Household Ghosts

by James Kennaway

  ‘I’m sure,’ she replied, tightly.

  Because some of the best-behaved subalterns and their blonde partners asked him politely, if persistently like little children, the Colonel allowed them to dance in the main hall, and the pipers were duly organised. Most of the grown-ups left about then which, as things turned out, was a blessing for Barrow; but the rest of them really settled down to enjoy themselves. In the billiards room, one or two of the wives were all blouse and colour by now, and Dusty Millar was very drunk, but Jock and some of the others came through in a group, abreast, towards the dancing. Morag stayed until the pipers arrived. They both knew her and smiled politely, but in spite of Douglas Jackson’s grip on her arm, she stayed no longer.

  The Colonel disappeared into the ante-room once again, when the dancing began. But later, as the noise in the hall increased, he grew more and more nervy and two or three times he ignored altogether remarks put to him by his guests. The noise from the hall grew in gusts and it was soon clear that the style of dancing was diverging very far from the lines laid down by the Pipe-Major at the early morning classes. Seeing the Colonel’s face, nobody in the ante-room could think of anything else and the whole Mess seemed to be shaking.

  Suddenly Barrow could stand it no longer. It was as if he had known all along that the party was building up to this. He detached himself from the group by the fire and walked out of the room: then he checked himself. When he saw the scene in the hall he grew pale with anger, and the liquor circled even faster in his glass. There were two sets dancing the eightsome. The first was lively, but their behaviour was excusable at the end of such a party. That could not be said for the second. Jock, Douglas Jackson, Rattray, and a fourth who was a local farmer, were the men in the set, and they were hoping that the Colonel would come to watch. Three or four times Jimmy Cairns, dancing in the other set, had implored them to dance less noisily. But he had done so in vain.

  Barrow’s lip twitched and he rubbed his thumb against the tips of his fingers. The whole floor was shaking, and the glass in the front door was rattling as the dancers leapt about the room swinging, swaying and shouting. When they saw the Colonel the noise increased, and a moment later Rattray inadvertently let go of the partner he was swinging vigorously so that she spun like a top across the floor, lost her balance, and fell. She fell at Barrow’s feet.

  Corporal Fraser and the other piper stopped playing and the dance came suddenly to an end. The Colonel reached forward to help the girl and she shook her hair from her face. She was too uncertain of the look in Barrow’s eyes to say anything at all and Jock was the first to speak.

  ‘Are you all right, lassie?’

  But it was Barrow who spoke next. His voice was low and clear.

  ‘Mr Rattray. I believe you owe this young lady an apology.’

  ‘Oh hell …’ she began. She was a student from St Andrews, this girl, and she knew all the words, but when she looked at the Colonel again her vocabulary failed her, and her voice died away. The Colonel stood very tensely. The gin in his glass was shaking so violently now that it splashed, and when Jock observed that a little of it had spilt he looked at the Colonel’s face, and he smiled a half-triumphant smile.

  ‘Have a drink, boy, have a drink,’ he said cordially; then he half turned towards the others. ‘Unless you’d like to join us. I’m sure Douglas here’ll stand out.’

  Barrow’s voice was a pitch or two higher than usual.

  ‘Piper: this will be the last reel.’

  ‘Sir.’

  The Colonel stood and watched as the pipers played again. He took a gulp of his drink to empty the shaking glass. The dance began quietly, to Jimmy Cairns’s great relief, and the girls soon adapted themselves to the style of it. They held their heads high and their backs arched: they placed their hands firmly with the palms downwards before them when it came to a swing. Barrow’s shoulders dropped an inch with relief.

  But when it was Jock’s turn in the centre he let his bloodshot eyes rest on the Colonel by the door. For the first circle he behaved himself: he set to his partner and to the third lady, and he completed the figure of eight with reserved precision coming near to perfection. Then when they circled again he sprang off the ground, flung his hands high in the air and let out a scream to crack rock. The others followed his lead. The noise rose, the floor started to shake again, and the glass in the door rattled louder than before.

  The Colonel’s voice rose above it all; and he was collected no longer.

  ‘Sinclair! Sinclair! Stop the dancing. D’you hear me, Piper? Stop at once!’

  He looked sick. Hearing the commotion people emerged from the cloakrooms and the ante-room to witness a scene such as the Mess had not known in forty years. But Jock had never looked so foursquare. He stood in the middle of the dancers and there was still the suspicion of a smile lurking behind the bland expression of his face. Embarrassed by the silence, one or two people in a mumbling sort of way endeavoured to interrupt, but the Colonel snapped at them to keep silent. One of the girls who had spoken blushed with indignation.

  Jock’s voice was low when he spoke.

  ‘You called me, Colonel?’

  ‘I did. I’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow. I’ll … Pipers, we’ve had enough of this. Quite enough.’ Barrow fidgeted as he spoke, and although Jock was just a few yards in front of him, he was shouting. Then there was quiet. The dancers moved, and the pipers marched smartly out of the frozen world. Corporal Fraser looked upset, almost guilty, as if he had seen those things which a good piper should not see.

  Now, for the first time the Colonel looked around him and he looked afraid and bewildered as if he had awoken from a dream and found himself at his own trial. He sighed heavily, and stretched his fingers.

  Jock stared at him quite steadily, with victorious calm. He did not quite have the audacity to say, ‘Are you going to rap me over the knuckles, Colonel?’ but he thought of doing so. Instead, he grinned openly at the dancers around him.

  Barrow now turned to the guests. ‘The party’s over. It’s late. It’s very late. I’m sorry it should end like this.’

  Jimmy came to the rescue. ‘It’s time we all had something to eat …’ he said with a friendly smile, but Douglas Jackson was not smiling. He had not moved, and he stood on the floor with one foot planted before the other, and his hands on his hips, in a Highlander’s pose.

  ‘We were just beginning to enjoy ourselves, Colonel.’ It might have been a reasonable enough thing to have said, but Jackson had once before spoken out too boldly.

  The Colonel checked himself, and everybody waited again. Jock was now grinning openly. Slowly the Colonel turned his head.

  ‘Who said that?’ And he knew perfectly well.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Adjutant!’

  Jimmy was trying to steady everybody. He nodded and moved up to the Colonel.

  ‘Not now,’ he whispered, but the Colonel braced his head back.

  ‘Do as you’re told. Take his name. Take that officer’s name.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Jimmy said. Of course he knew the name, so he did not move and two or three people in the room began to giggle. Jackson, for all his impudence, was looking very white himself now and he stared at the Colonel unblinkingly. The onlookers were fascinated by the scene, and apart from the two women who giggled, they were petrified by it. In the hall, they stood quite still. But in the doorway through to the ante-room people were shoving and craning their necks to see better. Just in the same way that speeches are passed back in a crowd too large, a commentary of the scene was passed as far as the billiards room and the dining-room where some of the servants stood, their heads on one side, to hear more clearly.

  But it was all over. The Colonel turned quickly away and walked towards the cloakroom, while some of the others went up to talk to Jock and Jackson. Jock laughed and shook his head, but Jackson was still very white. As some of his cronies congratulated him he stuck out his chin a little further.

  ‘I
was in my rights,’ he said, then he swore a little, but he did not relax enough to smile. In a moment when they were still standing about the hall the Colonel reappeared again, with his coat and bonnet on. He stopped by the front door, and putting on his gloves, he lifted his head and said:

  ‘Good-night, all.’

  One or two replied ‘good-night’, but the door had not closed behind him when the laughter began to ring round the room. Jimmy was sweating now: he was suddenly angry, and he tried to shout them down, but Jock was leading the laughter, and they paid no attention to him. They laughed all the louder when Jimmy grabbed his bonnet and ran out after the Colonel.

  EIGHT

  HE JUMPED INTO the jeep beside the Colonel just before he drove off, and the Colonel said nothing to him. Instead, he let in the clutch and accelerated fast. He changed his gears swiftly, like an expert, and he took the corners round the square as if he were racing. He braked hard at the gate and Jimmy shouted ‘Colonel’ to the sentry, who stood aside. By the time he had presented arms, the jeep was clear of the barracks.

  In the Mess, the remainder – to use Mr Riddick’s term for any party which had lost some of its members, the remainder moved to the billiards room where the drink was handy on the table, and as they drank, each one of them grew more like himself. Jock began to sweat. Douglas Jackson grew harsher until he had no time for any man or any idea except stern discipline. Rattray grew more vehement about Barrow’s English accent, and the need for a Gaelic revival. Dusty Millar told story after story. The doctor was sitting on the step by the leather bench, like a mouse with a lot of hair. He said, ‘It’s surely significant that the quarrel should have revolved round such a primitive thing as folk dancing.’

  This united them.

  ‘Och, chuck it, Doc,’ Jock said irritably.

  ‘You and your Freud and all that Sassenach cock,’ Rattray said, and Dusty Millar echoed Jock.

  ‘Aye, chuck it, Doc. For chuck’s sake chuck it.’

  ‘What’ll I say the morn, eh?’ Jock said. ‘What’ll I tell him?’ and they began to make suggestions.

  * * *

  The Colonel drove for several miles and the cold night air rushing into the jeep did not leave Jimmy breath for any words of comfort. They drove fast out on the south road, which is wide and straight. But in the dips there were patches of fog, and two or three times Jimmy was sure they were bound for the ditch. A wisp appeared in the yellow light of the headlamp, another, then they were driving through a yellow wall. In a second they were clear again and Jimmy sighed and folded his arms to try and protect himself from the bitter cold. At last, quite suddenly, Barrow took his foot off the accelerator and the jeep slowed down; then, out of gear, it glided to rest at the side of the road. Barrow eased himself back in the seat.

  ‘What a childish thing to do,’ he said and he closed his eyes.

  His eyelashes were long and they came to rest on his cheek with a peculiar softness.

  Jimmy said, ‘Och, I don’t blame you. It’s one way of getting something out of your system. Though if I’d known the speed you were going to travel I’m not so sure I’d have come for the joy-ride.’

  The Colonel smiled faintly. ‘Childish.’

  ‘That fog’s nasty. But you can certainly drive a jeep.’ The compliment did not encourage the Colonel. He sat still, with his eyes shut, and Jimmy went on. ‘And it’s bloody cold too. You’ve got a coat on but I’m frozen stiff. With this kilt blowing about I’m not sure I’m all here, any more.’ He went on talking for a moment or two, saying nothing, but speaking in a voice of persuasive comfort and complete normality. At last the Colonel opened his eyes, and he began to move out of the jeep.

  ‘You drive,’ he said. ‘I’m in no state to drive.’

  ‘Have you had a couple?’ Jimmy said, moving into the driver’s seat as Barrow walked round to the other door.

  ‘It takes more than a couple to make a man of my age make a fool of himself.’

  ‘Och, people always do bloody silly things at Mess parties. It’s part of the tradition. I know somebody who once had …’

  ‘Not a Colonel.’

  ‘A colonel’s human, isn’t he? He has a heart?’

  ‘He shouldn’t have: only a complexion.’ Then he seemed to withdraw into his own world.

  ‘Drive on,’ he said at last. ‘Drive on.’ And taking it quite gently, Jimmy drove back to the cobbled streets. The street lamps had haloes round them like moons and there was no traffic on the road. But Jimmy never went in for dramatic gear-changing or fast cornering. He obeyed the law, and in the town they drove at under thirty miles an hour. He glanced at the Colonel who was staring straight in front of him. His expression was the expression of a boy being driven back to a boarding school he hates.

  ‘I think we’d best drop into the Station and get a bite to eat.’

  Barrow nodded, and bit his moustache. Jimmy had run out of conversation now. He drew up in the big yard outside the hotel and switched off the engine. Then he saw that Barrow had pitched forward and he was holding his head in his hand.

  ‘Ridicule’s always the finish. You know that?’

  ‘Who said anything about ridicule?’

  Barrow wagged his head irritably, and Jimmy found more words.

  ‘For God’s sake, Colonel. They behaved bloody badly and you’d the sense to get out. What’s wrong in that?’

  Barrow seemed to like that idea. He clung to it, again childlike.

  ‘Is that how it looked?’

  ‘That’s how it was.’

  They climbed out and Barrow breathed in deeply as they walked to the hotel door. ‘I say, thanks awfully,’ he said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For coming along like this. You know …’

  ‘It’s part of the service, Colonel; part of the service.’

  As the Colonel ate his meal Jimmy was keen to find excuses for him. They sat in the far corner of the large dining-room, on opposite sides of a small table. Jimmy rested his arms on the table leaning forward to listen to Barrow, and to talk to him in a low voice.

  ‘What was your job down in Whitehall? I never found that out.’

  The Colonel smiled his former weary but collected smile.

  ‘I gathered Jock had found out everything about me.’

  ‘Oh no. Eton and Oxford was as far as he got.’

  ‘That’s not strictly true, either.’

  ‘So?’ Jimmy leant farther forward.

  ‘I was only at school for a term or two. I had a private tutor most of the time.’

  Jimmy nodded. He said with sympathy, ‘Aye. Were you sick?’

  ‘No.’ The Colonel ate another mouthful before replying. ‘My people thought it was a better idea.’ The Colonel busied himself with the wine list. He felt uncomfortable. ‘Sounds strange, I know.’

  ‘Not all that.’ Jimmy shook his head. ‘Hell, I might as well not have gone to school at all. I spent half my time playing games in class and all that. I never listened to the teacher.’ There was a likeness between Jimmy and Jock which people often noticed. They were both heavy men, although Jimmy was only in his middle thirties, and they had the same forthright manner. But Jimmy smiled much more. As Adjutant he behaved to the subalterns much as a friendly sales manager behaves towards his representatives. He joked them into doing things. But he was not capable of the same sort of banter this evening. When he remembered his academy days he smiled, but he soon grew serious again. It was like him, just as it would have been unlike Jock, to fall in with the Colonel’s suggestion that they drink a bottle of claret. He certainly would not have noticed had he been served with a glass of burgundy instead, but it was quite obvious that Barrow was something of an expert, and Jimmy drew him on the subject. Then at last he returned to the subject of the Colonel’s previous employment. Barrow shrugged.

  ‘Most of my time was spent with M.I.5.’

  ‘That must have been a terrible strain.’

  The Colonel nodded. He did not seem to wa
nt to discuss his work. ‘It was quite enjoyable: I suppose it took a lot out of one.’ But it had not been as adventurous as it sounded.

  ‘I’m sure it did. Whatever they say it’s that nervous work, and brain work too, that tires a man out. Did you have much leave before you came up here?’

  ‘Ten days.’

  Jimmy smiled. ‘And you wonder why you were a bit ratty tonight? Ten days is not enough. It seems to me you’ve been very patient.’

  ‘There were actually other things …’ The Colonel looked up doubtfully, and Jimmy was staring at him with solemn sympathy. ‘I had a marriage you know. I had a wife.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all over now really. But that was one of the reasons I accepted this job, you know: a change. I’d been rather lonely, I suppose.’ He paused, and started again. ‘I think perhaps all of us who were prisoners in the East are a little cranky now. D’you think that?’

  ‘Och no,’ Jimmy said, into his glass.

  ‘No? I do. All of us who were in Jap hands. That’s what my wife believed, anyway. She was quite sure of it. She had a friend too, whose husband … well, there are hundreds of examples. I suppose we got a touch of the sun. Or …’ Quite suddenly he decided not to go on. He just stopped.

  Jimmy moved his glass in a little circle, on the tablecloth, and some cigarette ash piled up beside it.

  ‘Och,’ he said, ‘a change of colonel always takes time. When the next man comes along it’ll be just the same.’ And the Colonel leant back. He finished his claret and collected himself.

  ‘Oh, good heavens, yes,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t pay too much attention to me. These damned social things always unnerve me. But I knew before I came here what it would be like. They told me about Jock.’

  ‘Jock’s the hell of a man.’

  ‘A great soldier.’

  Jimmy said, ‘You’re not a dog in the manger, Colonel,’ and Barrow shrugged.