The Sheik and the Dustbin. George Fraser MacDonald
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no’ think the worse o’ me for gie’n him a wee dram tae the Ninety-Twa,” said Uncle comfortably. He raised his glass again. “An’ tae the Bantam’s, hey, L’tenant? Aye, them’s the wee boys! Ma Goad, ma Goad …”
Mrs McGilvray saw me to the door when I left, Uncle crying after me no’ tae shoot ony cheeses gaun doon the stair. When I had thanked her she said:
“I wonder … Charlie doesnae write very often. D’you think …?”
“He’ll write every week,” I assured her. “He’s a great lad, Mrs McGilvray. You’re very lucky.”
“Well,” she said, clasping her hands, “he’s always been right enough. I’m sure you‘ll look after him.” We shook hands and she pecked me quickly on the cheek. “Take care, laddie.”
Uncle’s hoarse chuckle sounded from the inner room. “Come ben, wumman! Whit’ll the neebors say, you hingin’ aboot the stairheid wi’ sojers!’
She gave me a despairing look and retreated, and I went down the stairs, stepping over the children and reflecting that I was certainly not going to be able to change my batman now.
The final visit was to MacKenzie’s people, who lived in a fifteenth-century castle-cum-mansion in Perthshire, a striking piece of Gothic luxury in beautiful parkland with a drive a mile long through banks of cultivated heather; it contained its own salmon river, a fortune in standing timber, and a battalion of retainers who exercised dogs, strolled about with shotguns, and manicured the rhododendrons. Sir Gavin MacKenzie was his son thirty years on, tall, commanding, and with a handshake like a mangle; the red had apparently seeped from his hair into his cheeks, but that was the only difference. In manner he was cordial and abrupt, a genuine John Buchan Scottish aristo - which is to say that he was more English than any Englishman could ever hope to be. If you doubt that, just consider such typical “Englishmen” as Harold Macmillan, David Niven, Alec Douglas-Home, Jack Buchanan, Stewart Granger, and Charles II.
This was the only visit on which I actually stayed on the premises overnight. We dined at a long candlelit table in a large and clammy hall with age-blackened panelling covered with crossed broadswords, targes, and flintlocks, with silent servitors emerging occasionally from the gloom to refuel us. At one end sat Sir Gavin in a dinner jacket and appalling MacKenzie tartan trews cut on the diagonal; at the other, Lady MacKenzie, an intense woman with a staccato delivery who chain-smoked throughout the meal. From time to time she and her husband addressed each other in the manner of people who have met only recently; it was hard to believe that they knew each other well enough to be have begotten not only their son but a daughter, seated opposite me, a plain, lumpy sixteen-year-old with the magnificent MacKenzie hair, flaming red and hanging to her waist. The only other diner was a pale, elderly man with an eyeglass whose name I didn’t catch - in fact, looking back, I’m not sure he was there at all, since he never spoke and no one addressed him. He drank most of a bottle of Laphroaig during the meal, and took it with him when the ladies withdrew, leaving old man MacKenzie and me to riot over the port.
Coming on the evening of the day I had spent with the McGilvrays, it was an odd contrast. Lady MacKenzie had chattered non-stop about her son, but without asking any questions, and his sister had not, I think, referred to him at all, but since she had the finishing-school habit of talking very quickly to her armpit it was difficult to be sure. Sir Gavin had spoken only of the Labour Government. Now, when we were alone, he demanded to know why, in my opinion, Kenny had not joined the Scots Guards, in which he, Sir Gavin, had held an exalted position. Why had he chosen a Highland regiment? It was extraordinary, when he could have been in the Brigade; Sir Gavin couldn’t understand it.
I said, trying not to smile, that it was possible some people might prefer a Highland regiment, and Sir Gavin said, yes, he knew that, but it wasn’t the point. Why young Kenneth? It seemed very odd to him, when the family had always been in the Brigade, and he could have kept an eye on the boy - “I mean, I don’t know your Colonel - what’s his name? No, don’t know him. Good man, is he?”
“They don’t come any better,” I said. It seemed fairly obvious to me why young Kenneth, a firebrand and a maverick, had chosen not to be in father’s regiment, but that could not be said. Sir Gavin looked glum, and said he didn’t know anything about Highland regiments - fine reputation, of course, but he didn’t know how they were, d’you see what I mean? With the Guards, you knew where you were. Life for a young officer was cut and dried … Highland regiment, he wasn’t so sure. Suddenly he asked:
“Is he a good officer?”
“Kenny? Yes. His Jocks like him.”
“His what?”
“His Jocks-his men.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “What about your Colonel?”
“I’m sure he thinks Kenny’s a good officer.” Indeed, Sir Gavin didn’t know about Highland regiments, where the opinion of the men is the ultimate test, and every colonel knows it. Sir Gavin chewed his cigar and then said:
“You were a ranker, weren’t you? Very well - in Burma, would you have … accepted Kenneth as your platoon commander?”
I mentally compared Kenny with the brisk young man who’d once challenged me to a spelling bee and caught me out over “inadmissible”, and who’d died in a bunker entrance the next day. A good subaltern, but no better than MacKenzie.
“Yes,” I said. “Kenny would have done.”
“You think so?” he said, and suddenly I realised he was worried about his son. In the Guards, he could have served with him in spirit, so to speak - but he didn’t know how Highland regiments were, he’d said. Did the boy fit into that almost alien background? Was he a good officer? Like Mrs McGilvray, he aye worried about him, if for a different reason. So it seemed sensible to start talking about Kenny, describing how he got on in the regiment, how he and his platoon sergeant, McCaw, the Communist Clydesider, formed a disciplinary alliance that was a battalion byword, recalling incidents in which Kenny had figured, our own companionship, things like that, no doubt babbling a bit, while Sir Gavin listened, and kept the decanter going, now and then asking a question, finally sitting in silence for a while, and then saying:
“Well, I’m glad he’s all right. Thank you.”
It was two in the morning when we finally rose, port-bloated and drowsy - he must have been partially kettled, for he insisted on a frame of snooker with accompanying brandies before we parted for the night. “John’ll look after you,” he said, hiccoughing courteously, and I was aware of a dim sober figure at the foot of the massive staircase, waiting to conduct me to my room - which brings me back, after this digression of homecoming, to where I was in the first place.
John was a footman, the only one I have ever encountered outside the pages of Georgette Heyer and Wodehouse, and he would have fitted into them perfectly, along with the rest of the MacKenzie ménage. No doubt I was a trifle woozy with tiredness and Croft’s Old Original, but I have no impression that I had to stir so much as a finger in order to get into bed. His shadow flitted about me, my clothes vanished, towel and soap and warm water swam into my ken, followed by pyjamas and a cup of some bland liquid, and then I was between the sheets and all was dark contentment. When I woke two hours later there was a tray at the bedside with various mineral waters, biscuits, and a glass of milk, all under a dim night-light. I think the milk had been spiked, for the first two hours after waking next morning passed in a beatific haze; I seem to remember curtains being drawn and a cup of tea appearing, and then I was borne up gently into a sitting position and presently subsided, shaven, while a voice murmured that my bath had been drawn - not filled or running, you understand, but drawn. At that point he vanished, and when I emerged from the bathroom, more or less awake, there was a breakfast tray on the window table, with porridge and Arbroath smokies and ham and eggs and such morning rolls as God’s Own Prophet eats only in Glasgow bakeries; the Scotsman and the Bulletin lay beside it (not that I was fit for more than the Scottykin comic strip), my clothes were laid out, pressed, brushed, and beautiful, my