Lennox

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Glasgow may have been the Empire’s Second City, but much-smaller Edinburgh was Scotland’s capital. Edinburgh’s inhabitants called it ‘the Athens of the North’, presumably because none of them had actually seen Athens. If Glasgow could be described as a black city, then Edinburgh was grey. Grey buildings and grey people. It was also the most Anglicized city in Scotland, which is perhaps why its residents were the most Anglophobe you could encounter: what you hate the most is that which you most want to be but are not.

When the train pulled into Waverley station I was greeted with a banner declaring Ceud Mille Failte, which I had been told was Gaelic for ‘A Hundred Thousand Welcomes’. Having got to know the personality of Edinburgh a little, I would have better believed it meant ‘Fuck off, you English Bastard’.

But Edinburgh’s ire was aimed at more than the English. The rivalry between Scotland’s two main cities was vast and vicious. Much was made of the cultural differences between Glasgow and Edinburgh. In Glasgow they called children weans and in Edinburgh they were bairns; in Edinburgh they took their fish and chips with salt ’n’ sauce, in Glasgow with salt ’n’ vinegar; Glaswegians inexplicably ended their sentences with the conjunction ‘but’, in Edinburgh with the interrogative ‘eh?’.

Sometimes I found myself dizzy from Scotland’s cultural kaleidoscope.

I took a taxi from the rank up to Edinburgh Castle and was dropped at the Esplanade. The officious little corporal on guard was reluctant to let me into the barracks until I informed him that I was Captain Lennox and I was here to meet Captain Jeffrey. He indicated the main office and when I got there Rufus ‘Mafeking’ Jeffrey was waiting, hatless and dressed in civvies. ‘Mafeking’ was the nickname I had given him years before and which he resented, although he had no idea why I called him it. Jeffrey was a tall, lanky sort with blond hair frizzily receding. I could tell that he wasn’t particularly pleased to see me and, to be honest, I was never particularly happy to be back in a military environment, even the Chocolate Soldier setting of Edinburgh Castle.

‘I thought we’d grab a pint down in the Royal Mile, if that’s all right with you, old boy.’ Jeffrey’s smile was as genuine as his mock upper-class English accent, which had come courtesy of an Edinburgh private boarding school.

A Military Police sergeant marched his red cap past us and into the office. He brought back some unpleasant memories. ‘Sure,’ I said and we headed back down the Esplanade.

*

We sat in a corner of the pub. The bleak March sunlight from the window behind him sliced through blue smoke and made a halo of ‘Mafeking’ Jeffrey’s frizzy blond hair. We made small talk about the time that had intervened since our last meeting. The smallest of small talk: the truth was neither gave a crap about what had happened in the other’s life. I didn’t like Jeffrey and he didn’t like me, but I had something on him and I had, at one time, pulled his fat out of the fire. He had good reason to be grateful to me. Gratitude is by far the best foundation on which to build a true hatred.

‘Do you have the photograph you mentioned?’ he asked pleasantly enough. I slid it across the pub table to him. ‘Gideon…’ he read the back of it. ‘I know what this is. And I looked into this Sergeant McGahern for you. He may have started his service as a Desert Rat, but he didn’t end it as one. It would appear that Sergeant McGahern was a man of… how can I put it?… particular talents.’

‘A natural killer.’

‘And then some. But he was apparently quite the tactician and was also a natural leader of men. As you know yourself, Lennox, our last little European conflict required some innovation. You’ve heard of the