I cut off McAuslan’s impassioned denials, explained to him again that his associates were simply making game of him, told the rest of them to shut up, assured him that I personally had every confidence in his physical and spiritual hygiene, and was turning away when, just as the truck was revving up, a snatch of conversation from its cargo reached my ears over the Jocks’ chatter.
‘Hey, Toamie, ye hear aboot Karl Marx?’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Groucho’s brither.’
‘Away, he’s no’.’
‘He’s a bluidy Russian.’
‘How wid you know? Onywye, Karl Marx’s feyther was a charge hand in a pub at Tollcross . . .’
The truck rolled away, no doubt with lofty debate about Karl Marx’s parentage continuing (and Private McAuslan still loudly boasting his freedom from infection), and I pondered for a minute, as I watched the other trucks rumble past with their cargoes for quarantine, how these odd catch-phrases and slogans flew about Scottish battalions. Totally irrelevant, all of them. Only an hour earlier I had heard the M.O. mention Karl Marx, by way of persiflage, and now the Jocks had caught wind of it, and the great revolutionary’s name would become part of their jargon for a space, a byword; there would be Karl Marx jokes, and he would be scribbled on walls, and fitted into marching-songs, and then he would vanish as suddenly from their culture, leaving a mystery, like Kilroy and Chad, for etymologists and philologists to theorise over – supposing they ever heard of it.
It took the best part of five hours to clear the town, with the trucks thundering to and fro, foot patrols beating up the bars and cafés and every conceivable haunt that might contain a Serviceman, Highland or otherwise, and a loud-speaker jeep touring the streets brassily ordering everyone back to barracks. The townsfolk themselves, who were used to the eccentricities of the British military, paid no attention; they lounged at the doorways of the Italian bars, or squatted on the street corners, or hurried past, like sheathed black shadows, in the direction of the Suk. I wondered if any of our fellows had strayed down there – it had only recently been placed out of bounds, as a result of nationalist agitation, culminating in a few outbreaks of rioting which had been dispersed by the local police, with the military standing by with fixed bayonets and empty magazines. Its only conceivable attraction at night-time (apart from the doubtful thrill of wandering in a genuine Arab city which hadn’t changed much from the days of Dragut Reis and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa) was the native bordellos, which were not widely patronised. Apart from the fact that we were a youngish battalion, and young soldiers in those days were far less addicted to brothel-creeping than their anxious elders supposed, it was recognised that the Suk could be a highly dangerous place. Besides, like McAuslan, they had been to the M.O.’s lectures.
By two o‘clock the operation was virtually complete. I learned then over the signal set from battalion that the R.S.M. had accounted for all but about half a dozen Jocks, and it was likely that the last foot-patrols would bring them in. From my point of view it had been a tedious rather than a troublesome business – indeed, the only real bother had occurred at the Salvation Army Reading Room, of all places, where one of our more studious privates, a graduate of St Andrews, had resented his ejection at the hands of one of Sergeant McGarry’s provost corporals. As far as I could gather from a distraught Miss Partridge, the formidable spinster who ran the place, the root of the trouble had been the corporal’s attitude towards reading in general, and this had somehow been taken by our private as a slight upon Goethe, whose works he had been studying. I wasn’t clear how matters had developed, but expressions like ‘philistine’ and ‘hun-loving bastard’ had been bandied, and then the furniture had started to fly in earnest, the place being half-wrecked before the champion of German literature had been hauled off to the regimental sin-bin.
‘It was a disgraceful scene,’ said Miss Partridge, ‘but really — what did we fight the war for? If one cannot carry the works of a distinguished author on one’s shelves, foreigner though he be, without this sort of thing happening . . . well, it reminds one of the worst excesses of the Brownshirts.’
I told her I doubted if freedom of publication had really been at issue, since I questioned whether the corporal’s literary taste and prejudice rose much above the Beano and the Rangers football programme notes, but she said she would speak to the Padre about it.
I soothed her with apologies and promises that the battalion would clean up and make good any damage, advised her to go to the hospital for vaccination, and walked wearily back to the ‘Blue Heaven’ and my temporary H.Q., which was the back of a 15-cwt truck containing my signal set.
The M.T. sergeant, who was holding the fort with about half a dozen Jocks, reported that the last foot-patrols had come in, bringing with them five Jocks who had been discovered in various holes and corners; he had despatched them to the battalion. I raised the Adjutant on the set, told him that seemed to be the lot, and could we now come home to bed.
He said ‘Hold on’, there was muttered consultation audible through the crackling of the set, and then he came through again.
‘Something’s come up,’ he said. ‘We got your last five Jocks, but there are still two unaccounted for.′ More crackling. ‘Fagan and Hamilton – both C Company.’
‘Well, God knows where they are,’ I said. ‘We’ve been everywhere except the bottom of the bay. And the Suk, of course.’
‘Yes,’ he said, and there was a heavy pause. Then he went on: ‘Listen, Dand, it doesn’t look too good. We’ve been checking around in the last hour, and those two are definite contacts – I mean they were in Hunter’s company in the last forty-eight hours. Dand – you hearing me O.K.? They’re contacts – we’ve got to get them back.’
‘I’m hearing you,’ I said. ‘Any suggestions where we should look?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and through the static I could hear him taking a big breath. I knew then it was going to be bad news.
‘Listen carefully,’ the crackling voice went on. ‘We think they’re both A.W.O.L. In fact, we know Fagan is – he hasn’t been seen since the day before last, when he was with Hunter in the Uaddan bar. Hamilton’s been gone since noon yesterday – but he’s a pal of Fagan’s, so they may be together. And you know what Fagan’s like.’
I did; everyone did. A bad man from way back, with a crime sheet from here to Fort George. Not the same kind of bad man as Wee Wullie, whose peacetime service was one long drunken brawl but who was worth a hundred when the shot started flying, or the egregious Phimister of Support Company, who had gone absent almost weekly since his enlistment but had passed up the chance to escape from the Japanese at Singapore to let another man go in his place. Fagan was a real Ishmael, a slovenly, brutish, dishonest menace, a deserter in peace and war, whose conscription had been hailed with relief by the police of Glasgow’s Marine Division. Since then he had been the regimental Public Enemy No. 1, and his periodic absences had been almost welcome.
But this time he might be carrying smallpox with him. I clamped the sweaty ear-piece to my head and listened.
‘We’ve been digging around,’ went on the Adjutant. ‘We think he’s in the Suk, and that he’s maybe trying a home run.’
‘You mean, all the way to Blighty?’
‘Yes. He’s been borrowing money.′ The Adjutant’s voice was beginning to crack with the strain of talking through the static. ‘Deserters have found ships before; the Colonel thinks Fagan′s maybe on the same lark. We’ve got to stop him.’
That went without saying. A smallpox carrier bound for Britain – the thought was enough to freeze the blood.
‘But the Suk – ’ I was beginning.
‘I know – but we think we know where he might be. You know the Astoria? Well, the rumour is it’s the local equivalent of the Pioneer and Finlayson Green. You know what I mean.2 It’s just a chance, but it’s all we’ve got. So it’s worth trying, at any rate.’
‘You’ve been doing overtime on the intelli
gence work, haven’t you?’ I said, admiringly. ‘But look, Mike, isn’t this a job for the redcaps?’
‘No, it’s not!’ I started violently as the Colonel’s voice rasped out of the earphones – the old villain had been listening in. ‘Official intervention in the Suk is out of the question in the present delicate state of affairs.’ He meant the trouble there had been with the nationalists, and he was probably right. But then came what was, for him, the real reason. ‘And I’m not turning the damned military police out for one of our people. MacNeill? Are you listening, MacNeill?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m listening, sir. Sir.’
‘Right. Anyway, we don’t know for certain that he’s in this blasted brothel or whatever it is. But it’s my guess, knowing the fellow’s record, that he is deserting, and that that’s where he’ll be. If he’s not, we’ve lost nothing by looking. If he is, I want him back. Got that?’
I said I had got it, and the Adjutant came on again.
‘You’ve still got Keil —’ (this was the M.T. sergeant) ’ – and some chaps? Good. Don’t take more than four. Just a quick tool in, through the Astoria like a dose of salts, and out again – right? Nothing to it.’
This is the kind of hearty instruction that turns subalterns’ hair grey before their time. My guess was he’d be calling me ‘old boy’ in a minute.
‘And don’t, for God’s sake, cause a diplomatic incident, old boy,’ he went on. ‘Just a quick tool in, all right —’
‘Yes, and out again,’ I said. ‘I know. Mike, this is bloody dicey —’
‘Piece of cake, laddie. Oh, one other thing – he may be armed.’ I made egg-laying noises as he added almost apologetically: ‘Seems he had a German Luger in his kitbag – you know what the Jocks are like for souvenirs – well, it’s gone.’
‘Oh, great,’ I said. ‘Sure he hasn’t got an open razor and a set of brass knuckles as well?’
‘Knowing Fagan, he quite probably has. Look, take it easy. There’s a fair chance he isn’t even there – in which case we’ll have to get the redcaps —’ It was probably imagination, but I thought I heard a Colonel-like snarl in the background. ‘Now, in you go. Good luck. Anything else?’
I tried to think of something crushing, but couldn’t.
‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘that Karl Marx’s ancestors emigrated to Russia from Inverary?’ I listened to his anxious gabble of inquiry for a minute, and switched off.
So, there we were. A possibly armed potential deserter perhaps holed-up in a dive in a sensitive native quarter. The diversions the Army can think up for its junior officers are nobody’s business. It’s like a mixture of running an asylum and being a trigger-man for Al Capone.
I called up Keil and his worthies, and we conferred by the tailboard. The street was very quiet now – it was almost 3 a.m. – but there was a good moon, which would be handy in the unlit Suk.
‘Anyone know the Astoria?’ I asked, and after an embarrassed pause one of the Jocks reluctantly admitted that he did.
‘Right, you’re with me. And you two, and you, Sergeant Keil.’ I told them quickly what the operation was, and I’d have sworn that they looked pleased as they listened. Anything for a tear, as they say in Glasgow. They looked handy men — but suddenly I wished they were my own platoon Jocks – the massive Wee Wullie, the saturnine Fletcher and the wicked Forbes – yes, even the great unwashed McAuslan, who could, in his own words, ‘take a lend o′ anybody — and his big brother’. Not, when I thought about it, that we were likely to run into violent trouble—I hoped.
The Suk began at the old city wall, only a hundred yards from the ‘Blue Heaven’, and once through the massive stone gateway you were in another world. Twisting, unpaved streets, black and shuttered houses jammed crazily against each other, with occasionally a light filtering through an ornately-latticed window or from a dimly-lit doorway; shadowy figures standing back under overhangs or moving in the dark alleys on either side – it was just like Pepe le Moko’s Casbah, complete with romantic Middle Eastern night sounds, like:
‘Whaur ye goin’, Jock? Looking for bonnie lassie, yes? Come on in – hey, mac, where’s your kilt?’ And chants anent Auntie Mary and her canary. If you doubt this, you should know that the Arab is possibly the best imitator of the Scottish accent in either hemisphere, and loves to air his knowledge of the patois. So far from making a silent, unseen foray into the Suk, we were followed with interest by commentators on either side, and invitations from blessed damozels leaning out of the second-storey windows. I plodded grimly on, while the Jocks replied in kind, and presently we finished up in front of the neighbourhood’s three-star caravanserai, a substantial building in mouldering stucco with ′Astoria′ across the top of its peeling porch, a well-closed front door, piles of garbage out in front, and an admiring crowd watching us from either end of the street. There were lights in some of the windows, showing through dirty curtains, and the whole place looked as attractive as a disused gypsy caravan.
I confess I wondered what course of action to take. By rights I should have sent a man to guard the back door, but such was the town planning of the Suk that this would probably have entailed a walk of half a mile and then getting lost. I looked at the massive front door. Humphrey Bogart, who must have been in this situation dozens of times, would just have sidled in, somehow, shot a couple of hoods, seized a smouldering-eyed beauty by the wrist to make her drop her dagger, laughed mirthlessly, browbeaten Sydney Greenstreet, and then taken Fagan in an arm-lock and bundled him out to a waiting taxi. However, there were no taxis in the Suk, so I just knocked on the door. It seemed the obvious thing to do.
If no one had answered, frankly I’d have been at a loss, but presently the door opened, a vague female shape appeared in a very tight blue dress, a slim hand holding an unlit cigarette emerged from the shadows, and a husky voice said:
“Allo, dolleeng – gotta light?’
I hadn’t, as it happened, so I just said: ‘Good evening’, and as near as a toucher added: ‘I wonder, do you happen to have a Mr Fagan staying in the hotel?’ But fortunately, just as she was saying: ‘C’mon een, Jock – breeng you’ friends’, Sergeant Keil, a highly practical man, decided to take a hand. Where he came from, you didn’t loiter outside a potentially hostile front door, in case the occupants dropped a sewing-machine on you from an upper window. He was past me and into the dingy hallway before I could carry the courtesies any further. The female shape squealed and disappeared, the three Jocks surged in after Keil, more or less bearing me with them, and my education in ferreting out deserters. began from that moment.
What you actually do is go up the stairs three at a time, flinging open every door you come to, and waking the dead with your shouting. If the inmates show resentment, you pass on, leaving the door open, whereupon they come out to express their indignation, and your associates, following some distance behind, can identify them and see they’re not the men you’re after. There were, in fact, four rooms on each of the Astoria’s three floors, and I wouldn’t have believed you could get so many Arabs, lascars, Negroes and their assorted ladies into twelve apartments without everyone suffocating. Within sixty seconds of Keil’s eruption through the front door, there was a milling mass of multi-coloured humanity, in various stages of undress from full jellabah and boots to complete nudity, on the first two landings. I was struggling upwards past a grossly overweight lady who, I think, was Italian, and shrieking to wake the dead – and one of the deserters, Private Hamilton, was emerging from a doorway on the third floor, his mouth wide with fright, and then doubling back towards his room.
Keil got him by the ankle, they thrashed about in the doorway, and one of the other Jocks hauled Hamilton upright and jammed him against the wall. He was naked except for a pair of khaki slacks, and his first words were those of the Glasgow keelie trapped and helpless:
‘Don’t hit me, mister!’
‘Where’s Fagan?′ snapped Keil, just as I got free of Madame Butterfly and about eleven small
brown children who were darting about the stairway like tadpoles, and came pounding up to the top floor. Behind and below me it sounded like the sinking of the Titanic; there were pursuing feet, but as I reached the landing the largest of Keil’s Jocks slipped past me on to the top step, effectively barring the way up.
‘Where’s Fagan?’ Keil was shouting again, and as his fist drew back the cornered Hamilton said:
‘Eh? Eh?’ and jerked his head towards the closed doorway next to his own. Keil threw himself at it, but it was too stout for him. He thumped the panels, shouting:
‘Fagan! Ye’ve had it! Come oot!’
I glanced down over the rickety banister. In the dim light of the stairwell two rings of faces, one at each landing, were staring up – every colour from white to jet black, mouths open, frightened, bewildered, angry, and, above all, vocal. My Italian woman seemed to be dying on a permanent Top C, a large brown man with woolly silver hair was shouting and shaking his fist, and the rest of them were just generally joining in. I began to feel decidedly uncomfortable – not that they looked terribly dangerous, but it seemed to me our unorthodox entry into the Hotel Astoria was going to cause some stir in the neighbourhood generally, with possible ensuing diplomatic complications. But curiously, my chief emotion was a feeling rather like shame – at having roused and terrified so many ordinary citizens, and created bedlam in their hotel. It seemed a bit much – and then I remembered Fagan was a deserter possibly carrying smallpox.
Keil and another Jock were trying to burst in the door, still without success. Hamilton, released now, was standing pale and petrified; he was a gangly, freckled youth with a weak face and sandy hair.
′Hamilton,′ I said. ‘Fagan’s in there – anyone with him?’
He licked his lips. ‘A bint.’
I motioned Keil away from the door, put my head to the panels and called: ‘Fagan!’ No reply. I tried again, and this time there was the clatter of something being over-turned, and a female squeal, instantly hushed.