He slept in one of the two rooms of the upper floor, the other empty, his window looked down on the glare of Footforthie at night that changed to a sick yellow furnace-glow, unstill, staining the sky on the morning’s edge. You’d wanted him to change to another room, and he’d asked you why and you’d told him he’d surely get sick of it—working down there all day and seeing it all night. But he’d shaken his shapely, sleekèd head, no fancies or flim-flams with Εwan at all: It’ll neither wake me nor send me to sleep. Only a light in the sky, you know, Chris.—So you’d turn the handle of his door and go in and meet the sting of the sea-wind there, the window wide open, the curtains flowing, Εwan dim in the light of the early dawn, lying so still, so still he slept that near every morning you’d be startled the same, feared that he lay there dead, so quiet, you’d shake his shoulder and see as you bent the blankets he’d thrust away from himself, pyjamas open wide to the waist, curling dark down on a boy’s breast. Strange to think that this was your Ewan, once yours and so close, so tiny, so small and weak, sexless, a baby, that had grown a body tall as your own, slimmer, stronger, secret and strange, blossom and fruit from that seed of yours…. In a queer pity you’d look and shake him awake: Ewan, time you were up!

He’d start awake quietly, at once, like a cat, and look at you with those deep, cool eyes, neither grey nor green, grey granite eyes. All right. Thanks. No, I don’t want tea. I’ll get an apple for myself, mother. MOTHER! I said I’d get it for myself! And he’d be out of bed and have reached the dish and caught an apple afore you got near. You’ve enough to do without waiting on me.

—But I like waiting on you. Wouldn’t you wait on me?

—I suppose so, if you were sick or insane. What’s the time? And lean out half-naked from the window ledge to peer over Duncairn to Thomson Tower. Splendid. I’ve time for a dip in the Forthie.

He’d be out of the house as you gained the kitchen, an uproar by then of banging pans, Ma Cleghorn cooking porridge and bacon and sausages and coffee and cocoa and tea, and swearing out loud at the young maid, Meg, who slept at her home away down in the Cowgate and was supposed to come up each morning at seven. Call that seven?—Then you’re blind as well’s sweir. Stack up the range and be nippy about it. Mrs Colquohoun, will you lay the table?