The Broken Sword

by R. Mingo Sweeney

  MacQueen’s teeth started to chatter. He wrapped a blanket over his shoulder and stuffed some of the newspaper into the stove. This he lit, then started to feed in the kindling. He threw in a log and jumped back in bed.

  The sergeant reached under the bed and produced two bottles of beer. He opened them. “Come and get it,” he said.

  MacQueen darted across the floor and back to the bunk. It was something called Moosehead Ale.

  “That was my first civilized evening for years,” commented Sergeant Cyples. “I might even develop a taste for it.” He tilted the bottle and allowed a generous stream of beer to gurgle down his throat. He burped and lit a cigarette.

  MacQueen’s mouth tasted like a doormat. He followed the Sergeant’s example.

  “Is it true that you were a waiter in the sergeants’ mess?” asked Sergeant Cyples.

  MacQueen gave a short laugh. “That was the worst ever,” he answered. “Getting up and serving all of those guys three times a day. Washing those stacks of dishes out of a tin tub on the stove. A disgusting cook and a no-good tramp as help. Twelve hours of abuse for a buck and ten? Christ!”

  The sergeant laughed and gurgled more beer. “How did you get out of that one?” he asked. “It was before my time.”

  “The colonel was inspecting the barracks,” replied MacQueen. “He saw me and I was wearing riding breeches in the kitchen. He spoke to me and found out that I had been a classmate of his son. He took me to the headquarters building as his runner.”

  The sergeant nodded his head in resigned confirmation. “That’s how it works,” he said. “That’s the trick. I could turn a thousand awkward squads into soldiers and not one colonel would give me the time of day.”

  “A second lieutenant gave you his car!” MacQueen said, and thought it best not to laugh.

  “You are deliberately missing the point, old pal,” said the sergeant. He swung his long legs and bony feet out of the bunk. The cabin was warming but the floor was still cold. He pulled on a pair of heavy grey socks and padded to the sink. “Orders are orders,” he said and turned on the tap. “I’ve got a kit-bag with some shaving stuff in the car,” he said over his shoulder. “But we’ll get it later—it’s only nine o’clock.”

  “What did you do in Nicaragua?” asked MacQueen.

  The sergeant adjusted his long underwear and rinsed the sink. “It was El Salvador,” answered the sergeant. “Did I say Nicaragua? Sorry, it was El Salvador. Or its main town, really. They call it San Salvador. It isn’t much.”

  “You said you were beached there,” pressed MacQueen. “It sounds more exciting than waiting on the sergeants at Aldershot. What the hell did you do there?”

  “What was I doing?” The sergeant gave a nervous bark of a laugh. “What am I always doing? Training poor bastards to kill one another, that’s what I was doing.”

  “In Spanish?” MacQueen had harboured ambitions to run off and fight in the Spanish Civil War, which was one of the reasons he had been allowed by his family to join the militia at fourteen.

  “Killing is a language all its own,” said the sergeant. He pulled his boots from under the bed and picked up his battle dress trousers, which were neatly folded over the end of his bed to preserve the knifelike crease. “I have to go to the can. I’ll bring back some coffee and something to eat.”

  While MacQueen waited for the sergeant’s return, he further considered the maintained crease in his own trousers. It was not as sharp as the sergeant’s. Soldiers are strictly accountable for their personal appearance and have no one but themselves to rely on. They carefully attend to their equipment and themselves—a matter of extreme self-interest, which then becomes a matter of pride and, with some, close to a fetish. MacQueen thought over how it’s said that Napoleon conquered all of Europe with a piece of red ribbon—his famous Legion of Honour decoration.

  Thus, soldiers, whatever one’s opinion of them, are neat. Any unit that is not neat has poor discipline and low morale. Of course, the actual scene of combat is rarely neat; but they do their best. It is an actual tool of survival. Thirty men in one hut have to be neat, to say nothing of five men in one tank. Civilians often mistake this for vanity. MacQueen vowed to learn something from the sergeant and better the crease in his pants.

  MacQueen opened the door and the sergeant blustered in with mugs of coffee, toast, and marmalade. He even had some tinned orange juice. “Put the mugs on the stove,” he said. “Don’t burn your hands.”

  They ate in private, as friends like to do, rather than sitting at a counter in the diner. They had beer, cigarettes, and a car. They had a free day ahead of them, and they enjoyed one another’s company. For the moment, it was quite enough. The long-range planners in the capitals of the world suffered great stress, and our innocent duo had thrown the editorial pages into the fire without even glancing at them. They had other concerns and were anxious to know one another. They were unalike, but each thought that they might make a good team. They really had no control over their destinies whatsoever, but really, who has?

  “Your colonel’s favour did you no favour with the sergeants,” commented the sergeant. “Shit, they seemed to take it as an insult that you would prefer a colonel’s company to theirs! It makes me laugh, and they don’t like that either.”

  “You make me sound like a celebrity,” said MacQueen.

  “Hardly,” drawled the sergeant. “But it’s a small world at camp—and small worlds can be vicious. Look at El Salvador on the map!”

  They decided to drive to Windsor for lunch.

  “You seem to have a lot of cash,” commented MacQueen. “It’s thirty miles or so.”

  “My life’s savings!” laughed Sergeant Cyples. He got the kit bag out of the car. This produced shaving gear and boot brushes, two essentials of a soldier’s gear. The sergeant produced a thumbtack from his bag and pinned a small metal mirror to the wall.

  So, that is where my thumbtacks go, thought MacQueen.

  “What kind of an army has Bermuda got?” asked the sergeant. He poured some water into a mug and put it on the stove.

  “When I was there I think it was the Sherwood Foresters,” replied MacQueen. “Of course, there was the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. Even a couple of flying boats of the Royal Air Force and the BVRC.”

  The sergeant took the mug cautiously with a towel and put it in the sink. He then squeezed some shaving cream onto a brush and lathered his face. “How do you know all of that?” he asked.

  MacQueen did not quite comprehend the question. Why shouldn’t he know all of that? “My brother and I were shown around the flagship by a marine when our parents were visiting the admiral,” he answered. “The squadron leader of the air force used to buzz our house. I saw the Foresters marching at a tattoo. I’m not a spy!”

  The sergeant looked at MacQueen and shook his head in wonderment. “I suppose you played cricket?” he asked.

  “A bit,” answered MacQueen. “At an English school there. Is that important?”

  The sergeant sighed and looked back in the mirror. He raised his chin and started to stroke his neck with the razor. He rinsed the soap in the mug. “Christ, MacQueen,” he said. “You just don’t understand, do you? You’re a clueless fucking idiot. Do you know what I was doing when you were visiting admirals, going to tattoos, and playing cricket? I don’t think you will ever understand. You are Alice in Wonderland, MacQueen, and you are soon going to get bounced right out on your arse.”

  “I’ve been in some pretty tough scrapes, too,” said MacQueen defensively. “Did you ever try to get from New York to Ottawa on ten cents?”

  The sergeant laughed warmly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That little exposé of yours is part of the problem. Can you ever imagine me saying that I was visiting an admiral or playing cricket at a boy’s school? To you it means nothing. To me it is the hidden lever. I could never act that part—neither could you if it wasn’t true.” He put a fresh mug of water on the stove for MacQueen then brushed his lo
ng teeth vigorously. He splashed on some aftershave, then some talcum, and sternly inspected the results in the mirror. “Christ, I have a five o’clock shadow right after shaving,” he commented sourly. “How did you get from Alberta to Bermuda?”

  “We drove,” said MacQueen. He went to the bowl in turn and put the hot mug into it. The sergeant’s shaving gear was neatly aligned and cleaned for him to use. Even a fresh blade.

  “Drove?” The sergeant reached for a beer under the bed. “During the Depression?”

  “In my father’s big Studebaker,” said MacQueen. He lathered his face. “I was nine…”

  “…and I was riding the rods to join the fucking navy!” exclaimed the sergeant.

  This was the first time that anyone had shown any curiosity about MacQueen’s brief and erratic career. He never mentioned these things, because he knew that no one would be interested, or they would be resentful. This had left him with very little to say in conversations, as he wasn’t interested in sports, and his contemporaries were interested in little else. He had read a lot of history, because it interested him more than big league baseball.

  “Have you been to England?” MacQueen asked. It seemed a good enough question to get the conversation started again. He pulled at his cheek and stroked down the side of his face. His beard was not a major problem yet.

  “Been there? I was born there!” The sergeant had made up his bed automatically then sat on it and tilted the beer bottle. “My mother said that I was born within the sound of Bow Bells, or something like that. I guess it means that I’m a cockney. Gorblimey.”

  MacQueen stopped shaving and looked at his friend. “What difference does all this make?” he asked. “Who gives a shit?”

  “Finish shaving, MacQueen,” said the sergeant. “Let’s get out of here. We need some fresh air.”

  10

  The two soldiers climbed into the old coupe and headed through the Annapolis Valley, towards Windsor. They passed through Wolfville and by Acadia University, whose Grecian façade and New England style reminded MacQueen of his brother. The sergeant had absorbed all of his attention, and he hadn’t thought of his family in any context relating to the present. His father was in Charlottetown and his mother in Bermuda. His brother was on a course in Brockville, and his little sister was dead. He sighed.

  “What’s that all about?” asked the sergeant.

  “My little sister died in ’38,” answered MacQueen. “Every once in a while it hits me, like just now.”

  The sergeant braked at a stop sign then turned into an open service station on the main street. The attendant polished the windshield, checked the oil, looked at the tires, and sold them five gallons of gasoline. The sergeant gave him two dollars and told him to keep the change.

  They moved onto the gravel road outside Wolfville. Gentle hills of leafless apple trees rose to their right and a flat expanse of marshland cut by Acadian dykes stretched on the other side to the Bay of Fundy. The sun was high in a cloudless sky and the snow had almost disappeared. The landscape was russet and brown, and the air was clear.

  “So, why did you leave El Salvador?” asked MacQueen.

  “I was run out of town!” he said. “Light me a cigarette, will you, Pat? I had a room in what they called the Palacio Presidente. A bunch of guys in sombreros attacked it one night and I took off in pyjama pants through the back door. Ever try driving a Model T Ford in bare feet?” He laughed.

  “You’re kidding!” exclaimed MacQueen in delight. “Christ, that sounds great! What happened?”

  This little story was the sergeant’s trump card—and he knew it. “They had already had about four revolutions that year alone,” he said. “Training the president’s guard was a hazardous occupation. I didn’t have any choice—shit, I didn’t even have a passport! Back in Canada the navy would have hung me from the yardarm.” He swerved to avoid a tractor backing out of a driveway. There was a car in the ditch farther down the road.

  “Did they kill the president?” asked MacQueen eagerly.

  “Hell no. Presidents don’t get killed, they make deals,” replied the sergeant. “It’s poor bastards like us that get killed. Anyway, I had parked the only armoured car in the country right outside my door. An old Ford with iron plates welded on the sides. It had kind of a turret with a Lewis gun stuck in it. I took off in it and smashed right through the border post of Honduras on one flat tire and with no lights.”

  MacQueen threw his head back and shouted with pleasure. “God almighty, you’re funny! All this in your pyjamas?”

  Sergeant Cyples joined in the laughter. “That’s right,” he said. “When I climbed out my pants fell off and I was balls-to-the-breeze!”

  MacQueen’s eyes were streaming, and he couldn’t stop laughing. He had a vivid imagination and could see it all. “Why did you stop?” he spluttered.

  “I ran out of gas,” said the sergeant. “A hundred yards inside Honduras. These guys were standing around with long moustaches, holding rifles. The Ford died like an axed bull and there I was, standing in the middle of the road with nothing on. There were big trees all around and it was barely daylight. That scene I’ll never forget!”

  “God, neither will I!” said MacQueen, dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. “That’s unbelievable.”

  “It’s true,” said the sergeant. “I finally sold that Ford for ten bucks and came home to join the army. That’s what I was doing when you were playing cricket!”

  MacQueen didn’t hold that jibe against the sergeant; he was having too much fun. “Who would want to play cricket with games like that in town?” he asked.

  The sergeant smiled grimly. “You’re a real romantic, Pat,” he said. “You should follow Lord Byron and be king of Greece. Even if it sounds funny, that wasn’t a tale from Boy’s Own Annual. What the hell! Occupational hazards I guess….”

  “We should make a movie out of it,” said MacQueen.

  “With my cock?” asked the sergeant with a side glance. “You wouldn’t get a screen big enough!”

  Still laughing, they entered the town of Windsor. A parade of Highland cadets from King’s Collegiate were marching with a pipe band down the main street. Sergeant Cyples pulled to the curb, and the boys in red coats marched past the car. Their cheeks were flushed and their white spats glistened. They swung their arms—and no one smiled. “Church parade for future officers,” commented Sergeant Cyples. There was always a shadow of bitterness to his voice when that subject rose in his mind. If he wants to be an officer, thought MacQueen, he’ll have to lose that tone.

  11

  The restaurant in Windsor could not be classified; it had no distinction except checked tablecloths. It featured home cooking, and they ordered another three-course meal.

  “My old man was hard Labour party in England,” said the sergeant. “He is hard CCF now in Winnipeg. He described all of your attitudes when I was a kid, and he hated every one of them. I always figured that if he was against them there must be something good in them. You are the first example I’ve been able to examine close up.”

  A middle-aged waitress placed plates of thick soup in front of each of the soldiers. She maintained an icy reserve with strangers and went about her business with a flourish of muted disapproval.

  “You’ve got a second-rate specimen for analysis,” laughed MacQueen.

  The sergeant buttered a biscuit and popped it into his mouth. “Let’s check?” he said. “How many officers are there in, say, two generations of your family?”

  MacQueen found it intriguing that his friend was so insistent. “Let me see,” he said. “A couple—no, three colonels. One of them with the DSO. There’s also a navy captain with the DSC. My father was younger, and he retired in 1927 as a captain before going to Bermuda. One cousin is in the air force, a pilot. His sister is married to a lieutenant commander. I can’t think of them all.”

  “It just goes on and on, eh? My father was exactly what I am, a sergeant in the PBI. That’s Poor Bloody Infantry
, in case you don’t know. He was wounded on the Somme then headed for the colonies before the General Strike was broken.”

  The next course was plunked down in front of them.

  “I want to know some of this stuff because Browne will only back off if he thinks his ass will be in a sling. Leave it to me how to get the message to him. Don’t expect any favours, but he won’t bear down too hard. Not as long as I’m there.”

  “I’m glad that you’re not your father,” said MacQueen.

  “He would hang you from a lamppost,” said the sergeant. “One other thing—didn’t you tell me you thought to run off with the Mac-Paps?”

  “The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion?” MacQueen laughed again. The waitress frowned, and the little artificial candle with the pleated lampshade trembled. “I didn’t want to go with them. I wanted to join the other side.”

  “Franco!” The sergeant sat back in admiration. “God, MacQueen, you are solid gold. You don’t miss a beat and you think it all perfectly normal. My father would spend years examining your cranium for motives! An ordinary soldier can’t have any motives. To him you would be like a prized young octopus in an aquarium! And you do it by instinct. You’re a national treasure!”

  This outburst really did have MacQueen nonplussed. He was pleased to be considered such a gem, but he couldn’t understand the sergeant’s excitement. “I thought I was supposed to be studying you,” he said.

  “I’m no problem,” said the sergeant, narrowing his eyes and looking amused. “I want your viewpoint, but I want to see it myself. Therefore, we have to keep you fit and in the game. I’ll see to that if I have to punch Browne in the nose to do it. It would break my heart to lose you now—the sight of those green playing fields and rich pretty girly from Poughkeepsie! I now know what was driving my father for the first time today, and you showed me. That high-talking old fraud is full of envy. He never knew quality, and now he would just want to destroy it.”