DUNCAN WESTWATER, FIRST MINISTER

by
Robert Ewing

There sits Duncan Westwater. Look at him: he's young and foolhardy, too thin, sharp bones at his collar and hip, long craftsman's fingers drumming on the tabletop, the tips stained blue with ink and brown with tobacco, the hands of a bohemian dreamer. He is the youngest member of a secret council of radicals, gathered in a cellar in the stinking depths of Edinburgh's Old Town.

Biographical details, in brief. Duncan was born into a tenant farm high in the Ochil Hills. His mother died during his birth, and he was brought up by his father alone. He was given the customary harsh learning at a parochial school where the dominie would beat him for wrong answers, then have him ask for more punishment in Latin. Duncan left the school early to work on his father's farm. There was more to learn there: how to make and mend most of what could turn the earth, how to tend and slaughter the animals, how to build and sew and fetch and carry. But these chores were always a drudge. He would dally as he worked in the outfields, asking himself the questions his father had neither the heart nor the imagination to pose: What are clouds? How do birds find their way across the skies? How does the sun ripen corn and the oats? Where does the wind begin and why? What makes a sunset red, why even does the sun shine?

His father hated the questions. He'd beat Duncan if he chanced upon him idle, which was as often as not. After one such beating Duncan runs from home and does not return. On the road he meets a teacher—a self-styled Napoleonist and libertarian, and forby, a heavy drinker and snuff-taker. This teacher instils in Duncan a great dislike for all authority, and a love for tobacco. He quotes from the wee bookies of the philosopher David Hume, challenging Duncan to prove by case the existence of a benevolent and purposeful creator. This teacher, embittered, unable to work because of his excessive politicking and lack of religion, pours all of his ideas into Duncan.

Two years pass. Duncan drifts by degrees to Edinburgh. He discovers drink, taking his bevvy with a mixed group of men: unemployed soldiers, beggars, Irishmen, Highlanders. He falls in with a crooked bondsman called the Cadger who introduces Duncan to distillation, employing him to tend his illegal stills which smoke away day and night in the corners of bond houses of Leith. Drinking with the Cadger one evening, Duncan is surprised to meet his cousin, a salesman hard on his luck. This cousin has news from home.

Duncan's father is dead.

They have a drink over it. Duncan can think of nothing to say. He knows he should return to tend the farm. Equally, he knows that he will not. The worse for drink, he signs on a piece of paper a short declaration turning over the farm and all of its assets to his cousin.

He wakens late the next day and feels no regret.

So we are up to date. But before I continue you should understand that Duncan has three principal passions in his life. First: he is in adoration of a plump eighteen year old scullery maid called Mary Robertson (although his love for her is cruelly unrequited) Second: he has a zeal for invention. Browbeaten by his teacher-friend to succeed by all means, and shown how to do most things by the Cadger, Duncan invents. Already he has a catalogue of eccentric, generally useless, improvident and even downright dangerous creations to his name. To wit: elegant evening dress for dogs. A hat with a rod and fishing line extending anteriorly from its brim, labelled 'The lazy angler.' A monstrous sling designed to fire carrier pigeons over the spires and rooftops of Edinburgh in the direction of carriage; this service entitled 'Express pigeon post.' A device called the 'Auricular Examiner,' designed to allow the user, through a series of parabolic mirrors directed at angles to one another, to look into his or her own ear, for the especial purposes of auto-diagnosis or personal grooming.

Or just to look.

Duncan tinkers ceaselessly with gunpowder and chemicals. He alters a range of everyday objects to make them explode when they come into contact with blaeberry jam, but even he despairs of their marketplace suitability.

His third passion: politics. Duncan dreams of becoming a great leader, an orator of distinction, able to lead his country with high ideals and powerful rhetoric: in short, he wishes to return Parliamentary rule to Scotland.

'Let him speak; he's words tae oot,' says Rab Gray.

Downie asks, 'Any other maiters fur the table?'

'The subscriptions.'

Groans and mutterings.

'Ye will whine the lot of ye, but the need remains. One penny the quarter fur this meet: table, roof, tobacco, claret. There's none ay it for free. Downie, Rab Gray, and Duncan—as ever there—ye're tardy with the payments.'

Shrugs, pressings of empty pockets.

'Very well then, ah mun mark ye three fur double. Spit oot yer claret, Downie, and pit doon that pipe.'

Rab Gray interrupts: 'Duncan, it's your turn tae staun, lad. Ye said ye've words fur us, significant words. Staun and tell.'

'Dinna change tack, Gray.'

Rab Gray smiles at Duncan, who nods back appreciatively and stands. He takes a swig of claret then clears his throat. 'There is tae be an historic event,' he begins, 'Within the month in this fair city of Edinburgh.'

'Ach. No this again.'

'Hear me oot. The King, first gentleman and Prince of Whales, oor muckle, magnificent regent, arrives in three weeks, along with his hinger oan suthron swankies—'

'Get oan wi it.'

'He will be here tae press the haunds of Edinburgh's fine dignitaries (and toadies.) Now is the time tae promote, petition. And ma cause—and by extension, your cause—is nothing less than the return of parliamentary rule tae Scotland.'

Drysdale lights his pipe, scratches with a desultory hand at his psoriasis.

'Ah've a plan,' Duncan continues, 'That will see oor cause gets the notice it deserves. We kidnap the King,' he whispers, 'Wearing these.'

Reaching behind himself, he reveals the most unusual footwear: hob-nailed boots with hefty springs bolted to their undersides. 'The springs were taken from the seat of a disused hackney,' he explains. 'They're particularly thick and powerful.' He puts on the boots, stands. 'Pray: observe my motion.'

Duncan begins to bounce, the springed boots creaking and clamouring as he does so. Gaining height, he lectures them, talking all the while about energy of kinesis within the circular aspect of each spring, and the ease of forward propulsion using transference of upward momentum to a sidealong direction.

He demonstrates this by bouncing forwards and going around the table. He does this twice, finding himself quite out of breath by the second circumnavigation. 'Watch and admire (pant) my motion, the ease and elegance of said motion (pant).'

Fat Archibald remarks, 'Ah hope ye've a set ay strong springs fur me Duncan boy: for as ye might have greened, ma disposition is on the sonsie side.'

'We bounce (pant) wearing the springed boots, ower the Royal company, the archers and suchlike, tae the Kings carriage. Then (pant) we gaither him in this.' Duncan, still bouncing, unfurls a crude drawing of a net with drawstring top, with a stick-figure regent languishing at its bottom. 'And then bouncing in concert (pant), we make awa wi the King in the net, suspended by poles placed across oor shooders.' He stops with difficulty, taking a moment to get his breath back. 'We secrete the King to a fast place: thenceforth, make oor demands.'

All at the table are speechless.

Duncan folds his arms. 'What say ye?'

Silence. Fat Archibald replies: 'Weel done, Duncan. Yer idea is incredible lunacy, even considering your usual lang bounds of lunatic notion.'

Rab Gray, more sympathetic to the cause, says, 'Oh, Duncan. How are ye tae stop them from shooting ye, lad?’

Duncan shrugs, conceding the point. 'Ah've tried armoury. But it makes too great a noise when perambulating wi the springed boots. And it's no small encumbrance. Naw. Best wi stealth, and speed, and agility.'

'Stealth!' Drysdale splutters into his port, 'Stealth ye say? Where, in the name ay the wee man, resides the stealth in bouncing like a madman tae abduct a King in foon sicht ay scores of guards, sodjers and courtiers? That’s no stealth. That’s stupendous insanity, lad. Ye've a better chance ay makin icarus wings tae fly tae the moon.'

Duncan scowls at the insult. Everyone begins talking.

'Then we petition him,' he calls over the din, 'We petition him. A lesser plan, but I had feared already that I would have tae compromise. We use the springed boots tae get close enough tae hand ower the petition, direct. If we all do this in strength of numbers then one of us is sure tae get through.'

'And our requests are?'

'Ach, whit we have said before... oor wishes for Parliamentary reform, a proportion of ministers equal to those of England, of Wales, to Scotland. Lower taxation, universal male suffrage—whit we have gaun ower many times.' Duncan sits down.

Rab Gray leans forward. 'Duncan lad, yer plan is audacious… worthy. But we're boond by the six acts... son, if ye do this ye will get yer heid in the noose. And whit use is a young voice like yours if it has nae body tae sing frae?'

Murmurs of agreement. All at the table confer, and seem to be united. Fat Archibald remarks: 'An impossible, hair-brained scheme. Ye'll be run through or shot before yer petition ever reaches the King.'

Duncan is resolute. 'Listen tae ye aw. Talking like piss-breeked fearties, aw blaw an nae change tae the wind that ye spout. This—' He unfurls one of his petitions and prods the lettering, '—could set the seed of oor countries rebirth, the return of oor governance, oor rule. Oor parliament.'

'Parliament in Scotland is done, Duncan,' sighs Auld Coutts. 'Darien saw tae that. We're better off wi London in steerin charge, fur noo.'

'A plague ay shite oan London!' exclaims Duncan. 'If ye're no with me, then ah'll do this maself. Ahm lookin fur real Scotsmen…who huv the thumpin herts tae see this through. Those that can and will wraucht change. Scotsmen with the coursing blood of their patriotic forebears.'

The men at the table are unmoved by the rhetoric.

'Are ye fur me? Show yer hauns.'

Groans. No hands raised.

'Come on.'

'Ach, Duncan son, can ye no see? We're deid sweer against it.'

'Gie him a drink,' says Drysdale.

'Aye, strong drink.'

'Sorry, Duncan, lad,' says Rab Gray. 'Yer cause is a stunt and lost. It will change nothing, and forby, will just set the Royals further against Scotland.'

'Lad,' Fat Archibald hands Duncan a brimming glass of port, 'Ye've a heid looser than the bubbly jocks oan an escapit, hunner-year turkey.'

An explosion of laughter.

Duncan stands, insulted. He takes off his spring-heeled boots, collects up his plans, and makes for the door.

'Get some sleep, lad,' Drysdale calls after him, ''And for pity's sake, put yerself oot of hairm's wey.'

Duncan does not reply.

He consoles himself with a drink in Babbit's pub. Dark inside, the windows framed by grime, blacking out the meagre ration of summer light. Shrunken auld drunks melt into their chairs. Pipe smoke, and the smell of piss from the wynds outside. Tobacco spitters howking up; damp stains on the walls and roof. Sour smell of claret. Lines of whiskies above the bar, their labels yellowed. The publican a study in moroseness.

Duncan drinks alone, feeling damp in his jacket.

Much later, and drunk, he sails down the cobbled streets to Libberton Wynd, hop-scotching the filth on the way. The rain comes on and a welcome wind begins to blow, moderating the Auld Toon stench. Roaring laughter from auld Downie's tavern, a drunk fallen in a doorway there.

Duncan stops under the gables of the house opposite the tavern. In luck, the windows of the house are open. He wrings his hands, heart in his mouth, then shouts up: 'Mary! Oh bonny Mary, are ye there?'

His luck is twofold: Mary appears at her window. She looks bored and scours her teeth with a thumbnail. Mary is a very plain young woman. Duncan takes out a scrap of paper, and reads aloud his own smudged words: 'Mary, oh Mary. When will ye free me from the tyranny of unrequited love? When shall ah meet ye, walk aside ye, drink in the heavenly tang of yer perfume?'

There is horizontal laughter from the drunk.

Mary is unmoved. She says flatly, face as blank as a dead fish, 'Dinnay ken.'

Mary's mother appears at the stair window, scowling down. 'That you, Duncan?' Duncan waves back meekly. 'Whit did ah tell you about coming here? She no richt fur ye, so away you and spout yer pish somewhere else.'

'Good eve'nin, Mrs Robertson. Are ye well the nicht?'

'Dinna you well the nicht me. Get awa wi ye, or ah'll be doon there tae kick yer erse.' She disappears from the window.

Duncan implores his love, 'Mary…oh Mary… in a few days, ah will do something… grand, dangerous. This may be the last time we will see each other. Can ye grant me one last wish? Will ye smile for me, just this once?'

Mary looks down with her mouth gaping.

'Mary, ah mun ask…' Duncan steels himself, '…Mary, would ye ever mairry me? Would ye mairry me, Mary?'

Mary's mouth gapes further, then closes firm. She shakes her head. 'Oh, Duncan. Ah cannay mairry you.'

His heart goes cold. 'Why do ye say naw?'

Mary shrugs. 'Ma mither says ye're a bony arsed blellum, wi brains enough but nane ay the sense tae make me a bawbee.' She examines something on the end of her fingernail then as an afterthought, adds: 'And thon lassie Ferrier says ye've a pintle oan ye the size ay a flea's.'

Duncan turns, stricken. He walks from the wynd, looking back once, calling out: 'Adieu; au revoir. If I ever do see you again.'

Mary watches him go, quite unconcerned. She waits until he's out of sight then picks her nose and eats it.

Duncan stotts back on the dark streets of the old town. He rolls his eyes to the sky, rain-smirr on his cheeks. Children jostle past. He hears accents, Irish and Highland brogues. A pretty girl smiles at him, but he's inured to her searching look. He knows that other men will buy her childhood from her for small money.

Lamplights, and yellow candles glowing in the centres of smeared tenement windows. Fiddle noise, raised voices, wheezing laughter. Barking dogs, then more children flying past. A young boy with an extreme twist in his back, breathing heavily as he runs.

Duncan returns to his room. A part room, divided up by a rotten partition from the adjacent tenant. There are black spots of mould on the walls. Duncan takes off his coat and lights a single candle. Pouring brown water from a jug into a bowl, he washes his face then sits by the side of his bed with his head in his hands, until he is made to jump by a sudden noise from outside; looking out of the window, there is nothing.

He falls asleep to the shadow play of the candle.

The morning of the grand procession. The weather inauspicious, steady summer drizzle falling from clouds clasped over the city.

Duncan arrives on the Royal Mile early to secure a standing place, one which will allow him to get close to the King. Many are there before him, and from the foot of the Canongate to Castlehill, on both sides of the road, are crowds of people. They busy around him, hiding the ugly boards fronting the shops of the Mile with green and red cloth, dressing stands and scaffolds with flowers, flags, patriotic signs.

The standing spectators grow in number as the morning goes. All trades and professions shoulder to shoulder with their flags and ensigns: candlemakers, booksellers, binders and printers, advocates, butchers, surgeons, chairmasters, carters, colliers; the sailors of Leith and the Edinburgh clergy, and dotted here and there, schoolchildren waving flags. People at windows and rooftops; ten thousand umbrellas raised under the rain. Red-cheeked ladies in wet silks. Merchants and rich men, buying prominent places, heather in their hats. The throngs spilling out onto the wet cobbleways.

Duncan waits, feeling conspicuous. He stands in the shadow of a scaffold, averting his eyes if ever he is looked at. The clocks of the Old Town mark out eleven, then twelve, then one. The rain comes down. Then the cavalry and yeomanry arrive, pushing forward to clear a space along the road. Further down the Mile, the crowds begin to roar and Duncan's heart loups in his chest. He reaches inside his jacket and drains a flask of his own whisky, turning from the watchful eye of a Yeoman.

Bunting is thrown from windows, then there's cheering and handkerchief waving, signalling the King's imminence. Finally an entourage of trumpeters, heralds, pursuivants in red and yellow tabards, macers, henchmen, equerries and grooms trooping up the street.

‘There's word comin up that Geordie's wearin pink pantaloons!’ says the man standing beside Duncan. Duncan mutters some reply and stares fixedly back at the procession.

Small girls in pretty white dresses with blue sashes throw wild flowers onto the cobbles, ahead of the King's horses.

The King's carriage draws level. George is there inside, only his head visible through the lowered window. He turns a gloved hand to the spectators and smiles wanly. Duncan stares at him, surprised to see such an ordinary face on The King. A fat man's face, bulbous and ruddy and ordinary. He thinks to himself: So this is the King. Well, his teeth are yellow in his heid like ony man.

When the carriage passes Duncan makes his move. He unwraps his springed boots and, with shaking hands, ties them on. Then he pushes through the crowds into the hail of flowers and bunting. Jumping once, he is in the air, bouncing towards the Royal Procession at speed, petitions fluttering in his hand.

The crowds quieten momentarily: then there's jeering, laughter. Someone shouts man following, and the soldiers turn. Duncan jigs left and right, dodging from the arms of the cavalry. He bounces outrageously, leaving an equerry flat out on the wet cobbles, and all at once the cheering crowds are behind him and whooping up for him as he approaches the carriage.

The ground ahead is thick with soldiers. A flash of silver hits him in the face, money thrown. Duncan falls, then tries to get up again, but is poleaxed by a heavily built Royal archer and a scrum of soldiers.

His face is pressed hard against the cobbles. He sees scattered flowers, and hears a single word: Assassin.

The King and his retinue continuing along the Mile, unaware.

He is imprisoned. In court Duncan faces charges of Treasonable Practice: for being the convener, and an accomplice in, seditious meetings, and for attempting to molest, by petition, His Most Gracious Majesty King George (The Fourth).

He pleads insanity to avoid the gallows. His advocate cites in mitigation a fervent patriotism causing him take leave of his senses. Accordingly, Duncan acts in a highly inappropriate manner in court: grunting and undressing to the waist, scandalising and titillating in equal measure those watching from the galleries.

He is held in an asylum from which he promptly escapes.

Thenceforth Duncan becomes a fugitive, travelling under numerous ill-considered aliases, including, most foolishly of all, his own name and identity. He sleeps in caves and ruined houses and under bridges and fallen trees. He goes north as the light of the year fails. Ultimately he reaches the island of Mull, where he overwinters. He is given refuge in the byre end of a poor family, mother and father and seven children.

There in hiding, he carves fabled creatures for the children: Selkie folk, men with wings, fanged sea serpents. And when finally he leaves, he gifts to the father his tobacco pouch, and to the mother a bowl made of cherry wood, a pattern of flying swallows on its sides.

On a bright Spring day Duncan leaves Scotland for the Americas. He takes a boat first to Belfast, then from Belfast a large, white-sailed ship. He travels with the people of Ireland and the Highlands and Islands, singing with them through Atlantic squalls and sunshine and under the low drum-roll of the sails: Cha till mi tuille: We shall return no more.

His boat lands at Pictou, Nova Scotia.

There Duncan meets and marries an Ulster girl called Nessa, and together they have fourteen children (one more than King George IV.) They farm potatoes and keep cattle and sheep.

Duncan makes a small fortune with one of his inventions, a medical chest entitled 'The Universal Animal Compendium'. His chest contains potions, enemas, astringents, tablets and salts, which he purports will cure every ill known to domestic animals, including milk fever, pig dropsy, the gush-shits, and hoof rot. His medical chest bears the winning logo:Vigour for the dumb.

Duncan tries the potions on himself before using them on his animals. As a consequence his tongue turns permanently black.

His political zeal ebbs away from him in his middle years. Instead he learns to adore his wife, and so becomes a wise man. He and Nessa both miss their countries, but this passes as their children and then their grandchildren grow up to be Canadians. At a distance he reveres Queen Victoria, forgiving in her the foibles of her Uncle George.

Duncan lives to be ninety-eight. He dies in 1899, on the cusp of a new century. He makes a bet on his deathbed with an old friend, waging that Scotland will have its parliament within ten score years.

And this is what happens, for better or worse, and with weeks to spare, one hundred years later. And Duncan rattles around somewhere in a cemetery plot in Nova Scotia, startling the vigorous animals overground.

© Robert Ewing
Reproduced with permission

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