The Sheik and the Dustbin. George Fraser MacDonald
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from that crafty young soldier, was interesting. A chanty-wrastler is a poseur, and unreliable.
“Too dam’ sure of himself by half,” was the judgment of the second-in-command. “We can do without his sort.”
The Colonel rubbed tobacco between his palms in his thoughtful way, and said nothing.
Personally, I’d met plenty I liked better, but it seemed to me there was a deeper prejudice against Errol than he deserved, bouncy tigger though he was. Some of it might be explained by his service record which, it emerged, was sensational, and not all on the credit side. According to the Adjutant’s researches, he had been commissioned in the Territorials in ‘39, and had escaped mysteriously from St Valéry, where the rest of his unit had gone into the P.O.W. bag (“there were a few heads wagged about that, apparently”). Later he had fought with distinction in the Far East, acquiring a Military Cross (“a real one, not one of your up-with-the-rations jobs”) with the Chindits.
“And then,” said the Adjutant impressively, “he got himself cashiered. Yes, busted - all the way down. It seems he was in charge of a train-load of wounded, somewhere in Bengal, and there was some foul-up and they were shunted into a siding. Some of the chaps were in a bad way, and Errol raised hell with the local R.T.O., who got stroppy with him, and Errol hauled out his revolver and shot the inkpot off the R.T.O.’s desk, and threatened to put the next one between his eyes. Well, you can’t do that, can you? So it was a court-martial, and march out Private Errol.”
“But he’s a captain now,” I said. “How on earth—?”
“Chubbarao, and listen to this,” said the Adjutant. “He finished up late in the war with those special service johnnies who were turned loose in the Balkans - you know, helping the partisans, blowing up bridges and things and slaughtering Huns with cheese-wire by night. Big cloak-and-dagger stuff, and he did hell of a well at it, and Tito kissed him on both cheeks and said he’d never seen the like—”
“So that’s where he got the M.M.”
“And the Balkan gongs, and the upshot of it was that he was re-commissioned. It happens, now and then. And of late he’s been undercover in Palestine.” The Adjutant scratched his fair head. “Something odd there - rumours about terrorist suspects being knocked about pretty badly, and one hanging himself in his cell. Nasty business. Anyway, friend Errol was shipped out, p.d.q., and now we’re landed with him. Oh, and another thing-he’s to be Intelligence Officer, as if we needed one. Didn’t I say he was the type?” The Adjutant sniffed. “Well, at least it should keep him out of everyone’s hair.”
The disclosures of Errol’s irregular past were not altogether surprising, and they helped to explain his alakeefik attitude and brass neck. Plainly he was capable of anything, and having hit both the heights and the depths was not to be judged as ordinary mortals are.
His duties as I-man were vague, and kept him out of the main stream of battalion life, which may have been as well, for as a soldier he was a contradictory mixture. In some things he was expert: a splendid shot, superb athlete, and organised to the hilt in the field. On parade, saving his immaculate turn-out, he was a disaster: when he was Captain of the Week and had to mount the guard, I suffered agonies at his elbow in my capacity as orderly officer, whispering commands and telling him what to do next while he turned the ceremony into a shambles. Admittedly, since McAuslan was in the guard, we were handicapped from the start, but I believe Errol could have reduced the Household Cavalry to chaos - and been utterly indifferent about it. Doing well or doing badly, it was all one to him; he walked off that guard-mounting humming and swinging his walking-stick, debonair as be-damned, and advising the outraged Regimental Sergeant-Major that the drill needed tightening up a bit. (He actually addressed him as “Major”, which is one of the things that are never done. An R.S.M. is “Mr So-and-so”.)
Being casual in all things, he was naturally accident-prone, but even that did nothing to deflate him, since the victim was invariably someone else. He wrecked the Hudson Terraplane belonging to Lieutenant Grant, and walked away without a scratch; Grant escaped with a broken wrist, but there was no restoring the car which had been its owner’s pride.
He was equally lethal on blue water. Our garrison town boasted a magnificent Mediterranean bay, strewn with wrecks from the war, and sailing small boats was a popular pastime among the local smart set; Errol took to it in a big way, and from all accounts it was like having a demented Blackbeard loose about the waterfront. I gather there is a sailing etiquette about giving way and not getting athwart other people’s hawses, of which he was entirely oblivious; the result was a series of bumps, scrapes, collisions, and furious protests from outraged voyagers, culminating in a regatta event in which he dismasted one competitor, caused another to capsize, and added insult to injury by winning handsomely. That he was promptly disqualified did not lower the angle of his jaunty cigarette-holder by a degree when he turned up at the prize-giving, bronzed and dashing, to applaud the garrison beauty, Ellen Ramsay, when she received the Ladies’ Cup. She it was who christened him the Sea Hog - and was his dinner companion for many nights thereafter, to the chagrin of Lieutenant MacKenzie who, until Errol’s arrival, had been the fair Ellen’s favoured beau.
None of which did much for Errol’s popularity. Nor, strangely enough, did an odd episode which I thought was rather to his credit. The command boxing tournament took place, and as sports officer I had to organise our regimental gladiators - which meant calling for volunteers, telling them to knock off booze and smoking, letting them attend to their own sparring and training in the M.T. shed, and seeing that they were sober and (initially) upright on opening night. If that seems perfunctory, I was not a boxer myself, and had no illusions about being Yussel Jacobs when it came to management. Let them get into the ring and lay about them, while I crouched behind their corner, crying encouragement and restraining the seconds from joining in.
The tournament lasted three nights, and in winning his semifinal our heavyweight star, Private McGuigan, the Gorbals Goliath, broke a finger. Personally I think he did it on purpose to avoid meeting the other finalist, one Captain Stock, a terrible creature of blood and iron who had flattened all his opponents with unimagined ferocity; he was a relic of the Stone Age who had found his way into the Army Physical Training Corps, this Stock, and I wouldn’t have gone near him with a whip, a gun, and a chair. Primitive wasn’t the word; he made McAuslan and Wee Wullie look like Romantic poets.
Left to find a substitute willing to offer himself for sacrifice at the hands of this Behemoth, I got no takers at all, and then someone said he had heard that Errol used to box a bit, and must be about the right weight. There was enthusiastic support for this suggestion, especially from the older officers, so I sought the man out in his room, where he was reclining with a cool drink at his elbow, shooting moths with an air pistol - and hitting them, too.
“What makes you think I could take Stock, if you’ll pardon the expression?” he wondered, when I put it to him. “Or doesn’t that matter, as long as we’re represented?”
“Someone in the mess said you used to be pretty useful …”
“Did they now? That’s handsome of them.” He grinned at me sardonically. “Who proposed me - Cattenach?” This was the second-in-command, Errol’s principal critic. “Never mind. It’s not on, Dand, thanks all the same. I haven’t boxed for ages. Too much like work.”
“There’s no one else in the battalion,” I said subtly.
“Stop waving the regimental colours at me.” He picked off a large moth on the wing, bringing down a shower of plaster. “Anyway, I’m an interloper. Let Cattenach take him on if he’s so damned keen; God knows he’s big enough. No, you’ll just have to tell ‘em I’ve retired.”
So I reported failure, and there was disappointment, although no one was daft enough to suggest that Errol was scared. The Adjutant, who was a romantic, speculated that he had probably killed a man in the ring - his fiancée’s brother, for choice - and vowed never to box again; he would have joined the Foreign Legion, insisted the Adjutant, if it hadn’t been for the war. Others joined in these fine flights, and no one noticed the Colonel sauntering out of the mess, but later