The minister, at her desk between afternoon meetings, took up the next set of documents requiring her attention. Her usual practice, following that of all government ministers, was to read firstly the summary prepared by her civil servants. Only occasionally and in dire need, would she then read the full report. This did not signify any lack of diligence on her part. Indeed, the work of the Scottish Government would’ve shuddered to a halt if ministers had insisted on reading every document that crossed their desks from first page to last. But on this occasion, she read the summary and immediately then read the full report, re-reading some passages and asterisking two or three sentences. Uncharacteristically, she was then ten minutes late for her next meeting.
At the end of her day, she returned to her office to collect her things and picked up the report to take it home with her. She figured she needed to weigh it in her mind before taking any action. She turned from her desk to her window. It was a good view. She looked across Regent Road to Edinburgh’s famous Calton Hill; the westering sun was lighting up the columns of The Monument.
She remembered, once again, a day-trip from Fife as a child: she and her dad had climbed Calton Hill, partly for the view, but mainly because her dad, a policeman, had wanted to visit David Hume’s grave.
By the grave, her dad had explained to her that David Hume had been a great philosopher. She, a child of seven or eight, had asked what philosophers did. Her dad had thought for a moment, and answered that philosophers tried to find out the truth – they thought the truth was important. She must’ve realised that her dad was in a communicative mood. She asked if that was the same as being a policeman. The answer came: not quite. He told her that philosophers believed, first and foremost, in truth. So did scientists. But policemen believed first and foremost in justice.
He must’ve seen the puzzlement on her face. He explained that, he didn’t spend all his working day thinking about justice. He might instead be thinking that, for example, there was only forty minutes to go before the end of his shift, or he might be worrying about how Grandad Moffat was managing with his new hip. But there would be times when a policeman’s job was to make a decision about something and, at those times, the policeman had to choose the option that would serve justice.
That trip up Calton Hill had been a pivotal experience for her. As a government minister she believed in Good Government. Large parts of her days would be taken up with mundane matters: meeting constituents concerned about dog shit in the local park; wondering (as she had that morning) whether the half-bridge at the back of her upper jaw was going to need replacing; and so on. But there were also many times when she found herself weighing a political decision. Those were the times when she asked herself which option would serve good government.
And she hoped her dad would’ve been proud of her (though his hero, David Hume, hadn’t thought there was much chance of any after-death endorsements). Her dad had retired on ill-health grounds a few weeks before the 1984 miners’ strike. The son and grandson of Fife miners, he couldn’t bear to watch the news during his last illness. The whole family were silently grateful that he died before the miners were beaten back to work, the following year.
She headed down the stairs to the exit, feeling her teeth with her tongue. That morning, the dental hygienist had known that she, the minister, was left-handed. The hygienist had explained that the teeth on the right-side of her jaw were better cared for than those on the left-side. In the same way, scientists know things we don’t know – surprising things. And by the time we, the public, find out about those things, it’s often too late…
It was like that time, a lifetime ago, when a friend had taken her to see a volcano. After university, she’d spent a year volunteering in a country on the opposite side of the world. They’d climbed the slopes of a mountain dotted with pineapple plantations that were benefiting from the rich volcanic soil. Cresting the lip of the volcano, they saw below them a great blue lake. And in the lake, not in the middle, but over towards one side, was a small island – a volcanic cone. A wisp of smoke was issuing from the apex of the cone. The lake was calm as a porcelain plate; the thin smoke curled lazily upwards. Behind them, lower down the slopes, villagers were working in the pineapple fields. Her friend was a volcanologist. He said that the smoke was a sure sign that the volcano was active. The peacefulness of the scene was a dangerous illusion. Sooner or later, the villagers or their descendents would be in mortal danger, not just from quakes, ash and lava, but also from floods issuing from the lake. She gathered that the villagers kind-of-realised the danger, but they weren’t focussing on it. In truth, it was a task for good government.
She could’ve had a chauffeured government car, but (to the anger of the security people) she always insisted on driving herself home to Fife. She changed the CD in the car from Tom Waits to Thomas Tallis – she needed the company of a Tallis’ soaring choir, even if he was 500 years old. She headed off to the Forth Road Bridge. The traffic,for once, was light. On the soaring bridge, she finally settled on her top governmental task for tomorrow. Under ‘any other business,’ she must take the copies of this report to the Cabinet, and make them see that nine deaths in Perthshire from a rabbit virus was a matter requiring urgent government action.
Image: Forth Road Bridge by night by John Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons – a view of the bridge with all the lights lit and reflecting in the water.
literally stories 
Mick
You have done what until now I thought impossible: you created a government official who is likeable, interesting and human. I imagine it is an impossible job for the few who actually want to serve the people.
Very well done!
Leila
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Thanks, Leila! You’re dead right: an awful lot of people in government are self-serving, or self-inflated, or both, and definitely unlikeable. So it’s important to raise a ragged cheer for the embattled few who want to serve the people.
Hugh will tell you that, not far from his place, in the little ex-mining town of Cumnock, there’s a wee museum dedicated to Keir Hardie – a founder of the Labour Party and their first MP, a campaigner for workers’ rights, women’s suffrage, and Indian independence, and a campaigner against WWI. The museum is wee because it’s pretty empty – plainly he died almost as poor as when he was born. No self-serving there.
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Very nice indeed! Well crafted as always with just the right touches of humanity, so the reader is drawn in and then a sharp brake of an ending (for a moment there I thought it was going to involve the reawakening of Edinburgh’s long dead volcano!). A great story to end the week with (and lovely to see David Hume mentioned!).
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Thanks for your kind comments, Steven!
Re David Hume: Forty-odd years ago, I was given the task of looking after a visiting Polish philosopher. I asked him what he wanted to do in Scotland. He only wanted to do one thing: he wanted to visit David Hume’s grave.
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Hi Mick
You do history very well and you often writes in parallels – This is one of those. I’ve never set out to do that and I don’t know if any of my work has such a dynamic?? If it does it’s coincidental. But these types of stories take quite a bit of skill, knowledge and thought manipulation to make them work.
Paralleling her father’s cop ethics with her own Ministerial ones is something I could never have done simply because I don’t think any politician has any ethics!!!
This is well thought out and written beautifully as you always does.
Excellent as always my fine friend.
Hugh
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Thanks Hugh! Your kind remarks are greatly appreciated.
See my reply to Leila, above. Surely there was once an ethical politician in Cumnock?? Of course, I have to admit that ethical politicians, alive and dead, are pretty thinly scattered (as are ethical police-persons -those contemporaries of mine who joined the police were the loud-mouthed, slow-witted, school bullies).
Mick
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Hi Mick!
Hugh is right about your writing in parallels. This is a realistic tale of everyday life that probes and plumbs beneath the surface of civilization itself. The use of Hume, father, flashback is masterfully done. The contrast between the philosopher and the civil servant, the pure seeker after truth and the one who gets practical things done, is subtle and real.
(Most people thought Socrates was a somewhat fascinating, yet slothful, unwashed, lazy, and drunken, bum of sorts: except Plato and Xenophon. Xanthippe, his wife, certainly thought S. was a slothful, lazy, drunken, and unwashed bum: yet she wept like no one else when he refused to run away and calmly quaffed the hemlock instead.)
The prose style in your short story – clipped, spare, accurate, austere – fits the subject matter perfectly and is wonderfully done. In a way, “Crossing the Bridge with Thomas Thallis” – great title! – is like a late Beatles song or a Philip Larkin poem in its everydayness filled with levels and layers (Hugh’s “parallels”). Small details in this story are extraordinary: “feeling her teeth with her tongue.” It adds up to psychological accuracy. I love that she listens to Tom Waits, too (both a legendary, and a vastly underappreciated, artist of the word and the tune at the same time. He can scream, growl, howl, and mumble and it’s so raw it’s beautiful).
“Cresting the lip of the volcano, they saw below them a great blue lake.” That’s a perfectly awesome sentence on every level, and this tale is full of them! The way you handle point of view here can be studied and learned from. Of all your works I’ve read so far, this may be my favorite. Thanks, awesome, cheers, and bravo from Chicago.
Dale
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Wowwwww, thanks Dale! You’re very kind and I really appreciate your taking the time to read and comment on the piece.
I do feel I should ‘fess up here and make clear that the volcano-lake-pineapple-fields scenario was no miracle of imaginative fiction-writing – I once saw it for myself.
thanks again,
Mick
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A nice blend of history, descriptions, flashbacks and a unexpected and satisfying ending. She’d have my vote … if I could vote in Scotland.
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Thanks David. You’d have my vote, if I could vote in the USA
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ps. Yeah, Tom Waits – I love that guy.
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Mick
You’re totally right, Waits is great!
My favorite piece of work by him is “Lucky Day” from GLITTER AND DOOM.
It’s a short story in song wherein he uses his piano like a typewriter. And sad beauty never got any truer than this. “There’s nothin’ like a campfire and a can of beans…so don’t cry for me…”
I forgot to say that your story is really re-readable as well. A reader can get more out of it when it’s read more than once, the true sign of quality.
Dale
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Glitter and Doom – that’s another recommendation you’ve given me, Dale. Thank you. I’ve always admired Waits’ song-stories (‘Burma Shave’, ‘Postcard from a Hooker in Minneapolis’, etc). He’s been knockin’ em out for a long time now – hope he can keep em comin, like Dylan.
Mick
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Shows her inspirations for her idealism and what brings her meaning in her work, the historical roots of her dedication, truth and justice…. I like it when she changes the CD to Tallis. Music that echoes down thru the centuries. I heard the Tallis scholars not too long ago and while reading the story thought of that music as its soundtrack.
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Thanks Harrison, you’re a close reader! And a Thomas Tallis fan! never thought I’d be blown away by choral music (blame childhood Sunday school), but these days and in some moods, only Thomas Tallis fits the bill.
Mick
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This is sublime, multi-layered, character-driven, topical, important, brilliantly crafted writing. I bow to you Mr Bloor.
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Thank you kindly, Mr Kimm! Does this flurry of posts mean that you’re back in Bridlington? Hope you’re able to find the time to submit some more of your pieces to LS. best wishes,
Mick
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Love this story, Mick! I’m glad the minister decided to do the right thing for a good reason. Tom Waits too! Having spent endless study hours in the David Hume Tower in Edinburgh (and occasionally walking up Calton Hill with its unfinished monument), I was slightly taken aback recently to learn that the Tower had been re-named in 2020 (’40 George Square’) because of a petition pointing out racist views of DH. Hopefully, his otherwise very logical philosophy will not suffer the same fate.
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Thanks Alex, good to see your giraffes piece up on the LS site today. Like you, I missed the story of the renaming of the David Hume Tower at the time. I gathered that he was collateral damage in the Bristol Colston Statue controversy. Arguably, it was hypocrisy for the university to name the tower after DH, two hundred years after they refused him a lectureship. Anyway, one thing we can be sure about is that DH isn’t rotating in his Calton Hill grave about any of this.
Mick
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