The Sheik and the Dustbin

GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER

THE SHEIKH

AND THE DUSTBIN

Cover

Title Page

The Servant Problem

Captain Errol

The Constipation of O’Brien

The Sheikh and the Dustbin

McAuslan, Lance-Corporal

The Gordon Women

Ye mind Jie Dee, Fletcher?

Extraduction

Author’s Note

Glossary

Praise

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Servant Problem

One of the things I never learned from my tough grandmother (the golfing Calvinist, not the Hebridean saga-woman) was how to deal with domestic help, and this although she was an authority, having been both servant and mistress in her time. As a girl, straight from the heather, she had been engaged as kitchenmaid at one of those great Highland shooting lodges to which London society used to repair a century ago, and being a Glencoe MacDonald of critical temper and iron will, she had taken one cold Presbyterian look at the establishment with its effete southern guests and large inefficient staff and decided, like Napoleon contemplating the map of Europe, that this would never do. Within six weeks she had become senior housemaid, by the end of the season she was linen-mistress, and before her twentieth birthday she was head housekeeper and absolute ruler of the place, admired and dreaded by guests and staff alike. I can only guess what she was like as a teenage châtelaine, but since in old age she reminded you of a mobile Mount Rushmore, handsome, imposing, and with a heart of stone, it is a safe bet that living in that lodge must have been like being a galley slave in a luxury liner. Knowing her zeal for order and reform, I suspect that her aim would be that of an enlightened prison governor - not to break the spirit of the inmates altogether, but to see that they went back into the world better and wiser human beings.

Whatever effect she had on those sophisticated ladies and worldly gentlemen - and I’m sure she taught them that there were higher things in life than grouse-shooting and flirtation - they can have been in no doubt that the Highland servant, whether lowly menial or autocratic housekeeper, was very different from the southern domestic. My grandmother was not alone in her generation in simply not knowing what servility meant; indeed, mere civility was no commonplace, as witness the famous John Brown, whose devotion to Queen Victoria was matched only by his rudeness. My grandmother, who gave respect only when she felt it was due, which wasn’t often, used to recall (without a glimmer of a smile) an event from her early years in service when the lodge’s head cook, another stern Caledonian, noted for her prowess at whist drives, was called in by her employers to take part in a bridge game, there being a shortage of players among the guests. As luck had it, the cook partnered a Prince of the blood, who took mild exception to her bidding, whereon the cook rose in her wrath before the Quality assembled, and hurled down her cards, exclaiming: “Away, ye crabbit auld Prooshan, and play by yersel’!” Nor was she dismissed; a Prince may be a Prince, but a Highland cook who knows the secrets of venison and cold salmon is something else.

It may be significant, too, that grandmother’s only joke was based on the English master-Highland servant relationship. It described how a chimpanzee escaped from the circus and was found dead in a ditch by two ghillies employed at the local castle, then occupied by a London shooting-party. The ghillies had never seen a chimpanzee before, and didn’t know what to make of it. At last the elder said: “It’s ower hairy for a MacPherson, no’ broad enough in the chest for a Fraser, and too long in the lip for a Cameron - away you up to the big hoose, Erchie, and see if ony o’ the gentry’s missing.”

[I told that joke in the mess once, with mixed success: the Padre worked it, with Gaelic subtlety, into a sermon, but the second-in-command looked puzzled and asked: “And was anyone from the big house missing? No? Oh … bit of a mystery then, what?”]

However, you will note that there are two butts of the joke - the foreign gentry and the ignorant ghillies - which says something about grandmother’s outlook on life. Her censure knew no class boundaries; dukes and dustmen alike (and grandsons) had to be kept in their place, and she was the woman to do it, even when she was very old. My heart bled for her own maidservants when, as a small boy, I used to visit her home, that still, immaculate domain with its softly-chiming clock, redolent of beeswax and lavender, all swept and polished to perfection. I lived on tiptoe there, giving ornaments a wide berth, wondering at her bookshelves where Cruden’s Concordance and Bunyan’s Holy War lay beside long outdated fashion magazines from Paris, pushing in my chair to the exact inch when I received the almost imperceptible nod of dismissal from the stately, white-haired figure at the end of the table, straight and stiff as her own ebony walking-cane; dreading the cold eye and sharp, quiet voice, even when they were addressed to her maids and not to me. How they endured her, I’ll never know; perhaps they knew what I sensed as an infant: like her or not, you could be sure of her, and that is a quality that can count far beyond mere kindness.

Anyway, with that background I ought to have mastered the servant problem, but I never have, not from either side. On the occasions when I have had to serve, I have been a disaster, whether shirking my fagging duties at school, or burning toast, dropping plates, and letting the cookhouse boiler go out as a mess orderly and assistant scullion at Bellahouston Camp, Glasgow. Nor am I one of nature’s aristocrats, born to be ministered to and accepting it as my due; anything but. I hate being waited on; servants rattle me. I find their attentions embarrassing, and they know it, damn them. There was a butler once, about seven feet tall, with a bald head and frock coat, who received me at a front door; he looked me up and down and said: “Good morning, sir. Would you care to wash … at all?” I can’t describe what he put into that pause before the two final words, but it implied that I was filthy beyond his powers of description. Nor am I deceived by the wine-waiter unctuously proffering his bottle for my inspection: this bum wouldn’t know it from turpentine, is what he’s thinking.

Such an advanced state of doulophobia is bad enough in civilian life; for an army officer it is serious, since he has to have a body-servant, or orderly, or batman, call it what you will, whether he likes it or not. This did not trouble me when I first encountered it as a cadet in India; we had native bearers who brought our morning tea, cleaned our kit and rooms, laid out our uniforms, dressed us on ceremonial occasions, and generally nannied us through a fourteen-hour day of such intensive activity that we couldn’t have survived without them; there was even a nappy-wallah who shaved you as you sat bleary-eyed on the edge of your cot - and never have I had a chin so smooth. It seemed perfectly natural forty years ago; it would not have seemed natural from a white servant - and before anyone from the race relations industry leaps in triumphantly with his labels, I should remark that the Indian cadets were of the same opinion (as often as not, so-called race prejudice is mere class distinction) and were, on the whole, less considerate masters than we were. My own bearer was called Timbooswami, son and grandson and great-grandson of bearers - and proud father of an Indian Army officer. So much for the wicked old British Raj.

My troubles began when I joined my Highland battalion in North Africa and had to have a batman from the ranks of my own platoon. No doubt I had been spoiled in India, but the contrast was dramatic. Where I had been accustomed to waking to the soft murmur of “Chota hazri, sahib”, and having a pialla of perfectly-brewed tea and a sliced mango on my bedside table, there was now a crash of hob-nailed boots and a raucous cry of “Erzi tea! Some o’ it’s spillt, an’ there’s nae sugar. Aye, an’ the rain’s oan again.” Not the same, somehow. And where once there had been a fresh-laundered shirt on a hanger, there was now a freckled Glaswegian holding up last night’s garment in distaste and exclaiming: “Whit in Goad’s name ye been daein’ in this? Look at the state o’ it. Were ye fu’, or whit? Aye, weel, it’ll hiv tae dae - yer ither yins arenae back frae the dhobi. Unless he’s refused them. Aye. Weel, ye gettin’ up, or are ye gaunae lie there a’ day … sur?”

That was Coulter. I got rid of him inside three days, and appealed to Telfer, my platoon sergeant, for a replacement. And I hate to record it, for I like to think well of Telfer, who was a splendid soldier, but he then did one of the most diabolic things any sergeant could do to his new, green, and trusting platoon commander. Without batting an eye, and with full knowledge of what he was doing, this veteran of Alamein and Anzio glanced at his platoon roll, frowned, and said: “What about McAuslan?”

Innocent that I was, those doom-laden words meant nothing to me. I didn’t know, then, that McAuslan was the dirtiest soldier in the world, a byword from Maryhill Barracks to the bazaars of Port Said for his foulness, stupidity, incompetence, illiteracy, and general unfitness for the service, an ill-made disaster whom Falstaff wouldn’t have looked at, much less marched with through Coventry. This was the Tartan Caliban who had to be forcibly washed by his fellows and locked in cupboards during inspections, whom Telfer was wishing on me as batman. In fairness I can see that a sergeant might go to desperate lengths to keep McAuslan off parade and out of public view, but it was still a terrible thing to do to a subaltern not yet come of age.

I had seen McAuslan, of course - at least I had been aware of a sort of uniformed yeti that lurked at the far end of the barrack-room or vanished round corners like a startled sloth at the approach of authority, which he dreaded; I had even heard his cry, a raucous snarl of complaint and justification, for beneath his unkempt exterior there was a proud and independent spirit, sensitive of abuse. He had fought in North Africa, mostly against the Germans, but with the Military Police on occasion; his crime-sheet was rich in offences of neglect and omission, but rarely of intentional mischief, for McAuslan had this virtue: he tried. In a way he was something of a platoon mascot; the other Jocks took a perverse pride in his awfulness, and wouldn’t have parted with him.

Of all this I was happily ignorant at the time, and it gave me quite a start when I got my first view of him, crouched to attention in my doorway, eyeing me like a wary gargoyle preparing to wrestle; he always stood to attention like that, I was to discover; it was a gift, like his habit of swinging left arm and left leg in unison when marching. He appeared to be short in stature, but since he was never fully erect one couldn’t be sure; his face was primitive and pimpled, partly obscured by hair hanging over an unwashed brow, his denims would have disgraced an Alexandrine beggar (and possibly had), but the crowning touch was the filthy napkin draped carelessly over one forearm -1 believe now that he was trying to convince me that he had once been a waiter, and knew his business.

” 14687347Pr’iteMcAuslansah!” he announced. “Ah’m yer new batman, Sarn’t Telfer sez. Whit’ll Ah clean first?”

The smart answer to that would have been “Yourself, and do it somewhere else”, but I was a very new second-lieutenant.

“Ah brung ma cleanin’ kit,” he went on, fishing a repulsive hold-all from inside his shirt. “Oh, aye, it’s a’ here,” and he shook out on to the table a collection of noisome rags and old iron in which I recognised a battered Brasso tin, several bits of wire gauze and dried-up bianco, a toothbrush without bristles, and a stump of candle. (That last item shook me; was it possible, I wondered, that he performed his toilet by this illumination alone? It would have explained a lot.) It all looked as though it had been dredged from the Sweetwater Canal.

He made a sudden shambling pounce and snatched two rusted objects from the mess with a glad cry. “Aw, there th’are! Goad, an’ me lookin’ a’ ower the shop! Ah thought Ah’d loast them!” He beamed, wiping them vigorously on his shirt, adding a touch of colour.

“What are they?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

“Ma fork an’ spoon! They musta got in there that time I wis givin’ ma mess-tins a wee polish - ye hiv tae scoor them, sur, ye see, or ye get gingivitis an’ a’ yer teeth fa’ oot, the M.O. sez.” He peered fondly at the rusting horrors, like an archaeologist with burial fragments. “Here, that’s great! It’s been a dam’ nuisance bein’ wi’oot them at meal-times,” he added, conjuring up a picture so frightful that I closed my eyes. When I opened them again he was still there, frowning at my service dress, which was hanging outside the wardrobe.

“That’s yer good kit,” he said, in the grim reflective tone in which Sir Henry Morgan might have said: “That’s Panama.” He took a purposeful shuffle towards it, and I sprang to bar his way.

“It’s all right, McAuslan - it’s fine, it’s all clean and ready. I shan’t need it until five-thirty, for Retreat.” I sought for some task that should keep him at a safe distance from my belongings. “Look, why don’t you sweep the floor-out in the passage? The sand keeps blowing in… and the windows haven’t been washed for weeks; you could do them - from the outside,” I added hastily. “And let’s see … what else?” But he was shaking his matted head, all insanitary reproach.

“Ah’m tae clean yer kit,” he insisted. “Sarn’t Telfer sez. Ah’ve tae polish yer buttons an’ yer buits an’ yer Sam Broon an’ yer stag’s heid badge, an’ brush yer tunic, an’ press the pleats o’ yer kilt, an’ bell yer flashes wi’ rolled-up newspaper, an’ wash an’ dry yer sporran, and see the dhobi starches an’ irons yer shirts, an’ melt the bastard if he disnae dae it right, an’ mak’ yer bed …”He had assumed the aspect of a dishevelled Priest of the Ape People chanting a prehistoric ritual, eyes shut and swaying slightly, “… an’ lay oot yer gear, an’ bianco yer webbin’, an’ bring yer gunfire in ra mornin’, and collect yer fag ration, an’ fetch ye tea an’ wee cakes frae the Naafi for yer elevenses unless ye fancy a doughnut, an’ take ma turn as mess waiter oan guest nights, an’ …”

“Stop!” I cried, and he gargled to a halt and stood lowering and expectant. It was that last bit about being a mess waiter that had hit home -1 had a nightmare vision of him, in his unspeakable denims, sidling up to the Brigadier’s wife with a tray of canapés and inquiring hoarsely, “Hey, missus, ye want a sang-widge? Ach, go on, pit anither in yer bag fur efter …”

“We can discuss it tomorrow,” I said firmly. “My kit’s all ready for Retreat, and I’m on the range until five, so you can fall out until then. Right?”

It isn’t easy to read expressions on a face that looks like an artist’s impression of Early Man, but I seemed to detect disappointment in the way he blinked and drew his forearm audibly across his nose. “Can Ah no’ help ye oan wi’ yer gear?” he suggested, and I snatched my bonnet from beneath his descending paw in the nick of time and hastily buckled on my belt and holster. “Thanks all the same, McAuslan,” I said, withdrawing before he decided my collar needed adjustment - and he looked so deprived, somehow, that like a soft-hearted fool I added: “You can comb the sporran if you like … you better wash your hands first, perhaps, and be sure to hang it straight. Right, carry on.”

They say no good deed ever goes unpunished, but I could not foresee that in combing the big white horse-hair sporran he would drop it on the floor, tramp on it, decide that it needed rewashing, and then try to dry it over the cookhouse stove while the master-gyppo’s back was turned. They got the blaze under control, and probably only the gourmets noticed that the evening meal tasted of burned horse-hair. Meanwhile McAuslan, escaping undetected through the smoke, galloped back to my billet and tried to repair the charred remnant of my sporran by scraping it with my sgian dubh, snapping the blade in the process; he next tried daubing the stubble with white bianco, and dripped it on my best black shoes, which he then rendered permanently two-tone by scrubbing the spots with his sleeve. Warming to his work, he attempted to steal a sporran from Second-Lieutenant Keith next door, was detected and pursued by Keith’s batman, and defended his plunder by breaking my ashplant over the other’s head. After which they called the provost staff, and the Jeeves of 12 Platoon was removed struggling to the cells, protesting blasphemously that they couldnae dae this tae him, he hadnae finished gettin’ Mr MacNeill ready fur tae go on Retreat.

All this I learned when I got back from the range. I didn’t attend Retreat - well, you look conspicuous in mottled grey brogues and a bald, smoking sporran - and was awarded two days’ orderly officer in consequence; it was small comfort that McAuslan got seven days’ jankers for brawling and conduct prejudicial. I summoned him straight after his sentence, intending to announce his dismissal from my personal service in blistering terms; he lurched into my office (even in his best tunic and tartan he looked like a fugitive from Culloden who had been hiding in a peat-bog) and before I could vent my rage on him he cleared his throat thunderously and asked:

“Can Ah say a word, sur?”

Expecting apology and contrition, I invited him to go ahead, and having closed his eyes, swayed, and gulped - symptoms, I was to learn, of embarrassment - he regarded me with a sort of nervous compassion.

“Ah’m sorry, sur, but Ah’m givin’ notice. Ah mean, Ah’m resignin’ frae bein’ yer batman. Ah’m packin’ it in, sur, if ye don’t mind.” He blinked, wondering how I would receive this bombshell, and my face must have been a study, for he added hastily: “Ah’m sorry, like, but ma mind’s made up.”

“Is it, by God?” I said. “Well, get this straight, McAuslan! You’re not resigning, my son, not by a dam’ sight, because—”

“Oh, but Ah am, sur. Beggin’ yer pardon. Ah want ye tae understand,” he continued earnestly, “that it’s nuthin’ personal. Ye’re a gentleman, sur. But the fact is, if Ah’m lookin’ efter you, Ah hivnae time tae look efter mysel’ - an’ Ah’ve got a lot o’ bother, I can tell ye. Look at the day, frinstance - Ah wis rushed, an’ here Ah’m oan jankers - och, it’s no’ your fault, it’s that wee nyaff o’ a batman that works fur Mr Keith. Nae cooperation—”

“McAuslan,” I said, breathing hard. “Go away. Go quickly, before I forget myself. Get your infernal carcase on jankers, and tell the Provost Sergeant he can kill you, and I’ll cover up for him—’

“Awright! Awright, sur! Ah’m gaun!” He beat a shambling retreat, looking puzzled and slightly hurt. ‘Keep the heid, sur.” He saluted with crestfallen dignity. “Ah wis just gaun tae say, ye’ll be needin’ anither batman, an’ ye could dae worse than Chick McGilvray; he’s Celtic-daft an’ a bit casual, but - awright, sur, Ah’m gaun! Ah’m gaun!’

You know, when our sister regiment, the Black Watch, was first raised centuries ago, it was unique in that every private soldier had his own batman - and in next to no time that great fighting regiment had mutinied. It was now clear to me why: several hundred batmen in the McAuslan mould had simply proved too great a strain.

On the principle that any recommendation of his must be accursed, I did not approach McGilvray. Instead I spoke sternly to Sergeant Telfer - who had the grace to admit that eagerness to get shot of McAuslan had warped his judgment - and told him I would engage replacements on a trial basis. There was no shortage of volunteers, for a batman’s life is a cushy billet, with perks and time off, but none of them was any real improvement on Coulter, although all were grace itself compared to the Dark Destroyer who had succeeded him.

There was Fletcher, Glasgow spiv, dead shot, and platoon dandy, who kept my kit immaculate - and wore it himself in his sorties after female talent. Next there was Forbes, nicknamed Heinie after Himmler; he was small, dark, and evil, a superb footballer who performed his duties with ruthless efficiency, but whose explosive temper bred friction with the other batmen. After him came Brown, alias Daft Bob, an amiable dreamer who supported Partick Thistle (that’s a tautology, really) and was always five minutes late; he was also given to taking afternoon naps on my bed with his boots on. And there was Riach, who came from Uist and belonged to that strict religious sect, the Wee Frees; he had a prejudice against working on the Sabbath, and only did it under protest. (I once asked him how, during active service in the Far East, he had brought himself to kill Japanese on Sunday, and he ground his teeth in a grim, distant way and said that was all right, it was a work of necessity and mercy.)

I parted from each trialist in turn, without rancour. Perhaps I was hard to please - no, I was impossible to please, partly because I disliked being waited on and feeling my privacy invaded, but also because it was dawning on me that Scots (as I should have learned from my grandmother) are not natural servants; they have too much inborn conceit of themselves for the job, and either tyrannise their employers, like my grandmother and Coulter (although I’m sure her technique was that of the rapier, where his was the bludgeon), or regard them as victims to be plundered in a patronising way. Of course there are exceptions; Hudson of Upstairs, Downstairs does exist, but you have to be exceptional yourself to employ him (I never thought the Bellamy family were quite up to him, and I doubt if he did either).

Anyway, there were no Hudsons in 12 Platoon, and I wondered how it was that the other young officers got by - MacKenzie, heir to a baronetcy, had an easy, owner-serf relationship with his orderly, and the rest of the subalterns seemed to take personal attendance for granted, without noticing it. That is the secret, of course: you have to be of the fine clay that isn’t even aware of servants, but regards them as robots or talking animals who just happen to be around, lubricating you unobtrusively through life. The moment you become sensitive to their mere presence, never mind their thoughts, you stamp yourself as a neurotic peasant, like me, unfit to be looked after. So I concluded - and it never occurred to me that I was someone’s grandson, and possibly seeking an unobtainable ideal.

Finally, in despair, I offered the job to McAuslan’s nominee, McGilvray, a grinning, tow-headed Glaswegian who confessed that he hadn’t volunteered because he didn’t think he was cut out for it - that was a change, anyway. Mind you, he was right, but he wasn’t alone in that, and he was a cheery, willing vandal who, beyond a tendency to knock the furniture about and gossip non-stop, had only one serious defect: I had to darn his socks. This after I had noticed him limping slightly, made him take off his plimsolls, and discovered two gaping holes repaired by whipping the edges together into fearsome ridges.

“No wonder you get blisters, you Parkhead disaster,” I rebuked him. “Did no one ever teach you to darn? Right, get me some wool and a needle and pay attention …”

Darning socks was a vital art in those days; if you couldn’t darn you couldn’t march - unless you were one of those eccentrics who dispensed with socks and filled their boots with tallow, and I wasn’t having him doing that, not within fifty yards of my perfumed bower. But my tuition was wasted; he just couldn’t darn, and before you knew it I was inspecting his socks regularly and mending them myself, while he beavered away on my brass and webbing and explained why Celtic weren’t winning these days. From time to time I would wonder resentfully why the hell I was doing this, but I knew that if I didn’t it wouldn’t get done at all, and you know how it is: line of least resistance, etc., and I couldn’t be bothered finding yet another batman - which was an utterly trivial matter anyway, alongside the important things that were happening to me at that time. Such as getting to know and work well with my platoon, discovering that mutual reliance which is a gift (and an honour) beyond price, enjoying the acceptance that comes in a Highland battalion when the Jocks stop calling you “MacNeill” among themselves and give you a nickname (“Darkie”, I discovered), getting my second pip, feeling at home in one of the world’s most famous regiments, preparing to go home on leave after three years …