Free Soldier No More by Anthony Price Page A

on the jolly old touchline, urging the team on and shouting instructions—‘tackle him low, you stupid boy’. But to be actually on the field, getting wet and cold and muddy—and not only that, to have people shoot real bullets at you into the bargain—that’s really monstrously unpleasant, you know.”
    Roche cursed his inability to stem the flow, aware at the same time that there was something the schoolmaster had said that he wanted to pull him back to—what had it been, though?
    “He must have married very young—Nigel Audley?” he cut in quickly, as Willis opened his mouth to expatiate further on the horrors of war.
    “Eh?” Willis stared at him vaguely for a moment, as though he found it difficult to withdraw from his memories. “Oh, I suppose so. Does it matter?”
    “David Audley must have been a honeymoon baby, practically.”
    Must he?” The vague look was tinged with irritation. “I can’t say I’ve ever bothered to work it out, you know.” Willis shrugged dismissively. “But I hardly see what that’s got to do with you. Or me.”
    “What was she like? The mother?”
    “She died when he was a baby.”
    “Yes, I know. But what was she like?” Roche didn’t know why he was pressing the question, only that it was there in his mind.
    “Oh … she was … very young.” Willis fished in his pocket again, for his pipe.
    “Yes?”
    Willis jammed the pipe between his teeth. “Yes what?”
    What was she like?” repeated Roche obstinately.
    Willis removed the pipe and commenced filling it from an ancient leather pouch. “What was she like?”
    Yes,” said Roche.
    “What … was she like?” Now it was the lighter’s turn. Puff . “Didn’t really know her that well.” Puff, puff . The wind scattered the smoke. “Nice enough girl.” Puff, puff, puff . “So I believe.”
    “They met at Oxford, did they?”
    “Mmm—think so.” Willis took the pipe from his mouth suddenly and pointed the stem at Roche. “What’s all this in aid of, David Roche?”
    Roche met the question innocently. “Didn’t Colonel Clinton make that clear in his letter, Major?”
    “Not Major — Wimpy . You keep forgetting, don’t you!” The schoolmaster’s voice was mildly chiding on the surface, but Roche sensed the anger swimming beneath.
    “Sorry!” he apologised quickly. This wasn’t the moment to antagonise the schoolmaster—and, for a guess, that was a warning signal his pupils wouldn’t have missed, too.
    “All right, then …” Willis— Wimpy —accepted the amends with a nod. “Your lord and master made it very clear, even abundantly clear, one might say, that Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth, requires the services of her father’s former right trusty and well-beloved lieutenant of dragoons, my erstwhile pupil … yes, he did make that very clear, I grant you … and quickly too, she wants him. And that has a familiar ring about it also, I must say—meaning that owing to the vast stupidity and incompetence of some others among her right trusty and well-beloved servants she has her royal knickers in a twist.”
    Well, that was one way of putting it. And it was quite characteristically Willis’s—Wimpy’s, damn it!—way, lacking only a Latin tag.
    “But what he did not make clear—“ Wimpy cocked a sudden sharp eye at Roche “—always supposing it’s not mere vulgar curiosity on your part, David Roche … is the reason for all this inquiry into my David’s remote antecedents. You must have his family history to hand, with his military record—and no doubt you’ve got more than that … So why the rest, eh?”
    Obviously Clinton’s letter had not spelt out the past in detail, but that left Roche in a quandary as to how far he ought to go to rectify the omission.
    “And please don’t tell me that you’re just obeying orders,” continued Wimpy, still watching him closely. “It wasn’t good enough for our late enemies in ‘45, so it isn’t good enough for you