The Complete McAuslan (41 page)

He looked at me pityingly as I took his list. Of course, I ought to have known better. All this stuff about Highlanders’ second sight is nonsense; it’s just first-class espionage, that’s all.

‘Well,’ I said, studying the list, ‘I don’t know about this. I’m sure it’s all very irregular . . .’

‘So’s the employment o’ military personnel ootwith military duties,’ said Fletcher smugly. ‘Think if somebody frae the
Daily Worker
wis tae get word that wee shilpit Toamy frae the Q.M. store – him wi’ the bad feet – wis humphin’ the Adjutant’s golf-sticks a’ ower the place. They might even get a picture of him greetin’ – ’

‘Quite, quite,’ I said. ‘Point taken. All right, two bob an hour, but I want respectable men, understand?’

‘Right, sir.’ Fletcher hesitated. ‘Would there be a wee allowance, mebbe, for wear an’ tear on the fellas’ civvy clothes? They cannae dae the job in uniform, and it’s no fair tae expect a fella tae spile his glamour pants and long jaicket sclimmin’ intae bunkers – ’

‘They can draw white football shirts and long khaki drills from the sports store,’ I said. ‘Now go away, you crimson thief, and see that nobody who isn’t on this list ever hears that there’s payment involved, otherwise we’ll have a queue forming up. I want this thing to work nice and smoothly.’

And of course it did. Fletcher had picked eight men, including himself, of sober habit and decent appearance, and the sight of them in their white shirts and khaki slacks, toting their burdens round the links, did the Colonel’s heart good to see. It all looked very military and right, and he wasn’t to know that they were being subsidised out of battalion funds. In fact, I had quietly informed the Adjutant that if those officers who played golf made an unofficial contribution to the sports kitty, it would be welcome, and the result was that we actually showed a profit.

The Jocks who caddied were all for it. They made money, they missed occasional parades, and they enjoyed such privileges as watching the Adjutant have hysterics while standing thigh-deep in a stream, or hearing the Padre addressing heaven from the midst of a bramble patch. It was all good clean fun, and would no doubt have stayed that way if the new Colonel, zealous for his battalion’s prestige, hadn’t got ambitious.

He didn’t play golf himself, but he took pride in his unit’s activities, and it chanced that on one of his strolls across the course he saw Pirie the barman playing against the better of our elderly majors. The major must have been at his best, and Pirie’s game was immaculate as usual, so the Colonel, following them over the last three holes, got a totally false impression of the standard of golf under his command. This, he decided, was pretty classy stuff, and it seems that he mentioned this to his friend who commanded the Royals, who inhabited that part of the country. Colonels are forever boasting to each other in this reckless way, whereby their underlings often suffer most exquisitely.

Anyway, the Colonel of the Royals said he had some pretty fair golfers in his mess, and how about a game? Our Colonel, in his ignorance, accepted the challenge. I privately believe that he had some wild notion that because we had caddies in nice white shirts we would have a built-in advantage, but in any event he placed a bet with the Royals’ C.O. and then came home to tell the Adjutant the glad news. We were to field ten players in a foursomes match against the Royals, and we were to win.

Now, you may think an inter-regimental golf match is fairly trivial stuff, but when a new and autocratic Colonel is involved, puffed up with regimental conceit, and when the opposition is the Royals, it is a most serious matter. For one thing, the Royals are unbearable. They are tremendously old, and stuffed with tradition and social graces, and adopt a patronising attitude to the rest of the army in general, and other Scottish units in particular. Furthermore, they can play golf – or they could then – and of this the Adjutant was painfully aware.

However, like the good soldier he was, he set about marshalling his forces, which consisted of making sure that he personally partnered Pirie.

‘We know each other’s game, you see,’ he told me. ‘We blend, as it were.’

‘You mean he’ll carry you round on his back,’ I said. ‘You don’t fool me, brother. You see that partnering Pirie is the one chance you’ve got of being in a winning pair.’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to work with the Colonel; I see him every day, don’t I? I’ve got to salvage something from what is sure to be a pretty beastly wreck. Now, how about the second pair? The Padre and the M.O., eh? They always play together.’

‘They’ll be good for a laugh, anyway,’ I said. ‘Unless the Royals go easy on them out of respect for the clerical cloth, or the M.O. can get his opponents drunk, they don’t stand a prayer.’

‘Then there’s young Macmillan – he’s not bad,’ said the Adjutant hopefully. ‘I saw him hole a putt the other day. You could partner him yourself.’

‘Not a chance,’ I said .‘The best he’s ever gone round in is 128, with a following wind. Furthermore he giggles. I want to succumb with dignity; either I partner the R.S.M. or you can get yourself another boy.’

‘Old man Mackintosh, eh?’ said the Adjutant. ‘Well, he’s a steady player, isn’t he? Can’t think I’ve ever seen him in the rough.’

‘That’s why I want him,’ I said. ‘I want to play a few of my shots from a decent lie.’

‘You’ve got a rotten, defeatist attitude,’ said the Adjutant severely.

‘I’m a rotten, defeatist golfer,’ I said. ‘So are you, and so are the rest of us, bar Pirie.’

‘Ah, yes, Pirie,′ said the Adjutant, smirking. ′He and I should do not too badly, I think. If I can remember not to overswing; and I think I’ll get the pro. to shave my driver just a teeny fraction – for balance, you know – and get in a bit of practice with my eight iron . . .′

‘Come back to earth, Sarazen,’ I said. ‘You’ve still got two couples to find.’

We finally settled on our two elderly majors, Second-Lieutenant Macmillan, and Regimental Quartermaster Bogle, a stout and imposing warrant officer who had been known to play a few rounds with the pipe-sergeant. No one knew how they scored, but Bogle used to say off-handedly that his game had rusted a wee bitty since he won the Eastern District Boys’ Title many years ago – heaven help us, it must have been when Old Tom Morris was in small clothes – and the pipey would nod sagely and say:

‘Aye, aye, Quarters, a wee thing over par the day, just a wee thing, aye. But no’ bad, no’ bad at all.’

Personally I thought this was lying propaganda, but I couldn’t prove it.

‘It is,’ admitted the Adjutant, ‘a pretty lousy team. Oh, well, at least our caddies will look good.’

But there he was dead wrong. He was not to know it, but lurking in the background was the ever-present menace of Private McAuslan, now preparing to take a hand in the fate of the battalion golf team.

He was far from my mind on the afternoon of the great match, as the R.S.M. and I stood waiting outside the clubhouse to tee off. Presently my own batman, the tow-headed McClusky, who was caddying for me, arrived on the scene, and shambling behind him was the Parliamentary Road’s own contribution to the pollution problem, McAuslan himself.

‘What’s he doing here?’ I demanded, shaken.

‘He’s come tae caddy,’ explained McClusky. ‘See, there’s only eight caddies on the list, an’ ten o’ ye playin’, so Fletcher picked anither two. Him an’ Daft Bob Broon.’

‘Why him?’ I hissed, aware that our visitors from the Royals were casting interested glances towards McAuslan, whose greywhite shirt was open to the waist, revealing what was either his skin or an old vest, you couldn’t tell which. His hair was tangled and his mouth hung open; altogether he looked as though he’d just completed a bell-ringing stint at Notre Dame.

‘Fletcher said it would be a’right.’

‘I’ll talk to Master Fletcher in due course,’ I said. ‘But you ought to have known better, at least. Well, you can darn your own socks after this, my lad.’ I turned to McAuslan. ‘You,’ I hissed, ‘button your shirt and try to look half-decent.’

‘Ah cannae, sir, but.’ He pawed unhappily at his insanitary frontage. ‘The buttons his came aff.’

I’d been a fool to mention it, of course. I wondered momentarily if there was time to dismiss him and get a replacement, but the first foursome was already on the tee. ‘Well, tuck the damned thing in at least, and get hold of yourself. You’re caddying for the Regimental Sergeant-Major.’

I don’t know which of them was hit hardest by this news; probably no two men in the battalion were as eager to shun each other’s company. McAuslan went in fear and horror of the majestic Mackintosh; the R.S.M., on the other hand, who had been brought up in the Guards, regarded McAuslan as a living insult to the profession of arms, and preferred to ignore his existence. Now they were in enforced partnership, so to speak. I left them to renew old acquaintance, and went to watch the first shots being exchanged on the tee.

Pirie and the Adjutant were our openers, and when Pirie hit his drive out of sight you could see the Adjutant smirking approval in a way which invited the onlookers to believe that he, too, was cast in the same grand mould. Poor sap, he didn’t seem to realise that he would shortly be scooping great lumps out of the fairway while Pirie gritted his teeth and their opponents looked embarrassed. Not that the Royals looked as though pity was their long suit; it is part of their regimental tradition to look as much like army officers as possible – the type who are to be seen in advertisements for lime juice, or whisky, or some splendid out-of-doors tobacco. They were brown, leathery, moustached upper-crust Anglo-Scots, whose well-worn wind-cheaters and waterproof trousers could have come only from Forsyth’s or Rowan’s; their wooden clubs had little covers on their heads, their brogues had fine metal spikes, and they called each other Murdoch and Doug. Nowadays they broke stocks or manage export concerns, and no doubt they still play golf extremely well.

Our second pair were Damon and Pythias, the two elderly majors, who took the tee with arthritic moans. Rivals for the same girl when they had been stationed at Kasr-el-Nil before the war, they disliked each other to the point of inseparability, and lived in a state of feud. If they could manage to totter round the eighteen holes they would at least put up a show, which was more than I expected from our third couple, the Padre and the M.O.

They were a sight to see. The M.O., eating pills and wearing gym shoes, was accompanied by a caddy festooned with impedimenta – an umbrella, binoculars, flask, sandwich case and the like. Golf, to the M.O., was not to be taken lightly. The Padre, apart from his denim trousers, was resplendent in a jersey embroidered for him by the market mammies of some St Andrew’s Kirk in West Africa, a souvenir of his missionary days. A dazzling yellow, it had his name in scarlet on the front – ‘Rev. McLeod’, it said – while on the back, in many colours, was the Church of Scotland emblem of the burning bush, with ‘Nec tamen consumebatur’ underneath. The Padre wouldn’t have parted with it for worlds; he had worn it under his battledress on D-Day, and intended to be buried in it.

The M.O., breathing heavily, drove off, which consisted of swinging like a Senlac axe-man, overbalancing, and putting up a ball which, had he been playing cricket, would have been easily caught at square leg.

′ ″Gregory, remember thy swashing blow,″ ′ quoted the Padre. ‘Man, but there’s power there, if it could be harnessed. Don’t you worry, Lachlan, I’ll see to it’, and he wandered off towards the ball to play the second shot after his opponents had driven off – which they did, very long and very straight.

Second-Lieutenant Macmillan and R.Q.M.S. Bogle were next, Macmillan scraping his drive just over the brow of the hill fifty yards in front of the tee. Then the MacNeill-Mackintosh combo took the stage, and as we walked on to the tee with the Colonels and attendant minions watching from the clubhouse verandah, I could hear the R.S.M.’s muttered instructions to the shuffling McAuslan: ’. . . those are the wooden clubs with the wooden heads; the irons have metal heads. All are numbered accordin’ to their purpose. When I require a parteecular club I shall call oot the number, and you will hand it to me, smertly and with care. Is that clear?’

God help you, you optimistic sergeant-major, I thought, and invited him to tee off – whoever fell flat on his face in front of the assembled gallery, it wasn’t going to be me. He put a respectable drive over the hill, our opponents drove immaculately, and we were off, four golfers, three caddies, and McAuslan shambling behind, watching the R.S.M. fearfully, like a captured slave behind a chariot.

Looking back, I can’t say I enjoyed that match. For one thing, I was all too conscious of what was happening in the foursomes ahead of us, and over the first nine at least it wasn’t good. From time to time they would come into view, little disheartening tableaux: the M.O. kneeling under a bush, swearing and wrestling with the cap of his flask; R.Q.M.S. Bogle trying to hit a ball which was concealed by his enormous belly, while Macmillan giggled nervously; our elderly majors beating the thick rough with their clubs and reviling each other; the Adjutant’s plaintive bleat drifting over the dunes: ‘I’m awfully sorry, Pirie, I can’t imagine what’s happened to my mid-irons today; either it’s the balance of the clubs or I’m over-swinging. What do you think, Pirie, am I over-swinging?’ And so on, while the wind blew gently over the sunlit course, ruffling the bent grass, and the distant sea glittered from its little choppy wavelets; it was a brisk, beautiful backdrop totally out of keeping with the condition of the tortured souls trudging over the links, recharging all their worst emotions and basest instincts in the pursuit of little white balls. It makes you think about civilisation, it really does.

I refer to the emotions of our own side, of course. The Royals, for all I know, were enjoying it. My own personal opponents seemed to be, at any rate. They were of the type I have already described, trim, confident men called Hamilton and Dalgliesh – or it may have been Melville and Runcieman, I can’t be sure. They played a confident, rather showy game, with big, erratic drives and carefully-considered chips and putts – which, oddly enough, didn’t give them much edge on us. Mackintosh was a steady, useful player, and I’d been worse; we weren’t discontented to reach the turn one down.