The Complete McAuslan (32 page)

In my relief, I’m afraid I paid little attention to the other questions of that round – I know the Padre stopped at two, having identified the opening words of
Treasure Island
and the closing sentence of
Finnegans Wake
(trust the Army Education Corps to give James Joyce a good airing), and McCaw picked up useful yardage over Lloyd George and the peerage. It was Forbes who really stole the show – either in emulation or out of sheer confidence he demanded a ten-pointer and was asked what sports he would expect to see at The Valley, Maple Leaf Gardens, Hurlingham, Hileah and – this was a vicious one – Delphi. He just cleared his throat, said ‘Way-ull’, and then trotted them out:

‘Fitba’ – aye, soccer’ (this with disdain for the effete term), ‘ice hockey, ra polo, racin’, in America, an’ athletics – the Greeks in the auld days.’

I applauded as hard as any one – frankly, while I knew Forbes was an authority, he’d shaken me with his fifth answer. I should have realised that the
Topical Times and Book of Sporting Facts
researchers cast their nets wide. (The Colonel was equally astonished, I imagine, over Hurlingham; you could see him thinking it was time Forbes was made a corporal.)

We finished the first round leading 26 – 15, and then the contest developed into a long, gruelling duel. I don’t remember all that much of it accurately, but some memories and impressions remain. I know the Padre, after a nervous start, ran amuck through the Augustan writers and various artists of the Renaissance, with a particularly fine flourish over an equestrian statue of Gattemalatta, by Donatello, which had the Jocks chanting: ‘See the Padre, he’s the kid!’ Sergeant McCaw started no fires by attempting ten-point questions, but he was as solid as a rock on such diverse matters as the Jewish Disabilities Bill, the General Strike (I could hear the Padre mumbling snatches of prayer during this answer and trying not to catch the Colonel’s eye), and the results of celebrated by-elections. He seldom failed to answer all three of his questions. Forbes was brilliant, but occasionally erratic; he shot for too many ten-pointers and came adrift as often as not, on one occasion even forgetting himself so far as to engage in a heated debate with Father Tuohy on whether gladiatorial games were or were not sport. (‘Hoo the hell’s a fella expected tae know whit a Roman boxin’-glove’s called in Latin?’) Nor, it was clear, would he have included the Emperor Commodus in his list of Great Heavyweights. I did reasonably well, but never equalled my opening effort. I tried one more ten-pointer, and crashed heavily over the Powers involved in the Pragmatic Sanction (really, I ask you), but scored a mild tactical success over the question-master by insisting that the victorious commander against the Armada was Effingham, not Drake. Father Tuohy backed me up (affecting not to hear the cry of ‘Your side got beat, onywye, padre’ from some unidentified student of Elizabethan history in the audience), but the question-master hated me from that moment on.

We came to the half-way stage with a comfortable lead, and our Colonel produced a cigar from his sporran and sat back. He was anticipating, and not wisely, for in the second half we began to come adrift. The Fusiliers were finding their stride; two of them were only average, but the bespectacled genius of a warrant officer and the rotund major were really good. The major twice snapped up three-point questions on which I had failed (how was I to know the names of
all
the Valkyries), and on his own account displayed a knowledge of classical music and Impressionist painting which was almost indecent. I scrambled one ten-pointer by identifying five of the occupants of the stagecoach in the film of that name, and got a life-saving eight points from another ten-pointer by naming four of the Nine Worthies (God bless my MacDonald granny for keeping
Dr Brewer’s Reader’s Handbook
where my infant hands could get at it), but for the rest I was content to sit on my first two questions most of the time and take no chances. Forbes did well, with some fine work on baseball and the dimensions of football pitches, and McCaw continued his sound, stone-walling game, surviving one particularly blistering attack concerned with Gladstone’s Midlothian campaign, and for good measure quoting ‘Keep your eye on Paisley’, to the delight of the St Mirren supporters present.

The Padre was erratic. He pasted the Lake Poets all round the wicket, and caused some stir among the betting fraternity at the back of the hall by bagging two ten-pointers in succession (five trickily obscure quotations from modern poets, and a tour de force in which he identified five of the plays possibly attributable to Shakespeare outside the recognised canon. I can still hear that lilting Island voice saying slowly, ‘Aye, and then there wass
The Two Noble Kins-men,
aye . . .’). But he shocked the home support by confusing George Eliot with George Sand, and actually attributed an Aytoun quotation to Burns; it began to look as though he was over-trained, or in need of the trainer’s sponge. And so we came to the final round, with a bare seven-point lead, and Father Tuohy announced that the last eight questions would decide the fate of the two-pound boxes of Turkish Delight which were the winners’ prizes – to say nothing of the regimental honour and the Colonels’ fivers.

We were proceeding in reverse order in this half of the contest, so that the sporting questions came first, and general knowledge last. I wondered if I dare caution Forbes not to try for a ten-pointer, decided not to, and sat trembling while he did just that. I needn’t have worried: it was a football question, and he rattled off the names of forgotten Cup-winning teams without difficulty. And then his opposite number tried his first ten-pointer of the night, licking his lips and shredding a cigarette in his fingers, and as he identified obscure terms from croquet, backgammon, sailing, golf, and real tennis the Fusiliers’ boot-stamping rose to a crescendo. We were still holding on to our seven-point margin.

McCaw looked awful. Normally pallid, he now appeared to have been distempered grey, but he folded his arms, gulped, went for three questions, got the first two, and then stumbled horribly over the third: ‘In American politics, what are the symbols of the two main parties?’ He got the donkey, and then dried up. God forgive me, I toyed with the idea of doing elephant imitations, but my sporting instinct and a well-grounded fear that my trumpeting would not go undetected kept me silent. Still, he had got three points: our lead stood at ten. His opposite number blew up on his first question, and we came to the Padre’s turn. His hands clamped on his knees below the table, he put up his head, sniffed apprehensively, tried to smile pleasantly at the question-master, and asked for the first of his three questions in a plaintive neigh.

‘What,’ said the question-master, ‘are the books of the Pentateuch?’

It was, for the Padre, the easiest question he had had all night. They might as well have asked him his name. I relaxed momentarily – this was one certain point in the bag – and then to my utter horror heard him begin to babble out the books – of the Apocrypha.

We can all do it, of course – the sudden blank spot, the ridiculous confusion of names, the too-hasty reply. ‘Wrong,’ squeaked the question-master, and the Padre for once swore, and slapped his head, and cried ‘No, no, no!’ softly to himself in sheer anguish. And we sat, feeling the chill rising, as the bespectacled warrant officer snapped up the Padre’s question, got two points for it, conferred briefly with the stout major, and elected for the regulation three questions, which he answered perfectly for a total of another six. Our lead had been cut to a mere two points.

It was nasty. I looked across at the stout major, and he grinned at me, drumming his fingers on the table. I grinned back, sweating. The dilemma was – should I go for the regulation three questions, which at best might give me a total of six points? If I got the six, then his only hope would be a ten-point question; if I stumbled on any of my questions, he could have a shot at them for bonus points, and with his own questions still to come he could probably win the match. Again, he might fail one of his questions, and I would have a chance at it . . .

Or should I try for ten? If I did, and got it, that was the game in the bag; if I came a cropper, he had only three points to make on his own questions for victory. I looked along at my companions; the Padre was sunk in gloom, but Forbes suddenly spread his ten fingers at me, scowling fiercely. McCaw nodded.

‘Ten-pointer, please,’ I said, and the Jocks chanted encouragement, while the stout major smiled and nodded and called softly: ‘Good luck.’

And then it came, in all its horror. ‘What were the names of the five seventeenth-century statesmen whose initials made up the word “Cabal”?’

‘Ca-what?’ said a voice in the audience, and was loudly shushed.

I didn’t know. That I was sure of. For a dreadful moment I found myself thinking of cabalistic signs – the zodiac – and I hate to think what I looked like as I stared dumbly at the question-master. A cornered baboon, probably. Think, you fool, I found myself muttering – and out of nowhere came one gleam of certain light – whatever the C in Cabal stood for, I knew it wasn’t Clarendon.

That, you’ll agree, was a big help – but at least it was a start. Charles II – Dutch Wars – broom at the mast – de Ruyter climbing a steeple in childhood –
1066 and All That –
‘They’d never assassinate me, James, to put you on the throne’ – Restoration drama – dirty jokes in
The Provoked Wife –
oh, God, why hadn’t I paid attention in history classes? – oranges, Nell Gwynn, Chelsea Hospital, licentious libertines – Buckingham! It must be! Nervously, I ventured: ‘Buckingham?’

The question-master nodded. ‘One right.’

And four to go – but three would get me a total of eight points, even if I didn’t get the last name. I went for the two A’s – Ask-something – no, Ash! Ashley! I gulped it out, and he nodded. The other A was as far away as ever, but a worm of memory was stirring – one of them was a Scotsman – Laurieston ? Something like that, though. And then it came.

‘Lauderdale?’

‘Right. Two more.’

I was buffaloed. I caught the major’s eye; he was no longer smiling. One more would do – just one, and I was safe.

‘I’ll have to count you out, I’m afraid,’ said the question-master, and he began to intone ‘Five-four-three – ’, and the Fusiliers took it up, to be shushed angrily by their Colonel. The temptation to shout ‘Clarendon! And to hell with it!’ was overpowering – Cla – Cl-something – oh, lord –

‘Clifford!’ I shrieked, all restraint gone, and the question-master snapped his fingers.

‘Right. Four out of five gets you eight points. Bad luck with the fifth – it’s Arlington.’

I should have got that. It’s the name of a private baths in the West End of Glasgow – if you can’t remember that sort of thing, what can you remember?

Now it was for the Fusilier major. We were ten points up – he could just tie the match if he went for the big one, which of course he did, smiling in a rather frozen way, I thought.

‘Good luck,’ I said, but he didn’t need it. He identified the five Great Lakes without a tremor (pretty easy, I thought, after my abomination, but that’s the quiz business for you). And as the audience roared in frustration, Father Tuohy scratched his head and said, well, that was it. The match was drawn.

And then the babble broke out in the hall, with sundry crying for a tie-breaker to be played. Father Tuohy looked at the question-master, who spread his hands and looked at the top brass in the front row, and they looked at each other. The mob was beginning to chant ‘extra time!’, and Father Tuohy said, well, he didn’t know; the only people who were in no doubt were the seven other contestants and me. We were all busy shaking hands in relief and getting ready to pile for the exit and something long and cold. And then the brigadier, rot him, got up and addressed the question-master as the noise subsided.

‘There seems to be a feeling that we ought to try to – ah – fight it out to a decision,’ he said. ‘Can’t you set a few more questions to each side?’

The question-master, stout fellow, said his questions were exhausted, including the ten-pointers. They had been carefully balanced, he explained earnestly, and he wouldn’t like to think up questions on the spur of the moment – not fair to either side, sir, really . . .

This didn’t satisfy the audience. They began to chant and stamp in rhythm, and the brigadier smiled indulgently and asked the Colonels what did they think? Both of them obviously wanted only to let well alone, with honours even, rather than risk last-minute defeat, but they didn’t dare say so, and sat pretending genial indifference in an uneasy way. We stood uncertainly on the platform, and then the brigadier, with the air of a happy Solomon – my heart sank at the satisfied glitter in his eye – said, well, since there was apparently a general desire to see a decision one way or another, he had an idea which he thought might meet with universal approval.

I’ve nothing against brigadiers, as a class, but they do seem to feel a sense of obligation to sort out the lower orders’ problems for them. High military rank does this to people, of course, and they tend to wade in, flat-footed, and interfere under the impression that they are being helpful. Also, this brigadier was obviously bursting to cut the Gordian knot and win the plaudits of all. So we on the platform resumed our seats miserably, and he seized the back of a chair and unveiled his brain-child.

‘What I’d like to propose,’ he said, meaning ‘What I intend to dictate’ – ‘is that we should settle this absolutely splendid contest with one final question. It so happens that, listening to the perfectly splendid answers that we’ve heard – and I would like to take this opportunity of congratulating both teams on an admirable performance – a jolly good show, in fact – and I know their commanding officers must be delighted that they have so many . . . ah . . . clever . . . ah . . . knowledgeable, and . . . ah, yes, cultured intellects . . . in their battalions . . .’

The Fusilier major caught my eye, raising his brows wearily, and the Padre muttered ‘Get on with it, get on with it’, while the brigadier navigated back to square one.