‘I am.’ The proprietor pushed his face into the book. ‘Eh, is this right?’
‘Aye, it’s right.’
‘You’ve come fr’ London?’
‘No,’ Jock said solemnly. ‘From Thurso.’ ‘Dear me, Colonel …,’ the proprietor began. ‘It says so there doesn’t it, for Christ’s sake?’
‘I’m only doing my duty, Colonel Sinclair.’
The man fidgeted defensively. He was nervous of Jock. ‘It’s no right you should come in if you’re no a bona fide.’
Jock spluttered. He had always thought it a stupid law and he had no intention of taking it seriously.
‘For Christ’s sake, all the law says is that we’ve got to sign the book. That’s all you’ve got to carp about. All right?’
‘Colonel, it’s important that …’
‘Well I’ve signed the bloody thing. O.K.?’
‘There’s still a question.’ ‘There’s no question. I’ve signed it, haven’t I?’ ‘Aye, you have that, Colonel.’
‘Well for Christ’s sake get out of my way.’
Jock clenched and unclenched his fists as he pushed open the inner door, with his shoulder.
The pub was patronised almost exclusively by the more senior members of the band. No piper would dare to go to the private bar until he was invited there, and after that first invitation he would hardly ever go to any other pub. Not that there was anything special in the way of entertainment. An upright piano was as much as it boasted. But business had been good and since Jock had last called the room had been redecorated, in brown and cream, and it had been filled with new furniture in the shape of pink and green wickerwork chairs and round glass-covered tables. The proprietor had bought these at the sale of a seaside hotel the other side of Portobello. But the bar itself had not changed: it still had the coloured glass screen protecting it from the open part of the house – the public bar, and the saloon. A sergeant was stooping to order two beers and whisky chasers and he grinned, rather embarrassed, in reply to Jock’s nod.
Jock himself ordered a whisky from the waiter, and not just a wee one; but it was a whisky that was never to be drunk. As he started to unbutton his coat again he glanced round the room and observed that there were five or six pipers there, mostly non-commissioned officers, in their kilts and spats, their sporrans swung round on their hips, all prepared and all dressed up to get drunk. From the corner of his eye he was surprised to see that there was a dark girl with a pale face in the lounge: there were not often ladies present. Then perhaps almost instantaneously – but this realisation was characteristic of the movements that followed, in that it seemed to him a long time before he understood – he saw that the piper with the girl was Corporal Fraser. He also looked pale and he was rising to his feet, seemingly disturbed. A second glance lasted for a split second, but the picture was so firmly impressed on Jock’s mind that it seemed ever afterwards to have lasted for minutes. Morag was sitting with her hands on the table: she was very tense, and pale and her fingertips were pressing on the glass. She put her hand out to hold Corporal Fraser back for she must have known then what was going to happen. Jock advanced on them. With anger, with that blind rage that is always born of fear, he drew back his right hand, and his fist was only half closed as if he were holding a big stick. Then with a back-handed downward blow he struck the Corporal, just as he was finding his voice to give an explanation. Morag’s fingers went up to her lips, and she gave a whimper rather than a cry. The Corporal knocked against the table and upset the glasses. Everybody in the room stood up, uncertain whether to interfere or to hold back, and Jock’s voice came clear: ‘You bastard’ – with the same short a, but no joke for Charlie this time, ‘You bastard …’
He would have struck the Corporal again, this time with a closed fist, and Morag had already given out a warning cry, when a voice behind him called out sharply:
‘Colonel Sinclair.’
It was Mr McLean, standing absolutely still, just inside the door. Jock turned and saw him, and came to his senses. With a sinking agony he saw what he had done and his jaw dropped, his face blank like a man awakened to the sound of guns. Suddenly all was noise around him. Chairs and tables were pushed about, the proprietor was there, somebody was looking at the Corporal’s eye and Morag was in front of him whiter still, crying, ‘I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed.’
He must have said something, protested, demanded; but it was the Pipe-Major who was in command and Morag went home to his house. When an officer strikes a ranker it is time for someone else to take command. The others paid up, moved out, gathered coats and chattels like citizens alarmed by war, and Jock found himself sitting in a chair with a stern-faced proprietor telling him to pull himself together and away out of here. The proprietor’s face had a lot of lines on it and he looked like a lawyer’s senior clerk; like that, or like a wolf.
‘Away out o’ here: I’m no having carryings on in this house. You must be out o’ your senses. And still with your bonnet on.’
Jock nodded, and nodded, and the proprietor disappeared. He sat motionless for a few minutes, stunned by it all, appalled by what he had done, by what one blow had cost him, alone in a nightmare silence that was like the long high notes of a lament.
ONE
THE DAWN WAS like an afternoon; the day seemed to break with an immense regret. There were no bright streaks dramatic enough for an execution; but it was a prisoner’s day, dull and without birds.
It was just freezing outside and the barracks was at its worst. The high wall closed out the real world like a frame surrounding an etching. A tint of brown in the sandstone was the only colour within the perimeter, apart from the white of the snow, and the grey: the grey of the slates where the snow had thawed a little and shifted in an untidy avalanche; the grey shoulders of the Officers’ Mess at the end of the square; the grey figures scuttling about from block to block, the orderly corporals, the pickets dismissing, the bugler in search of breakfast, and the detention squads sweeping away the first paths through the sticky snow.
And in the middle of it all was another grey form, apparently in no hurry, walking clumsily, his head and shoulders wagging from side to side, like a great bear in a ring. Jock had not been to bed at all, and now he felt cold and sick. His feet were wet, every limb was dead-weight, every joint stiff, and his chin rested on his chest. Only once or twice did he look up. He stared blankly at the buildings and the figures moving about as the day began, he observed the lights going on in the barrack rooms, heard the echoes of the first complaints. He turned all the way round to look at every building, at the chimneys, and at the arc of sky. Two or three times he had hesitated and slightly changed his direction; he left a track of his indecision behind him in the snow. Then he lifted his head and marched towards the stucco villas of the Married Quarters (Warrant Officers and non-commissioned ranks). These were hidden behind the Officers’ Mess in the northernmost part of the area, and every house was dismally identical.
Jock expected Morag to come into the cramped little room. He was sitting like a bundle in a greatcoat, heaped into a modern armchair. Mrs McLean’s parlour was very spick-and-span with its tiled fireplace, piano, antimacassars, calendars, and obstacles galore. If the furniture was displaced by six inches in any direction, there was no thoroughfare from the window to the fire or to the door. Jock stood up awkwardly when he heard the approaching foot-steps, and the Pipe-Major nodded to him.
‘I’d thought she would come down, but she’s very determined.’
‘Did you tell her it was me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did