and doesn’t give a dam whether anyone knows it or not; when you have two strings of ribbons, starting with the M.C. and M.M. and including the Croix de Guerre and a couple of exotic Balkan gongs at the end, you don’t need to put on side. Which was just as well, for Errol had evidently been born with a double helping of self-esteem, advertised in the amused half-smile and lifted eyebrow with which he surveyed the world in general - and me in particular on the day he joined the battalion.
I was bringing my platoon in from a ten-mile route march, which they had done in the cracking time of two and a half hours, and was calling them to march to attention for the last fifty yards to the main gate, exhorting McAuslan for the umpteenth time to get his pack off his backside and up to his shoulders, and pretending not to hear Private Fletcher’s sotto voce explanation that McAuslan couldn’t march upright because he was expecting, and might, indeed, go into labour shortly. Sergeant Telfer barked them to silence and quickened the step, and I turned aside to watch them swing past - it was a moment I took care never to miss, for the pride of it warms me still: my platoon going by, forty hard young Jocks in battle order, rifles sloped and bonnets pulled down, slightly dusty but hardly even breaking sweat as Telfer wheeled them under the archway with its faded golden standard. Eat your heart out, Bonaparte.
It was as I was turning to follow that I became aware of an elegant figure seated in a horse-ghari which had just drawn up at the gate. He was a Highlander, but his red tartan and white cockade were not of our regiment; then I noticed the three pips and threw him a salute, which he acknowledged with a nonchalant forefinger and a remarkable request spoken in the airy affected drawl which in Glasgow is called “Kelvinsaid”.
“Hullo, laddie,” said he. “Your platoon? You might get a couple of them to give me a hand with my kit, will you?”
It was said so affably that the effrontery of it didn’t dawn for a second - you don’t ask a perfect stranger to detach two of his marching men to be your porters, not without preamble or introduction. I stared at the man, taking in the splendid bearing, the medal ribbons, and the pleasant expectant smile while he put a fresh cigarette in his holder.
“Eh? I beg your pardon,” I said stiffly, “but they’re on parade at the moment.” For some reason I didn’t add “sir”.
It didn’t faze him a bit. “Oh, that’s a shame. Still, not to panic. We ought to be able to manage between us. All right, Abdul,” he addressed the Arab coachman, “let’s get the cargo on the dock.”
He swung lightly down from the ghari - not the easiest thing to do, with decorum, in a kilt - and it was typical of the man that I found myself with a valise in one hand and a set of golf-clubs in the other before I realised that he was evidently expecting me to tote his damned dunnage for him. My platoon had vanished from sight, fortunately, but Sergeant Telfer had stopped and was staring back, goggle-eyed. Before I could speak the newcomer was addressing me again:
“Got fifty lire, old man? ‘Fraid all I have is Egyptian ackers, and the Fairy Coachman won’t look at them. See him right, will you, and we’ll settle up anon. Okay?”
That, as they say, did it. “Laddie” I could just about absorb (since he must have been all of twenty-seven and therefore practically senile), and even his outrageous assumption that my private and personal platoon were his to flunkify, and that I would caddy for him and pay his blasted transport bills - but not that careless “Okay?” and the easy, patronising air which was all the worse for being so infernally amiable. Captain or no captain, I put his clubs and valise carefully back in the ghari and spoke, with masterly restraint:
“I’m afraid I haven’t fifty lire on me, sir, but if you care to climb back in, the ghari can take you to the Paymaster’s Office in HQ Company; they’ll change your ackers and see to your kit.” And just to round off the civilities I added: “My name’s MacNeill, by the way, and I’m a platoon commander, not a bloody dragoman.”
Which was insubordination, but if you’d seen that sardonic eyebrow and God-like profile you’d have said it too. Again, it didn’t faze him; he actually chuckled.
“I stand rebuked. MacNeill, eh?” He glanced at my campaign ribbon. “What were you in Burma?”
“Other rank.”
“Well, obviously, since you’re only a second-lieutenant now. What kind of other rank?”
“Well … sniper-scout, Black Cat Division. Later on I was a section leader. Why … sir?”
“Black Cats, eh? God Almighty’s Own. Were you at Imphal?”
“Not in the Boxes. Irrawaddy Crossing, Meiktila, Sittang Bend—”
“And you haven’t got a measly fifty lire for a poor broken-down old soldier? Well, the hell with you, young MacNeill,” said this astonishing fellow, and seated himself in the ghari again. “I’d heap coals of fire on you by offering you a lift, but your platoon are probably waiting for you to stop their motor. Bash on, MacNeill, before they seize up! Officers’ mess, Abdul!” And he drove off with an airy wave.
“Hadn’t you better report to H.Q.?” I called after him, but he was through the gate by then, leaving me nonplussed but not a little relieved; giving lip to captains wasn’t my usual line, but he hadn’t turned regimental, fortunately.
“Whit the hell was yon?” demanded Sergeant Telfer, who had been an entranced spectator.
“You tell me,” I said. “Ballater Bertie, by the look of him.” For he had, indeed, the air of those who command the guard at Ballater Station, conducting Royalty with drawn broadsword and white spats. And yet he’d been wearing an M.M. ribbon, which signified service in the ranks. I remarked on this to Telfer, who sniffed as only a Glaswegian can, and observed that whoever the newcomer might be, he was a heid-case - which means an eccentric.
That was the battalion’s opinion, formed before Captain Errol had been with us twenty-four hours. He had driven straight to the mess, which was empty of customers at that time of day, smooth-talked the mess sergeant into paying the ghari out of bar receipts, made free with the Tallisker unofficially reserved for the Medical Officer, parked himself unerringly in the second-in-command’s favourite chair, and whiled away the golden afternoon with the Scottish Field. Discovered and gently rebuked by the Adjutant for not reporting his arrival in the proper form, he had laughed apologetically and asked what time dinner was, and before the Adjutant, an earnest young Englishman, could wax properly indignant he had found himself, by some inexplicable process, buying Errol a gin and tonic.
“I can’t fathom it,” he told me, with the pained expression he usually reserved for descriptions of his putting. “One minute I was tearing small strips off the chap, and the next you know I was saying ‘What’s yours?’ and filling him in on the social scene. Extraordinary.”
Having found myself within an ace of bell-hopping for Captain Errol by the same mysterious magic, I sympathised. Who was he, anyway, I asked, and the Adjutant frowned.
“Dunno, exactly. Nor why we’ve got him. He’s been up in Palestine lately, and just from something the Colonel said I have the impression he’s been in some sort of turmoil - Errol, I mean. That type always is,” said the Adjutant, like a dowager discussing a fallen woman. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he was an I-man.”
“I” is Intelligence, and the general feeling in line regiments is that you can keep it; I-men are disturbing influences best confined to the higher echelons, where they can pursue their clandestine careers and leave honest soldiers in peace. Attached to a battalion, they can be unsettling.
And
