Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

  “Nelson was a proper man.”

  III

  The Statement of the Budgerigar

  THERE IS a man called John Sparrowhawk, whom men call The Budgerigar. Once he was a Company Quartermaster-Sergeant. Now he is only a sergeant. Vague outlines, like birthmarks, in the bend of his stripes, indicate that little brass crowns used to be attached to his sleeves. He was reduced. There was an incident. The Budgerigar was in a café drinking a cup of tea. He says that he was quiet as a mouse. The general opinion is that The Budgerigar could not have been quiet if he was drinking tea. Anyway, he was interfering with nobody. He tells his story with terrible emphasis:

  “I was drinking my tea …”

  “Then what happened?” asks Hands. “Somebody thought you was drowning and dragged you out?”

  “A civvie tries to pinch my respirator. He thinks I’m not looking and walks out with it. So I taps him on the shoulder, and says: ‘Excuse me.’”

  “I know your taps on the shoulder,” says Hands. “You probably picked up a marble-topped table and tapped him with that. You probably drove him into the floor like a tack.”

  “I taps him on the shoulder and says: ‘Excuse me, that’s my respirator.’ And this civvie tries to make a dash for it. So I caught him by the collar.”

  “And his head came off,” says Hands.

  “His collar came off. Then a military policeman pinches me. A civvie policeman pinches the civvie. He gets three months for trying to pinch my respirator. I get busted for trying to stop him. Justice. Justice! All right, so they busted me. But I’ll be back. This isn’t the first time I’ve been busted. I should worry. I been in this mob more than twenty years. I’ve lost all hope. I lost all hope more than twenty-five years ago, or I’d never have joined this mob. I never did have no luck. Say I play pokey-dice. I can throw five kings in one, but somebody’s certain to throw five aces in one. Look at Hands. If Hands fell into the Thames he’d come out with a new suit of clothes on. With a pocket full of fishes he’d come out. But me, if I so much as spit it comes back and hits me in the eye. My luck is something unnatural.”

  Hands says: “You shouldn’t smoke that pipe. That civvie probably needed that respirator.”

  “Stealing soldiers’ respirators! Luck. Gah! The very first Buckingham Palace guard I ever did, just as the King comes in, I faints. It was my feelings. Could I help my feelings?”

  “Lucky you did faint,” says Hands. “If the King had seen you he’d probably have fainted instead. A face like yours.”

  Between Hands and The Budgerigar there exists a strange friendship. The Budgerigar, earnest and formidable, simple and single-minded, is a bull’s-eye for Hands to hit. Hands pretends never to take The Budgerigar seriously: The Budgerigar pretends that he has never heard anything Hands has ever said. They talk at each other. This has been going on for nearly nine years.

  *

  On hearing of the death of Nelson, The Budgerigar is silent. He swallows that tremendous piece of news as a quicksand swallows the wreck of a great ship. But at last he says: “And I stole his girl.”

  “The blind girl?” asks Hands.

  “I stole Bill Nelson’s girl.”

  “No girl with eyes in her head could let you steal her.”

  “Poor old Bill Nelson was courting a girl for nearly eighteen months. So it took me to do the dirty on him. On old Bill Nelson. Me. Spit in my eye. I’m a dirty swine. I never have no luck. If I bite a penny bun, there’s a stone in it. If I want to do a pal a good turn, I do him a lousy turn. I’m a dirty swine. Yet in a way, it could be argued, mind you, that I done Bill a sort of a good turn, in a kind of a style, it might be, perhaps. Who knows? I kid myself along I might have been doing Bill a good turn all these years. But on the other hand, I don’t know …”

  Hands says: “I know how it was. She was an old maid. What they call a spinster. She liked parrots. Parrots were expensive. She didn’t like to steal one, so she let you steal her. How’d you like your birdseed cooked, Polly?”

  “I never have luck. Unlucky at cards, unlucky at love, unlucky in the Army, and unlucky in everything.”

  Sergeant Crowne says: “Come to think of it, didn’t you go and marry Nelson’s young lady? What I mean … spliced, respectably married?”

  Hands says: “Some people like horrible things. Look at the way kids like golliwogs. Look at Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

  “It was the dirtiest trick I ever played in all my natural puff,” says The Budgerigar.

  “Well,” says Crowne, “the funny thing is, Budgey, Bill Nelson was always sort of under the impression that he dropped you a——” and he names an essential appendage of the masculine anatomy … one of those troubles that never comes singly. To drop one of these, in the jargon of Guardsmen, is to make a serious blunder. To drop one for somebody else is to let him down.

  “Nelson never dropped me nothing,” says The Budgerigar. “He was courting a girl called Joan, a very pretty girl that used to be an attendant at the Kinema at Groombridge. Look—here’s a pitcher of her in 1930.”

  The Budgerigar undoes a button, and pushes a hand into his tunic, and fishes out a wallet, and opens this wallet only a little way, squinting into it cautiously. Obviously, this wallet is full of secrets. He picks out a photograph. On the back of it somebody has written in a little peaky hand:

  Dearest fondest love from Joan.

  The photograph is of a young woman with an enormous quantity of light hair, one and a half times the normal area of eye and much more than her share of bosom. She must be a young woman who likes to make the most of what she has, whatever that may be. She has managed to get nearly twenty-two of her teeth into the picture. There is no doubt that she is holding her breath with a view to expanding her chest and pushing into the camera those organs that our grandfathers called Sacred Founts of Motherhood.

  Sergeant Hands says: “She reminds me of Staff Sergeant Moggridge when he did an impersonation of Janet Gay nor at the concert in 1936. He got a bit of an old coconut mat for a wig, and put two pillows under his sweater. He done an apache dance with some sergeant dressed up like Rudolph Valentino——”

  “Why, that was Piggy Hogg,” says Crowne. “The third ugliest man in the Brigade of Guards.”

  “You’re thinking of Porky Pye.”

  “I’m thinking of Piggy Hogg.”

  “You’re not thinking of no Piggy Hogg, you’re thinking of Porky Pye.”

  “I’m not thinking of no Porky Pye, I’m thinking of Piggy Hogg.”

  “Betcha.”

  “Wotcher betcha?”

  “Betcha million pounds.”

  The Budgerigar says: “But have you ever seen a prettier-looking girl? She was sort of engaged to Bill Nelson. He used to send her all his spare money to save up for the wedding. It was Bill that introduced us. When he had to go away, I was stationed in the Smoke. He said to me: ‘Budgey, sort of keep Joan company a bit when you got nothing better to do, Budgey. Because when I’m not there she pines. She frets, Budgey,’ Bill says, ‘so be a pal and cheer her up off and on, kind of style.’ Right you are. I sees her off and on and takes her out for a walk, or for a drink. No use taking her to the pictures, because she works in them. She’d seen the Love Parade twenty-one times. Nothing like what you’d think went on between us. I didn’t so much as hold her arm when we walked. So help me Jesus, I marched straight to attention at her side and I didn’t open my North-and-South. I never said a dicky-bird, because I was there to cheer her up and nothing more.

  “One Sunday—it was May—so she asked me to walk over Parliament Hill. So we sat down on top of the hill, and so we had an ice. A sixpenny ice. Then she started to talk about things. She asked me did I believe in love? Did I believe in love?”

  The Budgerigar, by instinct, drops into the staccato monotone of an N.C.O. giving evidence at a court-martial:

  “I said I did not believe in love. She said: ‘Oh, but you must.’ I said: ‘What for?’ She said: ‘Lots of girls mus
t fall in love with you.’ I said: ‘Not to the best of my knowledge and belief, Miss Joan.’ She said: ‘I know one who has, anyway.’ I said: ‘May I ast who?’ She said: ‘Oh, nobody,’ and then she bust into tears. I said: ‘Miss Joan, may I ast what is the matter?’ She said: ‘You are an experienced man. I want your advice. What would you do if you was a young girl, properly engaged to a man who had given you an amethyst ring, but who you had ceased to care for.’ I said: ‘Ho?’ She said: ‘Say you went and fell in love with another man?’

  “‘If you was not properly engaged,’ I said, ‘I should go ahead. But then it would depend.’ She said: ‘Depend upon what?’ I said: ‘Depend on everything.’ She said: ‘What do you mean by everything?’ I said: ‘Nothing.’

  “Then she said: ‘What would you do if you were a young girl and the man you were engaged to had sent you money for furniture, and then you had gone and lost this here money?’

  “Then all of a sudden I fluffed. I said: ‘Do you mean to tell me you’ve gorn and lost my pal Bill Nelson’s money?’ She said: ‘A matter of thirty-two pounds.’ I said: ‘Now exactly where did you lost it?’ And she said: ‘If I knew exactly where I lost it, I would know exactly where to find it, but I don’t know, I just lost it.’ I said: ‘You should have put it in the Post Office.’ She said: ‘I don’t trust Post Offices. Oh, what shall I do?’

  “‘Well, I don’t know what you can do,’ I said, ‘but,’ I said, ‘Bill Nelson is my chum,’ I said, ‘and you are his young lady. It’d be a pity for there to be trouble between my china and his young lady. So I’ll lend you the money to put back,’ I said. Because, you see, I had about forty-odd quid saved up. My old Mum left me a matter of seventy-five-odd quid not long before. I had lent a matter of twenty-odd quid to a certain party, and still had most of the rest, because I always was a careful man with my money. So I tells her that I’m prepared to let her have this little bit of dough.

  “‘But then,’ I said, ‘do you mean to tell me that on top of losing my pal’s money, you’ve gone and fancied some other geezer?’ She said: ‘I do. I have.’ I said: ‘Well, anyway, it is bad enough for you to go and break my pal’s heart. But it is even worse to go and lose the money he has earned serving his country with the sweat of his brow, so I’ll draw it out for you. And don’t you go losing it again,’ I said. ‘You didn’t go giving it to this other geezer, I hope? Because if you did, just point him out to me and with all due respects I will tie his legs in a hard knot round his neck and choke him.’ She said: ‘Oh no.’ I said: ‘S’matter fact, I think you better tell me who this kite is, so I can give him just a little bit of a hiding as a matter of form. Because you are Bill’s girl, and I am entitled to protect you.’

  “‘You can’t do that,’ she said.

  “‘Why not?’ I said.

  “‘Because you can’t give yourself a hiding,’ she said, and at that she busts into tears again.

  “I fluffed what she was getting at. ‘What me?’ I said. ‘You,’ she said. I said: ‘Lemme pay for these ices and go.’

  “She cried like a fire picquet. She cried like a hydrant. Since they caught me with tear gas that time when I had a faulty respirator and got the full blast of the stuff in that test chamber, I never see such spontaneous tears. She had prominent eyes, kind of style, and it was like squashing grapes. She said: ‘Oh, you drag a confession out of me and then you run away … you and your Bill. I’ll tell Bill all about you.’

  “‘You’ll tell Bill all about what?’ I said.

  “‘All about you,’ she said. ‘Making me love you.’

  “‘Oo I never!’ I said.

  “‘Oo you did,’ she said, ‘and I shall tell Bill.’

  “‘I never touched you,’ I said.

  “‘You never touched me on purpose,’ she said.

  “‘You’re showing me up,’ I said. ‘People are looking.’

  “‘My life is ruined,’ she said, ‘you beast, you beast, you beast.’

  “I said: ‘What do you want me to do, for God’s sake?’

  “‘You’ve got to marry me,’ she said.

  “I said: ‘If I marry you will you promise to stop crying?’

  “She said: ‘Yes.’

  “So I said: ‘All right then. Stop crying.’

  “I just can’t stand seeing women crying. It gets me groggy. I can’t bear it. I once promised to adopt a black woman’s child because she was crying. That’s why I joined the Army. A mulatto I wouldn’t have minded, but this was as black as coal, and I’d never seen her before in my life. You promise a thing, and there you are. She said: ‘Darling, all the time I knew you really cared for me.’

  “I didn’t have any money smaller than a ten-shilling note, except a lucky five-shilling piece that my Mum’s aunt give me. I wanted to get away quick. I couldn’t very well leave half a quid. I left the dollar. I couldn’t hang about for change with millions of people laughing at me, and so there it was. I lost me lucky dollar. She said: ‘When is it to be?’ I said: ‘Gord knows.’ She said she’d arrange everything, and so she did. I begged and prayed to be sent East. They wouldn’t let me go. I nearly run away to join the Foreign Legion, but I didn’t know how to go about it. So we got spliced. We been married ten years. She’s been ill with her nerves all the time. Sort of laughs and cries and tears her hair whatever goes wrong. If she is not well she’s afraid she’s going to die and she busts into tears. If she’s not not well, she’s afraid she’s going to be ill and she goes off the deep end. And so that’s how it is.”

  “Any kids?” asks Crowne.

  “No,” says The Budgerigar. “The first time I sort of tried … to kind of … have anything to do with her … she called the police. She said marriage was rude. So I never did. After losing that five-bob bit I never had no luck at all.”

  Crowne says: “And you think you did Bill Nelson a dirty trick.”

  “Well, I did steal his young lady,” says The Budgerigar.

  “A doctor did me a bad turn like that once,” says Hands. “He stole a bit of grit out of my eye.”

  “Ah,” says The Budgerigar. “But she said afterwards that the only man she ever loved was poor Bill. She said I was an adventurer. She said I was a Don Jewen. She said that she might have hit it off with Bill, but not with a beast in human guise. Meaning me.”

  “She sounds terrible,” says Hands.

  Sergeant Sparrowhawk, the broken quartermaster, the roaring lion of the parade ground, sticks out a jaw like the prow of a destroyer and thrusts forward a forehead like that of an ox. This forehead seems, somehow, directly linked with a neck like the stump of an elm tree. He hunches his shoulders and says: “You mind what you’re saying when you talk about my good lady. Who knows? Maybe I ruined her life and Bill’s …?”

  IV

  The Man Who Saved Thurstan

  THERE IS a man who appears to be a product of many different kinds of hunger, and his name is Thurstan. Everybody knows him. Nobody likes him. He is too tough. He has had to kick and bite his way through too many things. He has walked between great, grey overhanging circumstances, as between elephants: all his life he has had to look left and right at the same time … he has had to be prepared for a quick duck, a lightning dive, a tigerish spring and swerve. His life has depended too much upon the little efforts that he has been able to make. He was born in the badlands of the Border, and scraped a living out of the slag heads about the ironworks and the coal mines. He is scarred and silent. He has the obstinacy and the hitting power of a mule; a giant’s strength, and something of a giant’s tyranny. He squeezes whatever he picks up, and there is a certain venom in his friendliest nudge. He went absent twice. Once, he got seven days for hitting a man. The man borrowed Thurstan’s best boots. There is a whole legend about it. The man had to appear on an Extra Parade. His boots were dirty. Thurstan’s boots on the shelf next to his were brilliantly clean, and since Thurstan also wore a wide-fitting nine, he borrowed them for half an hour.

  Thurstan came in f
ive minutes after the man had left, and said: “Where’s me boots?”

  Somebody said: “Mac borrowed them for a minute for his Extra Parade.”

  Thurstan said: “Ah.”

  When the man came back Thurstan walked to within arm’s length and hit him precisely, with terrific force, on the point of the jaw; knocked him out, and then, while Mac lay on the floor, methodically took his boots off and put them back on the shelf over his bed. There was a certain savagery about this. It horrified the other men in the hut. While Thurstan was in close arrest, they played football with his best boots, just to teach him a lesson. When Thurstan had finished his seven-days’ C.B. (Mac got seven days, too, for borrowing the boots) he came in with a feral snarl and challenged twenty-eight men to single combat, one at a time, or all together. And such was the ruthless ferocity of this man that his challenge went unanswered.

  Now, when The Budgerigar stops talking, and the men stop laughing, and there is little sound in the hut except the sibilant scrape of twopenny nailbrushes upon web equipment, a hard cracked voice speaks from a corner near the door. It is a voice that comes out in queer gulping periods. It resembles the noise made by a bottle of beer, too abruptly inverted. The mouth is reluctant to let the words go, but when they get beyond the palate the lips spit them out like cherry-stones. It is Thurstan talking. When he talks, men pause in their spitting and their polishing, and they listen in a kind of incredulous amazement. I was going to say that they listen as men listen to a well-trained parrot; this is not quite true. They listen without amusement … only with interest, interest born of distrust. Thurstan is not a talker. He has nothing to say, and nobody to say it to. Indeed, he is not talking to any man now. He is not even talking to the twenty-nine or thirty other men in the hut. He is talking to himself and the universe. He is hurling some expression of something into the teeth of the world which rolls in loneliness down space. He is just talking: