The Complete McAuslan by George MacDonald Fraser Page B

announced that he would begin with the men’s canteen (‘men’s welfare comes first with me; should come first with every officer’), and in the panic that ensued on this unexpected move the canteen staff upset a swill-tub in the middle of the floor five seconds before he arrived; it had been a fine swill-tub, specially prepared to show that we had such things, and he shouldn’t have seen it until it had been placed at a proper distance from the premises.
    The General looked at the mess, said ‘Mmh,’ and asked to see the medical room (‘always assuming it isn’t rife with bubonic plague’); it wasn’t, as it happened, but the M.O.’s terrier had chosen that morning to give birth to puppies, beating the Adjutant to it by a short head. Thereafter a fire broke out in the cookhouse, a bren-gun carrier broke down, an empty cigarette packet was found in ‘B’ company’s garden, and Private McAuslan came back off leave. He was tastefully dressed in shirt and boots, but no kilt, and entered the main gate in the company of three military policemen who had foolishly rescued him from a canal into which he had fallen. The General noted his progress to the guardroom with interest; McAuslan was alternately singing the Twenty-third Psalm and threatening to write to his Member of Parliament.
    So it went on; anything that could go wrong, seemed to go wrong, and by dinner-time that night the General was wearing a sour and satisfied expression, his aide was silently contemptuous, the battalion was boiling with frustration and resentment, and the Colonel was looking old and ill. Only once did he show a flash of spirit, and that was when the junior subaltern passed the port the wrong way again, and the General sighed, and the Colonel caught the subaltern’s eye and said loudly and clearly: ‘Don’t worry, Ian; it doesn’t matter a damn.’
    That finally froze the evening over, so to speak, and when we were all back in the ante-room and the senior major remarked that the pipe-sergeant was all set for the dancing to begin, the Colonel barely nodded, and the General lit a cigar and sat back with the air of one who was only mildly interested to see how big a hash we could make of this too.
    Oddly enough, we didn’t. We danced very well, with the pipe-sergeant fidgeting on the outskirts, hoarsely whispering, ‘One, two, three,’ and afterwards he and the Adjutant and two of the best subalterns danced a foursome that would have swept the decks at Braemar. It was good stuff, really good, and the General must have known it, but he seemed rather irritated than pleased. He kept moving in his seat, frowning, and when we had danced an eightsome he finally turned to the Colonel.
    ‘Yes, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘But, you know, I never cared much for the set stuff. Did you never dance a sixteensome?’
    The Colonel said he had heard of such a thing, but had not, personally, danced it.
    ‘Quite simple,’ said the General, rising. ‘Now, then. Eight more officers on the floor. I think I remember it, although it’s years now . . .’
    He did remember; a sixteensome is complicated, but its execution gives you the satisfaction that you get from any complex manoeuvre; we danced it twice, the General calling the changes and clapping (his aide was studying the ceiling with the air of an archbishop at a cannibal feast), and when it was over the General actually smiled and called for a large whisky. He then summoned the pipe-sergeant, who was looking disapproving.
    ‘Pipe-sergeant, tell you what,’ said the General. ‘I have been told that back in the ’nineties the First Black Watch sergeants danced a thirty-twosome. Always doubted it, but suppose it’s possible. What do you think? Yes, another whisky, please.’
    The pipe-sergeant, flattered but slightly outraged, gave his opinion. All things were possible; right, said the General, wiping his mouth, we would try it.
    The convolutions of an eightsome are fairly simple; those of a