Free The Complete McAuslan by George MacDonald Fraser Page A

sixpence.
    ‘You did well to get him inside,’ I told McGarry.
    ‘Ach, he’s no’ bad tae manage when he’s puggled,’ said the provost. ‘A big, coorse loon, but the booze slows him doon.’
    I had some idea of what McGarry called ‘no’ bad tae manage’. I recalled Hogmanay, when Wee Wullie had returned from some slight jollification in the Arab quarter having whetted his appetite for battle on the local hostelries, and erupted through the main gate intent on slaughter. It had been at that moment of the day which, for a soldier, is memorable above all others; the hour when the Last Post is sounded, and everything else is still while the notes float sadly away into the velvet dark; the guard stand stiffly to attention by the main gate with the orderly officer behind, and the guardroom lanterns light up the odd little ceremony that has hardly changed in essentials since the Crimea. It is the end of the Army’s day, peaceful and rather beautiful.
    Into this idyll had surged Wee Wullie, staggering drunk and bawling for McGarry to come out and fight. For a moment his voice had almost drowned the bugle, and then (because he was Wee Wullie with 30 years’ service behind him) he had slowly come to attention and waited, swaying like an oak in a storm, until the call was ended. As the last note died away he hurled aside his bonnet, reeled to the foot of the guardroom steps, and roared:
    ‘Coom oot, McGarry! Ah’m claimin’ ye! Ye’ve had it, ye big Hielan’ stirk! Ye neep! Ye teuchter, ye!’
    McGarry came slowly out of the guardroom, nipping his cigarette, and calmly regarded the Neanderthal figure waiting for him. It looked only a matter of time before Wee Wullie started drumming on his chest and pulling down twigs to eat, but McGarry simply said,
    ‘Aye, Wullie, ye’re here again. Ye comin’ quiet, boy?’
    Wullie’s reply was an inarticulate bellow and a furious fistswinging charge, and five minutes later McGarry was kneeling over his prostrate form, patting his battered face, and summoning the guard to carry the body inside. They heaved the stricken giant up, and he came to himself just as they were manhandling him into the cooler. His bloodshot eyes rolled horribly and settled on McGarry, and he let out a great cry of baffled rage.
    ‘Let me at ’im! Ah want at ‘im!’ He struggled furiously, and the four men of the guard clung to his limbs and wrestled him into the cell.
    ‘Wheesht, Wullie,’ said McGarry, locking the door. ‘Just you lie doon like a good lad. Ye’ll never learn; ye cannie fight McGarry when ye’re fu’. Now just wheesht, or I’ll come in tae ye.’
    ‘You!’ yelled Wullie through the bars. ‘Oh, see you! Your mither’s a Tory!’
    McGarry laughed and left him to batter at the door until he was tired. It had become almost a ritual with the two of them, which would be concluded when Wullie had sobered up and told McGarry he was sorry. It was Wullie’s enduring problem that he liked McGarry, and would fight with him only when inflamed by drink; yet drunk, he could not hope to beat him as he would have done sober.
    I thought of these things as I looked into the cell at Wee Wullie asleep. On that wild Hogmanay I should, of course, have used my authority to reprimand and restrain him, and so prevented the unseemly brawl with the provost sergeant, but you don’t reprimand a rogue elephant or a snapped wire hawser, either of which would be as open to sweet reason as Wee Wullie with a bucket in him. The fact that he would have been overwhelmed by remorse afterwards for plastering me all over the guardroom wall would not really have been much consolation to either of us. So I had remained tactfully in the background while Sergeant McGarry had fulfilled his regimental duty of preserving order and repressing turbulence.
    And now it had happened again, for the umpteenth time, but this time it was bad. From what McGarry had told me, Wee Wullie had laid violent hands on a military