A History Maker

by Alasdair Gray

  On an agonized note Kittock cried, “She’s a neo-sapience Wat!”

  He stared then asked how she knew.

  “Guess,” she said, smiling mournfully.

  “You’re one too?”

  She nodded.

  After a moment he spoke casually, like a man prepared to spend a few more minutes with a stranger. He was pleased to see this hurt her.

  “When I was wee you told me the earth is the seed bed of the universe — that folk who choose immortality must leave the earth to prevent overcrowding. Immortals break that rule?”

  “I’m no immortal now,” said Kittock humbly, “I shogged off the insanity of rejuvenation when I returned to earth. I was sixty years abroad in the universe before admitting how much I hated eternity and infinity, how much I needed the world’s wonderful big smallness. The Dryhope grannies (some of them my daughters) let me sneak back to this outhouse where I crowd nobody and take nothing from the powerplant but poultry food and books for the gangrels. But Meg Mountbenger is another kind of woman altogether. She’s also your …”

  A rushing noise like distant wind had been coming nearer and suddenly surrounded the tower with a deafening, steady roar. The door at the foot of the spiral stairs burst open, a blast of warm air came out carrying a cloud of dust, feathers and four pigeons who tumbled and fluttered overhead before settling in window slits and book shelves. Wat and Kittock, partly blinded by dust, rushed to push the door shut but before they reached it the pressure of the blast eased and the roaring, though still continuous, lessened enough for the noise of hearty male voices and descending footsteps to be heard from above.

  The first to enter was a young lad in Boys’ Brigade uniform who cried, “Wattie, Wattie, we got the standard, we got the standard!”

  It was Sandy, Wat’s brother. Behind him a bulky, magnificent figure in the full dress uniform of a Northumbrian commander stooped to get his plumed helmet under the lintel. It was General Shafto looking so robustly, serenely cheerful that Wat felt happier at the mere sight of him. Shafto turned his grin from Wat onto Kittock, saluted her and said, “Forgive the rude intrusion, madam, but we have come here on urgent warrior business, having failed to contact the Ettrick commander by any other method. Colonel Dryhope! My good friend and best enemy! Your carriage awaits upstairs with Archie Crook Cot in full control. Since the entire Northumbrian command were coming north for the shinding at Selkirk tonight (yes, even old Dodds — he’s quite got over his huffs with you) I decided to return with your standard bearers, so here we are to collect the guest of honour and man of the moment.”

  “He’s not going to the circus,” said Kittock and Wat was puzzled by her appearance. She no longer looked calm and wise but small and frantic like a frightened child.

  “Forgive me for disagreeing madam, but he must! The circus cannot start without him! World champions are waiting to shake your hand, Wat Dryhope — Inongo, Winesburg and Pingwu, to name but a few. Commanders of great new recently created military leagues are here to shake your hand — Sheer Khan of Mongolia, Jack Ripper of Texas, Siegfried Krawinkel of the Fifth Reich. Every commander in Scotland is waiting to shake your hand — yes, Scotland will be a nation again and who but Wat Dryhope is fit to lead it? By gum, the Scots and Sassenachs can look forward to some grand scrimmages again! A whole galaxy of public eyeballs is also waiting outside but we won’t pay any attention to them. Come upstairs Wattie!”

  With pursed lips Wat had been smiling, nodding, almost laughing at what Shafto said yet he did not go at once. Part of him knew he was being swept away by other people’s wills and that nobody should let themselves be swept away. He looked at Kittock. She stared back and shook her head in a slight, definite negation. He suddenly knew that not going would be the greatest and truest act of his life but Shafto, chuckling, put a warm friendly hand on his shoulder and said, “Why should a hero like you skulk away from his comrades like Achilles did? Achilles’ lovely bedmate had been snapped from him by the commanding officer but YOU are the supreme commander here and the lovely and famous Lulu Dancy awaits your command in the flying bedstead upstairs. Go to her! Besides, Colonel Dryhope, your life is partly mine! I saved it a week ago! Tonight I insist that you do as I want. I order you to stop being a damned dour reticent Scot and for once enjoy yourself!”

  So Wat went to the circus after all.

  NOTES

  & GLOSSARY EXPLAINING OBSCURITIES

  NOTES ON THE PROLOGUE

  Page IX

  scunnered = a shrinking recoil more intense than disgusted. It derives from the noun sickener or scunner.

  dreich = grey and dull; cold and dismal.

  Page X

  snibbing = latching; bolting; locking. uisge beatha = Gaelic for aqua vitae or water of life; a spirit obtained by distillation from a mash of cereal grains saccharified by the diastase of malt; otherwise known as whisky or Scotch.

  Page XI

  ramfeezle = muddle; confuse; exhaust.

  Page XIII

  tholed = suffered, endured or been afflicted with pain, grief et cetera. bumbazing = perplexing; stupifying.

  Page XIV

  malagroozed = injured; hurt.

  clanjamfries = miscellaneous assemblies.

  Page XV

  lang-nebbed = long-nosed; over-intellectual; seeming wiser than is the case.

  Page 3.

  Five commanders … with … deeply scarred faces. Since medals were as obsolete as monarchs and presidents who had awarded them scars were now the only outward sign of a soldier’s experience. Many senior officers rejected medical treatment which would heal their faces completely, but unlike German student duellists of the late nineteenth century did not invite medical treatment which would make the scars more conspicuous.

  Page 7.

  An epoch when most men are over six feet tall. In the historical era good feeding and healthy exercise were often a perquisite of the officer class, whose average height, health and lifespan was usually greater than those who did not inherit wealth. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some scientists attributed such class differences to heredity: if the difference was genetic no political movement to better the lives of the badly fed could succeed. Yet in less than a century the average height of white Australians came to equal the average height of the British officer class, though at that time most white Australians were descended from poor people the British officer class had evicted.

  Page 10.

  bairns = infants, young folk, children or offspring. Of Teutonic and Scandinavian origin, this word was widespread in England as well as Scotland before the 18th century. Shakespeare and Swift used it.

  loons = young people, usually male, of a mischievous, rascally, sexually over-active or violent character; also used as an affectionate disparagement of someone the speaker likes or of the speaker himself. Natives of Forfar liked being called Forfar loons; it was the preferred nickname of that town’s football team.

  Page 11.

  When your wounds heal join the veterans and Boys’ Brigade in the Warrior house where you will be the only officers … Teach the Ettrick youngsters how to avoid them.

  There were no private soldiers in modern armies. The lowest ranks were the Boys’ Brigades which were seldom allowed to fight before the age of sixteen. Those who survived their first war and remained in the army at once became officers with full voting rights.

  Page 13.

  The Ettricks pull on their helmets and form a circle.

  The helmets contained the only electronic equipment modern armies allowed themselves: earphones through which soldiers could hear their commander’s voice on a wavelength

  inaudible to anyone else.

  Page 20.

  whins = gorse or furze, a prickly flowering evergreen shrub that thrives throughout Europe and Africa in thin or stony soils.

  Page 21.

  The only signs of battle on the moorland slopes were some gangrels collecting scattered swords, helmets, shi
elds.

  gangrels = tinkers, tramps, vagabonds, vagrants, gipsies, nomads of no fixed abode. The earliest kind of humanity were of this sort and wandered around the land for millennia in small family groups, improvising tools and shelter, gathering and consuming their food as they went. In some countries they acquired sheep and goats which they drove before them. The early Jews and Arabs were this sort of folk. When some early gangrels settled and started farming, weaving and making clay pots those who still moved between them became the first traders. Increasing settlement produced city states, empires and vast civilizations so gangrels inside their boundaries lived by migrant labour such as fruit picking, horse trading, scavenging, mending kettles, conjuring and making music. On the vast grasslands of northern Eurasia travelling nations of horse-riding herdsmen grew strong enough to counter-attack the settled lands of China pressing from the east and Rome from the west. Their attacks broke the Roman empire into the Christian nations of a new Europe, for the invading horsemen could not have gainfully managed the towns and territories they conquered without help from a priesthood who read and wrote. Their attacks gave China also a new ruling dynasty. When such gangrels became landlords their travelling days ended, except when they raided their neighbours.

  Governments of the historical era who wanted to distract public attention from their greed or uselessness usually went to war, but when war with outsiders seemed too dangerous or expensive they declared war on a part of those they ruled, and for at least two thousand years Jews and gangrels were the traditional victims. Between 1942 and 44 the German government tried to kill all the gipsies and Jews in Europe and killed about six million of each. In 1990 the British Home Secretary (a politician employed to protect British households) accompanied a police attack on a camp of gangrels on the ancient common of Glastonbury. Men and women were clubbed, their mobile homes smashed with truncheons, and next day the British Prime Minister announced in Parliament, “I see it as my duty to make life hard for these people.” Yet while making life hard for these people governments who served big property owners kept making people homeless. At the start of the twenty-first century for every tramp, gipsy, tinker or vagrant who liked the life there were a dozen too poor to rent a home and twice as many migrants in temporary accommodation where employers used them to cheapen the wages of settled workers. Before homes became self-supporting and the commons were restored to everyone most people became travellers after forced eviction.

  CHAPTER TWO — PRIVATE HOUSES

  Page 24.

  A stately woman of fifty was mother that day.

  Every home had at least six experienced women who could order the powerplant and who did the job by turns, a week at a time. During that week whoever did the job was regarded as mother of the whole household. It was hard work so no younger women wanted so stern a title. Besides, many girls bore children when too young to patiently nurse them. In modern homes no infant was in danger of neglect. Most attached themselves to an aunt (the title given to any childbearing woman over eighteen) or granny (a title given to all women past childbearing).

  Page 25.

  Silencing the organ she attended to the orders of the day.

  The organ could draw from the powerplant every recorded form of music, art and industry less than the diameter of the stalk. All housemothers were skilled musicians since anyone who could play Bach’s Mass circa 1740 easily managed the fingering which summoned the components of a Triumph motor cycle circa 1956. No skill in fingering was needed to make simple substances like chocolate or dynamite, though for health reasons organists kept this knowledge from children. (Note: the noise, stink and danger of the oil-fired Triumph made many adolescent youths prefer it to the safer, cleaner, more efficient models of the twenty-first century.)

  Elastoplast

  Trade name of an antiseptic adhesive bandage first manufactured in the early twentieth century.

  Page 25.

  The cooks [ordered] milk, cheese, flour, sugar, coffee beans.

  The extra fertilizing of the powerplants’ roots after large funerals let them deliver meat with unusual speed. Most families avoided the taint of cannibalism by being vegetarian for a fortnight unless hunters brought in game from the commons.

  Page 26.

  Granny Tibs was one hundred and twenty.

  Granny Tibs was not an immortal. Her age (like the greater average height) had grown naturally with modern housekeeping, which used the elderly with affection and respect. The link between long lives and respect for them was first discovered by a joint team of U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. scientists who visited the Russian Caucasus in the late twentieth century, investigating rumours of unusual longevity there. They found the rumours true, and that the longevity had little to do with diet and climate. Their discovery was tersely summed up by the Anglo-American Alistair Cooke who said, “If you want to live a long time teach your children to love you, and your grandchildren to revere you.”

  Page 29.

  A marble bird-table shaped like a twentieth-century aircraft carrier.

  This must have been derived from Ian Hamilton Finlay’s pond sculpture in the garden of Little Sparta, near Biggar in Lanarkshire.

  Page 30.

  A fishpond in a vegetable garden stretching all round the house.

  Powerplants could synthesize any form of healthy nourishment but food connoisseurs believed that synthesized foods more elaborate than maize, rice or cornflour lacked the flavour of natural growth, were as tasteless as the food in days when vegetables and livestock had their growth forced by factory farming and genetic engineering, their decay retarded by freezing, atomic radiation and chemical additions. Apart from grain crops the foods ordered from the powerplant were those which could not be grown locally such as tea, coffee, sugar, oranges and lemons in northern Europe. All modern households had large kitchen gardens. Berrying, nutting and mushroom picking on the commons were popular seasonal pastimes, hunting and fishing were popular sports. The increasing popularity of these activities during the last days of the early matriarchy were among the factors which helped humanity survive the great plague with so little loss of life.

  Page 30.

  On the right bank stood Dryhope Tower, an ancient keep used by the henwife.

  In northern Europe the henwife of large households had a status which gave her a place in folklore. Her work with poultry outside the walls made her a commoner, but she brought her produce directly to the senior lady of the manor, since fowls were meat for nobility when the main diet of the lower classes was flesh of beasts killed and salted at the onset of winter. The henwife’s permit to enter or leave the great house when she chose made her inconvenient to the janitor or doorkeeper. A fifteenth-century Scottish poet (sometimes thought to be Dunbar) tells how his wife dies of thirst, goes to heaven, gets work as the Mother of God’s henwife, “holds Saint Peter at strife”, and finding the ale of heaven sour, works in a public house outside the walls for travellers on the way there. The likeness between this henwife and Wat Dryhope’s mother is a consequence of their profession.

  … Saint Mary’s Loch half a mile away. Today the calm surface exactly reflected the high surrounding hills with woods of pine, oak, birk, rowan.

  The wooded character of this scene is recorded in the ancient ballad of the Outlaw Murray, which describes King James Stuart leading an army of full five thousand men against the border clans:

  They saw the derke forest them before,

  They thought it awesome for to see.

  In the eighteenth century this ancient forest was destroyed by a system of housekeeping based upon sheep and the wool industry. Sir Walter Scott later celebrated the transparency of the loch but also its arboreal devastation:

  Oft in my mind such thoughts awake

  By lone Saint Mary’s silent lake.

  Thou know’st it well — nor fen nor sedge

  Pollute the pure lake’s crystal edge;

  Abrupt and clear the mountains sink

  At once upon the le
vel brink;

  And just a trace of silver sand

  Marks where the water meets the land.

  Far in the mirror, bright and blue

  Each hill’s huge outline you may view;

  Shaggy with heath, but lonely, bare,

  Nor tree, nor bush, not brake is there,

  Save where, of land, yon slender line

  Bears thwart the lake the scattered pine.

  By the end of the twentieth century overgrazing had destroyed the topsoil, exposing grey slides of rubble-like stone in places. The end of industrial housekeeping let Ettrick regain its ancient forest with the addition of fine gardens around the homesteads.

  Page 30.

  Large, low-walled, broad-eaved mansions, each with the slim white inverted cone of a powerplant stalk growing dim and invisible after the first hundred feet.

  Like the trees on which it was modelled the powerplant lived and fruited by synthesizing sunlight, air, moisture and dirt, though the nature of the fruit was decided by human programming. Roof, walls and foundations of houses — all but the polished parquet floors — were extensions of the plant. Stalks easily reached cloud level since their tap root touched the geothermal layer.

  The first modern powerplant was developed in the twenty-first century by a team of more Japanese geniuses than can be listed here. The world was then so disastrously polluted by competitive exploitation that the richest exploiters were acquiring shares in self-contained ecosystems (some on Earth, some on satellites) where they hoped their children would survive when human life became impossible elsewhere. The same greedy madness for more existence than they would allow others had driven American, British and Russian governors to build nuclear bomb bunkers in the twentieth century, Egyptian governors to build huge pyramids and burial chambers in the dawn of history.