‘Absolutely,’ Pink answered him. ‘It’s in the book. Part of the myth for me. Don’t you worry, chum. A kind of Golgotha for me.’
The Captain frowned. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he admitted, about Golgotha. ‘But Passchendaele—’ He managed one of his gay little whistles. ‘Boy, you don’t get nearer to death than that, no – and the mud? The mud! Up to here. I do not exaggerate. No. I tell my stories, maybe, but I would not exaggerate about that day. It was a week really. Mud above the knee. Some places it was higher, but to the knee was far enough for Captain Gordon, R.A.M.C., Lieutenant, as he was then.’ He frowned. ‘I can’t remember what I thought.’ He sounded frightened by his own forgetfulness. ‘I can’t remember it clearly now. But I’d a Bible in my pocket. I can tell you that. A photo of my mother and another of a lassie I never saw in my life. She was somebody’s sister, I think. I don’t remember.’ He tried to pull himself together a little, but he did not have the courage to take a drink of whisky from Pink’s flask. ‘No, no,’ he said, and paused for a long minute. ‘Up to the knees!’ he repeated, and then added vaguely, ‘My knees are awful cold now.’ More firmly he continued:
‘When we got there, Jerry’s machine-gun—’ He relapsed into semaphore to mark a thousand of his countrymen dead. He put his hand flat on his forehead. ‘When we got there the boys had no fight left in them.’ His eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘Oh my goodness me,’ he said. He brushed his forehead with the sleeve of his black Highland jacket and one of the sharp silver buttons scratched his cheek, but he did not seem to notice it. He put the cloth to his nose again.
He said, ‘This thing smells of moth balls. It’s most unpleasant. That’s my dotter’s doing. And I don’t think you get moths in a caravan at all.’
He sat back and closed his eyes and then, almost in slow motion he tipped forward, and Pink let him gently down to the floor.
‘All right, old man?’ Pink asked anxiously, and moved forward to help pick him up again. But he lay where he fell and Pink said to himself, out loud:
‘Cheri – cheri – bim, by God. A regular thing.’
Then he went to look for John the policeman. Shouts of laughter still rang through the corridors, coming from the gym.
It was a few moments after this when Macdonald and Mary arrived. Although she had been near to tears herself when she met Macdonald, Mary now played it gay. Her laughter tinkled a little falsely as she came down the corridor, accusing Macdonald of respectability and false modesty for not having ventured into the gentlemen’s lavatory and further for having refused to accost any men on their way in or out. But then she did not see herself blush and laugh gaily as she led the way into the same lavatory saying ‘Good heavens! Look at those awful stalls!’
But the lavatory was by then as busy as a railway station. People were hauling the poor Captain this way and that. Around the body there were twenty pairs of legs, and six or seven people were talking at once. Somebody other than Macdonald, who came edging through, recognised that perhaps the Captain was something more than drunk, but John, who was a very young policeman, seemed determined that drunk he was, and badly confusing his duties, as he had himself drunk an illicit pint, he seemed further determined tomake some moral judgments. He had his cap off and his short hair stuck upwards and outwards. His only concession to civility at this point was to name the person he was talking to as often as a comma turns up in a sentence. Each clause was punctuated by a Mr Miller, a Miss Macdonald, or in the end, a Miss Ferguson, which anyway was incorrect, as Mary’s surname was now Cameron.
Somehow or other, action continued in spite of the confusion of argument, medical advice and a general atmosphere of clumsiness and indistinct focus. The groaning Captain was lifted to his feet and Mary, with unthinking annoyance, tore a strip off John the policeman, who could not have had better intentions as he said again and again to one person or the next:
‘A good evening’s one thing, Mr Hogg, but this is no’ right at all, Mr Hogg. This is the sort of thing that spoils a party. This is tantamount to public nuisance, Mr Hogg. So it is. I’m not at all sure that it shouldn’t go down in the book.’
‘It’s in the Book,’ Pink sang to himself. ‘Oyez, it’s in the Book.’
A moment later a flaming argument grew up, the same points being put again and again, as John the policeman refused to let Peebles, the singing farmer, take Macdonald and the Captain home.
By then, half the dance and all the boys from Classroom III were involved, but perhaps for reasons of class as much as personality they inclined to back Mary who dictated the following course of action. If the only car big enough to take the Captain in comfort was Peebles’ massive fawn Humber, then that was the car that should be used. Pink would drive it, Macdonald would go with the Captain, and John the policeman, himself, must also go to help carry the Captain from road to caravan, should this be necessary.
The Captain himself had offered only one positive note. He was not going anywhere except back to his burrow, namely the Captain’s caravan. John seemed doubtful about this, but as the body of spectators were solidly behind Mary, he at last agreed. There were two amendments, or additions, to the plan. The Captain himself, with a guilty look at Macdonald, asked that Mary should come, too. Somewhat to everybody’s surprise, after an important two seconds of thought (or better, forethought) Mary announced, and announced particularly plainly, that she was willing to do this. And as soon as she had said so she looked round the heads at the back of the crowd. There was no sign of David, but Stephen was there. He signalled, at once, that he had heard and understood. The other last-minute addition was that Peebles said he had a sheep-dog, named Flossy, in the back of the Humber. He was careful about the name. He said that as she was nervous he had better come along too. At last, the whole nebula of confusion gradually moved from the lavatory to the hall and then to the ashcourt. The description of the Captain’s embussing would be as laborious as the procedure itself. Somehow they squeezed him in (and he was looking very ill, now), then the car drove off. By some disturbing reflex, the crowd gave a little cheer, as if it were the send-off at the end of a wedding.
In the hall, meantime, Stephen told David, who had emerged from the gym, what had happened. He added, turning away, ‘Mary’s gone along too.’ Then at the gym door he paused, and said, ‘Want a drink?’
David shook his head. For amoment he seemed about to explain himself, then he decided on a simple ‘No, thanks’ and with a flick of his fingers about turned and made for the room where all the coats were kept. The crowd of well-wishers sauntered back, knocking their feet against the top step, as if they were used to mud. Most of them then decided that it was long past time to go. Some looked rather angry with themselves. But the hard nucleus of the Queen’s bar boys sidled back down the corridor, while the younger couples, shouting nonsenses at each other on a slightly high pitch, went back to the dance floor and tried to recapture the mood of the clinch.
But the country dance was at an end. Patchy music was provided by a rather dreamy young farmer who played the piano as if he had only one hand: the left being an automatic pump. Satisfied by this, several young couples dragged out the proceedings by dancing more or less in the dark, in front of the mirror. They swayed very slowly in their twos, looking only at those strangers, themselves.
Stephen did not stay in the hall to watch David run down the steps to his car. He returned to the gym and sat on the platform where all those girls had sat; those who were now being taken home in little cars or walked through blue, echoing streets. Stephen looked calm enough but he was then obliged to talk to one of the leading Young Conservatives, a nice boy, without looks, without money and without talent for games, dancing or sports, who for some reason spent all his time, outside the estate agent’s office in which he worked, doing everything in his power to preserve, or more accurately to recreate a society in which looks, money, field sports, games and dancing would have importance. This young man affected a Highland pose, with arms crossed a
nd one foot splay, and he enjoyed talking to Stephen. He told himself that he found Stephen sympathetic because he was one of the most intelligent young men in the district. Stephen himself thought how awful it was that he should sit discussing politics and crops with the dullest man in the area, and how inevitable. Soon he looked bored stiff.
Five or six minutes after the pianist had packed up, the couples drifted away and Stephen was in the gym alone. He sat a little while longer then, confirming that nobody else was there, he walked as far as the big square mirror. He stood for a few moments seriously considering the nice-looking dark young man in Highland dress who there confronted him, so passively. He seemed bewildered by the image’s inaction under provocation; puzzled by the flatness of jealousy. Then he took a step or two forward and looked very carefully at the blue eyes almost as if, having found himself so unconfident of his sex, he felt confused about his identity.
NINE
THE CARAVAN WAS not particularly clean or comfortable, but it was tidy. The books, but for Treasure Island and Journey’s End, which rested on the ledge by the bunk, were neatly clasped between a pair of stirrups which had been made into book ends. The Captain’s silver hair-brushes were carefully aligned with his comb and stud box. But the final scenes of his life were played clumsily. His own appearance was pathetically untidy, and even his clipped speech deserted him, because in the end, one half of his face was paralysed.
Pink, as soon as he had helped the Captain as far as the caravan, funked it, and saying something, weakly, about Peebles’ dog which had woken another at the cottage nearby, he hastened back to the car where Peebles lay snoring, sprawled half along the back seat.
Mary, when she was still shouting orders, had lost her nerve. At first, as if she were dealing with a drunk, not an invalid, she shouted to the policeman to undress him.
‘We’ll have him into bed and he’ll be right as rain.’
She smiled uncertainly at the Captain, but he could not reply. As he arrived at the caravan he was once again gripped with a pain that went across his chest, to his shoulders, even down his arms: a hollow and burning pain. In the car he had not attempted to speak. It was the policeman who had done most of the talking. He had protested all the way that the Force was the best career, Miss Macdonald, for a man such as himself coming from a big family like he did. He had done well at the Police College. ‘The Force offers the opportunities’, he said as the little Captain swayed and fell against his shoulder. Macdonald was in the back of the car and she reached forward and grasped the Captain’s shoulders. She spent half of the journey crying and the other half adjusting him in his seat as if he were a ventriloquist’s dummy, and for a moment, until he regained balance, holding him firmly there. Rabbits’ eyes shone in the headlights when they approached the river. At the sight of them Peebles’ dog began to bark, and Peebles, waking from a noisy sleep, hit it on the nose.
In the caravan, Macdonald, as they began to undress the Captain, clicked her teeth at Mary and said, ‘There’s no need to shout.’ They took off his shoes and his stockings, they unbuckled his sporran, then with difficulty undid his kilt. His legs were almost the same thickness all the way up, and white as the sheets. They took off his Highland jacket, and with his handkerchief, Macdonald dabbed the scratch on his cheek, but it was already dry. They removed his collar but they did not manage the shirt. The scene flared up for a moment as they tried. The Captain groaned in protest. He was sitting on his shirt tails and he could not lean forward and stand up. Mary said, ‘Well, lift him up then,’ her voice again rising to a shout. Macdonald stood back and the policeman could not manage on his own. His whole face was aglow with sweat. Mary’s hands moved in sharp nervy circles. ‘Go on, go on.’ Effortlessly, like a baby after his bottle, the Captain was a little sick and Macdonald took his hand towel and mopped it up. The policeman had stepped back and even Mary grew silent. For a second they did not seem to be friends helping the sick, but accomplices stripping the body.
Mary said suddenly, ‘Well, just leave him like that, for God’s sake, it doesn’t matter if he’s got his shirt on.’
‘He’s real bad,’ Macdonald said.
‘He’s half asleep,’ Mary retorted. ‘He’s tired out. Of course he is.’
They laid him in his bed in his vest and his open, boiled shirt. A meticulous Highland officer to the end, the Captain wore nothing under his kilt. As he rested against the pillows the front of his shirt pushed up against his chin, and curved like a board. Macdonald pulled up the sheet and blankets.
She said, again, ‘He’s bad,’ and Mary bit her nail.
She turned to the policeman who was putting on his cap and said:
‘Don’t just stand about then. Get over to the farm and use the phone.’
‘Who’ll I ring?’ he asked, and Mary’s impatience overwhelmed her. She clenched her fists as if she were going to scream. Macdonald moved back to the door of the caravan and in a low voice, like a voice from another room, she told him the numbers of the doctor and of the Captain’s daughter. By the time the policeman had noted them down, the Captain had momentarily recovered enough to indicate to Mary the syringe by his bedside. There was a tiny sealed phial of morphia in the drawer beside it. With a smile, the last smile that was not crooked, he said, ‘Jab.’
Mary, with an outward show of courage and appetite for action, removed the syringe from its case and shakily fitted it together. Her hands did not tremble. They were steady for a second, then leapt two or three inches at a time. She fumbled several times before she had the syringe fixed together. When she was trying to break the seal of the minute phial, because she did not understand that it was rubber to be pierced, her hand slipped again. The phial slid along the hard surface of the table and fell with a crash on the floor.
Mary cried out, then she shoved the syringe away from her.
‘Oh, damn the thing,’ she said, pushing her knuckles into her brow.
Macdonald, picking up the phial, saw that the contents were spilt.
The Captain said, very faintly, ‘It’ll not matter,’ and Mary did not dare look him in the face, lest she saw pain.
Macdonald, suddenly, for personal more than practical reasons, was determined that Mary should leave them. She stood over her and said, ‘There’s no point in both of us staying now. You’ve had a day of it. I’ll stay with him.’
Mary might have obeyed. She looked up at Macdonald and she did not recognise what was in her mind. She was clearly thinking ‘I’m so bloody useless anyway’ and that was why she was for once grateful to the Captain who sat up and protested. But again, and for a moment at least, fortunately, because it gave her confidence, she misinterpreted him. She thought he said, ‘No, stay, Mary,’ meaning ‘I find comfort in your presence.’ He did in fact say ‘No, stay, Mary,’ meaning ‘I’d find it more difficult if you left me alone with Flora.’ Even at this time, when the Captain was certain he was going to die, even in pain, although it was a little less acute now, he dreaded being left alone with the woman whose affection he could not return. He knew there was no chance of their both leaving him, but he was not sorry about this. At the Private bar at the Moray Arms, his local hotel (not pub), he had actually stated that when the time came he would like to be alone. He used to say, ‘Like the animals. They know a thing or two. They crawl away on their own to die.’ They crawl away on their own because there is no one to console them. And when the Captain had suggested, so gaily, that he would do the same, he was certain, somehow, that there would be another consolation. But he found none, and he therefore did not want them to go. As sensations slipped away, faster and faster, he wanted to hear voices and see people. As they grew dimmer they must sit closer. As their voices grew fainter they must shout louder.
Macdonald now sat close to him and she began to offer the only comfort she could, which was false comfort. She said the doctor would soon be there; she talked of the doctor, of how good he really was. She said his daughter would be back by breakfast time. The o
nly comfort was in the sound of her voice, not in the things she said. He would rather that she spoke of other people and other things now; it did not matter what. Macdonald, more because the manner of the scene disappointed her, than because her friend was dying, began to get tearful. Her mind could not cope with the tragedy and she fixed on the irritation. She turned again to try to make Mary go back to the farm to make sure that John the policeman had made the phone calls, but Mary obstinately refused to budge. With much effort, the Captain touched the copy of Treasure Island by his bedside and Macdonald picked it up. She refused to let Mary read and, in a wan voice, she began at the beginning of the book which the Captain almost knew by heart. It was at the end of the part where the pirates come to the inn that the Captain stirred again. He used to say of his mother ‘she was an awfully nice wee body’ and he meant to say of Treasure Island, ‘It’s an awfully good book.’ But his words were blurred and indistinguishable. They both looked up at him and with one eye, he recognised in their faces his own paralysis which had followed the stroke. It was his left side which was affected, and as he reached across with his right hand to feel his lip and chin he overbalanced slightly and fell against Macdonald, who was leaning forward beside him. They stuck for a moment, in a ludicrous position, their foreheads together like a couple of stags with their antlers caught. Then she pushed him back on the pillows. She looked back at Mary who was staring wide-eyed at the figure in the bed. Macdonald slowly turned back to the book.
At that point, without another word, Mary walked out.
Pink had moved the car along a little from the old bridge in order to try to stop Flossy and the dog in the kennel at the cottage from barking so incessantly, but the sun was rising and Mary soon discovered where he was. She walked across the corner of the field where the stooked corn looked damp and black. The clumps of trees by the river leaning gently with the wind were still without colour. The water itself looked like treacle, but the concrete face of the new bridge was light and bare. A couple of fish lorries rolled along the main road, their sidelights on, their tyres whining against the new surface. The sky was a deep duck-egg blue, with one or two streaks of black.
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