“Well,” said Lou. “What I’ve been reading about is this. It’s a chapter in a book by a philosopher, and it’s called The Case of the Two Wicked Uncles. That’s what it’s called.”
102 Act and Omission
She leant forward on the bar as she continued. “There’s Uncle A and Uncle B, you see. Both of these uncles have a nephew, who’s just a wee boy, about eight maybe. If this bairn dies before they do, then each stands to come into a lot of money.
“Uncle A goes to see his nephew one day. He arrives at the house and finds that the parents have gone out for some reason, leaving the boy alone in the house.”
“Somewhat unlikely,” said Angus, smiling at Matthew.
“Parents don’t leave eight-year-olds in the house. Not these days.”
Lou sighed. “It’s a story, remember. Philosophers like to tell stories. They don’t have to be true. Anyway, Uncle A goes upstairs and finds that the nephew has decided to take a bath.
The door to the bathroom is open and he goes in, sees the boy in the water, and decides, on the spur of the moment, to drown the poor bairn. Which he does, knowing that he will come into all that money.”
“Good God!” said Angus Lordie.
“Yes,” said Big Lou. “Not a nice uncle. Now here’s what Uncle B does. He goes off the same day to see his particular nephew and finds exactly the same situation there. When Uncle B goes upstairs in that other house, he sees the bathroom door open and goes in to see what’s happening. There’s his nephew, in the bath, but with his head under the water. He realises that the poor boy has slipped, knocked himself unconscious, and is submerged. He realises that if he doesn’t drag him out of the water – which will be a very simple thing to do – the boy will soon drown. He also realises that if this happens, then he will come into all the money. He does nothing.”
“He stands there?” asked Matthew.
“Aye,” said Big Lou. “He stands there. That’s Uncle B for you. Standing there, doing nothing.”
For a few moments there was silence. The story had touched both Matthew and Angus Lordie in a curious way. It was almost as if it had been true; that they had been hearing something shocking that was reported in the newspaper. Cyril, disturbed The Two Wicked Uncles: Possible Solutions 103
by the silence, looked up from the floor and stared at his master.
Then he looked at Matthew’s ankles again, scratched at an ear, and closed his eyes.
“So,” said Big Lou, breaking the silence. “What you have to decide is this. Is Uncle A, who does something, worse than Uncle B, who does nothing? You just said to me, Angus, that we are only responsible for the things we do and not for the things we don’t do. Yes, you did. Don’t deny it. So are you going to say that Uncle B did nothing wrong? Is that what you’re going to say?” She paused. “But also, you tell me this: is Uncle A worse than Uncle B, or is there no difference between them? Well?
Come on. You tell me.”
Angus looked down at the table.
“Let me think,” he said.
32. The Two Wicked Uncles: Possible Solutions While Angus Lordie thought, Big Lou, lips pursed in an almost undetectable smile, made him another cup of coffee. She knew what Angus Lordie thought of her – that she was just a woman who made coffee for people. Big Lou was used to this. Back home in Arbroath, they had thought that she was just a girl –
she had heard one of her male relatives say just that – and that somebody who was just a girl had nothing really important to say about anything. And in Aberdeen, where she had worked for years in the Granite Nursing Home, she had been just one of the assistants, somebody who helped, who cleaned up, who made the beds. And nobody had ever suggested to her that she might be something other than this.
Matthew, in silence, stared up at the ceiling, thinking of uncles.
He might so easily have been drowned by one of his uncles when he was eight, he thought. But which of his two uncles would have been most likely to drown him? His Uncle Willy in Dunblane, the one who farmed and who used to take him up the hillside on his all-terrain tractor to look at the sheep? Or 104 The Two Wicked Uncles: Possible Solutions his Uncle Malcolm in the West, who ran a marina and was a keen sailor? Uncle Willy might have drowned him in sheep dip, up at the high fank, and nobody would have been there to see it. It would have been a lonely death, under those wide Perthshire skies, and he would have closed his eyes to the sight of the heather and the mottled grey of the stones that made the fank.
But Uncle Willy was an elder of the Kirk and would never have drowned anybody, let alone his nephew. No. It would not have been Uncle Willy.
Would Uncle Malcolm have pushed him overboard from his yacht, he wondered? Hardly. And yet, now that he came to think of it, Uncle Malcolm had a temper and might, just might, have drowned him in a rage. Matthew remembered crewing for him off Colonsay when he was much younger and clearing away the breakfast things from the galley. He had tossed the dregs from a couple of tea cups into the sea and had done the same with the contents of a mug beside the sink.
Unfortunately, that had contained his uncle’s false teeth in their sterilising solution, and the teeth had been lost at sea.
His uncle had shouted at him then – strange, gummy shouts which had frightened him. Yes, Uncle Malcolm was the suspect in his case.
Suddenly, Angus Lordie clapped his hands together, causing Cyril to start and leap to his feet. “Uncle A,” he said. “Uncle B
is off the hook. He did nothing, yes? And even if he hadn’t been there the boy would have drowned. So he didn’t cause the drowning. Whereas Uncle A caused it to happen.”
Big Lou listened intently. “Oh,” she said. “So it’s all down to causing things? Is that it?”
“Absolutely, most cogitative Lou,” said Angus. “That’s your answer for you.”
“Maybe if Uncle B were to . . .” Matthew began, but was interrupted by Big Lou.
“So it’s cause then,” she said. “But the problem is this. I could say to you, surely, that Uncle B’s omission to act was a cause of the drowning just as much as Uncle A’s positive act was. Ken what I mean?”
The Two Wicked Uncles: Possible Solutions 105
Angus Lordie looked momentarily confused. Serves him right, thought Matthew. It was a bad mistake to condescend to Big Lou, as Angus was about to find out.
Big Lou reached for her cloth and gave the counter a wipe.
“You see, there’s no reason why we should not see omissions to act as being as causally potent as positive actions. It’s simply wrong to think that failures to act can’t cause things – they do.
It’s just that our ordinary idea of how things are caused is too tied to ideas of physical causation, of pushing and shoving. But it’s more subtle than that.”
“So there’s no difference between Uncle A and Uncle B then?”
asked Matthew.
“Not really,” said Big Lou. “The book I’m reading says that ordinary people – the man in the street – would always say that Uncle A was worse, while the philosopher would say that there was no real difference.” She finished her sentence, and then looked at Angus Lordie.
Angus Lordie picked up his coffee cup and drained the last few drops. “Well, Lou,” he said. “That’s pretty impressive. I’ll have to think about what you said. You could be right.”
“I am right,” said Big Lou.
“Could be,” said Angus, looking for support from Matthew, but getting none. He looked at Cyril, who returned his gaze directly, but gave no further sign.
Matthew now spoke. “There could be a difference, though.
There could be a difference between things we do on the spur of the moment and things we do after a bit of thought.”