by Simon Raven
“Better cashiered than starved,” Fingel said.
“Be my guest,” said Fingel a week later, as we sat down at a corner table in the Alte Krone, under a huge gilt crown draped about with crimson velvet. “Nothing on this menu is beyond the means of Fingel.”
“Right, I’ll start with Fresh Beluga Caviar.”
“So shall I. Odd that they should be able to get fresh caviar and yet have such trouble over common cocoa. It would have done your heart good to see how grateful the proprietor was when I delivered.”
“How much did you deliver?” I asked.
“Mack reckoned we could get away with five of those enormous cans of the stuff.”
“You mean you carted five bloody great cans out of barracks? In full sight of the Regimental Police?”
“Of course not. We emptied the cans into three kit-bags, and I then took my platoon on a special training run with full kit-bags slung over shoulders. Straight past the guard and through the gate. The Colonel looked out of his window and was mightily impressed with our performance.”
“So now you’ve involved your platoon?”
“Only three select men who carried the kit-bags with the cocoa, and they were so grateful to sit around in the Alte Krone guzzling beer and sausage while the rest of the platoon were still running that I shan’t have any bother from them. A more serious problem is Sweenie Mack. He wanted twenty-five per cent of the profit and was not at all pleased when I told him I was not being paid in cash.”
Sergeant Mack came in with a crony and sat down at the far end of the room.
“So I arranged free feeding facilities for him too,” Fingel said. “A great nuisance, having Other Ranks in one’s favourite restaurant, but there was no other way.”
“More to the point,” I said: “how are you and Mack going to replace that cocoa before someone comes round the stores to check on it?”
“Not too difficult, old bean. Every time I take my platoon out on a route march or something I’ll sign for an issue of cocoa but won’t draw it. Even when I’m not going out on training I can sign for the odd issue. We’ll account for it that way.”
“It might look rather odd – column after column of your signature in the book.”
“I’ll get other chaps to sign for fake issues. Pay ’em all back with dinner here.”
“At that rate you won’t be welcome here very long. There’s a limit to what you can expect for three kit-bags of cocoa.”
“Don’t be such a blister. It’s my Beluga you’re eating. Anyway,” said Fingel, squeezing a little lemon juice lovingly on to the luscious grey eggs, “I may be in funds again soon. I’m next in line to be made up as Temporary Captain – ”
“– If there’s a vacancy – ”
“– And then I could afford to buy cocoa in bulk from England and replace what we’ve taken from the stores.”
“When the Pay Corps got round to paying you the increase. Which would take them about four months.”
“At least there’d be pretty solid arrears when they did come across. And if time starts pressing, I could order a lot of cocoa on tick from Fortnum and Mason.”
“You only got out of England twelve hours ahead of Fortnum and Mason’s last writ.”
“I’ll start an account in another name. Yours, perhaps.”
“Look, Fingel,” I said: “the real danger, as you very well know, is that someone may come round to do a spot-check on that cocoa in the stores at any minute of any day. So let’s stop having fantasies about Captain’s pay or swindling Fortnum and Mason, and ask ourselves what happens if some nosey-parker turns up to take a gander at 0830 hours tomorrow.”
“Acting Colour Sergeant Mack will fob him off. Sweenie will be able to produce the correct number of cocoa cans, as we kept those we’d emptied and have since filled them up with light dry earth topped off by layers of genuine cocoa.”
“Dear God. That old trick.”
“It’s a good trick or it wouldn’t be an old one.”
“But any nosey-parker who knows his job digs down to take samples from the bottom.”
“Not if Sweenie Mack is showing him his new set of naughty pictures from Berlin.”
“Fingel. It could very well be the Colonel himself coming round to inspect. Don’t tell me Mack is going to beguile him with naughty pictures from Berlin.”
“I admit,” said Fingel, “that there may be extreme cases in which it will be necessary to improvise.”
“Trust to luck, you mean.”
“Fortune favours the bold. Do admit, old bean, that contraband training run was an operation of genius.”
Sergeant Mack clumped across from his table and came officiously to attention by ours.
“A vurra good evening to Your Honour,” he now deposed to Fingel.
It was Mack’s custom to apostrophise Fingel (and only Fingel) quite frequently in this absurdly antiquated style. Whether he did it out of reverence, irony or sycophancy was a nice matter for speculating. Myself I inclined to the view that “Your Honour” on Mack’s lips conveyed warning mixed with covert mockery; for although the phrase was always uttered with apparent respect, it always came out at times when Fingel was either threatened with humiliation and disgrace or had recently and narrowly evaded them.
“And a good evening to you, Sergeant Mack,” Fingel now said. “As you see, I am eating my dinner.”
“And I wouldna wish to spoil Your Honour’s evening,” said Mack, “not for the whole wide wurld. But I thought I should apprise Your Honour I have wurd along the bush-wire that the Captain Quartermaster his ane sel’ is checking on all company stores tomorrow.”
Fingel’s face juddered. The Quartermaster Captain was a very old soldier of acid insights, scholarly exactitude and un-breachable integrity.
“What time?” Fingel said.
“The Good Lurd alone kens, Your Honour, and foreby not even He. This is a snap inspection, and it’s lucky we are to be warned of it at all. Am I to have Your Honour’s instructions the noo?”
Fingel gazed down at the rich grey Beluga on his plate.
“Foreby the owner of this restaurant could lend us the cocoa back for a wee while?” suggested Mack. “He cannot yet have used it all for his cakies.”
“He’ll have used quite a lot,” said Fingel, “and almost certainly have sold some at a high price elsewhere. Besides, we shall look such bloody fools if we ask for it back now.”
“Better fools than felons,” said Sergeant Mack.
“I do believe you’re losing your nerve, Sweenie.”
“I dinna wish to lose my stripes – any more than Your Honour wishes to part with those two pretty stars on each shoulder.”
“Look,” said Fingel. “One way or another, most of that cocoa will have gone and cannot be got back now. Our only plan must be to convince the QM that those five cans of earth in your stores contain genuine cocoa. The only way he will find out that they do not contain genuine cocoa will be by digging down under the layers on top. Right?”
“And how am I to stop him? I dinna think the QM will be lured from his duty by those sinful pictures from Berlin.”
“Too true he won’t be.” Fingel looked down again at his caviar. “I saw a film a year or two ago,” he said, “called Kind Hearts and Coronets. Someone sends a general a pot of Beluga caviar, and when the general digs into it, it blows his head off. Just beneath a thin covering of Beluga, you see, there was a bomb which the general’s spoon had detonated. Now then: when the QM pushes his scoop through the top layer of genuine cocoa in the first of those cans – ”
“– Heaven forfend ye’ll have put a bomb there,” said Sergeant Mack, glowing with excitement at the notion.
“No,” said Fingel, “that would be overdoing it. But I have a scheme rather along those lines. Meet me in the company stores, Sergeant Mack, at eleven o’clock tonight. Have those cans out, open and ready for me, and I will make it all very plain to you.”
“It worked a real dream,” Fi
ngel told me early next morning at breakfast.
“What did?”
“My plan to fool the QM about that cocoa.”
“But the check-up hasn’t even happened yet.”
“I know, old bean.”
“Then how can you have fooled the QM?”
“It’s like this,” Fingel said. “Although I made a show of confidence to you last night about my ability to replace all that cocoa, I must confess that I have been finding the problem rather a worry. So a day or two ago I devised a plan which might, with a bit of luck, settle the matter here and now. The first stage was to start a story about an impending inspection of stores and make sure it got to Sweenie Mack and put the wind up him.”
“So today’s check-up is nothing more than a rumour?”
“Precisely. There’ll be one sooner or later, of course – ”
“– Probably sooner – ”
“– Probably sooner, I agree, but not, to my knowledge, today. That’s just a barrack-room buzz, got up by me, to make Mack start pissing his knickers.”
“From what I saw of him in the Alte Krone, you’d clearly managed that.”
“As soon as he came over to our table, I knew I was in business. The next stage was to convince him straightaway that I’d thought of a wheeze to cope with the QM. Hence that spiel about the caviar bomb in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Sweenie’s a shrewd man, but he’s also very romantic in rather an infantile way, and he has great belief in bizarre escapes and contrivances – the sort of thing he’s forever reading about in boys’ magazines like Hotspur. So when I told him I was going to bug those cocoa cans one way or another, I knew his curiosity would get the better of him and I’d have him exactly where I wanted him. And sure enough, there he was in the company store at eleven o’clock last night, waiting for me, with the cans all opened up and ready for me to go to work on. God alone knows what he thought I could possibly be going to do with them, but he’d taken my bait and there he was – when in comes a party of Regimental Police, tipped off anonymously by Fingel, and catches Mack red-handed – or so it appears – fiddling the company cocoa under cover of darkness. So what happens next?”
“Mack flashes those dirty pictures at them.”
“That’s right, old bean. And since the party is headed by a young corporal of little experience, they all sit down and drool over the pictures, while Mack passes round an enamel mug full of neat whisky and starts to sweet-talk them all into believing that he’s been working late in the stores and is checking the cocoa, not fiddling it. Just about then – enter Fingel. ‘What is this disgraceful scene?’ cries Fingel: ‘the piquet half-drunk on duty and goggling at disgusting pictures. Sergeant Mack, you should know better than to use your store as a pot-house. And anyway what are these cocoa cans doing, opened up like that’ – prod, prod – ‘why, they’re full of earth, just what is the meaning of this? ’Fore God, I have discovered a conspiracy to defraud Her Majesty.’
“At this the young corporal breaks down and sobs, ‘Sir, kind sir, I know nothing about it.’ Fingel then expatiates sternly on the enquiry that must now ensue if he does his duty and impounds the cans as evidence. Every sort of charge will be urged against every man in the room (including himself, though only he and Mack know that), and drunkenness on piquet alone will be enough to break the corporal and put his comrades behind bars for a month, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But then, amid the mutters of fear and shame, Fingel suddenly smiles a warm, human, radiant smile. There might yet be a way out, Fingel concedes. If the cocoa cans were to be totally and immediately disposed of, and if a plausible explanation were forthcoming to account for their disappearance, there could never be an enquiry about what was inside them or who put it there, and the various misdemeanours of all present would remain forever hidden. After all, says Fingel, what are a few cans of cocoa, that they should ruin the promising careers of six young soldiers and bring disgrace on that much loved figure, Sergeant Mack? Follows a cleverly deployed tear or two from Mack and protests of boozy gratitude from the police piquet – who are, however, quite sober enough to implement Fingel’s plan. They fetch the Regimental Police wagon, cart away the cocoa cans and many other valuable items of equipment, slam them deep into the incinerator, and then wake the Orderly Officer. Their story is absolutely pat and supported by all six of them. They were on a routine patrol, saw a suspicious light in D Coy stores, went to investigate, and found the door open but not so much as a cat moving. Leaving a guard on the door, they had roused Acting Colour Sergeant Mack from his innocent slumbers in the Sergeants’ Mess; Mack had deposed that such and such items, including five cans of cocoa, were gone; and now, would the Orderly Officer kindly come to the scene and take official cognisance of what had occurred?
“Later this morning,” continued Fingel, helping himself to about half a pound of marmalade, “the barracks will be searched for the missing stores and their remains will eventually be found in the incinerator – where, it will be assumed, the thieves put them in panic. Seven compasses, six pairs of binoculars, four revolvers, fourteen blankets – and five barely recognisable cans of what had once been cocoa, all stolen and incinerated by persons unknown – and who never will be known. Thus the cans will be duly accounted for and officially written off, and we need think no more of making up stock from Fortnum and Mason. The episode is entirely closed – apart from the banquets which I shall continue to enjoy at the Alte Krone.”
I thought for some minutes.
“Surely,” I said at last, “you and Mack could have managed the thing between you. No need to rig up all that tricksy intrigue with the Regimental Police.”
“We needed independent witnesses,” said Fingel, “and we needed strong men to hump all that gear about without arousing suspicion. The Regimental Police – even a corporal’s piquet – go where they like unquestioned. But imagine me and Mack rushing to the incinerator with a vehicle full of stores in the middle of the night – a sight as obvious and as guilty as a nine-month belly at the altar.”
“Well, you might at least have taken Mack into your confidence from the beginning. He must have had a very nasty shock when the piquet caught him mucking about with those cans.”
“Indeed he had, and he has complained to me most bitterly about it. But that,” said Fingel, “was the most refined element in my whole scheme. By springing a crisis on Mack, I brought out the best in him – by putting his back up against the shit-house wall, where rats like him are always at their most resourceful. And at the same time, old bean, I have ensured that he will no longer annoy me by haunting the Alte Krone. Having been brought so close to scandal by my machinations, he now knows that although he is officially in the clear he cannot risk incurring notice by living at unnatural expense.”
“The same might be said of yourself.”
“For me, old bean, the Alte Krone is a natural expense. People expect me to go there even when I can’t afford it and will only start noticing me if I don’t. But for Mack it is a conspicuous expense; the Alte Krone is not for the likes of him if he wants to avoid remark. In short, old bean, the present exigencies of discretion require me to enjoy myself and Mack to deny himself. An amusing and convenient instance of what is known as social injustice.”
Fingel’s Artillery
“A message for your honour,” said Sergeant Mack: “from the Adjutant’s Office.”
Fingel slit open a buff envelope and extracted a flimsy sheet of paper.
“Great piles of crap,” Fingel said: “my new guns are here. Waiting at the station. ‘Lieutenant Fingel, as O/c Anti-Tank Platoon’,” he read from the order in his hand, “‘will proceed immediately to Göttingen Station to take on charge from the Bahnhof Direktor five 120 millimetre Anti-Tank Rocket Launchers and will cause them to be conveyed to these Barracks forthwith’.”
“Well, what about it?” I jeered. “Those guns were bound to arrive sooner or later. You ought to be full of joy and enthusiasm. Now you’ll have a proper Anti-Tank Platoon at las
t instead of those absurd wooden toys.”
“We couldna hope,” said Sergeant Mack, “to get away with just the one gun forever.”
This conversation was going on in Fingel’s Anti-Tank Platoon Office at Border Barracks, Göttingen, in the early autumn of 1953. The previous spring, much to Fingel’s delight, his six cumbrous old Seventeen Pounder guns had been withdrawn, while because of some hiatus of a kind common in military affairs only one of the new type of Anti-Tank weapon had been issued in lieu. The remaining five, pending their arrival, were represented for tactical purposes by five token objects made of plywood and correspondingly easy to manipulate. Thus, during the whole of the summer season of training and manoeuvres, Fingel and the forty-odd men of his platoon had only one piece of genuine ordnance to deploy and maintain, even by Fingel’s standards an unexacting task. But now –
“‘– Lieutenant Fingel is reminded’,” Fingel read from the order, “‘that the Annual Administration Inspection by the GOC this Division is only seventy-two hours away, and that the five new Rocket Launchers on his charge must be cleaned, assembled, and rendered fully operational before the Inspection commences’.”
“They’ll be wrapped in rotten sacking,” said Sergeant Sweenie Mack, who adored this style of disaster, “with the barrels stuffed along solid with the grease and the detachable fittings clankering about on the loose and an inch deep in rust. There’ll be wee bitty nuts and bolts gone missing all over, and the tyres will be as flat as a Hebrew’s loaf. The sights will be smashed and the firing levers will be warped and the towing brackets will – ”
“– For Christ’s sake shut up,” said Fingel, “and try to be helpful.”
“‘Fully operational’, that order says,” continued Mack in a meditative tone, “which among all else, as Your Honour well kens, means that the crews must be fully trained to shoot them off. Foreby a summer spent faffing aboot with plywood will not have been the best preparation for that, I’m thinking; and when the General Officer Commanding this Division asks to see a little Gun Drill (for he’s an old Artillery hand, they do say, and dearly loves a sight of cannon) there’ll be such a looning and a clooning that Your Honour will be arrested on the spot.”
