The Complete McAuslan (37 page)

‘They’re pretty certain. He’s been vaccinated fairly recently, but apparently that’s not infallible, right, doc? Okay, the Colonel’s on his way in to barracks from his home, and the first thing is to get every Jock who is out of barracks back here, at once, for quarantine and new vaccination. You’ll be at it all night, Lachlan, I’m afraid. You, Dand,’ he went on to me, ‘get over to the M.T. sheds, take every truck you can find, as many N.C.O.s as there are in barracks – I’ll get someone to round ’em up – and go down town for the Jocks. Sweep them in, wherever they are —’

‘It’s Saturday night,’ I said. ‘They’ll be spread half-way to Cairo . . .’

‘I know that. At a rough guess eighty per cent of the battalion must be down there. You go through every club, canteen, dance-hall and gin-mill in the in-bounds area – I want them all, you understand. No stragglers, nobody overlooked. Start at the “Blue Heaven” and send out foot patrols from there. Don’t bother about the Suk, just yet. Just round them up, get them back here, tip ’em out at the gates, and back for another haul. Right – move!′

I was moving, fast, when the M.O., who was barking abuse down the phone at some unfortunate operator, turned and yelled after me:

‘When were you last vaccinated?’

‘Burma, ’45,’ I said, disappearing. The M.O.’s motto was, if it moves, stick a needle in it, and if I was going to have a hectic night combing out the Jocks from an Arab seaport which was more like a labyrinth than a town, I preferred to do it without a fresh load of his bugs coursing through my blood-stream.

‘Take a wireless and op. with you,’ shouted the Adjutant. ‘I’ll be in orderly room, taking signals.’

‘Roger!’ I wasted one second putting my head in at the billiard-room door and telling the barman: ‘Don’t let anyone move those balls – I want his heart’s blood!’ and then I was in flight for the M.T. sheds.

It would be nice to record that within two minutes I was humming down-town with a well-organised convoy behind me, but it never works out that way in the Army. I had to dig the M.T. sergeant out of the mess where he was playing darts, he had to start a hue and cry for drivers, some idiot had lost the key of the petrol store, the lead three-tonner wouldn’t start (‘C’mon, ye thrawn old bitch, cough for your feyther,′ the driver was saying as he perspired at the handle), the Adjutant’s promised N.C.O.s were slow to materialise – and then Regimental Sergeant-Major Mackintosh appeared, armed with his nominal rolls, and looking like an Old Testament prophet who had just been having words with the Lord and getting the worst of it. But, as usual, everything flowed into place under his Olympian influence; N.C.O.s and drivers appeared, trucks started, headlights flashed on in the velvety African dusk, the M.T. sergeant roared ′Embus!′ and the R.S.M. addressed me gravely through my truck window.

‘If I may advise, sir,’ said he, in that grave and heavy voice which he reserved for subalterns, rather like Polonius addressing a half-witted prince, ‘you might be best to stay doon the toon, supervisin’ the collection of battalion personnel. I shall remain here to receive them.′ He paused, thinking. ‘I know you are aware, sir, that it is of the utmost importance that we bring back every wan of them. It may be difficult. There is a native population in the toon of an estimated wan hundred thousand souls —’ (trust a Highland R.S.M. to say ‘souls’, not people) ‘ – so our men may be haard to find. Weel, just you stick at it, Mr MacNeill, and we’ll get the job done,
namanahee.
’

Looking back, I realise that the R.S.M. was a desperately anxious man that night. Of course, he was an old and experienced soldier, and I know now that he was contemplating what an epidemic of that hideous disease might do to a battalion that had survived everything the Germans and Japanese could give it. Vaccinations, as the M.O. said, are not infallible. But I didn’t really understand this at the time; I suppose I was young and callous and preoccupied with the job in hand. To tell the truth, I was rather excited, and slightly apprehensive on a different account.

As a subaltern, you get used to doing pretty well anything. In my brief time I had been called on to command a troop-train, change a baby’s nappies, quell a riot of Arab nationalists, manage a football team, take an inventory of buried treasure, and partner a Mother Superior at clock-golf. This was in the days when the British Army was still spread all round the globe, acting as sentry, policeman, teacher, nurse and diplomat in the wake of the Second World War, and getting no thanks for it at all. It was a varied existence, and if I’d been ordered to redecorate the Sistine Chapel or deliver a sermon in Finnish, I’d hardly have blinked an eyelid before running to the R.S.M. pleading for assistance.

But descending on an Arab city on a Saturday night to round up 800 Scottish soldiers, many of whom would doubtless be well gone in liquor and ready to prove it, was a new one. Still, that was what I got my £9 a week for, so as instructed I descended on the ‘Blue Heaven’, which was a cabaret-cum-canteen-cum-dance-hall just in-bounds from the prohibited Suk, or native market area. The ′Heaven′ was a well-known magnet for the more discerning revellers of the battalion, inasmuch as it provided local beer, Eurasian hostesses who danced with the troops and persuaded them to buy the champagne of the house (an unspeakable concoction known as ‘Desert Rose’ in affectionate memory of the Eighth Army public conveniences), an energetic Arab orchestra, and two belly-dancers of grotesque proportions called Baby Boadicea and Big Aggie. If I could clear the clientele out of that on a Saturday night I would be doing well; I could despatch the foot-patrols to less raucous establishments like the Y.M.C.A. and the Church of Scotland Club to pry the patrons loose from their Horlicks and copies of
Life and Work.

When we pulled up outside, the ‘Blue Heaven’ was jumping like a geyser. The Arab musicians were administering extreme unction to ‘In the Mood’, a glee-club of military amateurs was singing on the steps (they were bundled into the trucks before they knew it), and inside the establishment appeared to be on fire, so thick was the smoke. There seemed to be about two hundred tables, crowded with soldiers and airmen, all well-Brylcreemed and with their caps shoved under their shoulder-straps, the beer bar looked like the storming of the Bastille, and on a stage at the far end, Big Aggie, her brave vibrations each way free, as the poet says, was undulating with abandon, watched by an admiring circle of Jocks, arms folded, bonnets pulled down over their eyes, and mouths open in awe. Arbroath, you could almost hear them thinking, was never like this.

Calling the meeting to order was my immediate problem, made no easier by the fact that I was in civilian clothes. I shouted ′Quiet!′ at the top of my voice, without effect, seized a pint glass tankard, and hammered it on the table. Naturally it broke, leaving me with a splintered glass knuckle-duster, at the sight of which a battered Jock sitting nearby exclaimed ‘Name o’ Goad!’ and vanished beneath his table, advising his friends that I was a wild man and was going to claim them. For the rest, no one paid much attention, and I was left looking like a Broomielaw pub brawler in a Harris tweed jacket, which is a nice thought. Fortunately the M.T. sergeant took over, hammering a chair on the floor and roaring until the general din had subsided, Big Aggie stopped gyrating, and the Arab answer to Glenn Miller died away in an unmusical squawk.

‘All right,’ I said loudly, divesting myself of my broken glass.

‘All Highlanders are to return to barracks at once. There are trucks outside. Fusiliers and other British troops, return to your own units as quickly as possible. Don’t ask questions, don’t waste time, don’t wait to finish your drinks. Move – now.’

This elicited the usual loyal response from the troops – a mutinous baying punctuated by cries of ‘Why don’t you get a job?′ and ′ Awa′ hame, yer tea’s oot.′ I knew enough not to stand waiting, but to get out and leave it to the M.T. sergeant and his minions to clear the place, which they did in ten minutes flat. As the crowd streamed out, snarling, puzzled, resentful or resigned, but at least obedient, I was buttonholed near the door by a small, perspiring Italian, who proved to be the proprietor, demanding to know why I was summarily closing his establishment, depriving himself and his numerous family of their livelihood, and assuring me that anyone who alleged he sold kif (which is hashish) to young soldiers was a liar. Nor did he water his beer, or run a bawdy-house, the hostesses being all cousins of his wife’s on leave from their convent, and it was a vile calumny if anyone said his cigarettes were smuggled in from Tangier. Would I honour him by having a drink in his office?

I quieted him and went outside. It looked like the beach at Dunkirk, with Jocks piling into the trucks, drunks being lifted over the tailboards, the M.T. sergeant despatching the first of the foot patrols for stragglers, a fight or two breaking out here and there, and a Highland corporal arguing with two red-capped military policemen over the custody of a marvellously inebriated private who was lying prostrate on the bonnet of the M.P.’s jeep singing ′Hand me down my walking cane’ in a Glasgow accent. All in all, it was fairly normal, and no different probably from the usual chucking-out time at the ‘Blue Heaven’; most of them were going quietly, and I discovered why when a warrant-officer of the Fusiliers approached me and asked if it was right there had been a smallpox outbreak.

Since the murder was out, I told him yes, and to get his men home as fast as he could – and then a dreaded and remembered voice addressed me plaintively from the back of the first of our battalion trucks, which was fully loaded and ready to leave.

′Hi, Mr MacNeill! Hi! Sir! Here a minute. Ah’m no’ hivin’ this! You let me oot this truck, Michie, or Ah′ll melt ye, so I wull!′

This was all I needed. I sighed and went over.

‘What is it, McAuslan? Stand still and stop thrashing about. What’s the matter?’

He emerged from the press of close-packed bodies, and clung to the tailboard, Old Pithecanthropus Erectus in person, even more grimy and dishevelled than usual by reason of his Saturday-night potations, and full of indignation.

‘Here a bluidy liberty, sir,’ said he. At a rough guess, he was about six pints ahead. ‘Ah’m no’ standin’ fur it! Sharrup, Michie! Sir, they say Ah’m bein’ took back tae barracks because Ah’ve got the poax.’

‘You’ve what?’ I couldn’t believe I’d heard aright.

‘The poax. Ah hivnae got the poax. Dam’ sure I hivnae. Ah’m no’ like that. That’s a bluidy awfu’ thing tae say. Ah hivnae —′

‘Oh, shut up!’ I said, reasoning with him, and trying not to laugh. Trust McAuslan to get it wrong. ‘No one’s saying you’ve got the . . . the pox, you silly oaf —’

‘They are but! It’s that Michie started it, an’ Fletcher an’ a’, saying Ah’ve got the poax an’ll hiv tae go tae the hospital, an’ get pit on the V.D. list —’

Sober, McAuslan might or might not defend his personal reputation; flown with wine he invariably did, and in forceful terms. Knowing my man, I sought to reassure him.

‘You’ve got it wrong, McAuslan. They’re just kidding you. It’s a smallpox scare –
smallpox,
see, which is a different thing altogether – and much more serious. But you haven’t got it, I’m quite sure.’ (It was tricky, considering McAuslan’s permanently insanitary condition, guaranteeing that he hadn’t got something or other – and then the chill thought struck me that he might yet catch it; we all might.)

‘Anyway, everyone’s got to go back to camp and into quarantine,’ I concluded. ‘And get vaccinated again. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Aw.’ He digested this, the primitive features registering what passed with him for thought. ‘Zat right? Smallpox – no’ the poax? Cos Ah hivnae got the poax. Ah hivnae. See, Michie, ye bluidy liar.’ Virtuously he went on, proclaiming his purity: ‘Ah been tae the M.O.’s lectures, and seen thae fillums aboot catchin’ the clap an’ that. An’ Ah’m no’ like that, sir, sure ye know Ah’m no’. An’ Ah hivnae got the poax —’

‘Aye, ye have,’ said an anonymous voice from the depths of the truck. ‘Ye’ve got everything, you. Ye’re manky, McAuslan. Ye’ve got the bluidy plague. We’ll a’ catch it aff yez . . .’

I cut off McAuslan’s impassioned denials, explained to him again that his associates were simply making game of him, told the rest of them to shut up, assured him that I personally had every confidence in his physical and spiritual hygiene, and was turning away when, just as the truck was revving up, a snatch of conversation from its cargo reached my ears over the Jocks’ chatter.

‘Hey, Toamie, ye hear aboot Karl Marx?’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Groucho’s brither.’

‘Away, he’s no’.’

‘He’s a bluidy Russian.’

‘How wid you know? Onywye, Karl Marx’s feyther was a charge hand in a pub at Tollcross . . .’

The truck rolled away, no doubt with lofty debate about Karl Marx’s parentage continuing (and Private McAuslan still loudly boasting his freedom from infection), and I pondered for a minute, as I watched the other trucks rumble past with their cargoes for quarantine, how these odd catch-phrases and slogans flew about Scottish battalions. Totally irrelevant, all of them. Only an hour earlier I had heard the M.O. mention Karl Marx, by way of persiflage, and now the Jocks had caught wind of it, and the great revolutionary’s name would become part of their jargon for a space, a byword; there would be Karl Marx jokes, and he would be scribbled on walls, and fitted into marching-songs, and then he would vanish as suddenly from their culture, leaving a mystery, like Kilroy and Chad, for etymologists and philologists to theorise over – supposing they ever heard of it.

It took the best part of five hours to clear the town, with the trucks thundering to and fro, foot patrols beating up the bars and cafés and every conceivable haunt that might contain a Serviceman, Highland or otherwise, and a loud-speaker jeep touring the streets brassily ordering everyone back to barracks. The townsfolk themselves, who were used to the eccentricities of the British military, paid no attention; they lounged at the doorways of the Italian bars, or squatted on the street corners, or hurried past, like sheathed black shadows, in the direction of the Suk. I wondered if any of our fellows had strayed down there – it had only recently been placed out of bounds, as a result of nationalist agitation, culminating in a few outbreaks of rioting which had been dispersed by the local police, with the military standing by with fixed bayonets and empty magazines. Its only conceivable attraction at night-time (apart from the doubtful thrill of wandering in a genuine Arab city which hadn’t changed much from the days of Dragut Reis and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa) was the native bordellos, which were not widely patronised. Apart from the fact that we were a youngish battalion, and young soldiers in those days were far less addicted to brothel-creeping than their anxious elders supposed, it was recognised that the Suk could be a highly dangerous place. Besides, like McAuslan, they had been to the M.O.’s lectures.