“We were walking along South College Street when she said this. The others were slightly ahead, engaged in conversation of their own, while la McDowall and I trailed a bit behind. It had rained, and the stone setts paving the road glistened in the street lights. I felt exhilarated by the operatic beauty of our surroundings: the dark bulk of the Old College to our left, the high, rather dingy tenement to our right. At 106 Some Relative Warmth for the Ice Man any moment, I thought, a window might open in the tenement above and a basso profondo lean out and break into song.
That might happen in Naples, I suppose, but not Edinburgh; still, one might dream.
“La McDowall then launched into an explanation of the name McDowall and her ancestry. Have you noticed how these people are often obsessed with their ancestry? What does it matter?
We’re most of us cousins in Scotland, if you go far enough back, and if you go even farther back, don’t we all come from five ur-women in Western Europe somewhere? Isn’t that what Professor Sykes says in his book?
“Talking of Professor Sykes, do you know that I met him, Matthew? No, you don’t. Well, I did. I happened to be friendly with a fellow of All Souls in Oxford. Wonderful place, that.
Free lunch and dinner for life – the best job there is. Anyway, this friend of mine is an economic historian down there –
Scottish historians, you may have noticed, have taken over from Scottish missionaries in carrying the light to those parts. And we’ve got some jolly good historians, Matthew – Ted Cowan, Hew Strachan, Sandy Fenton, with his old ploughs and historic brose, Rosalind Marshall, who’s just written this book about Mary’s female pals, Hugh Cheape, who knows all about old bagpipes and suchlike, and any number of others. Anyway, I knew this chap when he was so-high, running around Perthshire in funny breeks like Wee Eck’s. He invited me down for a feast, as they call it, and I decided to go out of curiosity. I was put up in a guest room in All Souls itself – no bathroom for miles, of course, and an ancient retainer who brought in a jug of water and said something which I just couldn’t make out. Some strange English dialect; you know how they mutilate the language down there.
“The feast was quite extraordinary, and it reaffirmed my conviction that the English are half mad when they think nobody’s looking. They’re a charming people – very tolerant and decent at heart – but they have this distinct streak of insanity which comes out in places like Oxford and in some of the London Some Relative Warmth for the Ice Man 107
clubs. It’s harmless, of course, but it takes some getting used to, I can tell you.
“We had roast beef and all the trimmings – roast tatties, big crumbling hunks of Stilton, and ancient port. They did us proud.
There were a couple of speeches in Latin, I think, and of course we kicked off with an interminable grace which, among other things, called down the Lord’s fury on the college’s enemies.
That one was in English, just in case the Lord didn’t get the point. This brought lots of enthusiastic amens, and I realised that these people must be feeling the pressure a bit, what with all this talk of relevance and inclusiveness and all those things.
And I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for them, you know, Matthew. Imagine if you had fixed yourself up with a number like that and then suddenly the winds of change start blowing and people want to stop you having feasts and eating Stilton. It can’t be easy.
“Of course, it’s foolishness of a high order to destroy these things. The Americans would sell their souls just to get something vaguely approximating to All Souls – they really would.
It’s such a pity, because they would have such fun in places like that. The Canadians, of course, have got something like it. I know somebody who visited it once – a place called Massey College in Toronto. It was presided over by Robertson Davies, you know – that wonderful novelist. He was the Master. Now they’ve got somebody of the same great stripe, an agreeable character called John Fraser, who has a highly developed talent for hospitality, as it happens. Thank God for the Canadians.
“Well, at the feast, I ended up sitting next to none other than Professor Sykes, the genetics man, and he told me the most extraordinary story. I know it has nothing to do with anything, Matthew, but I must tell you. You may remember that he was the person who did the DNA tests on the Ice Man, that poor fellow they dug out of a glacier in France. He’d kicked the bucket five thousand years ago, but was in pretty good condition and so they were able to conduct a postmortem and look at the DNA 108 Old Injustices Have Their Resonances while they were about it. Anyway, Sykes decided to ask for a random volunteer down in England somewhere and see if this person was connected in any way to the Ice Man. Some woman stepped up to the block and he nicked off a bit of her nose, or whatever it is that these people do, and – lo and behold! – she shares a bit of DNA with the old Ice Man. Which just goes to prove what Sykes had been saying for years – that we’re all pretty closely related, even if some of us shrugged off this mortal coil five millennia ago.
“But then, Matthew, it gets even more peculiar. When this woman from Dorset or wherever it was got wind of the fact that she was related to the Ice Man, do you know what she started to do? She began to behave like a relative, and started to ask for a decent burial for the Ice Man!
“Which just goes to show, Matthew, that when expectations are created, people rise to the occasion. They always do. Always.”
Angus paused. “What do you think of that, Matthew?”
“I think she did the right thing,” said Matthew.
33. Old Injustices Have Their Resonances Angus Lordie stared at Matthew incredulously. “Did I understand you correctly?” he asked. “Did you say that this woman did the right thing? That she should have asked for a decent burial for the Ice Man?”
Matthew thought for a moment. He had answered the question impulsively, and he wondered if he was right. But now, on reflection, even if brief, he decided that he was.
“Yes,” he said evenly. “I think that this was probably the right thing. Look, Angus, would you like to be put on display in a museum or wherever, even if you were not around to object? If you went tomorrow, what would you think if I put you on display in, say, a glass case in Big Lou’s café? You’d not want that, I assume. And nor, I imagine, would the Ice Man have wanted to Old Injustices Have Their Resonances 109
be displayed. He might have had beliefs about spirits not getting released until burial, or something of that sort. We just don’t know what his beliefs were. But we can imagine that he probably would not like to be stared at.”
Angus frowned. “No, maybe not. But then, even if we presume that he wouldn’t want that, do we really have to respect the wishes of people who lived that long ago – five thousand years?
Do we owe them anything at all? And, come to think of it, can you actually harm the dead? Can you do them a wrong?”
Matthew thought that you could. “Yes,” he said. “Why not?
Let’s say I name you executor in my will. I ask you to do something or other, and you don’t do it. Don’t you think that people would say that you’ve done me a wrong, even though I’m not around to protest?”
Matthew was warming to the theme. The argument, he thought, was a strong one. Yes, it was wrong to ignore the wishes of the dead. “And what about this?” he continued. “What if you snuffed it tomorrow, Angus, and I told people things about you that damaged your reputation – that you were a plagiarist, for instance? That your paintings were copies of somebody else’s. Wouldn’t you say that I had harmed you? Wouldn’t people be entitled to say: ‘He’s done Angus Lordie a great wrong’?”