The Sheik and the Dustbin. George Fraser MacDonald
my ashplant over the other’s head. After which they called the provost staff, and the Jeeves of 12 Platoon was removed struggling to the cells, protesting blasphemously that they couldnae dae this tae him, he hadnae finished gettin’ Mr MacNeill ready fur tae go on Retreat.
All this I learned when I got back from the range. I didn’t attend Retreat - well, you look conspicuous in mottled grey brogues and a bald, smoking sporran - and was awarded two days’ orderly officer in consequence; it was small comfort that McAuslan got seven days’ jankers for brawling and conduct prejudicial. I summoned him straight after his sentence, intending to announce his dismissal from my personal service in blistering terms; he lurched into my office (even in his best tunic and tartan he looked like a fugitive from Culloden who had been hiding in a peat-bog) and before I could vent my rage on him he cleared his throat thunderously and asked:
“Can Ah say a word, sur?”
Expecting apology and contrition, I invited him to go ahead, and having closed his eyes, swayed, and gulped - symptoms, I was to learn, of embarrassment - he regarded me with a sort of nervous compassion.
“Ah’m sorry, sur, but Ah’m givin’ notice. Ah mean, Ah’m resignin’ frae bein’ yer batman. Ah’m packin’ it in, sur, if ye don’t mind.” He blinked, wondering how I would receive this bombshell, and my face must have been a study, for he added hastily: “Ah’m sorry, like, but ma mind’s made up.”
“Is it, by God?” I said. “Well, get this straight, McAuslan! You’re not resigning, my son, not by a dam’ sight, because—”
“Oh, but Ah am, sur. Beggin’ yer pardon. Ah want ye tae understand,” he continued earnestly, “that it’s nuthin’ personal. Ye’re a gentleman, sur. But the fact is, if Ah’m lookin’ efter you, Ah hivnae time tae look efter mysel’ - an’ Ah’ve got a lot o’ bother, I can tell ye. Look at the day, frinstance - Ah wis rushed, an’ here Ah’m oan jankers - och, it’s no’ your fault, it’s that wee nyaff o’ a batman that works fur Mr Keith. Nae cooperation—”
“McAuslan,” I said, breathing hard. “Go away. Go quickly, before I forget myself. Get your infernal carcase on jankers, and tell the Provost Sergeant he can kill you, and I’ll cover up for him—’
“Awright! Awright, sur! Ah’m gaun!” He beat a shambling retreat, looking puzzled and slightly hurt. ‘Keep the heid, sur.” He saluted with crestfallen dignity. “Ah wis just gaun tae say, ye’ll be needin’ anither batman, an’ ye could dae worse than Chick McGilvray; he’s Celtic-daft an’ a bit casual, but - awright, sur, Ah’m gaun! Ah’m gaun!’
You know, when our sister regiment, the Black Watch, was first raised centuries ago, it was unique in that every private soldier had his own batman - and in next to no time that great fighting regiment had mutinied. It was now clear to me why: several hundred batmen in the McAuslan mould had simply proved too great a strain.
On the principle that any recommendation of his must be accursed, I did not approach McGilvray. Instead I spoke sternly to Sergeant Telfer - who had the grace to admit that eagerness to get shot of McAuslan had warped his judgment - and told him I would engage replacements on a trial basis. There was no shortage of volunteers, for a batman’s life is a cushy billet, with perks and time off, but none of them was any real improvement on Coulter, although all were grace itself compared to the Dark Destroyer who had succeeded him.
There was Fletcher, Glasgow spiv, dead shot, and platoon dandy, who kept my kit immaculate - and wore it himself in his sorties after female talent. Next there was Forbes, nicknamed Heinie after Himmler; he was small, dark, and evil, a superb footballer who performed his duties with ruthless efficiency, but whose explosive temper bred friction with the other batmen. After him came Brown, alias Daft Bob, an amiable dreamer who supported Partick Thistle (that’s a tautology, really) and was always five minutes late; he was also given to taking afternoon naps on my bed with his boots on. And there was Riach, who came from Uist and belonged to that strict religious sect, the Wee Frees; he had a prejudice against working on the Sabbath, and only did it under protest. (I once asked him how, during active service in the Far East, he had brought himself to kill Japanese on Sunday, and he ground his teeth in a grim, distant way and said that was all right, it was a work of necessity and mercy.)
I parted from each trialist in turn, without rancour. Perhaps I was hard to please - no, I was impossible to please, partly because I disliked being waited on and feeling my privacy invaded, but also because it was dawning on me that Scots (as I should have learned from my grandmother) are not natural servants; they have too much inborn conceit of themselves for the job, and either tyrannise their employers, like my grandmother and Coulter (although I’m sure her technique was that of the rapier, where his was the bludgeon), or regard them as victims to be plundered in a patronising way. Of course there are exceptions; Hudson of Upstairs, Downstairs does exist, but you have to be exceptional yourself to employ him (I never thought the Bellamy family were quite up to him, and I doubt if he did either).
Anyway, there were no Hudsons in 12 Platoon, and I wondered how it was that the other young officers got by - MacKenzie, heir to a baronetcy, had an easy, owner-serf relationship with his orderly, and the rest of the subalterns seemed to take personal attendance for granted, without noticing it. That is the secret, of course: you have to be of the fine clay that isn’t even aware of servants, but regards them as robots or talking animals who just happen to be around, lubricating you unobtrusively through life. The moment you become sensitive to their mere presence, never mind their thoughts, you stamp yourself as a neurotic peasant, like me, unfit to be looked after. So I concluded - and it never occurred to me that I was someone’s grandson, and possibly seeking an unobtainable ideal.
Finally, in despair, I offered the job to McAuslan’s nominee, McGilvray, a grinning, tow-headed Glaswegian who confessed that he hadn’t volunteered because he didn’t think he was cut out for it - that was a change, anyway. Mind you, he was right, but he wasn’t alone in that, and he was a cheery, willing vandal who, beyond a tendency to knock the furniture about and gossip non-stop, had only one serious defect: I had to darn his socks. This after I had noticed him limping slightly, made him take off his plimsolls, and discovered two gaping holes repaired by whipping the edges together into fearsome ridges.
“No wonder you get blisters, you Parkhead disaster,” I rebuked him. “Did no one ever teach you to darn? Right, get me some wool and a needle and pay attention …”
Darning socks was a vital art in those days; if you couldn’t darn you couldn’t march - unless you were one of those eccentrics who dispensed with socks and filled their boots with tallow, and I wasn’t having him doing that, not within fifty yards of my perfumed bower. But my tuition was wasted; he just couldn’t darn, and before you knew it I was inspecting his socks regularly and mending them myself, while he beavered away on my brass and webbing and explained why Celtic weren’t winning these days. From time to time I would wonder resentfully why the hell I was doing this, but I knew that if I didn’t it wouldn’t get done at all, and you know how it is: line of least resistance, etc., and I couldn’t be bothered finding yet another batman - which was an utterly trivial matter anyway, alongside the important things that were happening to me at that time. Such as getting to know and work well with my platoon, discovering that mutual reliance which is a gift (and an honour) beyond price, enjoying the acceptance that comes in a Highland battalion when the Jocks stop calling you “MacNeill” among themselves and give you a nickname (“Darkie”, I discovered), getting my second pip, feeling at home in one of the world’s most famous regiments, preparing to go home on leave after three years …
The self-imposed task of darning McGilvray’s socks was a small price to pay for all of that. Mind you, I could have done without it; it was a piece of nonsense, really … perhaps when I came back off leave I’d find another batman. Yes, definitely.
It was a whole month’s leave, what they called L.I.A.P., meaning leave in advance of Python, which was the codeword for demobilisation. I qualified because, having been in the ranks in India, I’d been overseas longer than most of the subalterns; consequently I found myself barraged with requests to go and see their families. This was a phenomenon of