Soldier No More (12 page)

Odd, certainly; though perhaps not altogether extraordinary if Audley had been raised on a diet of Kipling; and maybe not extraordinary at all on second thoughts, if the eccentric Wimpy’s hand had been in that raising. And yet the little schoolmaster himself had magnified his own surprise, thought Roche: he had wondered at these books, even though they were undoubtedly Audley’s books—apart from the carefully-typed addresses …
Dr D. L.
Audley (to await arrival), c/o Mrs C. Clarke, The Lodge, Steeple Horley, Sussex
.

“Come on, then.” Wimpy straightened up, balancing his armful of historical fiction but leaving their wrappers at his feet. “I’ll ask Charlie to clear up this mess on his way home. The house is just ahead, round those trees—“

At first glimpse, through a scatter of silver birches, The Old House was disappointing—almost another Audley contradiction.

After Major Stocker’s casual description—‘not so big, but very old and rather nice’—Roche hadn’t expected a minor stately home. But from the way Wimpy and Mrs Clarke had spoken, almost reverently, of the care lavished on the restoration and of the high days and nights of Nigel Audley’s smart parties in the thirties, he had mentally prepared himself for a substantial manor, of the sort with which so many English villages were still blessed and which complemented the glorious little parish churches, his own special interest—medieval church, Stuart or Georgian manor, and Victorian school, plus ghastly twentieth-century village hall, that was the progression he had most often observed.

But The Old House was something different: a mixture of stone and weathered brick and half-timber, with windows and gables of different sizes apparently inserted at random—long and low … lower, indeed, than the windowless, ivy-covered barn beside it—the ivy at odds with a wisteria on the house—which had been tacked on to it at right angles, to form an L-shaped courtyard.

“Magic, isn’t it!” murmured Wimpy, at his shoulder. “It always takes my breath away—I envy you the first sight of it, old boy. ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’, and stout Cortez and Chapman’s ‘Homer’, and all that, eh?”

The scales fell from Roche’s eyes.

“Or ‘Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye’, even,” continued Wimpy softly, almost to himself. “The kitchen garden’s full of bits of Roman tile, and we found coloured
tesserae
from a pavement when they dug the drain at the corner—I swear there’s a villa underneath it somewhere … ‘Merlin’s Isle’, that’s what we used to say, David and I—there’s a track that runs behind the house, just below the rise of the downland up above—
O that was where they hauled the guns That smote King Philip
’
s fleet
! “—remember Puck’s song? Or maybe you don’t…”

Roche’s mouth was dry. “It’s … “ he swallowed awkwardly “…it must be very old,” he said.

“Older than old. God knows how old!” Wimpy paused. “It’s the servants’ quarters, actually—the kitchen wing of the original house, the 15th century house that was burnt down in 1603—the very day Queen Elizabeth died, the records say. But there was a fortified manor here before
that
house, and a Saxon hall before that… and, for my money, a Roman villa before
that
. And God only knows what before that, as I say… But the barn was built in the 1570s—the family was Catholic then, and there’s a local legend that there’s a ‘Priest’s hole’ in the house somewhere, but no one’s ever found it … It’s certainly a fact that Elizabeth’s officers raided the house regularly. But they never caught anyone, so it’s either just a legend, or the hiding-place is too damned well hidden. You pays your money and you takes your choice … But David and I have spent hours tapping and poking and prying, when Nigel was away, and we haven’t found anything yet… But we live in hopes, because—if you ask me—because it’ll be a useful thing to have, a secret hiding place in one’s house, in this country one day.”

Roche looked at Wimpy questioningly. “What?”

“Oh, it’ll be all right under Hugh Gaitskell—he may be a damned intellectual, but he’s in the Attlee-Bevin tradition, the old Labour Party I voted for in ‘45. It’ll be okay when he gets in after Macmillan—which he will next time …But there are some damned dodgy bastards in the wings after that, if you ask me—chaps who’ve never either done an honest day’s work or smelt gunpowder properly… the way Ernie Bevin and Clem Attlee did, old boy … I tell you, we’re in for a bad fifty years now—a bad twenty-five years, anyway, even if the bloody Russians don’t shit on us from a great height! So a prudent Englishman would do well to have a numbered account in Switzerland—always supposing it was legal!—and a secret hiding place in his house—“ he pointed at The Old House “—if only he can damn well find it!”

Roche blinked at him, and then stared at the house to hide his confusion. If David Audley didn’t yet have the hiding place, it did look as though he had acquired the numbered account; and if this was what his legal guardian had taught him that was not to be wondered at, either. And just at this precise moment, he—David Roche, as ever was—wished that he had the same, only more so, and with better and more urgent reason.

“Hah—sorry!” Wimpy coughed apologetically. “Got on my jolly old soap-box in a moment of weakness—bad form—and particularly bad form with you, eh, old boy? And that isn’t the object of this exercise anyway.” He nodded towards the house. “
That
is the object which I wanted you to study, David Roche.”

Roche studied The Old House obediently, though the act of obedience required no effort: he couldn’t keep his eyes off it—off its detail, of which nothing appeared to have been planned and everything was irregular; and yet the whole, the sum of the detail, fitted together like a perfect jigsaw in its frame of trees, with the soaring curve of the downland behind it. The mystery of his first disappointment niggled him; had it been that he simply wanted something about Audley to be simple and predictable and ordinary?

“I’ll say one thing for Cecil and Old Billy,” murmured Wimpy. “They’re damned cantankerous pair of old rogues, but they’ve done a bloody marvellous job on that roof. If they can do as well with the barn, they may get into heaven yet…”

Roche shifted his gaze unwillingly from the ancient mulberry tree at the corner of the house, its sagging branches crutched with rusty iron supports as befitted the oldest living inhabitant of the picture, to the dilapidated roof of the barn, with its chaos of moss-covered tiles. In one place the ridge was sagging like the mulberry’s branches.

“Well?” inquired Wimpy. “What d’you think of it?”

Roche estimated the artfully restored roof of the house against that of the barn. It would cost a pretty penny—that roof would have to be stripped, and the rotten timbers replaced … but Wimpy had said they’d found the oak for that—

“It’s got you, hasn’t it?” said Wimpy. “Good!”

Roche turned towards him, and found that he was smiling. “What d’you mean—it’s got me?” He frowned. “Good?”

“It’s in your face. It doesn’t take everyone that way. But you’re one of the lucky ones—or unlucky, maybe.” Wimpy’s own face was animated by mischief, almost malice. “I was hoping you would be, because it could help you.”

It could help
you?

“Let’s say … you need to see this place, I think, if you’re to have a chance of understanding
my
David—which frankly I don’t any more, to be honest—“ Wimpy seemed to have overheard that last unspoken question “—because this is David’s obsession, so far as I can make out. And I don’t wonder, even if he is hardly ever here—I don’t wonder—“

Roche didn’t wonder either.

“Yes … a bit of the old Matthew, chapter four, verse nine, eh?” said Wimpy softly. “ ‘All these things will I give thee, if only thou wilt fall down and worship me’—if I whispered that in your ear, supposing I had horns and a forked tail and oakum in my boots, how would you reply, young Roche?”

Had that been what the schoolmaster had seen in his face, thought Roche: had the envy been so naked?

He stared all the harder at the house to hide his annoyance with himself. To possess such a place—to hold such a piece of Old England—any sensible man would lie and cheat and steal, and do any dishonourable thing, certainly. And fight, of course, as no doubt those old Romans and Saxons and Normans had done—and scheme too, as no doubt those Elizabethan Catholics had done, with the Virgin Queen’s Gestapo breathing down
their
necks—

He found a false smile to give Wimpy. “I don’t think I could afford to run it on my pay, not even with the expenses thrown in, let alone employ Cecil and Old Billy, and Mr and Mrs Clarke.”

Wimpy nodded. “Good point. I’d have to throw in gold as well, of course. But the Devil always does that, doesn’t he!”

And yet there was a mystery here, to add to all the others, now that he’d seen the house: if this was David Audley’s obsession, the restoration of the family home to its past glory, his father’s intention seemed to have been the exact opposite—to use it, and mortgage it to finance its use, and to let it decay all the while… and even at the last to try to sell it over his son’s head, which only a German bullet in 1940 had prevented?

“You think we might get at him—at David Audley—through the house, somehow?” Roche faced the little man squarely, frowning sincerity at him. After all, the virtue of this diversion was that if it paid off it would cease to be a diversion. Not Mr Nigel, but Master David, was the objective.

“Hmmm … not if ‘get at’ means ‘threaten’, certainly.” Wimpy shook his head slowly. “Threatening my David could be … unproductive, let’s say. It isn’t something I’d undertake lightly—he has a streak of obstinacy a mile wide.”

At least Wimpy and Oliver St.John Latimer agreed on something, then!

Roche nodded at the house. “Where does the money come from?” It was rather a straight question, but it followed naturally.

“Blessed if I know!” Wimpy’s shoulders lifted. “I suppose you could look into that—he could be up to some fiddle, I shouldn’t wonder … the way we’re taxed these days, it can hardly be honest money, and that’s a fact!” He turned his gaze to Roche, still with the ghost of the smile on his face. Then the eyelids shuttered like a camera, and the next expression on the reel was cool and calculating. “But I’d do that carefully if I were you, if it’s a volunteer you’re after … I think … if it’s a fiddle it’ll be fool-proof— income-tax-inspector-proof, rather.”

Roche felt his own eye drawn again towards the house. He had never owned anything like it—he had never even imagined owning anything like it. All that he possessed could be packed into a tin trunk and two large suitcases, plus a couple of tea-chests for his books. Up until recently his heaviest piece of baggage had been an idea, an article of faith which he had pretended to himself was an unshakeable political conviction, which Julie had bequeathed to him as the sole beneficiary of her will. But he hadn’t really owned the idea for a long time now, and perhaps it had never really been his.

“You take my point? I rather think you do, eh?” Wimpy was observing him narrowly, but was evidently misinterpreting his face this time.

Roche felt his back muscles shiver. How could the man have come so close, after having been so wide of the mark? “But his father didn’t take the point, did he!”

“His father? Whose father?” Wimpy frowned.

“Audley’s—David Audley’s. ‘Mr Nigel’—
the expectancy and rose of the fair state
,” quoted Roche brutally. “Wasn’t ‘Mr Nigel’ about to sell the house?” He threw the truth down like a gauntlet between them, challenging Wimpy to choose where his loyalty lay, with the father, his old comrade-in-arms, or with The Old House and his David.

The schoolmaster’s face clouded. “Ah … well … Nigel … was Nigel.” He looked up and around nervously, as though he’d only just realised where he was, and Nigel—was —Nigel might be eavesdropping on them. “Clarkie said we ought to look out for her Charlie, because it’s time for his tea—half of which we’ve already eaten … And she also said,
sotto
voce
, as we were leaving—as I was leaving—that old Charlie’s having one of his turns … in his downhill phase, as the headshrinkers say … which means, the sooner he’s back home, the better. You just wait here, old boy, and I’ll go look for him—he’s in the garden somewhere.” Wimpy started to turn away before Roche could open his mouth to protest. “Talk about Nigel later, maybe.” The turn went through a full circle so that Wimpy was facing him again while retreating backwards towards the wrought-iron gate into the walled garden. “Just look after the books till I get back.” Wimpy pointed to the pile of historical novels he had deposited on the gravel. “Or, better still, take ‘em into the house and stack ‘em on the table by the door, and then have a scout round for yourself—right?”

Roche shut his mouth. If Wimpy was transparently set on ducking the question, solving his loyalty-dilemma simply by quitting the field, at least he was offering something attractive in exchange: to enter The Old House without a running commentary was a chance not to be missed.

“Right.” Wimpy waved vaguely, half at Roche, half at the house, and swivelled back towards the gate.

Roche watched him disappear through the trailing cascade of magenta-flowered clematis which covered the stone archway above the gate. Then he dumped his own armful of books alongside Wimpy’s and stamped across the gravel forecourt to the porch.

As the door swung open a burst of sunlight edged with rainbow colours caught him full in the face.

He shifted his head, shielding his eyes from the light with his hand, and stared up the beam of light through an arch full of dancing dust-motes into a stained-glass window—a high window blazoned with a rich coat-of-arms, yellow and red and blue, set at the top of a carved oak staircase—beyond which the afternoon sun blazed.

Directly ahead of him was an immense refectory table, dark with age like the panelling all around it, with a great bowl of roses on it. Some of the roses had shed their petals in different-coloured piles around the bowl, on a fine coating of dust which the sunlight betrayed. He sniffed, and the scent of the roses, mixed with a damp cellar-smell from somewhere under his feet, combined with the stained-glass to carry him back to this morning’s church and Genghis Khan. He wrinkled his nose, uncertain whether it was the cloying rose-scent-plus-church-smell which made him think of funerals, or the memory of Genghis Khan which also made him think of death, that disturbed him more.