“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.
“Can you defend him?”
The advocate looked unperturbed by the question. “It all depends on how I know that,” he answered. “If I know that he’s guilty because he’s suddenly told me so in a consultation and because he wants me to put him in the box so that he can lie to the court – as sometimes happens – then I must ask him to get somebody else to defend him. I cannot stand up in court and let him lie. But if I just think he’s guilty, then it’s a different matter. He’s entitled to have his story put before the court, whatever my personal suspicions may be.”
Angus frowned. “But Cyril can’t talk,” he said. “He’s a dog.”
Again there was silence. Then the advocate spoke. “That is something that we can all agree we know to be the case.”
“And since he can’t give any story at all – because of his . . .”
“His canine condition,” supplied the advocate.
Angus nodded. “Yes, because of his canine condition, then surely we must give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Of course we must,” the advocate conceded. He gestured at the papers in front of him. “Except for the fact that there is rather a lot of evidence against him. This is why I believe we might be better to accept that he did it – that he bit these unfortunate people – and concentrate on how we can ensure that the outcome for him is the best one. In other words, we should think about making recommendations as to his supervision that
84
Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question the sheriff will see as reasonable. And it will be a sheriff court matter.”
“Evidence?” Angus asked nervously.
“Yes,” said the advocate. “Your solicitor has obtained various statements, Mr Lordie, and it seems that there are three people who say that they recognised your dog as the biter. They each say that they knew it was your dog because they had seen him with you in . . .” He looked down at a piece of paper. “In the Cumberland Bar. Drinking, I might add.” He paused, and looked searchingly at Angus. “Do you think your dog might have been drunk when he bit these people, Mr Lordie?”
Angus did not reply. He was looking up at the ceiling. Cyril is going to be put down, he thought. This is the end.
26. Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question
On several occasions, Bertie had asked his mother whether he might stop psychotherapy, but the answer had always been the same – he could not.
“I don’t need to see Dr Fairbairn,” he said to Irene. “You could still see him, though, Mummy. You could go up there and I could sit in the waiting room and read Scottish Field. You know Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question 85
that magazine. I could even look after Ulysses while you went in to see Dr Fairbairn. Ulysses could look at Scottish Field with me.”
Irene laughed. “Dear Bertie,” she said. “Why should I want to see Dr Fairbairn? It’s you who are his patient, not Mummy.”
“But you like him, don’t you?” said Bertie. “You like him a lot, Mummy. I know you do.”
Irene laughed again – slightly more nervously this time. “Well, it’s true that I don’t mind Dr Fairbairn. I certainly don’t dislike him. Mummy doesn’t dislike many people, Bertie. Mummy is what we call tolerant.”
Bertie thought about this for a moment. It seemed to him that much of what his mother said was simply not true. And yet she was always telling him that it was wrong to tell fibs – which of course he never did. She was the one who was fibbing now, he thought. “But there are lots of people you don’t like, Mummy,”