Soldier No More

'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?'

The man was no fool. Through all the verbiage and side-tracking he held to his primary objectives, one after another.

Roche watched him narrowly. 'You know David Audley worked for intelligence at the end of the war?'

'For Clinton?'

'Or someone like him—yes.'

Wimpy nodded. 'I didn't know. But it doesn't surprise me one bit. Not one bit.'

No fool, and perhaps more than that, thought Roche, observing the little schoolmaster's deadpan reaction. Viewed from the spectators' stand, the connection between Clinton and the once-upon-a-time Major Willis had seemed a remarkable slice of luck in the process of gathering dummy5

information about David Audley. But from the players' point of view such happy coincidences could never be accepted on their face value until every suspicious element of cause-and-effect had been eliminated.

'Yes?' inquired Wimpy innocently.

Too innocently. Because all a player had to do to eliminate this coincidence was to rearrange the facts to make better sense of them.

'He mustered out when he went up to Cambridge in '46, I take it?' urged Wimpy, offering his intelligent guess as any innocent seeker-after-knowledge might have done.

Much too innocent. Because, in spite of his repeated allusions to the purely regimental nature of his military service as a 'poor bloody infantryman' , Wimpy had known Clinton well long before David Audley had put on his dragoon's uniform; and Clinton had never been a 'poor bloody infantryman' in his life—he had been Genghis Khan's

'professional from way back', a career intelligence officer.

'That's right—'

Yes, and doubly right: if this little schoolmaster hadn't been a full-time intelligence player, he had done his time on the substitutes' bench, in Clinton's team. And that answered that nagging little question, hitherto unanswered: how did a callow dragoon subaltern, however bright, get pulled out of the battle into intelligence work at the age of nineteen or twenty?

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'—it seems he caused a certain amount of... hassle in the work he was doing, as a matter of fact, actually . . .' Roche trailed off deliberately, passing the ball back to Wimpy.

The schoolmaster smiled. 'He made waves? Yes . . . that doesn't surprise me either. When he was young he was ... he appeared to be, I should say . . . malleable—biddable, you might say. But there was always a well- concealed streak of obstinacy in him—it was as though he seemed to be doing what you wanted, but in the end it turned out to be what he wanted, don't you know!' He shook his head, still smiling.

'When he grew up, as he got older, the streak became more obvious. But back in '44 he was worth saving, and he still is, by God!'

The last piece of the Clinton-Willis connection slotted into place with jig-saw accuracy. That smile was made of more than pride in a bright pupil and affection for a dead brother-officer's only son: for a guess it had been Wimpy himself who had recommended Audley to Clinton back in 1944, to get him out of the front line.

'Bloody awkward, is the way I've heard it.' He smiled back at Wimpy.

Wimpy managed to adjust his smile at last to something more properly neutral. 'But they like him now, enough to want him back, nevertheless?'

'I don't think they ever stopped liking him, actually.' A little soft soap wouldn't go amiss, especially when there had to be an element of truth in it, whatever Latimer might maintain.

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'They . . . meaning you?' inquired Wimpy politely.

Roche shook his head. 'They meaning they.' It would do no harm to differentiate the decent Roche, just doing his duty, from the foxy Clinton. And there was a bit of truth in that too, anyway. 'They parted when he went up to Cambridge in

'46, when he was demobbed. But they tried to re-enlist him again after he graduated, you see—before my time—'

'Ah!' Wimpy raised his hand. ' Now I see what you've been driving at—why you're here, asking all these damnfool questions! Why didn't you tell me straight off?'

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

'My dear man—Glendowerin Henry IV—' I c an call spirits from the vasty deep'—I sent David tickets to see that at Stratford in '52, and bloody marvellous it was too! He'd understand—and Hotspur replies: ' Why, so can I, or so can any man— but will they come when you do call on them?'—

that's the question!' Wimpy beamed at him. 'Not under military discipline any more, like in '44—so when they called on him he wouldn't come, naturally . . . once bitten, twice shy!' And then suddenly the smile vanished, as though it had been switched off from within. 'But now it's different, isn't it!'

The switch to seriousness was somewhat disconcerting.