal Mile, descending past St Giles and all the secret closes and passageways, dropping to Holyrood, out of sight below so you felt you could almost fall into it.

And from the front, a vertiginous drop down to the water, the cliff, then the railway tracks, then the green of Princes Street Gardens and the straight neat lines of the New Town beyond and further across the water to the Kingdom of Fife.

She stood still, even in the freezing sunlight, just staring, awestruck.

Oke approached her quite cautiously.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

Carmen swallowed once then spoke.

‘I didn’t … I’ve never really seen the New Town like this before. It’s laid out … like it was designed.’

‘It was designed!’ said Oke.

‘Was it?’ said Carmen, annoyed that she felt stupid. He realised his mistake at once.

‘Oh sorry.’

‘No, tell me,’ she said, trying not to be prickly. ‘I do want to know.’ And she did.

‘Well … Edinburgh was the first designed city in the world. The birth of the Enlightenment. The whole idea that we could plan our futures for ourselves; that we were not dependent on the whims of God, that we could conquer our animal natures, find our place in the world. That from this higgledy-piggledy … ’ He swept his arm around the show – the jammed-together old houses on the up-and-down cobbled streets of the old town. ‘ … thrown-together world, you could have beauty, order, fresh air. The New Town is philosophy made stone. It is a promise from the past to the future: that better times are coming. That entropy can be overcome. Well. For a while.’

‘But all the fun happens in the Old Town,’ said Carmen, naturally contrary as ever.

‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Oke, smiling. ‘Agents of chaos. Humans need that too.’

‘I’m an agent of chaos,’ said Carmen glumly. Oke looked at her curiously. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I just wondered for a moment if you were.’

‘You really know how to make a woman feel good.’

‘Who said that’s a bad thing?’

‘Every teacher I ever met.’

‘Until now,’ said Oke.

Then he cleared his throat and looked out over the horizon. And on this bright hard heavenly northern day, more Russian weather than Scottish, it was there, plain as day: the castle built to impose and threaten, and the jumble of rooms in the Old Town – she thought of Mr McCredie’s wobbly illogical house – piled here and there, often with whole families living in single rooms, surviving for hundreds of years. And ahead, the orderly roads running down to the water, beautiful wide pavements, beautiful houses and stunning gardens in the squares.

‘Those gardens are private though,’ said Carmen.

Oke nodded.

‘Oh, it’s built on dirty money,’ he said. ‘You can’t get away from that. But what is terrible about it doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful.’

He turned her around.

‘And over there – you can’t see it; it’s past the city – but over there is my favourite tree in all the world, and part of the reason I came here. It’s called the Ormiston Yew.’

‘How can you have a favourite tree?’ said Carmen. ‘Doesn’t it make all the other trees jealous?’

The guide beckoned them back in and, hands cold, they wandered into the little observatory room. The guide started to explain clearly how the Camera Obscura worked – the little hole, the lens – but Carmen didn’t really listen, so transfixed was she by the view on the large round table: the city, just as she had seen it laid out in front of her. It looked like a picture, but the traffic moved and the traffic lights changed. She was watching the world on a table.

‘Oh my goodness!’

The guide smiled, obviously never tired of people’s reactions. ‘Oke, look at this!’

They pored over it, making cars drive over their fingers, zooming in through the clear air to boats on the water, to the great clock on the Balmoral Hotel, forever set four minutes fast to chivvy the late traveller. It was as if you could tumble straight into the whole wonderful world of the city, see all its secrets, go behind any door.

‘This is … so amazing.’

Carmen felt as they watched it that odd feeling of peace she’d felt while making the little mouse decorations, or the old days of choosing the right lace for the right wedding dress back in haberdashery. It felt like flow; time vanished, and she forgot all about the previous evening. They were both surprised when another group, a school party, interrupted them, their noisy chatter and shouting showing they had also had a rather exciting time in the mirror maze, a fact borne out by the teacher’s slightly weary expression.