Soldier No More

Wimpy nodded at the line of photographs. 'Big chap, Charlie Clarke. . . Seen him lift a five-hundredweight truck to save his mates popping the jack under the rear wheel, to change it

—Charlie's only party trick, you might say . . . We had two like him in the battalion, with too few brains and too much brawn—never should have been recruited, except maybe into the Pioneers ... I had one of them in my company, 'Batty' they called him, because of the way he'd run amok. But he was killed in France in '40.'

Roche watched Wimpy sigh, and was grateful for the past tense: at least both of them were together in 1957 now, however uncomfortable the next few minutes might be!

'The other one was Charlie, in Jerry Johnson's company—

General Sir Gerald Johnson as he is now—and Fusilier Charlie Clarke as he is still. . . they were both lucky, after a fashion, anyway.' He looked at Roche at last, but bleakly.

'They both survived, that is—Jerry to prosper in his chosen profession, and Charlie . . . after Dunkirk ... to be Charlie, only less so at intervals—to be Charlie in 1940, before Dunkirk, as you have discovered, Captain Roche, eh?'

Oddly enough he didn't seem angry now. He seemed almost relieved by Captain Roche's abortive discovery.

'And you have been lucky too, I suppose one might say, Captain Roche,' said Wimpy.

Ignorance and silence were still safest, especially when the latter might purge the former.

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'Charlie was the gentle one, you see.' Wimpy nodded. 'Batty actually liked killing things—rabbits, Germans . . .

fortunately he never had a proper chance with regimental policemen, but it was all the same to him. Charlie was different, he was always gentle ... or almost always gentle—he meant to be as gentle as he could be, if people let him alone.

That was all they had to do—just let him alone.' He gazed at Roche almost sorrowfully. 'But you didn't let him alone . . .

and in this house too—he's very protective about this house.

God help the burglar he ever catches here!'

Roche felt the air cold against his cheeks: he could testify to the truth of that, the memory of Charlie's protectiveness was in that air still.

'But you were lucky, as I say. I turned up just in time, before he took you apart,' said Wimpy simply. 'Very lucky for all concerned . . . Though, of course, I blame myself too, old boy.'

There, at last, was the opening he had been waiting for, thought Roche, hot inside against the cold on his face from the memory of Charlie.

'So you damn well should!' he exclaimed. 'You wouldn't answer the question. Every time I asked it, damn it!'

Wimpy shook his head. 'Not 'wouldn't', old boy. I promised, but there's a time and place for the right answer, that's all.'

He pointed towards the staircase. 'David put them up himself, but. . . typical David, putting them up ... he did it when he came back from Normandy, the first time, on the dummy5

last day of his leave . . . but Charlie carried the hammer and the nails . . . typical David—' he shook his head at Roche, as blank-faced as Charlie had been '—took them all out of the study, plus the extra one Nigel had buried in his bottom drawer . . . and that was typical Nigel too—putting it away, when he could have torn it up, and burnt it, and it would have been dead and buried . . . But no—he just put it in the bottom drawer for David to find; and he knew David would find it, because David finds everything sooner or later—just put it in the bottom drawer for David to find, and David found it of course.... So out they all come from the study, plus the extra one—with never a word to Clarkie and me—and Charlie holds the nails—and bang, bang, bang, there they are in public, for everyone to see on the stairs—the one place everyone has to see, with never a word to me, not ever . . .

not even now—not now, not ever . . .'

Roche looked at the photographic gallery on the stairway, and then at Wimpy, and then at the gallery again. There were more bloody pictures there than was comfortable, if there was one extra picture which he was expected to home in on at first glance, to tell him what he ought to know.

'Go and see for yourself, my dear man— don't let me stand in your way, just go and see for yourself, eh?'

Roche went quickly, before the schoolmaster could confuse him further, either deliberately or accidentally.

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The line was not so much a line, as a double zig-zag over half a century— more than half a century—of the history of Oxford-and-Cambridge and photography both.

Indeed ... it went back to Great-Grandfather Audley, looking faintly like Prince Albert, in the smartly-cut but unpressed suiting of the time, blotched and faded by age, at the bottom of the staircase, gracing the Hoplites Society of Balliol College, to David Audley himself, vintage 1949, scowling from his college rugger XV, which had been added at the very top as a Cambridge afterthought—almost an act of defiance amongst a collection of otherwise exclusively Balliol College, Oxford: pictures of Father Nigel, Grandfather and Great-Grandfather, who had all been oarsmen in their college VIIIs, or ornaments of that same Hoplites Society . . . which, at a guess, from its name, and the stylish fashion of their evening dress, and the nonchalant don't-give-a-damn slightly drunken expressions they affected, must be an exclusive club for the young Classical gentlemen of their time.

God! What would Genghis Khan make of this collection?

Here, to the life, were the young bloods of the Tsar's Imperial Guard, lazing it at ease among the empty Champagne bottles through the 1905 revolt, past the 1914 armageddon to the 1917 reckoning!