by Gerald Kersh
“Why, you obstinate swine, you swining obstinate pig! Don’t you dare to fly in the face of History. You drunken slob! Didn’t you once tell me with your own two lips, you dirty liar, that you’d seen a ghost outside the Y.M.C.A. one night?”
“And so I damn well did,” says Geordie.
“You’re a one to talk, then, about not believing in anything. That’s what you are: I fluff you, all right. Truth, scientific fact like a V.C., honest scientific fact like my old pal Harry, you don’t believe. But ghosts, oh yes! You fairy!”
“That was no joke,” says Geordie. “It was sober truth as true as I sit in this chair. God strike me down dead this minute if I didn’t see it. Outside the Y.M.C.A., I tell you. And it wasn’t nighttime, but broad staring damnation daylight. I was going along that road, and coming the other way there was a bloke covered wi’ dust from head to foot, and walking as if he had sore feet. I takes a look at him, and I see he’s got a funny sort of a uniform on. Red coat, knee breeches, and a long sort of cardboard hat. So I thought he was one of these so-called Czechs, but he comes up to me and says: ‘Comrade, have you heard the news?’ So I thinks he’s one of these Communists, and I say: ‘No, Comrade, I ain’t. What news?’ And he says: ‘Napoleon is back‚’ he says, ‘and I’ve got to rejoin my regiment.’ And I says: ‘Are you trying to take the mike out of me? Or are you just potty? Or what are you?’ Then he looks at me, and shakes his head slowly, and with my own eyes I saw him sort of get thinner, thin-drawn-out, kind of smoky. And then he wasn’t there any more.”
“It could have been a dream,” says the Barman. Geordie glares at him, and growls: “It was no more of a dream than you are, you squirt! Why ain’t you in uniform, anyway, you …”
The Grenadier, who has been smiling on one side of his face, says:
“You and your dreams. To you, Geordie, dreams are real. Well, look. Look at this and tell me if I lie about Nicholls. Look.” And from a deep pocket of his S.D. Jacket, the tall man takes a bit of newsprint, creased almost to nothingness, but religiously preserved between two bits of cardboard. It is a copy of the London Gazette, dated Tuesday, 30th July, 1940.
“Look,” he says. “No. 2614910 Lance-Corporal Harry Nicholls, Grenadier Guards. And there’s the story. Dead true.”
“Then why didn’t you pull out that bit o’ paper in the first place?” asks Geordie.
“Because you ought to take my word for it.”
“Anyway,” says Geordie, “I knew it was true, because I see it in the papers at the time; and I believe I saw this kid Nicholls box, once.”
“Well then, what did you say you didn’t believe me for, then?” asks the Grenadier, angrily.
“Just for the sake of a argument,” says Geordie. “What’s a V.C., anyway?”
“A honour,” says the tailor.
“Point is,” says Geordie, “there comes a point where you got to go forrard or get kilt. You take a last chance, and fight mad. If it comes off, you’re a hero. If it don’t, you’re a corpse.”
“That depends,” says the Grenadier. “I’ve seen plenty men surrender, Jerries, in the last bust-up. I’ve seen plenty of ’em raise their hands and shout for mercy. They’re like that when cornered, though they’re cocky enough when things are going their way. But I never saw one of our mob doing any surrendering. Did you, Geordie?”
“No, never.”
“It’s a matter of temperament,” says the Grenadier. “Some people are made one way, others another way. Englishmen hate to look silly. So they go and die rather than make a laughingstock of themselves. Anything for the sake of proper order! I’ve seen a man crawl out over, good God, a bit of No Man’s Land that was a death trap where a man stood no more chance than a fly in a gearbox—go out under machine-gun fire, and shrapnel, good God Almighty, with the Jerries limbering up a flammenwerfer, a flame-thrower. He crawled out when the odds must have been say two or three hundred to one against him getting back at all, and thousands to one against him getting back unhurt. He went to pick up a bloke with a busted hip lying out in the open. Now as things were just then, it was about a million to one against any of us getting out alive, because there was only nine or ten of us, and Jerry was advancing under a curtain of heavy stuff, and we was cut off and hopeless to look at. But this bloke goes out to get this wounded man, who wasn’t even a china, not even a pal in particular. He couldn’t help it. It was in him to do it. Once an Englishman, always an Englishman. Medals don’t make any difference. You don’t go and get a V.C. because you think it’d look nice pinned on your coat, or because there’s some twopenny-halfpenny little pension attached to it. You aren’t a hero on account of a medal.”
“A medal encourages you,” says Geordie.
“Don’t you believe it,” says the Grenadier. “A medal is a bit of tin. A medal don’t encourage you. I’ve seen Italian colonels covered, from head to foot with crosses, and stars, and bits, and pieces, and medals of every possible variety and shape and size. And they ran like rabbits. No. It’s the act that is the encouragement. A bloke like my old pal Harry Nicholls, now, what’s a bit of a bronze cross to him? Or to anybody? But when kids get to hear about him, when they read stories about old Nicholls, they say to themselves: ‘It’d look silly if after all that we went and let Nicholls down.’
“And again, look at my old pal, Lance-Sergeant Rhodes. He had a Lewis gun section. Well, so Rhodes sees the Jerries leave a pill-box. Our own barrage was coming over thick and strong. It was the good old death trap again. But Rhodes, after picking off Jerry after Jerry with the Lewis and with his good old bundook, went out single-handed, with machine-gun fire right on him, and the shells bursting right in his face; and God only knows how he done it, but he took that pill-box, single-handed, he did, and brought back nine Jerry prisoners. All alone he did it. They give him a V.C. for that.”
A dark and excitable old soldier with a brass leek in his cap says:
“And what about my friend, look, Bob Bye, a Glamorgan boy, look! Did he not do all that and more? With these eyes I saw him do it. He took two German blockhouses, two, that is! First of all, look, he rushes one blockhouse and kills the whole lot of the garrison, all alone. Then he takes the second one with his company. Then a party was detailed to clear up a line of blockhouses which had been passed, see. Bob Bye volunteers to take charge. He cleans them all up. He takes a third objective. That is a man, he was! A Glamorgan boy, from Penrhiwceiber. Like me.”
The Scot says, with a grim air of acrimony:
“Did you hear of Freddie McNess, in ’sixteen? He was wounded so that his neck and jaw were pretty well blown away, while organising a counterattack. But he went through a bomb-barrage alone, to bring us fresh supplies of bombs; wounded and alone. He kept us going, shouting and swearing and cursing and laughing, throwing bomb after bomb like a mad machine. And then he fell down with hardly a drop of blood left within him. Hum. V.C.”
“Tom Witham did pretty much the same,” says Geordie. “A Burnley boy. Coldstream Guards, 1917. V.C.”
“And Johnnie Moyney?” says a giant Mick, an Irish Guardsman with a stiff leg, and a shrapnel-pocked cheek. “Old Johnnie Moyney. Didn’t he hold the post with us for ninety-six solid hours without water and with no food? And on the fifth day didn’t he take us out and give Jerry hell with the Lewis and Mills bombs; and cut a way back for us; and cover our retirement, and bring every last damned one of us safely back? There was a V.C. for you, a real V.C.! I wonder what happened to Johnnie Moyney …”
“I daresay the same as what happened to Oily Brooks of the Third Battalion,” says Geordie. “Blown to hell and back at Loos in ’fifteen; recaptured two hundred yards o’ trench: feared nothing. I daresay he’s one of two things. Alive, or else dead. V.C.s. Oh, phut! Some are noticed, others aren’t. Some get V.C.s. Others get headaches. It’s all the same in the end. Have another beer. Hi, you, you twit! Pour these out agen. To hell with the bits o’ tin and brass! Medals! I saved an officer’s life once, and ought to have got a V.C
. for it. Near Loos. I lifted up a burning car that he was pinned under with these two mitts, I did. I was as strong as a bullock then, and still arm, too! I lifted up that car by the front axles, and it was blazing like a busted lamp, flaring like crackey. I turned that car over. Sandow couldn’t have done it. I felt sort of strong, with all the shells bursting round me and the little bits o’ red-hot shrapnel yipping and wheeing in my ears. Yes. I saved that officer’s life. But he was dead. So nobody knew about it, and I didn’t get no medal. Waste o’ time.”
“Did you know he was dead?” asks the Grenadier.
“How could I have known, you stupid? Would I have gone to all that trouble and burnt the skin off of myself for a corpse? I kind of suspected that he might be dead, mind you, but I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. And much good it done him or me.”
“Ah,” says the Grenadier. “If I could have my time over again!”
“What’d you do?”
The Grenadier has not the faintest idea. He covers his confusion by picking on a young recruit who has edged into the alcove and is lighting a cigarette. “You,” he says, “what do you mean by coming here and eavesdropping on our conversation?”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping, I was just listening.”
“Oh, you were. What’s your name?”
“Dobbin.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Where are you from?”
“Luton.”
“What work you do in Luton?”
“Nothing.”
“Do all right at it?”
“How d’you mean?”
“Didn’t you have a trade?”
“No.”
“Like the Army?”
“No.”
“It’s the greatest life in the world, son.”
“Yes?” says Dobbin, with a grin. “It don’t seem to have got you anywhere.”
“Shall I scoff this little nit?” asks Geordie.
“Let him alone,” says the Grenadier. “It’s not for you to say, Dobbin, where anything has got us. It’s not any man’s place to say. Do you hear? We’ve been, in the Guards all our lives, and we might grouse and grumble day and night, but we’re proud of it. You see us now, son, getting on a bit in years. As the Dagoes put it, our roads are nearing the sea. But there’s more to a thing than you see in one second, at one time. You bear that in mind, Dobbin. You might see an empty brass cartridge case lying on the ground, and you might kick it aside without a word. Yet that cartridge case might be the one thing that won the War. Yes. You might see an old rusty nail lying around, and throw it away. But there was a time when that nail was bright and sharp, and for all you know to the contrary, that nail might have been the thing that held the very roof up over your head, in its time. If you saw us rolling about in Rolls Royce cars, I daresay you’d think we really had got somewhere, wouldn’t you? When you’ve knocked around as long as we have, you’ll know that everybody goes the same way to the same place in the end. A shilling blanket or an oak box with brass handles: there’s only one way for any man to go, Dobbin. What a man has got, doesn’t matter. What a man has done, and what he’s stood or fallen for, that’s what matters. That’s where he’s got. There was a City man that made millions out of swindling. On the Tuesday, you would have said he’d got to the top of the world. But on the Wednesday he blew his head off and the whole town knew him for an empty crook. Where had he got? Really and truly? Nowhere. Never anywhere. Us, we’ve got nothing. We’ve got our pay and our grub, and not too much of either. But we were keeping you and your mum safe in your beds when you were too little to walk, and keeping this country all clear for you to grow up and do nothing in. Where have we got? Into the Guards, and into a bit of history. That’s something, if there was nothing else, Dobbin. We held our lines, by Jesus, and we came out fighting and we managed to get through. We’ve been hurt. Nothing can hurt us much any more. No, the rain can’t wet us, the cold can’t freeze us, the wind can’t shake us, and the sun can’t burn us. There’s no man, or beast, or nightmare, or bluff that can throw a scare into us. There’s no force that can put us off a thing once we go towards that thing. Not even a lump of iron through the head can stop us, because we are the ones that hand on the stuff that makes us go. Put us in a desert, and we can make ourselves at home. Put us in a hole full of mud, and we’ll still keep calm and play the man. We’ve got no homes. A plank is comfort to us. A bit of meat is luxury. If we ever had any folks, we just lost ’em. The hut is our house. Our feet feel funny out of ammunition boots. We’ve known what it feels like to come face to face with a day or a night that must be the last … only somehow we came through, and saw the dark, or the daylight, and laughed it off whatever we felt. We’ve had our share of troubles. We can take an injustice and swallow it. We grouse, but never whine. We yell before we’re hurt; but never because we’re hurt. We’d lie for a pal, but not for ourselves. We break all the laws except the important ones. We can lie doggo under destiny like Arabs, but we never give way to it or anything else. We don’t believe in anything except that we’ve got to be on parade when the bugle blows, whatever the parade is, and wherever it is. And we like to keep ourselves clean, and don’t do too many dirty tricks. Where has it got us? Son—didn’t anybody ever tell you? Manhood! That is what it’s got us. We may be a bit dilapidated, but we’re men! Isn’t that something?”
A heavy old voice says: “Well said, my boy.”
It is Old Charlie.
Although he is neatly dressed in a blue tunic and trousers; although his boots have upon them a dye, or shine, such as only years can impart; and although he has an air of smartness, a dapper alertness, a prim elegance such as only Guardsmen acquire—turned out, though he is, with a calculated neatness, he somehow looks as ragged as a battle-tattered banner. There is that about him which suggests that he is deathless. He looks as if he might be some trophy over which nations have fought. Perhaps he is. He is one of the oldest of all the Coldstream Guards.
His forehead is something against which Time has sharpened its scythe: it is scored and creased and wrinkled beyond the aspect of flesh. Some strange fatality has saved him, throughout incalculable years, for some unknown destiny. He was born in 1860. Charles Dickens was a man-about-town when he was a boy. Once upon a time he was a child, and then he was devoted body and soul to an elder brother whose name—what a pig this Time is, that snuffles up everything!—he has almost forgotten. This brother, with the Foot Guards, went to a place called Russia on some fool’s errand and came back with one leg and a thousand tales. Where is this brother? The worms know. But it was out of hero worship for him that this old man joined the Guards, the Coldstream Guards. There was, in his mind, some bluish picture of smoke—some strange blurred scene—a haze, in the midst of which men in red struggled hand-to-hand with men in grey: some adolescent fantasy of Inkerman, where the Guards fought tooth and nail and, turning their muskets round, banged down the soldiers of the Czar with the butt of Brown Bess. He should be dead. He belongs to another day and age. His father remembered Waterloo. He can tell awful stories. Geordie has seen him looking at a short Lee Enfield rifle and shaking his head—it seemed to him such a small thing, with such a small hole in it. How could so petty a weapon stop a man? In spite of everything, years or no years, he stands erect. Nothing but putrefaction will bend that back. He is rigid with the uprightness of sixty years of service. The last time a sergeant told him to hold his head up was in 1881. He was an old soldier before the Boer War. His age had reached two figure—about ten years—when his mother, with a look of vexation, said: “This Napoleon.” She was referring to Napoleon the Third.
They call him Old Charlie. It is impossible for him to appear without some outbreak of badinage. Even Geordie says: “Where’s your bow and arrow?” There is a legend that he was put In The Book for having a dirty powder horn at the Hougoumont Farmhouse. Apart from the fact of his long service, his antecedents are wrapped in darkness. He never had
a home. If he ever had a wife or children, nobody ever heard about them. He is a legendary figure, like the old horse that still survives in the depot at Caterham—the slow, stately regimental horse, which represents nothing but a half-forgotten sentiment. He says little. The oldest have borne most. He knows it. He carries the weight of years and memory. None of us will ever live so long. Age has worn his cheeks into little pits and nodules: he is a monolith. Geordie is an old soldier, but Old Charlie might have had a son older than Geordie. “You may be young,” he seems to say, “but you never saw 1860. Live as long as you like, you never will have seen 1860.”
Sometimes he comes into the little bar; says nothing, drinks nothing, does nothing—simply looks about him with an expression curiously compounded of bewilderment and ineffable dignity. It is then that the nonsense starts; not that there’s any man in the place who would not defend Old Charlie with his life.
There is only one person to whom he talks. This is a little girl whom men call Star. She is the daughter of some old sergeant who lives beyond the camp. They call her Star because her mother, drenched in regimental matters, has embroidered the eight-pointed star of the Brigade upon the grubby yellow jersey which she invariably wears. She is a naughty little girl, sullen and intractable. Her face is fixed in a forbidding scowl. She got that from her father, a savage old N.C.O. She is not like other little girls. She is not interested in childish things; nor has she any of that budding womanliness which is common and proper to little girls. I believe that her real name is Jess, or Tess—anyway, it ends in “ess.” She likes soldiers, but in no flippant or flirtatious way. She likes to contemplate them. When the long brown lines go out in column of route, she may always be seen standing still as a graven image by the roadside; not cheering, giving no sign of recognition—merely gravely watching. Her lower lip protrudes; her upper lip is compressed. Her brow is corrugated; there is a ferocious look in her small dark eyes. This is a peculiar little girl. Nothing can melt her. If you offer her coins or sweets she takes them gloomily and thanklessly. She seems to be full of trouble. She plays only one game, and that seems to have no meaning. She walks up and down dragging after her a peeled branch of silver birch—saying nothing, and never smiling; simply dragging the branch. Her mother says that she is eight years old, and will grow out of it. It is alleged that she takes after her father—a man whom nobody loved, nobody understood, and nobody wanted to understand.
