Robert Louis Stevenson gave the simplest answer when he noted that Gaelic-speaking Highlanders regard English-speaking Lowlanders with a suspicion the Lowlander is inclined to return unless both meet in English company where they at once feel like blood brothers. Why? There are many partial answers. One is the comparative poverty ensuring that for centuries the Scots gentry, whether Lowland lairds or Highland chiefs, did not speak wholly differently from their lowly employees, unlike England whose chief officials still speak a mandarin dialect learned in expensive private schools like Rugby, Marlborough etcetera. Around 1370 a French traveller visiting Scotland thought it remarkable that if a knight rode his horse over a Scot’s grain field an angry peasant ran up and cursed him. No peasant dared do that in rich lands where the nobility had hundreds of workers so could have one flogged or hung without loss of income. Scots aristocrats were mostly too poor to damage crops on which they and their peasants depended. In the late 19th century Robert Louis Stevenson was dismayed by how completely his English friends behaved as if their servants and other low-class folk did not exist. Such national differences may be thought obsolete relics, and should be forgotten. This book will explain otherwise, not by inflaming anti-English sentiment, but by showing how local conditions have created a unique culture, so a separate government has always been required by those who share this land, these conditions.
The following chapters explain how Scottish people’s land, rocks, soil distribution, mineral resources, waters and those great potential dynamos the sea lochs, ensure that all who live and work here come to feel part of it like the Irish who came to found Dalriada and later fled here from the potato famine — the Anglo-Saxons who escaped across the border from Duke William and Margaret Thatcher into the Lothians — Jews driven here by Czarist and Nazi pogroms — Italians by the phylloxera epidemic that destroyed their vineyards — Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and other former subjects of the British empire, together with refugees from wars Britain has fought since then and who are now wickedly labelled asylum seekers. I believe that all who stay to live, work and vote here will invigorate this nation that has always been a colloquium of different people, as every sane nation must be.
NINETEEN TUNNOCK'S DIARY 2004
Highly perplexed. Around Saturday lunchtime yesterday life changed in a way that almost makes my entire past irrelevant, uninteresting. Shortly before noon I brought Niki her usual brunch in bed. She complained about amount of butter on toast. Told her she had a tenth part of what I put on my slice. She said that was why I was fat, then doorbell rang. Went down, opened it. Bustled in past me a person of my own height but sturdier, wearing a kind of battle dress with camouflage pattern designed for jungle warfare. She turned and facing me, hands on hips, said belligerently, “Where’s that Is?”
“Who are you?” I said, astonished.
“Where is that Is?” she demanded, fiercer still. Beginning to recognize her I said, “I don’t know! You led Isabel in here with two other girls three years ago. I had never seen them before and have never seen them since.”
“Hm!” she said, frowning, and, “Are you telling me the truth?” “Why should I tell lies?” I cried, exasperated. “Who are you? What do you want here?”
“Are you telling me there’s no woman in this house?”
“Why should I tell you anything?” I demanded.
“I’m the woman in this house,” said a voice and there was Niki on the stair landing, her coat slipped on over her nightgown and Moloch in her arms.
“Then clear out!” said this total stranger. Niki, obviously as astonished as I was, said faintly “Who are you?”
“Don’t you know?”
Niki stood staring and shaking her head. She had been redder than usual but was now paler than usual. The invader said, “If you don’t know me, ask around. I know you Mrs Kate MacNulty! Your man knows me even better so go back hame and ask him who I am! You’ll find him a lot nicer after his wee spell in jail, so put on your claes and get out of here because your arnae needed. John’s had enough of you and that wean you carted here instead of chucking in the Clyde. Amn’t I right John?”
That question was flung at me like a stone, and because I was indeed tired of Niki and Moloch I could not say no. Niki yelled, “Don’t worry! I’m sick of you John Tunnock and you’re welcome to that bitch whoever she is! I was going to clear out soon anyway ye fat, stupid, mean, TV-less wee bastard!”
Moloch started wailing.
When life grows too complicated for intelligent management, sit down till it simplifies. I did so in the dining-room, elbows on knees, head in hands. The invader stayed in the lobby until I heard Niki leave, muttering what were either ugly remarks to the stranger or soothing sounds to Mo. The front door slammed. The new presence entered the room and sat opposite me. Relief at departure of lodgers was blocked by dread of new burden. Without looking up I asked what she wanted. She said sullenly, “I wouldnae mind a whisky. A big one. No water. And I wouldnae mind chocolate biscuits or stuff like that, if you’ve got any.”
I gave her what she asked and sat down again facing her, sipping a whisky I had poured for myself and wondering what to say. She said suddenly, “Put on some of that music.”
“What kind?” I asked. She leaned toward me so that her hair fell forward and hid her face. She mumbled, “Something romantic.”
I went, tingling a little, to the pianola and inserted the Siegfried Idyll with which Wagner greeted Cosima on the morning she gave birth to their son. I returned to where the intruder sat, her face still hidden behind her curtain of hair. I again sat opposite not knowing what to say until, “Are you Zoe?” occurred to me. She said, “Aye.”
I said I had met her father a while ago. She said, “Where? How?”
“In a pub,” I said. She said, “Aye. Give me another whisky.”
I poured it saying, “Exactly what do you want? Is it money?”
She said, “I don’t need money.”
“So what do you want?”
“Is that not obvious?” she shouted, angrily glaring at me. I gaped at her. She said, “Let’s go to bed.”
“Not,” I said firmly, “before I have another whisky.”
Sounding disappointed she said she hadn’t known I was the kind that needed it.
What followed was too quick to be perfectly satisfying, but the relief was wonderful.
Post coitum omne animal triste est42 is attributed to Aristotle who never said it, because it is Latin and he Greek. It is not always true of me but is certainly true of every woman who has lain with me, so I was not surprized when Zoe, after bringing me to that rapid climax, started sobbing. Feeling happy and grateful I asked what was wrong, knowing from experience nothing I said would help. She said, “Now you’ll think I’m just a hoor, nothing but a hoor.”