The Sheik and the Dustbin

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In the first instance, he stole another man’s girl - and it wasn’t a case of cutting out someone like MacKenzie, the battalion Lothario, with Ellen Ramsay, whose admirers were legion (including even the unlikely Private McAuslan, whose wooing I have described elsewhere). Boy met, dated, and parted from girl with bewildering speed in post-war garrisons, and no harm done; Errol himself must have been involved with half the nurses, A.T.S., Wrens, and civilian females, and no one thought twice, except to note jealously that while the rest of us had to pursue, he seemed to draw them like a magnet.

But the case of Sister Jean was different. She was a flashing-eyed Irish redhead, decorative even by the high standard of the hospital staff, and her attachment to a U.S. pilot at the bomber base was the real thing, what the Adjutant called Poignant Passion, engagement ring, wedding date fixed, and all - until Errol moved in on the lady. I was on detachment at Fort Yarhuna during the crisis, but according to MacKenzie it had started with casual cheek-to-cheek stuff on the dance-floor at the Uaddan Club, progressing to dates, picnics, and sailing-trips on Errol’s dinghy while the American was absent on his country’s service, dropping sandbags on the desert (I quote MacKenzie). In brief, Jean had been beglamoured, her fiancé had objected, a lovers’ quarrel had ensued with high words flying in Irish and American, the ring had been returned, the pilot had got himself posted to Italy in dudgeon, and the hapless patients in Sister Jean’s ward were learning what life was like under the Empress Theodora.

“Talk about hell hath no fury,” said MacKenzie. “She’s lobbing out enemas like a mad thing. You see, not only is her romance with Tex kaput, bus, washed up; on top of that, the unspeakable Errol has given her the gate and is pushing around the new Ensa bint - who is a piece of all right, I have to admit. What women see in him,” he added irritably, “I’m shot if I know. The man’s a tick, a suede-shoe artist, a Semiramis Hotel creeper of the lowest type.”

“Didn’t anyone try to steer him away from Jean?” I asked, thinking of the Colonel, who when it came to intervening in his junior officers’ love lives could have given Lady Bracknell a head start. “Why didn’t you tackle him yourself?”

“Come off it. Remember what happened to Stock? Actually, Ellen Ramsay did get stuck into him at one stage … gosh, she’s a honey, that girl,” said MacKenzie, smiling dreamily. “I think I’ll take her grouse-shooting when we go home. You know, dazzle her with Perthshire … Eh? Oh, well, she tore strips off Errol, and he just laughed and said: ‘Why, darling, I didn’t know you cared,’ and swanned off, cool as be-damned, to take Jean swimming. And now, having wrecked her future, and Tex’s, he goes around blithe as a bird, as though nothing had happened. Yes - a total tick, slice him where you will.”

A fair assessment, on the face of it, and the temperature dropped noticeably in the mess when Errol was present, not that he seemed aware of it. Otherwise the incident was closed; for one thing, there were far more urgent matters to think about just then. Political trouble was beginning to brew in our former Italian colony, with noisy nationalist demonstrations, stoning of police posts by Arab gangs, and the prospect that we would be called out to support the civil administration. If there’s going to be active service, the last thing you need is discord in the mess.

Even so, Errol’s next gaffe came close to blowing the lid off with his bête noire, Cattenach, the second-in-command; it was the nearest thing I ever saw to a brawl between brother-officers, and all because of Errol’s bloody-minded disregard for other people’s feelings. He had set off early one morning to shoot on the salt flats outside the town, and came breezing in just as we were finishing breakfast, calling for black coffee and telling Bennet-Bruce that his shotgun (which Errol had borrowed, typically) was throwing left. Bennet-Bruce asked if he’d had any luck.

“Nothing to write to the Field about,” said Errol, buttering toast. “In fact, sweet dam’-all, except for a couple of kites near the Armoury. Weird-looking things.”

Cattenach lowered his paper. “Did you say near the Armoury? Where are these birds?”

“Where I left them, of course; somewhere around the Armoury wall. They weren’t worth keeping.”

Cattenach looked thoughtful, but went back to his paper, and it wasn’t until lunchtime that he returned to the subject. He brought his drink across from the bar and stopped in front of Errol’s chair, waiting until he had finished telling his latest story and had become aware that Cattenach was regarding him stonily. The second-in-command was a lean, craggy, normally taciturn man with a rat-trap mouth that made him look like one of the less amiable Norman barons.

“You may be interested to know,” he said curtly, “that the ‘kites’ you shot this morning were the Brigadier’s pet hawks.”

There was a startled silence, in which the Padre said: “Oh, cracky good gracious!”, and Errol cocked an incredulous, eyebrow. “What are you talking about - hawks? Since when do hawks stooge around loose, like crows!”

“They were tame hawks - something unique, I believe,” said Cattenach, enjoying himself in his own grim fashion. “A gift to the Brigadier from King Idris, after the desert campaign. Quite irreplaceable, of course, as well as being priceless. And you shot them. Congratulations.”

Well, you and I or any normal person would at this point have lowered the head in the hands, giving little whimpering cries punctuated by stricken oaths and appeals for advice. Not Errol, though; he just downed his drink and observed lightly:

“Well, why didn’t he keep them on a leash? I thought it was usual to put hoods over their heads.”

We stared at the man, and someone protested: “Oh, come off it, Errol!”, while Cattenach went crimson and began to inflate.

“Is that all you’ve got to say?” he demanded, and Errol regarded him with maddening calm.

“What d’you expect me to say? I’m sorry, of course.” If he was he certainly didn’t sound it. “I’ll send the old boy a note of apology.” He gave Cattenach a nod that was almost dismissive. “Okay?”

“Just… that?” growled Cattenach, ready to burst.

“I can’t very well do anything else,” said Errol, and picked up a magazine. “Unless you expect me to rend my garments.” To do him justice, I believe that if anyone else had brought him the glad news, he’d have shown more concern, but he wasn’t giving Cattenach that satisfaction - just his cool half-smile, and the second-in-command had to struggle to keep a grip on himself in the face of that dumb insolence. He took a breath, and then said with deliberation:

“The trouble with you, and what makes you such an unpleasant regimental liability, is that while most of us couldn’t care more, you just couldn’t care less.”

No one had ever heard Cattenach, who was normally a quiet soul, talk with such controlled contempt - and in the mess, of all places. A little flush appeared on Errol’s cheek, and he rose from his chair, but only to look Cattenach in the eye and say:

“You know, that’s extremely well put. I think I’ll enter it in the mess book.”

That was when I thought Cattenach was going to hit him - or try to, because Errol, for all his composure, was balanced like a cat. Suddenly it was very ugly, the Padre was making anxious noises, and the Adjutant was starting forward, and then Cattenach turned abruptly on his heel and stalked out. There was a toe-curling silence - and of course I had to open my big mouth, heaven knows why, unless I thought it was time to raise the conversation to a higher plane.

“Why can’t you bloody well wrap up, just for once?” I demanded, and was told by the Adjutant to shut up. “I think you’ve said enough, too,” he told Errol. “Right - who’s for lunch?”_

“I am, for one,” said Errol, unabashed. “Drama always gives me an appetite,” and he sauntered off to the dining-room, leaving us looking at each other, the Padre muttering about the pride of Lucifer, and the M.O., after a final inhalation of the Tallisker, voicing the general thought.

“Yon’s a bad man,” he said. “Mercy is not in him.”

That was a fact, I thought. Not only had he shown a callous disregard for the feelings of the Brigadier, bereaved of his precious pets, he had strained the egalitarian conventions of the mess to the limit in his behaviour to Cattenach - who, mind you, had been making a meal of his own dislike for Errol. It was all enough to make one say “Tach!”, as my grandmother used to exclaim in irritation, and lunch was taken in general ill-temper - except for Errol, who ate a tranquil salad and lingered over his coffee.

And then such trivia ceased to matter, for at 2.15 came the sudden alarm call from the Police Commissioner to say that the unrest which had been simmering in the native quarter had suddenly burst into violence: a mob of Arab malcontents and bazaar-wallahs were rioting in the Suk, pillaging shops and fire-raising; one of the leading nationalist agitators, Marbruk es-Salah, was haranguing a huge gathering near the Yassid Market, and it looked only a matter of time before they would be spilling out of the Old City and rampaging towards the European suburbs. Aid to the civil power was a matter of urgency - which meant that at 2.45 the two three-ton trucks bearing the armed might of 12 Platoon pulled up on the great dusty square east of the Kantara Bridge, and I reviewed the force with which I was expected to plug that particular outlet from the native quarter.

In theory, the plan for containing unrest was simple. The Old City, an impossible warren of tall crumbling buildings and hundreds of crooked streets and narrow alleys, spread out like a huge fan from the waterfront; beyond the semi-circular edge of the fan lay the European suburbs of the Italian colonial era, girdling the squalid Old City from sea to sea in a luxurious crescent of apartment buildings, bungalows, shops, restaurants, and broad streets - a looter’s paradise for the teeming thousands of the Old City’s inhabitants, if they ever invaded in force. To make sure they didn’t, the 24 infantry platoons of our battalion and the Fusiliers were supposed to block every outlet from the Old City to the New Town, and since these were innumerable, careful disposition of forces was vital.

Kantara was an easy one, since here there was an enormous ditch hemming the native town like a moat, and the only way across was the ancient bridge (which is what Kantara means) which we were guarding. It was a structure of massive stones which had been there before the Caesars, twenty feet broad between low parapets, and perhaps twice as long. From where I stood on the open ground at its eastern end, I could look across the bridge at a peaceful enough scene: a wide market-place in which interesting Orientals were going about their business of loafing, wailing, squatting in the dust, or snoozing in the shadows of the great rickety tenements and ruined walls of the Old City. Behind me were the broad, palm-lined boulevards of the modern resort area, with dazzling white apartments and pleasant gardens, a couple of hotels and restaurants, and beyond them the hospital and the beach club. It looked like something out of a travel brochure, with a faint drift of Glenn Miller on the afternoon air - and then you turned back to face the ancient stronghold of the Barbary Corsairs, a huge festering slum crouched like a malignant genie above the peaceful European suburb, and felt thankful for the separating moat-ditch with only that single dusty causeway across it.

“Nae bother,” said Sergeant Telfer. Like me, he was thinking that thirty Jocks with fifty rounds apiece could have held that bridge against ten times the native population - provided they were empowered to shoot, that is. Which, if it came to the point, would be up to me. But we both knew that was highly unlikely; by all accounts the trouble was at the western end of the Old City, where most of our troops were concentrated. Kantara was very much the soft option, which was presumably why one platoon had been deemed enough. They hadn’t thought it worthwhile giving us a radio, even.

Since it was all quiet, I didn’t form the platoon up, but showed them where, in the event of trouble, they would take up extended line, facing the bridge and about fifty yards from it, out of range of any possible missiles from beyond the ditch. Then they sat in the shade of the trucks, smoking and gossiping, while I prowled about, watching the market for any signs of disturbance, vaguely aware of the discussion on current affairs taking place behind me.

“Hi, Corporal Mackie, whit are the wogs gettin’ het up aboot, then?”

“Independence.” Mackie had been a civil servant, and was the platoon intellectual. “Self-government by their own political leaders. They don’t like being under Allied occupation.”

“Fair enough, me neither. Whit’s stoppin’ them?”

“You are, McAuslan. You’re the heir to the pre-war Italian government. So do your shirt up and try to look like it.”

“Me? Fat chance! The wogs can hiv it for me, sure’n they can, Fletcher? It’s no’ my parish. Hi, corporal, whit wey does the government no’ let the wogs have it?”

“Because they’d make a bluidy mess o’ it, dozy.” This was Fletcher, who was a sort of Churchillian Communist. “They’re no’ fit tae run a mennodge. Look behind ye - that’s civilisation. Then look ower there at that midden o’ a toon; that’s whit the wogs would make o’ it. See?”

So much for Ibn Khaldun and the architects of the Alhambra. Some similar thought must have stirred McAuslan’s strange mental processes, for he came out with a nugget which, frankly, I wouldn’t have thought he knew.

“Haud on a minnit, Fletcher - it was wogs built the Pyramids, wisn’t it? That’s whit the Padre says. Aye, weel, there ye are. They cannae be that dumb.”

“Those werenae wogs, ya mug! Those were Ancient Egyptians.”

“An Egyptian’s a wog! Sure’n he is. So don’t gi’ me the acid, Fletcher. Anyway, if Ah wis a wog, Ah wid dam’ soon get things sortit oot aboot indamapendence. If Ah wis a wog—”

“That’s a helluva insult tae wogs, right enough. Ah can just see ye! Hey, fellas, meet Abu ben McAuslan, the Red Shadow. Ye fancy havin’ a harem, McAuslan? Aboot twenty belly-dancers like Big Aggie frae the Blue Heaven?” And Fletcher began to hum snake-charmer music, while his comrades speculated coarsely on McAuslan, Caliph of the Faithful, and I looked through the heat haze at the Old City, and thought about cool pints in the dim quiet of the mess ante-room.

It came, as it so often does, with daunting speed. There was a distant muttering from the direction of the Old City, like a wind getting up, and the market-place beyond the bridge was suddenly empty and still in the late afternoon sun. Then the muttering changed to a rising rumble of hurrying feet and harsh voices growing louder. I shouted to Telfer to fall in, and from the mouth of a street beyond the market-place a native police jeep came racing over the bridge. It didn’t stop; I had a glimpse of a brown face, scared and staring, under a peaked cap, and then the jeep was gone in a cloud of dust, heading up into the New Town. So much for the civil power. The platoon were fanning out in open order, each man with his rifle and a canvas bandolier at his waist; they stood easy, and Telfer turned to me for orders. I was gazing across the bridge, watching Crisis arrive in a frightsome form, and realising with sudden dread that there was no one on God’s green earth to deal with it, except me.

It’s quite a moment. You’re taking it easy, on a sunny afternoon, listening to the Jocks chaffing - and then out of the alleys two hundred yards away figures are hurrying, hundreds of them, converging into a great milling mob, yelling in unison, waving their fists, starting to move towards you. A menace beats off them that you can feel, dark glaring faces, sticks brandished, robes waving and feet churning up the dust in clouds before them, the rhythmic chanting sounding like a barbaric war-song -and you fight down the panic and turn to look at the khaki line strung out either side of you, the young faces set under the slanted bonnets, the rifles at their sides, standing at ease - waiting for you. If you say the word, they’ll shoot that advancing mob flat, and go on shooting, because that’s what they’re trained to do, for thirty bob a week - and if that doesn’t stop the opposition, they’ll stand and fight it out on the spot as long as they can, because that’s part of the conscript’s bargain, too. But it’s entirely up to you - and there’s no colonel or company commander to instruct or advise. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve led a section in warfare, where there is no rule save survival; this is different, for these are not the enemy - by God, I thought, you could have fooled me; I may know it, but I’ll bet they don’t - they are civilians, and you must not shoot unless you have to, and only you can decide that, so make up your mind, Dand, and don’t dawdle: you’re getting nine quid a week, after all, so the least you can do is show some initiative.