Soldier No More

too—' Sir dummy5

Eustace looked down at the open file in front of him '—and communications are your special skill, aren't they?'

My file, thought Roche despondently: aptitudes, test marks, assessments, with more bloody betas and gammas than alphas.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that the Eighth Floor didn't muck around with communications—or with communications experts.

'I mean, we got you from the Royal Signals, didn't we?' Sir Eustace continued, looking up at him again. 'In Tokyo, wasn't it? During the Korean business?'

Since it was all down there in front of him, in black and white, the questions were superfluous to the point of being both irritating and patronising.

'I put down for the Education Corps, sir,' said Roche. 'I was posted to the Signals.'

'Indeed?' Sir Eustace raised an eyebrow over the file. 'Let's see ... you'd already been to university . . . Manchester?' He made it sound like Fort Zinderneuf. 'Where you read History

—that was before you were called up for your National Service?'

“French history mostly, actually.'

“French history?'

'It's a well-established qualification to the Royal Corps of Signals,' said Roche, straight-faced.

'It is?' Sir Eustace gave him an old-fashioned look. 'But you dummy5

volunteered for the RAEC nevertheless—did you want to be a schoolmaster, then?'

'No, Sir Eustace.' Roche cast around for a respectable reason for joining the RAEC while not intending to go into teaching after demobilisation. He certainly hadn't wanted to be a teacher then—that had been Julie's idea later. Then ... he hadn't particularly wanted to be anything; and a degree in History, and more particularly a knowledge of French history, had equipped him with no useful qualification except for transmitting that otherwise useless interest to the next generation. And so on ad infinitum, from generation to generation—that bleak conclusion, as much as anything else, had turned him against teaching. The conviction that the later French kings had been not so much effete as unfortunate had somehow not seemed to him of great importance in the creation of a more egalitarian Britain, not to mention a better world.

'Why, then?' persisted Sir Eustace.

He met Sir Eustace's gaze and, to his surprise, truth beckoned him once more. And not just truth, but also a sudden deeper instinct: these were the top brass, not the middlemen he was accustomed to report to—their rank and demeanour said as much, Thain's obsequious departure said as much, and Admiral Hall's portrait confirmed the message.

They hadn't summoned him here simply to give him his orders, they had other people to do that. He was here because they wanted to look at him for themselves, to see the dummy5

whites of his eyes and—more likely—the yellow of his soul.

It was his chance, and he had to take it. And he wouldn't get it by answering 'Yes, Sir Eustace' and 'No, Sir Eustace' like the scared, timeserving nonentity he was.

'I thought, if I fluffed the selection board, or I didn't stay the course as an officer-cadet at Eaton Hall, then at least I'd end up as an Education Corps sergeant in a cushy billet somewhere,' he said coolly.

'You like cushy billets?' Sir Eustace pounced on the admission. 'Isn't Paris a cushy billet?'

'Yes, it is—'

'I don't know a cushier billet than Paris!' Sir Eustace looked around him for agreement.

'Or a duller one, either,' snapped Roche, seizing his opportunity before anyone could answer. 'And I'm not a poor bloody National Serviceman any more either—and that's also the difference. And I wasn't conscripted from the Signals to Intelligence—I volunteered.'

Sir Eustace met his gaze steadily for a moment, and then nodded slowly, not smiling, but at least acknowledging the point.

'Yes . . . .' To Roche's disappointment it was Clinton who spoke now. 'And just why, in your considered opinion, is Paris so dull these days?'

Roche transferred his attention to Clinton, and wished he knew something—anything—about the man beyond what the dummy5

faint warning bells had whispered to him.

He licked his lips and decided to play for time. 'I handle the liaison traffic,' he began cautiously.

'I know that,' said Clinton.

Roche's courage sank. Sir Eustace had digested the assessments in the file, yet was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. But Colonel Clinton had reached a different and hostile conclusion, and there wasn't any time to play for.

'They don't love us, the French,' He had to find something to give Clinton, something which might impress him.

'Go on.'

'They don't even like us. . . . Last year, for maybe six months

—from the time Nasser seized the canal through to the landings—they tried to like us, but even then it was a