9

MacQueen jumped out of his dreams. They fell from his memory like broken shards of glass. Someone was banging on the cabin door. “Open up,” said a voice through the door. “I got some splits for ya.”

“What the hell is that?” asked Sergeant Cyples from the other bunk. The cabin was cold. He was sleeping on his stomach and raised a tousled head. “Get the door, Signalman. That’s an order.”

The signalman had a hard on and was embarrassed. Nonetheless, he jumped out of the cot and winced as his bare feet hit the linoleum floor. He opened the door. A man in an ear-lugged cap was standing there, holding a pile of kindling. “Have you got paper?” he asked.

“Where do I have a shit?” shouted the sergeant.

“It’s in the diner,” the man replied, shoving the wood at MacQueen. “I wish you guys wouldn’t piss in the snowbanks. It gives the place a bad name.”

MacQueen, shivering, tried to close the door.

“Then where in the hell are we supposed to piss?” roared the sergeant.

“Use the sink like everybody else!” The man shook his head at the stupidity of soldiers and tramped back to the diner.

MacQueen’s teeth started to chatter. He wrapped a blanket over his shoulder and stuffed some of the newspaper into the stove. This he lit, then started to feed in the kindling. He threw in a log and jumped back in bed.

The sergeant reached under the bed and produced two bottles of beer. He opened them. “Come and get it,” he said.

MacQueen darted across the floor and back to the bunk. It was something called Moosehead Ale.

“That was my first civilized evening for years,” commented Sergeant Cyples. “I might even develop a taste for it.” He tilted the bottle and allowed a generous stream of beer to gurgle down his throat. He burped and lit a cigarette.

MacQueen’s mouth tasted like a doormat. He followed the Sergeant’s example.

“Is it true that you were a waiter in the sergeants’ mess?” asked Sergeant Cyples.

MacQueen gave a short laugh. “That was the worst ever,” he answered. “Getting up and serving all of those guys three times a day. Washing those stacks of dishes out of a tin tub on the stove. A disgusting cook and a no-good tramp as help. Twelve hours of abuse for a buck and ten? Christ!”

The sergeant laughed and gurgled more beer. “How did you get out of that one?” he asked. “It was before my time.”

“The colonel was inspecting the barracks,” replied MacQueen. “He saw me and I was wearing riding breeches in the kitchen. He spoke to me and found out that I had been a classmate of his son. He took me to the headquarters building as his runner.”

The sergeant nodded his head in resigned confirmation. “That’s how it works,” he said. “That’s the trick. I could turn a thousand awkward squads into soldiers and not one colonel would give me the time of day.”

“A second lieutenant gave you his car!” MacQueen said, and thought it best not to laugh.

“You are deliberately missing the point, old pal,” said the sergeant. He swung his long legs and bony feet out of the bunk. The cabin was warming but the floor was still cold. He pulled on a pair of heavy grey socks and padded to the sink. “Orders are orders,” he said and turned on the tap. “I’ve got a kit-bag with some shaving stuff in the car,” he said over his shoulder. “But we’ll get it later—it’s only nine o’clock.”

“What did you do in Nicaragua?” asked MacQueen.

The sergeant adjusted his long underwear and rinsed the sink. “It was El Salvador,” answered the sergeant. “Did I say Nicaragua? Sorry, it was El Salvador. Or its main town, really. They call it San Salvador. It isn’t much.”

“You said you were beached there,” pressed MacQueen. “It sounds more exciting than waiting on the sergeants at Aldershot. What the hell did you do there?”

“What was I doing?” The sergeant gave a nervous bark of a laugh. “What am I always doing? Training poor bastards to kill one another, that’s what I was doing.”

“In Spanish?” MacQueen had harboured ambitions to run off and fight in the Spanish Civil War, which was one of the reasons he had been allowed by his family to join the militia at fourteen.

“Killing is a language all its own,” said the sergeant. He pulled his boots from under the bed and picked up his battle dress trousers, which were neatly folded over the end of his bed to preserve the knifelike crease. “I have to go to the can. I’ll bring back some coffee and something to eat.”

While MacQueen waited for the sergeant’s return, he further considered the maintained crease in his own trousers. It was not as sharp as the sergeant’s. Soldiers are strictly accountable for their personal appearance and have no one but themselves to rely on. They carefully attend to their equipment and themselves—a matter of extreme self-interest, which then becomes a matter of pride and, with some, close to a fetish. MacQueen thought over how it’s said that Napoleon conquered all of Europe with a piece of red ribbon—his famous Legion of Honour decoration.

Thus, soldiers, whatever one’s opinion of them, are neat. Any unit that is not neat has poor discipline and low morale. Of course, the actual scene of combat is rarely neat; but they do their best. It is an actual tool of survival. Thirty men in one hut have to be neat, to say nothing of five men in one tank. Civilians often mistake this for vanity. MacQueen vowed to learn something from the sergeant and better the crease in his pants.

MacQueen opened the door and the sergeant blustered in with mugs of coffee, toast, and marmalade. He even had some tinned orange juice. “Put the mugs on the stove,” he said. “Don’t burn your hands.”

They ate in private, as friends like to do, rather than sitting at a counter in the diner. They had beer, cigarettes, and a car. They had a free day ahead of them, and they enjoyed one another’s company. For the moment, it was quite enough. The long-range planners in the capitals of the world suffered great stress, and our innocent duo had thrown the editorial pages into the fire without even glancing at them. They had other concerns and were anxious to know one another. They were unalike, but each thought that they might make a good team. They really had no control over their destinies whatsoever, but really, who has?

“Your colonel’s favour did you no favour with the sergeants,” commented the sergeant. “Shit, they seemed to take it as an insult that you would prefer a colonel’s company to theirs! It makes me laugh, and they don’t like that either.”

“You make me sound like a celebrity,” said MacQueen.

“Hardly,” drawled the sergeant. “But it’s a small world at camp—and small worlds can be vicious. Look at El Salvador on the map!”

They decided to drive to Windsor for lunch.

“You seem to have a lot of cash,” commented MacQueen. “It’s thirty miles or so.”

“My life’s savings!” laughed Sergeant Cyples. He got the kit bag out of the car. This produced shaving gear and boot brushes, two essentials of a soldier’s gear. The sergeant produced a thumbtack from his bag and pinned a small metal mirror to the wall.

So, that is where my thumbtacks go, thought MacQueen.

“What kind of an army has Bermuda got?” asked the sergeant. He poured some water into a mug and put it on the stove.

“When I was there I think it was the Sherwood Foresters,” replied MacQueen. “Of course, there was the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. Even a couple of flying boats of the Royal Air Force and the BVRC.”

The sergeant took the mug cautiously with a towel and put it in the sink. He then squeezed some shaving cream onto a brush and lathered his face. “How do you know all of that?” he asked.

MacQueen did not quite comprehend the question. Why shouldn’t he know all of that? “My brother and I were shown around the flagship by a marine when our parents were visiting the admiral,” he answered. “The squadron leader of the air force used to buzz our house. I saw the Foresters marching at a tattoo. I’m not a spy!”

The sergeant looked at MacQueen and shook his head in wonderment. “I suppose you played cricket?” he asked.

“A bit,” answered MacQueen. “At an English school there. Is that important?”

The sergeant sighed and looked back in the mirror. He raised his chin and started to stroke his neck with the razor. He rinsed the soap in the mug. “Christ, MacQueen,” he said. “You just don’t understand, do you? You’re a clueless fucking idiot. Do you know what I was doing when you were visiting admirals, going to tattoos, and playing cricket? I don’t think you will ever understand. You are Alice in Wonderland, MacQueen, and you are soon going to get bounced right out on your arse.”

“I’ve been in some pretty tough scrapes, too,” said MacQueen defensively. “Did you ever try to get from New York to Ottawa on ten cents?”

The sergeant laughed warmly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That little exposé of yours is part of the problem. Can you ever imagine me saying that I was visiting an admiral or playing cricket at a boy’s school? To you it means nothing. To me it is the hidden lever. I could never act that part—neither could you if it wasn’t true.” He put a fresh mug of water on the stove for MacQueen then brushed his long teeth vigorously. He splashed on some aftershave, then some talcum, and sternly inspected the results in the mirror. “Christ, I have a five o’clock shadow right after shaving,” he commented sourly. “How did you get from Alberta to Bermuda?”

“We drove,” said MacQueen. He went to the bowl in turn and put the hot mug into it. The sergeant’s shaving gear was neatly aligned and cleaned for him to use. Even a fresh blade.

“Drove?” The sergeant reached for a beer under the bed. “During the Depression?”

“In my father’s big Studebaker,” said MacQueen. He lathered his face. “I was nine…”

“…and I was riding the rods to join the fucking navy!” exclaimed the sergeant.

This was the first time that anyone had shown any curiosity about MacQueen’s brief and erratic career. He never mentioned these things, because he knew that no one would be interested, or they would be resentful. This had left him with very little to say in conversations, as he wasn’t interested in sports, and his contemporaries were interested in little else. He had read a lot of history, because it interested him more than big league baseball.

“Have you been to England?” MacQueen asked. It seemed a good enough question to get the conversation started again. He pulled at his cheek and stroked down the side of his face. His beard was not a major problem yet.

“Been there? I was born there!” The sergeant had made up his bed automatically then sat on it and tilted the beer bottle. “My mother said that I was born within the sound of Bow Bells, or something like that. I guess it means that I’m a cockney. Gorblimey.”

MacQueen stopped shaving and looked at his friend. “What difference does all this make?” he asked. “Who gives a shit?”

“Finish shaving, MacQueen,” said the sergeant. “Let’s get out of here. We need some fresh air.”