legs again and his arms fell down by his sides. ‘And you’re not the great talker yourself.’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘No … Well, let’s have the music. Ho-ro, my Nut Brown Maiden for me, and for you, Charlie?’
‘The Cock o’ the North.’ Jock tipped forward at that. The legs of the chair creaked as they pitched on the floor again.
‘Yon’s the Gordons’ tune!’
‘I still like it.’
Jock screwed up his face: he was genuinely worried.
‘But yon’s a cheesy tune, Charlie.’
Charlie Scott shrugged.
Jock leant forward to persuade him. ‘Laddie, I was with them for a wee while. They didn’t like me, you know; no. And Jock didn’t care much for them, neither.’
‘Really?’
‘Can you no think of a better tune?’
‘Myself, I like The Cock o’ the North.’ Charlie Scott put another cigarette in his holder.
Jock laughed and the veins stood out again. He slapped his thigh and that made a big noise.
‘And I love you, Charlie; you’re a lovely man. You’re no a great talker, right enough. But you’ve a mind of your own … Aye, pipers, and where have you been?’
‘Pantry, sir.’
‘Are you sober?’
‘Sir.’
‘You’d bloody well better be, and that’s a fact. You’re no here to get sick drunk the same as the rest of us are.’
The drones began as the bladders filled with air. The pipers marched round and round again. The room grew smokier, and the officers sat close into their chairs as the drink began to flow. The stewards never rested.
TWO
THE PIPERS WERE in the pantry, recovering themselves. They were drinking beer, and the sweat poured down their faces. Their heavy kilts and tunics were hot and scratchy, and all the paraphernalia of their dirks and plaids was a nuisance to them.
The younger piper had yellow eyes and he spoke in a high-pitched voice.
‘He’s a bloody terror, and that’s what he is.’
‘Aye,’ said the Corporal, ‘and he’s a great man.’
‘He’s a bloody terror, and that’s what he is; I’m telling you, Corporal.’
‘You can close your mouth. You’ll need all your spittle the night.’
Mess stewards in their white bum-freezers hurried by in search of liquor.
‘Is it right he was a piper; is that right, Corporal Fraser?’
‘Aye. And he could be Pipe-Major if he felt like it, man. You should hear him on the pibrochs. There’s nobody to touch him. He’s played on the wireless, you know.’
‘I’m no a corporal; I never get the chance of listening to the bloody wireless.’
‘You’ll watch your language in the Officers’ Mess, Piper Adam.’
‘This is no the Officers’ Mess. This is the pantry.’ All around them were dirty plates and cutlery. ‘Look at the shambles, eh?’
‘Just the same.’
‘Och, away you go, Corporal … He’s a bloody terror; I’m telling you.’
‘Aye, aye. You’re telling me.’
The Corporal-Piper was a patient young man with the mild blue eyes of the far north. He came from that queer strip of flat land called the Lairg. It stretches for thirty or forty miles along the south side of the Moray Firth, and at no point is it more than a few miles wide. The road from Inverness to Fochabers is as straight as the pine trees there, and nowhere in Scotland is there so much sky. It is like a foreign land, and the people speak their English slowly, and with a mild intonation, as if they were translating from a foreign tongue. So it was with Corporal Fraser.
‘Aye,’ he said softly; and he finished his pint of beer.
Then they were called into the ante-room to play some reels. Jock had decided that they all ought to take some exercise before the next round of drinks and as it was too slippery for a race round the barrack square he ordered that there should be dancing. With Charlie Scott as his partner he led away with the ‘Duke of Perth’ while the others, standing in their lines, clapped their hands to the music.
Jock danced with energy and with precision. He leapt high in the air and landed miraculously softly on the toes of his small feet. That was how he had been taught to dance and the others had to try and dance like him. They put their hands above their heads; they swung; they yelled; they hooched. Then they had a drink and they began all over again with a new dance. By this time they were very warm and many of them had removed their tunics. Every officer in the Mess was dancing amongst the pillars in the long ante-room when the door opened and the new Colonel walked in.
For a moment, nobody observed him, and the dance continued. He was wearing a tweed suit and his jacket hung open. He had a moustache and his hair was growing grey, not at the temples where men like their hair to grow grey, but all over. Round his large eyes there was a yellowish shadow of tiredness, and his brow was lined. If you saw this man on a platform at a railway station you would at once be certain that there was a gun-case with his luggage; and you would be right. There must be fifty colonels who look very much like this one. He now stood quite still, as only an actor or a soldier can. His hands rested by his sides.
Mr Simpson followed Piper Adam’s eye, and he was the first to recognise the stranger. He immediately moved up the line to talk to Jock, who was absorbed with the dancing. He tugged at his elbow. His voice had the delighted urgency of the first man with bad news.
‘Colonel!’
‘What is it, laddie? Get down to your proper place.’
‘The Colonel’s here.’
‘You’re drunk, laddie.’
‘Colonel Barrow. He’s at the door.’
Jock looked round and stared, first at Simpson and then at the newcomer. Only a moment before he had been beaming with joy. He had joked with Charlie Scott as they gradually worked their way up the set to start their second turn. He had given a little imitation of some of Major Macmillan’s worse affectations on the dance-floor. Macmillan was a very smooth performer, and had Jock not been there he would hardly have bothered to move his feet at all. Jock meant no harm by his little demonstration. He was in good spirits. He had forgotten everything but the dancing and the drinking, and the music tingled in his veins. He liked to feel the floor bouncing. But suddenly the dancers and the pipers seemed to fade away from him, and he forgot them. He stopped clapping his hands and they hung in mid-air. A look of real pain crossed his face and he said in a whisper, ‘But dammit, he’s no due till the morn!’
Then his hands fell to his tunic and he began to button it up. He pulled in his stomach and bit his lip. He shouted at the top of his voice for the dancing to stop. The dancers heard but the pipers continued to play. When he shouted again they too understood and with a drone they ceased. Everybody now turned towards the figure at the door. Colonel Barrow did not sound nervous, but a little tired.
‘Good evening, gentlemen.’ His voice was very light. ‘My name is Barrow.’
Nobody replied. They looked at him, stunned. Then Jock strode down the middle of the room, his heels clicking on the boards. The two sets of dancers at each side of the room still stood in loose formation and they watched him come to a formal halt two paces away from the Colonel.
‘Jock Sinclair. Acting Colonel.’
‘I’ve heard a great