“Yes,” mused Angus. “It’s funny to us. But, you know, I’m not sure if that would be all that funny outside Scotland. There are some things which are made funny because of a very specific cultural context.”
“Oh, I think that would be funny anywhere,” said Matthew.
Angus smiled. “Maybe. But here’s something which is only funny in Scotland. It was told to me by a teacher. Do you want to hear it?”
“Only if it’s funny,” said Matthew.
“It is,” said Angus. “It’s funny here, as I said. A teacher noticed that a boy called Jimmy wasn’t eating fish when it was served in the school lunch. After a while, she decided to take up the matter with the boy’s mother and wrote a note to her to this effect. Back came a letter from the mother which said: See me? See my husband? See Jimmy? See fish? We dinnae eat it.”
There was only a moment’s silence before Matthew burst out laughing. “That’s very funny indeed,” he said.
Angus nodded. “Of course it is. But you could tell that story down in London and they’d look very puzzled. So why do we find it so amusing?”
Matthew pondered this. There was the habit of saying
“see” before any observation; that was a common way of raising a subject, but in itself was not all that amusing. Was it the way in which the mother developed her response, step by step, in the manner of a syllogism? That was it! It was a peculiar variant of syllogistic reasoning, perhaps, and its
expression in the demotic seemed surprising and out of place.
But there was something more. It was the conflict between two worlds: the world of the teacher and the world of the mother. When two very different worlds come into contact, we are amused.
Angus might have read Matthew’s mind. “It’s the desire to deflate officialdom,” he said. “There’s a strong streak of that in Scottish humour, and that’s what’s going on here, don’t you think?”
Matthew nodded, and thought: and there’s something funny about Angus.
That day, which was Saturday, was usually a busy day for Matthew, and he might have felt reluctant to leave the gallery unattended, but by the time that ten o’clock came round he was feeling distinctly edgy, and thought that one of Big Lou’s double espressos might help.
When he entered the cafe, Big Lou was by herself, standing at the bar, reading a book. She looked up at Matthew when he came in, slipped a bookmark between the pages of the book, and closed the cover.
“Don’t let me disturb you, Lou,” said Matthew, glancing at the title of the book. “Eric Linklater.
“
Matthew reached over and took the book from Lou. He opened it at random; a picture of a wild coast, a map, the prince himself draped in tartan. “Quite a story, isn’t it?” he mused. “It seems like a game from this distance.”
“It was no game at the time,” said Big Lou.
Matthew sensed that he was being judged for levity. “No,”
he said. “Of course not. But there’s something that interests me, Lou. What would have happened if Charlie had pushed on just a bit more? Weren’t things rather disorganised in London? What if he had huffed and puffed a bit more and blown their house right down?”
224
she said. “It didn’t happen.”
“But it could have,” said Matthew. “It could easily have happened. Look at how far he actually got. And anyway, there’s nothing wrong in asking these ‘what if’ questions. I saw a whole book on them the other day. What would have happened if the American planes had been on a different deck at the critical moment in the Battle of Midway? What would have happened if the wind had been coming from the other direction when the Spanish fleet took on the English? We’d be speaking Spanish now, Lou, as would the Americans if the wind had shifted just a few degrees. You know that, Lou?”
Big Lou shrugged. “Well, Prince Charlie didn’t get there,”
she said.
“If he had,” mused Matthew. “We’d have had more bishops.”
Big Lou looked thoughtful. “Robbie . . .” she began.
“I know,” said Matthew. “He’s got this thing about them, hasn’t he? He’s a Jacobite, I gather. I suppose that it’s a harmless enough bit of historical enthusiasm. Like those people who reenact battles. What do they call themselves? The Sealed Knot Society or something. You know, Lou, I was going for a walk in the hills above Dollar once and suddenly a whole horde of people came screaming down the slope. And suddenly I saw this chap in front of me dressed in sacking and wielding a claymore. And do you know who it was? It was an Edinburgh lawyer! Very strange. That’s how he spent his Sundays, apparently.”
the home and so on. Men have to find some outlet – now that they no longer need to hunt in packs.”
Matthew smiled. “So dressing up in sackcloth and pretending to be some ancient clan warrior is entirely healthy?”
