Sergeant Nelson of the Guards (27 page)

“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 …?”

T
HERE 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 five 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:

*

“Death.

“People die.

“Good job. They’re not fit to live. When they’re fit to die they live. When they’re fit to live they die. Me father lived. He was fit to die. Me mother too.

“I wish death was a man. Then some would be alive that is dead and some would be dead that’s alive. Nelson is dead.

“Everything good dies. Nelson’s dead.

“I knew him. No one else knew him. I knew him. No one else knew me. He knew me. He knew me fine. No other man knocked me off my feet but he did. Ah, he did! The second time I went absent he caught me. No, he didn’t. Nobody caught me. I gave myself up.

“The first time I went absent I gave myself up. It was because….

“I don’t know why it was. I did. I just came back. It was rotten in here. It was rotten out there. It was rotten everywhere. But there was a thing. I came back.

“I can’t be in one place. Time comes I’ve got to go. Go away. Away. Anywhere away. So long as it’s a long way. What do I care where? It came again. When it means fighting I’ll not go away. I’ll stay. I’ll stay for the fighting. Hah. They know me. For the fighting I’ll stay. But … maybe soon I’ll go away again. If I must they can’t hold me. I’ll go, if I got to go.

“I went. I went quiet. Pass till midnight. I get a bus. I go. Midnight? Hah. Midnight in hell! Back? Me? Hah. No. I got to go away. I got to go a long way away. Where? Hah. Where … I got to go. Got to get out. I got. Where? Pound. I go home. There isn’t a place. Old lass? God knows. Where? Hah. Get a civvie suit. Pinch one. Get out. Go away. Go away again. Anywhere away. They feed a lost dog. Or they kill a lost dog. Hah. Two weeks. Three weeks. Hah. You need grub. You want to eat. You can’t work. You want papers. You’re
military
age. They got you.

“You go down. You turn left. You turn right. You go deep. Deeper. Find a hole. Crawl in. Then rock. Nothing. Stay and die. Or crawl back. Absent. This regiment. That camp. No papers. Gimme a cup of tea. All right son. Cup of tea. Escort. Go back.

“He was my squad instructor. Nelson. No copper. No nark. A fool.

“Mad. Crazy. Him and another. He talks…. Still hungry,
Thurstan
? Ah. All me life. Fancy tea? Ah. There’s caff. There’s no food.
Tinned salmon sandwich. Fancy that? Ah. Another tea? Ah. Another sandwich? Ah. Thurstan, you’re hungry. You mug. You horrible man, Thurstan, but you’re hungry, brother. Ah. What did you go and run away for, Thurstan? What did you go and do it for? You mug. Are you yeller? Na. Na. Not yeller. I know you’re not yeller, Thurstan. I can see you’re not yeller, Thurstan. I know what it is. Ah? Ah. Just nuts. Want to get away. Run out. Get away from everything. Go up in the air, and hide yourself, you horrible man, or go down right into the guts of the earth and bury yourself there. Anything to get away, isn’t that it, you mug? Ah. Have another sandwich. We’ve got to be getting back. It means a steady twenty-eight days for you, Thurstan. The Glass House this time. You thought you had a tough break before, but you never had anything like the Glass House. I’m sorry for you.

“Give him one of those cakes. With that sort of coconut stuff on the top. And give the mug a lump of that stuff with dates in it. Eat it while you can, you poor mug. Anything on your mind, Thurstan? Na. You ain’t got no mind. Na. I don’t know what to do with you, Thurstan.

“Nor me with myself.

“Why d’you give yourself up, Thurstan? Want to go back? Na. Then why? To eat. You’ve ate, Thurstan. Ah. I’ve ate. Are you a man or an animal, Thurstan? Whatever you like. Neither. Eating? What’s eating? Cats eat their kittens, Thurstan. Ain’t you a man? Na. Then be-Jesus I’ll make you one. They done something to you. Thurstan, you poor louse. You got something, but it’s lost, lost in you like a needle in a haystack. Okey doke—I’m a magnet, see, cock?

“Nelson. Crazy.

“It’s a bit of waste ground and a dark lane and the station. Do you want to bust loose, Thurstan? Bust loose and run?

“You go to the police. Deserter. I’m absent. Hear? Run and be hunted down? I’ll leave it to you. Go on. Run away if you want to. Run away. You yeller dog.

“I smack him.

“He smacks me. He’s light. But good. I’m stronger. But you can’t hold him. We fight. I fight good. I fight mad. I can hit. Anybody want to see how I can hit? You know I can hit. Ask Mac. Ask
anybody
. I can smash a door. A wall. I can smash. But Nelson I can’t. No. He’s good. Come on, Thurstan. Or do you want to run away?

“There’s something. I never run away from any man, in any fight. But the heart goes out of me and I run. I run in the dark. He doesn’t follow. All over the tin cans and dirty dead cats and rubbish and muck on the waste ground and up the street and round the back doubles and over a court and the night as black as bloody pitch. Stop.

“Night. A bit of the coconut off that cake mixed up with some blood in me teeth.

“Hit the wall. Smash me hand. What for? For nothing. Think. Run away? Yes. Ah. But from a proper man? Run away from the Army, run away from the coppers. But Nelson? Drop him a——? I should be a mug. I should take meself back for him? A sergeant? Hah. I’m not a fool.

“And then I walk, I walk back, I walk right back. I walk right back to the station. Train. Not in. A bit of a light. A bit of a light on a bit of a brass star. Nelson and the other one. I say Got a fag? Not a word from that man. Not a word. He gives me a Woodbine.
Hi-de-hi
, Thurstan … made up yer mind to give me the honour of your company back to camp? Ah. Light? Light. Like I said, Thurstan, there can be a needle in a great big haystack … but there
is
a needle
in
the haystack, somewhere in that haystack. Wash. What we want is a good wash. Stick it out, Thurstan. Stick it out like a pal. Be a pal, Thurstan, and stick it out. It’s lousy. It’s dull. Monotonous. Unjust. Uncomfortable. Anything you like. But it ain’t being done for you. Nor me. Nor the C.O. Not for anybody in particular. It’s a thing. You got to stick. Because you’re a man and not an animal. You got to stick it out on your own, day by day, night by night of your own free will. After the war’s all over go to hell your own way. Till then, come to hell our way.

“Ah.

“Hi-de-hi, Thurstan!

“Ho-de-ho, Sergeant!

“By the Christ, he was a man.

“A man.”

*

And a silence comes upon the hut.

T
HIS SILENCE
lasts for about two seconds. Then Thurstan breaks it by throwing down his boots and going out of the hut. As the big, loose door rattles shut behind him Bearsbreath says:

“I think that feller is going properly mad. I don’t feel safe
sleeping
next to him. One of these days he’s going to run amok. Could you make head or tail of that rigmarole, Crowne?”

“Well,” says Sergeant Crowne, “in a general sort of way I could, sort of. I think I fluff what that geezer is driving at. Bill Nelson kind of won his respect. Though I can’t say that Geordie makes himself clear. Blimey, I’ve known Arabs and Jews that talked almost better English than that kid.”

At this a Guardsman whose name is Jack Cattle says:

“Thurstan talks as you or I talk in our sleep. You’ve got to piece what he says together like a jigsaw puzzle. He doesn’t hand you a line of talk, but clues, like a crossword puzzle. Of course Thurstan’s nuts, and dangerous. But what he was trying to say was something like this…. You or I would say it like this….
I’ve
never
known
where
to
go.
Civvie
Street
was
hell,
because
I
couldn’t
muck
in
there.
The
Army
was
hell
because
I
couldn’t
muck
in
there
either.
All
my
life
I
haven’t
known
whether
I’ve
been
going
or
coming.
All
my
life
I’ve
been
short
of
grub
and
everything.
I
gave
myself
up
because
I
needed
to
eat.
I
didn’t
come
back
of
my
own
free
will.
It
was
hunger
that
dragged
me
back
like
a
dog
that’s
been
on
the
loose.
Nelson
saw
that.
Nelson
wanted
me
to
be
a
man
with
a
will
of
his
own,
and
not
some
kind
of
a
dog
nosing
round
the
dustbins.
So
he
gave
me
a
chance
to
break
away,
after
he’d
fed
me
some
grub.
Nelson
took
that
chance. 
He
gambled
his
tapes
on
a
feeling
he
had
about
me.
And
then
I
really
came
back
of
my
own
free
will
and
took
whatever
punishment
was
coming
to
me.

“Get it? That’s what Thurstan would have said if he could have said it; only he can’t say it … he fiddles about and fumbles trying to get it out; shy, not knowing what to do or say, not certain of
himself
, like a kid of sixteen trying to undo a girl’s dress for the first time.”

This man Cattle is one of the oddest characters in the Brigade of Guards. He is a regular Guardsman of more than twelve years’
service
. It is said that he comes of what they call a Good Family, and has been to good schools. Sergeant Hands says Oxford, and Cambridge, and Harrow, and Eton. When newcomers ask Cattle what on earth made him join the Army, he replies, quite truthfully, that he joined the Army because he liked it; that he doesn’t want a commission or a stripe because he is really perfectly happy as an ordinary soldier. Cattle went into the Army as another man might have gone to a South Sea island. Here, he feels untrammelled. He has no responsibilities. To him, the routine is gentle, almost soporific. He enjoys cleaning his equipment as some men enjoy gardening: it gives him time to think, it leaves his mind in a state of pleasant detachment. He loves the simple rhythm of a route march, and finds relaxation in a drill parade.
Musketry
revision gives him infinite pleasure, because he knows it all
already
: it leaves him with nothing to do except think. To him, the assembling of a Bren gun is an enjoyable little fidget…. He puts together the groups pretty much as you or I would tinker with a familiar wire puzzle that leaves our souls free to contemplate the infinite. He likes to be left alone. It seems to him that the Army leaves a man alone. The general opinion is that Cattle is a little insane. He is imperturbable as a stone buddha. No man ever heard him raise his voice or saw him raise his eyebrows. He lives in a state of bliss, of sublime mediocrity. He is beyond good and evil; beyond hope and fear; beyond
astonishment
and anger. He is detached, unhooked, gently floating in a more than earthly serenity. His great limbs swing loosely on his powerful
torso. His huge-boned face wears a sweet, rippling smile. Every month he receives one letter, registered and sealed with the seal of a bank, and this letter simply begs to inform Mr. Jack Cattle that he will find enclosed the sum of four pounds. This represents all that is left of some little income he used to have. When the money comes, he puts it in his pocket and seems to forget it until somebody wonders if he could oblige with a small loan. Then he pulls out his money like a little handful of crushed leaves, and says: “Help yourself.” He makes notes in a twopenny book. It appears that once in a while he has a thought, which he writes down. Sometimes he attempts to draw
somebody
’s profile on the back of an old envelope. He will talk about
anything
, always with academic calm. The nearest he got to intimacy with any man was when he discussed life and books with The Schoolmaster, who left to be an officer.

He talks on, now, in his strange lazy way, idly shovelling into his sentences whatever words happen to get on to his tongue:

“You know, people do talk an awful lot of nonsense about what men are, and what they might have been. I heard somebody say Sergeant Nelson might have been … I forget what, but something or other that was very learned and professional, because Nelson had a clear mind and a good brain, and a way of expressing himself that made everything clear and exact. He had a fine understanding of men. But I think that Nelson found his real vocation in the Army, as a sergeant. What would he have done with another kind of job? In any other capacity, well, he would have been something not very much out of the ordinary. But as a sergeant he was great.

“Do you remember Old Silence? Poor Old Silence that got blown to hell when he left on leave to get married? Oh yes, yes, yes, Old Silence was a nice fellow and I liked him very much indeed. And he was an intelligent man with plenty of imagination and plenty of guts, and I think the world is so much the poorer since Old Silence got killed. Well, one day Old Silence and The Schoolmaster and I were talking about one thing and another and we got around to people we knew
and so we came to Sergeant Nelson. He was their first Squad
Instructor
, you know. I knew Nelson quite well. We were out East together, and I got to see a good deal of him. Well … The Schoolmaster and Old Silence were saying the most fantastic things you ever heard in your life about Nelson. Old Silence said that in a country like America, way back in the eighteen-fifties, a man like Nelson could have been President, like Abraham Lincoln. Don’t you believe it. Nelson’s genius was just rightly placed. He was cut out to be great, if you understand what I mean, only as a
man
and not as some professional with a career.”

Sergeant Crowne asks: “And what did The Schoolmaster say Bill ought to have been?”

“It sounded funny when The Schoolmaster said it, Sergeant. I don’t suppose you’d guess what he said in a thousand years. He said Bill Nelson ought to have been a poet.”

“A poet?”

“I’ll tell you how it came about. One evening, it seems that Nelson was talking to the fellows about active service, and fighting, and
living
and dying, and all that, and while he was talking it seems that The Schoolmaster, who was a literary kind of a mug … you know, he couldn’t think of a sunset or anything like that except in terms of rosebuds, or poached eggs, or anything else that was red except the sun…. The Schoolmaster took down what Nelson was saying almost word for word on a lump of paper. Then, you see, when he came to read it over, it seemed to him that Bill Nelson (poor old Bill Nelson! I can imagine what he would have said if he could have heard about this), Bill Nelson was talking pure poetry. This is a lot of poppycock, of course. But The Schoolmaster gave me what he’d written down. And this is how it sounded.”

Guardsman Cattle fishes out a tin box, and selects from a bundle of mixed documents a couple of sheets of Y.M.C.A. notepaper. He looks at these sheets, grins with indescribable languor and reads:

“When you come to think of it,” says Hands, “that really was
something
like how Bill used to talk, though I can’t say I ever noticed him making things rhyme. It only goes to show—you can talk bloody poetry all your life and not know it.”

“We—ell,” dragged out Jack Cattle, “any man who knows what he wants to say and says what he’s got to say without wasting words talks better than poetry, you mark my words. But old Nelson was dead hot on what you might call philosophy. He knew how to live, that man.”

“Feared nothing,” says Crowne.

“No, he was a brave mug,” says Bearsbreath.

A voice says: “Brave nothing! I knew Bill Nelson. He was a dirty, rotten coward.”