Soldier No More

'Very well!' The Orgy in the Tower didn't appear to worry Madame Peyrony in the least. 'Go and superintend Alexandra's toilette, then. Somebody must do it—and the Jewess will not—so it must be you. So ... allez-vous en, my dear, and don't argue the toss with me.'

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Roche did a double-take. He had just been watching Jilly's resistance crumble when don't argue the toss was incongruously delivered in a strange nasal tone only a moment after he had puzzled out the Jewess— the Jewess was Meriel Stephanides, of course—it had to be ... and the nuance of anti-semitism (never far away in this class—shades of Captain Dreyfus!) was really no surprise at all. But don't argue the toss—?

'Off you go, then!' Madame Peyrony gestured imperiously to dismiss the super-intelligent female ornament of the British Embassy in Paris.

The super-intelligent ornament went like a lamb, without a second glance at the ersatz paratrooper from Fontainebleau, who sat down like another lamb as he had been told to do.

'Now, Captain Roche—' Captain Roche was a little bit too hot already after having been too cold, Captain Roche decided.

'—what exactly is it that you are doing here?' Much too hot—

'Doing, Madame?' Hotter still. 'I'm on leave—'

“On leave, naturally. But why here?'

Hot, to be precise, under the collar: she shouldn't be asking a simple question like that—accusingly, as though she didn't expect the first answer to be truthful, thereby ruling out any conventional response about the beauty of the countryside and the attraction of foie gras and truffles. So all he was left with was Thompson's bloody bastides—

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'I'm by way of being a student of medieval history, Madame.'

God! It sounded thin, and how he wished it was Thompson himself who had to spread it! 'You have some very fine bastides round here—Beaumont and Monpazier and Domme, for example.'

The only thing to say for the bastides was they were so unlikely that she might accept them . . .

'In fact, I was only looking at the church in Neuville this afternoon, with Lady Alexandra—' He paused as something changed in her expression.

'There is wine on the table beside you. Captain. Please pour yourself a glass. Nothing for me, thank you.'

The decanter weighed a ton and the long-stemmed glasses were as fragile as eggshells.

He turned back to her finally, after having made heavy weather of pouring, like a peasant unused to such artefacts.

The wine was golden-yellow, and much too sweet for him.

She sat back in her chair, folding her hands on her lap. 'Is it Alexandra, then?'

'Madame?'

'If it had been Gillian she would not have let me send her away.' It was almost as though she was talking to herself.

'And you are not a mouse— paras are not mice . . . and it will not be the Jewess.'

'I beg your pardon, Madame Peyrony?' It was well enough to relegate the bastides to the nearest wastepaper basket, where dummy5

they belonged, but the repetition of Jewess was beginning to set his teeth on edge.

'The question is, if it is Alexandra, is it with her father's knowledge? The man, David Audley—he would be a mistake, but she is aware of that. . . but at least he would be suitable.'

He was just about to say 'What the hell are you talking about?' suitably bowdlerised for the occasion, when he remembered Raymond Galles's advice: he knew exactly what she was talking about, and that would be a stupid lie.

The realisation of how close he had been to such stupidity cooled him down. The age in which she lived had long passed, but she lived in it still. Also, Madame Goutard would have described to her the sheep's eyes Lexy had made at him after the episode in the shop.

Actually, marriage to Lexy wouldn't be so bad, once he had become accustomed to her cooking. Marriage to Jilly would be even better, and certainly more stimulating . . . but with a senior peer of the House of Lords for a father-in-law, and an American heiress for a mother-in-law . . . Champeney-Perowne multiplied by Vanderhorn divided by Roche might still produce a sum total big enough to protect him from the simple addition of all his enemies. It was only a pity that such prospects were altogether Utopian.

But, more immediately, Madame Peyrony's technique of thinking aloud was an interesting one.

'And I'm not suitable, Madame?' His brain shifted into the dummy5

right gear. ' A para, but not suitable?'

'I did not say that, Captain.'

'But you implied that.' It was like crossing swords.

'And you did not answer my question.'

'It was ... an insulting question.' And he would win, because he had more at stake. 'If you will permit me to say so.' But as yet he wasn't sure how he was going to win, that was all.