It was summer in Scotland.
The midges were out in force in the Highlands.
Luckily, the Scottish Tourist Board had arranged for a mass importation of their favourite foodstuff: the Sassenach.
In every small town in Scotland there was a small shop selling vast quantities of tins with shortbread inside, and pictures of heather-clad hillsides on the outside.
On a hilltop somewhere in Perthshire there stood a lone piper, playing his music, with a cap full of loose change on the ground in front of him.
He did not particularly want to play his pipes on top of a Perthshire hilltop, as there was very little passing trade, but he had no choice - all the other busking spots in Scotland were already taken by other pipers.
The new Parliament Building in Edinburgh had opened for business, housing twenty-three new Fringe productions, most of them very bad.
Half the inhabitants of Edinburgh had rented out their houses at £1,000 a week to Southerners, and had fled to the Med.
On the shore of Loch Ness, a man was putting water from the lake into bottles and selling it for large amounts of money.
In other words, it was summer business as usual in Scotland.
But one man cared nothing for all this.
One man was making his way through the lanes of Perthshire to Taviot Towers, where Lord Taviot, eighteenth of that title, was worrying about death duties.
Lord Taviot did not know that a man was coming to see him.
If he had known, he would not have cared. He was too busy worrying about death duties. At this very moment he was leaning out of one of the forty-three habitable bedrooms of Taviot Towers, staring down the drive into the distance. All he could see belonged to him. But if he died, it would belong to the Inland Revenue. What could he do? Yes, yes, he could always become immortal, of course, and avoid death duties by not dying, but even if he did that the tax people would no doubt smell a trick and change the rules.
Then he started.
In the distance he could see a man walking up the drive.
It was the man who had come to see him.
Of course, Lord Taviot did not know who he was yet. He could only supposed that it might be the postman, or a creditor, or an illegitimate son from his youth that he had forgotten all about.
As the man got closer, Lord Taviot could see he was wearing a kilt. He frowned. Not a Scotsman, then.
He went downstairs and got to the front door as the man arrived. Lord Taviot raised a hand in welcome and uttered, in Gaelic, the old family motto: ‘If you are not off my land in five minutes, I will set the otter hounds on you’.
‘Thank you, sir, for that greeting’, said the young man in a clear transatlantic voice. ‘I have come all the way from Philadelphia to see you.’
Lord Taviot fell to his knees.
‘God be praised!’ he cried, in English. ‘The Americans are here! We are saved! The money will start flowing again!’
He raised himself up off his knees again and dusted himself down. Always keep your dignity in the presence of rich Americans, that was another family motto. The Taviots had over five hundred family mottoes. When you live in the same place for 800 years, you tend to accumulate them.
‘Let me take you on a tour of the castle,’ he said. ‘There is a long tour, and a brief tour. The long tour costs £400. So does the short tour.’
But the young man shook his head.
‘I have come many miles and am tired,’ he said. ‘Besides, I have been doing some research into your family tree, and I am anxious to meet your daughter and heiress, the lovely twenty-year-old Rose, who is in her second year at St Andrews doing engineering, though her knowledge of bridge construction is not all it should be.’
Lord Taviot gave a low whistle.
‘That's what I call family research,’ he said.
The young man's name, it seemed, was Donald Taviot. He had been saving up all his life to come to Scotland and be reunited with his ancestors. Lord Taviot got out the old family trees and together they traced the American's ancestry to an eighteenth century connection. Reluctantly, Lord Taviot asked the young man to stay the night, and even more reluctantly he introduced him to his lovely daughter Rose, who was home on holiday.
Donald fell in love instantly with Rose, but was too tired to do anything about it and went to bed.
‘I'll turn in too, I think, father,’ said Rose.
‘Oh, no, you won't,’ said Lord Taviot. ‘We've got some fast thinking to do. We're in big trouble.’
‘Trouble?’
‘If you look at the family tree, you see that this Donald comes from a senior branch of the family that everyone thought extinct. What that means is that he should inherit the title, not me.’
‘You mean - this American is the true Lord Taviot?’
‘Yes.’
‘But that's wonderful!’ cried Rose. ‘That means that he inherits all the death duties and the tax debts!’
‘Ah, but it also means that we may have to go and live in Philadelphia,’ said Lord Taviot. ‘I don't think I'd like that.’
At that moment there was a noise from the door. They looked round. Young Donald Taviot stood there. He had been listening to everything.
‘There was one other thing I forgot to ask you about,’ he said. ‘When I was researching the family tree, I couldn't help noticing that you have a brother, Rose. A brother called Fergus. Where is your brother?’
‘He isn't here,’ said Lord Taviot, roughly. ‘He's gone away. He's emigrated. He's gone to, er, New Zealand. He's never coming back. He's . . .’
‘I don't think so,’ said Donald Taviot. ‘I think he is here in this very room.’
And leaning forward he took hold of Lord Taviot's hair and pulled at it. It came away. It was a wig! With it came the reading glasses and the wispy moustache. Underneath was the face of a much younger man.
‘I think you are Fergus,’ said Donald, quietly. ‘I think that the 18th Lord Taviot died some time ago, and that rather than pay the death duties you pretended he was still alive by disguising yourself as him.’
‘Yes, damn you,’ said Lord Taviot. ‘That is who I really am. But how did you know that and who are you?’
‘Oh, I knew that because I am not really Donald Taviot at all,’ said the young man, who, oddly, no longer had an American accent. ‘I am nobody. I just work for the Inland Revenue.’
‘The Inland Revenue!?’ cried Lord Taviot. He pulled himself upright, had a massive heart attack and keeled over dead.
‘Oh, dear,’ said the young man. ‘This looks like double death duties, I'm afraid. Unless . . .’
‘Yes?’ said Rose.
‘Unless . . . ‘ said the young man, taking Rose's hand.
But how he and Rose worked out a plan to avoid death duties, and how the young man became the nineteenth Lord
Taviot is another tale for another time.
Blairgowrie and Rattray Highland Games
5th September 2004
