Soldier No More

'But you didn't know her, of course.'

'I did meet her—briefly.' Roche didn't want to talk about Meriel Stephanides. 'Just briefly, down by the river, with Lady Alexandra and Miss Baker yesterday . . .'

'You did?' Audley nodded politely, without the least interest dummy5

in the information. 'What a waste . . . what a damn waste—

that's all I can think of, you know.'

'Yes.' He had to turn the conversation from Steffy. 'You didn't sleep either, then?'

'Me? Oh . . . I'm always up early.' Audley started to move again, waving downhill into the mist. 'First job of the day is to collect the bread and croissants for breakfast. Old Fauvet's boy leaves it in a box down by the road at the bottom—I save him the journey and get my morning exercise while my house-guests are lapped in swinish slumber.' He shrugged.

'No point in changing the routine.'

'No.' Now. 'About last night. . .'

'Last night?' Audley frowned at him sideways. 'What about last night?'

Roche searched for a moment for his opening gambit, and found Lexy offering it to him, generous as ever. 'Do you remember what Lady Alexandra said—about me.' He kept in step with Audley. 'Well, she was . . . right.'

'She often is. She's a clever little girl... or clever big girl, I should say . . . in her own peculiar way,' agreed Audley unconcernedly.

'You remember what she said?'

Audley grimaced at him. 'Yes . . . well, to be honest, no. I have this bad habit of not always listening to what Lexy says, you see.'

There was no help for it, he had to bite the bullet. 'I work for dummy5

British Intelligence, Dr Audley.'

Audley continued walking, not looking at him, almost as though he hadn't heard. But he had heard.

'Yes,' he said finally, this time almost as though merely agreeing with a statement of the obvious. 'You have the stretched look of some of the field men I once knew ... or maybe over-stretched, from being too long in the field— some foreign field, that is forever England. That's what stretched them.'

Roche shivered involuntarily at such a deliberate foot-fall on his grave, but before he could react to it Audley turned towards him.

'My dear fellow! Forgive me—I shouldn't have said that, to you of all people!' He raised his hand to forestall a reply.

'And when I should be grateful, too! Quite unpardonable!'

'Grateful?' Roche stumbled on a tussock, almost measuring his length.

'That's right.' Audley caught his arm to steady him. 'Aren't you about to tell me that you'll put in a good word for me up above, with your controller—or whatever they call them now?

That I'm ready and willing? That I've seen the error of my ways? That they won't ever again have recourse to Section Nine—or Section Ten, or whatever it is today?'

'Section Nine?' managed Roche.

'Or whatever. It was Section Nine in the 1914 Manual of Military Law I inherited. Of course, they never actually dummy5

threw it at me, not in '46... but it was an awful thing I did—

they must have felt like M'Turk did in Stalky, when Colonel Dabney's keeper took a shot at the vixen: 'It's the ruin of good feelin' among neighbours—it's worse than murder'. And quite right too, they were, that's the pity of it.'

Somehow the opening Roche had expected seemed to be eluding him. 'But I don't see what was so terrible, about refusing in the way you did—'

'You don't? Then you damn well ought to!' Audley had no mercy on himself. 'It was the moment of truth, and I fluffed it. It's . . . it's like the specimen charge in the back of the Manual, for Section Nine: The accused, Captain D. L. Audley

—name, rank, number and regiment. . . how do the words go?

—is charged with, when on active service, disobeying a lawful order given personally to him by his superior officer in the execution of his office —I think I've left out something about 'disobeying in such a manner as to show a wilful defiance of authority'. . .'

'But you didn't disobey anyone—you refused to come back in, that's all,' interrupted Roche quickly.

'I refused in '51.' Audley raised a finger. 'I disobeyed in a wilfully defiant manner in '46 ... when personally ordered to take up his rifle and fall in did not do so, saying 'You may do what you please, I will soldier no more' —and that's exactly what I told them . . . I'll soldier no more! ' Audley threw him another of his characteristic half-bitter, half-mocking smiles.

'For them—the unpardonable crime. So don't waste your dummy5

time with me, old boy,' concluded Audley. 'I'm out. And that's that.'