A History Maker

by Alasdair Gray

  Wat screwed the printout into a ball, cried, “Good for Geneva!” and flung the ball lightly at Colonel Wardlaw so that it bounced off his ear. The Colonel flinched then muttered, “Hard on your dad.”

  “It’s right about the Dad! But we’ll forgive his bloody craziness if it gets three good rules like that made law.”

  “You havenae drunk your whisky,” said Rab.

  “I don’t need it now,” said Wat, standing and going to them. They too were drinking Macallan. He tipped a neat third of his glass into each of theirs then signed to the barman for a strong coffee. It was brought.

  “I hate Dryhope, he’s a smug bastard,” sang Davie softly.

  “He cannae help it,” said Rab, “He wins a world-famous draw by cheatery, fails in his suicide attempt and gets praised by Geneva for standing up to his daddy, though he did exactly what the old man telt him. Do you hate him too, Colonel?”

  “Aye, but I hate his wee brother worse. Cadet Dryhope!” yelled the Colonel, “Stop standing there like a replica of Michel-fucking-angelo’s David! In the days before the establishment of our democratic Utopia pretty wee soldiers who stood straight and cocky in front of crippled officers were given a hundred lashes. Slouch like your brother.”

  “But the standard!” whispered the boy trying to slouch and plead frantically at the same time. “Clear out Sandy,” said Wat. Sandy left. As he opened and shut the door they heard a burst of hubbub from below pierced by the music of pipes playing a coronach.

  “Colonel Wardlaw!” said Wat sharply, “Tell me now why grown men like the Henderlands and Foulshiels — men with no interest in warrior business — are waiting downstairs among a crowd of weans and lassies.”

  “I don’t know,” muttered Wardlaw.

  “Will I go down and find out?” asked Wat.

  “The game’s a bogie, men,” said the colonel to the other players. He flung his cards on the table and turned his chair to face Wat. Davie dealt the cards again and went on playing with Rab.

  In a low voice pitched for Wat’s ears only Colonel Wardlaw said, “Look at my face, Dryhope.”

  Wat did so with frank pleasure because it took his attention away from the surgical corset holding the Colonel’s body together; then he saw that only a pale-blue left eye showed intelligence. The bloodshot right stared fixedly sideways from a pupil so big it blotted out the iris.

  “Sorry, Tam,” said Wat quietly, “I thought only your lower parts were hurt.”

  “No. The head has the worst damage and not where you see it. There’s a sore buzzing inside that I try to think isnae an insect. I wish you’d spent a month wandering the hills, Wattie, because I need peace. I said Here comes trouble when you arrived because you make us a quorum — the three officers and one colonel needed to dispatch urgent regimental business. Wattie, neither me nor Rab nor Davie could dispatch a paper aeroplane. We’re as queer and gruesome as a week with nine Mondays. I’m done with soldiering, Wattie. We’re all done with soldiering. The knocks we got from Northumbria are mainly why but that message from Geneva finished us. A spate of others marked urgent followed it. They’re in this pouch — ” (Tam clapped a satchel under the armrest of his chair) “ — I darena look at them.”

  “Gie’s them,” said Wat, stretching out a hand,

  “Jenny could have answered them but I’ll do it faster. I bet half can be ignored and the rest answered with Thanks for your friendly letter. And forget Geneva, Tam. It said the truth, but no honest soldier or kind woman will scorn us for obeying our elected commander.”

  Wat put the wad of sheets on a nearby table and quickly sorted it into two piles, one of blue sheets from public eye companies, one of pink sheets meaning warrior business. Tam watched with an expression in which weariness, indifference and anxiety oddly blended. Two minutes later Wat lifted the blue pile and said, “These are from every big eye company there is, the nearest in the Lothians, the farthest in the satellite belt. We know they want to exploit public excitement about a battle which for us is past and done, so we answer them this way.” With a sharp wrench Wat tore that pile in two, laid the bits on a chair then sorted through the other, this time glancing at a line or two before laying each one aside. Once he paused and said, “Colonel Tam, why were our wee lads yattering about standards?”

  “They want permission to fish our old pole out of the North Sea. They’re feart some of Dodds’s tykes will get it first and melt it intae the roots of a Northumbrian powerplant.”

  Tam sipped his whisky. Wat finished reading then turned and said, “Cellini’s Cosmopolitan Cloud Circus remind you that tomorrow night they will pay homage to mankind’s most famous draw with a completely new spectacle called From the Big Bang to the Battle of the Ettrick Standard: a Creative Evolutionary Opera to be performed on the hills round Selkirk. The rest are congratulations from clan chiefs everywhere, some of them world champions. Many blame Geneva for what some call a nursemaid attitude to the noble art of war. And here’s one to cheer you — Shafto of Northumbria wishes us well and says he didn’t subscribe to Dodds’s protest against the draw. This other is the only one needing a careful answer. Border United — the chiefs of Eskdale, Teviotdale, Liddesdale and the Merse — regret our loss of folk fit to train the next generation of Ettrick fighters. They will lend us officers of their own, on a rotation basis, not to fight battles of course but to get our youngsters ready for them. What do you say to that?”

  “Answer it yourself. Answer it how you like,” said Tam, “I telt the truth when I said I’m done with every game but cards.”

  His haunted expression did not change but something like a smile twisted it. In a hollow, resounding voice which all in the mess turned to hear he announced: “As Colonel of the Ettrick Army met in a quorum of my fellow officers in the absence of our dearly deceased General Jardine Craig Douglas, I appoint YOU, Major Dryhope, my successor with full plenary powers to do what the hell you like until such time as you get yourself — or someone else — elected general in Jardine’s stead. Arise Colonel Dryhope, greatest of Ettrick’s sons! I also declare that I and Rab Gillkeeket and Davie Deuchar are henceforth a trio of clapped-out veterans fit for nothing but games our grannies taught us. Deal me a hand, lads.” He turned his chair back to the card table where Davie Deuchar, after slowly clapping his hands together twice, shuffled and dealt.

  Wat had risen to his feet when the Colonel told him to. He now stood wondering why his new appointment did not surprise him, though he had certainly never expected it. The obvious answer was that only he was fit for it. He wished Colonel Wardlaw had passed on the job in kinder language. The veterans at the bar saluted him then raised and drained their glasses. He saluted back and was wondering what to do next when the major domo approached, bowed, murmured that the crowd downstairs had been long awaiting an announcement, and asked if Colonel Dryhope wished the decision the quorum had just expressed through Colonel Wardlaw to be made public.

  “Verbatim?” said Wat, sharply.

  “No sir: in a form suitably edited for the public ear,” said Jenny as reproachfully as if his intelligence had been questioned.

  “Go ahead Jenny.”

  Jenny left by a door behind the bar and Wat stood listening intently. He heard throbbings of a speaker then a swelling cheer which got louder until even here it was uncomfortably loud. It did not stop. Wat wondered why there was something soothing in the sound.

  “Shut them up Dryhope!” yelled Tam, “Talk to them! The glaikit sumphs want their new sweetheart to simper audibly.”

  Jenny approached again, bowed, put his moustache ticklingly close to Wat’s right ear and said, “Does Colonel Dryhope wish to respond to the ovation by loudspeaker, or will he prefer to personally address the Boys’ Brigade in the hall of the standards? In either case his words will be relayed to the crowd outside.”

  Wat felt the moustache withdraw and saw Jenny’s large flat ear presented to his mouth. He said thoughtfully, “Tell them that in fifteen minutes I’ll speak from the
roof of the eastern porch — that will give the Boy’s Brigade time to go outside. But first tell their captains to come here to the mess. And … and I must make a private call to Northumbria first. The speech will start in thirty minutes, not fifteen.” He went out with Jenny and the cheering stopped soon after.

  Later he returned, spoke briefly with veterans at the bar, went to the door, admitted six Boys’ Brigade captains and talked to them while Jenny served them half pints of shandy. This was their first time in the officers’ mess and they behaved with fitting dignity. Then Wat approached Tam, Rab and Davie and said quietly, “One last request, lads.”

  “Request refused,” said Wardlaw, “What is it?”

  “I’m making a speech from the porch roof and want you with me.”

  “Ye want us for a balcony appearance, Colonel Dryhope?” sang Davie loudly, “Like the clique who stood about behind Hitler above the Potsdamstrasse? Or made Stalin look less lonely outside the Kremlin? An hour ago you frosted that window to shut out public eyeballs. I knew power corrupts but didnae know it corrupted that fast!”

  “You don’t need our support, Dryhope,” said Tam Wardlaw sourly.

  “O I do, I need all three of you,” said Wat, kneeling so that his face was level with theirs, “Our families want to be proud of Ettrick, no matter what Geneva says. That’s why folk of every sort except aunts and grannies are waiting outside. We can make them proud if we stand together. I’ll be out there with old Megget and Cappercleuch and Hartleap, veterans who fought at Ilkley and Kettering and Sunningdale. I’ll have captains of the Boys’ Brigade beside me, champions of the future. How can I inspire pride when the best soldiers to survive our hardest fight — three of the quorum who made me Colonel — sit girning in the shadows like sulky bairns while the rest of us stand in the sunlight trying to look brave? Ye dour lazy bitches, ye don’t even need to stand! You’ve nae legs! All ye need do is roll your chairs through the door ahint ye.”

  “Does he persuade, Deuchar?” wondered Rab Gillkeeket, “If my glands were not disjaskit his rhetoric would get the adrenalin flowing, but does he persuade?”

  “He appealed to our clan patriotism,” pondered Davie, “Then flattered, shamed and mocked. This blend of the pawkie, couthie and earthy was once thought characteristic of the Scottish peasantry but Wat isnae a peasant and we’re naething but wrecks. What says Wardlaw?”

  Tam Wardlaw said violently, “We’ll do it and be done with it.”

  Wat nodded, told them to be ready in five minutes then went to a table where Jenny had laid a tumbler of milk and plate of sandwiches, his first meal that day.

  The starry film of frost vaporized and drifted up leaving the wall transparent. A section of it opened onto a roof garden over the porch. Wat sent the veterans and boys’ captains out with drinks in their hands to sit where they liked, then he and the cripples followed, wending through the tables to the rail that served as parapet. He put a chair between Wardlaw and Deuchar and sat with arms folded on the rail, waiting.

  This informal arrival drew little attention. The cloud had broken letting afternoon sunlight through. The crowd, much bigger than when he arrived, was now in a holiday mood. Picnic parties sat chatting on the turf; groups surrounded fiddlers, wrestlers, singers, debaters. The kind of alcohol and snuff no housemother would synthesize was being traded by gangrels in return for wristcoms and items of clothing. Some people in bright outlandish garb were advertising the cloud circus. He noticed a woman on twenty-foot-tall stilts covered by red and white striped trousers. She wore a star-spangled top hat and tail coat, and stepped about over the heads of the crowd waving in a comically threatening way a parasol shaped like a nuclear bomb cloud. Children on the verge of the crowd raced ponies through bracken and heather. The only solemn touches were groups of horsemen who had been waiting since morning, some mounted, some standing at their animals’ heads. One thing that worried him was a public eye a yard from his face. No open-air meeting as big as this had met in peacetime for a century so public eyes would intercut his speech with film of leaders haranguing huge crowds in the late historical era. Since he and his comrades were not standing in formal groups he would look, as well as sound, very different. He glanced at the tiny microphone on his chest and decided to speak seated, with folded arms.

  Suddenly he noticed part of the crowd he had overlooked. On the ground before the porch the Boys’ Brigade stood in six straight ranks. Feet apart, arms clasped behind them, faces tilted up toward Wat, the exact stance of each one made him a childish replica of the rest. Captainless, ordered outside by a servant to hear the new colonel’s speech, they had chosen this way to show the discipline that divided them from civilians. Wat stood up, smiling, and bent toward them. He muffled the microphone with one hand, saluted with the other and called down, “Break ranks, men, this — ”

  He had been going to say is not a military occasion but a huge hollow woofing drowned his words: the microphone was more sensitive than he had known. He stood erect and saw everyone was now attending; the only sound was the fading drone of a bagpipe and the rustle of folk turning or standing to see him more clearly. He said quietly, “This is Wat Dryhope about to speak to friends. Will the public eye please shift from between us?”

  The eye moved slightly aside. His voice had carried to the back of the crowd without manic-sounding reverberations but he sensed an immediate excitement, a hunger for the emotional unity that had greeted his descent from the hillside. This excitement gave him a feeling of righteous power because, unlike dark-age politicians, he was going to dissolve that mindless unity by the calm delivery of sensible information. He said, “I havenae much to say but most of you have been waiting here for hours so I’ll sit here and say it. If you’ve any sense you’ll follow my example — that’s a suggestion. The junior cadets will meanwhile break ranks and sit on the ground — that’s an order.”

  He sat down with arms folded on the railing. The Boys’ Brigade did as he commanded. With a murmur suggesting amusement all but the horsemen followed their example. Wat gave his speech.

  “I suppose you’ve come here to learn things you might not get from the public eye, which exists to make entertainment out of serious war games. Here are the straight facts. Colonel Tam Wardlaw here has given me his job because I’m the only soldier in Ettrick with two arms, two legs and no internal injuries. I am in this healthy state because General Craig Douglas ordered me to lead the vanguard, which was the safest job in our last battle. Our whole army was organized to get me safe to the cliff top where I did my wee trick with the standard. While getting me there our army was almost wholly destroyed but I’m all right. No wonder Geneva condemned that tactic.

  “My present health is also due to me rolling off the cliff when the massacre started, and to a bush that caught me after I’d done that, and to General Shafto of Northumbria who pulled me off it. Less than an hour ago I spoke to General Shafto and told him we feared that North Sea currents might wash our old pole out of reach. He is sending divers from Whitby to locate it and attach a buoy. Tomorrow we can recover it when we like. Good men, the Northumbrians.

  “What of the future? As Geneva says, ten years must pass before we can breed and train another professional army so there is no urgent need to elect a new general. Our wounded officers will recover, though we cannot say how completely. Some of our veterans may return to active service. In three or four years young captains beside me here will be old enough to fight. There are potential generals on this platform, and standing among you, and many more at home with their aunts. Building an army comes before choosing a general. Luckily our neighbours on the banks of Tweed and Leader, Teviot and Esk will lend officers to train youngsters and new recruits.”

  He stood up and said, “That was my news. Goodbye.”

  He saluted and was turning to leave when a voice said, “Can I say a word to you Colonel Dryhope?”

  It was a firm voice, quiet, adult, male and it came from the crowd.

  “You’ve
said several already,” said Wat turning back, “Seven at least. How did you say them through the Warrior house speakers?”

  “I’m Archie Crook Cot,” said the voice. This caused a burst of laughter; the Crook Cots were famous for their electronic expertise.

  “That explains it,” said Wat, looking amiably toward a group of horsemen with one stout rider a little before the rest, “What have you to say, Archie?”

  “Just that Geneva’s wrong about the ten years. More than two hundred full-grown Ettrick men are here to sign on as recruits today and you may get as many tomorrow. Our average age is eighteen or so. If we put our backs into the training … and we will lads, won’t we?” he asked turning in his saddle — there was a widespread shout of “Aye!” — “Then you’ll have a full adult fighting force in less than a year.” The last words were drowned in a storm of cheering as the whole crowd of younger folk jumped to their feet shouting and clapping and laughing. The Henderlands raised their pipes, puffed their cheeks and were obviously about to raise the sound level.

  “YE GOWK ARCHIE!” yelled Wat, “YE DOITED GOMERIL! YE STUPIT NYAFF! YE BLIRT!”