Soldier No More

he's 'B' Company. An' Captain Johnson, that was Mr Johnson until just recently—'e's 'A' Company now, of course . . .'he nodded slowly at Roche'. . . an' 'C' Company is. . .is. . .' the nod faded away as Charlie cast around in the lost property room of his memory, and failed to find the name of 'C'

Company's commanding officer, who had let him down by being unmemorable after seventeen years. ' 'C' Company is. . .' he rocked slowly from side to side '—'A' Company is Captain Johnson, that was Mr Johnson as was . . .'

Roche watched the Caliban-face twitch with the effort of putting the names of men who had most of them been dead and buried for years to formations which had long been disbanded. Someone—some irate sergeant-major or despairing corporal—had once hammered those names into dummy5

Charlie's memory so firmly that they were still there in the present tense.

'Captain Willis is out in the garden,' he nodded at Charlie.

' 'D' Company—I just told you,' said Charlie irritably. Then his incongruous little mouth twisted into some sort of grin.

'Get hisself killed on that motor-bike of his one of these days,

'e will—Captain Willis, that was schoolmastering before the war broke out.' He nodded back in Roche's direction. 'That's

'im what learns young Master David his letters, an' thinks the world of 'im, like my Ada does—'D' Company, 'e is.' He focussed on Roche, and frowned as though he was seeing him for the first time, but could supply no 1940 name for what he saw. 'Who are you, then?'

'I'm—' Roche stopped abruptly as the macabre reality of Charlie's 'downhill phase' registered fully with him. The man was in his own private time-warp, so it seemed from all those present tenses and 'Captain' Willis and 'young' Master David.

'I'm Captain Roche, Royal Signals,' he snapped. Whatever it might mean, there was one sure way of finding out, albeit a cruel and risky one.

'Is Master David not home, Clarke?' he snapped in Captain Roche's military voice, long disused.

Charlie's features twitched with the effort of thinking.

'Well, Clarke?' Roche jogged him mercilessly. 'Speak up!'

Charlie stiffened out of his stoop. 'No, sir.'

Roche braced himself. 'Is Major Audley home, then?' This dummy5

time he hardly dared to watch Charlie's face, the thoughts behind it were unguessable and didn't bear thinking about.

'No, sir,' said Charlie. 'Haven't seen him today, sir.' God, it was true! One end of this interrogation stood in 1957, but the other was trapped in 1940, with no years in-between! And, what was worse—Roche's flesh crawled at the possibility—

was Haven't seen him today, sir.... How many times did Charlie catch sight of his Mr Nigel, and the other ghosts of Mr Nigel's time, drifting round The Old House? But he had work to do now, in 1957.

'Hmmmm ...' Captain Roche's simulated annoyance almost choked him. 'I was hoping to catch one of them, damn it!'

He frowned at Charlie, whose face had settled into blank immobility. What business Captain Roche had with Mr Nigel and Master David was none of Fusilier Clarke's business.

And yet it was in that private area that the work had to be done. ' Hmmm . . . Seems to me, Clarke, that the Major doesn't hit it off very well with his son—am I right?' he said briskly.

Charlie started twitching again. 'Sir?' The gravel reduced the word to a croak.

'Mr Nigel and Master David—why don't they get on? Speak up, man! Don't pretend you don't know!'

Charlie's mouth opened and shut, and his head jerked from side to side, and his eyes rolled and ended up staring past Roche, over Roche's shoulder to the line of ancestral dummy5

photographs running up the staircase as though he was pleading with them to come to his assistance.

'Come on, Clarke—you can tell me. I'm a friend of the family, you know.'

' And so you are!' The voice came from the doorway on Roche's right, just out of his vision, and it was Wimpy's.

'So you are, my dear fellow—a good friend of the family!'

said Wimpy genially. 'Afternoon, Fusilier Clarke.' The geniality remained, but there was iron beneath the velvet.

'You cut along back to your billet now and have your tea, and I'll talk to you later—right? Oh . . . and there's a bit of a mess on the road, you'd better clear that up smartly or sar-major will see it, and then there'll be hell to pay, I shouldn't wonder. Right?'

'Sir!' Charlie's hobnails cracked to attention on the flagstones. 'Sir!'

Wimpy nodded. 'Off you go then, Clarke.'

Only after Charlie had departed did Wimpy move again, and then he circled Roche, ignoring him and breathing in The Old House's damp smell half-critically and half as though it was doing him a power of good.

'Well, old boy ...' Wimpy didn't look at him '. . . you took a bit of a risk there, didn't you!'

'I did?' Ignorance was never an excuse, but it was all he had to offer.

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