The Complete McAuslan by George MacDonald Fraser Page A

unfortunate party?’
    ‘Tell me,’ I said carefully. ‘Have you put a bet on?’
    ‘Have I, boyo? The lot, you bet. The sub-cheese. The bundle.’
    I looked at my watch. It was two minutes to kick-off.
    ‘Phone the bookie,’ I said. ‘Get it off. No matter what, cancel that bet.’
    He didn’t seem to be receiving me. ‘The whole lot,’ he said. ‘Boyo, I cleaned out the safe. I shot the works. I’m tellin’ . . .’
    ‘Shut up, you Welsh oaf,’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you understand? We’re playing the Fleet, the Navy, all the great horrible battleships and aircraft carriers, millions of talented sailors. They will eat us alive. Your bet, if you let it ride, will go down the nick. Get it off.’
    In all the world there is no sight so poignant as that of the confident mug when he feels the first sharp bite of the hook and realises it is going to sink inexorably home. His face went from sweating red to dry grey, and he seemed to crumple.
    ‘You’re drunk, boyo,’ he croaked.
    ‘I’m drunk? Look who’s talking. Look, Taffy, you’ll have to cancel . . .’ And just then what he had said came home to me. ‘You say you cleaned out the safe? The ship’s safe? But you’ve got two weeks of my Jocks’ pay in there . . . Oh, brother.’ I just stared at him. This was death, court-martial, ruin, and disaster. He was cooked. Unless the bet was scrubbed.
    ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘I cannot do it.’ Odd, I thought, he says cannot, not can’t. ‘I didn’t place it myself, see? The clerk did. Peterson. I gave him half a dozen addresses. I dunno where he is, now.’
    The crowd was moving in, the last of it. There was nothing to be done. The band had stopped. I left him standing there, like a busted flush, and climbed the stairs to the stand. Poor Samuels, I thought. Idiot, mad Samuels. Of all the . . .
    The roar hit me in the face as I came out into the stand. I sat at the back of the main box; down front the Governor was starting work on his first handkerchief of the game, and beside him was a massive, grizzled hero in blue, with gold lace up to his armpits. That would be the Admiral. Their henchmen were about them, full of well-bred enthusiasm; the stadium was jammed, and every second man seemed to be a sailor. Our support was confined to a handful of khaki down below the box: our own reserves and a few associates.
    ‘Flee-eet!’ rolled across the brown, iron-hard pitch, and I saw the concentration of yellow shirts down near one goal: the Navy were attacking, powerful dark-blue figures with red stockings. They smacked the ball about with that tough assurance that is the mark of the professional; I saw the corporal slide in to tackle, and red stockings deftly side-stepped and swept the ball past him. The roar mounted, there was a surge in our goal-mouth, and then the ball was trickling past into the crowd. I felt slightly sick.
    ‘Get tore intae these people!’ came from in front of the box, to be drowned in the Navy roar. Yes, I thought, get tore in. It’s your pay and Samuels’ reputation you’re playing for. Then I thought, no, the heck with that, it’s just for yourselves, that’s all.
    And they played. The hard ground and the light ball were on our side, for we were ball-players first and last; on grass the Navy would have been just too strong. They didn’t rush things; they passed with deliberation and looked for their men, unlike our team, who were used to fast, short passing controlled by some sort of telepathy. If we played at their pace we were done for, so we didn’t. The doll-like yellow figures moved and ran as though they were at practice, easy and confident.
    We scored in the sixth minute, a zig-zag of passes down the middle that left Campbell, the centre, clear of the defence, and he lofted the ball over the Navy goal-keeper’s head as he came out. There was a shocked roar from the crowd, a neigh of triumph from the Governor, a perceptible empurpling of the Admiral’s neck, and