Soldier No More

'Yes.' That was stretching the truth, but if sporting prowess was the way to Major Willis's heart then so be it.

Willis nodded again. 'They're rather good, aren't they—the Malays?'

Damn good,' said Roche heartily. 'But it was a scratch game

—we were on the way to Korea at the time. That was the main fixture just then.'

Willis stared at him for a second. 'Ah . . . yes, I see what you mean—the main fixture, what!' He nodded once more, and then turned to the groundsman. 'Well, Mr Badger, we'll let it wait until the weekend—right?'

'If you say so, Major Willis, sir,' the groundsman nodded lugubriously, and stumped away down the goal line.

'He knows he's in the wrong—and he just doesn't want to do the work—he knows damn well that I know it, too!' Willis shook his head at Mr Badger's departing figure. 'The trouble is, it's no good knowing better than other people these days—

I've been suffering from that all my life, and I ought to be used to it by now, I suppose . . .' He swung back to Roche in another of his abrupt Montgomeryesque movements. 'Now then, Captain—what's this 'matter of national interest' with which it is alleged I can help you, eh? Let's have it straight, dummy5

with no frills—identity card first— right?'

Roche watched him scrutinise the identity card.

'Seems okay. 'David Roche'? Can I call you David?'

'Yes, Major—'

'And we'll put a stop to that, for a start. Badger calls me

'Major' because he served in the same battalion with me for most of the war, and he knows it annoys me. He was an idle sergeant and I was an unpopular major, so we made a good pair, both civilians at heart. . . But you don't have to 'major'

me. The boys call me 'Wimpy' now, so you can do the same—

right?'

Right. . .' Or it would be right if he could get a word in edgeways. 'Right, then! Suppose you tell me about this national interest of yours? But I should warn you—you'll have to make a damn good case if you want me to help you.

I'm not in a giving frame of mind these days, you know.'

Roche looked at him questioningly. 'I beg your pardon?'

And so you should. Since Suez, my lad—when I was of a mind to go to the Canadian Embassy, or whatever they call it, and ask them if I could emigrate, except they would probably have told me they didn't want old buffers like me. . .And then we came a cropper— et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos, as Virgil put it. So where was 'the national interest' when we invaded Egypt, then—eh?'

'I didn't have anything to do with Suez—'

'Naturally. Like when Field Marshal Haig said to the poor dummy5

squaddie 'Where did you start the war, my man?' and the poor fellow replied 'Christ, sir—I didn't start it!' But is that a sufficient answer, I ask you? So where is the national interest now, Captain Roche?'

The plain white envelope in Roche's breast-pocket began to make its weight felt.

' Only in the last resort,' Stocker had advised him. ' Use it if he positively won't talk. Fred Clinton doesn't want it used, but you'll have to exercise your best judgement there.'

'Well—spit it out, man! Don't just stand there,' Willis exhorted him.

'Yes, sir—' Roche floundered.

' 'Wimpy'. You call a man 'sir'—or 'Major Willis', for that matter—and you're halfway to making an issue of it. But if you call him 'Jack', or 'Harry', or 'Wimpy', then you can get away with insulting him to his face,' said Willis, of a sudden half-conciliatory, almost friendly. 'Don't be put off by my bark—it's only a concealment for a total lack of bite, dear boy. I talk too much, that's my trouble. It's part natural—the way I'm put together—and part guilt- complex that there are still young fellows like you, having to look to the 'national interest' a dozen years after we won the war, which we'd never have had to fight in the first place if we'd stood up for what was right and in the national interest— audiet pugnas vitio parentum, rara iuventus . . . but I don't suppose you've had time to study the Classics—'how they fought shall be passed on to a younger generation smaller because of their dummy5

parents' crimes'—the context was different, but the sense is there, I'm sorry to have to admit...'

Stocker had described him as being 'mildly eccentric', especially on the subjects of sport and the classics, and therefore unpredictable; but reputedly benevolent after his lunch time sessions—out of term, naturally—with his cronies in the local pub; and a formidably good teacher, and a ladies'

man, but a bachelor—and, for God's sake, what did all that add up to?

'Well, David?' said Willis. 'The national interest, then?'

It added up at the moment to the reduction of David Roche almost to a tongue-tied Sixth Former with doubtful prospects in Higher Cert.

'Yes . . . Well, I'm told you were one of the executors of the will of Major Nigel Alexander George Audley, Mr Willis—'

Note i. Father, ed. Eton and Balliol College, Oxford; major, Prince Regent's Own South Downs Fusiliers (T.A.), killed in action, France, May