‘I’m not a great one for spit and polish, Pipe-Major, but the windows of your Band Block could do with a wash.’ He said this quite pleasantly, and Mr McLean looked concerned.
‘Oh, aye, sir. We’ll get that seen to straight away, sir; straight away.’ Then he smiled uncertainly, and the Colonel smiled back.
‘Straight away.’
‘Right this minute, sir. Thank you very much, sir.’
‘That will be all.’
The Pipe-Major nearly knocked over Mr Riddick when he opened the door. The eavesdropper moved his feet sharply, and coughed. ‘Cup-a-tea for you, Mr McLean?’
‘Thank you, Mr Riddick. That would be fine,’ the Pipe-Major replied in his comfortable way and they went into the little office. But as they closed the door behind them, orderlies in the next room raised their eyebrows and shrugged. It was never a good idea for these two to get together. Evenin the Mess the sergeants did not trust them in the same game of Housey-housey. It always ended in the same way.
When they took off their bonnets it could be seen that both men were a little bald, but while Mr Riddick’s hair was quite grey Mr McLean’s was sandy in colour. They sat silently for a while; then the R.S.M. launched straight into the meat of the matter.
‘Captain Cairns was in here this afternoon talkin’ about this dancing class. Said he had half a mind to chuck up the adjutancy.’
‘Aye?’ Mr McLean took five lumps.
‘Told him not to be daft. I’ve seen a change of colonel before today and there’s always trouble.’
‘A change is usually for the better. That’s true in life.’ Mr McLean enjoyed universals, but they were not for the R.S.M.
‘Don’t know anything about that. But I do know it would be damned disloyal to march off now. As Adjutant he has responsibilities, same as the rest of us.’
‘Aye. But it’s a big change for him. He’s known Jock all the way from El Alamein.’
‘That’s not the point. I can tell you, Mr McLean – I wouldn’t express an opinion to anyone else, mind you – but I can tell you, this one’ll be the better Colonel. Better by far. Shall I tell you why, eh?’
It was the beginning. The expression on the Pipe-Major’s face did not change, but he said gently, ‘I don’t think I’ll be agreeing with you here.’ He nodded his head. Mr McLean was anxious that it should be a pleasant chat.
‘Right,’ the R.S.M. said. ‘I’ll tell you why he’s the better Colonel. Because he’s a gentleman.’
Mr McLean smiled a wise smile and the R.S.M. repeated himself more emphatically, with just a flicker of malice in his boss eye.
‘Because he’s a gentleman.’
Slowly came the reply. ‘You’re the terrible snob, Mr Riddick. It is always the same with you people who start in the Brigade of Guards. You’re such terrible snobs; it is wicked.’ As he grew angry, he spoke more quickly.
‘Mr McLean. I know what I’m saying.’ The R.S.M. poured out another cup of tea and passed his hand over his short thin hair. He made a sour face. ‘Rankers may make Quarter-masters. But believe you me, sir, they don’t make battalion commanders.’ ‘Sir,’ from one Warrant Officer to another is a gauntlet.
‘That’s lies. Jock was the most successful Battalion Commander in the war.’
‘The war was a different sort of thing. You’re arguing off the point, again, Mr McLean. Of course he’s a good soldier, no one denies it; but the point is that he should be in my job or yours. And I’m not the sort of man who ought to command the Battalion.’
Mr McLean controlled himself.
‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘we shall see what we shall see.’ Then he added, in spite of himself, ‘But I think it is Jock who should have been appointed.’
Mr Riddick was in a keen mood. He wagged his nobbly finger.
‘The very fact that we call him Jock … Och, you must see it.’
Suddenly Mr McLean was unleashed. He spoke quickly. ‘You’re a diehard Tory; yes, and it’s you that stirs up class hatreds.’
Mr Riddick pushed back his shoulders. ‘That’s a damned impudent thing to say, Mr McLean.’
‘It is true. Yes it is.’
‘I never knew we had a bloody Communist as Pipe-Major.’
The R.S.M. now stood up and towered above the round figure of Mr McLean, who half closed his eyes, and half whispered, half shouted his reply. ‘I have told you before, I am a Liberal, Mr Riddick. A Whig, a Whig, a Whig!’
Rather patchily the R.S.M.’s complexion was changing from blue to vermilion.
‘It’s an unwritten rule in this Battalion, Mr McLean, that politics will not be discussed. I’d bring that to your attention.’
‘Och, you and your rules. It’s playing at soldiers that you are.’
‘Pipe-Major; I’m reminding you of my rank.’ Mr Riddick put on his bonnet. He was shouting now.
‘And a man of your rank should know better than to accuse one of his colleagues of being a Communist, when he’s a Whig. You had best go back to your Grenadiers or whatever it was.’
‘Are you attemptin’ to insult my late regiment? Tell me that, Mr McLean.’ Mr Riddick’s voice was low and menacing but the Pipe-Major, after several years of practice, knew just how far he could go. He put on his bonnet and prepared to leave.
‘No,’ he said.
‘If you want to insult my late regiment then I think we’d better meet in the gymnasium.’
The Pipe-Major smiled and shook his head.
‘Peter Pan; that’s what we should call you, Mr Riddick. Man, we’re far too old to be meeting in the gymnasium. You’d better go home now. Muffin the Mule’s on in a few moments.’
‘By God, you’re a bloody impudent man. I’ve a mind to put you under close arrest. D’you hear me? March you right inside.’
‘Then it’s high time I was leaving. Mr Riddick, I am thanking you for my cup of tea. It has been invigorating.’
But the R.S.M. did not return his smile.
‘Pipe-Major, I observed when marching by today that the windows of the Band Block are in a dirty condition.’
‘Did you, now?’ The Pipe-Major’s eyebrows nearly touched the fringe of his hair. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Mr Riddick, I’ll go right back there now and see that they are cleaned, just for your sake. That’s what I’ll be doing.’
Shortly after the Pipe-Major left, the R.S.M. spotted a soldier with the lace of his boot undone. He was put on a charge for being improperly dressed, straight away. He was lucky not to be put in gaol.
SEVEN
NOW THE TOWN was small, but the county was smaller. The news of the dancing class soon circulated and seasoned officers blushed like cadets when they were asked if they had learnt their Pas-de-Basques yet. Underneath the layer of sunburn even Sandy Macmillan grew a little warm, but if the officers were teased, the county notwithstanding was thoroughly glad. It was a sign for the better. The officers from Campbell Barracks had not made themselves popular over the preceding year or two, with their drinking and their springy dancing. Even those people in the county who did not consider themselves to be purists were a little sick of them. At the Hunt Ball, not that there is much of a Hunt, people had grown accustomed, in an angry sort of way, to seeing the officers form up in front of the band so that the rest of the dancers were edged down to the bottom of the set. They clapped their hands and joked with the drummer, and they hooched and swung their women.
Everybody knew that Jock Sinclair encouraged them: as acting Colonel he was at the root of the trouble, for this is an old axiom: that a Mess takes on the complexion of its Colonel. It was therefore with warm hearts that the county welcomed a man who was instantly recognisable as a gentleman – Barrow Boy.
At first people were curious to meet him; then they were anxious; then, after a month, they were desperate. The county began to talk of nothing else and everybody wished they could peep over the sixteen-foot wall. Rumours abounded. All sorts of innocent tweed-coated men were recognised as the mysterious Colonel. Jimmy Ca
irns’s aunt in Crieff set the Victorian terraces alight with her news items straight from the Adjutant’s mother’s mouth. A young farmer who had something to do with one of the Territorial outfits in the neighbourhood swore that Barrow was the White Rabbit himself. Barrow had blown up the heavy water plant in wherever-it-was; he had been one of Winston’s special boys. Barrow had made the officers run round the barracks before breakfast. Barrow had been doing far rougher things to the idle than any young Alexander. Barrow had been in Colditz. Barrow had said that if any officer held his knife like a pen he would be posted to another regiment. Barrow was the talk of both town and county.
‘He’s a small man. You never see him in uniform this side of the wall. My dear, he has a look of Lawrence of Arabia.’
‘Lawrence of where?’
‘Nonsense … his eyes are much larger.’
‘He’s coming to dinner on Thursday,’ proudly: that was said with pride.
‘Really?’ and that said with chagrin.
‘Well probably. You must recall him. Tom knew him before the war. You must remember him.’
‘My dear, I was a child then.’
In the county the talk is well up to standard. And the county often meets, even when the roads are bad. There were cocktail parties in houses which once had known stronger drinks and fuller servants’ quarters, but here as ever gossip, like a leaf, whirled round and round, then with a spiral movement and on the hot breath of a matron, it was lifted upwards to unlikely heights.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Jock said, when he heard or overheard such a conversation, and he clenched his fists and screwed up his face. But he never got further than that: instead he cracked that joke of his about red tabs and tits, which usually went down very well. He did not like to hear much talk of the Colonel; he said all the talk at the parties was childish; people going on as if the boy were Monty himself. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ he said.
‘He’s English, you know.’
‘Nonsense. He’s a connection of the jute Maclarens.’
‘Dundee?’
‘Originally.’
‘Really? He has money?’
‘I don’t know how much now.’
The ladies talked about him most at the cocktail parties, but in the swells’ club in the town and after dinner in some of the houses that still ran to dinner parties (proper style) his name came up again. The men treated it with a little more reserve.
‘Was he with the First Battalion?’
‘Can’t have been. Billy would have met him.’
‘He was S.A.S., wasn’t he?’
Then the older voice. ‘Only thing I know about him is he’s got a pair of Purdeys, and they say he can shoot with them: that’s more than that tyke Sinclair can do, at all events.’
A ‘hear, hear,’ a finishing of the glass, a moment or two spent in clearing away the dishes for the foreign girl, and it is time to join the ladies.
But the Colonel did not go to the dinner on the Thursday or on the Friday or to supper on the Sunday. He had to stack his invitations horizontally on his shelf, but he still replied to them all in his own neat hand. Each time he refused, and he gave as his reason pressure of work.
When at last, a month later, he invited the whole neighbourhood to a regimental cocktail party it was no surprise to anyone that there was hardly a refusal. The county had decided to come to the Colonel. And the drink had better be good.
And the drink was good. Whatever may be said about that Battalion’s fighting record or social performance no one but a Plymouth Sister could deny the quality of the drinks at one of the regimental parties. There were all sorts of drinks, and there were a great many of them. The officers saw that the stewards circulated amongst the guests swiftly and for a long time. It was impossible to hold an empty glass, and, perhaps consequently, it was impossible to believe that the party was not a howling success. Simpson and some of the other better-known young men were like perfect ushers at a wedding. They welcomed people as soon as they arrived in the ante-room, and they offered plates of savouries and silver boxes of cigarettes to two hundred guests. At the beginning – he’d had one for the road – Jock was pink in the eyes with social affability and he was holding guests male or female by the elbow, pretending to be listening to what they had to say. But often he glanced through the door to the hall where Barrow was greeting the guests.
Barrow made a point of shaking everybody’s hand. He had the dazed and silvery look of the bride’s father, and as he shook hands he said a word or two; then, as the guest replied, his eyes wandered to the next guest in the long queue. Everybody looked at him as if he were a waxwork that could talk, and although some of the sharper females dared a personal question, nobody was any the wiser at the completion of the ceremony.
The ante-room itself was very pleasant. Some of the worst armchairs and wicker tables had been moved out for the occasion. The tartan and the tweeds toned with the panelling of the walls and the wood toned well with the whisky. The chandeliers and the tumblers sparkled and the Mess servants made friends with some of the grand ladies which, after all, is always a sign of a good party.
The same grand ladies, when they were not making friends with the Mess servants or keeping Sandy Macmillan at a safe distance, concentrated on the Colonel. Some waited in their corners until he came to them while others, a little older and a little keener, moved through the throng to meet him. They all had a shot at penetrating his defences. Only one person had anything like a success, and she wished she had not spoken.
‘You ought to have had a girl friend to keep you company when you greeted us in the hall.’
A slight smile: ‘Yes? My Adjutant offered to help.’
‘We’ve got lots of presentable girls you know: you’d be surprised.’
‘Really?’
‘We’ll get you a wife.’
‘As a matter of fact I have had one of those.’
‘Oh. Oh, really?’ The girl put her weight back on one heel.
But it only added to the mystery of the man.
Even Morag had a try at opening the oyster. She was in her smartest cherry hat – one with a snout to it – and she wore a black tailored coat and court shoes. The Colonel found her alone, and he recognised her again, immediately. She refused a cigarette from his little silver case; it was one of those old-fashioned cases with a curve in it to fit closely to chest or hip. Morag was standing alone, not because she did not know anybody there, but because she liked to stand alone when she was not enjoying herself. Several officers had come to make conversation to her, but she frightened them away. Simpson tried valiantly.
‘What a smart hat!’
‘This thing?’
‘It’s awfully smart.’
‘Och, I picked it up in the sales for one-and-nine.’ Morag did not smile. Her common sense was almost militant.
‘How clever of you,’ Simpson replied pleasantly, but the answer was as sharp as before.
‘Not very. It’s just common sense. If you get up early enough you get the bargains.’
‘I think I’d be frightened to death. All those women fighting for the best bargain.’
‘Oh yes.’ She looked at him as if she thought him stupid, and he offered her some snacks, but she had no time for them.
‘Too fattening?’ Simpson suggested with a smile, and she replied, ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
After that he was stuck with her for a little time and they talked about some of the other people near them. Then she said, ‘You’d better go and give them their sardines,’ and not with grace, but with relief, he took his opportunity.
But she was more forthcoming with the Colonel, who did not make the mistake of flattering her.
‘D’you enjoy things like this?’ she asked him, and before he had time to reply she said, ‘Neither do I,’ and he smiled.
‘They serve a purpose, I suppose.’
‘Colonel Barrow, I don’t fancy it’s the time or place …’ she said, and she he
sitated. Barrow’s mouth tightened a little, and he looked at her severely. But nothing could stop Morag when she wanted to say something. She was as firm as the regimental Douglas Jackson.
‘Whatever Father’s said, don’t think I don’t see how difficult it must be for you …’ But there was no getting closer to the Colonel. He leant back on his heel, and looked round the room. She only saw the side of his face when he replied, ‘How kind of you to say so. You mustn’t worry.’
‘I wanted to say that.’
‘I’m grateful to you. Now, have you met …’ But as the Colonel looked round for a spare subaltern, Jock shouldered his way closer. He flicked his head at Barrow.
‘Aye. You’ve met Morag?’
The Colonel looked nervous. ‘Oh yes. Delighted.’ He waved his glass and nodded. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ He picked his way through the crowd rather as if he were frightened of it. Two or three groups opened like a flower to let the queen bee land, but he hovered and moved on again, farther round the room. His face was the face of anxiety. But that again only endeared him to the ladies.
Sometimes, and all of a sudden, they felt that it was only right that he should be called Boy. In spite of the grey hair, he looked like a child at a party; looked as if he had lost his way. And that, to regimental women, is something very attractive: their own husbands are always so vehement in protesting that they know where they are going. When Jock saw one of these take him by the hand and draw him into a group, it sickened him.
‘Well, Father?’ He had said nothing to Morag.
‘A-huh. Well, you seemed to be talking with him very seriously.’
‘I was just warning him what a bear you are.’
‘Aye. What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well you looked bloody pleased about it. He’s no the Brigadier you know; he’s just another colonel.’
Morag looked angry. The muscle in her cheek moved and she looked down at her feet.
‘I meant no harm,’ she said. ‘For goodness sake.’
‘Look at them now: look at them. You know these are the same women that made such a bloody fuss over me in forty-five. But I couldn’t cope with them. You wouldn’t remember. I was bloody rude to them.’
Household Ghosts Page 6