Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

  A silence.

  Beyond the frail branches of the silver birch trees, the bird still sang. The ancient soldier had risen to his feet and was putting on his cap. I could see the little girl now, for she had risen too. Her forehead was smooth. Her eyes were clear and wide open and the frown was gone from over them. For a moment they looked at each other.

  “Your belt,” she said.

  The old man said: “Keep it.”

  He stuck out his little finger and she clutched it, and then they walked away.

  EPILOGUE

  Nelson on Death

  PIRBRIGHT VILLAGE: the pub called “Fat Fan’s.” Once upon a time the “White Hart” was owned by a plump lady. The wife of the present landlord is slender; but in the Army, tradition dies hard. Go to the Brigade Naffy in Pirbright Camp any day at noon, and you will see a little knot of old, old soldiers in the wet canteen, drinking a species of ale so weak that it falls flat as soon as it is poured out. The most ancient of these warriors is a Coldstreamer of about thirty-five years’ service—a veteran of every military vicissitude, old as the hills and as indestructible; wise as Gideon, in battle, though not so wise out of it; huge, uproarious, heavy-jawed and voracious; a drain through which half the beer in England has passed; a graveyard of Naffy pies; a dictionary of strange language; a mine of information about the other ranks. He has been in Pirbright since time immemorial, but has never heard of the “White Hart.” But “Fat Fan’s”—oh, he knows “Fat Fan’s.” Let outsiders call the place the “White Hart.” Coldstreamers and Scots Guards in every square of Mercator’s Projection know the place as “Fat Fan’s”; and “Fat Fan’s” it will be for ever.

  I say: Pirbright Village; the pub called “Fat Fan’s.”

  The carriage trade gets there now. Captain Hobdey, who took the place, dug down through strata of wallpaper and found, like a gem in a Christmas cracker, an ancient inn. Bits of the “White Hart” thus discovered strike old soldiers as new-fangled. The seventeenth century is all very well, but it is nothing like the good old days. Nevertheless, they drink there, because it is “Fat Fan’s.” If a cataclysm washed the place out, the naked site would still bear the name … Fan’s, Good Old Fan’s, Old Fat Fan’s. There is nothing to be done about it.

  Sergeant Nelson is down on a visit. He was entitled to seven days’ leave. He had nine pounds in credit, and has drawn the money. Beyond the Army, that one-eyed hero would be lonely. It is true that he has a relation here and there; but nothing that you might describe as a family. To him, Sergeant Crowne’s handclasp is the touch of a vanished hand, and the faded echoes of the Pirbright bugles the sound of a voice that is still. The Black Huts are home sweet home. The ranges are the lost horizons of sweet youth. “Fat Fan’s” is a tender memory of the springtime of things. Time is a swine that snuffles up everything; but some things Time can never swallow.

  You can imagine with what grimly-suppressed eagerness he made the roundabout journey. But he comes into “Fat Fan’s” with perfect nonchalance. It might be his own mess. His heart bounds like a rabbit in a bag as he sees Crowne, Hands, and Dagwood, at the bar. But his face remains rigid. Only his eye celebrates. He says:

  “Ah-ha, Crowney. Ah-ha, Hands. Yah, Dag. Drink?”

  “Ole Lipstick,” says Sergeant Crowne.

  “Whattaya mean, Lipstick?” says Nelson. “Tcha gonna drink?”

  “Mild,” says Dagwood.

  “Bitter,” says Crowne.

  “Brown,” says Hands.

  “Place changed hands? Lady! Two bitters, a mild and a brown. Big ’uns. Well?”

  “Well?” says Crowne.

  “Long time since we met,” says Nelson.

  “1937,” says Hands.

  “8,” says Dagwood.

  “7,” says Hands.

  “9,” says Crowne.

  “7,” says Hands. “What d’you mean, 9, you Burke?”

  “What year did war break out?” asks Crowne, patiently.

  “I can tell you,” says Hands. “It was the year Big Arthur threatened the Drill Sergeant with a bayonet.”

  “That was 8,” says Dagwood.

  “1938?” says Crowne. “You sure? Well, all right. 1938. Big Arthur threatened the Drill Pig in 8. The year the war broke out was the year I got a Severe for sort of ’itting a feller that ’it me first. I know, I got this Severe, and then the war broke out. Yeamp, I got it: the war must of broke out round about September, 1939. Ye-amp, it sort of broke out then.”

  “Definitely,” says Nelson.

  “So what’s been happening since then?” asks Hands.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” says Nelson. “You?”

  “Nothing,” says Crowne. “Sort of squads you gettin’?”

  “Oh, just squads,” says Nelson. “I teach ’em: you skive with ’em.”

  “I unlearn ’em all you learn ’em, and then I learn ’em proper,” says Crowne.

  “Phut!” says Nelson.

  Hands introduces a newcomer, a burly Sergeant with a blue scar on his nose: “Know Clark? Nobby, this is Nelson.”

  “Stameetcha,” says Nelson.

  “He was in the Foreign Legion,” says Hands.

  “Well, have a drink. Have a short one. So you were one of these Foreign Legionaries, were you? Was it like on the pictures?”

  “The uniform was,” says Sergeant Clark.

  “There long?”

  “Five years.”

  “How d’you come to join that mob?”

  “I was a kid. I saw Beau Geste and got tight afterwards. When I come to, I’d joined the Foreign Legion.”

  “That’s how I joined the Guards,” says Nelson. “Well, was it all right?”

  “All right.”

  “Tough?”

  “I done tougher marches with our mob in Egypt.”

  “Well, well, so we meet again,” says Sergeant Nelson.

  “Um,” says Crowne. “Well? Drink? Same again please miss. So what’s goin’ on, Nelson?”

  “Browned off,” says Nelson.

  “’Angin’ on to you,” says Crowne. “Need instructors. Won’t let you go. Yah?”

  “Definitely hanging bloody on to me,” says Nelson. “I’m browned off.”

  “Me too,” says Hands.

  “I’m thinking,” says Dagwood, “of getting myself bust. Then I might get abroad.”

  “Me too,” says Crowne.

  “And me,” says Nelson.

  They have been talking like this for about seventeen years.

  *

  Nine-thirty.

  Private lives have been discussed and disposed of in five minutes. Grievances have filled two hours. Reminiscence has scuttled in and out of everything; ubiquitous, irrepressible and unreliable as a pup. It all comes back to shop; soldiering. All roads lead to that.

  “They’ll do all right,” says Nelson.

  “Mmm-yeah, maybe,” says Crowne. “Some of ’em are steady. But on the whole, they’ll do. I ’ad some of your kids.”

  “What kids were they?” asks Nelson.

  “They came in the autumn. Sort of October, round about.”

  “Oh yes. I remember. It was … no it wasn’t. Was there a kid from a place called Brighton that worked his ticket on account of asthma?”

  “No. There was a bloke called Thurstan that kept on getting into trouble.”

  “Glass House?” asks Nelson.

  “No,” says Crowne. “Went absent once. Came back. Went straight. Bit mental, but ’e come to ’is senses.”

  “Some people definitely do, and others definitely don’t,” says Nelson. “I remember the wallah you mean. I could see there was going to be trouble with that geezer. Definitely. So, he turned out all right, eh?”

  “A nice kid,” says Dagwood. “Well, anyway, not so bad.”

  “Wasn’t there a po-tential officer they used to call The Schoolmaster?”

  “Yes,” says Dagwood. “A bookworm.”

  “Kay?”

  “Yes,” says Crowne.
“Okay.”

  “When he left,” says Dagwood, “he wrote a bit of poetry.”

  “What, made it up?” asks Nelson.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t be surprised.” Dagwood rummages in a breast pocket and gets out a greasy little autograph album. “Look.”

  Looking over his shoulder, Nelson reads:

  Here dead we lie because we did not choose

  To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

  Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,

  But young men think it is, and we were young.

  “Now there you are,” says Nelson. “Dead we lie, and all that sort of bull and boloney. Life to be sure is nothing much to lose. Now where do they get that stuff? God blimey, where do they think that kind of tripe is going to get ’em? Education. There’s a man of education, and look at what he makes up. Before they do anything, they’ve got to write something on their own gravestones. They’ve got to make a song and a dance about it. Definitely, they’ve got to make a fuss. We were young! He is young! What’s the big idea, Dagwood? What’s the big idea? Crying over their own dead bodies before they’re killed! Here dead we lie. So what if here dead we lie? Eh, Crowney? A pack o’ tripe. I’d like to see anybody sort of encouraging a squad of rooks with that sort of slop. Me, I give ’em the old Hi-de-Hi! And I make ’em give me the old Ho-de-Ho! Dead we lie. Why, we been dead dozens of times. Haven’t we, Crowney? Or pretty near dead. As good as dead. But what did we say? We said: ‘Let’s give ’em rough stuff and bust through.’ Didn’t we, Handsey? We did, Dag, didn’t we? Definitely we did. Where do they get that stuff? God blimey, I nearly did a Dead We Lie on the way along: I nearly went smacko on the line. I tripped over a sort of trunk on the platform. Why, Dagwood, old cock, we lie dead, more or less, every five minutes from the time the nurse smacks our backside, to the time they chuck dirt in our face. But do I write poetry about Dead We Lie? Did you ever catch me at it, Dagwood? Definitely not. Did he, Crowney? Well then. Tear that page out and—”

  “Order your last drinks, please,” says the landlord.

  “Last drinks? Last drinks? What d’you mean, last drinks?” asks Sergeant Nelson, ordering one more round. “Well, mud in your eye, old skivers! This time next week payday on the Field! It’ll be nice, ha? The dear old Active Service! Death? I spit in his eye! Last drinks. Not by a definitely very long chalk, my cocko! Here’s looking at you!”

  “Time, gentlemen, please,” says the landlord.

  “Yes, Time—that’s all we need—Time!” says Nelson.

  PART TWO

  The Nine Lives of Bill Nelson

  I

  The Statement of Butcher the Butcher

  BUTCHER THE BUTCHER, a cutter-up of Army meat who works in the cookhouse, came off a seven-days’ leave twenty hours late, and was put under Open Arrest. Sergeant Crowne muttered: “’E was pushed once before, back in 1931. ’E was due back at midnight. ’E didn’t get in till midnight-forty. Forty minutes pushed. It was ‘Case Explained,’ though. Butcher’d got run over. There was what they call a Bright Young Thing: she sort o’ fell for old Butcher. She ast Butch to a party and give ’im … what do they call them? Mahrattas?”

  “Manhattans,” said Sergeant Hands.

  “Some Indian drink. So Joe Butcher walks into an Austin Seven. Actually, it’d take a Dennis truck to make a dent on Butcher. I b’lieve Butch smashed up the Austin Seven. Anyway, the police detained ’im, and ’e came back forty minutes pushed. I mean to say is, if Joe Butcher’s pushed twenty hours, there’s a good excuse. I lay five tanners to two Joe Butcher’s got a good bar. A smart soldier, Butcher the Butcher. Could of got tapes: but no ambition. Got blood pressure. Blood pressure! Stick a pin in old Joe Butcher and it’d come out like a bust water-main. Bags o’ pressure. I ought to know: I was first squadded with Joe Butcher.”

  Then Butcher came into the hut. He is a garrulous man, but this afternoon he was silent. His mouth was shut tight. His shiny black crescent moustache lay still, like a shard of broken gramophone record. He had left camp in his best suit, the suit of Service Dress which he had preserved for twelve years and which he filled as a hard red apple fills its skin—a burley, bloody-faced, full-bodied old soldier, instinctively meticulous in his dressing as only a Guardsman can be.

  Now, no military policeman would have let him pass unchallenged. A triangle of cloth had been ripped from his left sleeve. The edges of his creases were blunted. His cheeks were yellowish: only his nose was red, with the sore redness of inflammation, where something had hit it hard. There were dark, stiff stains on his tunic to mark the trail of the blood. The jetty shine of God knows how many months had been kicked off the surface of his beautiful best boots. He had been burnishing his cap star for twenty years, until, of the HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE around the cross in the middle, nothing but ON … IT … MA remained. But the badge was gone. With my own ears I heard Butcher the Butcher refuse ten shillings for that badge—ten shillings in cash, and another badge thrown in. But he only laughed. Three of his tunic buttons were gone—regimental buttons polished away to blank domed surfaces. The cloth under his armpits was split: some terrible effort had burst it. He dragged his respirator on a broken sling. And where was his tin hat? The bayonet scabbard which Butcher had shone brown and bright as a house-proud woman’s rosewood piano, was scratched beyond spit, polish, bone-friction, and elbow grease—“scratched up all to Hell.” Butcher the Butcher was encrusted with stuff like ashes mixed with curry powder. He was bone-weary—a strong man drained and exhausted, a bled beetroot, a force used up, a chewed fibre, a weariness in mud-defiled webbing. There was a pouchiness about him.

  The wireless was playing Lord, You Made The Night Too Long when he came in. Sergeant Hands was particularly fond of this song. But at the verse which says:

  You made the mountains high,

  The earth and the sky,

  And who am I to say you’re wrong …?

  there was a bip as Hands himself knocked up the switch and said:

  “Happened, Butch?”

  Butcher the Butcher said: “Raid.”

  “Get hit?” asked Sergeant Crowne.

  “Only by a house,” said Butcher.

  “You’re pushed,” said Sergeant Dagwood.

  “Yeh, yeh, I’m twenty hours pushed. I’m under Open Arrest.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeh, yeh, I’m okay.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Groombridge.”

  “Railway terminus?”

  “Yeh, Groombridge. Helped dig out few civvies. Due back: so what? Drill Pig says, ‘No excuse.’ Well, sod the Drill Pig. See people buried, you dig people out. Hauled lumps o’ house for eleven solid hours. Basement. No trains. Nobody gimme a lift. Slogged fifteen mile. I’m whacked. Forgot to get myself a chitty from the Rescue Bloke. Bleeding Drill Pig thinks I was in a fight. Oh, well, I sha worry. Lem gimme fourteen days! Lem gimme Royal Warrant! Lem semme to Devil’s Island frail I care. Ffphut!” Butcher the Butcher tries to spit with a dry mouth.

  “Lively, eh?” says Dagwood.

  “Bit,” says Joe Butcher. “Moo … moo … moo! Sireens. Like old cows; like lost cows, cows in pain. Ever hear a cow that lost a calf? Moo … moo … moo! Then these bombs go whizz, and bong! Ssssssssss—wheeeeeeee! Civvies in shelters and what not. I’m hanging on for a train. So I’m in a caff, getting a tea ’n’ a wad. Caff shuts up when the raid starts. I scrams. All va sudden ole Jerry drops one on a house. I goes arsover tip: blast … Dust! Talk about egg-wiped: Egypt was cleaned bright and slightly oiled compared to that dust! ’Stonishing dusty thing, a house. Sticks to the roof a your mouth like Banbury cakes.

  “Sort o’ residential houses with shops underneath, kind o’ style. Busted like a Christmas stocking. There was a lil sweet-stuff shop. I got hit in the face with a choclit marshmallow. Honest to Jesus, a choclit marshmallow. I scooped it orf me forrid and ate it. I got a tiny little bomb splinter in me leg, too; like a pinprick.

  “There’s
another house gorn nex’ door. Front wall down. I swallered a good bit o’ that wall. Shook meself clear o’ the debreece. Then some geezers comes up out a shelter; one old dear more ’n a million years old come Pancake Day yowping: ‘Me Georgie! Me Georgie! Upstairs! Me Georgie’s upstairs!’

  “I says: ‘Upstairs, Ma?’ She says: ‘Upstairs, son.’ There’s practically no stairs. But this old geezer’s leading orf about ’er Georgie this, and ’er Georgie that, and ’er Georgie upstairs. It seems this Georgie’s the old girl’s old man. So I goes up. Looka my ankle where I shoved it through a busted plank! Old girl comes up after me. First floor back. I chucks down a ton o’ rubble, busts a way through, kicks down a door. I asks: ‘Who locked this door?’ and the old girl says: ‘I did.’

  “Bedroom. Proper old-fashioned kip. Bloody brass bed like park railings … millions o’ brass. Bags o’ vorses and orlaments on the mannel-shelf, millions o’ chairs, and an aspradaspra on a stand all broke. On the bed there’s an old kite with a white beard, lying quiet. I says: ‘’E looks okay to me, Ma: kind of asleep.’ The old girl says: ‘As long as ’e ’asn’t fallen on the ground. ’Slong ’s Georgie’s still on the bed, everythink’s all right. You see, young man, we’re burying ’im tomorrow.’

  “So I goes on back down. I carries the old girl. Then they say there’s people in the basement. So there isn’t much of a rescue squad, and they can sort of hear people kind o’ yelling out, so I has a go at the stuff with my bare forks. Look at me fingers!

  “We clears a way. We cuts a bicycle inner tube in two and pushes it down. ‘Soup, Ma!’ we yells. And an old girl buried down there calls back: ‘Wish it was beer!’ I mean to say is, you can’t get some of these old girls down. Then she sort of screeks up the tube: ‘You better look sharp, there’s a young man ’oldin’ up the ceiling!’ So we digs like mad. Hours. Hours. They brung me tea, but I was sort of carried away. We gets down.