Soldier No More

Roche concentrated his wits and his memory. Wimpy had said (or was it Sir Eustace, or Colonel Clinton, or Stocker? Or had it been in the records, merely?) that Mr Nigel's father had been killed in 1917—

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It had been Wimpy: My father was at Oxford with his father

— the one that was killed in 1917—take away the right number of years and that was where to look—was it?

But why should that be worth looking at?

All the same, he looked—frowned, rather—at the Hoplites of the generation before Passchendaele: a double row of languid young men, none of whom could have imagined himself as a rotting corpse in thick mud, and none of whom he recognised . . . although the list of names underneath indicated that there was a D. N. D. Audley (hon. secretary) in it somewhere, next to The Hon. W. de V. Pownell- Lloyd (president) . . .

Wimpy's own father ought to be here somewhere, though hardly among the rich young Hoplites, because he had been clever but poor, and that ruled him out of their company.

Maybe he would be among the oarsmen in the next picture—

a crew comic not only for their close-fitting but elongated rowing uniforms, but also for their deadly-serious expressions, as though it had been the battle of Salamis in which they'd distinguished themselves, not Oxford in eighteen-ninety-something. But at least he could instantly identify the Audley in this crew—the familiar face stared at him out of the photograph—the Audley face, minus the broken nose, plus the rowing cap and the frail undergraduate moustache!

And there was a Willis in this crew, too—another plain plebeian W. Willis (another Wimpy?), but Captain of Boats dummy5

no less, and in a victorious Eights Week, judging by the list of defeated colleges beneath the names of the oarsmen. So both families had something to be proud of in this particular photograph, clearly—

He studied the picture for a moment, and then shifted to the Hoplites Society group just below it, and then returned to the oarsmen. They bore the same date, and the same photographer's name, but the oarsmen were clearer—much clearer, much less faded—

Buried in the bottom drawer!

It was here, in this picture, on the wall for everyone to see—it was here, somewhere among J. R. Selwyn (No.4) and D. N. L.

Audley (stroke) and N. B-R. Poole (cox) . . . and W. Willis (bow, Captain of Boats), but he couldn't see it.

He looked at Wimpy again, and knew for certain that it was there in front of him—it was in Wimpy's face, by God!

He stared at the oarsmen again, and then at the Hoplites, and then at the oarsmen.

And saw at last, what had been there all the time—what had been there half the afternoon, but not in Wimpy's face.

Literally, not in Wimpy's face.

He checked the names underneath to make doubly sure.

The chickens had come home to roost, and W. Willis (bow, Captain of Boats) had rowed them all the way from the eighteen-nineties: he was the spit-and-image twin, minus the broken nose, of David Audley.

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ADVANCE TO CONTACT:

Madame Peyrony's young ladies

VII

THE FRENCHMAN HAD been swimming strongly in the river current in the same place for all of ten minutes.

Molieres, Beaumont, Roquepine, Monpazier. . . they had all belonged to the English . . .

The sight of the man battling to no purpose, together with the hot sun not long past its zenith and the warm stones under the rug, and the truffle omelette and the trout, all conspired to undermine Roche's concentration.

Villereal, Montflanquin, Villeneuve, Neuville, Villefranche-du-Perigord . . . they were the French ones . . . but there were other Villeneuves and Neuvilles and Villefranches to be distinguished from them, which had been just as new and free, but also English, on this embattled frontier seven hundred years ago.

And Domme—French—high and golden above the river, which had betrayed him into over-eating when he needed a clear head—

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Maybe that was how it had happened— God! How I love this fat, fertile, self-indulgent country, so ripe for plundering but also so cruel and dangerous and ready to betray its enemies

—had that been the last Anglo-Saxon insight, the last clear English thought old John Talbot had had as the French cannon opened up on his archers at Castillon down the river five hundred years before—that it had always been too good to be true, the English Empire in France, from Bordeaux to Calais—too rich and too tempting and too strong for cold-blooded islanders?

He mustn't go to sleep! He wasn't even tired, he had slept five dreamless hours in the couchette from Paris- Austerlitz, lulled by the train sounds even through dawn halts at Limoges and Perigueux to be woken gently by the