Sergeant Nelson of the Guards by Gerald Kersh Read Free Book Online

replies, with patronage: “All right. You’re in the Army now, yer know,” and comes away from the door. He has lank black hair, heavily creamed, extraordinarily long, carefully arranged with a parting one inch to the left of the centre. I believe he would sooner part with his right arm than lose that gallant mane. But he swaggers forward , now, and says:
    “Cut it off, Corp-rerl. You can’t cut it too short for me. Oi can’t be bothered with it.” Tickety-tickety-tickety, chatter the clippers.
    “One o’ the Brylcreem Boys, eh?” says the Corporal, with a little smile of enjoyment: he looks forward to heads of hair like this; they give a zest to his life; he talks of them in the Mess. Tickety-tickety. … Johnson is scalped. A raiding party of Iroquois couldn’t have done a much completer job on him.
    “That looks noice,” says Bates.
    “Honest?” asks Johnson.
    “It makes yow look toof.”
    “Tough, eh?” says Johnson, and represses a smile of gratification. “Don’t talk soppy. You wait a minute and I’ll give you one o’ my cigarlets.”
    Bates has said exactly the right thing, for the first—and perhaps the last—time in his life. He beams, that simple soul; his face cracks into a smile like a split pumpkin. He has given pleasure: he is delighted beyond words. He lights one of the little black cigarlets. It isn’t anywhere near the stuff he rolls, for strength and irritant quality. Bates sucks in a cloud of smoke and blows it out.
    “They’re noice and moild,” he says.
    Johnson’s lips tighten again.
    Clipped to the bone we walk back and wait for the Medical Officer to send for us.
    *
    A dentist looks at our teeth. An old sergeant, who appears to be nailed to an invisible backboard, shuffles eye-testing cards. There are some unscrupulous recruits who, having bad eyes, try and learn the rows of letters by heart, and so slink into the Guards. They have several cards, which they change from test to test. A big Exeter man named Septimus Plimsoll, seventh son of a seventh son, but far from psychic, is cast out as astigmatic.
    “But my hair! They’ve cut my hair! They can’t turn me down now … they’ve cut my hair!” he says.
    “Cutcha hair, son?” says the old Sergeant, looking at him.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you what. You go straight to Corporal Philips at the barber’s shop—tell him Sergeant Robson sentcha—don’t forget to mention my name—and he’ll give you your hair back agen. Next!”
    We take off all our clothes except our trousers. Bodies emerge, pallid as maggots. You see, now, the herculean thews of Hodge; his biceps like grapefruit, his pectorals like breastplates; Thurstan, all tendon and gristle, with a back that writhes with muscle like a handful of worms; lanky Barker; the Widnes boy, still padded with puppy fat; the inconspicuous pale Dale; suety Shorrocks; Johnson, thin but fast-looking, with long flat muscles and not enough chest; Bullock, dark and knotty; Bates, starch-fed, starch-white, but built for power; Alison, the glum old soldier, with Death Rather Than Dishonour tattooed on his left arm and I Love Millie on his bosom … outdoor workers with brown forearms and necks which make their torsos look like cotton vests … sedentary men, run to skin and bone … miners, with great backs and arms … a timber-feller, with wrestler’s shoulders grafted on to the body of a clerk … a steel-worker, like a mummified Carnera … men who push things and have loins like Samson … men who pull things, and have deltoids like half-moons and hams for forearms….
    Barker says: “Hallo, Tarzan: if I ’ad me barrer ahtside I’d go an’ get yer a banana.”
    The man he calls Tarzan smiles a slow, white smile. He is a tall, strong Cornishman called Penrowe; Barker’s nickname will stick to him, for he has a hairy chest. Barker, looking at him for the first time, said: “Look—a Five.” A Five is a Five-to-Two, or Jew. Penrowe has something vaguely Semitic