Read Online The Complete McAuslan by George MacDonald Fraser - Free Book Online Page B

but . . .
    The Governor looked in, beaming congratulation, and there was a lot of noise and far too many people in the dressing-room. The team were pulling off their jerseys and trying to escape to the showers; clothes were falling on the floor and bare feet were being stepped on; the Governor was saying to Forbes, Well done, well played indeed, and Forbes was saying See yon big, dirty, ignorant full-back, and at last the door was shut and we were alone with the smell of sweat and embrocation and steam and happy weariness.
    ‘Well done, kids,’ I said, and the corporal said, ‘No’ sae bad,’ and rumpled McGlinchy’s hair, and everyone laughed. Through in the showers someone began to make mouth-music to the tune of ‘The Black Bear’, and at the appropriate moment the feet stamped in unison and the towel-clad figures shuffled, clapping and humming.
    ‘Not too loud,’ I said. ‘Don’t let the Navy hear.’
    I went over to McGlinchy, who was drying his hair and whistling. I wanted to ask: What gets into you? Why don’t you play like that all the time? But I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t ever find out.
    For no reason I suddenly thought of Samuels, and realised that he was off the hook. Resentment quickly followed relief: he was not only in the clear, he had probably made a small fortune. How lucky, how undeservedly lucky can you get, I thought bitterly: but for McGlinchy’s inexplicable brilliance Samuels would now be facing the certainty of court-martial and dismissal, possibly even prison. As it was he was riding high.
    Or so I thought until that evening, when I was summoned to the local bastille at the request of the Provost-Marshal, to identify a soldier, one McAuslan, who had been arrested during the afternoon. It appeared that he and an anonymous sailor had been making a tour of all the bars in town, and the sailor had eventually passed out in the street. McAuslan’s primitive efforts to minister to him had excited attention, and the pair of them had been hauled off by the redcaps.
    They brought him out of his cell, looking abominable but apparently sober. I demanded to know what he thought he had been doing.
    Well, it was like this, he and his friend the sailor had gone for a wee hauf, and then they had had anither, and . . .
    ‘He’ll be singing “I belong to Glasgow” in a minute,’ observed the redcap corporal. ‘Stand to attention, you thing, you.’
    ‘Who was the sailor?’ I asked, puzzled, for I remembered McAuslan’s antipathy to the ship’s crew.
    ‘Wan o’ the boys off the ship. Fella Peterson. He was gaun tae the toon, an’ Ah offered tae staun’ ‘im a drink. Ye remember,’ he went on earnestly, ‘ye told me tae fraternise. Well, we fraternised, an’ he got fu’. Awfy quick, he got fu’,’ McAuslan went on, and it was plain to see that his companion’s incapacity offended him. ‘He drank the drink Ah bought ‘im, and it made ‘im fleein’, and then he was buyin’ drink himself’ at an awfy rate . . .’
    ‘That was the thing, sir,’ explained the redcap. ‘This sailor had more money than you’ve ever seen; he looked like he’d robbed a bank. That was really why we pulled them in, sir, for protection. Weedy little chap, the sailor, but he had hundreds of pounds worth of lire on him.’
    Suddenly a great light dawned. Peterson was the name of Samuels’ clerk, who had been going to place his bets for him, and McAuslan had obviously encountered him beforehand, and full of good fellowship had bought him liquor, and Peterson, the weedy little chap, must have been unused to strong waters, and had forgotten responsibility and duty and his captain’s orders, and had proceeded to go on an almighty toot. So it seemed obvious that whatever custom the bookies had attracted that day, Samuels’ had not been part of it. His money (and the ship’s funds and my jocks’ pay) was safely in the military police office safe, less what McAuslan and Peterson had expended with crying