Soldier No More (11 page)

So that was the other fear Ada Clarke had slept with, night after night, while her adored Master David had galloped off to the war—and a fear she’d literally slept with, in the person of her Charlie, who had taken his wounds in the mind, on the Dunkirk beaches—that her Master David would also come back unrecognisable, handicapped in the same way.

He smiled at Mrs Clarke. “But he did come back all right?” he encouraged her. One thing at least: the excavation of Master David now seemed the most natural thing in the world.

“Oh yes, sir—“

“But different,” cut in Wimpy.

“Not much different, sir. The big difference was before that—after the Master was killed, and right through until he went off to the war, he was difficult then. But that’s not to be wondered at… And he was never an easy boy—“

“Which is not to be wondered at, either,” said Wimpy drily.

“He was too much on his own, that’s what. A boy ought to have friends. And being away at school so much—and even during the holidays too sometimes, when the Master was away, when he stayed on at school—he didn’t have any friends, not of his own age.” Mrs Clarke sniffed. “And that Mrs Templeton—“

Wimpy sat up. “Oh—come on, Clarkie!”

Mrs Clarke shook her head. “No, sir! I could tell a tale there—if I chose to … which I don’t… But I could.” Her lips thinned to a hard-compressed line. “She was a man-eater, she was.”

“But not a boy-eater, Clarkie.”

“Hmmm!” Her jaw hardened. “More like what they put in the local paper, sir: ‘Pedigree bitch—house-trained, eats anything, very fond of children’.”

“Clarkie!” Wimpy sounded genuinely shocked.

“I didn’t say it, sir. It was Mr Deacon that said it—and it was Mr Deacon that put a stop to it too, in the end. You ask him if you think I tell a lie, sir, Mr William.”

“Well…” As near as he had ever come to being at a loss, Wimpy was so. “Well, he never told me, Clarkie.”

“Mr Deacon, sir?”

“David, I mean.”

She shook her head. “Well, he wouldn’t, sir, now would he? What Master David wants to forget, he forgets, and it’s like it never happened to him. But what he wants to remember, he never forgets.”

If Audley had that peculiar ability, it was a blessed gift, thought Roche. But, nevertheless, the boy and the man must still be the sum of this strangely twisted past in which so many influences had combined to tarnish the silver spoon he’d been born with.

“Hah—hmm …” Wimpy eyed Roche uneasily, as though the dialogue had outrun his intention. “And how’s the house getting on, then, Clarkie?”

“Ah—“ she shook herself out of the past gratefully “—that’s getting on a treat, sir. They’ve finished the main roof, with all the timbers replaced that had the death-watch beetle. And they’ve done temporary repairs on the barn—only temporary, because Master David’s coming home in the autumn to have a look at it himself before they do the job properly… But they’ve bought the tiles for that, from an old place up Guildford way that’s falling down—he won’t have anything new, won’t Master David, it’s got to be just right, no matter what the cost… thousands, he’s spent on it, my Charlie reckons … Old Billy and Cecil have been on it three years nearly now, and not done a day’s work anywhere else since they started—they’re away today with the lorry, getting the oak beams for the barn that Master David ordered in the spring when he was here last.”

“He was here in the spring, was he?”

“Two weeks, sir. And three games of rugger, that’s what he did. And all the bills paid—and wages for me and Charlie, and Old Billy and Cecil, in advance right until the end of October, cash money—“ she shook her head disbelievingly “—not like with Mr Nigel, nothing on tick, all cash money … It’s got so if they want credit, Old Billy says, he could get anything he wants, the builders’ merchants are so pleased to see him now—
not
like Mr Nigel… Except Mr Nigel never spent anything on the house, if he could help it, even with the rain coming in through the end gable so I had to put the old tin bath to catch it, to stop it coming through into the dining room! But not a drop comes in now, with the roof done good as new—“

Stocker’s reservations on Audley’s finances echoed inside Roche’s head. There had been some money, and then there had been very little of it. But here was Audley satisfied with nothing but the best, even down to restorations in original materials plundered from old houses by his own private staff of restorers!

“And the bathrooms are done, like with things you never saw before— except Charlie remembers them, that he’s seen in France when he was there—“

“Bidets, you mean, Clarkie?”

“If you say so, sir.” Mrs Clarke sniffed her disapproval of all things French. “The plumbing’s all done, anyway. And the electric wiring, that the insurance man wanted.”

“And central heating?”

“No, sir—he won’t have that done.”

Wimpy nodded at Roche. “The lingering legacy of a public school education.”

“But he doesn’t come home much in the winter,” said Mrs Clarke loyally. “He’s like Mr Nigel there … So Charlie lights all the fires twice a week to keep the old place aired … and that roof’s made a heap of difference, I can tell you.” She nodded. “You wouldn’t hardly recognise it.”

Wimpy smiled. “I should like to see it… remembering the discomforts of the past.” He flicked a glance at Roche. “Would you like to have a look, David? Would that be okay, Clarkie?”

“Of course, sir.” She turned to Roche. “It’s a beautiful old place, sir—it was a crime to let it go to wrack and ruin. But Master David’s put that right.” She gave Wimpy a sly look. “All it needs now is a woman’s touch, to my way of thinking, sir, Mr William.”

Wimpy shook his head. “No sign of that on the horizon, I’m afraid, Clarkie. And it’d need an exceptionally resilient young woman to handle our David—let alone capture him.”

“Hmm …” Ada Clarke pursed her lips, but didn’t deny the assessment. “A mistress it needs, I still say.”

“It’s had one or two of those, by golly!” Wimpy chuckled.

“I didn’t mean
that
, sir—and well you know it! There were too many of
them
up to the war … But there’s never been a real lady since—since—“ she broke off suddenly, staring at Wimpy blankly for an instant, then seeming to notice Roche again as a stranger just in time. “There now! You want to go up to the house, and I’ve got my Charlie’s tea to think about—if you should see him you tell him to come on back now, he’s up there somewhere—“ she rose from her chair and began fussing over the plates and teacups “—and there’s some parcels for Master David you can take up for me while you’re about it, and save me the bother—“

THEY MADE THEIR
way up the long, curving gravel drive between great banks of hawthorn and briar and elder interlaced with blackberry branches.

“Going to be a good year for blackberries.” Wimpy nodded at the cascades of unripe greeny-red fruit. “Charlie never cuts the hedges back until after the jam-making and bottling—always wonderful picking along here.”

Roche balanced the parcels with which he was loaded, and attempted to sort out his thoughts. He was aware that he had been fed with a great deal of information about David Audley, which might be priceless because it was of a kind that money and conventional interrogations would never have bought, except that he still didn’t know why it should be so valuable.

“I used to pick them along here with Charlie when we were both boys,” continued Wimpy. “ ‘Pick one—eat one’ was our motto, as I recall.”

Wimpy, as well as Ada Clarke and Charlie, was an old retainer of the Audley family, Roche decided. But there must be a class difference in the relationship which he hadn’t yet worked out.

“You knew him—Nigel Audley—before Oxford?”

“Oh yes. My father was up there with
his
father—the one that was killed in 1917… They were both at Balliol at the same time. Only Dad was clever and poor and Audley
grand-p
è
re
was clever and rich … But they rowed in the same eight, and they became friends. And they stayed friends even after Dad metamorphosed into a poor schoolmaster, like me after him—it’s in the blood, I’m sorry to say, dear boy!” He bobbed his head at Roche. “Only I didn’t really get to know Nigel until Oxford—I knew Charlie better until then, as a matter of fact. Poor old Charlie!”

Poor old Charlie … . This had been—and still was—a strange intertwining of people and families, across the boundaries of class and money, here and in Oxford, and through two world wars, which had turned the schoolmaster into Audley’s guardian and the housemaid into something more than his nurse.

“She brought him up, in effect—Mrs Clarke?” The question followed the thought.

“David?” Wimpy nodded. “In effect—I suppose she did. In association with St. George’s and Immingham and Rudyard Kipling, you might say— they brought him up too, just as much, no matter how much he resisted them.”

“He … resisted them?”

Wimpy twisted a smile at him. “Not on the surface. One thing a boarding-school teaches you … is to conform or go under. And yet the saving grace of the British system is that it always manages to throw up a percentage of eccentrics and rebels nevertheless, to leaven the lump. So they have the great potential for good or evil…”

Bloody-minded
, remembered Roche. That had been Latimer’s assessment, and since Latimer was a product of the same system he should know a fellow spirit.

“I’m not sure that David has decided which horse to back,” continued Wimpy. “Perhaps you’ll be the catalyst—you’re the man he could be waiting for. Freddie Clinton could be right.”

Roche frowned. “What d’you mean? Right about what?” Wimpy walked in silence for a time. “What do I mean? I think I mean… if you could recruit David—if he came to you of his own free will this time, not as a conscript, like in the war—“

“They don’t conscript people into Intelligence.”

“Wrong word? It was Intelligence or back to regimental duty, but after what he’d seen in Normandy that wasn’t a choice … No, what I mean is, if you can’get him to give you his loyalty freely just once, then that’ll be it. ‘Whether she be good or bad, one gives one’s best once, to one only. That given, there remains no second worth giving or taking’—Pertinax in
Puck
, once again. I don’t think he’s given his best yet, to anyone or anything. That’s all.”

It was more than enough to Roche: it was dust and ashes bitter in his mouth. No one was a greater authority on the second best than he: he had spent years giving it, ever since Julie. Whoever Pertinax was, he was right.

“We’re getting close to the house. It’s just round the curve ahead, through the trees,” said Wimpy. “It really is a fascinating old place—“

“What was wrong between Audley and his father?” asked Roche.

“Nigel?” Wimpy half-stumbled, tipping the topmost of his share of the parcels into the trackway ahead of him. “Damn! Mustn’t damage the merchandise. Can you rescue that book for me, old boy? You’re not so heavily laden as I am.”

The division of the parcels had appeared equal to Roche, but it seemed churlish to refuse the request. He set down his own burden—of books also; all the parcels contained books by the shape and feel of them—and set about recovering the fallen volume, which had half emerged from its torn wrapping.

He couldn’t resist the temptation to examine it—it would be a history book, something to do with Visigoths or Islamic doctrines, for a bet—

But it wasn’t. Or rather, it wasn’t quite: the garish dustcover illustrated the head of a warrior as though picked out in stained-glass, one-eyed and bearded and helmeted—
The Twelve Pictures
, by Edith Simon. Letting the remnants of the wrapping drop, he opened the book.

‘
The Twelve Pictures
’
is a novel as rich and wonderful as a medieval tapestry
—
a tapestry of beauty and terror
…

“Interesting?” inquired Wimpy politely.

Roche looked up at him. “It’s an historical novel—about Attila and the Huns.” He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Is it, indeed?” Wimpy reflected the surprise back at him. “I wouldn’t have thought that would be quite his style of light reading—not
these
days …”

That was it exactly. Oxford and Cambridge were notoriously addicted to whodunits and mysteries—they were even given to writing the things. But historians (and although Audley wasn’t an academic he was certainly an historian) were surely the last people to indulge in third-class relaxation in their own chosen subject.

“Let’s have a look at the others,” exclaimed Wimpy, his eyes alight with mischief and curiosity. “We shouldn’t… but I can never resist temptation, old boy!”

It was hardly the place to start tearing open parcels, in the middle of a leafy lane, but the little schoolmaster had set down his parcels and was ripping at them before Roche could suggest as much.

“Here’s another one—
The Restless Flame
, by Louis de Wohl… about St. Augustine of Hippo. And it’s second-hand, so he must have ordered it—yes, it’s from old Evan White in Guildford, of course! A damn good bookseller—he doesn’t overcharge for the Loebs I’ve been extracting from him … And here’s another one—Jack Lindsay’s
The Barriers Are Down
…
let’s see … ‘Gaul during the break-up of the Roman Empire’. And a new Penguin—Graves’
Count Belisarius
. I read that in hardcover before the war, I bought it for the school library in fact—“

They were all historical novels, new and second-hand; there wasn’t a serious history book among them.

“Alfred Duggan—
Winter Quarters
,” concluded Wimpy. “I must get that for the school library, I didn’t know he’d got a new one out—a damn fine writer. I was arguing with Steve Bates, our sixth form History man, just not long ago that his hopefuls could learn more about the First Crusade from Duggan’s
Knight with Armour—
aye
, and more about the 5th century from Palfrey’s
Princess in the Sunset—
than
from anything he could offer them.” He gave Roche a knowing leer. “He conceded Duggan, but Palfrey’s purple passages about delicate over-bred Roman maidens having to submit to the sweaty embraces of hairy Goths were a bit too much for him.” He sighed. “But we can’t squat here all day, maundering over David’s extraordinary taste in literature—and it is very odd, I grant you …” Wimpy gazed at the book in his hand.