Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

  She has one boy-friend. This is Old Charlie.

  They have assignations. They meet, by a kind of instinctive arrangement. At about a quarter past one every afternoon the little girl Tess, or Jess, walks gravely past the Guardroom and walks, as it were accidentally, up and down the road outside the Sergeants’ Mess. She is self-possessed, preoccupied and rather sombre. She never ceases to frown—in fact the habit of this facial contortion has already cut two tiny lines between her eyes. She walks swinging her arms, her small fists clenched. At other times she might drag her branch; but never at one-fifteen. She walks up and down. In due course, out of the Officers’ Mess where he is employed in some not to laborious capacity, Old Charlie comes striding, dressed all in blue. The mystery of it is, that in all those years—all those years—awful, monotonous years of military service—he has never managed to acquire even two stripes. Lance-Corporals of the Coldstream Guards always wear two stripes: (it looks, somehow, better) old as the hills, he is less than a Lance-Jack. Was he stupid? It seems hardly likely. Was he a bad man? A bad soldier? One would say not. The fact remains that he is ending as he began, having got nothing in the service but age, which any man can get anywhere if he lives long enough. He walks solemnly and pauses just by the Catholic Church—a cold old man with moustachios like icicles, disciplined and aged beyond ordinary humanity. The little girl walks to within four or five paces of him, and then she stops, boring the toe of her right shoe into the gravel. She has all the appearance of one upon whose shoulders rests the weight of the universe. She looks almost as old and almost as responsible as Old Charlie. She pretends not to have seen him. He pretends not to have seen her. His huge right hand, which resembles a bunch of red West Indian bananas, slowly opens: he always carries his pipe in his hand, for fear that the bulk of it may spoil the outline of his skin-tight blue mess suit. From a trousers pocket he produces a match; strikes it, lights the pipe, spits once and lets a big blue cloud crawl up to heaven while he contemplates, with God knows what strange sad thoughts, the bare and hideous Guardroom, the White Huts, and the hidden distance which ends in the trees beyond the cricket field. This never varies. His forefinger, indestructible as asbestos, tamps down the glowing ash in his pipe. Holding this pipe in his right hand, while his left arm hangs straight down; slightly inclining his head in deep thought, he walks up to the Guardroom and stands still.

  The little girl watches him out of the corners of her eyes. Then she follows him, walking exactly as he walks—in long, stiff strides. They pass each other three or four times. The ancient one pauses and his tangled white eyebrows come down in a savage and forbidding scowl. His poor old washed-out eyes, which might be blue or grey or green, fix themselves upon the little girl in a glare which is meant to be terrifying, but which, alas, is nearly vacant. She in her turn, glares back at him and in her glance there is something oddly lonely. They confront each other: the child, dark with the clouds of sorrows which nobody will ever understand; and the old man, inarticulate and encumbered with an awful weight of half-remembered things.

  He clamps the teeth the Army gave him down upon the yellowish stem of his burned-out pipe and holds it unsteadily between his wavering jaws. Then he shoots out his right fist clenched tight, and slowly peels away from it one finger—the fourth. The little girl looks at it, frowning, and then grabs this extended finger in her left hand. No word is spoken. They walk off together. It is believed that neither of them has another friend in the world. Old Charlie has outlived everything and everybody; and Jess (?) or Tess (?) seems to feel that she is going to have much to live through.

  A meeting of the currents of Life and Time. They walk away, past the Officers’ Mess, past the Pioneers’ Yard, to the Y.M.C.A., and then back.

  And it happens that only I have heard what they say to each other.

  Near the nice new huts of the Scots Guards, between the road and the canal, lies a strip of woodland, mostly silver birch. From here they cut twigs to make revetting hurdles. Men go in with slash hooks, and come out with great armfuls of slender and elegant budding branches; yet, the woodland remains dense and almost primæval. We come here sometimes in field training: there are dents and gashes in this strip of earth which present all the varying features of potential cover. From the road it looks like … merely trees, but if you go in among these trees, you lose sight of the road … the dark grey dreary road … and find yourself under a pattern of foliage which waves gently and mysteriously, and among slim, straight, speckled silver trees which stand between you and the world. Men come here sometimes on Sundays or on Saturday afternoons, when they want to be alone. There is a time when every man wants to be alone, for a little while, among trees.

  It was Saturday afternoon. I was lying there and looking up. In the distance rubber tyres purred over tarmac; and some bird, some high-flying bird with a voice of ineffable sweetness sang a song in four notes. The branches moved. In that moment I forgot all the grandeur and misery of the war and the world, and almost fell asleep. I heard them coming, but the sound of their feet seemed to come from far away and hardly penetrated the gentle coma into which I had fallen. I saw them—the very old man and the very young child, both scowling, she clasping the little finger of his right hand in a determined left fist. This must have been a place to which they often came. They walked straight to it and sat down upon a patch of grass between two banks of bracken. I could not see the little girl: she was too small, and the fronds hid her. But the stiff blue back of that impenetrable old soldier stood up sturdily, conspicuous against its background of green. He took off his cap. I don’t know why I was surprised to see that he had no hair.

  He spoke:

  “Woman. Look. Trees. Do you like trees, woman?”

  No doubt the child nodded; she said nothing.

  “Listen.”

  The birds still sang.

  “Do you like birds?”

  Silence. She must have nodded again, for he went on:

  “I like birds too. Birds are nice things. Wherever you go you find birds. Anywhere you like, there is always birds. Go to Africa—right out into the desert, where there is nothing at all; and there are still birds. Out on the veldt: you look, and you see nothing. But fall down, just you fall down. And what will you see then? Why, woman, right up, right up in the sky, as it might be a speck, a tiny little speck, you’ll see something coming down. What is it, what is it coming down out of that empty sky right down on to that empty land?”

  The little girl said “God.”

  The old man said: “Vultures. A kind of a bird. They wait, hanging up in the sky so high that you can’t see them, but all the time they’re watching you, watching you all the time. And when they see you fall, or if they see you die, they drop. They don’t fly down. They wrap themselves up in their wings and fall like stones, and then, two or three hundred yards off the ground they spread their wings out all of a sudden as it might be, great big flowers opening, and you hear them go slap! Yes, slap! And they slide down, and they stand round you, wrapped up in them wings of theirs, like cloaks, and they wait.”

  “What for?” she asked.

  “They wait for you to die.”

  “Why?”

  “So as to eat you.”

  “Not till you’re dead?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.”

  Silence again. Then the little girl said: “What are they for?”

  The old man replied: “To clean up. You can’t have things lying around all over the place. They clean things up. They are …” he paused and then said, “on fatigue. They get a wilderness dug out. If it wasn’t for them horrible birds the desert would stink. Because everything is dying all the time. Yes, in them hot places it is easy to live. If you put your walking stick into the ground, roses would come out of it. And if it is easy for one thing to live, it is easy for another thing to live; and it is easy for you to get along, and also for your enemy likewise. Yes, woman, the easier it is to live, the easier it is to die. But woman, you look at
me. I’m ten times older than you are, and I’m alive. I’m eighty.”

  “Eighty’s not much,” she said.

  He went on rather dreamily: “I see every day fellas fretting—fretting like prisoners behind bars—at being in this Army. But woman, do I say to them: ‘Young fella, I have been in this Army over sixty year’? No I don’t. I don’t say nothing. Woman, I don’t talk to ’em. I ain’t got nothing to say, woman. Why? Because talking makes no difference. Talking makes no difference. Talking never helped anybody nor never will. There is nothing to be said woman, nothing. Sometimes I think that in the Army the first thirty years is the worst but woman, when I think again I don’t know. Everything is rotten while you’re going through it, and everything is lovely when you look back on it. I don’t know woman, and I don’t care. I’m old. But I will see ’em damned before I die. I ain’t going to die.”

  He said this almost to himself. Then he seemed to remember something, and his tone changed. He said: “You like me, don’t you? And I like you. I think you’re a nice little girl. You like holding on to my finger don’t you?”

  She made a noncommittal noise: “Mm.”

  “If I had anything to give you, I’d give it to you. But I ain’t got anything. No, after all these years I got nothing to show. But does that matter? You take it from me woman, having something to show don’t matter. Show yourself to yourself, at the end of everything, and if you can pat yourself on the back and shake hands with yourself and like yourself—like yourself like you might like a stranger—well, that’s all right. I’ve seen rough times. I’ve had field punishment. I’ve seen wars. Yes, woman, I’ve drunk my medicine. When they lay me out, there’ll be some marks for them to see. But that don’t matter. I was saying, if I had anything to give, I’d give it to you, or to your mum to hold for you. I had a matter of a hundred and eighty-two pounds that I saved up. But I ain’t got it any more. I give it away. Tell me, woman, am I crazy?”

  Her voice said very firmly: “Yes.”

  “Yes, says you, yes says everybody. So I don’t talk. A certain party comes to me and says: ‘Charlie, I’ve got to find a five-pound note.’ So I thinks. ‘A five-pound note,’ I says. ‘All right,’ I says, ‘I will’ give you a five-pound note.’ So I draws out a five-pound note to give him. And then I says: ‘What do you want with the dirty money? What have you saved it for?’ And I draws it all out, and I gives it away. I gives it to charity. Never mind what. It makes no difference, I give it away, woman, and I felt the better for being without it. I’m a soldier, see? And I travels light.

  “There’s a young fella they calls Bearsbreath. A sort of a lance-corporal. A kid, a little kid, a kid of no more than thirty-six or seven. And yet, woman, I see that kid Bearsbreath, with these two eyes I see him give away everything he ever had. And do you know what it was? A belt. Do you understand?”

  “’Course I understand.”

  “’Course you understand. You’re a woman of the world and I’m a man of the world, and I’m talking to yer, because you got savvy. Me, I joined the Army—do you know why? Because I idolised my brother. He was in this mob. He was at Inkerman. That was in the Crimean War. Why,” said Old Charlie, with a kind of hushed amazement in his voice, “if he had lived Edward would be ninety-five. But he’s dead. Everybody’s dead. That was a battle, Inkerman, woman. The Coldstream Guards come over, and when their guns was empty they picked up stones off the field and beat the Russians’ ’eads in with ’em. Yes, we took that position with sticks and stones, that’s what we did. And we’d do it again, woman, we’d do it again, sticks, stones, boots, or just bare fists.

  “But this kid Bearsbreath. What was I saying? Oh yes, his belt. Young Bearsbreath has been in this mob all his life, practically. He was a Barnado’s Boy. Do you understand what that is, woman? He didn’t ’ave nobody. He didn’t ’ave no mum, he didn’t ’ave nothing. I believe they found him in a basket outside a door. Soon as he was old enough he went into the Army. Guards. Coalies. Got ’im nowhere. Regular old sweat like me. Never had nothing and never will ’ave nothing. Except what? Don’t laugh, a belt. Dirty old leather belt. You understand, woman? ’Course you understand. An old soldier has a belt. Wherever he goes and makes a friend he gets a badge. He swaps badges, with whatever pal he might make in another regiment. And he fixed this here badge on to his belt. Time comes when his belt is covered with badges, and that is a very nice pretty thing. This here young fool of a Bearsbreath, he had a belt.

  “Hah! Well, so there was a kid in the drums. Ginger kid. I don’t know his name but they called him Ginger. One day, so there’s a rehearsal for a pantomime or a concert, or something. Somebody or other says: ‘What’s the dateth today?’ and somebody else says: ‘The dateth today is the nineteenth.’ This kid Ginger—you wouldn’t cry, would you, woman?—this kid Ginger busts out crying. Well, young Bearsbreath says to young Ginger: ‘What’s the trouble?’ and young Ginger says: ‘Nuffink.’ This kid Ginger was a good drummer. It was a pleasure to hear him blow Defaulters. This kid Ginger says: ‘Nuffink’ and this kid Bearsbreath says to ’im: ‘Somebody been bullying you, Ginger?’ and Ginger says: ‘No.’ Then Bearsbreath says: ‘Why did you bust out crying when they told you the dateth?’ and this kid Ginger says: ‘I wasn’t crying.’ ‘I should bloody well think not,’ says Bearsbreath. ‘A big boy like you. ’Ow old are you?’ And this kid Ginger says: ‘Sixteen.’ ‘Oh,’ says Bearsbreath, ‘you’re a big boy for your size, and when was yer sixteen?’ This kid Ginger says: ‘I’m sixteen today.’ ‘Why,’ says Bearsbreath, ‘what’s that to cry about. You ought to be laughing. You should be thankful you’re alive, or something. Gord blimey,’ says Bearsbreath, ‘whether you’re thankful or sorry, God damn and blast it all, you should be ashamed of yourself for crying. Are you a man or are you a woman?’ ‘I’m a man,’ says Ginger. ‘No you’re not,’ says Bearsbreath, ‘you’re not a man, crying like that! Why,’ he says, ‘what’s the matter with you? Did you want your mummy to come and wish you many happy returns or something?’ The kid Ginger says: ‘I ain’t got no mum.’ ‘Oh,’ says Bearsbreath, ‘you ain’t got no mum. And I suppose next thing you’ll tell me is that you ain’t got no dad.’ ‘Well, what if I ain’t,’ says Ginger. ‘Ain’t you?’ says Bearsbreath, and Ginger says: ‘Well, no, I ain’t.’ ‘Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts?’ says Bearsbreath. ‘No,’ says Ginger. ‘Oh,’ says Bearsbreath. ‘A sort of orphan.’ Then Ginger says: ‘Sort of.’ ‘Well,’ says Bearsbreath, ‘then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ and he walks out. Well, about five minutes later he comes back into the hut with four tuppeny bars of chocolate, and he gives them to this kid Ginger and he says: ‘Oh well, many ’appy returns,’ and hands these bars of chocolate to young Ginger, and Ginger says: ‘Thanks.’”

  “Nut-milk chocolate?”

  “Yuh—that’s right, nut-milk chocolate. And then Bearsbreath sort of stands on his two legs wide apart, and he says: ‘I’m surprised at you. You and your birthdays. Blimey,’ he says, ‘what’s the younger generation coming to. Personally,’ he says: ‘I never had a birthday in me life,’ he says. ‘Only sissies have birthdays. Only effiminate young women ’ave birthdays. Why,’ he says, ‘personally, I’d be ashamed to own to ’aving a birthday,’ he said. ‘So,’ he says, ‘you ain’t got no mum and no dad and you ain’t got nobody, and you go around ’aving birthdays, do you? All right, young fella,’ he says, and this kid Bearsbreath shoves his hands under this here rubbish, this sloppy stuff they call battledress, and takes off his belt. Bearsbreath was proud of this belt. It was a good bit of cowhide with a big brass buckle, and this kid Bearsbreath had stuck on to it eleven or twelve regimental badges of all sorts, and in particular a silver stag’s head of the Seaforth Highlanders, and a Scots Guards warrant officer’s starred cross in some sort of silver metal. He was proud of that belt, because in a way, apart from a sort of a stiffness in the back and a sort of way of walking, this belt was all that young Bearsbreath had to show for about twenty years in the Guards, w
oman, twenty lousy years. Bearsbreath takes off this belt, and I thought for the moment that he was going to give Ginger a lamming with it. (In case you want to know, a belt of that sort is very handy if it comes to a roughhouse.) Bearsbreath drops this belt into this kid Ginger’s lap and says: ‘Here you are, you little crybaby. Here’s a birthday present for you,’ and walks out. Young Ginger sat there sort of staring, and a couple of other drummers who had been pulling his leg about him piping his eye stood around and sort of went green with envy, and somebody says: ‘God blimey, I wonder what come over old Bearsbreath,’ because, you understand, woman, that that belt was much more than money to a man like Bearsbreath. Dammit, woman, that was his Army life. That was bits and pieces. That was all he had to show. That was all he’d ever have to show. A Lance-Jack, good for nothing but the lousy Army … but that belt, well, that belt was something.

  “Me, I only gave away a bit of money. That was nothing. Money’s nothing.”

  “Have you got a belt?”

  “Yes, I’ve got a belt.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Yes, but you mustn’t touch it.”

  “I won’t touch it.”

  “Honour bright?”

  “Honour bright.”

  *

  I heard the snick of a buckle, and a little scream of admiration.

  “Isn’t it lovely.”

  “Yuh, isn’t it? There’s badges on that belt that you’ll never see the like of again. Do you see that one there? That dates back to 1855, and that’s pretty nigh a hundred years ago. There’s twenty-two badges on that belt, woman, and every one of them badges belonged to a good comrade of mine, a good friend. And every one of them men is dead and that’s all there is to show, so what do you think of that, woman?”