Sergeant Gregson's War

by Jim Gregson

  The young ladies would have been appalled to hear how their adventures were retailed and embroidered in the sex-starved enclaves of Dhekelia.

  *

  My cricket match was tame by comparison.

  It offered me my first experience of a matting wicket. The ground was perfectly level, but for much of the year the turf here was brown and parched, as it scarcely ever was in England. The men who had planned the army sports ground had taken account of this. The single pitch was a strip of concrete with matting pinned tightly over the top of it.

  It was quick but very true. ‘You can make runs if you get in and play down the line,’ one of our batsmen told me after he had compiled a polished thirty-four. I didn’t get in and didn’t play down the line. I’d never claimed to be much of a batsman, though my big hitting had occasionally been useful to my league team in Lancashire. Batting at number nine, I was hopelessly late on my shot on this swift and unfamiliar wicket. My off stump cartwheeled towards the wicketkeeper as I was still playing studiously forward.

  I consoled myself with the thought that I should be able to work up quite a brisk pace when I bowled on this strip, even though I’d played only once in the last year. It didn’t work out as I’d planned. ‘Erratic’ would have been a kind word to apply to my bowling.

  My deficiencies were exposed by an expert practitioner. He was a lieutenant on a short-service commission, batting at number three for the opposition. He had a blue from Oxford. He’d played in the university match and in four games for Hampshire. My first ball to him was slightly short and slightly wide. It was cut with lightning speed past point’s right hand and it raced to the boundary before anyone could move towards it.

  I tried to correct myself. I went for the fast Yorker, aiming at the batsman’s toe. It was no more than a foot short, but that made it a half-volley to this man. He drove it sumptuously through the covers without apparent effort; the ball hit the base of a bench and bounced ten yards back on to the field. ‘Glad I wasn’t in the way of that!’ said the man who retrieved it. Both shots were things of beauty and joys forever. But Keats was never a pace bowler.

  My wicketkeeper told me during the next over that this handsome striker had been bred on the playing fields of Winchester. I stood at slip and reflected darkly that I had been bred on the damp turf of Lancashire. Bred by the Irish Christian Brothers, who knew even less about cricket than about most other things in life. I thought of Fred Trueman, whose splendid bowling action I had striven to replicate. The sight of a public school cap was reputed to put an extra yard on Fred’s already formidable pace. Now it must do the same for me. I glowered fiercely, striving to transform this pleasant and highly gifted young man into the public school twat I needed.

  I managed to increase my pace, but in doing so lost the rhythm which was essential to the bowling of a gangling young beanpole. My opponent stayed very still during my lengthy run to the wicket. He seemed to be waiting for the short ball on the line of his body and he hooked it unhurriedly for six. Square leg watched the ball with interest and informed me that the ball was still climbing when it crossed the boundary line. The sun was now blazing into my face from the south-west and I was sweating profusely. I over-pitched, and was hit for a straight four with princely timing. The umpire had to leap aside quickly to avoid shattered shins.

  I said my bowling was ‘erratic’. That is better than hopeless: it implies that I produced the occasional good one. The last ball of this third over was the one I had been trying to find during the previous seventeen. It pitched on off stump on a perfect length and it was the fastest I was capable of delivering. It didn’t deviate, as it might have done on an English wicket, but it lifted quite sharply. The county man got an outside edge and the ball flew swiftly but at a comfortable catching height to second slip. We were less extravagant in celebration in those days; we didn’t yelp or exchange high fives. But I ran down the pitch in an extended follow-through, with both arms raised in silent triumph above my head.

  The fielder dropped it. It burst through his hands, hit his shoulder, and ran away from the most undeserved of singles. ‘Sorry, bowler!’ the offender said cheerfully.

  No one drops a catch on purpose. I’d told myself that many times and I’d dropped my own quota. I grinned weakly at the commissioned officer who was the offender. The batsman, who was now beside me, said, ‘Hard luck, sergeant. That one was a cracker!’ With the illogical fury possible only in a frustrated bowler, I was at that moment reviling all officers.

  The star batsman offered no other chance and scourged all bowlers without discrimination. Six wickets fell at the other end, but he was a hundred and ten not out when his team overhauled our hundred and sixty-four. With the scores level, it was not he but the man batting with him who produced the shot that completed my disastrous day.

  This was a panting lieutenant colonel, who had come in only at the death, but who seemed to have decided that his role was to make the winning hit that would conclude the match. He wasn’t much of a batsman and I’d have liked an over at him: his wicket might have restored a little of my shattered morale. No such luck. With the match virtually over, the ball was tossed to a portly leg-spinner whose best days were well behind him. The senior officer mowed extravagantly at his first two balls, without establishing contact. The dwindling crowd laughed a little and waited for the match to end.

  He repeated his ambitious agricultural clout to the third ball, endeavouring to hit it for six over mid-wicket. This time he made contact. The ball flew impossibly high off a thick edge, as if deferring to the batsman’s huge effort rather than his very limited skill.

  I was fielding at cover point. What happened then was an example of how quickly the human brain can operate under pressure. A whole succession of thoughts moved through my mind whilst that ball was in the air. As red ball soared against blue sky, I recalled that I’d been bowled for a duck and taken none for twenty-four in my three overs. I couldn’t remember a worse day on a cricket field.

  But now I was going to catch this ball. I would watch it closely, move the twenty yards necessary as it whirled above my head, and pouch the catch. It wouldn’t win the match. But it would put that posturing lieutenant colonel in his place, restore at least a little of my amour proper, and show the spectators that I wasn’t a complete duffer at the game.

  I judged it well. The ball was in the air for a long time and it moved a little on the late-afternoon breeze. But I was equal to the task. I’d caught higher balls than this in Bacup and in Ramsbottom; this one was a doddle. I clutched the ball against my chest in both of my large hands and prepared to look modest as I accepted the applause for my effort.

  I never knew quite what it was that hit me. It felt like a compact and fast-moving tank. It was only later I learned that it was in fact a small but powerful infantry lance corporal, as intent upon making the catch and dismissing a lieutenant colonel as I was. Each of us was concentrating so fiercely upon doing this that he was totally unconscious of the other’s presence. Each of us was so commendably single-minded that he did not hear the last-minute warning shouts from other fielders.

  The fiercely accelerating frame of the infantryman hit my long legs in the very instant of my triumph. As I clutched the bright red ball against my eager chest, my lanky frame was upended. My head hit the baked, unyielding ground with an impact that made strong men shudder. I was carried insensible from the ground by my distressed team-mates and dispatched immediately to the expert care of the nearby military hospital.

  *

  It was dark when I recovered consciousness. I sighted a tall window with stars beyond it at the end of the room. It seemed a long way away from me. I blinked my eyes repeatedly and it moved a little closer. I was lying on my back and I had a headache. Perhaps I was in heaven. But probably not: I didn’t think headaches were allowed in heaven.

  Nevertheless, there seemed a little while later to be an angel at my side, wiping my forehead with something cool and damp. With infinite care
, I inched my troublesome head slowly sideways. It did not come off and my neck did not splinter. The angel had dark blue eyes and even darker hair. It smiled at me. It had an earthly smile, not an ethereal one, and it was feminine. Perhaps this was Hollywood, not heaven.

  My mouth was dry, but I could speak. The only words I could summon made no sense at all. ‘Don’t you now call for hot water and towels?’

  That smile again. Wonderful, but definitely not an angel’s. ‘Not unless you’re planning to produce a baby. You’re not, are you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m thirsty.’

  ‘I’ll get you a drink. It’ll be easier than helping you give birth.’

  She went away and came back with a jug of water. I looked round the room and saw four other beds, all empty. There were no pictures on the walls and just the single window with the night outside. This definitely wasn’t heaven. I said as she returned, ‘I’m in hospital, aren’t I? And you’re a nurse.’

  ‘Nothing gets past you army education blokes, does it? That’s it: you’re a patient and I’m a nurse – well a sister, actually.’

  ‘I wish you were my sister.’ I smiled dreamily at the ceiling. I remembered a drunk saying that to a barmaid in a Manchester bar. We’d given him a round of applause at the time. Now it seemed to me like crisp repartee. But this delicious presence didn’t seem at all like a barmaid. I assured her very seriously, ‘You’re not at all like a barmaid.’

  ‘You’ve got severe concussion, sergeant. But no other serious injuries. You’re very lucky.’

  ‘I’m very lucky. My head feels better, now.’ I reached out and took her wrist in my left hand. I studied it for a while, then traced the course of a delightful blue vein up her forearm.

  She detached herself gently and put a glass of water in my hands. ‘You’re being kept in hospital under observation. You’ll be here overnight and perhaps for another day or two. I’m the sister in charge of this ward. As you happen to be my only patient, you may call me Ellen, if you wish to do that.’

  ‘I wish to do that.’ I uttered the words quietly and fervently, as if they were a prayer.

  She went away then. I stared at the white ceiling above me and allowed the events of the cricket match to swim slowly back into my head. Then I moved on to the world and my place in it. I was in hospital. I had cool, clean sheets and this whole big room to myself and a wonderful English nurse who’d said I could call her Ellen. She had soft white hands and a gentle, undulating bosom. This wasn’t heaven and it wasn’t Hollywood. But it had all the makings of a damned good skive.

  I tried to think of it as that, but my thoughts kept straying beyond the standard army cliché.

  I wondered whether this was an army hospital or a civilian one. Army, probably, but it didn’t really matter. Like everything else in Dhekelia, it was recently built and no doubt medically up to date. I’d fallen on my feet – silly expression to use, that, when I was here because I’d fallen so heavily upon my head. My nurse returned after a while, looking very crisp and smart in her blue uniform. She was tall and shapely and she moved across the empty ward as if she were on well-oiled castors.

  Male patients always fell for their nurses, didn’t they? I couldn’t think of any pressing reason why Sergeant Gregson should be a deviation from the norm. But my head was hurting again, and I couldn’t think of any chat-up lines. ‘Am I really your only patient tonight?’

  She nodded, reaching for my pulse, brushing my upper arm with the softness of her breast beneath cool cotton. ‘Unlike most hospitals in the world, we’re over-staffed and under-used. We’re staffed for the mass anti-terrorist engagement and the resultant multiple injuries which have never come to us.’

  ‘Not so far.’ The inevitable soldier’s qualification, like touching wood.

  ‘Not so far, no. That means that a man with mere concussion can have all my attention.’

  ‘Severe concussion.’

  ‘All right, severe concussion, Your memory seems to be coming back.’ She slipped a thermometer beneath my tongue. ‘Concussion gives you the right to behave unpredictably, but not irresponsibly. Remember that, please, Jim.’

  She’d used my first name. I wondered who’d told her what it was. I slid my fingers experimentally up to the delicious upper reaches of her arm. ‘Unpredictably, eh?’

  She didn’t remove my hand, She slid her right buttock on to the edge of the bed and let her shoulder rest against mine. We didn’t speak for many seconds. Then she said, ‘You national service?’

  ‘Yes. It’s only because I’m RAEC that I’m a sergeant.’

  ‘And it’s only because I’m out here that I’ve become a sister at my age. I thought you might be national service. It’s lonely out here, don’t you think?’

  I realised suddenly that she felt as isolated as I did in Cyprus. ‘Yes, it is, when you’re not regular army. I’m married. Only just married, but I’ve got a wife at home.’

  I wondered why I’d said that. It seemed exactly the wrong thing to say at this moment. Perhaps it was the concussion. Or was it defensive, an assertion of my Catholic virtue against the scarlet temptations of a sinful world? Whatever the reason, I regretted my words even as I uttered them. As some sort of refutation of them, I moved my other hand clumsily across and put it upon hers.

  She didn’t detach my hand. Instead, she looked for a moment into my face, then eased the rest of her bottom on to the bed, so that she rested more comfortably against me. The night was warm. I was beneath the bedding and she was on top of it, but that left but a single sheet between us. She looked into my face again and then did two unexpected things. She planted an unhurried, chaste kiss upon my forehead. And then she said, ‘I’m married, too.’

  I was becoming more conscious by the second of the warmth of her body against mine, running now down the length of the bed. I said carefully, ‘It’s not much fun being out here, is it, Ellen? Not from that point of view.’

  I’d used her name at last. It was a long time since she’d said I could do that. She smiled at my last clumsy phrase. ‘“From that point of view”, Jim? You mean sex, don’t you? No, it’s not much fun, from that point of view. I didn’t think I’d miss it all that much, but I do.’

  She was very blunt. People had told me that nurses were like that. Or perhaps it was just these extraordinary circumstances, which had thrown us together in an almost deserted hospital. I decided to be equally direct: perhaps the concussion was helping me. ‘I expect you were a virgin when you got married, Ellen.’

  ‘I was. Yes. Most people are, I think.’

  I couldn’t think of what else to say for a while. Then I said, ‘My wife was a virgin. And I was, too. People don’t think of men as virgins, do they? We’re all supposed to be tremendously experienced.’

  ‘I know. When all you are is tremendously randy.’

  I wished she wouldn’t use words like that. It was affecting a part of me that I hoped was decently concealed beneath the bedclothes. Perhaps it was that which prompted a question I had never planned to ask. ‘Are you a Catholic, Ellen?’

  ‘Yes. I expect you are, as well.’

  ‘Yes.’ I grinned, wincing at the hurt in my temple. ‘It’s bloody awful, sometimes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Especially when you find yourself believing less and less of it!’ She giggled unexpectedly and I joined her. I fancied I could feel the eagerness in the pulsing of the soft, vital body beside me. She put her arm carefully, decorously around my shoulders and we lay still for a while. Then I cupped my hand very deliberately and very carefully around the breast which had so excited me when it had brushed casually against me earlier.

  Ellen said, ‘Careful, sergeant!’ But it was no more than a gentle whisper. Almost an encouragement to me, really.

  I wanted to lift the sheet and draw her gently and lovingly beneath it. I wanted to hold her body against mine and then for us to move on from there into whatever came naturally to us. That seemed natural and loving, a culmination o
f the tenderness which had grown quickly and mysteriously between us.

  Yet I did not do what I and she both wanted to do.

  Some accident of birth or upbringing or temperament, some combination perhaps of all three, made both of us afraid to move a muscle to advance the situation. Perhaps we were afraid of destroying the precious thing which had visited us in this quiet place. We were both twenty-two and 1957 seemed to us very modern and very up to date, very forward-looking. A mere ten years later, our conduct would have seemed to us positively Victorian.

  Neither of us knew quite how long we lay together and relished each other. Eventually, Ellen rose and stood for a moment beside the bed. Then she stooped and kissed me on the lips, holding my shoulders firmly, running her tongue for a moment along the line of my teeth, feeling the response against her lips and her tongue. I wanted the moment to last forever, though I knew it could not do that. When it was over, I breathed into her ear, ‘Mine’s called Joy.’

  ‘And mine’s Derek.’ She looked down into my face. I’m sure it looked as young, amazed and vulnerable as hers did. Then she smiled at me and said, ‘I suppose they’re lucky, aren’t they?’ and I knew in that moment that she was taking her leave of me. She poured me a glass of water and left without looking back. I saw her several times again during the hours which followed, each of them firmly in her official capacity.

  I fell eventually into a confused sleep. I dreamt of Joy falling off a donkey and was sad when I woke up and found her so far away. I was discharged from hospital later that day, many hours after Ellen had gone off duty. It was a relief to dismiss emotional confusion and return to the bawdy simplicities of the sergeants’ mess.

  On the next day, I was informed officially that I was to be called as a witness at the court martial of RASC Staff Sergeant George Armstrong.