The World According to Bertie

he indicated the lawyers, “what they don’t understand is that mistakes, human error, may have nothing to do with fault. We all make mistakes – however careful we are.”

“Yes,” mused Angus. “This morning I put tea in the coffee pot . . .”

“But of course you would!” said the psychologist. “That’s exactly the sort of mistake that people make. We call it a slip/lapse error. We do that sort of thing mostly when we’re doing things that we are very used to doing. We’re wearing our glasses and we look for them. Or we dial one familiar number when we mean to dial another. I know somebody who thought he had dialled his lover and had dialled his wife. He launched straight into the conversation and said: ‘I can’t see you tonight – she’s invited people to dinner.’ And his wife said: ‘Good. So you’ve remembered.’”

Angus laughed, although the story, he thought, was a sad one.

“And you?” asked the psychologist. “Why are you here?”

“Because of my god,” Angus replied.

The psychologist frowned. Then his expression lightened.

The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril 81

“You mean dog! Another slip/lapse error! The transposing of g and d.” He paused. “Mind you,” he said, “if one were a theist, your statement would be correct. Unless, of course, one removed the space between a and theist, in which case it would be incorrect.”

“Oh,” said Angus.

25. The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril The advocate instructed by Angus Lordie’s lawyer was in his late thirties, a man with fine, rather aquiline features. As a portrait painter, Angus was sensitive to such matters, and he approved of this man’s face. He liked people, and particularly faces, to suit occupations and often found himself feeling vaguely disappointed when face and profession were not in harmony. He had occasionally attended stock sales with a farming friend and had been struck by the faces of the Border farmers, by the ruddy complex-ions, by the features that gave every impression of having been left out overnight in the rain. One man, he thought, had looked like a haystack, with his hair sticking out in all directions – his skin the colour of well-dried hay, too, he observed; another, with a thick neck and heavy shoulders, looked to all intents and purposes like an Aberdeen Angus bull. These men were gifts to the portrait painter, he told himself, as was the face of the librarian who occasionally came into the Cumberland Bar, a man whose skin was like parchment, whose scholarly eyes looked out at the world from behind the lenses of small unframed spectacles –

perfect.

And now here was this advocate, in his strippit breeks, with his sharp, legal face that would not have been out of place in an eighteenth-century engraving, a John Kay miniature – though Kay preferred his subjects wirlie, and this man would take a good twenty years to become truly wirlie.

“This is a very sad affair,” said the advocate, looking down 82

The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril at the file of papers before him. “Your agent here tells me that you’re very fond of your dog, Mr Lordie.”

Angus looked at his lawyer, who smiled at him, a smile of sympathy, of regret.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “I am. And I simply can’t believe that I find myself . . . that my dog finds himself in this position.”

The advocate sighed. “I suppose that even the best-behaved of dogs have their . . . their – how should one put it? – atavistic moments.”

Angus stared at the lawyer, noticing the slight touch of redness that was beginning to colour the side of the aquiline nose. That was the effect of claret, he thought, an occupational hazard for Edinburgh lawyers. The observation distracted him for a moment, but he soon remembered where he was and what the advocate had just said. Cyril was not atavistic; he had not bitten anybody. But the advocate had implied that he was guilty – on what grounds? The mere assumption that any dog was capable of biting?

“That might apply to other dogs,” he said. “But it certainly does not apply to mine. My dog is innocent.”

Silence descended on the room. In the background, a large wall clock could be heard ticking.

“How can you be so sure?” asked the advocate.

“Because I know him well,” said Angus. “One knows one’s dog. He is not a biter.”

The advocate looked down at his papers. “I see here that your dog has a gold tooth,” he said. “May I ask: how did that come about? How did he lose the original tooth?”

“He bit another . . .” Angus stopped. The two lawyers were looking at him.

“Please go on,” said the advocate. “He bit another . . . person?”

“He bit another dog,” said Angus hotly. “And the fight in question was certainly not his fault.”

“Yet he did bite, didn’t he?” pressed the advocate. “You see, Mr Lordie, the situation looks a bit bleak. Your dog has bitten . . .”

The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril 83

Angus did not allow him to continue. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Perhaps I misunderstand the situation. I assumed that we had engaged you to help us establish Cyril’s innocence. Aren’t you meant to believe in that? Aren’t you meant to argue that?”

The advocate sighed. “There is a difference between what I believe, Mr Lordie,” he said, “and what I know to be the case.

I can believe a large number of things which have yet to be established, either to my satisfaction or to the satisfaction of others.”

Angus felt his neck getting warm. There was some truth in the expression getting hot under the collar; he was. “What if you know that somebody you’re defending is guilty?” he began.