The Complete McAuslan (72 page)

‘What time was this?’

‘Jist efter dark. Is that no’ right, Macrae? Aye, soon’s it wis dark, that Erchie McLaren an’ anither yin came up tae the hoose, an’ we a’ got inna truck, an’ drove up tae that loch where the Dipper has his boat . . .’ He paused, apprehension clouding his primitive features as it dawned on him that he was Telling All. He gulped, gasped, closed his eyes, shuddered, was convulsed by another monumental sneeze, muttered ‘Mither o’ Goad, Ah’ve jist aboot had itl’, shot an appealing look at the saturnine Macrae, and then gave me a furtive, fawning grin which I think on the whole was the most repulsive expression I’ve ever seen on a human face.

‘Eh . . . eh . . . Ah’m awfy sorry, sur,’ he said. ‘Ah’ve forgot the rest.’

‘No, you haven’t, McAuslan. But you don’t have to worry,’ I reassured him. ‘It’s all right. You can tell me. Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you.’

He digested this, stricken, and decided there was nothing else for it. ‘Aye, weel, like Ah wis sayin’. We got up tae the loch, an’ the Dipper an’ his boys, an’ the fower of us, we got his bluidy contraption oot the boat – here, it was a right plumber’s nightmare, sur, so it wis! An’ that’s whit they mak’ ra whisky in! Ye widnae credit it. Onywye,’ he went on, wiping his face with his blanket in an oratorical gesture, ‘we wis staggerin’ aboot wi’ the thing in the watter, an’ no’ kiddin’, sur, Ah wis aboot ruptured, an’ the Dipper wis next tae me, an’ he lets oot a helluva roar. “Whit’s up?” sez Ah. “It’s ma ee!” sez he, ”it’s fell oot. It’s in ra watter!” Ah couldnae figure ‘im oot. “Yer ee?” sez Ah. “Whit ye talkin’ aboot, Dipper!” “Ma gless ee!” cries he, an’ starts floonderin’ in ra watter, an’ efter a bit he cam’ up wi’ it, and slipped it back in. Tell ye the truth,’ said McAuslan, ‘Ah wis a bit disgustit. But we got the still on the truck, an’ Ah sez tae the Dipper, “Hoo did ye lose yer ee, auld yin?” “Got it shot oot in France in sixteen”, sez he. “Away!” sez Ah. “Wis you in the Airmy?” “Wis Ah no’,” sez he. “See your man MacNeill, his uncle wis ma officer. Brung me back in aff the wire efter ma ee got shot oot. Ah widnae be makin’ malt the day, if it hadnae been for him.”’

Actually, that was news to me. McAuslan paused to beam on me. ′He musta been a‘right, your uncle, eh?’

‘Yes, he was,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

‘Aye, weel, we′d jist got the tailboard up when here’s a caur comin’ up the hill road tae the loch – we couldnae see it, but we heard the engine. “Claymore!” bawls the Dipper. “Here the King’s Navy an’ the bluidy gadgers! Oot o’ this, Erchie, or we’re lost men!” An’ him an’ his two fellas tumbled in the boat an’ starts rowin’, an’ we got inna truck, but we couldnae tak’ the road, wi’ the caur comin’, so Erchie jist went straight doon the side o’ the hill. Inna dark, helpmaGoad! Whit a helluva ride it wis! We wis bashin′ ower rocks an′ breengin′ through bracken, an’ ma innards comin’ oot ma ears, an’ Erchie McLaren’s roarin’: “Thy will be done, oh Lord! Keep a grip o’ the still, lads!” Hoo we got ontae the main road, guid kens, an’ then we drove for miles – ’

‘Where to? Where did you take the still?’ He looked blank. ‘Do you know, Macrae?’

He shook his head. ‘Nae idea, sir – honest. It was as black as the Earl o’ Hell’s breeks. Somewhere off the Tyndrum road, in a dry cave in a corrie.’

‘So what was it the Dipper dropped in the loch in front of the gadgers?’

He tried in vain to keep a straight face. ‘An old stove and a lot o′ bed springs.’

The classic selling of the dummy, in fact. Well, good luck, Admiral, I thought. You’ll drag the loch for that still, and never find it – but you’ll always believe it’s there, somewhere at the bottom of Lochnabee. While the Dipper sits in his dry cave, distilling away to his heart’s content and quietly enjoying what, to the Highlander, is the perfect victory: the one the enemy doesn’t know about.

It occurred to me that Aunt Alison’s delaying tactic on behalf of my errant soldiery had also given the Dipper time to get his still safely away. Not that she could have foreseen that, of course. Interesting, though . . .

‘Aye, but here, sur, ye hivnae heard the hauf o’ it!’ McAuslan, girding his sodden blanket about him, was eager to resume his role as saga-man. ‘See efter that, but? Onna way hame we ran intae ra durty polis, an’ had tae scram oot o’ ra truck an’ run fur it, an’ Ah near drooned in a bog, an’ got a’ covered in – ’

‘Thank you, McAuslan, I know all about that.’

‘ – an’ that man Elphinstone dragged me oot by the hair o’ the heid – an’ where the hell were you, Macrae?’ he demanded at a sudden tangent, glaring balefully at his superior. ‘Fat lot o’ help you wis, an’ chance it! Lookin’ efter Number Wan ye wis, an’ me uptae ma neck in the – ’

‘All right, McAuslan, that’ll do . . .’

‘Aye, weel, sur, Ah’m jist sayin’. Nae thanks tae Macrae Ah got oot . . . an’ then the man Elphinstone got us tae his caur, an’ took us tae yer auntie at ra hotel, an’ – ’

‘McAuslan!’

‘― beg pard’n sur, Missus Gordon, Ah shoulda said. Awfy sorry. An’ she sez: “Jeez, will ye look at the state o’ ye!”, or sumpn like that, an’ then the man Elphinstone cries: “Here somebuddy comin’!”, an’ she had us through yon door afore ye could say knife – sure’n she did, Macrae? Here, sur, wis it yon wee nyaff o’ an Admiral? See the bluidy Navy, Ah hate them, so Ah do – ’

‘Shut up!’ I shouted, and he fell silent, with the pained surprise of a Cicero cut off in full peroration by the Consuls, although I doubt if the great orator ever scrubbed his nose with his toga, or asked can Ah pit ma soaks on noo, sur, ma feet’s fair freezin’?

‘Wait till they’re dry, idiot’ I snarled. ‘Socks, forsooth! Hasn’t it sunk into your concrete skull yet that you committed a crime last night? That you could have wound up in Barlinnie?’

He blinked, scratching himself while he digested this, and made a deep guttural noise of concern. ‘Zattafac’, sur? Here, aye, Ah s‘pose that’s right. Ah’m awfy sorry, sur, Ah didnae think aboot that.’ He towelled his matted head in a contrite way, and then brightened. ‘Aye, but it wis a’right, ye see. Your auntie – beg par’n, Missus Gordon, Ah should say – she took care o’ us, nae bother. Organised, so she wis. Had us through that door sae fast wir feet didnae touch.’ His gargoyle face creased in complacent approval. ‘Ah think she’s smashin’, Ah do. Awfy nice. Awfy clever . . .’

I gave up – not for the first time. As I climbed out of the truck I realised that Macrae was regarding me warily; I knew what was going on in that practical mind, but I’d already weighed this against that and decided, reluctantly, that there was only one thing for it.

‘Right, Macrae,’ I said. ‘In you get.’

He hesitated with his hand on the tailboard. ‘Eh . . . what aboot the whisky, sir?’

‘What whisky?’ I said. ‘Get in, and be quiet. And think yourself lucky.’

‘. . . never panicked. Kept the heid. Just says, “In there, the pair o’ ye, an’ no’ a cheep oot o’ ye’.’ McAuslan was still extolling Aunt Alison’s presence of mind. ‘Ah think she’s marvellous, so Ah do. She’s a great buddy . . . Ah mean, wumman . . . Ah mean, leddy.’ He regarded me over the tailboard, shaking his grimy head in solemn respect, and bestowed the Glaswegian’s ultimate accolade. ‘She’s a‘right, but.’

Or as they say in Breadalbane: that is a woman of the Gordons for you.

Ye mind Jie Dee, Fletcher?

Twenty years ago Scotland’s footballers were in the World Cup finals in Argentina. That bald statement gives not the remotest idea of the emotional convulsion which the event produced north of the Tweed; whenever Scottish prestige is at stake in any major international contest (war and soccer especially) the population tends to go into an inner frenzy of apprehension and wild hope, and those stern Caledonian virtues of sound judgment and common sense have to struggle for survival. Whatever the odds, however unlikely victory may be, the fever takes hold: dreams of glory and memories of past heroes and triumphs mingle with anxious speculation, and if outward opinion of the country’s chances is often muted and even disparaging, don’t let that fool you – under the surface all the old passions are on the boil again, the savage joy of impending conflict, the charging up of confidence, the growing, shining conviction that this time – this time, at long last! – it is all going to come true. Now and then it does, as witness Bannockbum 1314, Wembley 1928, Lisbon 1967, and Muirfield Village 1987. (The fact that other nations were also on the winning side on that last occasion is, to Scots, irrelevant. Whose game is it, anyway?)

But few things rouse Scottish emotions so much as football – another game which they regard as their personal property. England, the mother of sport, laid down with typical Anglo-Saxon tidiness the laws which imposed form and order on the old wild celebration in which two sides battled over a ball; they invented the game, but the Scots gave it the style which made it the most popular team sport on earth. More than a century ago they cast a calculating eye on football as it was played south of the Border, saw its possibilities, and transformed the charging, kick-and-rush recreation into a thing of science and even beauty; not for them to chase pell-mell after the ball with the reckless exuberance of the hunting field; they actually passed it to each other, ran into open space for the return, moved in ever-changing formations, perfected control with foot and head, and turned to advantage the short, wiry stature and lightning nimbleness which three generations of slum-dwelling had bred into a people who had once been the biggest in Europe. Like Pygmalion, they fell hopelessly in love with their creation, and have been faithful ever since.

For sixty years it was a blissful honeymoon, up to the Second World War. The Scottish professionals held undisputed mastery, and only England, with its tenfold superiority in sporting manpower, could hope to match if not to overtake them; Ireland and Wales provided interesting practice, and the rest of the world didn’t count. Soccer was only spreading then; young enthusiasts like Nikita Khrushchev were learning the art of the sliding tackle in the Donbass, and a goalkeeper named Albert Camus was cherishing the dream (later realised) of playing for his country, but it was still a British game, and its high priests served their novitiates at Ibrox, Tynecastle, and Parkhead.

It all changed after 1945. England began to beat Scotland more often than not. Moscow Dynamo came to Glasgow and held the mighty Rangers to a draw, Austria became the first foreign side to win on Scottish soil, quicksilver South Americans dazzled the traditionalists with a style of play that ignored the old sacred forms, and when Hungary took England apart at Wembley with clinical efficiency, Britain was no longer football’s Olympus, and Scotland was a second-rate power. But the Scottish temperament being what it is, the dream remained, kept alive by national sides who were occasionally brilliant, more frequently awful to the point of embarrassment, and chronically inconsistent.

This is a characteristic which has bedevilled the Scots (and not only in sport) since Macbeth was a boy. At their best they are matchless; at their worst they defy description, and you never know which extreme you are going to see. Given pygmies for opponents, they are liable to get slaughtered; faced by giants, they will run rings round them – and then snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by some last-minute folly. England, on the other hand, are steady and predictable; only they could have restored British prestige by winning the World Cup in 1966 with sound if uninspired football and bulldog determination. Scotland, who hadn’t even been able to qualify, promptly suffered a rush of blood to the head and thumped them next time out, and the nation lived in a tartan euphoria – until the next disaster.

To supporters as proud and passionate as the Scots this is frustrating to the point of trauma. They bear their burden of tradition with a fierce nostalgia, knowing that their players are still the equal of any, but sensing too, in their heart of hearts, that Scotland will never win the World Cup (except in imagination every four years). But irrational hope springs eternal, fuelled by occasional wins against England, and such heady triumphs as that of 1967, when a Celtic team who were arguably the best club side ever to come out of Britain, brought back the European Cup from Portugal, and for six weeks afterwards the British Embassy staff in Lisbon were terrified to open cupboards in case little drunk men in tartan scarves fell out, demanding the fare back to Glasgow.

That victory, and an appearance in the World Cup finals of 1974 from which, by a quirk of the system, they were eliminated without actually losing a game, sustained Scotland until 1978, when they qualified for the finals yet again. And that was when the madness took hold, and a conviction arose as never before that this would be Scotland’s year at last. A new manager, Alistair Macleod, somehow convinced his eager countrymen that the Scottish team, a workmanlike enough collection, were world-beaters; Scottish fans, describing themselves as ‘Ally’s Army’, sang excruciating victory songs beforehand and gloated that England had failed to qualify for Argentina; the presence of two insignificant sides, Peru and Iran, in Scotland’s preliminary group seemed to augur a triumphal progress to the final stages, and even the fact that the fourth team in the group, Holland, were probably the best side in the world at that time, could not damp Caledonian ardour. It was in the bag, the World Cup was as good as back in Glasgow, here’s tae us, wha’s like us, we’re the wee boys, etc., etc.. . . Never were the Fates so tempted.

Well, Scotland were clobbered 1—3 by the despised Peruvians, scrambled a draw with Iran (Iran!), and to crown all, had a player sent home for taking ‘an innocuous but illegal stimulant’. There had been nothing like it since Flodden, and the anguished cries of rage and grief from the faithful were heartbreaking. Scots exultant are unbearable, but when disappointed and betrayed their recriminations are worthy of the Old Testament. I didn’t see or hear it, for I was far from Scotland at the time, but I could imagine all too well what was being said ― and by one voice in particular, a voice I had not heard in thirty years, but which I didn’t doubt would be upraised in denunciation and wild lament, just as I remembered it from the parade grounds and barrack-rooms of North Africa. I just had to close my eyes and there it was, drifting raucously across the ether, the plainsong of ex-Private McAuslan, J., reviewing the World Cup scene and reflecting on what might have been, but was not . . .