Edward Kane and The Voice of the Spider. Chapter 4: Patria Potestas

‘Nah. A slap on the arse would have done it. But a punch was a bit much, sir.’

Kane sipped his tea: ‘And – it was her own father who administered the blow…’

‘Well – that’s different ennit.’

‘In what respect?’

‘If it’s the dad, then he has every right, doesn’t he.’

‘I shouldn’t think…’

Horse waved his pipe to make his point: ‘No, sir – hear me out. If it’s the dad, then he got every right to keep his child in check, ain’t he. I mean if the lass is a bit of a ragamuffin who needs a good walloping from time to time, then that’s the dad’s job, ennit. That’ll be the Law, sir. That’ll be on Page One of them big Law books you bring home.’

The Advocate sighed: ‘I’ll certainly need a big Law book for this case, my friend.’

‘So what does the old lady want to do?’

‘She wants to adopt the girl.’

Horse gulped some tea from his old tin mug: ‘Anything in them Law books about “snowballs”, sir?’

‘“Snowballs”, Mr Horse?’

‘Yes, sir. Snowballs. And their chances in Hell, sir. A bit like the old lady’s case here…’

****

‘Patria Potestas, Edward.’

The friends sat in the Advocates Library Reading Room. Edward Kane rubbed his forehead: ‘I’m afraid that it is a little early in the day for Latin, Collins.’

Collins balanced his saucer on his lap and sipped from his cup: ‘It’s your biggest obstacle here, Edward. The Ancient Roman doctrine of Patria Potestas. The absolute power of the father.’

Kane shut his eyes tight: ‘I suppose you are telling me, Collins, that a grown man in Scotland is permitted to punch an eleven year-old girl in the face because of some rule created by Julius Caesar.’

Collins smiled in good humour: ‘You will forgive me if I dissect your opposition. First – the rule is even older than Caesar; second, this was not any eleven year old child the gentleman struck on the face, this was his daughter…’

‘Even worse…’

Collins was firm: ‘No. This was chastisement of a child. His child.’ He pointed at his friend: ‘Edward – are you telling me that you were never once treated to the cane by your father or by a school master?’

Kane sighed: ‘By my father – never. By the masters…let’s just say that if I showed any deficiencies in the Religious Instruction class, then – as a Son of the Manse – I was made to feel my shortcomings at the end of the cane.’

Collins smiled: ‘And that, my friend, has made you the infallible repository of Biblical knowledge that you are today.’

The friends laughed. Collins leaned forward: ‘You know what they say, Edward, “Spare the rod…”

Kane smiled: ‘Ahhhh. Proverbs. 13:24…’

****

‘The Spider Case’ (as Mr Horse was wont to call it) lay dormant for several days while Edward Kane submerged himself in the law. At one level, the case yielded a simple question: could a well-meaning stranger (perfect in all senses) adopt or acquire the custody of an unrelated eleven-year-old child? A child whose parent(s?) were still alive? Not for the first time, Kane struggled with writing The Opinion of Counsel. He sat at his desk, stared into space and began to bite the top of his pen. The problem was…the problem was…what right did Lady Carmunnock have to raise the action in the first place? To ask a court to give her such a thing? She was a stranger to the child, to the family. What was her ‘standing’ in the case? Kane wrote down the words ‘locus standi’ on the paper. A bit of Latin in the Opinion always made the Opinion look better – even if – in this particular circumstance – it made the case itself look worse.

****

Sat in front of the fire in the cramped (but suitably cheap) set of rooms in the Edinburgh Old Town, Kane explained the issue to his manservant. Mr Horse drank the gin from his old battered tin cup: ‘No “standing”, Mr K? That sounds fair enough, since the old buzzard is stuck in a bath chair. Maybe put that in your Opinion, sir.’ They laughed. Kane nodded his head: ‘I’m not convinced that my Latin composition extends to the word “bath-chair”, Mr Horse.’ He thought for a moment: ‘“Balny” something, perhaps?’ The Cockney manservant grinned: ‘More like “barmy”, sir – just plain “barmy” – that’s what this case is. An old lady in a chair turns up at your door and wants to take your nipper away from you? Barmy! It’s not a lawyer that’s needed here – it’s a bloomin’ copper.’

Kane was stern now: ‘No need for that kind of language, Mr Horse.’

The manservant held up his hands: ‘I got nothing against the constabulary, sir, you know that. They’re just doing their jobs, ain’t they. It’s The Law is the problem. I mean – look at that spider…’

‘Oh, don’t you start, Mr Horse…’

The manservant was insistent: ‘No, sir – it’s all the same, ennit – spiders and people….’

Horse was off on one of his rants. Best to let it blow itself out.

Horse drew a shape in the air: ‘That circle – the one what the spider was inside – well, that’s The Law, ennit?’ You step outside the circle and there’s hell to pay. You catch my drift, sir?’

Kane frowned. The sense of the rant was emerging: ‘I accept the proposition, Mr Horse, that we all live within the confines of the Law. But I’m not sure that...’

Horse pressed on: ‘But that spider, sir, he was just walking across the play-ground going about his business before that lad drew a circle round him…’

‘So?’

‘So, the spider didn’t know that the rules had changed, did he?’

Kane frowned. The manservant continued: ‘And the poor little blighter had no idea that if he stepped out of that circle, then he’d get a ruddy great brick on the head, did he?’

Kane had to accept that – at core – there seemed to be an odd validity in the analogy but could not quite articulate his opposition: ‘I think that there is probably a substantial difference in treatment between spiders and people, Mr Horse.’

The manservant leaned forward: ‘Unless you’re an eleven year-old girl coming out of an old furnace, sir. It’s not a brick in the head then – it’s a punch in the mouth…’

‘That was, perhaps, regrettable…’

Kane thought that he heard a snarl in Horse’s voice now: ‘If the man Boylan is punching his own daughter right there in public, and in front of his boss an’ all, then what is he doing to that wee lass when they get home?’

Tomorrow in The Scotsman: But Why There?

Edward Kane and Mr Horse: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories. Available from Amazon and Kindle