The Complete McAuslan (30 page)

This is because he is stuck in the middle of the front row, surrounded by all the visiting brass and their wives, and knowing that the climax to the whole terrible show, which his soldiery are waiting for like knitting-women impatient for the tumbril, will be the moment when the battalion funny-man comes on and does the court-jester bit. Our own local comedian was an evil and disreputable Glasgow keelie called McCann, the scruff of A Company, and generally regarded as that unit’s answer to Private McAuslan. He came bauchling confidently on, his wits honed by years of abusing referees, policemen and tram conductors, convulsed the hoi-polloi with his grating catch-phrase (‘Hullaw rerr, fellas, see’s a knife, Ah wantae cut up a side street’), and set the tone by winking at the Colonel and addressing him affably as ‘china’.

Thereafter, with delicately edged allusion and innuendo, he took the mickey out of his commanding officer in a performance judged with such a niceness that it stopped just a shaved inch short of outright insubordination. It really was masterly, in its way, and would have won plaudits from Will Kemp and Archie Armstrong, who would have expected to go to the Tower, if not the block, for it. And the Colonel, pipe clenched in his teeth, took it with an eager, attentive smile that promised penalties unmentionable for Private McCann if ever he was damnfool enough to get himself wheeled into the orderly room on a charge.

The last act of the evening, after McCann had bounced off to tumultuous applause (with the Colonel clapping grimly and regularly) was a complete anti-climax. It was a general knowledge test among teams from the six companies, devised by the Padre, and it laid the expected theatrical egg, with the mob streaming away to the canteen before it was finished. But the Colonel sat it out, and was heard to say in the mess afterwards that it had been the only decent event on the programme. Presumably anything looked good to him after McCann.

‘The rest of it,’ he observed to the Fusilier Colonel, who had been an interested (and, during McCann’s turn, an inwardly delighted) guest, ‘was just bloody awful. Of a piece with all modern entertainment, of course. Haven’t had a decent film, even, since
Snow White
. At least these general knowledge quizzes serve some useful purpose – anything does that imparts information to the men. God knows most of ’em could do with some education, considering the drivel that’s served up to them as entertainment.’ And he had the crust to scowl at me – which, considering he had dragooned me into the show in the first place (‘A good officer ought to take part in all his men’s activities; give ‘em your monologue’), was pretty cool, I thought.

The Fusilier Colonel said he doubted if the general knowledge competition we had heard that night was very educational; it had consisted, he pointed out, of questions mostly about sport.

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ said our Colonel. ‘Shows a healthy outlook. Have another gin.’

‘Thanks,’ said the Fusilier Colonel. ‘What I meant was, to be really useful a general knowledge quiz ought to be more broadly based, don’t you think? I mean – football and racing are all very well, but general knowledge should take in, well, art, politics, literature, that sort of thing.’ He took a sip of his gin and added: ‘Perhaps your Jocks aren’t interested, though.’

That, as they say, did it. But for McCann, and the fact that our Colonel’s liver must have been undergoing one of its periodic spells of mutinous behaviour, he’d probably just have grunted agreement. As it was, he stopped short in the act of refuelling his pipe and asked the Fusilier Colonel what the devil he meant. The Fusilier Colonel said, nothing, really, but general knowledge quizzes ought to be about general knowledge. They’d had one in his battalion, and he’d been astonished at how much his chaps – quite ordinary chaps, he’d always thought – knew about all sorts of things.

Our Colonel did a brief, thoughtful quiver, looked across the mess with that chin-up, faraway stare that his older comrades associated with the Singapore siege, and said, was that so, indeed. He finished filling his pipe, and you could see him wondering whether the Fusilier Colonel had somehow managed to enlist the entire Fellowship of All Souls in his battalion. Then he looked round, and if ever a man was taking inventory of his own unit’s intellectual powers, he was doing it then. There was the Padre, with an M.A. (Aberdeen), and the M.O. with presumably some scientific knowledge – pretty well versed in fishing, anyway – and then his eye fell on me, and I knew what he was thinking. A few days before he’d heard me – out of that fund of my trivia – explaining to the Adjutant, who was wrestling futilely with a crossword, that the term ‘derrick’ derived from the name of an Elizabethan hangman. Eureka, he was thinking.

‘Tell you what,’ he said to the Fusilier Colonel. ‘How’d you like to have one of these quiz competitions – between our battalions? Just for interest, eh?’

‘All right,’ said the Fusilier Colonel. ‘A level fiver?’

‘Done,’ said our Colonel, promptly, and in that fine spirit of philosophic inquirers bent on the propagation of knowledge for its own sake they proceeded to hammer out the rules, conditions and penalties under which the contest would be conducted. It took them three double whiskies and about half a pint of gin, and the wheeling and dealing would have terrified Tammany Hall. But finally they agreed that the two teams, four men strong, should be drawn from all ranks of the respective battalions, that the questions should be devised independently by the area education officer, that the local Roman Catholic padre should act as umpire (our Colonel teetered apprehensively over that, and presumably concluded that the Old Religion was marginally closer to our cause – Jacobites, Glasgow Irish, and all that – than to the Fusiliers’), and that the contest should be held in a week’s time on neutral ground, namely the Uaddan Canteen. And when, with expressions of mutual good will, the Fusilier Colonel and his party had left, our Colonel called for another stiff one, mopped his balding brow, refilled his pipe, and took the operation in hand. He formed the Padre and myself into an O-Group, with the Adjutant co-opted as an adviser, told the rest of the mess to shut up or go to bed, announced: ‘Now, this is the form,’ and paced to and fro like Napoleon before Wagram, plotting his strategy. Dividing his discourse under the usual subheadings – object, information, personnel, communications, supply, and transport – he laid it all on the line.

‘These Fusiliers,’ he said, smoking thoughtfully. ‘Probably quite brainy. Never can tell, of course, but they put up a dam’ fine show at Anzio, and Colonel Fenwick is nobody’s fool. Don’t be discouraged by the fact that they’ve had one or two of their chaps through Staff College – the kind of idiot who can write p.s.c. after his name these days is, to my mind, quite unfit for brain-work of any kind and usually has to be excused boots.’ The Colonel had not been to Staff College. ‘However, we can’t afford to take ’em lightly. Their recruiting area is the north-east of England, which I grant you is much like the Australian outback with coal-mines added, but we can’t count too much on that. There’s a university thereabouts – which reminds me, Michael, we’ll have to check on where this area education officer hails from. The chap who’s setting the questions. Fenwick proposed him – bigod, I’ll bet he’s a Geordie – ’

‘He’s a Cornishman,’ said the Adjutant. ‘Pen-pal, or some such name.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said the Colonel. ‘You’re sure? Right, then, we come to our own team. You, Padre, and you, young Dand, will select as your team-mates the two most informed, alert and intelligent men in the battalion. Officers or other ranks, I don’t care which – but understand, I want a team who can answer the questions put to them clearly, fully, and accurately, and in a soldier-like manner. No dam’ shuffling and scratching heads. When a question’s asked – crack! straight in with the answer, like that.’

‘Provided we know the answer,’ said the Padre, and the Colonel looked at him like a dyspeptic vulture.

‘This battalion,’ he said flatly, ‘knows all the answers. Understand ? What’s the shortest book in the Bible?’

‘Third John,’ said the Padre automatically.

‘There you are, you see,’ said the Colonel, shrugging in the grand manner. ‘It’s just a matter of alertness and concentration. And – training.’ He wagged his pipe impressively. ‘Some form of training is absolutely essential, to ensure that you and the rest of the team are at a highly-tuned pitch on the night of the contest. The questions are to fall under the headings of general knowledge; art and literature and music and what-not; politics; and sport. I suppose,’ he went on reflectively, ‘that you could read a bit . . . but don’t for God’s sake go swotting feverishly and upsetting yourselves. Some chaps at Wellington used to, I remember – absolutely hopeless on the day. I,’ he added firmly, ‘never swotted. Just stayed off alcohol for twenty-four hours in advance, went for a walk, had a bath and a good sleep, a light breakfast . . . well, here I am. So just keep your digestions regular, no late hours, and perhaps brush up a bit with . . . well, with some of those general knowledge questions in the
Sunday
Post. I don’t doubt the education officer will draw heavily on those. Anyway, they’ll get you into the feel of the thing. Apart from that – any suggestions?’

The Adjutant said he had a copy of
Whitaker’s Almanack
in the office, if that was any use.

‘Excellent,’ said the Colonel. ‘That’s the sort of practical approach we need. Very good, Michael. No doubt there’s some valuable stuff in the battalion library, too.’ (I knew of nothing, personally, unless one hoped to study social criminology through the medium of
No Orchids for Miss Blandish or Slay-ride for Cutie.)

‘And that,’ said the Colonel, ordering up four more big ones, ‘is that. It’s just a question of preparation, and we’ll have this thing nicely wrapped up. I’ve every confidence, as usual – ’ he gave us his aquiline beam ‘ – and I feel sure that you have, too. We’ll show the Fusiliers where the brain-power lies.’

The trouble with the Colonel, you see, was that he’d been spoiled by success. Whether it was taking and holding a position in war, or thrashing all opposition at football, or looking better than anyone else on ceremonial parades, or even a question of the battalion’s children topping the prize-list at the garrison school, he expected no less than total triumph. And perhaps because he so trustingly expected it, he usually got it – and a trifle over. It was a subtle kind of blackmail, in a way, and that crafty old soldier knew just how to operate it. Leadership they call it.

I’ve seen it manifest itself in most curious ways, as when the seven-year-old daughter of Sergeant Allison was taking a ballet examination in Edinburgh – and there, just before it began, was the Colonel, in tweeds and walking-stick, just looking in, you understand, to see that all was in order, gallantly chatting up the young instructresses in their leotards, playing the genial old buffer and missing nothing, and then giving the small and tremulous Miss Allison a wink and a growling whisper before stalking off to his car. The fact was, the man was as nervous as her parents, because she was part of his regimental family. ‘He’ll be there at the Last Judgement,’ the M.O. once said, ‘cadging a light off St Peter so that he can whisper “This is one of my Jocks coming in, by the way . . .”’

It followed that the quiz against the Fusiliers assumed an importance that it certainly didn’t deserve, and I actually found myself wondering if I ought to try to read right through the
Britannica
beforehand. Fortunately common sense reasserted itself, and I concentrated instead on selecting the remaining two members of the team – the Padre insisted that was my affair; he was going to be too busy praying.

Actually, it wasn’t difficult. The Padre and I had agreed that in the quiz he would deal with questions on what, in a moment of pure Celtic pessimism, he irritably described as ‘the infernal culture’ – that is, literature, music and the arts – while I would look after the general knowledge. So we needed a political expert and a sporting one. The political expert was easy, I said: it could only be Sergeant McCaw, Clydeside Communist and walking encyclopedia on the history of capitalist oppression and the emergence of the Working Man.

The Padre was horrified. ‘Ye daren’t risk it! The man’s a Bolshevik, and he’s cost me more members than Sunday opening. He’ll use the occasion for spouting red propaganda – man, Dandy, the Colonel’ll go berserk!’

‘He’s about the only man in this battalion whose knowledge of Parliament goes beyond the label of an H.P. sauce bottle,’ I said. ‘It would be criminal not to pick him – he can even tell you what the Corn Laws were.’

‘Is that right?’ said the Padre, metaphorically pulling his shawl round his shoulders. ‘I fear the worst. Stop you till he starts calling Churchill a fascist bully gorged on the blood of the masses. What about sport?’

‘Forbes,’ I said. ‘From my platoon. He’s the man.’

‘Yon? He’s chust a troglodyte.’

‘Granted,’ I said, ‘but if you knew your Reasons Annexed as well as he knows his league tables, you’d be Moderator by now.’ And in the face of his doubts I summoned Private Forbes – small, dark, and sinful, and the neatest inside forward you ever saw.

‘Forbes,’ I said. ‘Who holds the record for goals scored in a first-class match?’

He didn’t even blink. ‘Petrie, Arbroath, got thirteen against Aberdeen Bon-Accord in 1889. He wis playin’ ootside right, an’ – ’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Who got most in a league game?’

‘Joe Payne, o’ Chelsea, got ten when he was playin’ fur – ’

‘What’s the highest individual score in first-class cricket?’

‘Bradman, the Australian, he got 452 in a State game – ’

‘How many Britons have held the world heavyweight title?’

‘None.’ He took a breath. ‘Bob – Fitzsimmons – wis – English – but – he – was – namerrican – citizen – when – he – beat – Corbett – an’ – Toamy – Burns – wis – a – Canadian – but – that – disnae – count – an’ – ’

‘Fall out, Forbes, and thank you,’ I said, and looked at the Padre, who was sitting slightly stunned. ‘Well?’