by CL Skelton
Andrew lowered himself gratefully into one of the heavy leather armchairs which they had moved so as to be able to watch what was going on outside. ‘Well,’ he said, sipping his drink, ‘what’s going to happen in South Africa? This must be pretty worrying to you with Maud on her way there.’
‘Aye, it is, though I couldna persuade her not to go. As to what’s going to happen, I can tell you that, all right. I doubt that you’ll believe me, though.’
‘Try me,’ said Andrew. ‘The invincible Boer?’ he added with a little smile.
‘Och, no, man, it’s not as simple as that, and there’s nae point in you mocking them. If yon bugger Joe Chamberlain gets his way, we’ll be fighting them soon enough, though, and we’ll lick them, but it’ll cost us dear. Never forget that they’ve already beaten us once at Majuba. If they did it again, it would mean the beginning of the end of the British Empire; and the Germans and the French would all be there picking up the pieces.’
‘Oh, come now,’ said Andrew.
‘Nae, Andrew, I mean it. These men that we are going to be fighting, and mark my words there will be fighting, only oursel’s can understand. They’re like the auld Highlander.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘They havna got an army as we understand it. Their whole nation is their army. Every man jack o’ them is a soldier and a damned good one. Every one o’ them can ride and shoot, he’s been weaned on it. And, damn and blast oor lords and masters, they’re better equipped than we are.’
‘We have the Lee-Metford.’
‘Aye, and they have the Mauser,’ retorted Willie.
‘There’s not much between them.’
‘Och, awa’, man. One press of the thumb and they’ve got five rounds loaded while oor laddies are putting them in one at a time till their magazine’s full. That alone makes every one of them worth three of us, for I have no doubt that they can get off fifteen rounds to every five of ours.’
‘Well,’ said Andrew, ‘the Lee-Enfield is coming along fairly soon; that should put us on even terms.’
‘Aye,’ said Willie, ‘they’ve got them in store already. But you ken what those cheese-paring bastards at the War House are going to do?’
‘What?’
‘They’ll keep them in store until the Metfords are worn out or their owners are deed. Then they might start to issue them.’
‘You’re not very encouraging,’ said Andrew.
‘I see bloody little to be encouraged aboot,’ replied Willie. ‘I think that it’s worse. One of ours canna match one of them in firepower. Any o’ them can outride the best of our cavalry, and just now there are more of them than there are of us. You havena seen what they call the High Veld, Andrew. I have. I mind I was there fighting the Zulus, when I was only a drummer boy. I saw it then and that’s where the fighting’s going tae be. It’s mile after mile o’ nothing, it’s bigger than all of Scotland, and it is just aboot the worst place I have ever seen to mount an attack over. There’s nae point in trying tae tak’ what they call a toon. It’s never mair than a dozen or so wood houses and a church and they’re no going tae sit there and wait for us.’
‘Well, they do say that Buller is raising a corps to go to the Cape.’
‘Aye,’ said Willie, ‘but they’ll no move. Not until the war starts, and by the time he gets there the Boer will have been having his own way for a lang, lang time.’
‘May I come in?’
They both looked around at Ian, who had just entered the room.
‘Hello, Uncle Willie,’ he said, ‘you are spending a lot of time here just now.’
‘Och, well,’ said Willie, ‘there’s nothing much over at Cluny just at the moment wi’ Maud away and all.’
‘I thought that you were at the barracks today,’ said Andrew.
‘I’ve only just got back,’ replied Ian. ‘We’ve got our marching orders.’
Both of the older men showed interest. ‘What’s that?’ asked Willie.
‘When?’ asked Andrew.
‘We move at the beginning of August.’
‘Well, come on, lad, tell us where,’ said Andrew. ‘India again?’
‘Lord, no, nothing so interesting. Aldershot, so I suppose that will mean South Africa.’
‘We’ve just been talking about South Africa,’ said Willie. ‘How do you feel about it, Ian?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Ian. ‘I think it will be big; probably bigger than we’ve ever seen. Did you know that the rumour is that they’re not going to send any Indian troops there?’
‘Why ever not?’ asked Andrew. ‘The Indian regiments are some of the best we have.’
‘I know,’ replied Ian. ‘But my information is that if it comes to war, they want to keep it a white man’s war. No native troops, no Indians, only us.’
‘I dinna know why they don’t just hand the whole damned place over to the Boers on a plate. The Zulu is right behind us and the Bantu, after the way they’ve been treated by the Boer. He’d get no native help. Are you sure of your facts, Ian?’
‘Well, it’s just a rumour at the moment.’
‘And I hope to God it stays that way.’
‘Is the battalion anyway near up to strength?’ asked Andrew.
‘We’re within a hundred and fifty of establishment, and we have a fair chance of making that up before we go. I have Sergeant Leinie out at the moment on a recruiting drive. Amazing the way that man’s come on. I’d rate him as just about the best N.C.O. we have.’
‘Any hope of the Enfields?’ asked Willie.
‘’Fraid not. I’ve been on to the War House; they don’t seem to want to know. They say that they haven’t got any.’
‘Och, they’ve got them all right,’ said Willie. ‘They’re sitting on them and hoping they’ll grow.’
‘We’re getting another Maxim, though.’
‘Aye, well, that’ll help, if you ken how to use it,’ said Willie.
‘Come on, Uncle Willie,’ said Ian, laughing. ‘The army’s changing, you know. We study these things now.’
‘Aye, and you’d be as well tae study yon johnny you’re going to be fighting. It’s no going tae be easy.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Andrew, ‘your Uncle Willie feels rather depressed over the whole business.’
‘Of course, nobody wants a war,’ said Ian. ‘But we can’t let the Boers go on the way they are behaving. They don’t allow the blacks any rights before the law, and the uitlanders, that’s us, have no voice whatsoever in the Transvaal or the Orange Free State.’
‘You’re sounding a wee bittie like Chamberlain,’ said Willie.
‘Oh, no,’ replied Ian, laughing. ‘Not I. I just came in because I thought you’d like to hear the news.’
‘Will you be taking Victoria with you?’ asked Andrew.
‘Not this time, though it will be difficult to persuade her not to come. As I see it, Aldershot is just a staging post, and there’s no chance of wives being allowed on a trooper. Not if we’re going straight on to active service.’
‘You’re the C.O.,’ said Andrew.
‘And I’m not going to take advantage of that,’ replied Ian. ‘I wondered if you could have a word with her, Father, and try to persuade her to stay here.’
Andrew looked out of the window to where the family were just finishing tea. ‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘But you know what she is.’
‘Aye,’ said Willie, ‘you did all right there, Ian. And she didn’t do too badly, either.’
‘Well,’ said Ian, ‘I suppose that I had better go and break the news to her. Wish me luck.’
It was not easy, as Ian had foreseen. Victoria dug her very small feet very firmly in and refused point blank to stay up in Scotland when the regiment moved to Aldershot. Finally they reached a compromise, Victoria reluctantly agreeing to stay at the house in Charlotte Street while Ian was down there, at least for as long as it took them to find out what was happening.
At about the same time Ian had entere
d his father’s study, Alasdair Maclaren, no relation to the Maclarens of Culbrech House, was setting out from camp. He was on his way to climb the little hill which ran up towards Glen Cannich just before you get into Beauly. Alasdair was seventeen years old and had served with the regiment for a full year. In that period he had completed his training and earned himself the right to be addressed by his juniors as ‘trained soldier’.
He had joined the regiment just after his sixteenth birthday. It had all happened one evening in the ‘bobbie’s hoose’ in Drumnadrochit. From these headquarters Alasdair’s father pursued his duties of keeping the law as village constable. Sitting at the big wooden table in their kitchen along with his nine brothers and sisters, he had told them, over their tea of bread and jam, that his friend, Donnie Buchannan, had joined the Gordon Highlanders at Fort George.
Upon receipt of this information his sisters, all five of them, had taunted him and accused him of being afraid to become a soldier. This rankled and Alasdair said to himself, ‘I’ll show them whether or not I’m as good a man as Donnie Buchannan.’ The following day he took the steamer into Inverness and sought out Sergeant Leinie of the Maclaren Highlanders who was recruiting in the city, and Alasdair had taken the Queen’s shilling. From there he was taken to the barracks at Beauly and kitted out in Highland kilt, sporran, red tunic, and the rest. All of this, the glamour of the uniform, was, he now realized, the real attraction that the army held for boys of his age.
The initial glamour had palled within a very short time. His first months consisted of square-bashing, polishing and cleaning, and kit inspections and rifle drill and musketry and again square-bashing, and so on in endless repetition. But Alasdair had stuck it out and had already been noticed on more than one occasion for his soldierly bearing by Regimental-Sergeant-Major Gibson.
Alasdair was not a very big man. In looks he in no way resembled the Maclarens of the big house, for he had the black hair and the blue eyes of the true Celt. He also had superstitions, inbred for centuries, and they were the main reason for his journey that day. Alasdair had decided that after the happenings of today, he would go and talk with Marhi Crow. Crow was not her real name, of course. She was called Marhi Crow because she was black. Her hair was black, her eyes were dark, and there was a touch of the Romany in her looks and in the colour of her skin. Marhi Crow had the sight.
Alasdair had never been to see her before, but he knew about people who had the sight and who could tell you what was to befall you, and sometimes warn of disasters to come. Many had the sight in the glens of the Highlands, but Marhi was something special. For Alasdair the exercise was a bit frightening, but he wanted to know what was happening.
The signs he had seen were nothing to do with foreknowledge, they were all of a very practical nature. That morning they had all been paraded and marched around to the quartermaster’s stores. There they had been issued with two tunics, one khaki drill and one khaki serge, khaki webbing and ammunition pouches, even khaki spats to cover their white diced hose. And then the hat. It looked funny, more of a helmet. It was khaki, too, and so was the pugaree which he would have to practise binding round it. All in all it was an awful comedown from the bright red coat with its braided Inverness skirt and cuffs and the feather bonnet with its proud cockade. Rumour had been rife in the barrack room after dinner at noon, and the trouble with the Boers was high on everyone’s mind. Only one thing seemed certain and that was that there was going to be fighting to be done, and that the fighting was not going to be anywhere near home.
He got to the door of Marhi’s bothy with its straw thatch and its little wisp of blue peat smoke rising straight from the hole in the centre of the roof, for even though the day was warm and still, Marhi would never let her lumb go out.
He had never seen Marhi before and he hardly knew what to expect. Probably a haggard old crone with warts on her nose and a tall hat?
Summoning up his courage, he shoved his head in through the open door and into the blackness and called:
‘Is onybody theere?’
Alasdair got the shock of his life when in reply a voice from behind him demanded, ‘And what would you be wanting, Alasdair Maclaren?’
He whipped around and faced the speaker. She was dark, all right, just as he had been told, but she was young, and she was beautiful, made more so by the dark-haired child on her hip.
‘I look for Marhi Crow.’
‘Then you have seen her, so best be on your way,’ she said in the carefully enunciated English of the native Gaelic speaker.
He found himself staring at the child. He had heard of it, of course. It was said to have been fathered by her familiar, in spite of its resemblance to John Doig, the butcher from Struy. He pulled himself together, fighting the temptation to run away down the hill, and with forced casualness he said, ‘Och, I was just passin’.’
‘And I would suppose,’ she replied, ‘that you always stick your nose into people’s houses whenever you are just passing them?’
‘No, I dinna.’
‘You came to see me, did you not?’
‘Aye.’
‘Then you must have had something you wanted to see me about.’
‘Aye.’
‘Then do not stand there dreeching, and tell me why it is that you have come?’
‘I heered ma faither talk aboot you, and he says that you hae the sight.’
Marhi’s face suddenly became serious. ‘That is not for any man to say, and the sight, if I have it, is not for the likes of you.’
‘But I want tae know. I can pay if that’s what you want. I hae money.’ He took a florin out of his sporran and extended his hand towards her with the coin lying on his open palm.
She raised her head to look him in the eyes and suddenly her head darted forward as if it was a snake striking, and she spat on the coin. ‘Away with you and your money. You must know that the sight cannot be bought.’
He pushed the florin back into his sporran and quite suddenly she put the child down and seized his hand, holding it tight between her palms. He watched her as she seemed to go far, far away from him, and he felt a shiver running all the way down his back.
‘You did see something, and dinna tell me that you didna.’
Her expression came back to normal, and she looked at him kindly, but with a certain sadness. ‘Go to the officer and tell him your real age,’ she said.
‘I canna dae that. I’ll be oot o’ the army if I dae that,’ he protested. ‘Besides, they wouldna believe me.’
‘Then I cannot help you, though I would if I could. I will give you a promise, though.’
‘A promise?’
‘Yes. You will not die before you see me again.’
‘Then I’ll never come back and I’ll live forever,’ he said.
‘But because of what I have seen, you can bed with me tonight, if you wish.’
‘Och, woman, you’re daft,’ he said, but she only smiled sadly.
Something inside Alasdair snapped, and without another word he turned and ran off down the hill as if all the devils in hell were after him.
Regimental-Sergeant-Major Frankie Gibson knew. That is, he knew as much as his commanding officer did, and he was not looking forward to the prospect. At least, that was the impression he gave to Sergeant Leinie. Sergeant Leinie had just presented him with a batch of twenty-three new recruits. They had been kitted out, and they looked awful.
Frankie Gibson took a long pull at his pint of ale, and thumped the bar counter of the sergeants’ mess.
‘De ye think that we’re going tae be able tae fight a war wi’ that lot?’
The sergeants’ mess consisted, to all intents and purposes, of three rooms. The dining room, where they ate the best food in the regiment; the anteroom, which was almost always empty; and the bar, which was hardly ever empty. The bar itself was a large spacious room with long picture windows heavily curtained. The curtains had been a gift from Sir Andrew Maclaren. Most of the senior N.C.O.s gathered
here when they were off duty. A small group who were sitting playing dominoes at a table beside the stand which held the trophies won, in various sporting activities, by the members of the mess, looked up as Frankie hammered on the bar, and turned back to their game before allowing themselves to grin. It was highly dangerous to allow the R.S.M. to see himself as a subject for mirth.
Most of them would have denied that Frankie had changed at all over the years, though in fact his hair was now beginning to show touches of grey and the furrows on his bronzed weather-beaten face were deeper. But his eyes were as bright and searching as ever and he held in deep contempt those under him who were unable to flout the law with the skill with which he had done as a junior soldier.
‘They’re always like this,’ said Leinie, replying to his question. ‘Anyway I say the Boer’ll back doon and then we’ll nae ha’ a war tae fecht wi’ ony lot.’ He took a pull at his beer. ‘I tell you what, though, yon Donaldson, he’s a funny yin, that.’
‘Whae’s Donaldson?’
‘The yin that talks like an officer.’
‘Och aye,’ said Frankie. ‘Ye get ’em like that sometimes. They mak’ guid sodgers, though. I’ve seen them before.’ He remembered Jamie Patterson, gentleman ranker, who had died in India. Most of them were like Jamie; they had nothing left to live for so there was nothing that they feared. ‘It takes all kinds tae make an army,’ he said. ‘And if he’s a guid sodger, shoots straight and keeps his boots clean, I’ll ask nae mair of him.’
‘De ye think that mebbe I should nae ha’ taken him?’ asked Leinie.
‘Och, mannie, ye’ve got tae take what ye can get. They’re no men that ye bring in. They’re babies and brutes and beggars and worse. Its oor job tae turn them into men. By God, we’ll dae it, too. We move oot o’ here in just over a month, and if by then there’s one of these men that I wouldna want at me side in action, I’ll hae somebody’s guts for garters. Have anither pint.’
In the officers’ mess Robert Maclaren was lounging in a leather armchair, his shoes propped on a small table while he admired the crease in the trousers of his mess kit. His was the unenviable task of looking after D Company, which was not really a company at all. It was the training company, or squad, or whatever you cared to call it, where all new recruits came for initial training. As soon as they were showing the slightest signs of becoming soldiers, they were taken away and shared out among the other, more illustrious companies. Then D Company waited for the next lot.
