Chapter 49

"When I was a sixteen-year-old boy, in Edinburgh," said Gordon Mackay, starting his story as one who starts to pull against the tide, "I began to be interested in the life that went on across the city from my father's home. We lived in Great King Street. If you know Edinburgh, and I'm sure you do, you know that between Great King Street and the Canongate there's a great gulf fixed. I used to go through the streets that led to my father's church, on Sunday morning--those great, stately, quiet streets. The 'odour of …