George Fraser - The Complete McAuslan

“Kill him!” bawled the Admiral, decency forgotten.

“Get tore in!” cried the Governor.

He went down in a heap of navy jerseys, and a sudden bellow went up from behind the goal. I couldn’t see why, and then I saw why. The ball was lying, rolling just a little, a foot over the goal-line. It came to rest in the net, just inside the post.

At such times, when all around is bedlam, the man of mark is distinguished by his nonchalance and detachment. Calmly I took out my cigarette case, selected a cigarette, struck a match, set fire to my sporran, roared aloud, dropped cigarettes, case, and matches, and scrambled on my knees along the floor of the box trying to beat the flames out. By the time I had succeeded the box was full of smoke and a most disgusting stench, one of the Admiral’s aides was looking round muttering that expressions of triumph were all very well, but the line should be drawn somewhere, and the Fleet were kicking off in a last attempt to retrieve the game.

They didn’t make it, but it was a near thing. There was one appeal for a penalty when the corporal seemed to handle—if I’d been the referee I believe I’d have given it—but the claim was disallowed, and then the long whistle blew. We had won, 5-4, and I found myself face to face with a red-faced petty officer who was exclaiming, “By, you were lucky! I say, you were lucky! By!”

I made deprecating noises and shot downstairs. They were trooping into the dressing-room, chattering indignantly—it was their curious way not to be exultant over what had gone right, but aggrieved over what had gone wrong. I gathered that at least two of the Fleet should have been ordered off, that the referee had been ignorant of the offside law, that we should have had a penalty when … and so on. Never mind, I said, we won, it had all come out all right. Oh, aye, but …

The Governor looked in, beaming congratulation, and there was a lot of noise and far too many people in the dressing-room. The team were pulling off their jerseys and trying to escape to the showers; clothes were falling on the floor and bare feet were being stepped on; the Governor was saying to Forbes, Well done, well played indeed, and Forbes was saying See yon big, dirty, ignorant full-back, and at last the door was shut and we were alone with the smell of sweat and embrocation and steam and happy weariness.

“Well done, kids,” I said, and the corporal said, “No’ sae bad,” and rumpled McGlinchy’s hair, and everyone laughed. Through in the showers someone began to make mouth-music to the tune of “The Black Bear”, and at the appropriate moment the feet stamped in unison and the towel-clad figures shuffled, clapping and humming.

“Not too loud,” I said. “Don’t let the Navy hear.”

I went over to McGlinchy, who was drying his hair and whistling. I wanted to ask: What gets into you? Why don’t you play like that all the time? But I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t ever find out.

For no reason I suddenly thought of Samuels, and realised that he was off the hook. Resentment quickly followed relief: he was not only in the clear, he had probably made a small fortune. How lucky, how undeservedly lucky can you get, I thought bitterly: but for McGlinchy’s inexplicable brilliance Samuels would now be facing the certainty of court-martial and dismissal, possibly even prison. As it was he was riding high.

Or so I thought until that evening, when I was summoned to the local bastille at the request of the Provost-Marshal, to identify a soldier, one McAuslan, who had been arrested during the afternoon. It appeared that he and an anonymous sailor had been making a tour of all the bars in town, and the sailor had eventually passed out in the street. McAuslan’s primitive efforts to minister to him had excited attention, and the pair of them had been hauled off by the redcaps.

They brought him out of his cell, looking abominable but apparently sober. I demanded to know what he thought he had been doing.

Well, it was like this, he and his friend the sailor had gone for a wee hauf, and then they had had anither, and …

“He’ll be singing ’I belong to Glasgow’ in a minute,” observed the redcap corporal. “Stand to attention, you thing, you.”

“Who was the sailor?” I asked, puzzled, for I remembered McAuslan’s antipathy to the ship’s crew.

“Wan o’ the boys off the ship. Fella Peterson. He was gaun tae the toon, an’ Ah offered tae staun’ ’im a drink. Ye remember,” he went on earnestly, “ye told me tae fraternise. Well, we fraternised, an’ he got fu’. Awfy quick, he got fu’,” McAuslan went on, and it was plain to see that his companion’s incapacity offended him. “He drank the drink Ah bought ’im, and it made ’im fleein’, and then he was buyin’ drink himsel’ at an awfy rate …”

“That was the thing, sir,” explained the redcap. “This sailor had more money than you’ve ever seen; he looked like he’d robbed a bank. That was really why we pulled them in, sir, for protection. Weedy little chap, the sailor, but he had hundreds of pounds worth of lire on him.”

Suddenly a great light dawned. Peterson was the name of Samuels’ clerk, who had been going to place his bets for him, and McAuslan had obviously encountered him beforehand, and full of good fellowship had bought him liquor, and Peterson, the weedy little chap, must have been unused to strong waters, and had forgotten responsibility and duty and his captain’s orders, and had proceeded to go on an almighty toot. So it seemed obvious that whatever custom the bookies had attracted that day, Samuels’ had not been part of it. His money (and the ship’s funds and my jocks’ pay) was safely in the military police office safe, less what McAuslan and Peterson had expended with crying “Bring in!” Samuels could make that up himself, and serve him right. Also, he could have fun explaining to the M.P.s just how one of his sailors came to be rolling about town with all that cash on his person.

“McAuslan,” I said, “in your own way you’re a great man. Tell me,” I asked the redcap, “are you going to charge him?”

“Well,” said the redcap, “he wasn’t what you’d call incapably stinking, just happy. It was the sailor who was paralytic. He still is. So …”

“Thank you,” I said. “Look, McAuslan, you’re a lucky man. You shouldn’t go about getting little sailors stotius …”

“I was jist fraternisin’, honest …”

“Right. You can fraternise some more. What I want you to do is go over to the ship, look out Lieutenant Samuels, and tell him, in your own well-chosen words, what happened today. Tell him the money’s in the M.P. safe. And then you might offer to buy him a drink; he’ll probably need one. And McAuslan, if he tries to hit you, you’re not to clock him one, understand? Remember, be fraternal and polite; he’s your superior officer and you wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

We took our leave of the civil redcaps, and I watched McAuslan striding purposefully towards the harbour, bonnet down over his eyes, to break the glad news to Samuels. It was growing dusk, and all in all, it had been quite a day.

I saw McGlinchy many years after, from the top of a Glasgow bus. Although his fair hair was fading and receding, and his face looked middle-aged and tired, there was no mistaking the loose-jointed, untidy walk. He was carrying a string bag, and he looked of no account at all in his stained raincoat and old shoes. And then the bus took me past. I wondered if he remembered those few minutes out in the sunlight. Perhaps not; he wasn’t the kind who would think twice about it. But I remember McGlinchy when …

The duties of a regimental orderly officer cover pretty well everything from inspecting the little iced cakes in the canteen to examining the prisoners in the guard room cells to ensure that they are still breathing. In our battalion, the cells were seldom occupied; the discipline imposed on our volatile mixture of Aberdonians and Glaswegians was intelligent rather than tough, and more often than not trouble was dealt with before it got the length of a charge sheet.