Soldier No More Read online

  “Yes …” Sir Eustace accepted the nod and passed it on to Roche. “Bad psychology … and probably bad timing too—too soon after the war. Too many scars not properly healed, most likely.”

  “I don’t know about that,” St. John Latimer demurred. “He didn’t have a bad war.”

  Clinton looked at Latimer without speaking, and for a moment his eloquent silence monopolised the debate.

  “What I mean is, by the time he got into it, we were winning—“ Latimer plunged forward again “—and in any case that’s not quite the received wisdom, according to Forbes at Cambridge—the war-weary hero explanation. What Archie Forbes seems to think is that he had other fish to fry at the time, that’s all.”

  “His academic work, of course,” agreed Sir Eustace, whose attitude towards the Clinton-Latimer cold war appeared to be one of indifference, if not ignorance. “He had a research fellowship of some sort, didn’t he?”

  “He did, yes—a minor one.” Latimer sniffed.

  “And that was the fish, Oliver, was it?”

  Latimer scowled. “Forbes wasn’t too sure about that. The truth is, so far as I can make out, they regarded Audley himself as a bit of a queer fish.”

  “Queer?” Sir Eustace raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t mean queer—“ Latimer waved a pudgy hand irritably “—the one thing you can’t accuse the fellow of is being queer. I mean odd—“

  “Eccentric?”

  “Not that either…” Latimer’s scowl deepened as he searched in vain for the word he wanted.

  Sir Eustace examined the file in front of him. “Well, there’s nothing out of the ordinary here … certainly not down to ‘49 … nothing at all.”

  Latimer nodded. “That’s right. There’s nothing strange at all. And maybe that’s what’s so strange, I don’t know … But they didn’t like him, anyway. Or they didn’t trust him, might be more accurate. And no one seems to know why, not even Archie Forbes, who was his tutor and supervisor.”

  “And our talent scout,” murmured Sir Eustace. “Which is why they didn’t elect him to a fellowship after the research grant ran out, I take it, Oliver?”

  “That’s the way it seems to have been.” Latimer’s face wrinkled with distaste. “But the precise reason why … eludes me still, I’m afraid.”

  Evidently, the fact that Audley was arrogant, selfish, indisciplined, bloody-minded, ruthless and cunning—not to mention generally tricky, in summation—did not count in St. John Latimer’s estimation of the reckoning of any collection of Cambridge dons, as debarring Audley from election to a college fellowship. There was some other bar, but he did not know what it was.

  “You don’t happen to have a nice fellowship in your gift by any chance, Eustace?” The distaste was still etched into Latimer’s face, if anything even deeper.

  “For Audley?”

  “Uh-huh.” And that of course was the reason for the Latimer expression—soliciting a plum for a man he detested. Or maybe envied would be more accurate? “I suppose Oxford would do as well. He’d probably turn his nose up at a redbrick place.” Latimer flicked a glance at Roche.

  “You think that might interest him?”

  Latimer scratched his head. “It might. But after having been turned down once … I don’t know, I just don’t know … but with this fellow I can’t believe it’ll be as easy as that.” He looked directly at Roche. “And I wish I knew why.”

  Colonel Clinton grunted. “Which is why—this time—we must know exactly what we are about, Roche—“

  “—so, yes, I knew him, David Roche,” said Willis, nodding at Roche, but then looking away from him towards the distant rugger posts at the far end of the pitch. “And yet, the answer could just as well be no for all the good it’ll do you.”

  Yes—and no—had said Major Stocker.

  Roche looked up at the rugger posts towering above him, and began to suspect even more strongly from his own inadequate knowledge of the game that Willis was kicking for touch, not so much to gain ground as to win time in which to let the defenders get in position.

  “David Audley was in the war, wasn’t he?” As of now, if the dialogue was going to go off at a tangent, it would be David Roche’s tangent.

  “The last half, yes,” agreed Willis coolly, taking the change in his stride, his defenders ready. “He was in Normandy about the same time as I was, actually.”

  “In an armoured regiment?”

  “Yes. Yeomanry lot, dashing about the place in Cromwells, to the west of us—we were poor bloody infantry.”

  “He did quite well, I gather?”

  “He didn’t let the side down, no,” agreed Willis. “And they did have a pretty rugged time in that neck of the woods, the tank chaps—bad country for them, that bocage. Good anti-tank country—we’d have loved it. Badger had a bloody field day in it, with his PIAT! But of course they were on the receiving end, trying to push south, past Caumont towards Flers and Conde, to take the heat off the Yanks at the time of the break-out.” He smiled at Roche. “Lovely place for a holiday—marvellous food—but a rotten place from which to winkle hard-bitten Jerries with the Fuehrer’s stand-fast order in their pockets.” He paused, and nodded to emphasise his military judgement. “He did all right, did young David, even if he was a bit over-sized for his tank—he performed satisfactorily, anyway … And, more to the point, he survived, which in itself indicates a certain skill. Mere longevity is a considerable virtue, in peace as well as war, don’t you think?”

  Stripped of all its verbiage, and allowing for the fact that the schoolmaster had a tongue like a cow-bell, there was more there than old soldierly memories. Willis had known exactly where his ward had gone into battle, and the long odds against his survival unscathed; and if it was all a gentle joke now, casually thrown off, it wouldn’t have been a joke then—no joke at all.

  “There’s a lot to say for surviving, I agree.” He returned Willis’s smile. “But his father didn’t do so well there, did he!”

  “Ah …” For one fraction of a second the change in direction caught Willis unprepared. “Yes … that is to say, no—he didn’t—“ The eyes clouded as the defences were adjusted “—though, again, perhaps it wasn’t altogether ill-timed, in so far as being killed can ever be considered well-timed—but Tacitus did say it of Agricola, after all—felix opportunitate mortis, and all that, eh?”

  “What?” exclaimed Roche, totally outflanked.

  “A charming fellow, Nigel Audley—quite delightful … manners, breeding, grace—and guts … everyone liked him, everyone admired him. Good-looking, and clever with it—the expectancy and rose of the fair state—he had that rare quality of perfection which prevented lesser mortals envying him his silver spoon, he was too far above the rest of us for that, we were simply grateful for knowing him—that’s the simple fact of it, David Roche.”

  Roche was struck speechless by this panegyric: David Audley’s father was too impossibly good to be true.

  Willis regarded him tolerantly. “Ah—I know what you’re thinking: de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and all that. But it’s not true, you can ask anyone who knew him, and every man-jack of them—and every woman too—will bear me out.”

  Roche waited for him to continue, but he seemed to have run out of steam with surprising suddenness.

  “He was killed in 1940, wasn’t he?”

  “What?” Willis turned towards him, frowning. “Why do you persist in asking me questions to which you already know the answers?” he asked sharply.

  And that was uncharacteristic too, thought Roche, taken aback by the sharpness. If the defences around David Audley were well-sited, those protecting his father were in even greater depth, and suspiciously so for such a paragon.

  “Do you always ask your pupils questions they’re not sure of—or do you lead them from what they know to the more difficult ones?” he countered as gently as he could.

  Willis stared at him, at first vaguely then focussing exactly. “Touche …” he nodded,
accepting the rebuke. “You made me remember things I’d forgotten—I’m sorry—you’re quite right, and you have your job to do … Yes, in 1940, when the skies were falling in on us—in 1940, in France.”

  And he hadn’t told everything, either: because in one particular respect, and the most important one, he had already indicated that the paragon wasn’t a paragon.

  But that could wait for the right moment.

  “How did you come to meet him in the first place?”

  Willis looked at him questioningly. “I taught him—when he was at St. George’s, Buckland—but you know that—“

  “I meant the father.” Was that a simple misunderstanding, or was it deliberate?

  “Oh, I’m sorry—I thought we were back with David … I knew the family. And I got to know Nigel pretty well at Oxford, of course. I was at Univ—University College—he was at Balliol—Eton and Balliol, like his father—“ Willis caught himself “—but you hardly want to know about that.”

  “I think I want everything you can tell me.”

  Willis shrugged. “Oh … he was killed in ‘17, on the Scarpe, commanding our old territorial battalion—the Prince Regent’s Own. And Nigel was killed in ‘40, in the same battalion, not far away… that’s all—history more or less repeating itself, don’t you know.”

  So David Audley must have felt a bit queasy, landing in Normandy in ‘44; or certainly after the break-out had commenced, which might have taken him back over the same ill-omened ground. With such a family tradition survival did indeed have great virtue.

  “Why didn’t David join his father’s unit?” The question was hardly important, but there was something niggling in the back of Roche’s mind.

  “He couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to—it didn’t exist any more. After it was massacred in ‘40 it was never reconstituted. The nearest equivalent was the West Sussexes—that’s where they put me afterwards … But I suppose the armoured corps was more fashionable than the poor bloody infantry—blitzkrieg and Rommel and all that—more likely to take a young man’s fancy.” Another shrug. “I don’t know—what made you join whatever you joined, David?”

  That was no joke—or no joke meriting the truth, anyway. “I was too young to know any better.”

  Willis nodded understandingly. “Well, there’s your answer. And just as well, too, because war’s a young man’s sport, and it relies on a high degree of stupidity—like volunteering for air crew. He was prime cannon-fodder, young David—he didn’t know any better … Whereas Nigel and I—we were almost too old, we were a different sort of fool altogether: a ‘no fool like an old fool’ variety, trapped by foolish patriotism in the 1930s.” The corner of Willis’s lip drooped. “But there we were in ‘39 and ‘40—in the front line, and far too old to be there. And after that, the ones who survived—like me—we were the veterans, we were.” He grinned at Roche.

  “I even commanded a battalion for one brief, utterly unmemorable spell in ‘45—not for long, because they’re not that stupid, the brass-hats—not for long … but I remember in ‘42 and ‘43, some of my young fellows were quite apologetic about my being there—and even more in ‘44, as though I’d arrived on the battlefield by some ghastly administrative accident.”

  How old was he, then? With a little bouncy fellow like this—plenty of healthy sport divided by a substantial intake of alcohol at the local pub made it hard to judge, and the Audley file had had nothing to say on his legal guardian’s curriculum vitae.

  “Yes … but, of course, the truth was, we were too old—and Nigel was even older than I was when he copped it—far too old for playing dangerous games like that! Fair enough if you’re on the jolly old touchline, urging the team on and shouting instructions—‘tackle him low, you stupid boy’. But to be actually on the field, getting wet and cold and muddy—and not only that, to have people shoot real bullets at you into the bargain—that’s really monstrously unpleasant, you know.”

  Roche cursed his inability to stem the flow, aware at the same time that there was something the schoolmaster had said that he wanted to pull him back to—what had it been, though?

  “He must have married very young—Nigel Audley?” he cut in quickly, as Willis opened his mouth to expatiate further on the horrors of war.

  “Eh?” Willis stared at him vaguely for a moment, as though he found it difficult to withdraw from his memories. “Oh, I suppose so. Does it matter?”

  “David Audley must have been a honeymoon baby, practically.”

  Must he?” The vague look was tinged with irritation. “I can’t say I’ve ever bothered to work it out, you know.” Willis shrugged dismissively. “But I hardly see what that’s got to do with you. Or me.”

  “What was she like? The mother?”

  “She died when he was a baby.”

  “Yes, I know. But what was she like?” Roche didn’t know why he was pressing the question, only that it was there in his mind.

  “Oh … she was … very young.” Willis fished in his pocket again, for his pipe.

  “Yes?”

  Willis jammed the pipe between his teeth. “Yes what?”

  What was she like?” repeated Roche obstinately.

  Willis removed the pipe and commenced filling it from an ancient leather pouch. “What was she like?”

  Yes,” said Roche.

  “What … was she like?” Now it was the lighter’s turn. Puff. “Didn’t really know her that well.” Puff, puff. The wind scattered the smoke. “Nice enough girl.” Puff, puff, puff. “So I believe.”

  “They met at Oxford, did they?”

  “Mmm—think so.” Willis took the pipe from his mouth suddenly and pointed the stem at Roche. “What’s all this in aid of, David Roche?”

  Roche met the question innocently. “Didn’t Colonel Clinton make that clear in his letter, Major?”

  “Not Major—Wimpy. You keep forgetting, don’t you!” The schoolmaster’s voice was mildly chiding on the surface, but Roche sensed the anger swimming beneath.

  “Sorry!” he apologised quickly. This wasn’t the moment to antagonise the schoolmaster—and, for a guess, that was a warning signal his pupils wouldn’t have missed, too.

  “All right, then …” Willis—Wimpy—accepted the amends with a nod. “Your lord and master made it very clear, even abundantly clear, one might say, that Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth, requires the services of her father’s former right trusty and well-beloved lieutenant of dragoons, my erstwhile pupil … yes, he did make that very clear, I grant you … and quickly too, she wants him. And that has a familiar ring about it also, I must say—meaning that owing to the vast stupidity and incompetence of some others among her right trusty and well-beloved servants she has her royal knickers in a twist.”

  Well, that was one way of putting it. And it was quite characteristically Willis’s—Wimpy’s, damn it!—way, lacking only a Latin tag.

  “But what he did not make clear—“ Wimpy cocked a sudden sharp eye at Roche “—always supposing it’s not mere vulgar curiosity on your part, David Roche … is the reason for all this inquiry into my David’s remote antecedents. You must have his family history to hand, with his military record—and no doubt you’ve got more than that … So why the rest, eh?”

  Obviously Clinton’s letter had not spelt out the past in detail, but that left Roche in a quandary as to how far he ought to go to rectify the omission.

  “And please don’t tell me that you’re just obeying orders,” continued Wimpy, still watching him closely. “It wasn’t good enough for our late enemies in ‘45, so it isn’t good enough for you now.”

  And yet in a way that was the answer, thought Roche. He was here asking these questions of this man because he had been directed to do so, not for any reason of his own.

  “Come on. Or I shall begin to suspect you’re busy putting lies together for me,”said Wimpy silkily. “And I might find that… discouraging.”

  There was no more time. “It isn’t that. I’m not su
re how far I can trust you, that’s all.” Damn it! It was gone now.

  Wimpy smiled again, a winner’s smile. “I don’t think you’ve a lot of choice—do you? As the Good Book says, you just have to cast your bread on the waters.”

  “All right.” It was time to cut his losses. “You could say ‘the child is father of the man’, for a start.”

  “You could say it.” Wimpy’s face closed up. “I would say … that a child has many fathers.” He paused for a moment, then gestured towards the rugger pitch. “There’s one father, if you like. Certainly one of David Audley’s fathers, I’d say.”

  Roche looked at him questioningly.

  “Yes …” Wimpy nodded. “ ‘Audley spent a cold and quiet afternoon at full-back’—I believe that was his first appearance in print at his prep school, in the school mag at St. George’s, the first time he played for the school, in the under-twelves.”

  “And you taught him rugger there?”

  “I had a hand in his education. But at St. George’s the essence was not so much the games master as the headmaster, to whom certain forms of play in rugby football were a form of Christianity, or otherwise ethical behaviour— it was unchristian to tackle high … not because it was dangerous, but because it was ineffective … running straight was the same—you were in trouble with the Head if you didn’t tackle low, or run straight, or fall on the ball when the other forwards were advancing, or do these various things, because that was the moral, decent, ethical thing to do.”

  “You taught David Audley at St. George’s and here at Immingham?”

  Roche rallied.

  “So I did. David Audley came up from his prep school with a scholarship … in the same year, the same term. We were new boys together, yes.” He grinned at Roche, as though the memory had mellowed him.

  “Okay, then.” Roche grinned back. “But what I’m going to tell you is classified. I wouldn’t want my boss to hear about it.”

  Wimpy acknowledged the confidence with a single nod. “Understood. And I wouldn’t want you to think that anything I may say to you as a result is because Fred Clinton has twisted my arm—far from it! Whatever I tell you now is for my young David’s sake. Because it’s time he did a proper job of work—time he matched his racket to balls worthy of him … time he did something difficult, instead of wasting himself on mere scholarship—which is for him quite ridiculous … And all of which, of course, the egregious Clinton is relying on—with me as well as David. And that’s the whole difference between us, between the goats and the poor bloody sheep: we both know how people tick, but he knows how to make them jump as well. So … what is this that’s so frightfully classified, then?”