Perfect Gallows
“Right … You bending at the knees, lad? … Then five three and a quarter’s the best we can do for you …”
“Hm … Usual childhood illnesses? Polio? … Know your father’s height? … Runs in the family, evidently—nothing wrong with that …”
“Here’s one just right for the midget submarines! Only joking, lad. You want the navy you got to volunteer, and you’re too late for that.”
Queue to have your chest thumped and listened to. Queue to piss in a bottle. Queue for eye-test. Tempter at your elbo...w all the time—epilepsy, myopia, nameless wheezings … No! When you were seventy you needed to be able to count on your fingers the performances you had missed through illness. Summon such a familiar now and it might nestle inside you through the years. Pure superstition, but real. He couldn’t. He let Adrian rattle off the bottom line of the eye-chart.
Then another wait, this time sitting in a side room till a second batch was ready to join them in the written test.MoreLess
“Hm … Usual childhood illnesses? Polio? … Know your father’s height? … Runs in the family, evidently—nothing wrong with that …”
“Here’s one just right for the midget submarines! Only joking, lad. You want the navy you got to volunteer, and you’re too late for that.”
Queue to have your chest thumped and listened to. Queue to piss in a bottle. Queue for eye-test. Tempter at your elbo...w all the time—epilepsy, myopia, nameless wheezings … No! When you were seventy you needed to be able to count on your fingers the performances you had missed through illness. Summon such a familiar now and it might nestle inside you through the years. Pure superstition, but real. He couldn’t. He let Adrian rattle off the bottom line of the eye-chart.
Then another wait, this time sitting in a side room till a second batch was ready to join them in the written test.MoreLess
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