The north wind had blown most of the snow to the side of the barrack square, and not a soul walked there; not a canteen cat. In the guardroom the corporal commanding the picket was warming his fingers on a mug of hot tea, and the metalwork on the sentry’s rifle was sticky with frost. In the bathhouse the Battalion plumber was using a blow-lamp on the pipes, and he had reached the stage of swearing with enjoyment. The sergeants were in their Mess, singing to keep themselves warm, and drinking to keep themselves singing. National Servicemen wished they were home in their villas, and horn-nailed Regulars talked of Suez; even the bandboys wished they were back at borstal. In the Married Quarters, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, Mr Riddick, was sandwiched between his fire and his television set.
But it was warm in the Officers’ Mess. Dinner was over, and the Queen had had her due. The long dining-room with the low ceiling was thick with tobacco smoke. The regimental silver cups, bowls and goblets shone in the blaze of the lights above the table, and from the shadows past colonels, portrayed in black and white, looked down at the table with glassy eyes. Two pipers, splendid in their scarlet, marched round and round the table playing the tunes of glory. The noise of the music was deafening, but on a dinner night this was to be expected.
The officers who owned ‘Number Ones’ were in their blue tunics and tartan trews. Sitting back from the table they crossed their legs and admired their thighs and calves. They moved their feet and felt the comfort of the leather Wellingtons that fitted closely to the ankle. Only one or two of the subalterns who could not rise to Number Ones were wearing khaki tunics and kilts. But, drunk to the stage of excited physical consciousness, they too crossed their legs and glanced with anxious pride at their knees. They had folded their stockings to make the most of the muscles of their legs, and they wore nothing under their kilts. Some were anxious that the dinner should finish early giving them time to visit their women. Others of a more philosophic turn of mind had resigned themselves by now. They had ruled out the idea of visiting a woman and they were now falling into a slow stupor. Both sets of officers would in the end return to their bunks, thoroughly dispirited, and breathless with the cold of three o’clock in the morning. The lover as likely as not, if he were still a subaltern, would be disappointed to the point of pain, and the philosopher, bowing patiently and bowing low to the inevitable, would be sick. And both would live to fight another day.
But it was at this point in the evening, when the pipers played, that the officers could see most clearly how the night would end. Their fate lay in the hands of the man sitting half way up the table, and in spite of the Mess President at the head, nobody could deny that the table was commanded by the unforgettable figure of Acting Lieutenant-Colonel Jock Sinclair, D.S.O. (and bar).
The Colonel’s face was big and smooth and red and thick. He had blue eyes – they were a little bloodshot now – and his voice was a sergeant’s. His hair, which was thin, was brushed straight back with brilliantine. It was not a bit grey. The Colonel did not look broad because he was also deep, and had the buttons on his tunic been fastened there would have been little creases running across his chest and stomach. But at times such as this he was inclined to unfasten his buttons. He had even unfastened the top two buttons of his trews this evening and his striped shirt protruded through the gap in the tartan. His trews were skin tight and it looked as if he need only brace his muscles to tear the seams apart. In his lap he nursed a very large tumbler of whisky, and he tapped his foot on the ground as the pipers played. He did not seem to find the music too loud.
From time to time he glanced round the table, and other officers when they caught his eye quickly turned away while he continued to stare. The look in his eye was as flat as the sole of his polished boot.
He had already made the pipers play three extra tunes that night, and as they played The Green Hills for the second time he hummed, and the music comforted him. He put his glass on the table when the room was silent again.
‘Get away with you,’ he said, surprisingly kindly, to the Corporal-Piper and as the pipers marched out of the room the officers applauded in their usual way: they banged their fists on the table and stamped their feet on the floor-boards. Jock sent orders that the pipers should be given double whiskies, then he leant back in his chair and groaned, while his officers talked. It was some minutes later when one of the younger subalterns at the far end of the table caught his attention. Jock tipped forward in his seat and put his clenched fists on the table. The flat eye grew narrow; the meat on his face quivered, and along the table conversation died on the lips. He made a suppressed sound which was still something of a shout:
‘MacKinnon, boy!’ Then he lowered his voice to a hiss. ‘For Christ’s sake smoke your cigarette like a man. Stop puffing at it like a bloody debutante.’ He moved his hand as though he were chucking away a pebble, and he spoke loudly again. ‘Get on with you; smoke, laddie, smoke …’
There was silence in the room as the young subaltern put his cigarette to his lips. He held it rather stiffly between two fingers and he half closed his eyes as he drew in the tobacco smoke. There was still a hush. He looked nervously at his Colonel as he took the cigarette from his lips. Even the movement of his wrist as he brought the cigarette down to the plate had something inescapably feminine about it, and this made Jock shake his fist. The boy’s mouth was now full of smoke and he sat very still, with his eyes wide open.
‘Go on then, laddie; draw it in, draw it in.’
MacKinnon took a deep breath which made him feel a little dizzy and he was glad that the Colonel could not resist a joke at this point. The sound of his little cough was drowned by the laughter that greeted his Colonel’s witticism. Jock looked from side to side.
‘We’ve got laddies that’ve never put it in, I know,’ he said with both a wink and a nod. ‘What I didn’t know is how we’ve one who can’t even draw it in, eh?’ When he laughed the veins on his temple stood out. Then the laugh, as usual, deteriorated into a thick cough, and he shook backwards and forwards in an attempt to control it.
The officers were a mixed collection. One or two of them, such as Major Macmillan, who was perpetually sunburnt, seemed very much gentlemen, although they too laughed at Jock’s jokes. The others, if not gentlemen, were Scotsmen. The younger they were the larger were their jaws, the older they were the fatter were their necks, except of course for the Quartermaster, Dusty Millar, who had no neck at all.
At last Jock recovered himself. ‘Aye,’ he said, with a final cough, ‘aye … Well gentlemen, I have news for you.’
Someone at the far end of the table was still talking.
‘All of you, you ignorant men.’ Jock raised his voice. ‘News that’ll affect you all.’ He paused. ‘Tomorrow there’s a new colonel coming, and he’ll be taking over the Battalion. D’you hear? D’you hear me now?’
All the officers hesitated. Their jaws dropped and they leant forward to look at Jock, who was looking at his tumbler.
Macmillan had a light-comedy voice. He touched his fair hair with his hand and he said, ‘Come, Jock, you’re pulling our legs.’
‘Aye,’ someone said uncertainly, disbelievingly. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘What I’m telling you is true.’ Jock took a sip of his drink. ‘Ask Jimmy Cairns. Jimmy knows right enough.’
Cairns, who was his Adjutant, did not know what to say but felt it was a time when something should be said. He moved his hands, and he frowned.
‘That’s the way of it,’ he said.
‘Och …’ The Quartermaster moaned, and others echoed him.
‘That’s not right,’ one said; and another, ‘It can’t be true.’ The Battalion without Jock as C.O. seemed then an impossibility.
Jock raised his hand in the smoky air.
‘We didn’t ask for comments,’ he said. Then, glancing at the younger officers at the far end of the table, some of whom did not seem so dismayed by the news, he added, ‘One way or the other,’ and he showed his teeth
when he grinned. He grew solemn again and drew his hand down his face and wagged his head, as if to clear his vision. ‘It’s just a fact,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s just a fact,’ and he leant back in his chair again.
Major Charlie Scott, who sat next to Jock, had an after-dinner habit of stroking his large red moustache, but he dropped his hand to ask, ‘What’s his name, eh?’
‘Basil Barrow.’
‘Major Barrow?’ a clear-voiced subaltern said at once. ‘He lectured at Sandhurst. He’s an expert on Special …’ Suddenly aware that he had sounded a little too enthusiastic, his voice trailed away. He looked around, brushed some ash from his trews, and continued in a nonchalant tone, ‘Oh, he’s really quite all right; they say he’s frightfully bright upstairs.’ The officers looked towards the Colonel again. They were gradually recovering.
‘Aye,’ Jock said. ‘He went to Oxford, if that means anything. They say he was a great success as a lecturer or whatever he was. Quite a turn with the cadets.’ He gave a malicious grin and another big wink. Then he belched and made a sour face. He took another drink of whisky.
‘Colonel Barrow’s a man about forty-four. Eton – aye, it’s right, what I’m telling you – Eton and Oxford. He joined the Regiment in 1935 and he was only with it a year or two before being posted on special duties. He has some languages, so it seems. It’s as young Simpson says. He’s bright upstairs. He got the M.C. and he was taken prisoner pretty early on.’ Jock swung his eyes around the table. ‘I know all about him; you see that?’
‘There was a fellow we used to call Barrow Boy. D’you remember him? A lightweight chap; good at fencing, if I recall.’
‘I remember. Good Lord, yes.’
Jock spoke again. ‘That’s the same chum. That’s him. He was well placed in the Pentathlon sometime just before the war.’ He grew suddenly tired of the subject. ‘Well, he’s to command the Battalion and I’ll have another tumbler of whisky.’
A Mess steward dashed forward and replaced the empty glass with a full one. On nights like this Jock’s drinks were lined up on a shelf just inside the pantry door; lined up in close formation.
‘And what about you, Jock?’ Cairns asked.
‘Aye. And what about me, china?’
‘You staying on?’
‘Unless you’re going to get rid of me, Jimmy.’
Cairns knew just how far he could go with Jock.
‘I thought there might be a chance of it.’
Jock was about to smile when the same subaltern who had known Barrow interrupted. ‘Staying on as second-in-command, you mean?’ and he was too young and a little too well spoken to get away with it. His seniors glanced immediately at the Colonel. Jock eyed the boy with real hatred, and there was a very long pause.
One of the stewards by the pantry door all but dropped his salver; his eyes grew wide, and he felt the hair rising at the back of his neck. Goblets and glasses poised in the air, whisky stayed in the mouth, unswallowed, and the swirly cloud of smoke above Jock’s head for one instant seemed perfectly still.
Jock spoke very sourly, and quietly. ‘So may it please you, Mr Simpson,’ was what he said, looking back to his tumbler.
‘Oh, I’m glad you’re not leaving us, sir.’ But the answer came too glibly. Jock shrugged and gave a little snigger. He spoke as if he did not care whether he was heard. ‘You’re away off net, laddie … and, Mr Simpson?’
It was fairly easy to see that Mr Simpson had been a prefect at school. He looked the Colonel straight in the eye and he never quite closed his mouth.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘No “Sirs” in the Mess. Christian names in the Mess except for me and I’m “Colonel”. I call you just what I feel like. O.K.?’
‘Yes, Colonel.’
‘Yes, Colonel … Now, gentlemen; now then. This is Jock’s last supper and there’ll be a round of drinks on me. Even one for Mr Simpson. Corporal!’
‘Sir.’
‘Whisky. For the gentlemen that like it and for the gentlemen who don’t like it, whisky.’
He turned apologetically to Charlie Scott, who was still stroking his moustache.
‘I’m no good at talking at the best of times, Charlie, and tonight I’m no coping at all. Will we have the pipers back? It fills the gaps.’
‘Whatever you say, Jock; it’s your night.’
‘Aye.’ Jock opened his eyes very wide: this was one of his mannerisms. ‘Aye,’ he used to say, then with his eyes wide open he would add a little affirmative noise. It was an openmouthed ‘mm’. Aye, and a-huh. ‘Well I say we’ll have the pipers.’ He leant back in his chair and addressed one of the stewards who was hurrying by with a bottle. ‘Laddie, call the pipers.’
‘This minute, sir.’
‘Just “Sir”.’ He made a gesture with his flat hand: a little steadying gesture. It was the same gesture that had steadied men in the desert, in Italy, France, Germany and Palestine. ‘Just “Sir”. That’s all you need say.’ Then he sighed, and he said, ‘Aye, Charlie.’ He dug the point of his knife into the table-cloth again and again as he talked. He first made a hole with the knife and gradually he widened it.
‘… And you’ll have a tune, and I’ll have a tune, and Macmillan here’ll have a tune, and I’ll have another tune. Charlie, why the hell d’you grow that moustache so big?’
Major Charlie Scott continued to stroke it with his fingers. His great green eyes grew wide, under the shepherd’s eyebrows. He could think of no explanation.
‘Dunno; I’m sure. Just grew.’
Jock leant his chair back on two legs again and his arms fell down by his sides. ‘And you’re not the great talker yourself.’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘No … Well, let’s have the music. Ho-ro, my Nut Brown Maiden for me, and for you, Charlie?’
‘The Cock o’ the North.’ Jock tipped forward at that. The legs of the chair creaked as they pitched on the floor again.
‘Yon’s the Gordons’ tune!’
‘I still like it.’
Jock screwed up his face: he was genuinely worried.
‘But yon’s a cheesy tune, Charlie.’
Charlie Scott shrugged.
Jock leant forward to persuade him. ‘Laddie, I was with them for a wee while. They didn’t like me, you know; no. And Jock didn’t care much for them, neither.’
‘Really?’
‘Can you no think of a better tune?’
‘Myself, I like The Cock o’ the North.’ Charlie Scott put another cigarette in his holder.
Jock laughed and the veins stood out again. He slapped his thigh and that made a big noise.
‘And I love you, Charlie; you’re a lovely man. You’re no a great talker, right enough. But you’ve a mind of your own … Aye, pipers, and where have you been?’
‘Pantry, sir.’
‘Are you sober?’
‘Sir.’
‘You’d bloody well better be, and that’s a fact. You’re no here to get sick drunk the same as the rest of us are.’
The drones began as the bladders filled with air. The pipers marched round and round again. The room grew smokier, and the officers sat close into their chairs as the drink began to flow. The stewards never rested.
TWO
THE PIPERS WERE in the pantry, recovering themselves. They were drinking beer, and the sweat poured down their faces. Their heavy kilts and tunics were hot and scratchy, and all the paraphernalia of their dirks and plaids was a nuisance to them.
The younger piper had yellow eyes and he spoke in a high-pitched voice.
‘He’s a bloody terror, and that’s what he is.’
‘Aye,’ said the Corporal, ‘and he’s a great man.’
‘He’s a bloody terror, and that’s what he is; I’m telling you, Corporal.’
‘You can close your mouth. You’ll need all your spittle the night.’
Mess stewards in their white bum-freezers hurried by in search of liquor.
‘Is it right he was a piper;
is that right, Corporal Fraser?’
‘Aye. And he could be Pipe-Major if he felt like it, man. You should hear him on the pibrochs. There’s nobody to touch him. He’s played on the wireless, you know.’
‘I’m no a corporal; I never get the chance of listening to the bloody wireless.’
‘You’ll watch your language in the Officers’ Mess, Piper Adam.’
‘This is no the Officers’ Mess. This is the pantry.’ All around them were dirty plates and cutlery. ‘Look at the shambles, eh?’
‘Just the same.’
‘Och, away you go, Corporal … He’s a bloody terror; I’m telling you.’
‘Aye, aye. You’re telling me.’
The Corporal-Piper was a patient young man with the mild blue eyes of the far north. He came from that queer strip of flat land called the Lairg. It stretches for thirty or forty miles along the south side of the Moray Firth, and at no point is it more than a few miles wide. The road from Inverness to Fochabers is as straight as the pine trees there, and nowhere in Scotland is there so much sky. It is like a foreign land, and the people speak their English slowly, and with a mild intonation, as if they were translating from a foreign tongue. So it was with Corporal Fraser.
‘Aye,’ he said softly; and he finished his pint of beer.
Then they were called into the ante-room to play some reels. Jock had decided that they all ought to take some exercise before the next round of drinks and as it was too slippery for a race round the barrack square he ordered that there should be dancing. With Charlie Scott as his partner he led away with the ‘Duke of Perth’ while the others, standing in their lines, clapped their hands to the music.
Jock danced with energy and with precision. He leapt high in the air and landed miraculously softly on the toes of his small feet. That was how he had been taught to dance and the others had to try and dance like him. They put their hands above their heads; they swung; they yelled; they hooched. Then they had a drink and they began all over again with a new dance. By this time they were very warm and many of them had removed their tunics. Every officer in the Mess was dancing amongst the pillars in the long ante-room when the door opened and the new Colonel walked in.
Household Ghosts Page 2
