A New Kind of War

‘Nothing, really.’ Had Audley broken up their conversation deliberately? ‘I was just asking a few questions.’

‘Did you get any answers?’

It sounded an innocent question, but Fred didn’t think it was. ‘Not really – no.’

‘No . . . you wouldn’t.’ Audley sounded relieved now.

‘He’s a good man, is our Jacko. The best, actually. But he doesn’t say much. Even the egregious Crocodile can only claim dumb insolence.’ He chuckled to himself suddenly.

Fred echoed the chuckle, and not altogether falsely dummy4

because of the sameness-with-difference of the two men’s opinions of each other. ‘Whereas your insolence will never be dumb, David?’

Another nervous chuckle. ‘Oh . . . I’m only deliberately rude to the Old Croc. With everyone else it’s just accidental, Fred.’ Pause. ‘What were the jolly questions, then?’

‘Questions?’ Below the boy’s superficially innocent-curiosity Fred sensed wariness and suspicion – the same disturbing state of mind, in fact, which he now realized lay hidden beneath the eccentric chit-chat of all ranks of TRR-2 whom he had met so far, from the Colonel downwards. But perhaps that was the occupational disease of their ‘dirty business’, against which Kyri had warned him – ?

‘What do you want to know?’ Silence always goaded Audley into trying again.

‘Ah . . .’ Why doesn’t Devenish click-click and save me, damn it! ‘. . . well . . . there was your umbrella, for a start, David.’

‘My – ?’

‘Umbrella.’ Fred’s wits quickened. ‘An old cavalry tradition, you said?’

‘Oh . . .’ Audley sounded disappointed. ‘Yes.’

Fred knew he was on a winner. ‘Waterloo, was it?’

‘Yes.’ The boy sighed. ‘But actually, it started in the dummy4

Peninsular War. Lots of cavalry officers had umbrellas.

And then Wellington stopped it in 1814, when they crossed the Pyrenees into France – he said it was unmilitary . . . Although General Picton always carried an umbrella . . . and it came back in ’15, at Waterloo.‘

Audley paused. But then history became too strong for the future historian. ’I had an ancestor in the cavalry down there, in Spain. He was actually killed at Salamanca, charging with Le Marchant, you know.

Bought into the King’s Own – the 3rd – from the West Sussex Yeomanry, my old regiment – ‘ Audley stopped suddenly, again. ’Yes . . . well, Sergeant Devenish wouldn’t have given you anything on umbrellas – I can well understand that.‘

‘He doesn’t approve of them.’ Still no click-click!

‘Like the Duke of Wellington?’

‘Only more so. And what else did you ask of him?’

There would be a time for real questions, but now wasn’t that time. And young Audley wasn’t the man, in spite of his inclination towards indiscretion. It was de Souza he needed for real questions. But what other unimportant questions were there?

A single drop of rainwater, diffused through the network of overhanging branches above him, hit Fred on the tip of the nose. And that was the answer, of course.

‘When it was pissing down, earlier – ’ He felt his voice dummy4

lifting from a whisper to conversational level as the sound of the aircraft engines rose ‘ – you said “This is how it would have been”, David.’ What was good about this utterly unimportant question, apart from the certainty that Devenish wouldn’t have had the answer to it, was that it actually had been irritating him, this last hour. ‘What did you mean by that?’

‘Oh . . . that’s not me, really – that’s Caesar Augustus.’

Click-click! ‘Colonel Colbourne?’

‘Yes.’ Audley ignored the signal. ‘He says it every time it pisses down, Fred: “This is what it was like in A.

D. 9” is what he means – ’

Click-click! ‘Ah . . .’ A.D. 9? Fuck A.D. 9! ‘Was that Sergeant Devenish, David?’

‘Yes.’ But Audley didn’t move. ‘He reckons it was probably raining then, up in the Teutoburgerwald, when poor old Varus was trying to march his three legions through it – with all their transport, and such . . . Because it was pretty much a peace-time march, apparently: just showing the Roman flag –

showing the Eagles – to the conquered German tribes . . . Three full legions, plus auxiliary regiments, plus the usual camp followers, and NAAFI waggons and all that, and the Roman ABCA people – education-wallahs, peddling the Roman Way of Life to the troops and the German natives . . . When, of course the dummy4

German natives were leading him astray, into ambush, and sharpening their assegais and licking their lips –

poor old Varus! Up to his knees in German mud, with millions of German trees around him – and thousands of bloodthirsty Germans, too – ’

Click-click!