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“These Highlanders,” said a soulful-looking A.T.S. with an insubordinate sniff, “don’t know their own strength.”
“Take it easy,” I said, nonplussed, to coin a phrase. “Er, corporal, I think they’d better all move into the corridor …”
“Into the corridor!” “We can’t stay there all night.” “We’re entitled to a compartment”—even in the A.T.S. they had barrack-room lawyers, yet.
“… into the corridor until I get you fixed in other compartments,” I said. “You can’t stay here.”
“Too right we can’t.” “Huh, join the A.T.S. and freeze to death.” “Some people.” Mutters of mutiny and discontent while they gathered up their belongings.
I trampled out, told the corporal to keep them together, and, if possible to keep them quiet, and headed up the train. There was a compartment, I remembered, with only two officers in it. I knocked on its door, and a pouchy eye looked out at me.
“Well, what is it?” He was a half-colonel, balding and with a liverish look. I explained the situation.
“I thought you might not object if, say, four of the girls came in here, sir. It’s one of the few compartments that isn’t full.” Looking past him, I could see the other man, a major, stretched out on a seat.
“What? Bring A.T.S. in here?”
“Yes, sir, four of them. I can get the other four placed elsewhere.”
“This is a first-class compartment,” he snapped. “A.T.S. other ranks travel third.”
“Yes, I know, but their compartment hasn’t got a window …”
“Then I suggest you find them one that has.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t one; they’re all full.”
“That is your business. And I would point out that you have no right to suggest that they move in here.”
“Why not, for Pete’s sake? Look,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “they have to go somewhere …”
“Don’t address me in that way,” he barked. “What’s your name?”
“MacNeill.”
“MacNeill what?”
He had me there. “MacNeill, sir.”
He gave me a nasty look. “Well, MacNeill, I suggest that you study the regulations governing the movement of troop trains. Also the limitations of authority of damned young whippersnappers who are put in charge of them, but are not, strange as it may seem, empowered to address their superiors in an insolent manner, or request them to vacate their compartments in favour of A.T.S.”
“I didn’t ask you to vacate your compartment, sir,” I said, my voice shaking just a little, as it always does when I’m in that curious state halfway between backing down shamefaced and belting somebody. “I merely asked, since they are women …”
“Don’t dam’ well argue,” said the man lying on the seat, speaking for the first time.
“No,” said the pouchy half-colonel. “Don’t argue, if you know what’s good for you.” And he shut the door.
I stood there, hesitating. The choice was clear. I could fling open the door and give him a piece of my mind, taking the consequences, or I could creep off towards my own compartment. Eventually I compromised, creeping away and giving him a piece of my mind as I did so, in a reckless whisper. Not that it helped: the A.T.S. were still homeless and had to be fitted in somewhere.
I needn’t have worried. When I got back to the corridor where I had left them it was empty, but shrieks of female laughter led me to the primitive restaurant car, where they had found refuge with a mixed company of R.A.F. and our gallant Australian cousins. From the way these two branches of the service were looking at one another it was obvious that the A.T.S. were safer than they would have been in a convent; jealousy would see to that. Both sides were making heavy running, one big lean Aussie explaining to three of the A.T.S. what a didgery-doo was, and offering them sips from his hip-flask, while my Biblical flight-lieutenant was leading the remainder in the singing of “Bless ’em all”, the revised version. I just hoped the padre was a sound sleeper.
Thereafter things were fairly uneventful for about an hour. A fight broke out in one compartment because somebody snored; the soulful-looking A.T.S. girl was sick — as a result, she insisted, of what the Australian had given her from his hip-flask; she hinted darkly that he had wanted to drug her, which seemed unlikely—a kitbag mysteriously fell from a window and the owner was only just prevented from pulling the communication cord, and one of the Arab Legion got locked in the lavatory. These things I observed on my hourly tour of the train; the Arab Legionnaire’s predicament I came on after pushing through a small group of well-wishers singing “Oh, dear, what can the matter be?” I scattered them, and watched with interest while Sergeant Black painstakingly shouted orders through the locked door. It did no good; the entrapped one alternately bawled dreadful Arabic words and beat the panelling, and sent out a keening wail which was probably a lament that T. E. Lawrence hadn’t minded his own business in the first place. Finally Black lost his temper and upbraided the man in purest Perthshire, at which the door flew open and the occupant, his face suffused, emerged with his rifle at the trail—why he had it with him he alone knew.
I congratulated Black and strolled back towards my compartment, speculating on whether there was an affinity between Arabic and the Crieff dialect, or whether the Arab had finally found how the bolt worked. I was pondering this in the corridor and listening to the rumbling ring of the wheels and looking through the window at the scrub-studded desert, black and silver in the moonshine, when the compartment door nearest me opened and a dishevelled young captain emerged, clutching a bundle. Beyond him a young woman was sitting with another bundle over her knees; both bundles were wailing plaintively and the compartment, which was otherwise unoccupied, was littered with clothes, towels, small clothes, utensils, and all the paraphernalia that an ignorant young bachelor associates with children.
“Yes, dear, I’ll try,” the man was saying. “There, there, Petey-Petey, all right, all right.”
“And it must be sterilised,” called the young woman, agitated. “They must have some boiling water, somewhere. Yes, yes, Angie dear, mummy’s going to fix it as soon as she possibly can … Do hurry, dear, please!”
“Yes, darling, I am hurrying, as fast as I can. What shall I do with Petey?”
“Not on that seat!” cried the mother. “He’ll roll off!”
“Oh, God!” said the man, wild-eyed. He saw me. “Have you any idea where there’s boiling water?”
Some questions are best answered with a helpless gape.
“Please, Charles, hurry! Oh, no, Angela, did you have to?”
“She hasn’t!” said the man, aghast.
“Oh, she has. Again. And I’ve only got a few clean ones left. Oh, Charles, do go for that water. It’s past feeding-time. Oh, Angela.”
“Right, dear. What shall I …?” He wheeled on me. “Look, can you hold Petey for a moment? I shan’t be an instant.”
“Why, er …”
“Good man.” Harassed, he very gently passed the tiny bundle to me. It was stirring manfully, and letting out a noise that my toilet-locked Arab would have envied. “Got him? Just like that: marvellous. I’m going, darling; this gentleman …”
“What? Oh, Angela, you little horror! Oh, really, I never knew babies could be so foul!”
“I’m leaving Petey with this … this officer,” cried the man. “With Mr, er …”
“MacNeill.”
“Mr MacNeill. How d’ye do? My name’s Garnett. This is my wife …”
“How do you do?” I said, clutching Petey tenderly. “Charles! Please!”
“Yes, dear.” He grabbed a feeding-bottle and fled. Two seconds later he was back. “Darling, where will I get the water?”
“Oh, darling, how do I know? The engine, or some-place. The train runs on boiling water, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and fled again.
I sat down opposite Mrs Garnett. Angela, disrobed, was lying across her knees squealing blue murder, while her mother, frantically sorting among the litter on the seat, cried endearments and shocking threats in turn. I turned Petey as though he were made of eggshells; I like babies, and the feel of his tiny, squirming body was somehow delightful. So was the tiny red face, all screwed up and raging as it was, eyes tight shut, minute toothless gums showing, and little legs kicking under his dress. My delight was temporary; I became aware that all was not well with Petey.
“Er,” I said. “Er, I think Petey has …”
She seemed to see me for the first time. Normally she would have been a pretty, dark-haired young woman; now, clutching a nappy in one hand, and trying to steady her young with the other, her hair disordered and her manner disturbed, she looked like a gypsy wench preparing to attack a gamekeeper.
“Of course he has,” she snarled. “They always do it together. I had to have twins! Oh, Angela, please lie still. Still, dearest! Mummy’s trying to get you all comfy, you little monster! There, darling, Mummy has some nice, cool cream for iddums.” She was trying to tuck the nappy under Angela’s midriff, and making rough work of it.
“But,” I said. “What … I mean …” Petey was getting noxious. He suddenly changed gear in his screaming, taking up a new, intense note.
“Oh, dear, Petey-Petey!” She was distraught for her other young now. “Just a minute, precious! Lie still, Angela, dearest, blast you! Well, don’t just sit holding him! Do something!” She spared a hand to hurl nappies across. “Change him, can’t you?”
Ask me that question today, and rusty as I am with lack of practice, you will see an efficient response. I know the drill: newspaper on the floor, up with the dress, child face down and lightly gripped with the left hand; rubber pants down to knee-level with two swift pulls either side, pins out and thrust into the upholstery convenient to hand, nappy drawn down cleanly as child is slightly raised with left hand to permit front of nappy to come away; pause and gulp, drop nappy on to paper and fold paper over it with foot, mop the patient, anoint with cream to accompaniment of some rhythmic chant, whip clean nappy on and, with encouraging cries, pin one side, up and under, pin the other, make sure child has not been transfixed in process, up with rubber pants, and congratulations. Thirty seconds if you’re lucky.
Today, yes, but this was many years ago, and all I knew of baby care was prodding them in the navel and saying “Grrrtsh”. Changing nappies was outside my experience, and the way little Petey was delivering I wanted it to stay outside. Yet the British soldier is meant to be capable of anything. Could Wellington have changed a nappy? Or Marlborough? Doubtful. Or Slim? Yes, I decided, Slim could have changed a nappy, and almost certainly had. So for the honour of XIVth Army I began painfully and messily to strip Master Petey’s abominable lower reaches, and in my innocence I sang him a lullaby at the same time—the old Gaelic one that goes “Hovan, hovan gorriago” and relates how the fairies stole away a baby from a careless mother. Mrs Garnett said that was all right with her, and what would they charge for twins?
So we worked away, myself the brutal soldier humming and coo-cooing, and the gentle mother opposite rebuking her daughter in terms that would have made a Marine corporal join the Free Kirk. And I was just pausing before the apparently impossible task of slipping a nappy on to the tiny creature, and marvelling at the very littleness of the squirming atom, with its perfect little fingers and their miniature nails, and pondering the wonder that he would probably grow into a great, hairy-chested ruffian full of sin and impudence, when the lights went out.
Mrs Garnett shrieked; I just clamped my hands as gently as I could on Petey and held on. My first thought, naturally enough, was of terrorists, until I realised that we were still a good way from the border, and the train was still rattling on. I assured her that everything was all right, and that Petey was in great shape—he wasn’t, actually; he was at it again, spoiling all my good work—and presently the man Garnett came lumbering up the corridor, calling for directions and announcing that there was no hot water to be had, and what had happened to the lights.
It seemed to me I should be doing something about it, as O.C. train, so in the darkness I negotiated with him for the return of his infant, whom he accepted with exclamations of fatherly affection, changing to disgust, but by that time I was off roaring for Sergeant Black. I found him in the guard’s van, with a candle and a fusebox; he and an Arab in dungarees—who he was, heaven knows—were wrestling in the dark with wires, and presently the lights blinked on again.
“Just a fuse,” he said. “No panic.”
“Is that right?” I said. “You try grappling with an independent baby in the dark. Which reminds me, there’s a woman back there wants boiling water.”
“In the name of God,” said Sergeant Black. “Is she havin’ a wean?”
“Don’t say that, even in jest,” I said. “It’s about all that hasn’t happened on this bloody train so far. She wants to sterilise a feeding-bottle. How about it?”
He said he would see what he could do, pulled down his bonnet, and set off up the train. Within a quarter of an hour there was boiling water, feeding-bottles were being sterilised, and Mrs Garnett was being rapturously thankful. The sergeant had realised that although the restaurant car was without actual cooking appliances, there was at least a place where a fire could be lit.
After that there was peace until we reached the border. Black and I stood together at an open window near the front of the train, looking out over the desert and wondering about it. Up ahead was Gaza, where we were due for a stop; after that there was the Holy Land, where the Stern Gang and the Irgun operated. I said that probably we wouldn’t see any trouble; Black scratched his blue chin and said, “Aye”. It was getting cold. I went back to my compartment and tried to get some sleep.
We drew into Gaza not long after, and everyone got off for tea or coffee at the platform canteen, except Black and the prisoners. We crowded the platform and I was halfway through my second cup and discussing child psychology with Captain Garnett when I suddenly realised that the crowd wasn’t as thick as it had been five minutes before. But I didn’t think they had got back on the train; where, then, were they going? Troops moving by train were confined to the platform at all halts; anywhere else was out of bounds. Oh, God, I thought, they’re deserting.
They weren’t, in fact. They were playing the Gaza Game, which was a feature of Middle Eastern travel in those days. It worked like this. At Gaza, you changed your Egyptian pounds for the Military Administration Lire (mals) used in Palestine. The exchange rate was, say, 100 mals per £E1 at the currency control post on Gaza station. But if you knew the Game, you were aware that in a back street a few hundred yards from the station there dwelt Ahmed el Bakbook of the Thousand Fingers, otherwise Ahmed the Chatterer, who would give 120 mals per £E1. So you went to him, changed your £E to mals, hastened to the control office, changed your mals back to £E, raced off to Ahmed again, did another change, and so on until you had to board the train, showing a handsome profit. How the economies of Egypt and Palestine stood it I wouldn’t know, nor yet how Ahmed made a living at it. But that was how it worked, as I discovered when I was investigating the sudden exodus from the platform, and was accosted by the pouchy lieutenant-colonel who claimed to have detected several soldiers sneaking out of the station. Oh, he knew what they were up to, all right, he said, and what was I doing, as O.C. train, to stop it? I was keen enough on finding A.T.S. girls billets to which they were not entitled, but I appeared to be unable to control the troops under my command. Well, well, and so on.
Personally, I couldn’t have cared less if the troops had changed the entire monetary reserves of Egypt into roubles, at any rate of exchange, but technically he was right, which was why I found myself a few moments later pounding down a dirty back alley in Gaza, damning the day I joined the Army. In a dirty shop, easily identified by the khaki figures furtively sneaking in and out, I confronted a revolting Arab. He was sitting at a big plain table, piled with notes and silver, with an oil lamp swinging overhead and a thug in a burnous at his elbow.
He gave me a huge smile, all yellow fangs and beard, and said, “How much, lieutenant?”
“You,” I said, “are conducting an illegal traffic in currency.”
“Granted,” he replied. “What do you require?”
“Dammit,” I said. “Stop it.”
He looked hurt. “Is not possible,” he said. “I fill a need. That is all.”
“You’ll be filling a cell in Acre jail when the military police get wise to you,” I said.
“Everyone gets out of Acre jail, you know?” he said cheerfully. “And you do not suggest I work in defiance of the military police? They do not trouble me.”
He was just full of confidence, a little amused, a little surprised. I wondered if I was hearing right.
“Come on, old boy, get a move on,” said a voice behind. One of the R.A.F. types was standing there with his wallet out. “Time presses, and all that. And you did jump the queue, you know.”
I gave up. Ahmed dealt courteously with the R.A.F. type, and then asked me almost apologetically how much I wanted to change. I answered him coldly, and he shrugged and dealt with the next customer. Then he asked me again, remarked that it must be getting near train time, and pointed out that since I had already infringed the regulations myself by leaving the station, I might as well take advantage of his unrivalled service.
He was right, of course, this good old man. I shovelled across my £E, accepted his mals, declined his invitation to join him in a draught of Macropoulos’s Fine Old Highland Dew Scotch Whisky—“a wee-doch-and-dorus”, as he called it—and fled back to the station. I had no time to make another transaction, but I looked in at the currency office to see how trade was going, and asked the Royal Army Pay Corps sergeant if he was not worried about six months on the Hill at Heliopolis for knowingly assisting the traffic in black market exchange.
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “I’m buyin’ a pub on the Great West Road when I get my ticket.”
My lieutenant-colonel was still on the platform. He had watched several score military personnel leave the station, he said, and I had done nothing that he could see to stop them. Would I explain? His manner was offensive.
I asked him what he, as an officer, had done about it himself, he went pale and told me not to be impertinent, and after a few more exchanges I said rudely that I was not responsible to him for how I conducted the affairs of Troop Train 42, and he assured me that he would see that disciplinary action was taken against me. I got on the train again shaking slightly with anger and, I admit it, apprehension, and ran slap into the padre, who was all upset about the A.T.S. still.
I needed him. Perhaps I was overwrought, but I told him rather brusquely to stop bringing me unnecessary complaints, to mind his own business, to go back to his compartment, and generally to get off my neck. He was indignant, and shocked, he said. I advised him again to go back to his compartment, and he said stiffly that he supposed he must take my orders, but he would certainly make a report …
“All right, padre,” I said. “Do that. But for the present just remember that to obey is better than sacrifice, and hearkening than the fat of rams. O.K.?”
He said something about the Devil and Scripture, and I went back to my compartment pretty depressed. It seemed suddenly that I had loused things up fairly substantially: two rockets were on the way, I had failed to control the troops efficiently at Gaza, I hadn’t covered myself with glory in accommodating the A.T.S., I couldn’t even change a nappy. What was I good for? I lay down and fell asleep.
Your real hero can sleep through an elephant stampede, but wakes at the sound of a cat’s footfall. I can sleep through both. But the shriek of ancient brakes as a train grinds violently to a halt wakes me. I came upright off the seat like a bleary panther, groping for my gun, knowing that something was wrong and trying to think straight in a second. We shouldn’t be stopping before Jerusalem; one glance through the window showed only a low, scrubby embankment in moon-shadow. As the wheels screamed to a halt I dived into the corridor, ears cocked for the first shot. We were still on the rails, but my mind was painting vivid pictures of a blocked line and an embankment stiff with sharpshooters.
I went through the door to the platform behind the tender; in the cabin I could see the driver, peering ahead over the side of his cab.
“What the hell is it?” I shouted.
He shouted back in Arabic, and pointed ahead.
Someone was running from the back of the train. As I dropped from the platform to the ground he passed through the shaft of light between two coaches and I recognised Black’s balmoral. He had his Luger out.
He slowed down beside me, and we went cautiously up past the engine, with the little wisps of steam curling up round us. The driver had his spotlight on, and the long shaft lit up the line, a tunnel of light between the embankment walls. But there was nothing to see; the embankment itself was dead still. I was turning to ask the driver what was up when he gave an excited little yelp behind us. Far down the track, on the edge of the spotlight beam, a red light winked and died. Then it winked again, and died.
A hoarse voice said: “Get two men with rifles to the top of the bank, either side. Keep everyone else on the train. Then come back here.”
It had almost finished speaking before I realised it was my own voice. Black faded away, and a moment or two later was back.
“They’re posted,” he said.
I wiped my sweaty hand on my shirt and took a fresh grip of the revolver which I ought to have remembered back in Cairo, so that some other mug could have been here, playing cops and robbers with Bert Stern or whoever it was. “Let’s go,” I said, just like Alan Ladd if he was a soprano. My hoarse voice had deserted me.
We walked up the line, our feet thumping on the sleepers, the spotlight behind us throwing our shadows far ahead, huge grotesques on the sand. The line “The dust of the desert is sodden red” came into my head, but I hadn’t had time even to think the uncomfortable thought about it when he just materialised in front of us on the track, so suddenly that I was within an ace of letting fly at him. I know I gasped aloud in surprise; Black dropped on one knee, his Luger up.
“Hold it!” It was my hoarse voice again, sounding loud and nasty. And with the fatal gift of cliché that one invariably displays in such moments, I added, “Don’t move or I’ll drill you!”
He was a young man, in blue dungarees, hatchet-faced, Jewish rather than Arab. His hands were up; they were empty.
“Pliz,” he said. “Friend. Pliz, friend.”
“Cover him,” I said to Black, which was dam’ silly, since he wasn’t liable to be doing anything else. Keeping out of line, I went closer to him. “Who are you?”
