Читать книгу The Complete McAuslan - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 12

I had two grandmothers, one Presbyterian, the other pagan. Each told me stories, in her own way. The pagan, an incredibly old, bright-eyed creature from the Far West, peopled the world with kelpies and pixies and giants, or fair cold princesses and their sea-rover lovers; these were the tales her people had brought in the long ships centuries ago. And sometimes she would tell of our more immediate mainland ancestors, of the Red Fox and Robin Roy Macgregor and the caterans of the Highlands and the dirty tricks they played each other. But always her stories were full of passion and fighting and magic and cunning stratagems, and above all, laughter. Watching her old, wrinkled face, so eager, and the play of her ancient thin hands, it was easy to believe that her own grandmother had known a woman who had seen the men coming back from the ’45, thrusting their broadswords into the thatch for another time, and stamping while the tears ran down their faces. Afterwards she would give me a penny or a potato scone, which she baked with great skill.

My other grandmother had only one story, the point of which eludes me still. She was a Glencoe MacDonald, strong and of few words, worshipping a stern God on whom she kept a close eye to see that he didn’t get up to anything the Presbytery wouldn’t have approved of, like granting salvation to Catholics and Wee Frees. She frightened me, for she was hard and forbidding and insisted that we walk miles to church on Sundays. On these walks I was naturally forbidden to take my ball; on weekdays I could dribble it along beside her, and on one occasion she even condescended to kick it, watching it with a cold eye to see that it rolled straight. It did. And it was on that occasion that she told me the story; the sight of a distant train puffing along the hillside had brought it to mind.

It appears that on the West Highland railway near Tyndrum there was a steep hill. A train of cattle in open trucks was steaming up it, when a coupling broke and the trucks began to run back downhill. In the rear truck was the elderly guard and a young assistant, and the guard, as the train gathered speed, cried to the young man:

“When you see me shump, you shump too. Better to be killed on the bank than smochtered among the cattle.”

They had both jumped, and the young man broke his ankle and the old guard smashed his watch, and the train thundered on to the bottom of the hill and glided gradually to a stop in perfect safety.

At this point my grandmother paused, and I waited for the punchline. She stood gazing out across the glen with that stony look that she would fasten on the minister if he looked like letting up in his sermon after a mere forty minutes; her mind was away somewhere else.

“And that,” she said impressively at last, “is what happened on the West Highland railway.”

I thought it was a pretty feeble story then, and it doesn’t look much better in retrospect, although I have a feeling she saw a point to it which she didn’t explain. But both the story and that grim old lady who told it come back to me every time I smell engine smoke or hear a whistle wail. I have remembered it on the long haul across the prairies, where the horizon stretches out for ever; on the sweaty Punjab Mail, jam-packed inside with white-robed Orientals, with more on the roof and in the windows and doorways and fat babus clinging for dear life a yard above the tracks; in the damp, blacked-out, blue-lit corridors of war-time trains clanking on and halting interminably; in football specials carrying the raucous, boozed-up supporters to Wembley; in a huge German train rattling across France with its solemn script notices, like ancient texts, telling you that pots were to be found under the seats, by order; in little trains at country halts, where beyond the misted windows you could see the glare of the porters’ lamps and hear the sudden bang of a carriage door and the lonely call of “Symington!” or “Tebay!”

Most of all I remembered it on the Cairo—Jerusalem run in 1946 or ’47, when the Stern Gang and the Irgun were at large, and the windows were sometimes boarded because the glass had been shot out, and lines were being blown up, and the illegal immigrant ships were coming in through the blockade, and a new nation was being uncomfortably born in a welter of hatred and confusion and total misunderstanding on all sides. Ben Hecht was having a holiday in his heart every time a British soldier died, and British soldiers were having a holiday in theirs at the prospect of getting away from a country they detested, in which some kind of illusion was shattered for them because the names of Bible stories had turned out to be places where machine-pistols rattled and grenades came in through windows. In the U.N. there was much talk and seeking of viable solutions and exploration of channels, and in the Palestine clubs young subalterns danced with their guns pushed round out of the way but still handy.

It was my gun that had got me into trouble. I had been on a course up at Acre—one of those courses where you walk miles across stony hills and look at maps, and a Guards officer instructor says, “Now this is the picture …”—and I was staying one night in Cairo before flying on to the battalion, which was living away along the North African coast, blancoing itself and playing football hundreds of miles from the shooting. Being me, I set off for the airport in the morning without my pistol, which was in the transit camp armoury, and so I missed my plane. You simply could not travel in those days without your gun; not that it was dangerous where I was going. It was just The Law. So I turned back for it, and the Movements Officer had a fit. Missing a plane was practically a capital charge. Apart from that, I couldn’t get another for several days, so they looked for something unpleasant for me to do while I was waiting.

“You can be O.C. train to Jerusalem tonight,” said the Movements Officer, with sadistic satisfaction. “Report to Victoria Station at twenty-two hundred hours, don’t be late, and this time take your blasted gun with you.”

So I had a bath, played snooker against myself all afternoon, and in the neon-lit Cairo evenfall rolled up to Victoria, clutching my little pistol in a damp palm. I fought my way through a press of enormous dragomans—huge, ugly people with brass badges who offer to carry your kit, and when you agree they whistle up some tiny assistant who shoulders your trunks and staggers off like an ant under a haystack. The dragoman doesn’t carry anything; he just clears a way, roaring, and demands an exorbitant fee.

The movements office gave me a great sheaf of documents, a few instructions on how to command a troop train, reminded me that we left at ten sharp, and waved me away. The place looked like a stock market during a boom, everyone was running and shouting and chalking on boards; I got out to the bar, where sundry wellwishers cheered me up with anecdotes about the Jerusalem run.

“Tell me they’re blowing one train in three,” said an American Air Corps major.

“Doing it dam’ neatly, too,” said a captain in the Lincolns. “’Course, most of ’em are British or American-trained. On our side a year or two ago.”

A quarter-master from the South Lancs said the terrorists’ equipment and stores were of the finest: Jerry landmines, piles o’ flamin’ gun-cotton, and more electrical gear than the G.P.O.

“Schmeiser machine-pistols,” said the American cheerfully. “Telescopic sights. Draw a bead on your ear at six hundred yards with those crossed wires—then, bam! You’ve had it. Who’s having another?”

“Trouble is, you can’t tell friend from foe,” said the Lincoln. “No uniforms, dam’ nasty. Thanks, Tex, don’t mind if I do. Well, thank God they don’t get me past Gaza again; nice low demob. group, my number’ll be up in a month or two. Cheers.”

I said I had better be getting along to my train, and they looked at me reflectively, and I picked up my balmoral, dropped my papers, scrabbled them up, and went out in search of Troop Train 42, Jerusalem via Zagazig, Gaza and Tel Aviv, officer commanding Lt. MacNeill, D., and the best of luck to him.

The platform was jammed all along its narrow length; my cargo looked like the United Nations. There were Arab Legion in their red-checked head-cloths, leaning on their rifles and saying nothing to anybody, A.T.S. giggling in little groups and going into peals of laughter at the attempts of one of them to make an Egyptian tea-seller understand that she didn’t take milk; service wives and families on the seats, the women wearing that glassy look of worn-out boredom and the children scattering about and bumping and shrieking; a platoon of long bronzed Australians, bush-hatted and talking through their noses; worried-looking majors and red-faced, phlegmatic corporals; at least one brigadier, red-tabbed, trying to look as though he was thinking of something important and was unaware of the children who were playing tig round him; unidentified semi-military civilians of the kind you get round bases—correspondents, civil servants, welfare and entertainment organisers; dragomans sweeping majestically ahead of their porters and barking strange Arabic words. Hurrying among them, swearing pathetically, was a fat little man with R.T.O. on his sleeve and enormous khaki shorts on his withers; he seized on me and shouted above the noise of people and escaping steam.

“Stone me! You MacNeill? What a blasted mess! You’ve got the short straw, you have. Fourteen service families, Gawd knows how many kids, but they’re all in the manifest. A.T.S. an’ all. I said we shouldn’t have it, ought to be eighty per cent troops on any troop train, but you might as well talk to the wind that dried your first shirt.” He shoved another sheaf of papers at me. “You can cope, anyway. Just don’t let any of ’em off before Jerusalem, that’s all. There’s at least two deserters under escort, but they’re in the van, handcuffed. It’s the civvies you’ve got to watch for; they don’t like taking orders. If any of ’em get uppity, threaten to shoot ’em, or better still threaten to drop ’em off in a nice stretch of desert—there’s plenty. Damn my skin, I’m misting up again!” He removed his spectacles from his pug nose, wiped them on a service hankie, and replaced them; he was running sweat down his plump red cheeks. “Now then, there’s a padre who’s worried about the A.T.S., God knows why, but he knows his own mind best, I dare say; keep an eye on the Aussies, but you know about them. And don’t let the wog who’s driving stop except at stations—that’s important. If he tries, don’t threaten to shoot him, just tell him he’ll lose his pension. An’ remember, you’re the boss; to hell with ranks, they don’t count on a train. You’re the skipper, got it?”

The loudspeaker boomed overhead.

“Attention, please, attention. Will Captain Tanner please go to platform seven, plat-form sev-en. Captain Tanner, please.”

“All right, all right,” said the little man, savagely. “I can only be one place at a time, can’t I? Where was I? Oh, yes, you’ve a second-in-command, over there.” He pointed to a figure, standing alone near the engine. “One of your crowd,” he added, looking at my tartan shoulder-flash. “Seems all right. Sergeant Black!” he shouted, and the figure came over to us.

He was about middle height, with the big spreading chest and shoulders you often see in Highland regiments; his chin was blue and his profile was like a Red Indian’s under the tilted bonnet with its red hackle. He was neat, professional, and as hard as a gangster, and he had the M.M. in front of the Africa and Italy ribbons. A pair of stony eyes looked me over, but he didn’t say anything.

“The run takes about seven hours,” went on the R.T.O. He stopped and shuffled his papers. He was thinking. “If you hit trouble,” he said at last, “you use your initiative. Sorry it’s not much help, but there you are. You’ve got some signallers, and the telegraph line’s never far away. You’ll be O.K. as far as Gaza anyway; after that there’s more chance of … well, anyway, it’s not likely there’ll be any bother.”

The loudspeaker crackled again for Captain Tanner.

“Oh, shut up!” he snapped. “Honest, it’s the only blasted name they know. Well, look, you’re off in about ten minutes. Better start getting ’em aboard. I’ll get a bleat for you on the tannoy. Best of luck.” He hurried off, and then turned back. “Oh, one other thing; there’s a captain’s wife with a baby and she thinks it’s getting German measles. I wouldn’t know.”

He bustled off into the crowd, and as he disappeared I felt suddenly lonely and nervous. One train, two hundred people—a good third of them women and children—seemed a lot of responsibility, especially going into a country on fire with civil strife and harried by armed terrorist gangs. Two deserters, a worried padre, and possible German measles. Oh, well, first things first. How does one start clearing a crowded platform into a train?

“Sergeant Black,” I said, “have you made this trip before?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh. I see. Well, start getting them aboard, will you?”

God bless the British sergeant. He flicked his bonnet with his hand, swung round, and thundered, “All aboard for Jerusalem,” as though he had been a stationmaster all his life. The tannoy boomed into sound overhead and there was a general move towards the train. Sergeant Black moved in among the crowd, pointing and instructing—he seemed to know, by some God-given instinct, what to do—and I went to look at the engine.

I’m no authority, but it looked pretty rickety, and the genial Arab driver seemed to be in the grip of some powerful intoxicating drug. He had a huge laugh and a glassy eye, spoke no English, and fiddled with his controls in a reckless, unnerving way. I thought of asking him if he knew the way to Jerusalem, but it would have sounded silly, so I climbed into the front carriage, dumped my hand baggage on a seat in the compartment marked “O.C. Train, Private” (with the added legend “Kilroy was here—he hated it”) and set off down the corridor to tour the train.

It was like the lower gun-deck of the Fighting Temeraire at Trafalgar, a great heaving mass of bodies trying to sort themselves out. There were no Pullman cars, and the congestion in the carriage doorways was brutal. I worked my way through to the guard’s van, and found Sergeant Black eyeing the two deserters, tow-headed ruffians handcuffed to a staple on the wall.

“Let them loose,” he was saying to the M.P. escort.

“I’m responsible …” the M.P. began, and Black looked at him. There was one of those pregnant silences while I examined the instructions on the fire extinguisher, and then the M.P. muttered some defiance and unlocked the handcuffs. Sergeant Black lit a cigarette and tapped the butt of his Luger.

“See, you two,” he said. “Run for it, and I’ll blow yer ---- heids aff.” He caught sight of me and nodded.

“Awright this end, sir.”

“So I see,” I said and beckoned him out in the corridor. “You think it’s safe to loose those two?”

“Well, it’s like this. If there’s trouble, it’s no’ right they should be tied up.”

“You mean if we hit the Stern Gang?”

“Aye.”

I thought about this, but not for long. There would certainly be other, more important decisions to make on the journey, and there was no point in worrying myself at this stage about the security of two deserters who were hardly likely to take off into the desert anyway. So I allotted Sergeant Black the rear half of the train, struggled back to my place at the front, checked my notorious pistol to see that it was loaded, satisfied myself that everyone was off the platform, and settled down with “The Launching of Roger Brook”, which was the current favourite with the discerning literati, although closely challenged by two other recent productions, Animal Farm and Forever Amber. The train suddenly heaved and clanked, and we were off.

The Cairo—Jerusalem run is one of the oldest and most well-worn routes in the world. By train in those days you went due north towards the Nile delta and then swung east through Zagazig to Ismailia on the Canal. Then north along the Canal again to El Kantara, “the Bridge” by which Mary and Joseph travelled and before them Abraham. Then you are running east again along the coast, with the great waste of the Sinai on your right and the Mediterranean on your left. This was the way the world walked in the beginnings of recorded time, Roman, Arab, Assyrian, Greek; if you could talk to everyone who used this road you could write the history of the human race. Everyone was here, except the Children of Israel who made it the hard way, farther south. And now they were trying to make it again, from a different direction, over the sea from Europe and elsewhere-still the hard way, they being Jews.

The tracks stick to the coast as far as the Palestine border, where the names become familiar, echoing childhood memories of Sunday school and the Old Testament—Rafa and Gaza and Askalon away to the left, where the daughters of the uncircumcised were getting ready to cheer for Goliath; and then the line curves slowly away from the coast to Lydda, and doubles almost back on itself for the last lap south and east into Jerusalem.

At various points along the route Samson had destroyed the temple, Philip had begun preaching the gospel, Herod had been born, the Lord smote the thousand thousand Ethiopians, Peter cured in the name of Jesus, Solomon dreamed of being wise, and Uzziah broke down the walls of Jabneh. And Lt MacNeill, D., was following in their footsteps with Troop Train 42, which just shows that you can always go one better.

We had just rattled through Zagazig and Roger Brook was squaring up to the finest swordsman in France when there was a knock at my door and there stood a tall, thin man with a big Adam’s apple knocking on his dog collar, wearing the purple-edged pips of the Royal Army Chaplain’s Department. He peered at me through massive horn-rims and said:

“There are A.T.S. travelling on this train.”

I admitted it; and he sucked in his breath.

“There are also officers of the Royal Air Force.”

His voice was husky, and you could see that, to his mind, Troop Train 42 was a potential White Slave Special. In his experience, R.A.F. types and A.T.S. were an explosive formula.

“I shouldn’t worry, padre,” I said, “I’m sure …”

“But I must worry,” he said indignantly. “After all, if we were not in this train, it would be time for Lights Out. These young girls would be asleep. The young men …” he paused; he wasn’t so sure about the young men. “I think that, as O.C. train, you should ensure that a curfew of compartments is observed after eleven o’clock,” he finished up.

“I doubt if there’s any regulation …”

“You could enforce it. You have the authority.”

That was true enough: an O.C. train, however junior in rank, is like the captain of a ship; obviously he exercises tact where big brass is concerned, but when the chips are down he is the man. But authority cuts two ways. Now that I’d been reminded of it, I resented having a young sky-pilot (he was ribbonless and under 30), telling me my job. I got formal.

“A curfew would be impractical,” I said. “But I shall be patrolling the train from time to time, as will my sergeant.”

You could see he was wondering about that, too. He looked at me doubtfully and muttered something about spiritual duty and promiscuity. Plainly he was a nut. After shifting from one foot to the other for a moment, he bade me good night unhappily, and lurched off down the corridor, colliding with a fresh-faced young flight-lieutenant who was coming the other way. The R.A.F. type was full of bonhomie, duty-free in the Service.

“Hiya, Padre,” said he. “Playing at home this weather, eh?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, this is your territory, isn’t it?” said the youth. “Y’know, bound for the Holy Land. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Jezebel,” he waved expansively, “Goliath of Gath, Sodom and Gomorrah and Gomorrah and Gomorrah creeps in this petty pace from day to day …”

I went inside quickly and closed the door. Something told me the padre was going to have a worrying trip.

He wasn’t the only one, although it was past El Kantara that the next interruption came. I had taken a trip along the train, and seen that everyone was reasonably installed for the night, conferred with Sergeant Black, and come back to my compartment. Roger Brook had pinked the villain long ago, and was now rifling the Marquis’s closet for the secret plans, when the knock came.

It was a small A.T.S., blonde and snub-nosed, wearing two stripes. She saluted smartly and squeaked at me.

“Please, sir, could something be done about our carriage window? It’s broken and boarded up, and Helen is in a draught. Actually, we all are, sir; it’s very cold. But Helen feels it most.”

A young officer appealed to by A.T.S. is a sorry sight. He becomes tremendously paternal and dignified, as only a 21-year-old can. Elderly staff officers look like babbling lads beside him. He frowns thoughtfully, and his voice drops at least two octaves. I was no exception.

“Very good, corporal,” I said, sounding like Valentine Dyall with a heavy cold. “Show me the way, please.”

She bounced off, with me following. Her billet was two coaches behind, and as we entered the second one I glanced into a compartment and found the padre staring at me with a mistrustful eye. Quis custodiet, by gum, he was thinking, so to assure him that all was well I gave him a big smile and the O.K. sign, thumb and forefinger together, other fingers raised. A second after I did it, I realised that it was open to misunderstanding, but it was too late then.

There were seven other A.T.S. in the compartment, shivering, with the wind whistling through the boarded window. They emitted cries, and while the corporal told them it was O.K. now, because the O.C. train would fix it in person, I ploughed through their piles of kitbags, shoes, parcels, and general clutter to the window. There was a big crack in the boarding, but it looked as though it could be forced to quite easily.

“Can you manage, sir?” they cried. “Will it shut?” “I’m freezing.” “Help him, Muriel.”

I heaved at the board and the whole damned thing came loose and vanished into the Palestine night. A tremendous blast of cold night air came in through the empty window. They shrieked.

“Oh, he’s broken it!”

“Oh, it’s perishing!”

“These Highlanders,” said a soulful-looking A.T.S. with an insubordinate sniff, “don’t know their own strength.”

“Take it easy,” I said, nonplussed, to coin a phrase. “Er, corporal, I think they’d better all move into the corridor …”

“Into the corridor!” “We can’t stay there all night.” “We’re entitled to a compartment”—even in the A.T.S. they had barrack-room lawyers, yet.

“… into the corridor until I get you fixed in other compartments,” I said. “You can’t stay here.”

“Too right we can’t.” “Huh, join the A.T.S. and freeze to death.” “Some people.” Mutters of mutiny and discontent while they gathered up their belongings.

I trampled out, told the corporal to keep them together, and, if possible to keep them quiet, and headed up the train. There was a compartment, I remembered, with only two officers in it. I knocked on its door, and a pouchy eye looked out at me.

“Well, what is it?” He was a half-colonel, balding and with a liverish look. I explained the situation.

“I thought you might not object if, say, four of the girls came in here, sir. It’s one of the few compartments that isn’t full.” Looking past him, I could see the other man, a major, stretched out on a seat.

“What? Bring A.T.S. in here?”

“Yes, sir, four of them. I can get the other four placed elsewhere.”

“This is a first-class compartment,” he snapped. “A.T.S. other ranks travel third.”

“Yes, I know, but their compartment hasn’t got a window …”

“Then I suggest you find them one that has.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t one; they’re all full.”

“That is your business. And I would point out that you have no right to suggest that they move in here.”

“Why not, for Pete’s sake? Look,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “they have to go somewhere …”

“Don’t address me in that way,” he barked. “What’s your name?”

“MacNeill.”

“MacNeill what?”

He had me there. “MacNeill, sir.”

He gave me a nasty look. “Well, MacNeill, I suggest that you study the regulations governing the movement of troop trains. Also the limitations of authority of damned young whippersnappers who are put in charge of them, but are not, strange as it may seem, empowered to address their superiors in an insolent manner, or request them to vacate their compartments in favour of A.T.S.”

“I didn’t ask you to vacate your compartment, sir,” I said, my voice shaking just a little, as it always does when I’m in that curious state halfway between backing down shamefaced and belting somebody. “I merely asked, since they are women …”

“Don’t dam’ well argue,” said the man lying on the seat, speaking for the first time.

“No,” said the pouchy half-colonel. “Don’t argue, if you know what’s good for you.” And he shut the door.

I stood there, hesitating. The choice was clear. I could fling open the door and give him a piece of my mind, taking the consequences, or I could creep off towards my own compartment. Eventually I compromised, creeping away and giving him a piece of my mind as I did so, in a reckless whisper. Not that it helped: the A.T.S. were still homeless and had to be fitted in somewhere.

I needn’t have worried. When I got back to the corridor where I had left them it was empty, but shrieks of female laughter led me to the primitive restaurant car, where they had found refuge with a mixed company of R.A.F. and our gallant Australian cousins. From the way these two branches of the service were looking at one another it was obvious that the A.T.S. were safer than they would have been in a convent; jealousy would see to that. Both sides were making heavy running, one big lean Aussie explaining to three of the A.T.S. what a didgery-doo was, and offering them sips from his hip-flask, while my Biblical flight-lieutenant was leading the remainder in the singing of “Bless ’em all”, the revised version. I just hoped the padre was a sound sleeper.

Thereafter things were fairly uneventful for about an hour. A fight broke out in one compartment because somebody snored; the soulful-looking A.T.S. girl was sick — as a result, she insisted, of what the Australian had given her from his hip-flask; she hinted darkly that he had wanted to drug her, which seemed unlikely—a kitbag mysteriously fell from a window and the owner was only just prevented from pulling the communication cord, and one of the Arab Legion got locked in the lavatory. These things I observed on my hourly tour of the train; the Arab Legionnaire’s predicament I came on after pushing through a small group of well-wishers singing “Oh, dear, what can the matter be?” I scattered them, and watched with interest while Sergeant Black painstakingly shouted orders through the locked door. It did no good; the entrapped one alternately bawled dreadful Arabic words and beat the panelling, and sent out a keening wail which was probably a lament that T. E. Lawrence hadn’t minded his own business in the first place. Finally Black lost his temper and upbraided the man in purest Perthshire, at which the door flew open and the occupant, his face suffused, emerged with his rifle at the trail—why he had it with him he alone knew.

I congratulated Black and strolled back towards my compartment, speculating on whether there was an affinity between Arabic and the Crieff dialect, or whether the Arab had finally found how the bolt worked. I was pondering this in the corridor and listening to the rumbling ring of the wheels and looking through the window at the scrub-studded desert, black and silver in the moonshine, when the compartment door nearest me opened and a dishevelled young captain emerged, clutching a bundle. Beyond him a young woman was sitting with another bundle over her knees; both bundles were wailing plaintively and the compartment, which was otherwise unoccupied, was littered with clothes, towels, small clothes, utensils, and all the paraphernalia that an ignorant young bachelor associates with children.

“Yes, dear, I’ll try,” the man was saying. “There, there, Petey-Petey, all right, all right.”

“And it must be sterilised,” called the young woman, agitated. “They must have some boiling water, somewhere. Yes, yes, Angie dear, mummy’s going to fix it as soon as she possibly can … Do hurry, dear, please!”

“Yes, darling, I am hurrying, as fast as I can. What shall I do with Petey?”

“Not on that seat!” cried the mother. “He’ll roll off!”

“Oh, God!” said the man, wild-eyed. He saw me. “Have you any idea where there’s boiling water?”

Some questions are best answered with a helpless gape.

“Please, Charles, hurry! Oh, no, Angela, did you have to?”

“She hasn’t!” said the man, aghast.

“Oh, she has. Again. And I’ve only got a few clean ones left. Oh, Charles, do go for that water. It’s past feeding-time. Oh, Angela.”

“Right, dear. What shall I …?” He wheeled on me. “Look, can you hold Petey for a moment? I shan’t be an instant.”

“Why, er …”

“Good man.” Harassed, he very gently passed the tiny bundle to me. It was stirring manfully, and letting out a noise that my toilet-locked Arab would have envied. “Got him? Just like that: marvellous. I’m going, darling; this gentleman …”

“What? Oh, Angela, you little horror! Oh, really, I never knew babies could be so foul!”

“I’m leaving Petey with this … this officer,” cried the man. “With Mr, er …”

“MacNeill.”

“Mr MacNeill. How d’ye do? My name’s Garnett. This is my wife …”

“How do you do?” I said, clutching Petey tenderly. “Charles! Please!”

“Yes, dear.” He grabbed a feeding-bottle and fled. Two seconds later he was back. “Darling, where will I get the water?”

“Oh, darling, how do I know? The engine, or some-place. The train runs on boiling water, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and fled again.

I sat down opposite Mrs Garnett. Angela, disrobed, was lying across her knees squealing blue murder, while her mother, frantically sorting among the litter on the seat, cried endearments and shocking threats in turn. I turned Petey as though he were made of eggshells; I like babies, and the feel of his tiny, squirming body was somehow delightful. So was the tiny red face, all screwed up and raging as it was, eyes tight shut, minute toothless gums showing, and little legs kicking under his dress. My delight was temporary; I became aware that all was not well with Petey.

“Er,” I said. “Er, I think Petey has …”

She seemed to see me for the first time. Normally she would have been a pretty, dark-haired young woman; now, clutching a nappy in one hand, and trying to steady her young with the other, her hair disordered and her manner disturbed, she looked like a gypsy wench preparing to attack a gamekeeper.

“Of course he has,” she snarled. “They always do it together. I had to have twins! Oh, Angela, please lie still. Still, dearest! Mummy’s trying to get you all comfy, you little monster! There, darling, Mummy has some nice, cool cream for iddums.” She was trying to tuck the nappy under Angela’s midriff, and making rough work of it.

“But,” I said. “What … I mean …” Petey was getting noxious. He suddenly changed gear in his screaming, taking up a new, intense note.

“Oh, dear, Petey-Petey!” She was distraught for her other young now. “Just a minute, precious! Lie still, Angela, dearest, blast you! Well, don’t just sit holding him! Do something!” She spared a hand to hurl nappies across. “Change him, can’t you?”

Ask me that question today, and rusty as I am with lack of practice, you will see an efficient response. I know the drill: newspaper on the floor, up with the dress, child face down and lightly gripped with the left hand; rubber pants down to knee-level with two swift pulls either side, pins out and thrust into the upholstery convenient to hand, nappy drawn down cleanly as child is slightly raised with left hand to permit front of nappy to come away; pause and gulp, drop nappy on to paper and fold paper over it with foot, mop the patient, anoint with cream to accompaniment of some rhythmic chant, whip clean nappy on and, with encouraging cries, pin one side, up and under, pin the other, make sure child has not been transfixed in process, up with rubber pants, and congratulations. Thirty seconds if you’re lucky.

Today, yes, but this was many years ago, and all I knew of baby care was prodding them in the navel and saying “Grrrtsh”. Changing nappies was outside my experience, and the way little Petey was delivering I wanted it to stay outside. Yet the British soldier is meant to be capable of anything. Could Wellington have changed a nappy? Or Marlborough? Doubtful. Or Slim? Yes, I decided, Slim could have changed a nappy, and almost certainly had. So for the honour of XIVth Army I began painfully and messily to strip Master Petey’s abominable lower reaches, and in my innocence I sang him a lullaby at the same time—the old Gaelic one that goes “Hovan, hovan gorriago” and relates how the fairies stole away a baby from a careless mother. Mrs Garnett said that was all right with her, and 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 action was taken against me. I got on the train again shaking slightly with anger and, I admit it, apprehension, and ran slap into the padre, who was all upset about the A.T.S. still.

I needed him. Perhaps I was overwrought, but I told him rather brusquely to stop bringing me unnecessary complaints, to mind his own business, to go back to his compartment, and generally to get off my neck. He was indignant, and shocked, he said. I advised him again to go back to his compartment, and he said stiffly that he supposed he must take my orders, but he would certainly make a report …

“All right, padre,” I said. “Do that. But for the present just remember that to obey is better than sacrifice, and hearkening than the fat of rams. O.K.?”

He said something about the Devil and Scripture, and I went back to my compartment pretty depressed. It seemed suddenly that I had loused things up fairly substantially: two rockets were on the way, I had failed to control the troops efficiently at Gaza, I hadn’t covered myself with glory in accommodating the A.T.S., I couldn’t even change a nappy. What was I good for? I lay down and fell asleep.

Your real hero can sleep through an elephant stampede, but wakes at the sound of a cat’s footfall. I can sleep through both. But the shriek of ancient brakes as a train grinds violently to a halt wakes me. I came upright off the seat like a bleary panther, groping for my gun, knowing that something was wrong and trying to think straight in a second. We shouldn’t be stopping before Jerusalem; one glance through the window showed only a low, scrubby embankment in moon-shadow. As the wheels screamed to a halt I dived into the corridor, ears cocked for the first shot. We were still on the rails, but my mind was painting vivid pictures of a blocked line and an embankment stiff with sharpshooters.

I went through the door to the platform behind the tender; in the cabin I could see the driver, peering ahead over the side of his cab.

“What the hell is it?” I shouted.

He shouted back in Arabic, and pointed ahead.

Someone was running from the back of the train. As I dropped from the platform to the ground he passed through the shaft of light between two coaches and I recognised Black’s balmoral. He had his Luger out.

He slowed down beside me, and we went cautiously up past the engine, with the little wisps of steam curling up round us. The driver had his spotlight on, and the long shaft lit up the line, a tunnel of light between the embankment walls. But there was nothing to see; the embankment itself was dead still. I was turning to ask the driver what was up when he gave an excited little yelp behind us. Far down the track, on the edge of the spotlight beam, a red light winked and died. Then it winked again, and died.

A hoarse voice said: “Get two men with rifles to the top of the bank, either side. Keep everyone else on the train. Then come back here.”

It had almost finished speaking before I realised it was my own voice. Black faded away, and a moment or two later was back.

“They’re posted,” he said.

I wiped my sweaty hand on my shirt and took a fresh grip of the revolver which I ought to have remembered back in Cairo, so that some other mug could have been here, playing cops and robbers with Bert Stern or whoever it was. “Let’s go,” I said, just like Alan Ladd if he was a soprano. My hoarse voice had deserted me.

We walked up the line, our feet thumping on the sleepers, the spotlight behind us throwing our shadows far ahead, huge grotesques on the sand. The line “The dust of the desert is sodden red” came into my head, but I hadn’t had time even to think the uncomfortable thought about it when he just materialised in front of us on the track, so suddenly that I was within an ace of letting fly at him. I know I gasped aloud in surprise; Black dropped on one knee, his Luger up.

“Hold it!” It was my hoarse voice again, sounding loud and nasty. And with the fatal gift of cliché that one invariably displays in such moments, I added, “Don’t move or I’ll drill you!”

He was a young man, in blue dungarees, hatchet-faced, Jewish rather than Arab. His hands were up; they were empty.

“Pliz,” he said. “Friend. Pliz, friend.”

“Cover him,” I said to Black, which was dam’ silly, since he wasn’t liable to be doing anything else. Keeping out of line, I went closer to him. “Who are you?”

“Pliz,” he said again. He was one of these good-looking, black-curled Jews; his mouth hung open a bit. “Pliz, line brok’.” And he pointed ahead up the track.

I left Black with him, collected the driver and his mate, and went off up the track. Sure enough, after a little search we found a fish-plate unscrewed and an iron stake driven between the rail ends—enough to put us off the track for sure. I didn’t quite realise what that signified until the driver broke into a spate of Arabic, gesturing round him. I looked, and saw we were out of the cutting; now the ground fell away from the track on both sides, a rock-strewn slide that we would have crashed down.

While the driver and his mate banged out the stake and got to work on the fishplate, I went back to where Black had the young Jew in the lee of the engine. There was a small crowd round them, contrary to my orders, but one of them—an Arab Legion officer—was talking to him in Hebrew, and getting results.

“What’s he say?” I asked.

“Oh, God, he’s a dope,” said the officer. “He found the rail broken, I think, and heard the train coming. So he stopped us.”

“He found the rail broken? In the middle of the bloody night? What was he doing here?”

“He doesn’t seem to know.” He directed a stream of Hebrew at the youth and got one back, rather slower. The voice was thick, soft.

“Don’t believe a word of it,” a voice was beginning, but I said, “Shut up,” and asked the officer to translate.

“He was looking for a goat. He lives in a village somewhere round here.” It sounded vaguely biblical; what was the story again … the parable of the shepherd …

“What about the red light?” It was Sergeant Black.

Questioned, the youth pulled from his pocket a lighter and a piece of red cellophane.

“For God’s sake,” I said.

“He’s probably a bloody terrorist,” said someone.

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “Would he warn us if he was?”

“How dare you call me a fool?” I realised it was my old friend the pouchy half-colonel. “Who the—”

“Button your lip,” I said, and I thought he would burst. “Who authorised you to leave the train? Sergeant Black, I thought I gave orders?”

“You did, sir.” Just that.

“Then get these people back on the train—now.”

“Now, look here, you.” The half-colonel was mottling. “I’ll attend to you in due course, I promise you. Sergeant, I’m the senior officer: take this man”—he indicated the Jew—“and confine him in the guard’s van. It’s my opinion he’s a terrorist …”

“Oh, for heavens’ sake,” I said.

“… and we’ll find out when we get to Jerusalem. And you,” he said to me, “will answer for your infernal impudence.”

It would have been a great exit line, if Sergeant Black had done anything except just stand there. He just waited a moment, staring at the ground, and then looked at me.

“O.C. train, sir?” he said.

I didn’t catch on for a moment. Then I said, “Carry on, sergeant. Take him aboard. Get the others aboard, too—except those who want to stand around all night shooting off their mouths in a soldier-like manner.” What had I got to lose?

I went up the track, to where the driver was gabbling away and yanking fiercely on a huge spanner. He gave me a great grin and a torrent of Arabic, from which I gathered he was coming on fine.

I went back to the train: Sergeant Black was whistling in the sentries from the banks; everyone was aboard. Presently the driver and his mate appeared, chattering triumphantly, and as I climbed aboard the engine crunched into life and we lumbered up track. The whole incident had occupied about ten minutes.

In the guard’s van Black and the Arab Legion captain and my half-colonel were round the prisoner—that’s what he was, no question. The captain interrogated him some more, and the half-colonel announced there was no doubt about it, the damned Yid was a terrorist. To the captain’s observation that he was an odd terrorist, warning trains instead of wrecking them, he paid no heed.

“I hold you responsible, sergeant,” he told Black. “He must be handed over to the military police in Jerusalem for questioning, and, I imagine, subsequent trial and sentence. You will …”

“You won’t hold my sergeant responsible,” I said. “I’ll do that. I’m still in command of this train.”

For a moment I thought he was going to hit me, but unfortunately he didn’t. He just bottled his apoplexy and marched out, and the captain went with him, leaving me and Black and the Jew. The two deserters, I supposed, were farther up the train. We were rattling along at full clip now; Black reckoned we were maybe two hours out of Jerusalem. I gave him a cigarette, and nodded him over to the window.

“Well?” I said. “What d’you make of him?”

He took off his bonnet and shook his cropped head.

“He’s no terrorist, for certain,” I said. “Well, ask yourself, is he?”

“I wouldnae know. He looks the part.”

“Oh, come off it, sergeant. He warned us.”

“Aye.” He dragged on the cigarette. “What was he doin’ there, in the middle of the night?”

“Looking for a goat.”

“In dungarees stinkin’ o’ petrol. Aye, well. And makin’ signals wi’ a lighter an’ cellophane. Yon’s a right commando trick for a farmer. That yin’s been a sodger, you bet. Probably wi’ us, in Syria, in the war.”

“But he doesn’t speak English.”

“He lets on he disnae.” He smiled. “And if you’re lookin’ for goats, ye don’t go crawling aboot on yer belly keekin’ at fish-plates, do ye?”

“You think he knew, before, about the broken rail?”

“I’m damned sure of it, sir. Yon was a nice, professional job. He knew aboot it, but why he tellt us … search me.”

I looked over at the Jew. He was sitting with his head in his hands.

“He told us, anyway,” I said. “Whether he’s a terrorist or not, or knows terrorists, doesn’t much matter.”

“It’ll matter tae the military police in Jerusalem. Maybe they’ve got tabs on him.”

“But, dammit, if he is a Stern Gangster, why the hell would he stop the train?”

Black ground out his cigarette and looked me in the face. “Maybe he’s just soft-hearted. Maybe he doesnae want tae kill folk after all.”

“Who are you kidding? You believe that?”

“Look, sir, how the hell dae I know? Maybe he’s a bloody Boy Scout daein’ his good deed. Maybe he’s no’ a’ there.”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe.” It was difficult to see any rational explanation. “Anyway, all we have to do is see that he gets to Jerusalem. Then he’s off our backs.”

“That’s right.”

I hesitated about telling Black to keep a close eye on him, and decided it was superfluous. Then I went back up the train, full of care, noticing vaguely that the two deserters were in a group playing rummy, and that the blinds were down on the padre’s compartment. Captain and Mrs Garnett had their door open, and were talking animatedly; in the background one of the twins was whimpering quietly.

“But, darling,” he was saying. “German measles isn’t serious. In fact, it’s a good thing if they get it when they’re little.”

“Who says?”

“Oh, medical people. It’s serious if you get it when you’re older, if you’re a girl and you’re pregnant. I read that in Reader’s Digest.”

“Well, who’s to say it’s true? Anyway, I’m worried about Angie now, not … not twenty years hence. She may never get married, anyway, poor little beetle.”

“But it may not be German measles, anyway, darling. It may be nappy rash or something …”

Everybody had their troubles, including the formerly incarcerated Arab legionnaire, who was now trying to get into the lavatory, and wrestling with the door handle. The young pilot officer was lending a hand, and saying, “Tell you what, Abdul, let’s try saying ‘Open Sesame’ …”

All was well with the A.T.S., the Australians, and the airmen; the excitement caused by our halt had quieted down, and I closed my compartment door hoping nothing more would happen before we got to Jerusalem. How much trouble could the pouchy half-colonel make, I wondered. The hell with him, I had been within my rights. Was the young Jew a terrorist, and if he was, why had he stopped the train? And so on, and I must have been dozing, for I remember being just conscious of the fact that the rhythm of the wheels had changed, and we were slowing, apparently to take a slight incline, and I was turning over on the seat, when the shot sounded.

It was a light-calibre pistol, by the sharp, high crack. As I erupted into the corridor it came again, and then again, from the back of the train. An A.T.S. shrieked, and there were oaths and exclamations, and I burst into the guard’s van to find Sergeant Black at the window, his Luger in his hand, and the smell of burned cordite in the air. The train was picking up speed again at the top of the incline. The Jew was gone.

“What the hell …” I was beginning, and stopped. “Are you all right?”

He was standing oddly still, looking out at the desert going by. Then he holstered his gun, and turned towards me.

“Aye, I’m fine. I’m afraid he got away.”

“The Jew? What happened?”

“He jumped for it. When we slowed down to take the hill. Went out o’ that windae like a hot rivet, and doon the bank. I took a crack at him, two or three shots …”

“Did you hit him?”

“Not a chance.” He said it definitely. “It’s no use shootin’ in this light.”

There were people surging at my back, and I wheeled round on them.

“Get back to your carriages, all of you! There’s nothing to get alarmed about.”

“But the shooting …” “What the hell …”

“There’s nothing to it,” I said. “A prisoner jumped the train, and the sergeant took a pot at him. He got away. Now, go back to your compartments and forget it. We’ll be in Jerusalem shortly.”

Through the confusion came Old Inevitable himself, the pouchy half-colonel, demanding to know what had happened. I told him, while the others faded down the corridor, and he wheeled to the drawling major, who was at his elbow, and bawled:

“Stop the train!”

“Now, take it easy,” I said. “There’s no point in stopping; he’s over the hills and far away by now, and he’s a lot less important than the safety of this train. We’re not stopping until we get to Jerusalem.”

“I’ll decide that!” he snapped, and he had an ugly, triumphant look as he said it. “You’ve lost the prisoner, in spite of my instructions, and this train is being stopped …”

“Not while I command it.”

“You don’t! You’re a complete bloody flop! I’m taking over. John, pull that communication …”

It must have been pure chance, but when the major turned uncertainly to touch the communication cord, Sergeant Black was right in his way. There was one of those pregnant silences, and I jumped into it.

“Now look, sir,” I said to the half-colonel. “You’re forgetting a few things. One, I am O.C. train, and anyone who tries to alter that answers to a general court-martial. Two, I intend to report you to the G.O.C. for your wilful hampering of my conduct of this train, and your deliberate disobedience of orders from properly constituted authority.”

“Damn you!” he shouted, going purple.

“You left the train when we halted, in flat defiance of my instructions. Three, sir, I’ve had about my bellyful of you, sir, and if you do not, at once, return to your compartment, I’m going to put you under close arrest. Sir.”

He stood glaring and heaving. “Right,” he said, at last. He was probably wondering whether he should try, physically, to take over. He decided against it. “Right,” he said again, and he had his voice under control. “Major Dawlish, you have overheard what has been said here? Sergeant, you are a witness …”

“Aye, sir,” said Black. “I am that.”

“What do you mean?” snapped the half-colonel, catching Black’s tone. “Let me tell you, Sergeant, you’re in a pretty mess yourself. A prisoner in your …”

“Not a prisoner,” I said. “A man who had warned us about the railway line and was being carried on to Jerusalem, possibly for interrogation.

He looked from me to Black and back again. “I don’t know what all this is about,” he said, “but there’s something dam’ fishy here. You,” he said to me viciously, “are going to get broken for this, and you, Sergeant, are going to have a great deal of explaining to do.” He wheeled on his buddy. “Come along, John.” And they stumped off down the corridor.

When they had gone I lit a cigarette. I was shaking. I gave another one to Black, and he lit up, too, and I sat down on a box and rested my head on my hand.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t understand it either. But there is something dam’ fishy, isn’t there? How the hell did he get away?”

“I told ye, sir. He jumped.”

“Oh, yes, I know. But look, Sergeant, let’s not fool around. Between ourselves, I’m not Wild Bill Bloody Hickock, but he couldn’t have broken from me, so I’m damned sure he couldn’t break from you. People as experienced as you, I mean, you carry a Luger, you know?”

He said, poker-faced, “I must have dozed off.”

I just looked at him. “You’re a liar,” I said. “You never dozed off in your life—except when you wanted to.”

His head came up at that, and he sat with smoke trickling up from his tight mouth into his nostrils. But he didn’t say anything.

“What are we going to tell them in Jerusalem?” I said.

“Just what I told you, sir. He was a gey fast mover.”

“You could get busted,” I said. “Me, too. Oh, it’ll be well down my crime-sheet, after tonight. I’ve done everything already. But it could be sticky down at your end too.”

He smiled. “My number’s up in the next couple of months. I’ve got a clean sheet. I’m no’ worried about being busted.”

He seemed quite confident of that. He looked so damned composed, and satisfied somehow, that I wondered if perhaps the exigencies of the journey had unhinged me a little.

“Sergeant Black,” I said. “Look here. The man was a terrorist—you think so, anyway. Well, why on earth …”

“Yes, sir?”

“Never mind,” I said wearily. “The hell with it.”

I knew what he was going to come back to. Terrorist or not, he had saved the train, and everyone on it, me and the pouchy half-colonel and Angie and Petey and the A.T.S. and lavatory-locked legionnaires. Why, God alone knew. Maybe he hadn’t meant to, or something. But I knew Black and I were speculating the same way, and giving him the benefit of the doubt, and thinking of what would have happened if he had been a terrorist, and there had been tabs on him in Jerusalem.

“The hell with it,” I said again. “Sergeant, I’m out of fags. You got one?”

It was while I was lighting up and looking out at the desert with the ghostly shimmer that is the Mediterranean dawn beginning to touch its dark edges, that for no reason at all I remembered Granny’s story about the cattle-train at Tyndrum. I suppose it was the association of ideas: people jumping from trains. I told Sergeant Black about it, and we discussed grannies and railways and related subjects, while the train rattled on towards Jerusalem.

Just before we began to run into the suburbs, the white buildings perched on the dun hillsides, Sergeant Black changed the topic of conversation.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about yon half-colonel,” he said.

“I’m not worried,” I said. “You couldn’t call it worry. I’ve just got mental paralysis about him.”

“He might think twice about pushing charges against you,” said Black. “Mind you, he stepped over the mark himsel’. He wouldnae come well out of a court-martial. And ye were quite patient wi’ him, all things considered.” He grinned. “Your granny wouldnae have been as patient.”

“Huh. Wonder what my granny would have said if she had been wheeled before the brigadier?”

“Your granny would have been the brigadier,” he said. “We’re here, sir.”

Jerusalem station was an even bigger chaos than Cairo had been; there were redcaps everywhere, and armed Palestine Police, and tannoys blaring, and people milling about the platforms. Troop Train 42 disgorged its occupants: I didn’t see the half-colonel go, but I saw the Arab Legion forming up to be inspected, and Captain Garnett and his wife, laden with heaps of small clothes and handbags from which bottles and rolls of cotton wool protruded, carrying Angie and Petey in a double basket; and the A.T.S. giggling and walking arm-in-arm with the Aussies and the R.A.F. types, and the padre with loads of kit, bargaining with a cross-eyed thug wearing a porter’s badge. Sergeant Black strode through the train, seeing everyone was off; then he snapped me a salute and said:

“Permission to fall out, sir?”

“Carry on, Sergeant,” I said.

He stamped his feet and hoisted his kit-bag on to his shoulder. I watched him disappear into the crowd, the red hackle on his bonnet bobbing above the sea of heads.

I went to the R.T.O.’s office, and sank into a chair.

“Thank God that’s over,” I said. “Where do I go from here? And I hope it’s bed.”

The R.T.O. was a grizzled citizen with troubles. “You MacNeill?” he said. “Troop Train 42?”

“That’s me,” I said, and thought, here it comes. Pouchy had probably done his stuff already, and I would be requested to report to the nearest transit camp and wait under open arrest until they were ready to nail me for—let’s see—insubordination, permitting a prisoner to escape, countenancing illegal trafficking in currency, threatening a superior, conduct unbecoming an officer in that I had upbraided a clergyman, and no doubt a few other assorted offences that I had overlooked. One way and another I seemed to have worked my way through a good deal of the prohibitions of the Army Act: about the only one I could think of that I hadn’t committed was “unnatural conduct of a cruel kind, in that he threw a cat against a wall”. Not that that was much consolation.

“MacNeill,” muttered the R.T.O., heaving his papers about. “Yerss, here it is. Got your train documents?” I gave them to him. “Right,” he said. “Get hold of this lot.” And he shoved another pile at me. “Troop Train 51, leaves oh-eight-thirty for Cairo. You’ll just have time to get some breakfast.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“Don’t you believe it, boy,” he said. “Corporal Clark! Put these on the wire, will you? And see if there’s any word on 44, from Damascus. Dear God,” he rubbed his face. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

“You can’t put me on another train,” I said. “I mean, they’ll be wanting me for court-martial or something.” And I gave him a very brief breakdown.

“For God’s sake,” he said. “You were cheeky to a half-colonel! Well, you insubordinate thing, you. It’ll have to keep, that’s all. You weren’t the only one who was getting uppish last night, you know. Some people gunned up a convoy near Nazareth, and apart from killing half a dozen of us they did for a United Nations bigwig as well. So there’s activity today, d’you see? Among other things, there aren’t enough perishing subalterns to put in charge of troop trains. Now, get the hell out of here, and get on that train!”

I got, and made my way to the buffet, slightly elated at the idea of making good my escape on the 8.30. Not that it would do any good in the long run; the Army always catches up, and the half-colonel was the vindictive sort who would have me hung up if it took him six months. In the meantime I wasn’t going to see much of the famous old city of Jerusalem; eating my scrambled eggs I wondered idly if some Roman centurion had once arrived here after a long trek by camel train, only to be told that he was taking the next caravan out because everyone was all steamed up and busy over the arrest of a preaching carpenter who had been causing trouble. It seemed very likely. If you ever get on the fringe of great events, which have a place in history, you can be sure history will soon lose it as far as you are concerned.

I got the 8.30, and there was hardly a civilian on it; just troops who behaved themselves admirably except at Gaza, where there was the usual race in the direction of Ahmed’s back street banking and trust corporation; I just pretended it wasn’t happening; you can’t fight international liquidity. And then it was Cairo again, just sixteen hours since I had left it, and I dropped my papers with the R.T.O., touched my revolver butt for the hundred and seventeenth time to make sure I still had it, and went back to the transit camp, tired and dirty. I went to sleep wondering where the escaping Jew had got to by this time, and why Sergeant Black had let him go. It occurred to me that the Jew might have had a pretty rough time in Jerusalem, what with everyone’s nerves even more on edge with the Nazareth business. Anyway, I wasn’t sorry he had got away; all’s well that ends well; I slept like a log.

All hadn’t ended well, of course; two mornings later a court of inquiry was convened in an empty barrack-room at the transit camp, to examine the backsliding and evil behaviour of Lieutenant MacNeill, D., and report thereon. It consisted of a ravaged-looking wing-commander as president, an artillery major, a clerk, about a dozen witnesses, and me, walking between with the gyves (metaphorically) upon my wrists. The redcap at the door tried to keep me out because I didn’t have some pass or other, but on finding that I was the star attraction he ushered me to a lonely chair out front, and everyone glared at me.

They strip a man’s soul bare, those courts of inquiry. With deft, merciless questioning they had found out in the first half hour not only who I was, but my rank and number; an officer from the transit camp deponed that I had been resident there for several days; yet another certified that I had been due out on such-and-such a flight; an airport official confirmed that this was true, and then they played their mastercard. The pilot of the aircraft (this is sober truth) produced an affidavit from his co-pilot (who was unable to attend because of prickly heat) that I had not, to anyone’s knowledge, boarded the plane, and that my seat had been given to Captain Abraham Phillipowski of the Polish Engineers, attached to No. 117 Field Battery, Ismailia.

They were briefly sidetracked because the president plainly didn’t believe there was such a person as Captain Abraham Phillipowski, but once this had been established to their satisfaction the mills of military justice ground on, and another officer from the transit camp described graphically my return after missing the plane, and my despatch to Jerusalem.

The president wanted to know why I had been sent to Jerusalem; witness replied that they had wanted to keep me employed pending a court of inquiry into why I had missed my plane; the president said, pending this court, you mean; witness said yes, and the president said it seemed bloody silly to him sending a man to Jerusalem in between. Witness said huffily it was no concern of his, the president said not to panic, old boy, he had only been making a comment, and witness said all very well, but he didn’t want it appearing in the record that he had been responsible for sending people to Jerusalem when he hadn’t.

The president suggested to the clerk that any such exchange be deleted from the record (which was assuming the proportions of the Greater London telephone directory, the way the clerk was performing with his shorthand), and I unfortunately coughed at that moment, which was taken as a protest. A judicial huddle ensued, and the president emerged, casting doubtful glances at me, to ask if I had anything to say.

“I forgot my gun,” I said.

He seemed disappointed. “He forgot his gun,” he repeated to the clerk.

“I heard,” said the clerk.

“All right, all right!” cried the president. “Keep your hair on.” He looked at me. “Anything else?”

“Should there be?” I asked. It seemed to me that they hadn’t really started yet, but I wasn’t volunteering information about events on the train, which seemed to me to dwarf such trivia as my missing my plane in the first place.

“Dunno,” said the president. He turned to the clerk. “How do we stand, old boy?”

“He forgot his gun, he missed the plane,” said the clerk bitterly. “That’s what we’re here to establish. What more do you want?”

“Search me,” said the president. “You did miss the plane, didn’t you?” he asked me.

“That’s irregular,” bawled the clerk. “At least, I think it is. You’re asking him to convict himself.”

“Rot,” said the president. “He hasn’t been charged, has he? Anyway, old boy, you’re mixing it up with wives not being able to testify against their husbands.”

“I need a drink,” said the clerk.

“Good show,” said the president. “Let’s adjourn, and then you can type all this muck out and we’ll all sign it. Any objections, objection overruled. Smashing.”

The proceedings of that court occupied about forty-five minutes, and heaven knows how many sheets of foolscap, but it did establish what it had set out to do—that I had negligently failed to take a seat on an aircraft. It was all carefully forwarded to my unit, marked attention Commanding Officer, and he blew his stack, mildly, and gave me three days’ orderly officer for irresponsible idiocy—not so much for missing the aircraft as for causing him to waste time reading the report. But of Black, and the escaping Jew, and threats, and insubordination, and currency offences there was never a word.

And, as my grandmother would have said, that is what happened on the Cairo—Jerusalem railway.