The Complete McAuslan (39 page)

Keil and another Jock were trying to burst in the door, still without success. Hamilton, released now, was standing pale and petrified; he was a gangly, freckled youth with a weak face and sandy hair.

′Hamilton,′ I said. ‘Fagan’s in there – anyone with him?’

He licked his lips. ‘A bint.’

I motioned Keil away from the door, put my head to the panels and called: ‘Fagan!’ No reply. I tried again, and this time there was the clatter of something being over-turned, and a female squeal, instantly hushed.

′Fagan,′ I called again. ‘This is Lieutenant MacNeill, of D Company. Come on out and give yourself up.’

This time there was silence, and while I stood listening Keil darted into the doorway of Hamilton’s room, and came back to report that from the window he could see there was a roof adjoining the back of the building – a possible means of escape from Fagan’s room.

‘Fagan,’ I tried again. ‘Listen to me. You can’t get away – we’ ve got men all round the hotel. Now, listen. One of your friends, Hunter, is in hospital with smallpox. You were with him two days ago – that means you may be carrying it. You’ve got to get vaccinated, quickly – or you may get it yourself and spread it all over. D‘you understand, Fagan? This is serious, man!’

There was a thin, wailing sound from inside, and a man’s voice cursing, more clattering and rustling. I banged on the door, and suddenly his voice sounded:

‘Gerraway or I’ll blow yer —— head aff!’

‘Oh, don’t be a damned fool! You’ve had it, man! You’ve only been absent two days – what are you worrying about? But if you resist arrest, and try to get away when you’re a smallpox carrier, you’ll go inside forever. For God’s sake man – ’ and it sounded terribly melodramatic, but it was true ‘ – you can’t go spreading a deadly disease about among innocent people. Come on – open the door! Fagan! D’you hear?’

There followed a couple of minutes’ silence from the room – more than compensated for by the Pilgrim’s Chorus on the stairs – and then I thought I heard sounds of movement again.

‘Fagan?’

Feet sounded on the other side of the door, and his voice came through the panels:

‘MacNeill?’

‘Yes.’

A pause, and then: ‘Hunter’s got smallpox?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is that —— true?’

‘Yes.’

‘D’ye swear that?’

At first I wasn’t sure what he’d said; it was an unexpected question. But it was no time for quibbles. I said yes.

There was the sound of a key turning, and then the door opened. Like Hamilton, he was wearing only khaki slacks, a big, sallow, narrow-featured man with thick hair on his chest and shoulders. His hands were empty.

I motioned him out, and glanced into the room. There was no light, but the moon showed that the window had been thrown up, a jacket was lying over the sill, and crouched down beside the bed, on one knee, was an Arab girl – maybe not Arab, probably half-caste, wearing only a white petticoat. I had an impression of long black hair and big eyes staring fearfully; she looked about fifteen.

‘Where’s the Luger?’ I said to Fagan, and he just stared at me. I reflected that it had probably been tossed far out of the window before he opened the door.

‘All right,’ I said to Keil. ‘Take them down and back to the truck.’

‘Wai’ a minute,’ Fagan said. He looked at me. ‘This sma’-pox. Ah’ve been —in’ vaccinated.’ He jerked his head towards the doorway; the girl was inside still, making tiny whimpering sounds. ‘She hisnae. Ye’ll get her —in’ vaccinated.’

I daresay it shouldn’t have startled me, but it did. Likewise Sergeant Keil, and with an N.C.O.’s suspicious mind he demanded:

‘Whit the hell you on, Fagan?’

Fagan stared at him, and said deliberately: ‘Ah’ll be lookin’ for you one o’ these days, china.’ Then he turned back to me. ‘Ye’ll see she gets vaccinated?’

I didn’t suppose that the local native authorities would even think of trying to vaccinate the population of the Suk; twenty to thirty thousand is a lot of people, especially when they don’t much hold with Western medicine. Fagan wanted to make sure for her.

‘I’ll see she gets it,’ I said.

He kept staring at me a moment. ‘Right?’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said.

He went downstairs without another word.

Our strategic withdrawal from the top floor of the Hotel Astoria was a fairly fraught business; for a while I didn’t think we were going to make it. Keil, with Fagan and Hamilton escorted by two of the Jocks, made it easily enough, simply by snarling menacingly as he descended and offering to murder anyone who got in his way. But my own exit was complicated by the fact that I’d promised to take Fagan’s bint along; she screamed and wept and tried to hide under the bed until the remaining Jock lost his temper, slapped her soundly, and took her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. We set off down, myself leading, and by this time the manager had appeared at the head of the excited multitude on the lower landings. At least, I imagine he was the manager – he was a six-foot Soudani-looking gentleman, with tribal cuts across his cheeks, a tarboosh on his head, and a British Army greatcoat. He was also carrying a club, and he affected to believe that, apart from disturbing the peace of his hostelry and forcing entry, I was intent on kidnapping one of his guests for immoral purposes. ‘Scotch bastard!’ was the chorus of his complaint, in which the assembly joined with a will. Fortunately two native constables arrived, a discussion ensued, and when I could get a word in - and that word was ‘smallpox’ – the more or less European element gave one great wail and fled. We inched our way out, the manager demanding to know who was going to pay for Messrs Fagan and Hamilton’s penthouse accommodation, so I gave him ten lire, at which he beamed alarmingly and asked me to stay the night with his sister. Honestly, I reflected as we hurried back to the truck, I’d have been better working hard at school and getting into university instead of letting the Army get its hooks on me.

We dropped the girl off at the hospital, and really the most painful part of the whole night was watching the poor soul’s hysterical submission to the vaccination administered by a medical orderly. For some reason I felt I owed it to Fagan to see the job actually done – I hadn’t worked it out, but I had a feeling that if it hadn’t been for her, he’d have been over the rooftops and far away by now. Anyway, the nurses took charge of her, I made my last call over the set to the battalion, learned that Hamilton and Fagan were in safe hands and every Jock was now accounted for, and that I could go to bed. It was after four, and the dark blue sky was bright orange at its eastern edge when I dismissed the truck at the barrack gates.

There were lights on in the H.Q. building and one or two of the barrack-blocks, but I was too bone-weary to go across. All I wanted was a long cold beer and bed, so I went to the deserted mess, got a bottle from the ice-box, and drank it in the empty, musty billiard-room. The balls on the table lay as we had left them; I stood smoking and studying them tiredly and finally rolled them into the pockets – the Padre’s infernal luck would have got him out of the snooker, anyway; it always did. Heaven knows how they put in their time at theological faculties, I thought, as I slumped into an armchair, and the next thing I knew the Adjutant was shaking me awake, the sun was streaming in through the shutters, and the waiters were clattering crockery in the dining-room across the hall.

The Adjutant was as offensively bright as an advertisement for liver salts, throwing open shutters and singing to himself.

‘Eggs and b. coming up in a moment,’ he cried. ‘Good old egg and b. Haven’t you been to bed, you foolish subaltern? Drowning your sorrows in drink,’ he went on, picking up my fallen beer-glass from the floor, ‘or just sleeping off the great anti-climax.’

‘Wrap up,’ I growled. ‘What anti-climax?’

‘Didn’t someone tell you – oh, probably not, we didn’t hear until an hour ago, while you were sunk here in your hoggish state of alcoholism. Ramsey phoned from base hospital - Hunter hasn’t got smallpox. Nothing like it. Septic prickly heat, apparently, and not very extensive at that, but it seems some young doctor panicked and sent the balloon up, ringing the alarum bells and crying ‘Blow, wind, come wrack’ – and since by one of those damnable coincidences all the senior staff were out of town, well . . . we had a great smallpox drama for nothing.’

He giggled, idiotically if you ask me (but then, an effervescent Adjutant was the last thing I needed in the early morning), and went on:

‘The M.O. went berserk, of course, when he heard – he’d been at it all night, up to his knees in lymph and lancets, using miles of sticking-plaster, and the entire battalion has got sore arms for nothing. Dammit,’ he added, ‘I believe I’m starting to itch myself.’

‘And serves you right!’ I snarled. ‘While I’ve been tangling with armed deserters, earning a reputation as a white slaver, and getting mobbed by angry wogs – oh, and Miss Partridge is raising hell because the Jocks bust up her reading-room. I hope you enjoy dealing with her.’

‘Well, at least we’ve got Fagan in the coop,’ said he. ‘The Colonel’s very pleased about that – thinks you handled it admirably. Come on, eggs and b., toast, coffee and all good things – ’

‘Oh, you go and get raffled, Michael Adjutant,’ I said. ‘I’m going to bed.’

And that should have been the end of it, but there was a curious appendix. When I got up, after lunch, my orderly loafed in, on the pretext of cleaning up the room, but actually to convey the latest scandal and get my reaction. He pottered about handlessly, as usual, knocking my personal effects around, and after several irrelevant comments about the weather, observed:

‘You’re a right fly man, you.’

I said ‘Eh?’ intelligently, and he added: ‘They say Fagan’s doin’ his nut in the cooler. Haw!’

I didn’t get the drift of this, so I told him to stop destroying the furniture and explain.

‘Fagan’s up tae high doh,’ said he, from which I gathered that Fagan was extremely annoyed and disturbed. ‘He says – or the boys say – you spun him a tale aboot Hunter hivin’ smallpox, and Hunter didnae hiv smallpox at a’. An’ Fagan’s sayin’ yer a bluidy leear – Ah mean, that you kidded him into givin’ hisself up. That’s whit the boys say – right fly man, you.’

‘Hold on!’ I protested. ‘This is drivel! I thought Hunter
did
have smallpox – everyone did. Heavens above, d’you think I’d have been tearing through the Suk like a man demented, looking for one piddling little deserter – well, two, if you count Hamilton – if we hadn’t thought there was a risk of epidemic? Come away, McClusky! We didn’t realise it wasn’t smallpox until – when? About seven this morning, I suppose.’

‘That a fact?’ he said. ‘No kiddin’.’ And until you have heard a Glaswegian use these expressions you don’t know anything about scepticism and amused disbelief. ‘Aye, weel.’ He continued to potter, grinning secretly to himself. ‘That’s whit the boys are sayin’ – that ye kidded Fagan intae the cooler. No’ bad. Serve ’im right. Naebody likes him. But he’s in a hell of a sweat about it – says he’s gaunae claim ye when he gets the chance.’

‘Fagan,’ I said, ‘can think what he likes. I couldn’t care less. But I did
not
lie to him to get him to give himself up. You can tell him that, if you like, and add that he isn’t worth it, anyway, and – ’

‘Okay, okay, sir,’ he said. ‘Ah’m just sayin’ whit the boys are sayin’. Keep the heid – sir? Sno′ ma fault. Right?’ He shook his head, still grinning, as he stirred the contents of my wardrobe thoughtfully. ‘Right fly man ye are, though, so ye are.’

The trouble was, he said it admiringly. Obviously the garbled tale would be all over the battalion about how the Macchiavellian MacNeill had conned Fagan into giving himself up by lies and false pretences. And I was still young enough to resent that fact – I didn′t want to be thought of as a ′fly man′, whatever status that might confer in the Jocks’ curious scale of ethics.

I told the Colonel about it when I went over to the mess, where he was lingering over his after-lunch whisky with the Adjutant, and he just roared with laughter, like the wicked old man he was. Then he regarded me from beneath his bushy brows, and remarked:

‘I don’t know how long it took me – about twenty years, I’d say – yes, it would be in Ahmedabad, probably about ’33 or ’34 – before the Jocks started to call me a “fly man”. Quite mistakenly, I assure you. You’ve managed it in about six months – very good going indeed. He gave me his quizzical grin. ‘You probably
are
a fly man, young Dand. Shouldn’t be surprised if the Jocks are right.’

‘Well, sir, they’re dead wrong if they think I spun Fagan – ’

‘Of course they are. In this instance. Don’t take it to heart, boy. This isn’t the Fifth Form at St Dominics; it’s a battalion of Scottish Highlanders – heavens, I’m telling
you!
You
are
one. They value all sorts of things – the usual military virtues and so on – but most of all, they tend to respect what the uncharitable would call craft. Like the Italians in that, I suppose. If they choose to think you’re a fly man, just be thankful – however unearned you may feel the reputation is. You’ll be surprised how useful it is.’ He smiled under his moustache. ‘If your night’s frolicking in the Suk has taught you that, all the better. You can’t learn too much.’

‘That reminds me,’ said the Adjutant. ‘I learned something last night – nothing of consequence, really, but it was quite new to me. Did you know, sir,’ he said to the Colonel, ‘that Karl Marx’s grandmother was a Campbell?’

The Colonel raised an eyebrow. ‘No,’ he said, with mild interest, ‘I didn’t know that.’ He thought about it a moment, and sniffed. ‘Mind you, I can’t say I’m in the least surprised.’

McAuslan in the Rough

My tough granny – the Presbyterian MacDonald one, not the pagan one from Islay – taught me about golf when I was very young. Her instruction was entirely different from that imparted by my father, who was a scratch player, gold medallist and all, with a swing like de Vicenzo; he showed me how to make shots, and place my feet, and keep calm in the face of an eighteen-inch putt on a downhill green with the wind in my face and the match hanging on it. But my granny taught me something much more mysterious.