The Complete McAuslan (20 page)

At any other time, I believe, there might have been unofficial representations to the C.O. to clear the thing up, but everyone was too busy. Royalty was still at Holyrood, and within the week the Highland Division Games were due to take place. This had not happened on a full scale since time immemorial, for it is difficult to get all six Highland Regiments together at one time (there being an official tendency to keep the savages apart in case they start another ’45 rebellion, or destroy each other, which is more likely). Any Highland Games is a spectacular show, but with a full muster of the regiments in Scotland this was expected to be something special. Apart from the normal track and field events which you get at any athletics meeting, there would be such esoteric contests as throwing the hammer, tossing the caber, Highland dancing, and piping; the tug-of-war, and the pillow-fight for which McAuslan had fastidiously refused to enter, would be the final events before the prizes were presented by one of the Royal Duchesses. Altogether it was big military, sporting, and social stuff, and McAuslan’s court-martial was back-page news by comparison.

As battalion sports officer I hardly even had time to sleep; I was running myself in the quarter-mile and the relay, and I had to supervise the training of the regiment’s athletes. This did not consist so much of giving them psychological pep-talks and tips on sprinting, as of keeping Wee Wullie out of the guard room, for he was anchor man and mainstay of the tug-of-war team, and he was drinking more than usual to drown his sorrows over the old Colonel’s departure. We had a pretty fair team, all round; we would hold our own in piping and dancing, would probably win the relay and certainly take the high jump, for the Adjutant was a possible Olympic prospect, and we would make a respectable showing in everything else.

So it wasn’t the business of making a good show in the actual competition that worried me, so much as ensuring that our entry remained sober and of sound mind, and did nothing to disgrace the regiment’s fair name. With royalty present you can’t be too careful, and with competitors who have knavery and mischief running thick in their blood you have to be doubly on guard. To give just one example, I uncovered the germ of a plot – just an idea, really, it hadn’t got to the blue-print stage – which involved getting hold of the caber in advance and soaking it in water. A caber is several yards of tree trunk which the competitor, a man of iron muscle invariably, must throw end over end; soaked in water it becomes so heavy as to be unmanageable, and there were those in our battalion so lost to shame as to consider it a splendid idea to doctor the caber before the Argylls or the Highland Light Infantry entrants tried to throw it. It wasn’t a bad scheme, at that, but the snag was how to arrange matters so that we got the use of an unsoaked caber first. They were working on this when I got wind of it and spoiled everything by threatening disciplinary action. Anyway, as I pointed out, it was too risky.

Then there was the pipe-sergeant to soothe and quieten. He was alarmed to distraction because the Adjutant ‘iss participating in the godless high chump, Mr MacNeill, sir, when I want him for the foursome. Look yonder,’ he cried, ‘at him hurling himself over a silly bit stick when he should be at the dancing, with a one-two. He will injure himself, and I’ll be left with Corporal Cattenach that has no more sense of the time than a Hawick farmer. Can you not appeal to him, sir?’

‘He can win the high jump and dance in your foursome, too, pipey,’ I said.

‘Aye, can he, and if he strains himself, with ruptures and torn ligaments, where are we?’ cried the pipey. ‘Which is the more important for a Highland Games, the fine dancing or . . . or yon abomination? Any clown can loup, sir, but the dear Adjutant is a dancer in ten thousand, see the grace of him. Ach, damn,’ he added petulantly, ‘they have spoiled all decent sport with their bluidy athletics!’

I left him lamenting, and spent half an hour with our juvenile entry, for the Games included children’s sports, and our regimental infants were toiling busily in preparation for the three-legged race, the bean bag, the bunny jump, and the under-10 eighty-yard dash. In this last we were strong, for we had the twin sons of Corporal Coupar, known locally as the Bullet-Headed Little Bandits. They were wicked, fearless, malevolent-looking little urchins of nine, infamous for their evil-doing and their language, which would have earned censure in a Tollcross pub. But they could run; years of evading the wrath of regimental cooks, their father, and those private soldiers who were sensitive to juvenile abuse had made them faster than chain lightning with a link snapped. Barring accidents, the eighty-yard dash was ours. I seized one twin as he shot by, and received a hair-curling rebuke.

‘Don’t use that disgusting word,’ I said. ‘Are you Davie or Donnie?’

‘Name o’ the wee man,’ said he. ‘Can ye no’ tell? Ah’m Donnie. Ah don’t look like that, surely?’ And he indicated his twin with distaste. Davie retorted, unmentionably.

‘David!’ I beckoned him, and he came defiantly. ‘Now, look, both of you. Do you want any more stories?’

The two small, ugly faces looked slightly concerned. They liked their stories.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Unless you cut out swearing, no more stories. You should be ashamed. What would your father say?’

Davie sniggered. ‘Ye should hear him.’

I slapped him on his trouser seat. ‘Don’t be impertinent. And what’s more, I won’t let you run in the sports. Yes, I thought that would worry you. Anyway, are you going to win?’

‘No kiddin’,’ said Donnie scornfully. ‘We’ll dawdle it.’

‘Ye mean Ah’ll dawdle it,’ said Davie.

‘You? You couldnae catch me in a bus.’

‘Could Ah no’? You couldnae run wi’ the cold.’

I rolled them on the ground briefly, which one should always do to small boys, and was preparing to go on my way when Davie picked himself up from the grass and called:

‘Hey, Mr MacNeill. Is it right McAuslan’s goin’ tae get the jail?’

This stopped me short. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘Ah heard my daddy sayin’ McAuslan had had it. Is that right?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Why are you interested?’

‘Och,’ said Davie. ‘Ah like McAuslan. He’s that —— dirty.’

‘Ah hate Corporal Baxter,’ said Donnie viciously. ‘He’s a ——.’

I despaired. You might as well have tried to stop an alcoholic tippling as purify the conversation of the Bullet-Headed Little Bandits. Oddly enough, though, I felt sympathy for both their views, and in the next few days, while the athletes trained and the pipers practised, and the wooden grandstands were erected and the tents pitched and all was made ready for the Games, I found McAuslan increasingly on my mind. The Games were Friday and Saturday, and McAuslan’s trial was fixed for the Friday afternoon. He looked like a dead duck, and I wondered how stiff a sentence he would get. Disobeying an order may be admonished at company level, but when it gets before a court-martial it can be a detention offence, quite easily, and McAuslan doing twenty-one days in the iron discipline of a glasshouse was a worrying thought. He wasn’t exactly cut out for doing everything at the double and in spotless order.

His defending officer, the ‘prisoner’s friend’, arrived on the Wednesday afternoon. He was a thin, nervous Cockney Jew, with a hard-worn captain’s uniform and enormous horn-rimmed spectacles. His other distinguishing characteristics were a huge Adam’s apple, a blue lantern jaw, a pendulous nose, and an unhappy expression.

‘Name of Einstein,’ he said, shaking hands limply. ‘Don’t make any mathematical jokes, for God’s sake, I couldn’t stand it. No kidding, I’m thinking of changing it to Shylock.’ He laid his battered brief-case on my desk and sank into a chair, massaging his forehead. ‘Honest, I’ve just about had it. Had to stand all the way from York. I’m bushed. Usual last-minute flap, of course. You think you’ve got it tough in the infantry, mate, you ought to see the Army’s bloody legal department. To give you an idea’ – he removed his glasses and stared at me with great spaniel eyes — ‘I still don’t know the first thing about this ruddy case; not a thing! Organisation! Oh, they did give me the documents, but I seem to have left ’em somewhere. I should cocoa. As my old man said, “Any lawyer that needs a brief needs a bloody nursemaid”. And he was no mug, my old man. What’s the charge?’

‘Disobeying an order,’ I said, and he looked surprised.

‘Bit of a come-down for your lot, isn’t it? I mean to say, last time I was mixed up with a Highland mob it was murder, arson, and making away with Government property in the face of the enemy. Disobedience, eh? Well, it’s a living. And as my old man so wisely said, bless his black heart, “Always be happy to do business with the Gentile Tribe, Frankie, you may need a free kilt some day.”’ His vulpine face assumed a friendly beam. ‘So just fill me in, old man, would you?’

I told him the McAuslan saga, pillow-fight, new C.O., objection to being called dirty, and all, and he sat sucking his teeth and twitching.

‘Well, some mothers do have them,’ he observed when I had finished. ‘Got a fag on you, old man?’

I lit him up and asked him how long he thought McAuslan would get.

‘Get?’ he said, staring at me through the smoke. ‘Whaddya mean, “get”?’

‘Well, he doesn’t seem to have much chance —’

‘Not much chance? Don’t make me laugh. He’s going to get acquitted, mate, don’t you worry about that. All my clients get acquitted. There’s more of my clients walking about free men than you’ve had hot dinners. “Get” forsooth! I like that.’

‘I’m sorry, I —’

‘What we’ve got to decide on,’ said Einstein, waving me to silence, ‘is a line of defence. Yers-ss. Let’s see . . . How about steady-responsible-hard-working-soldier-victimised-by-cruel-superior? Old, but sound.’

‘No, not with McAuslan . . . I don’t think . . .’

‘Just an idea,’ he shrugged. ‘Wait, I’ve got a good one. How about religious-fanatic-wounded-in-his-beliefs? That’s a beauty. Show a court a holy man and they get the willies every time.’

‘McAuslan isn’t holy,’ I said. ‘He’s probably an atheist.’

‘You’re not helping, you know,’ said Einstein severely. ‘Tell you what, is he deaf? No? It’s never much good, anyway. I don’t suppose he’s illegitimate, either?’

‘Illegitimate?’

‘A bastard, you know,’ he explained patiently. “Cos if he was, and this corporal called him one, it’d be a lovely extenuating circumstance. I used that one once, out in Port Sudan. Gift from the gods. President of the court turned out to be a bastard himself. Turned a certain two years for mutinous behaviour into a straight acquittal.’ He chuckled reminiscently. ‘Those were the days, mate, those were the days.’

‘Well, this is today,’ I said with some heat, for it seemed to me Captain Einstein was approaching things in a decidedly offhand manner. ‘And McAuslan . . .’

‘I know, I know,’ he flapped his hands at me. ‘I’m just exploring, see? Getting the feel of things, looking for a line.’ He meditated. ‘He isn’t normal and steady, he isn’t religious, he isn’t deaf, and he isn’t a bastard. What the hell is he, a cave-man?’

‘You said it, not me.’

‘Oh.’ He stared at me. ‘Well. In that case, maybe I’d better have a little talk with him.’ He slapped his pockets. ‘I say, got another fag on you? I seem to have left mine . . . Ta. Yes, I’ll have to reorientate a bit, I can see. To quote my old man again, “If you can’t find a good line of defence, just stick to the truth.” Let’s go and interview the body.’

When he saw McAuslan, who was sitting on his bunk in the cells, looking foul and miserable, Einstein had a quick intake of breath, most of it cigarette smoke, and a coughing fit.

‘Gawd,’ he said reverently, when he had recovered. ‘You don’t half pick ’em, don’t you? He looks like a distressed area. I can see I’m going to have to be at my talented smoothest to make
him
look good in court. Oh, well, never say die, all things are possible. I mean to say, if you’ve got a Church of England chaplain off on an embezzlement charge, you can do practically anything, can’t you? I’ve done that, too. Tell you what,’ he added, laying a hand on my shoulder, ‘why don’t you buzz off to the mess and get some drink set up while I have a word with old Private Piltdown here? See you in ten minutes.’ He winked. ‘And don’t look so worried, old cock. Your boy is in capable hands, believe me.’

I hoped sincerely that he was right, this voluble Einstein, but I’d have been happier if he had looked just a bit less of a villain. Frankly, when it came to appearances, I’d sooner have been represented by Blackbeard Teach.

Nor did he seem terribly energetic. Having spent only ten minutes with McAuslan, he came to the mess and drank me nearly bankrupt, ate a hearty dinner, and then took seven and six off the M.O. at snooker. The following day he passed in loafing about the barracks, having a word here and there, returning frequently to the mess to hit the Glenfiddich, and generally looking like a man without a care in the world. I didn’t know how legal men prepared for mortal combat, but I was pretty sure they spent more time poring over papers and hunting out surprise witnesses than swilling whisky and trying to lure people to the billiards table.

Then it was Friday morning, and I had the heats of the quarter-mile to worry about: I had modest hopes of getting into the final, and maybe picking up a point or two there. As it turned out, the thing was money for jam, thanks to Corporal Pudden and my own cleverly psychological running. I discovered as a lad that to succeed in the quarter-mile, against any but really good runners, all you have to do is to set off at top speed from the start. This discourages the mob, who think you must be good; they tend to take it easy in consequence, and by the time they realise their mistake, when you are wheezing and reeling through the last hundred yards, it is probably too late for them to make up lost ground.

So when my heat lined up – Pudden and I were the only representatives of our regiment – and the gun barked, I went off like the clappers. As far as the back straight I was doing fine, but by three-quarters of the way round my evil living – cigarettes, marshmallows, and the like – was taking its toll, and by the time I hit the straight I was giving a fair imitation of the last survivor staggering into the garrison, weak with loss of blood. However, unknown to me, Corporal Pudden, who couldn’t run particularly well, but was broad in the beam, had established himself in second place, and by judicious weaving across the track was preventing the opposition from getting past. This enabled me to get home by a comfortable margin, and Pudden, having body-checked a Seaforth who was trying to take the long way round him, just nosed out a Highland Light Infantryman for second place. So after that there was really nothing to do except put my tunic on over my strip and lounge about looking professional, watching the other heats, slapping my calves thoughtfully, and generally behaving like a man to whom both heats and finals are just formalities.