I call you just what I feel like. O.K.?’
‘Yes, Colonel.’
‘Yes, Colonel … Now, gentlemen; now then. This is Jock’s last supper and there’ll be a round of drinks on me. Even one for Mr Simpson. Corporal!’
‘Sir.’
‘Whisky. For the gentlemen that like it and for the gentlemen who don’t like it, whisky.’
He turned apologetically to Charlie Scott, who was still stroking his moustache.
‘I’m no good at talking at the best of times, Charlie, and tonight I’m no coping at all. Will we have the pipers back? It fills the gaps.’
‘Whatever you say, Jock; it’s your night.’
‘Aye.’ Jock opened his eyes very wide: this was one of his mannerisms. ‘Aye,’ he used to say, then with his eyes wide open he would add a little affirmative noise. It was an openmouthed ‘mm’. Aye, and a-huh. ‘Well I say we’ll have the pipers.’ He leant back in his chair and addressed one of the stewards who was hurrying by with a bottle. ‘Laddie, call the pipers.’
‘This minute, sir.’
‘Just “Sir”.’ He made a gesture with his flat hand: a little steadying gesture. It was the same gesture that had steadied men in the desert, in Italy, France, Germany and Palestine. ‘Just “Sir”. That’s all you need say.’ Then he sighed, and he said, ‘Aye, Charlie.’ He dug the point of his knife into the table-cloth again and again as he talked. He first made a hole with the knife and gradually he widened it.
‘… And you’ll have a tune, and I’ll have a tune, and Macmillan here’ll have a tune, and I’ll have another tune. Charlie, why the hell d’you grow that moustache so big?’
Major Charlie Scott continued to stroke it with his fingers. His great green eyes grew wide, under the shepherd’s eyebrows. He could think of no explanation.
‘Dunno; I’m sure. Just grew.’
Jock leant his chair back on two legs again and his arms fell down by his sides. ‘And you’re not the great talker yourself.’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘No … Well, let’s have the music. Ho-ro, my Nut Brown Maiden for me, and for you, Charlie?’
‘The Cock o’ the North.’ Jock tipped forward at that. The legs of the chair creaked as they pitched on the floor again.
‘Yon’s the Gordons’ tune!’
‘I still like it.’
Jock screwed up his face: he was genuinely worried.
‘But yon’s a cheesy tune, Charlie.’
Charlie Scott shrugged.
Jock leant forward to persuade him. ‘Laddie, I was with them for a wee while. They didn’t like me, you know; no. And Jock didn’t care much for them, neither.’
‘Really?’
‘Can you no think of a better tune?’
‘Myself, I like The Cock o’ the North.’ Charlie Scott put another cigarette in his holder.
Jock laughed and the veins stood out again. He slapped his thigh and that made a big noise.
‘And I love you, Charlie; you’re a lovely man. You’re no a great talker, right enough. But you’ve a mind of your own … Aye, pipers, and where have you been?’
‘Pantry, sir.’
‘Are you sober?’
‘Sir.’
‘You’d bloody well better be, and that’s a fact. You’re no here to get sick drunk the same as the rest of us are.’
The drones began as the bladders filled with air. The pipers marched round and round again. The room grew smokier, and the officers sat close into their chairs as the drink began to flow. The stewards never rested.
TWO
THE PIPERS WERE in the pantry, recovering themselves. They were drinking beer, and the sweat poured down their faces. Their heavy kilts and tunics were hot and scratchy, and all the paraphernalia of their dirks and plaids was a nuisance to them.
The younger piper had yellow eyes and he spoke in a high-pitched voice.
‘He’s a bloody terror, and that’s what he is.’
‘Aye,’ said the Corporal, ‘and he’s a great man.’
‘He’s a bloody terror, and that’s what he is; I’m telling you, Corporal.’
‘You can close your mouth. You’ll need all your spittle the night.’
Mess stewards in their white bum-freezers hurried by in search of liquor.
‘Is it right he was a piper; is that right, Corporal Fraser?’
‘Aye. And he could be Pipe-Major if he felt like it, man. You should hear him on the pibrochs. There’s nobody to touch him. He’s played on the wireless, you know.’
‘I’m no a corporal; I never get the chance of listening to the bloody wireless.’
‘You’ll watch your language in the Officers’ Mess, Piper Adam.’
‘This is no the Officers’ Mess. This is the pantry.’ All around them were dirty plates and cutlery. ‘Look at the shambles, eh?’
‘Just the same.’
‘Och, away you go, Corporal … He’s a bloody terror; I’m telling you.’
‘Aye, aye. You’re telling me.’
The Corporal-Piper was a patient young man with the mild blue eyes of the far north. He came from that queer strip of flat land called the Lairg. It stretches for thirty or forty miles along the south side of the Moray Firth, and at no point is it more than a few miles wide. The road from Inverness to Fochabers is as straight as the pine trees there, and nowhere in Scotland is there so much sky. It is like a foreign land, and the people speak their English slowly, and with a mild intonation, as if they were translating from a foreign tongue. So it was with Corporal Fraser.
‘Aye,’ he said softly; and he finished his pint of beer.
Then they were called into the ante-room to play some reels. Jock had decided that they all ought to take some exercise before the next round of drinks and as it was too slippery for a race round the barrack square he ordered that there should be dancing. With Charlie Scott as his partner he led away with the ‘Duke of Perth’ while the others, standing in their lines, clapped their hands to the music.
Jock danced with energy and with precision. He leapt high in the air and landed miraculously softly on the toes of his small feet.
