jerks his stick hand again and goes on, followed by the two officers, at a trot toward the door from which he had emerged.
The sergeant-major faces the battalion again. “Para-a-ade!” he shouts. An indistinguishable movement passes from rank to rank, an indistinguishable precursor of that damp and sullen clash which dies borning. The sergeant-major’s stick has come down from his armpit; he now leans on it, as officers do. For a time his eye roves along the battalion front.
“Sergeant Cunninghame!” he says at last.
“Sir!”
“Did you take that man’s name?”
There is silence for a moment a little more than a short moment, a little less than a long one. Then the sergeant says: “What man, sir?”
“You, soldier!” the sergeant-major says.
The battalion stands rigid. The rain lances quietly into the mud between it and the sergeant-major as though it were too spent to either hurry or cease.
“You soldier that don’t shave!” the sergeant-major says.
“Gray, sir!” the sergeant says.
“Gray. Double out ’ere.”
The man Gray appears without haste and tramps stolidly before the battalion, his kilts dark and damp and heavy as a wet horse-blanket. He halts, facing the sergeant-major.
“Why didn’t you shave this morning?” the sergeant-major says.
“A am nae auld enough tae shave,” Gray says.
“Sir!” the sergeant-major says.
Gray stares rigidly beyond the sergeant-major’s shoulder.
“Say sir when addressing a first-class warrant officer!” the sergeant-major says. Gray stares doggedly past his shoulder, his face beneath his vizorless bonnet as oblivious of the cold lances of rain as though it were granite. The sergeant-major raises his voice: “Sergeant Cunninghame!”
“Sir!”
“Take this man’s name for insubordination also.”
“Very good, sir! ”
The sergeant-major looks at Gray again. “And I’ll see that you get the penal battalion, my man. Fall in!”
Gray turns without haste and returns to his place in ranks, the sergeant-major watching him. The sergeant-major raises his voice again: “Sergeant Cunninghame!”
“Sir!”
“You did not take that man’s name when ordered. Let that happen again and you’ll be for it yourself.”
“Very good, sir!”
“Carry on!” the sergeant-major says.
“But why did ye no shave?” the corporal asked him. They were back in billets: a stone barn with leprous walls, where no light entered, squatting in the ammoniac air on wet straw about a reeking brazier. “Ye kenned we were for inspection thae mor-rn.”
“A am nae auld enough tae shave,” Gray said.
“But ye kenned thae colonel would mar-rk ye on parade.”
“A am nae auld enough tae shave,” Gray repeated doggedly and without heat.
III
“FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS,” Matthew Gray said, “there’s never a day, except Sunday, has passed but there is a hull rising on Clyde or a hull going out of Clydemouth with a Gray-driven nail in it.” He looked at young Alec across his steel spectacles, his neck bowed. “And not excepting their godless Sabbath hammering and sawing either. Because if a hull could be built in a day, Grays could build it,” he added with dour pride. “And now, when you are big enough to go down to the yards with your grandadder and me and take a man’s place among men, to be trusted manlike with hammer and saw yersel.”
“Whisht, Matthew,” old Alec said. “The lad can saw as straight a line and drive as mony a nail a day as yersel or even me.”
Matthew paid his father no attention. He continued to speak his slow, considered words, watching his oldest son across the spectacles. “And with John Wesley not old enough by two years, and wee Matthew by ten, and your grandfather an auld man will soon be ”
“Whisht,” old Alec said. “I’m no but sixty-eight. Will you be telling the lad he’ll make his bit journey to London and come back to find me in the parish house, mayhap? ‘Twill be over by Christmastide.”
“Christmastide or no,” Matthew said, “a Gray, a shipwright, has no business at an English war.”
“Whisht ye,” old Alec said. He rose and went to the chimney cupboard and returned, carrying a box. It was of wood, dark and polished with age, the corners bound with iron, and fitted with an enormous iron lock which any child with a hairpin could have solved. From his pocket he took an iron key almost as big as the lock. He opened the box and lifted carefully out a small velvet-covered jeweler’s box and opened it in turn. On the satin lining lay a medal, a bit of bronze on a crimson ribbon: a Victoria Cross. “I kept the hulls going out of Clydemouth while your uncle Simon was getting this bit of brass from the Queen,” old Alec said. “I heard naught of complaint. And if need be, I’ll keep them going out while Alec serves the Queen a bit himsel. Let the lad go,” he said.
He put the medal back into the wooden box and locked it.
“A bit fighting winna hurt the lad. If I were his age, or yours either, for that matter, I’d gang mysel. Alec, lad, hark ye. Ye’ll see if they’ll no take a hale lad of sixty-eight and I’ll gang wi ye and leave the auld folk like Matthew to do the best they can. Nay, Matthew; dinna ye thwart the lad; have no the Grays ever served the Queen in her need?”
So young Alec went to enlist, descending the hill on a weekday in his Sunday clothes, with a New Testament and a loaf of homebaked bread tied in a handkerchief. And this was the last day’s work which old Alec ever did, for soon after that, one morning Matthew descended the hill to the shipyard alone, leaving old Alec at home. And after that, on the sunny days (and sometimes on the bad days too, until his daughter-in-law found him and drove him back into the house) he would sit shawled in a chair on the porch, gazing south and eastward, calling now and then to his son’s wife within the house: “Hark now. Do you hear them? The guns.”
“I hear nothing,” the daughter-in-law would say. “It’s only the sea at Kinkeadbight. Come into the house, now. Matthew will be displeased.”
“Whisht, woman. Do you think there is a Gray in the world could let off a gun and me not know the sound of it?”
They had a letter from him shortly after he enlisted, from England, in which he said that being a soldier, England, was different from being a shipwright, Clydeside, and that he would write again later. Which he did, each month or so, writing that soldiering was different from building ships and that it was still raining. Then they did not hear from him for seven months. But his mother and father continued to write him a joint letter on the first Monday of each month, letters almost identical with the previous one, the previous dozen: We are well. Ships are going out of Clyde faster than they can sink them. You still have the Book?
This would be in his father’s slow, indomitable hand. Then, in his mother’s: Are you well? Do you need anything? Jessie and I are knitting the stockings and will send them. Alec, Alec.
He received this one during the seven months, during his term in the penal battalion, forwarded to him by his old corporal, since he had not told his people of his changed life.
He answered it, huddled among his fellow felons, squatting in the mud with newspapers buttoned inside his tunic and his head and feet wrapped in strips of torn blanket: I am well. Yes I still have the Book (not telling them that his platoon was using it to light tobacco with and that they were now well beyond Lamentations). It still rains. Love to Grandadder and Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley.
Then his time in the penal battalion was up. He returned to his old company, his old platoon, finding some
