He shouted ‘Sir’ and Mr McLean tapped him on the knee, suggesting he should sit down again.
‘My suggestion, perfectly in order,’ he murmured indignantly, and Jock looked up at him with pale blue parrot’s eyes.
‘Ssh,’ Mr McLean said, and he leant back in his chair, so it creaked. Mr Riddick felt foolish.
‘Pipe-Major!’ Mr McLean jumped. He was afraid Jock had thought he was whispering to Riddick.
‘We’ll deal with the music after “Intercommunication.” I’ll come to that later. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir. Yes.’ His reply was a little song.
‘Very well.’
Jock was more like a preacher now. He hung on to the tall desk as if it were a lectern in a pulpit, leaning over it, swaying about it. The sweat was forming on his brow, although all the others in the room were cold. The hands that held the pencils were blue with cold.
‘Is the order of march clear, gentlemen?’ Two or three of the officers nodded, and Jimmy mumbled a general assent.
‘Clear, Mr Simpson?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Clear, Major Hay?’ to one of the Company Commanders.
‘Quite clear, Colonel.’
‘Mr Riddick?’
‘Sah.’ Mr Riddick still shouted his assent fiercely.
‘Very good then.’ He unrolled the map of the town again. He took the pointer and stood to one side. The orders were given according to the book.
‘The Battalion will proceed at the slow march down to the cross-roads where they will turn right, off Stuart Road.’ Always he pointed to the place which he named. ‘At this point the band will stop playing and the Battalion will continue along Bridge Road to the High Street.’ He followed the whole route, naming in detail every street and every corner and the pointer followed the procession along the map.
‘In Lothian Terrace the Battalion will halt and turn by companies and contingents left into line and order arms. The carrier party, colour party, h.q. group and extra contingent will detach themselves, and they will follow the Padre to the graveside in the following order. They will follow in slow time.
‘Padre.
Band contingent.
Carrier party – that is the eight sergeants and the Regimental Sergeant-Major.
Colour party. Commanding Officer and h.q. Group.
Mourning Contingent.
Firing party to be drawn from A Company.
‘The band party will consist of the Pipe-Major, Corporal-Drummer, and your picked piper. The band remainder will remain …’; the noise of the repetition seemed to please him and he began the sentence again. ‘The band remainder will remain in Lothian Terrace under the command of the senior sergeant. Mr McLean!’
‘Sir?’ Mr McLean always sounded anxious to please. His voice was always the very breath of sanity and civility.
‘Have you got your pibroch piper picked?’
‘Aye, sir. He’s waiting next door.’
‘We’d better have him in.’
‘I’ll just be getting him, sir.’
‘Obliged.’
The Pipe-Major pushed back his chair and Mr Simpson stood up to let him by. The break was welcomed by everybody and again they all stirred in their seats. Jock himself was lighting a cigarette and there was a little hum of voices. Mr Simpson leant forward to Major Macmillan and he said, ‘I’d no idea it was to be as big as this.’
Macmillan raised his eyebrows high. ‘I don’t think they’d give you or me a show like this.’
But the R.S.M. was more serious in his complaint. He said out aloud:
‘Dammit, Montgomery couldn’t expect anything more than this.’
Charlie was the only one who spoke up.
‘Pretty elaborate do,’ he said, but Jock did not seem to hear him. So Cairns followed up.
‘How long was Barrow with us, all told?’ and he glanced at Jock, but Jock ignored him too. He was preparing the next details in his mind. If he saw that his officers were uncomfortable about the scale of the operation he gave no sign of it. There might have been a soundproof screen between him and the others and his face was quite expressionless until the Pipe-Major returned with the picked piper.
‘Corporal Fraser,’ the Pipe-Major said, and the Corporal saluted smartly. His face was pale and he still had a dark blue shadow round his eye. Jock was thrown off balance and his hands fumbled for the pointer on the desk. He looked fiercely at the Pipe-Major.
‘You didn’t say it was Corporal Fraser.’
‘No, sir. He’s the only one with the pibroch good enough, sir.’
‘Aye.’
Jock looked nervously from one face to another, and he tried to recover himself quickly. He pulled himself up and he said, ‘The Padre’ll give the officers a talk on the ceremony tonight at …’ He looked blankly at them as he remembered he had said this before. He paused: he looked lost for a moment.
‘1930 hours I think, sir,’ Jimmy said.
‘1930 hours,’ Jock echoed, then his eyes wandered back to the Corporal again. He was standing stiffly to attention just inside the door. The blue ring round his right eye made his face look paler, like a moon in the shadows of the corner. For a moment or two Jock seemed to see nothing other than this face. He gazed at it. It was the first time that he had seen the Corporal since he had struck him. All the business of the cancellation of the enquiry had been done through the Pipe-Major. Mr Riddick had not liked it at all: but when he opened his mouth with a threat, Mr McLean looked at him so hard that the words would not come. Charlie, when he learned, just shrugged his shoulders, and said, ‘Luck of the game.’ Jock nodded, at last.
‘A-huh, Corporal Fraser.’
‘Sir.’
‘I haven’t seen you. Where are you staying?’
‘Been on a pass, sir. I am back in barracks again now, sir.’
‘When did you come back from leave, eh?’
‘This morning, sir.’
A little of the old wiliness returned. ‘A-huh. Are you married or single, Corporal?’
‘Single, sir.’
Jimmy leant forward anxiously. Jock was standing at the side of the little platform by the blackboard, facing the Corporal.
‘Colonel, we’re short of time …’
‘Is Morag with you, Corporal?’
Jimmy had spoken softly and he wondered if he had been heard.
‘Colonel …’
‘Hold your tongue!’ Jock glowered down at him. He turned back to the Corporal and spoke softly again.
‘Is Morag with you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Where is she?’
Charlie shifted in his seat. Major Hay whispered something to his neighbour and the R.S.M. gave a heavy cough.
‘One of the officers,’ he said, ‘should take steps.’
‘Wheesht, man,’ the Pipe-Major replied.
‘Wait, the rest of you,’ Jock said without looking at them. ‘Answer me, Corporal.’
‘She’s staying with my people, sir.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Forres, sir.’
‘Christ,’ Jock said. ‘There’s a carry-on. There’s a bloody carry-on. At ease, Corporal. Nobody. Nobody told me this. You never told me this, Jimmy.’
‘No, sir.’ He gave a friendly smile. ‘After …’ he suggested, but Jock waved his hand.
‘Och, for Christ’s sake: there’s no bloody secret now. There have been too many damned secrets and whispers. I like things in the open, and I always have done. That I have. You’ll be playing the pipes over the grave, Corporal. Take a seat. We’ve to deal with the music yet. Sit down like the rest of them and you’ll get your orders.’
The Corporal took a chair from the pile at the back, and he brought it up behind the others. He unfolded it and sat down.
‘Bonnets off,’ Jock said. ‘Bonnets off.’ And the Corporal put his bonnet on his lap. He had swung his sporran round to his hip.
But Jock could not bring himself back to the orders as
quickly as he had anticipated. He was an actor who had forgotten his words. There was a little silence, then he looked at Jimmy and he said fiercely:
‘Where the hell was I?’
Jimmy could not recall fast enough.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, someone. Where did we get to? Were none of you listening, eh, is that the way of it?’
Macmillan of all people answered: perhaps his social experience had taught him to keep his head in moments of embarrassment.
‘The actual ceremony, I think, Colonel.’
‘I told you the actual ceremony’s the Padre’s business: he’ll speak to you tonight at … in the Mess at …’
‘1930 hours, sir.’
‘We’ve been through all that …’ As he faltered again, Charlie spoke, very calmly.
‘Seeing we’ve come to an interval, I wonder, Colonel… This is a pretty elaborate funeral you’re planning for, what?’
‘Have you an objection, Major Scott?’
‘Well,’ Charlie poked the point of his crook into a crack between the damp floor-boards. ‘It isn’t as if Barrow was with us a long time. I mean he may have been a good man and all that but … What does anybody else think?’
Charlie leant back as he threw the question open to the others. Jock was standing crouching over the high desk, staring at them.
‘Agreed, sir,’ Mr Riddick shouted.
‘It does seem quite a do,’ Macmillan said. Jock waited patiently with a pained smile on his face, and Jimmy spoke again:
‘Of course it’s right he should get a proper burial, but the whole Battalion, and the gun carriage. Would that not be overdoing it – or d’you not think so?’
He looked back at Jock who made no movement.
All the other Company Commanders, now the tension had been broken a little, said the same thing in different ways and Simpson, because he’d always been taught to speak up, said, ‘I mean, the circumstances of his death alone.’ And here Jock cut in. He came down heavily on Simpson in his old bullying way.
‘The circumstances of his death, eh? What does that mean, Mr Simpson?’
‘Well, sir, there’s been talk enough. I know it was of unsound mind, but,’ his voice trailed away; then as Jock waited he said, ‘I mean, sir, suicide’s suicide. I’m not sure the Church …’
Jock clenched his fists. ‘No, it bloody well isn’t. It’s bloody murder.’ With an effort he controlled himself and he threw the next sentence away, so that some of them did not even hear it. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. For Christ’s sake.’ He stepped off the platform and he walked over to the window and looked down at the barrack square. Most of the snow had disappeared now, but there was a little pile round the edge of the square. A squad was doubling along from one end to the other under the direction of a corporal with panic in his voice. Jock watched them as if they were toys.
He said, ‘I rang his wife, and she had not seen him for three years. I rang his lawyers and they knew of no brothers and sisters. Mind you, he had his friends in Whitehall and he need never have left. Fifteen years after he left this Battalion he came back to it. Fifteen years after he had left Scotland he came back to it.’
He turned his face to them, and he lifted his arms.
‘Can you not see?’ he asked. ‘Can you not understand? And this is the Battalion that’s known as the friendly one: and ours is the Mess where it’s Christian names only. You mean bastards; you’d grudge him his burial.’
‘Oh, hardly,’ Charlie said.
‘You do, Charlie Scott.’
‘It’s only the method, Jock.’
‘We’ll bury him as he should be buried.’
‘It isn’t as if he even led us in battle.’
‘He could have done.’
Charlie’s face hardened. ‘I merely said he didn’t. Jock, whichever way we look at it, we’re only burying a colonel.’
‘Oh!’ Jock shouted it out. ‘Oh! Oh, for Christ’s sake! Only a colonel. You don’t know, do you? None of you; you don’t begin to know. Only a colonel! Aye, and that’s what he said himself.’ He turned back to the window. He seemed now quite out of touch with the others in the room, and he talked as much to himself as to anybody else. He made a little cross in some dust that had formed on the sill: not a Christian cross, but a double cross for noughts and crosses. ‘Only a colonel and a colonel’s heart. And I wonder about that, too. I’m no sure it’s only the Colonel: I’m no sure it isn’t the whole bloody glory.’
The murmurs grew louder in the room, and only Corporal Fraser, sitting by himself at the back, kept quiet. He just stared at Jock unbelievingly. Then at last the big shoulders swivelled round and the conversation dried up.
‘We’ll bury him the way I say we’ll bury him, and that’s an order, and that’s a fact.’ He walked quickly back to the platform and he faced them again.
‘METHOD:
‘After the ceremony. The return to barracks.’ He shouted it out loud.
‘I say,’ Simpson said. ‘He’s gone round the bend, hasn’t he?’
‘For Christ’s sake, shut up,’ Jimmy replied.
‘But it’s true.’
‘Shut up.’
‘The groups taking part in the ceremony will slow march back to the formation in Lothian Terrace and the Battalion on my word of command will march off in column of threes, in the reverse order, D Company in advance of the retreat.’
He pointed at the board again, this time with his finger and he went through each group, finishing with A Company.
‘When the leading company – D Company in this instance – reaches the crossing of the High Street and Stuart Road the Battalion will halt company by company, contingent by contingent. Then under my general command, but company by company, the column will retreat to the barracks at the slow march. The companies will turn into line, and I will dismiss the parade.’
The last set of orders seemed to take a great deal out of Jock and he leant forward on the desk again, and took a sip of water. The rims of his eyes were pink with weariness. All of the officers, save for Charlie, were staring at him. Charlie was looking at the floor. Like a boxer at the start of another round, Jock moved away from the desk again and stretched himself straight. As he opened the next paragraph, what had been a doubt before now became a terrible certainty. There was an audible gasp, and Jimmy covered his face with his hands. Simpson looked round at the others who looked neither to left nor right. There was no pity in Mr Riddick’s eye but he was twitching his little moustache with discomfort. Jock, wide-eyed, rolled into the attack. Nothing would have stopped him now. His face was florid and his eyes were bright. Words flowed from his lips.
‘ADMINISTRATION:
‘The Colonel will be laid in his coffin in the full scarlet of a Lieutenant-Colonel of this Regiment, his headdress beside him.’
Jock glanced along the line.
‘The Adjutant acting with the q.m. and the Medical Staff will see that this order is discharged.’
He paused and looked at Cairns, who had not moved.
‘The Adjutant,’ he suddenly said with the voice he usually used for sarcasm, ‘is hiding his face. Is my order understood?’
Jimmy did not even want to look at him now. He just glanced up for a second, and he bit his lip. Then he said softly, ‘Sir,’ And Jock went on, ‘The full scarlet. The full dress, even if it has to be tailored tonight. D’you hear me? The full scarlet. Is that understood?’
‘Sir.’ Jimmy was looking white. He closed his eyes to recover himself.
‘The coffin will be carried to the final resting place on the traditional gun carriage which the officer commanding Transport Company will put at the disposal of the Regimental Sergeant-Major commanding the carrying party. Is that understood?’
‘Sir.’
‘Mr Riddick, is that understood?’
The pantomime continued.
‘Understood, sir.’
Soon nobody was looking at Jock; nobody dared, nor did they dare look at each o
ther, any longer. They had turned their eyes away from him much as boys do in a classroom when one of their number begins to cry. Only Mr McLean glanced at him from time to time, and he nodded to show that he was listening. All around him he saw the bowed heads. Not long after Macmillan told some of his friends how ludicrous it had all been: but he was not laughing at the time. He did not feel at all like laughing, at the time. He had the same desire as all the others there, then: he wanted to hide himself.
‘The Quartermaster has already been warned about dress. The necessary accoutrements will be drawn from the Battalion stores, company by company, in accordance with the Q.M.’ s detail. The aprons and the plaids.
‘The full parade rehearsal will be at 1000 hours tomorrow. This afternoon and tomorrow at 0900 hours the separate companies …’
There were a score of details, and the orders seemed to go on and on. Jock did not hesitate now. He had remembered the words, but the others still looked away. Jimmy listened and prayed that it would soon come to an end. None of them noted down any of the points: none of them moved. It might have been a stranger standing on the platform, talking so fast. They had a horror of him. Jimmy searched for pity, but could find nothing other than the same horror.
‘Mr Riddick will personally supervise the gun carriage drill, and brief the senior sergeants forming the carrying party. Understood?’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘The Assistant Adjutant will make it his business to report the details of routes and timing to the Chief of Police.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘INTERCOMMUNICATION:
‘The column will be of considerable length and halting by companies or changing time will present difficulty. Warning orders should be passed back from Company Sergeant-Major to Company Sergeant-Major and arrangements for this are again the responsibility of the R.S.M.’
Jock scowled. He seemed to have forgotten something here and he leant forward. The group waited, half expecting him to collapse over the desk, but he pulled himself up again. As the silence continued, the others, one by one, looked up, aware that it was all over. Jock stood perfectly still. He stared down at them until they had all raised their heads, and he completed the formula:
‘Any questions?’
Nobody spoke until at last Charlie said, ‘Absolutely none.’
Household Ghosts Page 18