Sergeant Nelson of the Guards (33 page)

“’E won prizes, though, sometimes. I remember ’e won a box of paints for painting, and a medal for swimming, and a book—a medical book about some Doctor Johnson or other. ’E was educated there …”

*

You know the kind of thing.

There is a large school building, as red as if it has been skinned, in the middle of a playground. On one of the walls somebody has chalked a representation of a wicket, which stands out, pale and skeletal, against a background of dim bricks dotted with the marks of wet rubber balls.

Some hundreds of boys rush about, throwing things at one another and uttering appalling cries. In another segregated corral a large
number
of girls dash from place to place, squealing. Then a whistle blows, or a bell rings, and everybody goes into the big red building.

“Hands together! Eyes closed!” The children strike attitudes of
supplication
. Then they say:

and so on, to
Zarection-a-body-a-lifer-lasting
GAR-MEN.
Then, having swung through the Lord’s Prayer:

they have uttered their confession of faith and made their demands on Heaven. So they get to work. They learn Reading, Writing, Arithmetic. They “do” History, which is Kings and Battles. They take in
Geography
, which is rivers and mountains and imports and exports, and is contained in brown books. They learn passages out of the plays of
William
Shakespeare; and “have Art” which consists of pencil lines dragged round areas of paper shaped like jugs, cups, or bottles. In the middle of the morning they have a Playtime: they throw more things at one another, and utter more appalling cries, and tell one another the latest snippets of gynæcological misinformation. A whistle brings them in again. There are more lessons. At twelve they pray that the Lord may be present at their tables, and then rush away, howling, to eat. They return at two, thank God for their food and beg Him to give manna to their souls; and so go back to lessons. At four or four-thirty they pray that God will guard them against the perils and dangers of the coming night …

Thanking God in their hearts that the agonies of the day are over, they emerge, striking tremendous blows at every head within reach and hurling shocking epithets at their friends and enemies. Some go
straight home. Others hang about looking for things to break. They have got over the arid wilderness of the afternoon. They have picked their way over the soggy morass of the things they have been given to learn. Somewhere between boredom and fear of punishment, they have picked up a few shreds of fact and nonsense … the technique of addition, subtraction, and multiplication … how to read and write a bit … Mark Anthony’s speech out of
Julius
Caesar,
which is already fading from their minds like a word drawn on a steamy window. Those who wouldn’t do as they were told, or couldn’t repeat what they had heard, were slapped about the head a little or beaten on the backside—which is not the place to hammer home the accumulated wisdom of the centuries.

They find it all a bore. It is a bore. They want to grow up quickly; get old, smoke in public, drink beer, muck about with girls, shave, spit, back horses, wear long trousers, and in their turn beat little boys with an iron adult hand.

I know just what kind of education they gave Bill Nelson.

He was a bright boy, Mrs. Fish said. He won a scholarship which entitled him to a free place in a secondary school. But his mother wouldn’t let him go. He stayed at school until he was nearly fourteen. At that age he seems to have been morose and touchy, horribly
sensitive
about his wretched clothes, his lanky legs, his long wrists, and his uncut hair.

His mother had taken to bemoaning her lot. The boy Nelson was overwhelmed by pity for her. It makes a picture in my mind. I can see it clearly … a dark, depressing picture. On the one side, the mother, Henrietta, a tall woman carrying the wreckage of a certain hot-eyed beauty in an aura of recrudescent gin, cigarette smoke, Opopanax
perfume
and the perspiration of sexual hyperaesthesia … a big-boned, loose-mouthed woman got up in shoddy finery. On the other, the boy who had been born with a black eye, the villain who had nearly killed his mother in his desperate struggle to be born; the much-blamed,
much-beaten
child who had eaten and drunk at her expense; the offspring of
an absentee father; the walking liability, the living reproach, the
breathing
encumbrance.

*

“She took up with a feller called Daly, a feller that worked for a bookie, and this Daly used to be a boxer. Billy got a job with a man that ’ad a paper shop, delivering things and ’elping in the shop. Every farthing ’e earned ’e give Etta, but she was always crying to Billy about all she’d done for ’im. Daly come to live with ’er, and there used to be ructions when they rowed. ’E knocked ’er about a bit. Billy tried to stick up for ’is mother. Once ’e knocked Daly down with a poker, and ’e was only sixteen at the time, too. But Etta went for Billy bald-’eaded when ’e done that, and scratched all ’is face. Daly kep quieter after that, though ’e sometimes went for Billy something wicked when ’e’d ’ad a few drinks.

“Billy ’ad a lot of different jobs. Nobody ever troubled to ’ave ’im taught a trade. Nobody cared about ’im. It’s a wonder ’e didn’t grow up to be a burglar, or a waster, or something. ’E must ’ave good blood in ’im, a lovely nature. ’E was a bit rough with people sometimes, but never with ’is mother. Whenever ’e talked about ’er it was like ’earing er talk about ’erself, you know. All about the way she’d suffered and what she’d been through. Then it all broke up.

“Billy was just over seventeen, and strong as a lion. I was in Etta’s kitchen at the time. Daly and ’er was ’aving words, and Daly called ’er a
W.
Billy said nothing but walked over to ’im and ’it ’im straight in the face. It was a punch that made my blood run cold. It sounded like a mallet. Daly fell over and knocked ’is ’ead against the table leg. I thought ’e was done for then. But it was concussion. Then, when all the
screaming
and shouting was over, and Daly was bandaged up, Etta turns round to Billy and tells ’im straight out that she wants ’im to clear out and stay out. ‘You only like making trouble for me,’ she says; ‘you’ve done nothing but make trouble for me all your life. I ’ate the sight of you,’ she says. ‘Go ’way, get out of this ’ouse. Get out and keep out. I mean it,’ she says. ‘Go to ’ell. I can’t stand you, and never could.’

“So Billy goes. ’E was crying. ’E didn’t ’ave anything to pack, you see, so ’e went as ’e was. Crying. It broke my ’eart.

“’E stayed on at ’is job, which was no good, much. And then ’e got fed up, you see. ’E said to me that ’e was tired of everything, and wanted to run away from it all. Then I didn’t see ’im for a year or more, and then one day ’e comes to see me in a big grey overcoat and a brass kind of cap. ’E’d joined the Army. ’E sent every penny ’e ’ad, almost, to Etta. Then she was took bad and went to the ’ospital. She knew she was going to die, and she was afraid. Billy come to see ’er. She said: ‘Forgive me, Willy’ (she always called ’im Willy: it was a name ’e ’ated). She said: ‘I’ve treated you like a dog.’ And ’e said: ‘You’ve always been a good mother to me.’ Then she died, and she was buried, and Billy went away and I never saw ’im again ever.”

*

So that is how it was.

Nelson went into the Army because at that time he wanted to get away from life. He took to the Army as another man might have taken to drink: he wanted to drown himself. He ran away into the Army as a wounded animal runs away into a solitude: he wanted to be alone with his wounds. The Army was a kind of wilderness, in which he could lose himself. So he lost himself; and found himself; and so he became Hi-de-Hi Bill the Bucko Sergeant, Nelson, the One-Man Wave of Destruction.

B
UT
something prompted me to keep my mouth shut, and Bearsbreath went on:

“What does anybody join the Army for, anyway? Some join because they’re no good for anything else. They’ve got no proper go in them of their own accord, and they’ve got to be forced by law and discipline. Some join the Army because they’re browned off with the job they’ve got, or haven’t got, in Civvy Street; and in the Army, at least, they can eat regular. I’m talking of peacetime. Some join because of women. Some join because they think they’re going to see the world; or because it’s easier for a Guardsman to get into the Police after he’s served a few years; or because they fancy themselves in a Guard Order. Only one or two join because they’re cut out to be soldiers.”

“Some join because their fathers were in the mob,” says Crowne.

“Some join because they’re made to join,” says the Butcher. “A kid’s sent to the Duke o’ York’s School. He gets Army training from eight onwards. Then he becomes a drummer or a tradesman. I knew one that never grew up. He never grew beyond about four-foot-four. Tichy Seeds: remember Tichy? Forty years old, he looked like a kid, from the back: in the Sports he just made the weight for the little boys’
tug-o
’-war team. But from the front he had a moustache like a hand
scrubber
. And a voice! What a voice. A voice near as loud as Tibby Britton’s. And he was a Full Sarnt. Drums, of course.”

“Wasn’t it Tich that got fourteen days for the bull about the
Field-Marshal’s
Baton?” asks Hands. “He was a drummer at the time. Some officer’s lecturing the drums about some regimental Fanny Adams, and
this officer says something about ‘In every soldier’s knapsack there is a Field-Marshal’s Baton.’ And this kid says: ‘Gorblimey, I thought it was me fife!’ The officer heard, and thought he was being insubordinate. The kid thought he was whispering, only he had such a shocking voice he bawled it instead of whispering it.”

“Trust a drummer,” says Crowne. “Nobody gets into more trouble than drummers. Every Defaulters’ Drill is lousy with drummers. You can’t punish them kids—they’ve had it all before. The training they get, they can sing and dance a Defaulters’ chasing. They’re ’ard, them kids. I’d as soon ’ave a couple of fifteen-year-old drums with me in a scrap as plenty of ’airyarse Guardsmen I know.”

“Once when I was in Pompey,” says Butcher the Butcher, “I was going to the station with a drummer walking just behind me. I would of let this kid walk with me, only it doesn’t do to chuck away your
dignit
y
too bloody much in a public place. A kid that looked as if there was napkins on under his greatcoat. A whey-faced runt about
three-foot
-two that ought to ’ve messed in a wet-nursery and carried a titty bottle instead of a water bottle. Well, so three Marines, a bit lit, come barging along and start some funny stuff, and it end up with a fight. This drum joins in. Him and me against three Marines, mind you. Well, we was still holding our own ten minutes later when the Gestapo broke us up. He could go, that kid. Maybe the bloke he picked on—a Marine about seven and a half foot long by about four across—was only playing at fighting ’im and didn’t want to hurt. But you should ’ve seen that kid. He was little, but he was like a ghost with a hammer in his hand, like Jimmy Wilde.”

“Little men can fight, very often,” says Hands.

“I don’t like ’em,” says Crowne. “They sort you out. The littler they are and the bigger you are, the more they sort you out, and whatever ’appens you’re in the crap. ’It ’em and you’re a bully. Ignore ’em and you’re yeller.”

“Psychology,” says Hands. He rolls this word on his tongue. “
Psychology
. Psychology means that a man’s got to be handled with kid
gloves in case he goes off the deep end. Recruits suffer with Psychology. So do little men. A recruit one week squadded ’ll work himself skinny to show he’s willing and ready to do his stuff. You’d die of strain if you kept on as you go on at the Depot. After you’re trained, of course, you lose a good deal of your Psychology and start hanging round the Naffy like a good soldier. Well, with some little men it’s the same. They want to show they’re not afraid of anybody. They hit you back before you hit them first. It’s exactly the same as a rookie moving before he’s given an order. Some of ’em get so keyed up they have to go to the sick-bunk for Bromide. It’s the best thing in the world for a touch of Psychology, a nice spot of Bromide.”

“Nerves are ruination to a soldier,” says Crowne.

“That’s what training is for,” says Hands. “To get rid of nerves. Look at me. I’ve got no nerves in all my body. Yet once I was a bundle of ’em. That’s how I came to join this mob. You would have died laughing, Butch. I was standing looking at one of them posters.
Join
the
Army
and
See
the
World.
And as I’m looking there comes up a Recruiting Sarnt. They were on a nice racket in peacetime, them pigs. They got a
commission,
or something, on approved recruits. I’m talking of a few years back. I was so nervous—this is a fact, Crowney—I used to get bound up and have to take medicine: I was shy about making a noise. Honest to God. Well, this feller comes up to me, and says ‘Hello.’ I blushed like a pansy, from head to foot. I’d never seen such a man in my life. He was about the same build as Butcher, here, but he carried himself better and had a tash exactly like the horns on a sacred cow in India or somewhere. Chest like the Albert Hall. It went bloobety-boom like a drum whenever he talked.

“He said: ‘Well, son? Thinking of joining the Army? See the world? Travel a bit? Put on a bit of bone and muscle and a punch like the kick of a grey-bellied mule in a thunderstorm?’ He was using
Psychology
, there, you see, because I was as weedy as a clurk and doughy-faced. ‘Be a man,’ he says. ‘Be a soldier. Come and have a drink and we’ll talk about it.’ I didn’t like to, but I was too shy to say no. We had a mild ale.
He started reeling off the old bull-and-boloney about the Army. ‘The Guards! Think of standing over there spick and span and trained to a hairbreadth guarding the body of your King and your Queen. Do you want to go East? Think of Egypt. I’ve been there many a time. Peaches and oranges growing on every street corner and plump little brides with eyes as black as charcoal ready to fall down and worship you like a god. China! Lovely sunshine, live like a Mandarin in silks and satins, cushy little drill parades for gentle exercise in the morning and romance! Talk about your picture palaces! Talk about your story-books! Little princesses with almond eyes and tiny little dolls’ feet ready to cover you with silks and jewels. Palestine, the Holy Land! Are you serious-
minded
? Read your Bible? I’m a reading man myself, son. You get leisure and time to do whatever you like in the Guards, and get paid well for doing it; paid like a gentleman, and fed like a Prince, and treated like a Lord. You say you’re a Bible-reading man?’ (I’d never said any such thing.) ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘many and many’s the time I’ve read my Bible—Old
Testament
, New Testament, and all the other Testaments from cover to cover and back. Well, you’ll be taken to see the Tomb of Jesus Christ Himself. You don’t find a thing like that on every street corner, I don’t mind telling you…. Or maybe you’re an Atheist? So am I. An Atheist to the backbone. You’re free to believe anything you like in the Guards. Are you a Roman Candle? I’m a bit of a Roman Candle myself. Or if you’re a Jew, we’ll send you to Synagogues: some of my best friends are Jews.

“‘But,’ he says, ‘don’t think I’m trying to talk you into anything. It don’t rest with me. I can show you the ropes. But you’ve got to be fit, because in the Guards, for instance, they take only the cream of the population and the salt of the earth. You look to me just the sort of man they’re crying out for. And if you’re not, you will be. Look at me. I go eighteen stone, all bone and muscle, and yet when I joined I was six-foot-five and weighed nine-stone-two. But now … I’m an old man now. But the other day some kids were trying to put the weight, and I just showed ’em how to do it. I didn’t think I still could. I picked up
that ball of iron and tossed it through the Orderly Room roof, two hundred yards away. Yet once … why, when I was issued my first pair of ammunition boots, I fell down when I tried to pick ’em up, and when I put ’em on I couldn’t move my legs.

“‘Now look. What’s your job? Nothing much, I’ll be bound. Then why not just look in and have the doctor—a Harley Street Specialist: you’d pay him a hundred pounds’ fee for the sort of examination we’ll ask him to give you free—have him just look at you? It’s my business to offer advice and help those that need help—not to try and talk you into anything or persuade you to do anything you didn’t mean to do in the first place. Son, sonny boy, can’t you see I’m trying to help you? Can’t you see I’d give my right hand to do you a good turn, because I liked your face the minute I saw it?
Can
’t
you
see
that, kid? I’m only a weak old man, but I want to help the youngsters before I die … and I haven’t got much longer to live. Humanity is my country. To do good is my religion. Come and serve your King and your Country. As the poet says:

The poet that wrote the little red book of poetry said that, son, and it’s true. The lordliest life on earth! Shall we just take a tiny little look in?’

“And before I knew what was happening,” says Hands, “I’d joined the Coldstream Guards. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to have tea with my sister when I ran into that Recruiting Sergeant. But I was too shy to say I wouldn’t join the Army after all he’d said. And then when I realized I was about an hour late for my tea, I was so frightened of what my sister would say that I’d probably have run away from home, anyway. I had some idea of signing on for about three years. Then some bloke says to me: ‘Do you want to sign for twenty-one years?’ I says: ‘Yes, sir, no, sir.’ ‘What am I supposed to say to that?’ he says. ‘Yes, sir, no, sir…. Three bags full?’ I says: ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Make your
mind up,’ he says, ‘is it twenty-one?’ To save further argument I says: ‘Yes, sir.’ And bang went the best years of my life. My feelings were such that I wetted myself.”

“Any regrets?” asks Dagwood.

“What’d be the use of regrets?” asks Hands. “I look at it like this: Say I hadn’t signed. What ’d have happened? I was a squirt, no good for anything much. I’d have gone stuttering and blushing on and on in some twopenny-half-penny job, without the nerve to ask for a
five-bob
rise or talk back to a kid of ten. But now? I’m under orders, yes. I’m not my own boss, no. But no more is Churchill, no more is the King, no more is the Pope, no more is anybody his own boss. Whole point is, I’m not afraid of any man or anything; with the possible exception of wasps.”

“Funny thing—I’m afraid of caterpillars,” says The Budgerigar.

“You’re afraid they’ll run after you and catch you and eat you, you big-booted lettuce-leaf,” says Hands.

At this moment something happens. For the first and last time in recorded history, The Budgerigar has a flash of inspiration. He replies to Hands. He drops a pearl of repartee:

“And you? You scared a wasp might take your nose for a pot o’
raspberry
jam?”

But Butcher, picking on the word
jam,
stamps down The
Budgerigar’s
one and only witticism by saying:

“Jam! Remember Blinding Oliver? I took him to a friend’s for tea, once. He behaves himself all hunky-dory till he wants some jam. Then

Olly shouts out, at the top of his voice: ‘Pass the——ing Pozzy!’ So

I pulled him up. ‘Now then, Olly,’ I said. And he said: ‘Sorry, miss. I meant to say: “Pass the——ing jam”.’”

“Look who’s here,” says Dagwood.

“Joe Purcell,” says Crowne.

Hands, of course, says: “She thought her little girl’s nightie was white, till she met old Persil. Ha-ha-ha!”

Corporal Purcell comes in and says: “What’s this about Bill Nelson?”

“Snuffed it,” says Crowne. “Ask Butch.”

Butcher the Butcher tells him.

“Pity,” says Purcell.

Another corporal comes in. “Who said Bill Nelson was dead?” he asks.

This is Corporal Bittern, sometimes known as “Twice Shy.” It would be a waste of time to ask him how he heard about Nelson. News spreads in camps. There is something telepathic about it: it is as strange and disquieting as signal-drums in a dark jungle. Who told who what? When? How? What little bird carried the whisper? Find the
breeding-place
of the herring—witness the mating rites of the eel—then try and trace the source of an Army news-flash or the place where a rumour gestates.

Butcher the Butcher explains again.

“Ha,” says Bittern, and he draws a very deep breath….