скачать книгу бесплатно
The Sheik and the Dustbin
George MacDonald Fraser
Private McAuslan, J., The Dirtiest Soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban, or the Highland Division's answer to Pekin Man) first demonstrated his unfitness for the service in' The General Danced at Dawn'.He continued his disorderly advance, losing, soiling, or destroying his equipment, through the pages of' McAuslan in the Rough. The Sheikh and the Dustbin 'pursues the career of the great incompetent as he bauchles (see Glossary) across North Africa and Scotland, swinging his right arm in time with his right leg and tripping over his untied laces. His admirers already know him as court-martial defendant, ghost-catcher, star-crossed lover and golf caddie extraordinary; here he appears as the most unlikely of batmen to his long-suffering protector and persecutor, Lieutenant Dand MacNeill, as guardroom philosopher and adviser to the leader of the Riff Rebellion and even as Lance Corporal McAuslan, the Mad Tyrant of Three Section. Whether map-reading his erratic way through the Sahara by night or confronting Arab rioters, McAuslan's talent for catastrophe is as sure as ever.
GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER
THE SHEIKH
AND THE DUSTBIN
Contents
Cover (#u6e822464-6f31-5639-8b8d-a0d80fd8d2fb)
Title Page (#uc28fca02-e144-5a05-aca7-0f159dbb2dcd)
The Servant Problem
Captain Errol
The Constipation of O’Brien
The Sheikh and the Dustbin
McAuslan, Lance-Corporal
The Gordon Women
Ye mind Jie Dee, Fletcher?
Extraduction
Author’s Note
Glossary
Praise
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
The Servant Problem (#u95881581-f823-5a8d-a3ac-d9448f6e897a)
One of the things I never learned from my tough grandmother (the golfing Calvinist, not the Hebridean saga-woman) was how to deal with domestic help, and this although she was an authority, having been both servant and mistress in her time. As a girl, straight from the heather, she had been engaged as kitchenmaid at one of those great Highland shooting lodges to which London society used to repair a century ago, and being a Glencoe MacDonald of critical temper and iron will, she had taken one cold Presbyterian look at the establishment with its effete southern guests and large inefficient staff and decided, like Napoleon contemplating the map of Europe, that this would never do. Within six weeks she had become senior housemaid, by the end of the season she was linen-mistress, and before her twentieth birthday she was head housekeeper and absolute ruler of the place, admired and dreaded by guests and staff alike. I can only guess what she was like as a teenage châtelaine, but since in old age she reminded you of a mobile Mount Rushmore, handsome, imposing, and with a heart of stone, it is a safe bet that living in that lodge must have been like being a galley slave in a luxury liner. Knowing her zeal for order and reform, I suspect that her aim would be that of an enlightened prison governor - not to break the spirit of the inmates altogether, but to see that they went back into the world better and wiser human beings.
Whatever effect she had on those sophisticated ladies and worldly gentlemen - and I’m sure she taught them that there were higher things in life than grouse-shooting and flirtation - they can have been in no doubt that the Highland servant, whether lowly menial or autocratic housekeeper, was very different from the southern domestic. My grandmother was not alone in her generation in simply not knowing what servility meant; indeed, mere civility was no commonplace, as witness the famous John Brown, whose devotion to Queen Victoria was matched only by his rudeness. My grandmother, who gave respect only when she felt it was due, which wasn’t often, used to recall (without a glimmer of a smile) an event from her early years in service when the lodge’s head cook, another stern Caledonian, noted for her prowess at whist drives, was called in by her employers to take part in a bridge game, there being a shortage of players among the guests. As luck had it, the cook partnered a Prince of the blood, who took mild exception to her bidding, whereon the cook rose in her wrath before the Quality assembled, and hurled down her cards, exclaiming: “Away, ye crabbit auld Prooshan, and play by yersel’!” Nor was she dismissed; a Prince may be a Prince, but a Highland cook who knows the secrets of venison and cold salmon is something else.
It may be significant, too, that grandmother’s only joke was based on the English master-Highland servant relationship. It described how a chimpanzee escaped from the circus and was found dead in a ditch by two ghillies employed at the local castle, then occupied by a London shooting-party. The ghillies had never seen a chimpanzee before, and didn’t know what to make of it. At last the elder said: “It’s ower hairy for a MacPherson, no’ broad enough in the chest for a Fraser, and too long in the lip for a Cameron - away you up to the big hoose, Erchie, and see if ony o’ the gentry’s missing.”
[I told that joke in the mess once, with mixed success: the Padre worked it, with Gaelic subtlety, into a sermon, but the second-in-command looked puzzled and asked: “And was anyone from the big house missing? No? Oh … bit of a mystery then, what?”]
However, you will note that there are two butts of the joke - the foreign gentry and the ignorant ghillies - which says something about grandmother’s outlook on life. Her censure knew no class boundaries; dukes and dustmen alike (and grandsons) had to be kept in their place, and she was the woman to do it, even when she was very old. My heart bled for her own maidservants when, as a small boy, I used to visit her home, that still, immaculate domain with its softly-chiming clock, redolent of beeswax and lavender, all swept and polished to perfection. I lived on tiptoe there, giving ornaments a wide berth, wondering at her bookshelves where Cruden’s Concordance and Bunyan’s Holy War lay beside long outdated fashion magazines from Paris, pushing in my chair to the exact inch when I received the almost imperceptible nod of dismissal from the stately, white-haired figure at the end of the table, straight and stiff as her own ebony walking-cane; dreading the cold eye and sharp, quiet voice, even when they were addressed to her maids and not to me. How they endured her, I’ll never know; perhaps they knew what I sensed as an infant: like her or not, you could be sure of her, and that is a quality that can count far beyond mere kindness.
Anyway, with that background I ought to have mastered the servant problem, but I never have, not from either side. On the occasions when I have had to serve, I have been a disaster, whether shirking my fagging duties at school, or burning toast, dropping plates, and letting the cookhouse boiler go out as a mess orderly and assistant scullion at Bellahouston Camp, Glasgow. Nor am I one of nature’s aristocrats, born to be ministered to and accepting it as my due; anything but. I hate being waited on; servants rattle me. I find their attentions embarrassing, and they know it, damn them. There was a butler once, about seven feet tall, with a bald head and frock coat, who received me at a front door; he looked me up and down and said: “Good morning, sir. Would you care to wash … at all?” I can’t describe what he put into that pause before the two final words, but it implied that I was filthy beyond his powers of description. Nor am I deceived by the wine-waiter unctuously proffering his bottle for my inspection: this bum wouldn’t know it from turpentine, is what he’s thinking.
Such an advanced state of doulophobia is bad enough in civilian life; for an army officer it is serious, since he has to have a body-servant, or orderly, or batman, call it what you will, whether he likes it or not. This did not trouble me when I first encountered it as a cadet in India; we had native bearers who brought our morning tea, cleaned our kit and rooms, laid out our uniforms, dressed us on ceremonial occasions, and generally nannied us through a fourteen-hour day of such intensive activity that we couldn’t have survived without them; there was even a nappy-wallah who shaved you as you sat bleary-eyed on the edge of your cot - and never have I had a chin so smooth. It seemed perfectly natural forty years ago; it would not have seemed natural from a white servant - and before anyone from the race relations industry leaps in triumphantly with his labels, I should remark that the Indian cadets were of the same opinion (as often as not, so-called race prejudice is mere class distinction) and were, on the whole, less considerate masters than we were. My own bearer was called Timbooswami, son and grandson and great-grandson of bearers - and proud father of an Indian Army officer. So much for the wicked old British Raj.
My troubles began when I joined my Highland battalion in North Africa and had to have a batman from the ranks of my own platoon. No doubt I had been spoiled in India, but the contrast was dramatic. Where I had been accustomed to waking to the soft murmur of “Chota hazri, sahib”, and having a pialla of perfectly-brewed tea and a sliced mango on my bedside table, there was now a crash of hob-nailed boots and a raucous cry of “Erzi tea! Some o’ it’s spillt, an’ there’s nae sugar. Aye, an’ the rain’s oan again.” Not the same, somehow. And where once there had been a fresh-laundered shirt on a hanger, there was now a freckled Glaswegian holding up last night’s garment in distaste and exclaiming: “Whit in Goad’s name ye been daein’ in this? Look at the state o’ it. Were ye fu’, or whit? Aye, weel, it’ll hiv tae dae - yer ither yins arenae back frae the dhobi. Unless he’s refused them. Aye. Weel, ye gettin’ up, or are ye gaunae lie there a’ day … sur?”
That was Coulter. I got rid of him inside three days, and appealed to Telfer, my platoon sergeant, for a replacement. And I hate to record it, for I like to think well of Telfer, who was a splendid soldier, but he then did one of the most diabolic things any sergeant could do to his new, green, and trusting platoon commander. Without batting an eye, and with full knowledge of what he was doing, this veteran of Alamein and Anzio glanced at his platoon roll, frowned, and said: “What about McAuslan?”
Innocent that I was, those doom-laden words meant nothing to me. I didn’t know, then, that McAuslan was the dirtiest soldier in the world, a byword from Maryhill Barracks to the bazaars of Port Said for his foulness, stupidity, incompetence, illiteracy, and general unfitness for the service, an ill-made disaster whom Falstaff wouldn’t have looked at, much less marched with through Coventry. This was the Tartan Caliban who had to be forcibly washed by his fellows and locked in cupboards during inspections, whom Telfer was wishing on me as batman. In fairness I can see that a sergeant might go to desperate lengths to keep McAuslan off parade and out of public view, but it was still a terrible thing to do to a subaltern not yet come of age.
I had seen McAuslan, of course - at least I had been aware of a sort of uniformed yeti that lurked at the far end of the barrack-room or vanished round corners like a startled sloth at the approach of authority, which he dreaded; I had even heard his cry, a raucous snarl of complaint and justification, for beneath his unkempt exterior there was a proud and independent spirit, sensitive of abuse. He had fought in North Africa, mostly against the Germans, but with the Military Police on occasion; his crime-sheet was rich in offences of neglect and omission, but rarely of intentional mischief, for McAuslan had this virtue: he tried. In a way he was something of a platoon mascot; the other Jocks took a perverse pride in his awfulness, and wouldn’t have parted with him.
Of all this I was happily ignorant at the time, and it gave me quite a start when I got my first view of him, crouched to attention in my doorway, eyeing me like a wary gargoyle preparing to wrestle; he always stood to attention like that, I was to discover; it was a gift, like his habit of swinging left arm and left leg in unison when marching. He appeared to be short in stature, but since he was never fully erect one couldn’t be sure; his face was primitive and pimpled, partly obscured by hair hanging over an unwashed brow, his denims would have disgraced an Alexandrine beggar (and possibly had), but the crowning touch was the filthy napkin draped carelessly over one forearm -1 believe now that he was trying to convince me that he had once been a waiter, and knew his business.
” 14687347Pr’iteMcAuslansah!” he announced. “Ah’m yer new batman, Sarn’t Telfer sez. Whit’ll Ah clean first?”
The smart answer to that would have been “Yourself, and do it somewhere else”, but I was a very new second-lieutenant.
“Ah brung ma cleanin’ kit,” he went on, fishing a repulsive hold-all from inside his shirt. “Oh, aye, it’s a’ here,” and he shook out on to the table a collection of noisome rags and old iron in which I recognised a battered Brasso tin, several bits of wire gauze and dried-up bianco, a toothbrush without bristles, and a stump of candle. (That last item shook me; was it possible, I wondered, that he performed his toilet by this illumination alone? It would have explained a lot.) It all looked as though it had been dredged from the Sweetwater Canal.
He made a sudden shambling pounce and snatched two rusted objects from the mess with a glad cry. “Aw, there th’are! Goad, an’ me lookin’ a’ ower the shop! Ah thought Ah’d loast them!” He beamed, wiping them vigorously on his shirt, adding a touch of colour.
“What are they?” I asked, not really wanting to know.
“Ma fork an’ spoon! They musta got in there that time I wis givin’ ma mess-tins a wee polish - ye hiv tae scoor them, sur, ye see, or ye get gingivitis an’ a’ yer teeth fa’ oot, the M.O. sez.” He peered fondly at the rusting horrors, like an archaeologist with burial fragments. “Here, that’s great! It’s been a dam’ nuisance bein’ wi’oot them at meal-times,” he added, conjuring up a picture so frightful that I closed my eyes. When I opened them again he was still there, frowning at my service dress, which was hanging outside the wardrobe.
“That’s yer good kit,” he said, in the grim reflective tone in which Sir Henry Morgan might have said: “That’s Panama.” He took a purposeful shuffle towards it, and I sprang to bar his way.
“It’s all right, McAuslan - it’s fine, it’s all clean and ready. I shan’t need it until five-thirty, for Retreat.” I sought for some task that should keep him at a safe distance from my belongings. “Look, why don’t you sweep the floor-out in the passage? The sand keeps blowing in… and the windows haven’t been washed for weeks; you could do them - from the outside,” I added hastily. “And let’s see … what else?” But he was shaking his matted head, all insanitary reproach.
“Ah’m tae clean yer kit,” he insisted. “Sarn’t Telfer sez. Ah’ve tae polish yer buttons an’ yer buits an’ yer Sam Broon an’ yer stag’s heid badge, an’ brush yer tunic, an’ press the pleats o’ yer kilt, an’ bell yer flashes wi’ rolled-up newspaper, an’ wash an’ dry yer sporran, and see the dhobi starches an’ irons yer shirts, an’ melt the bastard if he disnae dae it right, an’ mak’ yer bed …”He had assumed the aspect of a dishevelled Priest of the Ape People chanting a prehistoric ritual, eyes shut and swaying slightly, “… an’ lay oot yer gear, an’ bianco yer webbin’, an’ bring yer gunfire in ra mornin’, and collect yer fag ration, an’ fetch ye tea an’ wee cakes frae the Naafi for yer elevenses unless ye fancy a doughnut, an’ take ma turn as mess waiter oan guest nights, an’ …”
“Stop!” I cried, and he gargled to a halt and stood lowering and expectant. It was that last bit about being a mess waiter that had hit home -1 had a nightmare vision of him, in his unspeakable denims, sidling up to the Brigadier’s wife with a tray of canapés and inquiring hoarsely, “Hey, missus, ye want a sang-widge? Ach, go on, pit anither in yer bag fur efter …”
“We can discuss it tomorrow,” I said firmly. “My kit’s all ready for Retreat, and I’m on the range until five, so you can fall out until then. Right?”
It isn’t easy to read expressions on a face that looks like an artist’s impression of Early Man, but I seemed to detect disappointment in the way he blinked and drew his forearm audibly across his nose. “Can Ah no’ help ye oan wi’ yer gear?” he suggested, and I snatched my bonnet from beneath his descending paw in the nick of time and hastily buckled on my belt and holster. “Thanks all the same, McAuslan,” I said, withdrawing before he decided my collar needed adjustment - and he looked so deprived, somehow, that like a soft-hearted fool I added: “You can comb the sporran if you like … you better wash your hands first, perhaps, and be sure to hang it straight. Right, carry on.”
They say no good deed ever goes unpunished, but I could not foresee that in combing the big white horse-hair sporran he would drop it on the floor, tramp on it, decide that it needed rewashing, and then try to dry it over the cookhouse stove while the master-gyppo’s back was turned. They got the blaze under control, and probably only the gourmets noticed that the evening meal tasted of burned horse-hair. Meanwhile McAuslan, escaping undetected through the smoke, galloped back to my billet and tried to repair the charred remnant of my sporran by scraping it with my sgian dubh, snapping the blade in the process; he next tried daubing the stubble with white bianco, and dripped it on my best black shoes, which he then rendered permanently two-tone by scrubbing the spots with his sleeve. Warming to his work, he attempted to steal a sporran from Second-Lieutenant Keith next door, was detected and pursued by Keith’s batman, and defended his plunder by breaking my ashplant over the other’s head. After which they called the provost staff, and the Jeeves of 12 Platoon was removed struggling to the cells, protesting blasphemously that they couldnae dae this tae him, he hadnae finished gettin’ Mr MacNeill ready fur tae go on Retreat.
All this I learned when I got back from the range. I didn’t attend Retreat - well, you look conspicuous in mottled grey brogues and a bald, smoking sporran - and was awarded two days’ orderly officer in consequence; it was small comfort that McAuslan got seven days’ jankers for brawling and conduct prejudicial. I summoned him straight after his sentence, intending to announce his dismissal from my personal service in blistering terms; he lurched into my office (even in his best tunic and tartan he looked like a fugitive from Culloden who had been hiding in a peat-bog) and before I could vent my rage on him he cleared his throat thunderously and asked:
“Can Ah say a word, sur?”
Expecting apology and contrition, I invited him to go ahead, and having closed his eyes, swayed, and gulped - symptoms, I was to learn, of embarrassment - he regarded me with a sort of nervous compassion.
“Ah’m sorry, sur, but Ah’m givin’ notice. Ah mean, Ah’m resignin’ frae bein’ yer batman. Ah’m packin’ it in, sur, if ye don’t mind.” He blinked, wondering how I would receive this bombshell, and my face must have been a study, for he added hastily: “Ah’m sorry, like, but ma mind’s made up.”
“Is it, by God?” I said. “Well, get this straight, McAuslan! You’re not resigning, my son, not by a dam’ sight, because—”
“Oh, but Ah am, sur. Beggin’ yer pardon. Ah want ye tae understand,” he continued earnestly, “that it’s nuthin’ personal. Ye’re a gentleman, sur. But the fact is, if Ah’m lookin’ efter you, Ah hivnae time tae look efter mysel’ - an’ Ah’ve got a lot o’ bother, I can tell ye. Look at the day, frinstance - Ah wis rushed, an’ here Ah’m oan jankers - och, it’s no’ your fault, it’s that wee nyaff o’ a batman that works fur Mr Keith. Nae cooperation—”
“McAuslan,” I said, breathing hard. “Go away. Go quickly, before I forget myself. Get your infernal carcase on jankers, and tell the Provost Sergeant he can kill you, and I’ll cover up for him—’
“Awright! Awright, sur! Ah’m gaun!” He beat a shambling retreat, looking puzzled and slightly hurt. ‘Keep the heid, sur.” He saluted with crestfallen dignity. “Ah wis just gaun tae say, ye’ll be needin’ anither batman, an’ ye could dae worse than Chick McGilvray; he’s Celtic-daft an’ a bit casual, but - awright, sur, Ah’m gaun! Ah’m gaun!’
You know, when our sister regiment, the Black Watch, was first raised centuries ago, it was unique in that every private soldier had his own batman - and in next to no time that great fighting regiment had mutinied. It was now clear to me why: several hundred batmen in the McAuslan mould had simply proved too great a strain.
On the principle that any recommendation of his must be accursed, I did not approach McGilvray. Instead I spoke sternly to Sergeant Telfer - who had the grace to admit that eagerness to get shot of McAuslan had warped his judgment - and told him I would engage replacements on a trial basis. There was no shortage of volunteers, for a batman’s life is a cushy billet, with perks and time off, but none of them was any real improvement on Coulter, although all were grace itself compared to the Dark Destroyer who had succeeded him.
There was Fletcher, Glasgow spiv, dead shot, and platoon dandy, who kept my kit immaculate - and wore it himself in his sorties after female talent. Next there was Forbes, nicknamed Heinie after Himmler; he was small, dark, and evil, a superb footballer who performed his duties with ruthless efficiency, but whose explosive temper bred friction with the other batmen. After him came Brown, alias Daft Bob, an amiable dreamer who supported Partick Thistle (that’s a tautology, really) and was always five minutes late; he was also given to taking afternoon naps on my bed with his boots on. And there was Riach, who came from Uist and belonged to that strict religious sect, the Wee Frees; he had a prejudice against working on the Sabbath, and only did it under protest. (I once asked him how, during active service in the Far East, he had brought himself to kill Japanese on Sunday, and he ground his teeth in a grim, distant way and said that was all right, it was a work of necessity and mercy.)
I parted from each trialist in turn, without rancour. Perhaps I was hard to please - no, I was impossible to please, partly because I disliked being waited on and feeling my privacy invaded, but also because it was dawning on me that Scots (as I should have learned from my grandmother) are not natural servants; they have too much inborn conceit of themselves for the job, and either tyrannise their employers, like my grandmother and Coulter (although I’m sure her technique was that of the rapier, where his was the bludgeon), or regard them as victims to be plundered in a patronising way. Of course there are exceptions; Hudson of Upstairs, Downstairs does exist, but you have to be exceptional yourself to employ him (I never thought the Bellamy family were quite up to him, and I doubt if he did either).
Anyway, there were no Hudsons in 12 Platoon, and I wondered how it was that the other young officers got by - MacKenzie, heir to a baronetcy, had an easy, owner-serf relationship with his orderly, and the rest of the subalterns seemed to take personal attendance for granted, without noticing it. That is the secret, of course: you have to be of the fine clay that isn’t even aware of servants, but regards them as robots or talking animals who just happen to be around, lubricating you unobtrusively through life. The moment you become sensitive to their mere presence, never mind their thoughts, you stamp yourself as a neurotic peasant, like me, unfit to be looked after. So I concluded - and it never occurred to me that I was someone’s grandson, and possibly seeking an unobtainable ideal.
Finally, in despair, I offered the job to McAuslan’s nominee, McGilvray, a grinning, tow-headed Glaswegian who confessed that he hadn’t volunteered because he didn’t think he was cut out for it - that was a change, anyway. Mind you, he was right, but he wasn’t alone in that, and he was a cheery, willing vandal who, beyond a tendency to knock the furniture about and gossip non-stop, had only one serious defect: I had to darn his socks. This after I had noticed him limping slightly, made him take off his plimsolls, and discovered two gaping holes repaired by whipping the edges together into fearsome ridges.
“No wonder you get blisters, you Parkhead disaster,” I rebuked him. “Did no one ever teach you to darn? Right, get me some wool and a needle and pay attention …”
Darning socks was a vital art in those days; if you couldn’t darn you couldn’t march - unless you were one of those eccentrics who dispensed with socks and filled their boots with tallow, and I wasn’t having him doing that, not within fifty yards of my perfumed bower. But my tuition was wasted; he just couldn’t darn, and before you knew it I was inspecting his socks regularly and mending them myself, while he beavered away on my brass and webbing and explained why Celtic weren’t winning these days. From time to time I would wonder resentfully why the hell I was doing this, but I knew that if I didn’t it wouldn’t get done at all, and you know how it is: line of least resistance, etc., and I couldn’t be bothered finding yet another batman - which was an utterly trivial matter anyway, alongside the important things that were happening to me at that time. Such as getting to know and work well with my platoon, discovering that mutual reliance which is a gift (and an honour) beyond price, enjoying the acceptance that comes in a Highland battalion when the Jocks stop calling you “MacNeill” among themselves and give you a nickname (“Darkie”, I discovered), getting my second pip, feeling at home in one of the world’s most famous regiments, preparing to go home on leave after three years …
The self-imposed task of darning McGilvray’s socks was a small price to pay for all of that. Mind you, I could have done without it; it was a piece of nonsense, really … perhaps when I came back off leave I’d find another batman. Yes, definitely.
It was a whole month’s leave, what they called L.I.A.P., meaning leave in advance of Python, which was the codeword for demobilisation. I qualified because, having been in the ranks in India, I’d been overseas longer than most of the subalterns; consequently I found myself barraged with requests to go and see their families. This was a phenomenon of the time which may be hard to understand in these days of instant world travel - anyone going home was expected to visit his comrades’ parents, just so that they could hear about their boy from someone who’d actually been with him. Letters weren’t the same as being able to talk to and touch someone who’d been with Jack or Billy; it was a great reassurance in those days.
So, apart from a commission to buy the Colonel half a dozen of his favourite Lovat pipes (“and don’t let them fob you off with any damned Bulldogs or patent puffers, d’you hear?”) I had four or five addresses to call at in and around Glasgow and Edinburgh. That was after I had undergone the extraordinary experience of “coming home from the war”, which must differ from person to person, I suppose, but is like nothing else in life. For this young soldier, unmarried and unattached, it was a going home to parents, a wonderful elated reunion full of laughter and babbling and maternal tears, and aunts exclaiming, and father shaking his head and grinning with satisfaction before going through to his surgery, bursting quietly with the news for his patients, and my MacNeill grandmother, ninety-three years old, bright-eyed and laughing softly in Gaelic as she preened herself in the Arab shawl I had brought her. (I wonder if she remembered my MacDonald grandmother’s remark to her as they listened together to Chamberlain’s declaration of war in 1939: “Well, Mrs MacNeill, the men will be going away again.” Only a Highland matriarch would put it quite like that. If my MacNeill grandmother did remember, she was probably reflecting that now the last of the men was home; the first ones she had seen returning, as a little girl, had been from the Crimea.)
It was very happy, but it was strange. They looked the same to me, of course, but now and then I realised that they were recognising the boy of 18 whom they remembered, in this much bigger, sunburned young man of 21. That’s an odd feeling. So is standing alone in the quiet of your room, just as you remember it but a little smaller, staring at each familiar thing of childhood and thinking: that day of the Sittang ambush … that terrible slow-motion moment at Kinde Wood when the section went down around you in the cross-fire … that night when the Japs came up the Yindaw road, the little ungainly figures in the light of the burning trucks, passing by only a few yards away … that hectic slashing mêlée at the bunkers under the little gold pagoda where L—bought his lot and J—had his hat shot off and the ground was dark and wet with blood - while all that was happening, a world and a lifetime away, this was here: the quiet room, just as it had always been, just as it is now. The porcupine-quill inkstand that the old man brought home from East Africa, the copy of Just William with its torn spine, the bail you broke with your fast ball against Transitus (it must have been cheap wood), the ink-stain low down on the wallpaper that you made (quite deliberately) when you were eight… Nothing changed, except you. Never call yourself unlucky again.
I couldn’t sleep in bed that night. I did something I hadn’t done since Burma, except on a few night exercises: I went out into the garden with a blanket and rolled up under a bush. God knows why. It wasn’t affectation -1 took good care that no one knew - nor was it sheer necessity, nor mere silliness in the exuberance of homecoming. At the time I felt it was a sort of gesture of thanksgiving, and only much later did I realise it was probably a reluctance to “come home” to a life that I knew there could be no return to, now. Anyway, I didn’t sleep a bloody wink.
After just a few days at home (which was in Northern England) I took off for Scotland. My excuse was that I had to make the visits I had promised, but the truth was I was restless and impatient. Three years of adventure - because there’s no other word for that kaleidoscope of travel and warfare and excitement and change in strange lands among weird exotic peoples - had done its work, and once the elation of just being home, so long dreamed of, had passed, there was the anticlimax, the desire to be off and doing again. It was no big psychological deal of the kind you see in movies; I wasn’t battle-happy, or “mentally scarred”, or hung up with guilt, nor did patrols of miniature Japanese brew up under my bed (as happened to one of my section whenever we came out of the line: we used to tell him to take his kukhri to them, and when he had done so to his satisfaction, swearing and carving the air, we all went back to sleep again, him included). It was just that my life was now outside that home of boyhood, and I would never settle there again. Of course no word of this was said, but I’m sure my parents knew. Parents usually do.
I was nearly two weeks in Scotland, staying at small hotels and making my afternoon calls on families who had been forewarned of my coming; it was a succession of front-rooms and drawing-rooms, with the best tea-service and sandwiches and such extravagance of scones and home-made cakes as rationing allowed (I had to remind myself to go easy on the sugar, or I would have cleaned them out), while I was cross-examined about Drew or Angus or Gordon, and photographs of the poor perishers were trotted out which would have curled their toes under, and quiet aunts listened rapt in the background, and younger brothers and sisters regarded me with giggling awe. They were such nice folk, kind, proper, hanging on every word about their sons, tired after the war, touchingly glad that I had come to see them. It was fascinating, too, to compare the parents with the young men I knew, to discover that the dashing and ribald Lieutenant Grant was the son of a family so douce that they said grace even before afternoon tea; that the parents of the urbane Captain D—, who had put him through Merchiston and Oxford, lived in a tiny top-floor flat in Colinton; and that Second Lieutenant Hunter, a pimply youth with protruding teeth, had a sister who was a dead ringer for Linda Darnell (and whose R. A.F. fiancé stuck to her like glue all through tea).
But the most interesting calls were the last two. The first was to a blackened tenement in Glasgow’s East End, where McGilvray’s widowed mother lived with his invalid great-uncle, on the third floor above a mouldering close with peeling walls, urchins screaming on the stairs, and the green tramcars clanging by. Inside, the flat was bright and neat and cosy, with gleaming brass, a kettle singing on the open black-leaded grate, an old-fashioned alcove bed, and such a tea on the table as I had not seen yet, with gingerbread and Lyle’s golden syrup. Mrs McGilvray was a quick, anxious wee Glasgow body, scurrying with the tea-pot while Uncle chuckled and made sly jokes at her; he was a small wheezy comedian with a waxed moustache and a merry eye, dressed in his best blue serge with a flower in his buttonhole and a gold watch-chain across his portly middle; he half-rose to greet me, leaning on a stick and gasping cheerfully, called me “l’tenant”, informed me that he had been in the H.L.I, in the first war, and wha’ shot the cheese, hey? (This is a famous joke against my regiment.) When he had subsided, wiping his eye and chuckling “Ma Goad, ma Goad”, Mrs McGilvray questioned me nervously across the tea-cups: was Charlie well? Was Charlie behaving himself? Was Charlie giving me any bother? Was Charlie saving his pay or squandering it on drink, cards, and loose women? (This was actually a series of questions artfully disguised, but that was their purport.) Was Charlie attending Church? Was he taking care? Were his pals nice boys?
“In Goad’s name, wumman,” cried Uncle, “let the man get his tea! Yattety-yattety-yattety! Cherlie’s fine! Thur naethin’ wrang wi’ him. Sure that’s right, L’tenant?”
“He’s fine,” I said, “he’s a great lad.”
“There y’are! Whit am Ah aye tellin’ ye? The boy’s fine!”
“Aye, well,” said Mrs McGilvray, looking down at her cup. “I aye worry aboot him.”
“Ach, women!” cried Uncle, winking at me. “Aye on aboot their weans. See yersel’ anither potato scone, L’tenant. Ma Goad, ma Goad.”
“Does he …” Mrs McGilvray hesitated, “does he … do his work well? I mean … looking after you, Mr MacNeill?”
“Oh, indeed he does. I think I’m very lucky.”
“Ah’d sooner hae a cairter lookin’ efter me!” wheezed Uncle. “Heh-heh! Aye, or a caur conductor! Ma Goad, ma Goad.’
“Wheesht, Uncle! Whit’ll Mr MacNeill think?”
“He’ll think yer an auld blether, gaun on aboot Cherlie! The boy’s no’ a bairn ony langer, sure’n he’s no’. He’s a grown man.” He glinted at me. “Sure that’s right? Here … will ye tak’ a wee dram, L’tenant? Ach, wheesht, wumman - can Ah no’ gie the man a right drink, then? His tongue’ll be hingin’ oot!” At his insistence she produced a decanter, shaking her head, apologising, while he cried to gie the man a decent dram, no’ just dirty his gless. He beamed on me.
“Here’s tae us! Ninety-Twa, no’ deid yet!”
“Whisky at tea-time - whit’ll Mr MacNeill think o’ ye?” wondered his niece, half-smiling.
“He’ll no’ think the worse o’ me for gie’n him a wee dram tae the Ninety-Twa,” said Uncle comfortably. He raised his glass again. “An’ tae the Bantam’s, hey, L’tenant? Aye, them’s the wee boys! Ma Goad, ma Goad …”
Mrs McGilvray saw me to the door when I left, Uncle crying after me no’ tae shoot ony cheeses gaun doon the stair. When I had thanked her she said:
“I wonder … Charlie doesnae write very often. D’you think …?”
“He’ll write every week,” I assured her. “He’s a great lad, Mrs McGilvray. You’re very lucky.”
“Well,” she said, clasping her hands, “he’s always been right enough. I’m sure you‘ll look after him.” We shook hands and she pecked me quickly on the cheek. “Take care, laddie.”
Uncle’s hoarse chuckle sounded from the inner room. “Come ben, wumman! Whit’ll the neebors say, you hingin’ aboot the stairheid wi’ sojers!’
She gave me a despairing look and retreated, and I went down the stairs, stepping over the children and reflecting that I was certainly not going to be able to change my batman now.
The final visit was to MacKenzie’s people, who lived in a fifteenth-century castle-cum-mansion in Perthshire, a striking piece of Gothic luxury in beautiful parkland with a drive a mile long through banks of cultivated heather; it contained its own salmon river, a fortune in standing timber, and a battalion of retainers who exercised dogs, strolled about with shotguns, and manicured the rhododendrons. Sir Gavin MacKenzie was his son thirty years on, tall, commanding, and with a handshake like a mangle; the red had apparently seeped from his hair into his cheeks, but that was the only difference. In manner he was cordial and abrupt, a genuine John Buchan Scottish aristo - which is to say that he was more English than any Englishman could ever hope to be. If you doubt that, just consider such typical “Englishmen” as Harold Macmillan, David Niven, Alec Douglas-Home, Jack Buchanan, Stewart Granger, and Charles II.
This was the only visit on which I actually stayed on the premises overnight. We dined at a long candlelit table in a large and clammy hall with age-blackened panelling covered with crossed broadswords, targes, and flintlocks, with silent servitors emerging occasionally from the gloom to refuel us. At one end sat Sir Gavin in a dinner jacket and appalling MacKenzie tartan trews cut on the diagonal; at the other, Lady MacKenzie, an intense woman with a staccato delivery who chain-smoked throughout the meal. From time to time she and her husband addressed each other in the manner of people who have met only recently; it was hard to believe that they knew each other well enough to be have begotten not only their son but a daughter, seated opposite me, a plain, lumpy sixteen-year-old with the magnificent MacKenzie hair, flaming red and hanging to her waist. The only other diner was a pale, elderly man with an eyeglass whose name I didn’t catch - in fact, looking back, I’m not sure he was there at all, since he never spoke and no one addressed him. He drank most of a bottle of Laphroaig during the meal, and took it with him when the ladies withdrew, leaving old man MacKenzie and me to riot over the port.
Coming on the evening of the day I had spent with the McGilvrays, it was an odd contrast. Lady MacKenzie had chattered non-stop about her son, but without asking any questions, and his sister had not, I think, referred to him at all, but since she had the finishing-school habit of talking very quickly to her armpit it was difficult to be sure. Sir Gavin had spoken only of the Labour Government. Now, when we were alone, he demanded to know why, in my opinion, Kenny had not joined the Scots Guards, in which he, Sir Gavin, had held an exalted position. Why had he chosen a Highland regiment? It was extraordinary, when he could have been in the Brigade; Sir Gavin couldn’t understand it.
I said, trying not to smile, that it was possible some people might prefer a Highland regiment, and Sir Gavin said, yes, he knew that, but it wasn’t the point. Why young Kenneth? It seemed very odd to him, when the family had always been in the Brigade, and he could have kept an eye on the boy - “I mean, I don’t know your Colonel - what’s his name? No, don’t know him. Good man, is he?”
“They don’t come any better,” I said. It seemed fairly obvious to me why young Kenneth, a firebrand and a maverick, had chosen not to be in father’s regiment, but that could not be said. Sir Gavin looked glum, and said he didn’t know anything about Highland regiments - fine reputation, of course, but he didn’t know how they were, d’you see what I mean? With the Guards, you knew where you were. Life for a young officer was cut and dried … Highland regiment, he wasn’t so sure. Suddenly he asked:
“Is he a good officer?”
“Kenny? Yes. His Jocks like him.”
“His what?”
“His Jocks-his men.”
