‘Evening, Carlo.’ Errol rapped the bar. ‘Antiquary and Glenfiddich and two waters, at your good pleasure.’ He seemed in fine fettle, glancing bright-eyed over the crowd. ‘What’s to do?’
‘Marbruk’s dead.’
‘You don’t say? That’s a turn-up.’ He whistled softly, fitting a cigarette into his holder. ‘How’d it happen?’
I indicated the stout civilian, who was continuing.
. . . probably one of his political rivals. You know what they’re like – pack of jackals. With Marbruk gone, there’ll be a fine scramble among his lieutenants.’ ‘It wasn’t one of the gang with him,’ said a police captain.
‘Burgess saw the body and talked to informers. Shot twice, head and heart, almost certainly with a rifle, from a roof-top.’
‘Good God! A sniper? Doesn’t sound like a bazaar-wallah!’
‘Whoever it was, here’s to him,’ said the stout civilian. ‘He probably saved the town in the nick of time.’
Our whisky arrived and Errol studied the pale liquid with satisfaction. ‘First today. Slàinte mhath.’ He sipped contentedly. ‘Yes, that’s the good material. Had dinner?’
‘Too late for me, thanks. I’ll have a sandwich in the mess. I’ve got a report to write.’
‘How Horatius kept the bridge?’ He grinned sardonically. ‘You can leave me out of it.’
‘Don’t be soft! It was your idea that did it!’
‘They won’t like it any better for that. Oh, well, please yourself.’
‘Look, if it wasn’t a rival wog, who was it?’ someone was exclaiming. ‘It can’t have been police or military, without authority – I mean to say, it’s simple murder.’
‘And just Marbruk — the king-pin. A political rival would have tried to knock out that right-hand man of his, Gamal Whatsit, wouldn’t he?’
‘Well, perhaps . . . or it may just have been a personal feud . . .’
Errol was lounging back on his stool, studying the menu on the bar, but I had the impression he was listening, not reading. I noticed that like me he was still in K.D., belt, and revolver, and less spruce than usual: there was a smudge of oil on his shirt and one sleeve was dirty. He looked tired but otherwise at peace with the world.
‘When you’ve finished inspecting me, MacNeill,’ he said, still scanning the menu, ‘how about getting them in again?’
‘Sorry. Two more, Carlo.’
‘Anyway, it was a damned fine shot,’ said the police captain. ‘Two damned fine shots – and as you say, just in time, from our point of view.’
‘You won’t break a leg looking for the murderer, eh?’
‘Oh, there’ll have to be an inquiry, of course . . .’
‘I’ll bet there will,’ Errol murmured, and laughed softly – and something in the sound chilled my spine as I put my glass to my lips. Sometimes a sudden, impossible thought hits you, and in the moment it takes to swallow a sip of whisky you know, beyond doubt, that it’s not only possible, but true. It fitted all too well . . . ‘killing Huns with cheese-wire by night’ . . . the expertise with small arms . . . the rumours of anti-terrorist brutalities in Palestine . . . the scientific destruction of a boxing opponent . . . the cold-blooded nerve of his bluff at Kantara Bridge . . . all that I knew of the man’s character . . .
‘Steak, I think,’ said Errol, closing the menu. ‘About a ton of Châteaubriand garni — that’s parsley on top, to you – preceded by delicious tomato soup. Sure I can’t tempt you? What’s up laddie, you look ruptured?’ The whimsical glance, the raised eyebrow, and just for an instant the smile froze on the handsome face. He glanced past me at the debating group, and then the smile was back, the half-mocking regard that was almost a challenge. ‘The cop’s right, don’t you agree? A damned good shot. You used to be a sniper – what d’you think?’
‘Someone knew his business.’
He studied me, and nodded. ‘Just as well, wasn’t it? So . . . as our stout friend would say – here’s to him.’ He raised his glass. ‘Okay?’
‘Slàinté, I said, automatically. There was no point in saying anything else.
We drank, and Errol turned on his stool to the dining-room arch immediately behind him. A little Italian head-waiter, full of consequence, was bowing to a couple in evening dress and checking his booking-board.
‘Table for one, please,’ said Errol, and the little man bared his teeth in a professional smile.
‘Certainly, sir, this way – ’ His face suddenly fell, and he straightened up. ‘I regret, sir – for dinner we have to insist on the neck-tie.’
‘You don’t mean it? What, after a day like this? Oh, come off it!’
‘I am sorry, sir.’ The head-waiter was taking in Errol’s informal, not to say untidy, appearance. ‘It is our rule.’
‘All right, lend me a tie, then,’ said Errol cheerfully.
‘I am sorry, sir.’ The waiter was on his dignity. ‘We have no ties.’
Errol sat slowly upright on his stool, giving him a long, thoughtful look, and then to my horror laid a hand on his revolver-butt. The head-waiter squeaked and jumped, I had a vision of inkpots being shot off desks – and then Errol’s hand moved from the butt up the thin pistol lanyard looped round his neck, and smoothly tightened its slip-knot into a tie.
‘Table for one?’ he asked sweetly, and the head-waiter hesitated, swallowed, muttered: ‘This way, sir,’ and scurried into the dining-room. Errol slid off his stool, glass in hand, and gave me a wink.
‘Blind ’em with flannel, laddie. It works every time.’ He finished his drink without haste, and set his glass on the bar. ‘Well . . . almost every time.’ He gave his casual nod and sauntered into the dining-room.
The investigation of Marbruk es-Salah’s murder came to nothing. There was no more nationalist unrest until long after our departure, when a republic was established which turned into a troublesome dictatorship – so troublesome that forty years later the American air force raided it in reprisal for terrorist attacks, bombing our old barracks. This saddened me, because I had been happy there, and it seemed wasteful, somehow, after all the trouble we’d had just preserving that pleasant city from riot and arson and pillage. I’m not blaming the Americans; they were doing what they thought best – just as we had done. Just as Errol had done.
I lost sight of him when I was demobilised; he was still with the battalion then, going his careless way, raising hackles and causing trouble. Many years later, a wire-photo landed on my newspaper desk, and there he was among a group of Congo mercenaries; the moustache had gone and the hairline had receded, but there was no mistaking the cigarette holder and the relaxed, confident carriage; even with middle-aged spread beneath his flak-jacket, he still had style. Yes, I thought, that’s where you would end up. You see, there’s no place for people like Errol in a normal, peace-time world; they just don’t belong. Their time lay between the years 1939 and 1945 – and even then they sometimes didn’t fit in too comfortably. But I wonder if we’d have won the war without them.
The Constipation of O’Brien
Apart from the three afternoons devoted to games (which in our battalion meant football, no matter what the time of year) the most popular event of 12 Platoon’s working week was undoubtedly the Education Period. Not that they were especially thirsty for academic improvement, but the period came last on Friday afternoon, at the end of the week’s soldiering, and following immediately after a bathing parade which consisted of lolling on the warm sand of a gloriously golden North African beach, idly watching the creamy little waves washing in from the blue Mediterranean – the kind of thing millionaires would have paid through the nose for, but which in those balmy post-war years the British Army provided free. And there was no Hotel Ptomaine just over the skyline in those days, crammed with reddened tourists, bad drains, and abominable canned music; just a thousand miles of nothing stretching literally to Timbuctoo on the one hand, and Homer’s sunlit sea on the other, apparently unsailed since Ulysses went down over the horizon to distant Djerba
.
It was, consequently, a fairly torpid audience that I used to find awaiting me in the platoon lecture room afterwards, all 36 of them jammed into the two back rows, snoozing gently against the whitewashed walls, whence Sergeant Telfer would summon them to git tae the front and wake yer bluidy selves up. When they had obeyed, blinking and reluctant, I would announce:
‘Right. Education Period. Pay attention, smoke if you want to. Now, what we’re going on with this afternoon is . . .’
The formula never varied; it was as settled and comforting as a prayer. Whether the subject was British Way and Purpose (whatever that was, something to do with why we’d fought the war, as if anybody cared), or Care of the Feet, or How-to-get-civilian-employment-when-you-are-demobilised (a particularly useful lecture that, since it was delivered by a subaltern who’d never held a steady job in his life to a platoon who’d spent most of their time on the dole), or any of the numerous subjects prescribed by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, it was invariably introduced as ‘what we are going on with’. Why, I don’t know; it probably dated from Marlborough’s time, and it has been the signal for successive legions of young British soldiers to settle themselves contentedly on their benches and sleep with their eyes open, dreaming about Rita Hayworth (or Florrie Ford or Nell Gwynn, depending on the era) while their platoon commander gasses earnestly at them.
There is a whole generation of elderly men in these islands today who, if you whisper ‘what we are going on with’ in their ears, will immediately relax, with an expression of feigned interest in their glassy eyes, gently munching their lips as a prelude to dropping off. That’s what army education does for you. The only way I ever discovered of reclaiming my platoon’s attention during a lecture was to drop in a reference to football or women; once, to settle a bet with the Adjutant, I read them a very long passage from Hobbes’ Leviathan, and when they were drowsing nicely I suddenly began a sentence with the words ‘Gypsy Rose Lee’ – the effect was electric: 36 nodding heads snapped up as though jerked by wires, quivering like ardent gundogs, and 72 eyes gleamed with animation. From a lecturing point of view it posed me a difficult problem of smooth continuity, but it won me my bet.
Two subjects only were barred at education periods – religion and politics. In fact, they could be mentioned provided they weren’t, in the Army’s mysterious phrase, discussed ‘as such’ – a distinction which went for nothing when Lieutenant MacKenzie, product of Fettes and the grouse-moors, and politically somewhere to the right of Louis XIV, got embroiled during a lecture (on Useful Hobbies, of all things) with his platoon sergeant, one McCaw, who in civilian life was a Communist Party official on Clydeside. Exchanges like: ‘If ye’ll pardon me for sayin’ so, comrade – Ah mean, sir’ and ‘I’ll pardon nothing of the sort, my good man – I mean, sergeant – the General Strikers should have been put up against a wall and shot, and don’t dam’ well argue’, are not conducive to good order and military discipline. Especially when the platoon sit egging on their betters with cries of: ‘Kenny’s the wee boy! Kenny’s tellin’ ’im!’ and ‘Get tore in, McCaw! Go on yersel’!’
So politics we avoided, gratefully; for one thing, the Jocks knew far more about it than we did. Religion was even trickier, with that fundamentalist-atheist, Catholic-Protestant mixture – I recall one ill-advised debate on ‘Does God Exist?’ which would have had the Council of Trent thumbing feverishly through their references, and ended with a broken window. And of course religion in the Scottish mind – or the Glasgow mind, anyway – is inextricably bound up with sport, to such an extent that I have seen an amiable dispute on the offside rule progress, by easy stages, through Rangers and Celtic, to a stand-up fight over the fate of some ancient martyr called the Blessed John Ogilvie, in which Private Forbes butted a Catholic comrade under the chin. I wouldn’t have thought either of them cared that much, but there you are.
Thereafter I confined the education periods to personal monologues on Interesting Superstitions, How Local Government Works, and What Should We Do with Germany Now? That last elicited some interesting suggestions, until they discovered that I wasn’t advocating mass bombing or deportation, but social and political restructuring, as laid down in the Army pamphlet. After that they just dozed off again in the warm North African afternoon, salty and soporific from their swimming, until the cook-house call sounded for tea.
And then one day the Colonel, finding mischief as colonels will, discovered that his clerk at company headquarters couldn’t orient a map. This is a simple technical matter of laying a map out so that its north corresponds with magnetic north; normally you do it with an army compass. Apparently the clerk couldn’t use a compass, which didn’t surprise me — I knew there was at least one member of my platoon who didn’t know north from south, and God help the man who tried to teach him. But the Colonel was shocked; he sent out word that every man in the battalion must become a proficient map-reader henceforth, so on the next education period my lecture-room had 18 maps and compasses laid out on the big table, one to every two men, working together. This is a very sound idea; it halves the chance of total ignorance, theoretically anyway.
Looking over my platoon, I wasn’t so sure. Most of them were bright boys, but there in the front rank stood the legendary Private McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world, illiteracy and uncleanliness incarnate, glaring with keen displeasure at the compass in his grimy hand.
‘Whit the hell’s this, then? Darkie no’ gaun tae give us a speech the day? Ah thought we were jist meant tae listen tae edumacation. Sure that’s right, Fletcher?’
‘Sharrup,’ said Private Fletcher. ‘Yer gaun tae learn tae read a map.’
‘But Ah cannae read. Darkie knows Ah cannae read. Sure he knows Ah’ve been tae the Edu-macation Sergeant for a course, an’ the daft bugger couldnae learn me anythin’. He’s a clueless nyaff, yon,’ added McAuslan, in disgust at the Education Sergeant’s shortcomings. ‘Couldnae teach ye the right time, him.’
‘Readin’ a map’s no’ like readin’ a book, dozy. It’s jist a matter o’ lookin’ at the map an’ seein’ where ye are.’
McAuslan digested this, slowly, strange expressions following each other across his primitive features. Finally:
‘Ah know where Ah am. Ah’m here.’ He dismissed the map with a sniff that sounded like a sink unblocking. ‘An’ Ah don’t need this bluidy thing tae tell me, either.’
At this point, fortunately, Sergeant Telfer called them to attention, and I got off to a smooth start by telling them that what we were going on with this afternoon was map-reading and, more specifically, map-orientation.
‘It’s quite easy,’ I said, with lunatic optimism, aware of McAuslan’s fixed stare; it was rather like being watched by a small puzzled gorilla with pimples. ‘We just have to turn the map round so that it points north. Right?’ I decided, in an unwise moment, to conduct a simple test, just to make sure that everyone knew what the points of the compass were – McAuslan. I was pretty certain, didn’t know them from Adam, but there might be others in the platoon who shared his ignorance.
‘Suppose that’s north,’ I said, indicating the wall behind me, ‘where is south-west?’
Indulgently, the platoon pointed as one man to the correct far corner of the room – with the usual single exception. McAuslan was pointing to the ceiling. By heaven, I thought, ex McAuslano semper aliquid novi. How had he worked that one out?
‘Haud on, sur,’ he said, and I realised that his raised hand had been designed simply to catch my attention. ‘Ah mean, ‘scuse me.’ He breathed heavily. ‘Wid ye mind repeatin’ that?’
‘It’s all right, McAuslan,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’m just establishing that if that’s north, then that’s south, and that’s east, over there, and that’s west. See?’
‘But you said —’
‘Now, the points of the compass are divided into 360 degrees, which means that between each of the four main points there are – ’
My frantic burst to es
cape from him didn’t work; his hand was up again, and he was frowning like a judge who has just heard a witness use an obscenity.
‘Degrees?’ he said suspiciously.
‘That’s right, McAuslan,’I beamed. ‘Degrees; 360 of them – ’
‘Like onna thermometer?’
I fought back a vision of myself lying in a fever, with McAuslan kneeling by my bed in a nurse’s wimple, trying to take my temperature with an army compass. ‘Not exactly,’ I said, and strove to think of a simple explanation. By God, it would have to be simple. ‘Let’s see,’ I said, improvising madly, ‘the degrees on a thermometer go up and down, but the degrees on a compass go round in a circle.’
Well, I know I’m a rotten teacher, but with McAuslan it was hard to know where to begin, honestly. And there were 35 other men in the platoon to think of, who knew what I was talking about, badly and all as I might be doing it. While McAuslan was reflecting on degrees which rotated, as against those which leaped perversely up and down, I hastened on to a practical demonstration of the army compass, showing how it must be applied to the eye so that one could see the reflected numbers moving past. Within two minutes the platoon had mastered the art, and were turning their maps in a soldier-like manner to point north, with the compasses pointing neatly along the magnetic north line.
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Now they’re oriented, and if we take them outside, and orient them again, we can establish our own position on the maps, and then compare features on the maps with the things we actually see in front of us. Let’s – yes, McAuslan?’
He was glowering at me in accusation. ‘Sur,’ he demanded. ‘These maps pointin’ north?’
I admitted it, uneasily.
‘But you,’ he remonstrated, ‘said that wis north.’ And he pointed to the wall behind me. ‘That’s no’ the way the maps is pointin’. Oh, no. They’re pointin’ ower there, an’ – ’
It was entirely my fault, of course, for using an arbitrary illustration. ‘I’m sorry, McAuslan,’ I said. ‘Before, what I meant was, supposing that wall was north; it isn’t, really, but I was just trying to show . . . to find out . . . if everybody knew the points of the compass . . .’