Authors: Anthony Price
And little Jack Butler caught in the middle, caught between two men who were both as hard as diamonds, old comrades implacably opposed to each other.
‘Rifleman Sands reckoned that if it had been a marginal Parliamentary seat they would both have stood for it, and made a real fight of it. But it was a safe Tory seat, and neither of them reckoned to waste their time in London when they could be pitching into each other where they were. Beautiful!’
But maybe not so beautiful for little Jack, though?
Paul turned back to the books again.
‘What about … Colonel Butler …’ She couldn’t call him ‘little Jack’ out aloud ‘… when he was a boy?’
‘Ah .. . You mean, what did Rifleman Sands have to say about Rifleman-Colonel Jack?’ He reached out for another book, and Frances noted the care with which he extracted it from the shelf, how he pressed the top of its spine inwards first so that he could lift it out from the bottom without straining the binding. ‘Yes … another
Ex libris
Henricus Chesney
—
but the one next to it—‘ he exchanged one book for another ‘—that can’t be, because I remember when it first came out.
The Debateable Land
…
that would be about ‘69 …
J. Butler 1970,
there you are! And the old General died way back in ‘53 … so—quite a lot of these must be J. Butler’s, actually. But that figures, as they say … that figures.’
‘Who say?’ Frances inquired gently. So far he hadn’t given her anything, and now he was teasing her.
‘”Always had his nose in a book, young Jack”—Rifleman Sands.’ Paul nodded at the shelves. ‘Thought he was going to be a schoolmaster, young Jack, did Rifleman Sands … scholarship boy at the grammar school, with his nose always in some book or other when he wasn’t working at his odd jobs. And that’s really how it happened, I suppose: the General kept an eye on him because he was RSM Butler’s son—gave him the job because he was RSM Butler’s son. Sands was there when he gave it to him. And then saw how much he read, and gave him the run of the library too … One lonely old man and one lonely small boy—no mother, and Father Butler busy with his politics and his trade unionism when he wasn’t working … and the old General’s only son had been killed by the Afridis ten years before, up in Waziristan somewhere, and his wife had died of ‘flu donkey’s years earlier, just after the ‘14—‘18 War. One plus one equals two …
I guess young Jack must have aroused the old man’s interest first, because he was his father’s son. Then the interest became a sort of hobby, because the boy was intelligent…’
More than that under the surface, Frances suspected. There was a familiar enough pattern here: the age gap was such that the two of them would probably have been able to talk to each other in a way that they could never have talked to anyone else. She could remember the confidences she exchanged with Grannie, which went far beyond anything either of them had told Mother. And, for a guess, unspoken love would have followed spoken confidences.
As always, she was surprised how the memory of Grannie still ached. Or not the memory, but the loss.
‘And then the interest—the hobby—became an obsession.’ Paul gazed into space for a moment. ‘You know, they wrote to each other once a fortnight. Butler and the General—never failed. Sometimes it was only a note from Butler. And sometimes, when he was away at the war, and when he was in the thick of it in Korea, the letters would bunch up and arrive together. But the General would give Rifleman Sands a letter to post every other Monday, rain or shine, every one numbered in sequence. And he’d report to Sands how Butler was getting on—the day Butler’s Military Cross was gazetted they both got stoned out of their minds, Sands says. Started with champagne, which neither of them liked, and finished up on 40-year-old malt whisky, and Sands sprained his ankle trying to get on his bicycle afterwards, and was off work for a week.’ Paul grinned at her suddenly. ‘Got his money’s worth out of our Jack, the General did, in Rifleman Sands’ opinion—or value for money, anyway. And so did Sands himself, he was quite frank about it: nice little private nursing home, with pinchable bottoms—not a lot of change out of £100 a week, I should think—all at Rifleman-Colonel Butler’s expense.
And
not in the General’s will, either—the General took it for granted that Butler would do it, and Butler did it.’
‘Does that make Sands a reliable witness?’
Paul laughed. ‘The old bugger doesn’t give a damn. With his pension and his investments—he’s been a bachelor all his life, and the General made his investments for him—he’s got enough to see himself out, no problem. He said so himself.’
‘Then why does he accept money from Butler?’
‘Ah—now that’s interesting. He does it to please Butler.’
‘To …
please
—
?
’
Paul nodded. ‘That’s got you, hasn’t it!
Autres temps, autres maeurs,
Princess … You see, the way Rifleman Sands was brought up—and the way Rifleman-Colonel Butler, our Jack, was also brought up, just one street away in the same district, also on the wrong side of the tracks, but in the same world as the General—was that if a man did his duty to the best of his ability, then everything would be all right, come what may. You can laugh—‘
‘I’m not laughing.’
‘Then bully for you. That makes you a very old-fashioned girl, I can tell you … But I’ve talked to a lot of these old boys, when I was pretending to be an historian, and trying to find out how they stood it in the trenches. And it all comes back to the same thing: they didn’t think it was religious, but they were all brought up on the Bible and it’s straight out of St. Paul to the Colossians, chapter three:
And whatsoever ye do, do it
heartily, as to the Lord, and not to men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of
the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ.
’
Good God! thought Frances involuntarily: Paul Mitchell quoting the Scriptures—it wasn’t so much surprising that he could recall the words accurately, because his amazing capacity for recall was well-known, as that he accepted their importance in preference for more cynical interpretations.
‘So Rifleman Sands considers it
his
duty to let Butler do
his
duty. Which in turn allows Sands to leave his money to Army charities—mostly the British Legion—which Butler himself knows perfectly well, because he’s an executor of the will … I tell you.
Princess, it’s all absolutely incredible. And at the same time it’s beautiful as well, the way both of them have it worked out between them—where their obligations lie.’
He was telling her something now. Maybe he didn’t think he was—maybe he was simply blinding her with what he took to be irrelevant facts, however academically interesting—but he was, nevertheless. He was telling her something of enormous significance.
‘What about those letters? The General would have kept them—did they go to the Imperial War Museum?’
Paul shook his head. ‘No way we’re going to get a look at them. They’re safe in the bosom of the regimental archives somewhere—he didn’t include them with the papers he gave to the museum. And I mean safe. Because when he handed them over he slapped a 50-year embargo on them, and only he can unslap it … the adjutant made that crystal clear.’
He paused for a moment or two, ran his finger over some of the books casually, and then glanced sidelong at her. ‘A decent fellow, the adjutant … didn’t know Butler himself, too young, but he produced a couple of old sweats who knew him pretty well, and put me on to a retired half-colonel of the Mendips who was one of his subalterns in Korea … Lives not far from here, the half-colonel, so I took him in en route. And there was another chap I talked to this morning, ex-Rifles … I’ve covered one hell of a lot of ground since last night, and that’s the truth.’
He was impressing her with how much he knew, and how much he had to offer.
And also that he was nearly ready to start trading.
‘But he didn’t tell me about the letters, the adjutant—I heard about them from Rifleman Sands. And when I phoned the adjutant back he said—ever so politely—that if Her Majesty wanted to see them it’d be a case of
hard luck. Your Majesty.
,’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Frances.
‘I agree. Except they would only have given us the beginning of the story, and it’s the end of it we really need …’ He watched her. ‘That is … if we’re looking for the same thing, Princess.’
‘True.’ The trading had started. ‘You said Sands thought he was going to be a schoolmaster, not a soldier? Did he really mean that?’
Paul half-smiled. ‘Takes a bit of effort to see Fighting Jack as Mr Chips, not Colonel Blimp, doesn’t it!’
‘Did he?’
‘I doubt it. I think Rifleman Sands simply thinks that any poor boy who won a scholarship to- the Grammar and liked reading books ought to be a schoolmaster, that’s all. Just the old class prejudice against the Red Coat … plus his own memories of the trenches, I suspect.’
‘And what did Butler’s father make of it?’
‘Well, I think . ..’ He broke off. ‘I think … that it’s about time you stopped asking questions and answered one or two for a change. Princess. Like, for instance, what this sudden interest in Fighting Jack’s academic progress means?’
Frances shrugged. ‘I think he’s a complex man.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ He gestured towards the shelves of books. ‘But he carried on the family tradition—adopted family anyway. They’re all military, or military-political. Or political …
Ex libris
Butler is the same as
Ex libris
Chesney.’
‘Not upstairs.’
‘Upstairs?’
‘In his bedroom.’
‘Indeed? Books in his bedroom? Well, well!’ He was interested in spite of himself.
‘What dark secret have you uncovered there, then?’
Frances thought of the hard, narrow bed and the carefully adjusted reading lamp, as well as the well-thumbed books. And also what the children had said.
‘No dark secret, Paul. Just Hardy and Dickens and Thackeray … he’s re-reading
Henry Esmond
at the moment.’
‘Re-reading?’
‘And Defoe’s
Journal of the Plague Year.
And Robert Penn Warren’s
All the King
’
s Men.
And Hemingway and Stephen Crane. And Jack London’s
Martin Eden.
’
‘That would be rather suitable,’ murmured Paul. ‘But Hemingway—that’s a turn-up, I must say!’
‘And John DOS Passes … Thoreau, Mark Twain … and Faulkner—every bit of Faulkner …’
She trailed off.
‘Hmm . ..’ There was a frown on his face now. ‘Not a simple soldier, you mean? But maybe a man after your own heart, perhaps?’
He had seen her books, Frances remembered, even though he had also confused Robbie’s with hers to her discomfort.
And then … after her own heart?
Well, they both had the same Yoknapatawpha County tales, except that his had been bought new in ‘55—
J. Butler 1955
—
and hers picked up, dog-eared, in the Charing Cross Road fifteen years later.
Heart—
And except his had an underlining in it (and it was his underlining too, in the same coal-black ink of
J. Butler
7955), and as he had never underlined anything in any other of his books, so far as she could discover, that passage from Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech had to be strong magic for him:
…
the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths
…
love and honour and pit
y
and pride and compassion and sacrifice
…
‘You favour the psychological approach this time, then? “Know the man, and you’ll know where to find the facts everyone else has missed”?’ At least he was deadly serious and not making fun of her.
‘Are there any facts everyone else has missed?’
He didn’t reply at once; he was still adding the unsuspected literary Butler to his Fighting Jack, and getting no sort of answer.
At length he nodded. ‘I think there are, somewhere—yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of us, Frances. You and me.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean … I don’t believe they would have detached us without a reason—I don’t think it can be just because someone high up hopes to block Butler’s promotion. I think that a word has been dropped somewhere that there is something. And if they put the same people on it who checked him out before, they think those people will find the same things, which will amount to nothing. But you and I—we start out fresh. That’s what I think, Frances.’
And we
’
re the best too,
he left unsaid.
‘Which leaves us with the old “means, motive and opportunity”—if he killed her, then how did he, and why did he, and when did he?’ He paused fractionally. ‘Only we already know that there could have been a “when”, because he never produced an alibi.
And the “how” hardly matters, because when it comes to killing he’s got more notches on his belt than Billy the Kid.’
‘But only in war.’
‘But he enjoyed it. That’s what the chap who was with him on the Imjin in Korea said. They were in trenches-trenches and dug-outs and wire, and it was bloody cold, and they were overrun by rats. Rats don’t like cold, they like nice warm dug-outs. And you can’t poison them because they go home to die, and then they smell. And there were plenty of dead bodies to smell, too … In fact, it was like the ‘14-‘18 War—in some ways it was even worse, because there weren’t any billets behind the lines, or if there were they were full of rats and lice—and the rats and lice were full of scrub typhus and Songo fever, neither of which Butler senior had to contend with on the Somme. Apart from which there was foot-rot and ring-worm and malaria.
And,
of course, there were a million Chinese who were quite prepared to swop casualties at ten to one—‘
This, again, was the other Paul: a Paul transformed by his private military obsession, convoys and battle-cruisers forgotten now.