The World According to Bertie - Alexander Hanchett Smith [36]
‘Find an advocate,’ said Angus. ‘Get the best. I don’t care what it costs.’
The lawyer nodded. ‘If that’s what you want.’
It was, and now Angus was preparing for a consultation with the advocate who had been engaged to represent Cyril. They were to meet that morning, in the premises of the Faculty of Advocates, to discuss the case and the strategy that would be adopted. As Angus trudged up the Mound to attend this meeting, his mind was full of foreboding. He had seen an item in The Scotsman that morning about a sheepdog that had been ordered to be destroyed after it had herded a group of Japanese tourists into the waters of Loch Lomond. Would a similar order be made in respect of Cyril? Could dogs effectively be executed these days? Surely that was too cruel a punishment, even if a dog had bitten somebody. And that sheepdog was just doing what it thought was its duty.
He walked across Parliament Square, past the front of St Giles’, the High Kirk, that scene of so many of Edinburgh’s dramas. The streets here were steeped in history: here traitors, criminals, simple heretics had been dragged on their last journey; here the Edinburgh mob had howled its protests against its masters; here Charles Edward Stuart himself had ridden past in his vain attempt at the regaining of a kingdom; here Hume had walked with his friends. And now here was he in his private misery, going to the seat of justice to plead for the life of a dog whom he loved, who was his friend.
He walked into Parliament Hall and watched as lawyers strolled up and down the hall, deep in conversation with one another, going over their pleadings, strategies, possible settlements. He was early for the consultation – he had at least half an hour in hand – and he decided to sit down on a bench at the side. He looked up at the high, hammerbeam roof with its great arches of Scandinavian oak, and at the portraits which surrounded the hall; such dignity, such grandeur; and yet behind it all were the ordinary, stubborn facts of human existence – grinding labour, power, vanity. We dressed our affairs in splendour, but they remained at root grubby little mixtures of hope and tragedy and failure; while round about the foundations of this human world ran the dogs, enthusiasts all, pursuing their own doggy lives in the shadow of their masters; free, but only until they collided with human aims. And then the dogs were smacked or locked up, or, if they overstepped a mark they knew nothing about, given a sharp little injection that put an end to it all for them.
He was still looking up at the ceiling when he became aware of the fact that somebody had sat down on the bench beside him. Angus glanced at his neighbour – a man a bit younger than himself, wearing a suit and tie, and looking at that moment at his wristwatch.
Angus decided to strike up a conversation; anything was better than thinking about Cyril and durance vile. ‘You’re giving evidence?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I’m a so-called expert.’ The other man laughed. ‘Actually, I suppose I am an expert – it’s just that I never call myself that. I’m a psychologist, you see. I specialise in how people do things, in particular how they make mistakes.’
Angus was interested. ‘So what’s going on today?’
‘Oh, it’s the usual thing,’ said the psychologist. ‘Somebody made a mistake over something. They’ve called me to give evidence on how the mistake was made. They want to find out who’s responsible. That’s what they do up here.’
‘Whose fault?’
The psychologist smiled. ‘Well, yes. But what these people,’ he indicated the lawyers, ‘what they don’t understand is that mistakes, human error, may have nothing to do with fault. We all make mistakes – however careful we are.’
‘Yes,’ mused Angus. ‘This morning I put tea in the coffee pot . . .’
‘But of course you would!’ said the psychologist. ‘That’s exactly the sort of mistake that people make. We call it a slip/lapse error. We do that sort of thing mostly when we’re doing things