Soldier No More

'Two weeks, sir. And three games of rugger, that's what he did. And all the bills paid—and wages for me and Charlie, and Old Billy and Cecil, in advance right until the end of October, cash money—' she shook her head disbelievingly '—

not like with Mr Nigel, nothing on tick, all cash money . . .

It's got so if they want credit, Old Billy says, he could get anything he wants, the builders' merchants are so pleased to see him now— not like Mr Nigel. . . Except Mr Nigel never spent anything on the house, if he could help it, even with the rain coming in through the end gable so I had to put the old tin bath to catch it, to stop it coming through into the dining room! But not a drop comes in now, with the roof done good as new—'

Stocker's reservations on Audley's finances echoed inside Roche's head. There had been some money, and then there had been very little of it. But here was Audley satisfied with nothing but the best, even down to restorations in original materials plundered from old houses by his own private staff dummy5

of restorers!

'And the bathrooms are done, like with things you never saw before— except Charlie remembers them, that he's seen in France when he was there—'

'Bidets, you mean, Clarkie?'

'If you say so, sir.' Mrs Clarke sniffed her disapproval of all things French. 'The plumbing's all done, anyway. And the electric wiring, that the insurance man wanted.'

'And central heating?'

'No, sir—he won't have that done.'

Wimpy nodded at Roche. 'The lingering legacy of a public school education.'

'But he doesn't come home much in the winter,' said Mrs Clarke loyally. 'He's like Mr Nigel there ... So Charlie lights all the fires twice a week to keep the old place aired . . . and that roof's made a heap of difference, I can tell you.' She nodded. 'You wouldn't hardly recognise it.'

Wimpy smiled. 'I should like to see it... remembering the discomforts of the past.' He flicked a glance at Roche.

'Would you like to have a look, David? Would that be okay, Clarkie?'

'Of course, sir.' She turned to Roche. 'It's a beautiful old place, sir—it was a crime to let it go to wrack and ruin. But Master David's put that right.' She gave Wimpy a sly look.

'All it needs now is a woman's touch, to my way of thinking, sir, Mr William.'

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Wimpy shook his head. 'No sign of that on the horizon, I'm afraid, Clarkie. And it'd need an exceptionally resilient young woman to handle our David—let alone capture him.'

'Hmm ...' Ada Clarke pursed her lips, but didn't deny the assessment. 'A mistress it needs, I still say.'

'It's had one or two of those, by golly!' Wimpy chuckled.

'I didn't mean that, sir—and well you know it! There were too many of them up to the war . . . But there's never been a real lady since—since—' she broke off suddenly, staring at Wimpy blankly for an instant, then seeming to notice Roche again as a stranger just in time. 'There now! You want to go up to the house, and I've got my Charlie's tea to think about—

if you should see him you tell him to come on back now, he's up there somewhere—' she rose from her chair and began fussing over the plates and teacups '—and there's some parcels for Master David you can take up for me while you're about it, and save me the bother—'

VI

THEY MADE THEIR way up the long, curving gravel drive between great banks of hawthorn and briar and elder interlaced with blackberry branches.

'Going to be a good year for blackberries.' Wimpy nodded at the cascades of unripe greeny-red fruit. 'Charlie never cuts the hedges back until after the jam-making and bottling—

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always wonderful picking along here.'

Roche balanced the parcels with which he was loaded, and attempted to sort out his thoughts. He was aware that he had been fed with a great deal of information about David Audley, which might be priceless because it was of a kind that money and conventional interrogations would never have bought, except that he still didn't know why it should be so valuable.

'I used to pick them along here with Charlie when we were both boys,' continued Wimpy. ' 'Pick one—eat one' was our motto, as I recall.'

Wimpy, as well as Ada Clarke and Charlie, was an old retainer of the Audley family, Roche decided. But there must be a class difference in the relationship which he hadn't yet worked out.

'You knew him—Nigel Audley—before Oxford?'

'Oh yes. My father was up there with his father—the one that was killed in 1917. . . They were both at Balliol at the same time. Only Dad was clever and poor and Audley grand- pere was clever and rich . . . But they rowed in the same eight, and they became friends. And they stayed friends even after Dad metamorphosed into a poor schoolmaster, like me after him—

it's in the blood, I'm sorry to say, dear boy!' He bobbed his head at Roche. 'Only I didn't really get to know Nigel until Oxford—I knew Charlie better until then, as a matter of fact.

Poor old Charlie!'

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Poor old Charlie . . . . This had been—and still was—a strange intertwining of people and families, across the boundaries of class and money, here and in Oxford, and through two world wars, which had turned the schoolmaster into Audley's guardian and the housemaid into something more than his nurse.