“But I’ve done nothing. I’m innocent.”
“You cannot touch pitch without being defiled,” says the stranger implacably.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you deny that your brother has impregnated half the women in North Lanarkshire? And filled his Sheriff Irvine Smith Street flat with illicit unregistered earthenware plumbing? And white-washed the windows from inside without local community planning permission?”
“Why should that make me a criminal?”
“Because you cannot touch pitch without being defiled.”
This conversation so interests the barmaid that she has laid aside her magazine. The regular customer cowers under the policeman’s accusing glare, and begs humbly, “Don’t arrest me please. Yes, Harvey Drambogie once inveigled me into voting for the Greens before I knew they were terrorists, but I’ve never voted since. I promise not to see my brother again as long as I live, and I’m very sorry I was so stand-offish when you first spoke to me. I admit that my manners to you then were deplorable so please, please, please accept my humble apologies and let bygones be bygones.”
The policeman drinks the last whisky his wad has purchased and murmurs, “You’re beginning to sound sincere.”
His former cheerful manner suddenly returns. He extends a hand saying, “Apology accepted. Shake, pal.”
They shake hands heartily, then the policeman says, “You will now prove your sincerity by handing over your wallet.”
It is handed to him. He looks inside, removes a banker’s card, hands the wallet back saying, “Without your personal identification number this card is useless. So?” “Zero zero nine zero.”
“Not a number I’ll forget,” says the policeman, going to the door. Before leaving he looks back and with a mischievous smile asks, “Would you like to know what will happen to you if you’ve lied to me?”
“Please don’t tell me,” the regular customer whispers. “I wouldn’t dare lie to you.”
“Wise man. See you around. Goodbye miss.”
The door closes and the regular customer says gloomily, “That’s the third banker’s card a plain clothes cop has pinched from me this year.”
“I’m surprised you’ve any money left,” says the barmaid. “I’ve taken precautions. I have several bank accounts with small token sums in them and only carry one card at a time. My real savings are in a waterproof condom gaffer-taped to the inside of the U-bend behind my lavatory pan.”
“Not much room in a condom.”
“If I say that condom contains items to the value of nearly half a hundred million pounds, will you believe me?”
“No.”
“It does. When I saw how galloping inflation was devaluing the currency I converted my capital into diamonds, pearls and a few well-cut multi-faceted amethysts, for which I have a weakness.”
“I like a good amethyst too.”
“Well you’re not getting any of mine!” he yells in sudden parsimonious frenzy. “Don’t expect it! I am not an idiot! Whit is mine is ma ain ye bitch, and whit’s ma ain is nain o’ yourn — ”
The regression of his speech to a primitive level of dialect is abruptly cut short.
A tall dark brown man has entered wearing the traditional dress of ancient Gaelic warriors: rawhide pampooties on his feet, a tartan plaid upheld by a broad leather belt, a tweed waistcoat with voluminous linen sleeves. On his head is a white turban with a moorhen’s tail feathers sticking up from a cairngorm brooch. There is a targe on his left arm, his right hand grasps a basket-hilted claymore which he lays carefully on the bar counter before saying in a soft, clear, Western Isles accent, “If you please, mistress, a small celebratory Inverarity.”
He is paid no particular attention by the barmaid serving him. The regular customer has resumed reading his newspaper, as it is nowadays safer to ignore eccentricity. The Gael seems hurt by their neglect of his appearance. Having paid for his whisky he rotates the glass without tasting, then asks loudly, “Have none here heard the news?”
Without looking up from his paper the regular customer says, “You can save your breath if you want to tell us the Broomielaw embankments have burst and rising water is turning Glasgow into a cluster of islands. We knew that was bound to happen years ago.”
“Indeed yes, it is happening, but that is not the great news.”
The Gael lifts the whisky glass high above his turban, cries, “The Prince has landed — slanjay vawr,” empties the glass down his throat and flings it to smash in a corner, so that no inferior toast may again be drunk from it. The barmaid looks annoyed. The regular customer says, “Exactly what Prince are you on about?”
“Prince Charles Windsor Xavier Sobieski Stuart the Tenth, our Once and Future King.”
Says the barmaid, “I have more to worry about than politics these days.”
In exasperation the regular customer flings his paper down and demands, “Exactly where did you dredge up that Prince?”
With a lilt in his voice the Gael says, “Charlie has been with us all his life, but kept from his rightful inheritance by treacherous politicians and a bad old mother wrongly called Elizabeth the Second of Britain. The first monarch of all Britain was Jamie Stuart the Sixth of Scotland! He came after Elizabeth the First of England. In 1707 a German dynasty with Stuart blood in its veins was put on the British throne, blood of which Queen Victoria was rightly proud. And now Prince Charlie has extirpated his German taint by fully identifying with his Stuart ancestry. All Scotland must now arise to make him rightful King of Scotland, England, Ireland, Poland and North America!” “If you asylum seekers had more sense you would keep your mouths shut,” says the regular customer.
“Asylum seeker!” asks the Gael in a dangerously quiet voice. “Does that epithet refer to my complexion?”
“It stands out a mile.”
In dignified speech that grows increasingly passionate the Gael announces, “I will have you know that I was born a subject of the British Empire. My father fought for it in two World Wars. In 1944, inside Buckingham Palace, King George pinned a medal to my father’s chest in recognition of his conspicuous bravery. At the same ceremony he met my mother, a MacTavish of Jura, a nurse being honoured for her services to our troops in Malaysia. They married a week later and I was born twenty years after, since when I have farmed my people’s ancestral croft with my own two hands. And now you — a Lowland Sassenach without land or ancestry — have the gall to call me an asylum seeker!”
“I’m glad the British Empire gave you a chance in life,” says the regular customer, “but frankly, since the year dot, your sort have been diluting the purity of Scottish culture and enough is enough.”
“What Scottish culture?” ask the Gael and barmaid simultaneously. The regular customer starts talking didactically but he too grows passionate as he tells them, “Scotland gave the world the Protestant Bible, steam engines, gas lighting, the bicycle, Tar Macadam, Macintosh raincoats, the electric telegraph, television, penicillin, Campbell’s Soup, and McDonald’s Burger King. Asylum seekers have been diluting that proud culture ever since 1890 when the Eye-Ties came here with their decadent ice-cream parlours, their corrupting fish-and-chips shops. Then came the Jews, Indians, Pakis, Chinks, Serbs and Croats. Every stupid nation we’ve helped by invading has brought us a new wave of asylum seekers destroying our native culture with filthy foreign cuisine until now…” (he chokes and sobs) “… now Scottish salmon, Highland venison, Aberdeen Angus beef, Forfar bridies, Finnan haddies, haggis, black pudding, shortbread and even my old granny’s tablet is for export only.”