The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ what would they charge for twins?

      So we worked away, myself the brutal soldier humming and coo-cooing, and the gentle mother opposite rebuking her daughter in terms that would have made a Marine corporal join the Free Kirk. And I was just pausing before the apparently impossible task of slipping a nappy on to the tiny creature, and marvelling at the very littleness of the squirming atom, with its perfect little fingers and their miniature nails, and pondering the wonder that he would probably grow into a great, hairy-chested ruffian full of sin and impudence, when the lights went out.

      Mrs Garnett shrieked; I just clamped my hands as gently as I could on Petey and held on. My first thought, naturally enough, was of terrorists, until I realised that we were still a good way from the border, and the train was still rattling on. I assured her that everything was all right, and that Petey was in great shape—he wasn’t, actually; he was at it again, spoiling all my good work—and presently the man Garnett came lumbering up the corridor, calling for directions and announcing that there was no hot water to be had, and what had happened to the lights.

      It seemed to me I should be doing something about it, as O.C. train, so in the darkness I negotiated with him for the return of his infant, whom he accepted with exclamations of fatherly affection, changing to disgust, but by that time I was off roaring for Sergeant Black. I found him in the guard’s van, with a candle and a fusebox; he and an Arab in dungarees—who he was, heaven knows—were wrestling in the dark with wires, and presently the lights blinked on again.

      “Just a fuse,” he said. “No panic.”

      “Is that right?” I said. “You try grappling with an independent baby in the dark. Which reminds me, there’s a woman back there wants boiling water.”

      “In the name of God,” said Sergeant Black. “Is she havin’ a wean?”

      “Don’t say that, even in jest,” I said. “It’s about all that hasn’t happened on this bloody train so far. She wants to sterilise a feeding-bottle. How about it?”

      He said he would see what he could do, pulled down his bonnet, and set off up the train. Within a quarter of an hour there was boiling water, feeding-bottles were being sterilised, and Mrs Garnett was being rapturously thankful. The sergeant had realised that although the restaurant car was without actual cooking appliances, there was at least a place where a fire could be lit.

      After that there was peace until we reached the border. Black and I stood together at an open window near the front of the train, looking out over the desert and wondering about it. Up ahead was Gaza, where we were due for a stop; after that there was the Holy Land, where the Stern Gang and the Irgun operated. I said that probably we wouldn’t see any trouble; Black scratched his blue chin and said, “Aye”. It was getting cold. I went back to my compartment and tried to get some sleep.

      We drew into Gaza not long after, and everyone got off for tea or coffee at the platform canteen, except Black and the prisoners. We crowded the platform and I was halfway through my second cup and discussing child psychology with Captain Garnett when I suddenly realised that the crowd wasn’t as thick as it had been five minutes before. But I didn’t think they had got back on the train; where, then, were they going? Troops moving by train were confined to the platform at all halts; anywhere else was out of bounds. Oh, God, I thought, they’re deserting.

      They weren’t, in fact. They were playing the Gaza Game, which was a feature of Middle Eastern travel in those days. It worked like this. At Gaza, you changed your Egyptian pounds for the Military Administration Lire (mals) used in Palestine. The exchange rate was, say, 100 mals per £E1 at the currency control post on Gaza station. But if you knew the Game, you were aware that in a back street a few hundred yards from the station there dwelt Ahmed el Bakbook of the Thousand Fingers, otherwise Ahmed the Chatterer, who would give 120 mals per £E1. So you went to him, changed your £E to mals, hastened to the control office, changed your mals back to £E, raced off to Ahmed again, did another change, and so on until you had to board the train, showing a handsome profit. How the economies of Egypt and Palestine stood it I wouldn’t know, nor yet how Ahmed made a living at it. But that was how it worked, as I discovered when I was investigating the sudden exodus from the platform, and was accosted by the pouchy lieutenant-colonel who claimed to have detected several soldiers sneaking out of the station. Oh, he knew what they were up to, all right, he said, and what was I doing, as O.C. train, to stop it? I was keen enough on finding A.T.S. girls billets to which they were not entitled, but I appeared to be unable to control the troops under my command. Well, well, and so on.

      Personally, I couldn’t have cared less if the troops had changed the entire monetary reserves of Egypt into roubles, at any rate of exchange, but technically he was right, which was why I found myself a few moments later pounding down a dirty back alley in Gaza, damning the day I joined the Army. In a dirty shop, easily identified by the khaki figures furtively sneaking in and out, I confronted a revolting Arab. He was sitting at a big plain table, piled with notes and silver, with an oil lamp swinging overhead and a thug in a burnous at his elbow.

      He gave me a huge smile, all yellow fangs and beard, and said, “How much, lieutenant?”

      “You,” I said, “are conducting an illegal traffic in currency.”

      “Granted,” he replied. “What do you require?”

      “Dammit,” I said. “Stop it.”

      He looked hurt. “Is not possible,” he said. “I fill a need. That is all.”

      “You’ll be filling a cell in Acre jail when the military police get wise to you,” I said.

      “Everyone gets out of Acre jail, you know?” he said cheerfully. “And you do not suggest I work in defiance of the military police? They do not trouble me.”

      He was just full of confidence, a little amused, a little surprised. I wondered if I was hearing right.

      “Come on, old boy, get a move on,” said a voice behind. One of the R.A.F. types was standing there with his wallet out. “Time presses, and all that. And you did jump the queue, you know.”

      I gave up. Ahmed dealt courteously with the R.A.F. type, and then asked me almost apologetically how much I wanted to change. I answered him coldly, and he shrugged and dealt with the next customer. Then he asked me again, remarked that it must be getting near train time, and pointed out that since I had already infringed the regulations myself by leaving the station, I might as well take advantage of his unrivalled service.

      He was right, of course, this good old man. I shovelled across my £E, accepted his mals, declined his invitation to join him in a draught of Macropoulos’s Fine Old Highland Dew Scotch Whisky—“a wee-doch-and-dorus”, as he called it—and fled back to the station. I had no time to make another transaction, but I looked in at the currency office to see how trade was going, and asked the Royal Army Pay Corps sergeant if he was not worried about six months on the Hill at Heliopolis for knowingly assisting the traffic in black market exchange.

      “Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “I’m buyin’ a pub on the Great West Road when I get my ticket.”

      My lieutenant-colonel was still on the platform. He had watched several score military personnel leave the station, he said, and I had done nothing that he could see to stop them. Would I explain? His manner was offensive.

      I asked him what he, as an officer, had done about it himself, he went pale and told me not to be impertinent, and after a few more exchanges I said rudely that I was not responsible to him for how I conducted the affairs of Troop Train 42, and he assured me that he would see that disciplinary СКАЧАТЬ