perhaps, who want to clear their names. They feel strongly enough and they’re still very much with us. So the duty is to the living rather than to people who no longer exist.”
“But what if their descendants knew nothing about it?” asked Matthew. “What if there weren’t any families asking for pardons? Would we have any duty to them then? A simple, human duty to recognise that they were people . . . people just like us?”
Angus was beginning to look uncomfortable. He had argued himself into a position in which he appeared to be careless of the human bonds which united us one to another, quick and dead. Matthew, he thought, was right. Feeling concerned for the Ice Man was a simple recognition of human hopes, whenever they had been entertained. Ancient feelings were feelings nonetheless; old injustices, like the shooting of those poor, shell-shocked men, had their resonances, even today. And the govern-ment, he thought, was probably quite right to pardon the lot of them on the grounds that you couldn’t distinguish between cases at this distance.
“You’re right,” Angus said. “You win.”
“Oh,” said Matthew. “I didn’t think you’d agree.”
“Well, I do,” said Angus. “But let’s get back to la McDowall.
Where were we?”
“You were walking down South College Street. She was telling you about McDowalls in general.”
“Oh yes,” said Angus. “Well, she suddenly turned to me, la McDowall did, and said: ‘We go back a very long way, you know, my family.’ Of course I refrained from pointing out to her that we all went back as far as each other, and so she continued. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can trace things back quite a way, you know. I happen to be descended from Duegald de Galloway, younger grandson of Prince Fergus de Galloway, and his forebears can be traced back to Rolf the Dane, who died back in 927 AD.’
“That was pretty rich, but I let her go on. It’s best not to interrupt these people once they get going – they can easily blow a valve. So she said: ‘Oh yes. And if we go back from Rolf we eventually get back to Dowal himself, who lived in Galloway in 232 BC.’
“I ask you, Matthew! What nonsense. And here was this otherwise perfectly rational woman, who went each day into an office somewhere in Edinburgh and made administrative decisions or whatever, claiming that she went back to 232 BC!” He shook his head. “Personally, I blame the Lord Lyon, you know. He has the authority to stamp that sort of thing out, but what does he do? Nothing. He should tell these McDowalls that their claims are outrageous and that they shouldn’t mislead people with all this nonsense.”
“But I’ve heard he’s a very nice man,” said Matthew.
“Perhaps he just feels that people like that are harmless. And if he started to engage with the McDowalls, he’d have all those Campbells and MacDonalds and people like that on to him.
Scotland’s full of this stuff. It’s what keeps half the population going.”
The earlier consensus between them disappeared, immediately. “That sort of thing is very important,” said Angus. “I happen to believe that clan reunions, clan gatherings and so on
– these are important. They remind us who we are.”
“Oh well,” said Matthew. “I know who I am. But let’s not disagree. If you don’t mind, tell me what happened.”
112
“But Bertie,
“I’m not an adult, Mummy,” said Bertie. “I think that boys are allowed to uninvite people. I promise you, Mummy; they are. Tofu invited me to his house once and cancelled the invitation ten minutes later. He does that all the time.”
“What Tofu does or does not do is of no concern to us, Bertie,” said Irene. “As you well know, I have reservations about Tofu.”
Bertie thought he might try another tack. “But I’ve read about invitations being cancelled by grown-ups,” he said. “The Turks invited the Pope to see them and then some of them said that he shouldn’t come, didn’t they?”
Irene sighed. “I’m sure that the Turks didn’t mean to be rude,”
she said. “And I’m sure that the Pope would have understood
that. I’m also one hundred per cent sure that if the Pope invites you to the Vatican, the invitation is never cancelled. So we cannot possibly uninvite Olive. And we don’t want to, anyway! It’s going to be tremendous fun.”
Bertie had abandoned his attempt to persuade his mother.
But in a last, desperate throw of the dice, on the morning of the visit, using a red ballpoint pen, he applied several spots to his right forearm and presented this with concern to his mother.
“I don’t think that Olive will be able to come to play, Mummy,”
he said, trying to appear regretful. “It looks like I’ve got measles, again.”
Irene had inspected the spots and then laughed. “Dear Bertie,”
she said. “Have no fear. Red ballpoint ink is not infectious.
Messy, perhaps, but not infectious.”
