Soldier No More

She took stock of him. The lightweight suit was right (expensive, but not too expensive; a little rumpled, but he was on leave); and the tie was only his old hockey club's, but it looked like something better; and the haircut was safely French military, Fontainebleau '57. And she already knew that he spoke Parisian French, and an Englishman who didn't speak the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe couldn't be all bad, especially an English para.

'You are not married, that is certain,' she pronounced that judgement with an air of finality, because that was her technique. And although he didn't know how she had arrived at it he knew instinctively that the answer to his question, how to win? lay within reach.

'No, I'm not married.' It was a risk, but not a very great risk

—certainly not a very great risk for a para accustomed to risks. And, finally, instinct also made him want to talk, and for once not lie while talking.

'I was engaged once, unofficially, Madame. But never married— definitely not married, Madame.' She didn't dummy5

interrupt. Wise woman!

'She was an American girl. I met her during the Korean War, Madame— while I was in Japan, after I'd been posted out of Korea.'

Cultural shock: Japan is beautiful, and the people are kind and ordinary . . . just ordinary people, no better and no worse, in spite of the true stories of Changi and the Siamese railway, and Imphal and Kohima—

'She was very beautiful, Madame. Beautiful like ... the Jewess. And intelligent—like Gillian. . . and slim like her, too.

And as full of life as Lady Alexandra.' Perhaps all that was a bit too good to be true, after six years of looking back through rose-tinted spectacles—maybe not so beautiful, and not so intelligent and not so full of life. Maybe nervous at times, and highly-strung, and full of doubt about America, and where it was going, and what it was doing in the name of Liberty and 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' and 'the government of the people, by the people, for the people'. But Julie still—Julie always—

' In War it is as it is in Love. . . Whether she be good or bad, one gives one's best once, to one only—'

True! So Madame Peyrony had nothing to worry about—

though this was not quite yet the moment to tell her so.

'She killed herself.' There was no way of making it other than brutal: it was brutal. 'She told me once, the way to go was to swim out—there was a current on the bay where we dummy5

used to swim, if you went far enough out in the evening it would carry you out to sea, the fishermen said—and swim and swim and swim, until it didn't matter any more, until the sea and the sky joined. And that's what she did. Tout simplement!'

He'd only met Madame Peyrony five minutes before, and never before had he told that to anyone, because there was no one to tell who didn't have someone else to tell it to.

But Madame had no one to tell it to, only the resident ghosts, who couldn't tell it to anyone else, so it was all right to tell it to her.

And, besides, now was the time to tell it anyway, even if she did pass it on. Because now he was breaking faith with Julie—

and because now, in a few days' time anyway, it wouldn't matter either way! Tout simplement!

'Why?'

He hardly heard the question, it was asked so softly. But he had intended to answer it anyway.

'It was a bad time. The bomb . . . MacArthur . . . Senator McCarthy— Senator McCarthy most of all—the senate sub-committee investigation. . . Julie's step-father worked for the government, and he'd subscribed to all sorts of causes, from the Spanish Civil War onwards . . . And she adored him—he was a great chap, a nice man—'

Julie's Harry, who knew all about England, as no other American he had ever met knew about the country, from his dummy5

service there in the war— even knew about the railways there, the very lines over which his own father had driven his engine— the old London North-Eastern—

' You've got a great chance in England, boy, to make real Socialism work— to show the Russians how to do it, so they can get it right. . . they're trying to, and they'll get the hang of it if you can show them the way—'

He was relieved Harry hadn't seen Suez. But he was even more glad he'd missed the East German riots and Poland, and above all the Hungarian massacres; they would have done the job just as surely as McCarthy had done, perhaps even more cruelly—

'He committed suicide. He shot himself with this German pistol he brought back from the war. He wrote a letter—'

Dearest Julie—

'—he wrote her a letter, explaining why.'

She waited until she was sure he wasn't going on. He wanted her to ask the question.

'And because of that—because of her step-father—?'

'Also because of me. She wrote me a letter also—'

My own David—