The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ point to it which she didn’t explain. But both the story and that grim old lady who told it come back to me every time I smell engine smoke or hear a whistle wail. I have remembered it on the long haul across the prairies, where the horizon stretches out for ever; on the sweaty Punjab Mail, jam-packed inside with white-robed Orientals, with more on the roof and in the windows and doorways and fat babus clinging for dear life a yard above the tracks; in the damp, blacked-out, blue-lit corridors of war-time trains clanking on and halting interminably; in football specials carrying the raucous, boozed-up supporters to Wembley; in a huge German train rattling across France with its solemn script notices, like ancient texts, telling you that pots were to be found under the seats, by order; in little trains at country halts, where beyond the misted windows you could see the glare of the porters’ lamps and hear the sudden bang of a carriage door and the lonely call of “Symington!” or “Tebay!”

      Most of all I remembered it on the Cairo—Jerusalem run in 1946 or ’47, when the Stern Gang and the Irgun were at large, and the windows were sometimes boarded because the glass had been shot out, and lines were being blown up, and the illegal immigrant ships were coming in through the blockade, and a new nation was being uncomfortably born in a welter of hatred and confusion and total misunderstanding on all sides. Ben Hecht was having a holiday in his heart every time a British soldier died, and British soldiers were having a holiday in theirs at the prospect of getting away from a country they detested, in which some kind of illusion was shattered for them because the names of Bible stories had turned out to be places where machine-pistols rattled and grenades came in through windows. In the U.N. there was much talk and seeking of viable solutions and exploration of channels, and in the Palestine clubs young subalterns danced with their guns pushed round out of the way but still handy.

      It was my gun that had got me into trouble. I had been on a course up at Acre—one of those courses where you walk miles across stony hills and look at maps, and a Guards officer instructor says, “Now this is the picture …”—and I was staying one night in Cairo before flying on to the battalion, which was living away along the North African coast, blancoing itself and playing football hundreds of miles from the shooting. Being me, I set off for the airport in the morning without my pistol, which was in the transit camp armoury, and so I missed my plane. You simply could not travel in those days without your gun; not that it was dangerous where I was going. It was just The Law. So I turned back for it, and the Movements Officer had a fit. Missing a plane was practically a capital charge. Apart from that, I couldn’t get another for several days, so they looked for something unpleasant for me to do while I was waiting.

      “You can be O.C. train to Jerusalem tonight,” said the Movements Officer, with sadistic satisfaction. “Report to Victoria Station at twenty-two hundred hours, don’t be late, and this time take your blasted gun with you.”

      So I had a bath, played snooker against myself all afternoon, and in the neon-lit Cairo evenfall rolled up to Victoria, clutching my little pistol in a damp palm. I fought my way through a press of enormous dragomans—huge, ugly people with brass badges who offer to carry your kit, and when you agree they whistle up some tiny assistant who shoulders your trunks and staggers off like an ant under a haystack. The dragoman doesn’t carry anything; he just clears a way, roaring, and demands an exorbitant fee.

      The movements office gave me a great sheaf of documents, a few instructions on how to command a troop train, reminded me that we left at ten sharp, and waved me away. The place looked like a stock market during a boom, everyone was running and shouting and chalking on boards; I got out to the bar, where sundry wellwishers cheered me up with anecdotes about the Jerusalem run.

      “Tell me they’re blowing one train in three,” said an American Air Corps major.

      “Doing it dam’ neatly, too,” said a captain in the Lincolns. “’Course, most of ’em are British or American-trained. On our side a year or two ago.”

      A quarter-master from the South Lancs said the terrorists’ equipment and stores were of the finest: Jerry landmines, piles o’ flamin’ gun-cotton, and more electrical gear than the G.P.O.

      “Schmeiser machine-pistols,” said the American cheerfully. “Telescopic sights. Draw a bead on your ear at six hundred yards with those crossed wires—then, bam! You’ve had it. Who’s having another?”

      “Trouble is, you can’t tell friend from foe,” said the Lincoln. “No uniforms, dam’ nasty. Thanks, Tex, don’t mind if I do. Well, thank God they don’t get me past Gaza again; nice low demob. group, my number’ll be up in a month or two. Cheers.”

      I said I had better be getting along to my train, and they looked at me reflectively, and I picked up my balmoral, dropped my papers, scrabbled them up, and went out in search of Troop Train 42, Jerusalem via Zagazig, Gaza and Tel Aviv, officer commanding Lt. MacNeill, D., and the best of luck to him.

      The platform was jammed all along its narrow length; my cargo looked like the United Nations. There were Arab Legion in their red-checked head-cloths, leaning on their rifles and saying nothing to anybody, A.T.S. giggling in little groups and going into peals of laughter at the attempts of one of them to make an Egyptian tea-seller understand that she didn’t take milk; service wives and families on the seats, the women wearing that glassy look of worn-out boredom and the children scattering about and bumping and shrieking; a platoon of long bronzed Australians, bush-hatted and talking through their noses; worried-looking majors and red-faced, phlegmatic corporals; at least one brigadier, red-tabbed, trying to look as though he was thinking of something important and was unaware of the children who were playing tig round him; unidentified semi-military civilians of the kind you get round bases—correspondents, civil servants, welfare and entertainment organisers; dragomans sweeping majestically ahead of their porters and barking strange Arabic words. Hurrying among them, swearing pathetically, was a fat little man with R.T.O. on his sleeve and enormous khaki shorts on his withers; he seized on me and shouted above the noise of people and escaping steam.

      “Stone me! You MacNeill? What a blasted mess! You’ve got the short straw, you have. Fourteen service families, Gawd knows how many kids, but they’re all in the manifest. A.T.S. an’ all. I said we shouldn’t have it, ought to be eighty per cent troops on any troop train, but you might as well talk to the wind that dried your first shirt.” He shoved another sheaf of papers at me. “You can cope, anyway. Just don’t let any of ’em off before Jerusalem, that’s all. There’s at least two deserters under escort, but they’re in the van, handcuffed. It’s the civvies you’ve got to watch for; they don’t like taking orders. If any of ’em get uppity, threaten to shoot ’em, or better still threaten to drop ’em off in a nice stretch of desert—there’s plenty. Damn my skin, I’m misting up again!” He removed his spectacles from his pug nose, wiped them on a service hankie, and replaced them; he was running sweat down his plump red cheeks. “Now then, there’s a padre who’s worried about the A.T.S., God knows why, but he knows his own mind best, I dare say; keep an eye on the Aussies, but you know about them. And don’t let the wog who’s driving stop except at stations—that’s important. If he tries, don’t threaten to shoot him, just tell him he’ll lose his pension. An’ remember, you’re the boss; to hell with ranks, they don’t count on a train. You’re the skipper, got it?”

      The loudspeaker boomed overhead.

      “Attention, please, attention. Will Captain Tanner please go to platform seven, plat-form sev-en. Captain Tanner, please.”

      “All right, all right,” said the little man, savagely. “I can only be one place at a time, can’t I? Where was I? Oh, yes, you’ve a second-in-command, over there.” He pointed to a figure, standing alone near the engine. “One of your crowd,” he added, looking at my tartan shoulder-flash. “Seems all right. Sergeant Black!” he shouted, and the figure came over to us.

      He was about middle СКАЧАТЬ