Thrilling Tales by Ruskin Bond

Author:Ruskin Bond [Bond, Ruskin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: en
ISBN: 9788129115904
Publisher: Rupa & Co.
Published: 2010-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

IRONGUT AND THE BROWN MOUSE

Gerald Kersh

ike Sherlock Holmes, I sometimes think that I might write a monograph ... on 'The Technique of Worming-out Case Histories', on 'How to Write Letters to Film Magnates', and especially 'On Huts'. I know huts, especially Army huts. I have lain in elegant huts, partly constructed of brick, brand-new, still smelling of freshly-planed wood. I have passed formidable, nights in Nissen huts, looking up at the reflections of diffused moonlight upon the corrugations of the iron, and feeling like Jonah in the whale's belly. I have some experience of sectional huts... I have seen them tossed out of a lorry in piles, like packs of cards: shuffled, dealt, and put up; and have slept in them by nightfall, gazing at the pencilled section-numbers on the boards, between which the east winds thrust their edged and pointed Khyber knives. But the hut in which I sometimes feel that I have left a portion of my soul is a hut called—The Black Hut.

At least thirty years old, it was still surviving in a summer camp for British infantry in the Second World War. The Black Hut was made of boards, like any other hut; only age had given it character. Thousands of men had settled down and lived in it. Nearby, in the same camp, there were many elegant and comfortable huts; but nobody remembers these. The Black Hut is the place which all the best men drag up into memory in their reminiscences.

I slept near the door. The cot next to mine was occupied by an old regular soldier whose life had been one long and unrelenting war. If only these words could be reinforced with moving pictures—if this were, say, television—I might convey to you something of the real aspect of Private Irongut, as we called him. His nickname grew out of his capacity for impossible mixtures of drink. The inside of the man must have been plated with something acid-proof This may be interesting; but the most interesting of all was his face, his figure, and his general manner. Now, how can I describe him?

His head might have been modelled by a vigorous but unskilful sculptor who, trying to make a likeness of a broken gladiator, has, by an unrepeatable lucky accident stumbled upon the right thing ... modelled in red clay and then left to dry and crack in the sun. Irongut had fought his way out of childhood into adolescence; and had come out of that corner, jabbing and swinging into manhood ... from which melancholy stage he had leapt—like a man from a table in a pub brawl—into the Army.

I find that I am telling you the history of Irongut; but let it be. His conduct sheet, as a soldier, was long and black as a February night; he was insubordinate; he got drunk; he struck civilians; he struck his fellow Privates; he struck Lance-Corporals, full Corporals, lance-Sergeants, full Sergeants; he threatened a Quartermaster; he swore at a Sergeant-Major; he used language at which Rabelais would have hidden his head under the pillow.

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