The Complete McAuslan (33 page)

‘As I was saying, listening to this . . . ah, display of talent, I couldn’t help remembering a quiz question of which I heard many years ago, which always struck me as very ingenious and interesting, and I’m sure you’ll all agree when you hear it.’

I’d have been willing to lay odds against that, but the polite soldiery gave him a mild ovation, and on he went.

‘My proposal is that I set this question to both sides, and whichever can answer it should be declared the winner. All right?’

Of course it was all right; he was the brigadier. Ivan the Terrible might as well have asked the serfs if it was all right.

‘Well, here it is then,’ went on this high-ranking buffoon, beaming at his own ingenuity. ‘It’s a sporting question – ’ my heart leaped as I saw Forbes sit forward expectantly ’ – but I have to confess it is a
trick
question.’ He smiled impressively, keeping us waiting. ‘Now, here it is – and if anyone can answer it, I’m sure you’ll agree his side
deserves
to win.’ There wasn’t a sound in the hall as he went on, slowly and deliberately:

‘In a game of association football, how is it possible for a player to score three successive goals – ’ he paused, and added the punch-line ‘ –
without any other player touching the ball in between.’

He smiled contentedly around at the stricken quiet which greeted this, said ‘Now’, and waited. Immediately there was a babble of voices asking him to repeat it, and while he did I glanced along at Forbes. He was frowning in disbelief, as well he might, for the thing was patently impossible. I know the rules of football as well as the next man, and it just isn’t on – when a goal is scored, the
other
side have to kick off, which involves another player . . . I thought feverishly. Unless someone put through his own goal, and then took the kick-off – but even then, he had to pass to
someone
– you can’t score direct from a kick-off . . . It was beyond me, and I glanced apprehensively across at the Fusiliers. But they were plainly baffled, too.

‘Well, now, come along.’ The brigadier was grinning with pure restrained triumph. ‘Surely we have some football enthusiasts. . .’

‘Ye cannae do it.’ This was Forbes, outraged at what he accounted a heretical question. ‘Ye’re no’ on.’ In the heat of the moment, he forgot all respect due to rank, glaring at the brigadier, and the brigadier let it pass, contentedly, and said:

‘I will concede that it is highly unlikely. I doubt if it has ever happened in a game, or ever will. But under the rules it is theoretically possible. So.’

It was one of
those
questions, like the 155 break at snooker – it never happens, but it could. Thunderous consultation was taking place in the audience, with what appeared to be a fight breaking out in Twelve Platoon – and then Forbes was claiming attention again, shaking his black-avised head in furious disbelief.

‘It isnae in the rules of fitba’,’ he pronounced. ‘It’s impossible. Ye cannae . . .’

‘Is that a confession of defeat from your side?’ asked the brigadier, with silken cunning, and I hurriedly said ‘No, no!’ and gestured Forbes to sit down. He did, glowering, and I looked anxiously again at the Fusiliers, but the stout major was shrugging his shoulders.

‘Come along, come along.’ The brigadier was enjoying himself thoroughly, confounding the rabble at their own game. And as the platform sat in stale-mated silence, he looked round. ‘Let’s throw it open to the
supporters
of both sides, shall we? Anyone – from either battalion? You can win it for your side. All right?’

They sat, glowering at him in baffled silence – all except in Twelve Platoon’s seats, where some huge upheaval was going on. To my astonishment I saw McAuslan, apparently trying to wrestle free from Fletcher, mouthing inaudibly, raising a grimy hand in the press.

‘No one?’ the brigadier was saying genially. ‘Well, now, that’s – what? You wanted to say something?’

McAuslan was struggling up, ignoring Fletcher’s fierce command of ‘Siddoon, ye bluidy pudden! Whaddy
you
know?’ He lurched past Fletcher into the aisle, his face contorted, and said in a gravelled whisper:

‘Please, sur. Ah think . . . Ah think Ah know the answer, but.’

From that moment the evening took on a dream-like quality as far as I was concerned. There he was, Darwin’s discovery, in his usual disreputable condition, buttons undone, hair awry, shoe-laces trailing, and – I tried not to look – his bag of chips still clutched in one hand. Suddenly he must have realised where he was and what he was doing, for he paled beneath his grime – he was out there in the open, with everyone looking, facing Authority, and this was a situation which McAuslan normally avoided as the blindworm shuns the day. The Colonel had slewed round in his seat, and was staring at him as one on whom the doom has come – well, no one likes to see McAuslan step forth as a representative of his command – and the brigadier blinked in disbelief and started back, before recovering and exclaiming: ‘Excellent! Good show! Let’s hear it!’

McAuslan closed his eyes and swayed, mouthing a little, as was his wont. I could only guess that a sudden blinding belief that he, McAuslan, was for once possessed of knowledge denied to lesser men had got him up on his feet, but he was visibly regretting it now. I had a momentary vision of him transformed, with golden curls around his battered brow, and satin small-clothes in place of his unspeakable khakis, standing on a little stool and being asked: ‘When did you last see your father?’ And then reality returned, and the brigadier was saying kindly:

‘Come forward a little, and speak up, so everyone can hear.’ McAuslan did an obedient forward shamble, and then the brigadier noticed the bag of chips, McAuslan noticed him noticing, and for a fearful moment I thought he was going to proffer the greasy mess and invite the brigadier to help himself. Instead, he hurriedly stuffed the bag inside his shirt, wiped his hands almost audibly on his thighs, and croaked:

‘Weel, it’s like this, see.’

And we waited, breathless, for the Word.

‘A fella – he’s a centre-forward,’ said McAuslan, and stopped, terrified. But he rallied, and went on, in a raucous whisper: ‘He pits the ba’ through his own goal. That’s one, right?’ The brigadier nodded. ‘Well, then, this same fella picks up the ba’ and kicks off, frae the centre. But he disnae pass, see. No’ fear. He belts the ba’ doon the park, and chases after it, and a dirty big full-back ca’s the pins frae him – ’

‘Tackles him foully,’ our Colonel put in hurriedly, out of ashen lips. The brigadier, intent on McAuslan’s disquisition, nodded acknowledgement of the translation.

‘So,’ McAuslan gestured dramatically. ‘Penalty! Oor boy grabs the ba’ – naebody else has touched it, mind, since he kicked aff – pits it on the spot, an’ lams it in. Two, right?’

‘That’s right!’ exclaimed the brigadier. He seemed quite excited. ‘And then?’

‘Aye, weel, then.’ McAuslan glanced round uneasily, realised yet again that all eyes were on him, swallowed horribly, scrabbled at his perspiring brow, and ploughed gamely on. ‘Soon as the goal’s scored – the ref. whistles for hauf-time. An’ when they come oot fur the second hauf, it’s oor boy’s turn tae kick aff, see, ‘cos the ither side kicked aff at the start o’ the game. So – he does the same thing again – batters it doon the park, gets the hems pit oan him again by the dirty big full-back –

‘The same full-back fouls him yet again,’ translated the Colonel, his head bowed.

‘That full-back wants sortin’ oot,’ said someone. ‘Jist an animal.’

‘ – and there’s anither penalty,’ McAuslan gasped on, his eyes now closed, ’an’ oor boy shouts, “Ma ba”, and takes it again and belts it – ’

‘You’ve got it!’ cried the brigadier. ‘First-rate! Well done!’ For a moment he looked as though he might grasp McAuslan’s hand, but thought better of it. ‘Do you know, you’re the only person I’ve ever heard answer that question, since it was first told to me, oh, thirty-five years ago, at Eton. Where did you hear it?’

McAuslan confessed that it hadn’t been at Eton, but inna boozer onna Paurly Road in Gleska; he had heard it affa fella. The brigadier was astonished. Meanwhile, around them, the audience were demanding that the answer be repeated, while those who had understood it were vociferous in complaint that it was a daft question, it couldn’t happen – not in a real game.

‘I told you,’ said the brigadier knowingly, ‘that it was most unlikely. A hypothetical question, purely hypothetical, which our . . . ah . . . colleague here has answered most satisfactorily.’

The assembly bayed their disapproval of this – you cannot take liberties with football where British soldiers are concerned, and they felt the brigadier’s question was facetious, if not downright ridiculous. (Which it was, if you ask me.) There were those insubordinate enough to suggest, from the back of the hall, that it was the kind of question that would have appealed only to a brigadier or a McAuslan. But the brigadier’s serenity was not to be disturbed; he awarded the laurel wreath, so to speak, to McAuslan, who was now quite overcome at his own temerity, and was shuffling uneasily like a baited bear in the presence of mastiffs. The brigadier then congratulated our Colonel, who was looking as though the House of Usher had fallen on him, and led the applause. There wasn’t much, actually, as the mob was streaming for the exits in disgust.

On the platform I scooped up one of the boxes of Turkish Delight, and gave it to Forbes to pass on to McAuslan – after all, he had succeeded where the cream of two battalions’ brains had failed, and presumably earned the Colonel a fiver. Forbes sniffed.

‘Dam’ funny fitba’ matches they must hiv at Eton, right enough,’ was all he said, but I know he presented the prize to its rightful owner, for I chanced by Twelve Platoon’s barrack-room later that night, just to make sure the lights were out, and heard things. I had been marvelling at the fact that McAuslan’s memory, which normally couldn’t hold much beyond his own name, had somehow retained the answer to a catch-question overheard in a public house. Of all the useless, irrelevant information – and then I thought of my own vast store of mental dross, and humbly put the matter out of my mind.

At which point, appropriately, there floated out of the darkened barrack-room window a familiar voice:

‘See, Fletcher, Ah’m no sae dumb. No’ me. Who answered the man’s hypodermical question, hey? Wisnae you, oh no, an’ wisnae Forbes, or Darkie – ’

‘Ach, sharrup braggin’, McAuslan. It’s aboot the only thing you ever kent in yer life – an’ a dam’ silly question, too. Here, gie’s a bit o’ yer Turkish Delight, ye gannet.’

‘Fat chance,’ observed Private McAuslan, munching with audible contentment. ‘Youse hivnae got the brains tae know tae pit it in yer mooth. Youse arenae intelleck-shull.’

And every time I watch the keen young brain-workers on television effortlessly fielding questions on French literature and microbiology and Etruscan art, I think to myself, yes, all very well, but let’s hear you tell us how a footballer can score three goals in a match without anyone else touching the ball in between . . .

Parfit Gentil Knight, But

The last place you would have expected to hear Private McAuslan sing was the Colonel’s office; it wasn’t that sort of place, and McAuslan wasn’t that sort of chorister. In fact, it was news to me that he sang at all. But I knew his voice too well to mistake the keening, raucous note that drifted in through the open green shutters on the warm North African air, and the effect was such that the Colonel, who had been discussing pistol-shooting with Bennet-Bruce, the Adjutant and myself, paused in mid-sentence to listen in disbelief.

‘What the devil’s that?’ he demanded, and having stalked to the window like a dyspeptic Aubrey Smith, exclaimed: ‘Good God, it’s that fellow McAuslan. Is he drunk?’

It seemed plausible. I couldn’t imagine a sober McAuslan, who in addition to being the dirtiest soldier God ever made was also of a retiring disposition and terrified of authority, being so incautious as to play Blondel outside a building containing the Colonel, the R.S.M., and the provost staff. But there he was, shuffling along the back path, waking the echoes with a parody of ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’.

‘Ah wis walkin’ doon the Garscube Road,
Ah wis taken unawares;
They wis shoutin’ honey pears,
Git up them spiral stairs!
Oh-h-h come oot, come oot,
They’re sellin’ fruit,
They say – ’

What they said was lost in the crash of a ground-floor shutter being thrust violently open, and the voice of the provost sergeant administering a scarifying rebuke. The song stopped abruptly, and the blackened sepulchre of D Company did a hasty shamble round the corner of the building to safety.

‘Blast!’ said the Colonel. ‘Why the blazes must McGarry be so officious? I wanted to hear the rest of it.’

There was a pause, and the Adjutant coughed diffidently. ‘It goes . . . er, something like this, sir.’ And he continued, in recitatif, where McAuslan had left off:

‘They’re selling fruit,

They say that plums is – or are – good for the gums,

And noo – now – they’re selling green yins to the Fenians.’

He paused, blushing, and the Colonel regarded him with something like awe.

‘Where on earth did you learn that, Michael?’

The Adjutant said he had heard his batman singing it a good deal; you could see he was slightly uneasy about admitting acquaintance with the ribaldries of the barrack-room. But the Colonel, a keen student of battalion folk-lore, was all for it.

‘Extraordinary, I thought I knew all the Jocks’ songs, but that’s a new one on me. What’s it mean – you know, what’s behind it?’

Adjutants are used to answering colonels’ questions on virtually anything ; really, it’s what they are paid for.

‘Well, sir,’ said Michael, ‘so far as I can judge it’s about this chap who is walkin’ doon – er, walking, on the Garscube Road, which is actually a street in the north-west part of Glasgow, close to Maryhill Barracks, where the H.L.I. have their depot – I did my primary training there, actually – ’