Soldier No More

1940.

'—and Legal Guardian of David Longsdon Audley—'

Audley, David Longsdon—

Willis looked at him blankly for a moment. 'What?'

'You're David Audley's legal guardian?' repeated Roche.

'I was, yes.' The schoolmaster emphasised the past tense.

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'You were a friend of his father's?'

Willis nodded. 'Yes.'

'And you taught the son—at his prep school?'

Another nod. 'Yes.'

'And here at Immingham?'

'Yes.'

Roche waited in vain for something more than that third successive 'yes', until it became obvious that in spite of being self-confessedly talkative Willis was now determined to be monosyllabic.

'So you knew him quite well?'

Willis bent down to examine the grass, probing it with his fingers as though he was looking for something. And so he was, of course, thought Roche. But it wasn't in the grass.

'Who?' Willis didn't look up, though.

'The son.'

Willis straightened up slowly. 'Why do you want to know?'

'The national interest, Major.'

Willis faced him. 'I told you, I don't like being called 'Major'—

and particularly at this precise moment, I think.'

'Why not—at this precise moment particularly?'

'Because I suspect it's to remind me that I once held the King's Commission—'Right trusty and well-beloved', and all the rest, Captain.'

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The envelope would be required. Stocker had known that all along.

'Don't think that I've forgotten that allegiance,' said Willis.

'It's simply that there are other allegiances—like that of a legal guardian, for example. And a teacher's too ... 'in loco parentis' covers both—'in the place of a parent', if you have no Latin, Captain.' Willis paused. 'How would you say 'in the national interest' relates to 'in loco parentis', morally speaking?'

Roche waited. The briefly monosyllabic Willis had been a little unnerving, but now that the man had started to talk again he could afford to wait. 'I concede the classical precedents. It would have presented no problem to a Roman father, and certainly not to a Spartan one . . . But nowadays they encourage children to inform on their parents behind the Iron Curtain, and we regard that as an attribute of barbarism. And I don't see why the boot shouldn't be on the other foot as well, in all honesty.'

The whole drift of Willis's soliloquy was fascinating, in that he'd taken it for granted Audley was the subject of a security investigation of some kind. But what was surprising was that Willis himself didn't seem in the least surprised.

'What makes you think I want you to 'inform' on him, as you put it?' he inquired innocently.

Now Willis did seem a touch surprised. 'My dear fellow, I can't imagine you want me to 'inform' on his father! Apart from the fact that Nigel's been dead these sixteen—seventeen dummy5

—years, I hardly think his ... gentlemanly activities, such as they were—his gathering of rosebuds—were ever likely to be of the slightest national interest, or of any other sort of interest, except perhaps sociological, as a footnote to the 1930s. So that only leaves young David, and you clearly wish me to 'inform' on him—even so unworldly a person as myself can see that!'

But—'

Willis raised a hand. 'And I must tell you that on mature consideration I don't think I will, and for two reasons . . . Of which the first is that I doubt that I have anything of the slightest importance to impart, since I haven't clapped eyes on him for several years, and we correspond but rarely with each other . . . And the second, and to my mind much stronger reason, is that... as his former guardian and teacher, not to mention the friend and brother- officer of his father . . .

I'm not prepared to sneak on him— certainly not without a very much better reason than anything so vague as 'the national interest'. Indeed—whose 'national interest'? Not that of those who conceived the Suez landings of last year as also being 'in the national interest', I can tell you!'

Roche nodded deprecatingly. 'I do take your point, sir—' he could no more bring himself to call the man 'Wimpy' than he could have called the terrifying Johnnie 'Genghis Khan' to his face '—but I don't think you quite understand why I'm here . . . why we need your help, that is . . .'

'Indeed?' Willis regarded him with an expression of polite dummy5

but absolute Misbelief.

'We want David Audley to help us,' said Roche.