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"Charlie was the gentle one, you see." Wimpy nodded. "Batty actually liked killing things—rabbits, Germans . . .
fortunately he never had a proper chance with regimental policemen, but it was all the same to him. Charlie was different, he was always gentle ... or almost always gentle—he meant to be as gentle as he could be, if people let him alone.
That was all they had to do—just let him alone." He gazed at Roche almost sorrowfully. "But you didn't let him alone . . .
and in this house too—he's very protective about this house.
God help the burglar he ever catches here!"
Roche felt the air cold against his cheeks: he could testify to the truth of that, the memory of Charlie's protectiveness was in that air still.
"But you were lucky, as I say. I turned up just in time, before he took you apart," said Wimpy simply. "Very lucky for all concerned . . . Though, of course, I blame myself too, old boy."
There, at last, was the opening he had been waiting for, thought Roche, hot inside against the cold on his face from the memory of Charlie.
"So you damn well should!" he exclaimed. "You wouldn't answer the question. Every time I asked it, damn it!"
Wimpy shook his head. "Not 'wouldn't', old boy. I promised, but there's a time and place for the right answer, that's all."
He pointed towards the staircase. "David put them up himself, but. . . typical David, putting them up ... he did it when he came back from Normandy, the first time, on the dummy5
last day of his leave . . . but Charlie carried the hammer and the nails . . . typical David—" he shook his head at Roche, as blank-faced as Charlie had been "—took them all out of the study, plus the extra one Nigel had buried in his bottom drawer . . . and that was typical Nigel too—putting it away, when he could have torn it up, and burnt it, and it would have been dead and buried . . . But no—he just put it in the bottom drawer for David to find; and he knew David would find it, because David finds everything sooner or later—just put it in the bottom drawer for David to find, and David found it of course.... So out they all come from the study, plus the extra one—with never a word to Clarkie and me—and Charlie holds the nails—and bang, bang, bang, there they are in public, for everyone to see on the stairs—the one place everyone has to see, with never a word to me, not ever . . .
not even now—not now, not ever . . ."
Roche looked at the photographic gallery on the stairway, and then at Wimpy, and then at the gallery again. There were more bloody pictures there than was comfortable, if there was one extra picture which he was expected to home in on at first glance, to tell him what he ought to know.
"Go and see for yourself, my dear man— don't let me stand in your way, just go and see for yourself, eh?"
Roche went quickly, before the schoolmaster could confuse him further, either deliberately or accidentally.
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The line was not so much a line, as a double zig-zag over half a century— more than half a century—of the history of Oxford-and-Cambridge and photography both.
Indeed ... it went back to Great-Grandfather Audley, looking faintly like Prince Albert, in the smartly-cut but unpressed suiting of the time, blotched and faded by age, at the bottom of the staircase, gracing the Hoplites Society of Balliol College, to David Audley himself, vintage 1949, scowling from his college rugger XV, which had been added at the very top as a Cambridge afterthought—almost an act of defiance amongst a collection of otherwise exclusively Balliol College, Oxford: pictures of Father Nigel, Grandfather and Great-Grandfather, who had all been oarsmen in their college VIIIs, or ornaments of that same Hoplites Society . . . which, at a guess, from its name, and the stylish fashion of their evening dress, and the nonchalant don't-give-a-damn slightly drunken expressions they affected, must be an exclusive club for the young Classical gentlemen of their time.
God! What would Genghis Khan make of this collection?
Here, to the life, were the young bloods of the Tsar's Imperial Guard, lazing it at ease among the empty Champagne bottles through the 1905 revolt, past the 1914 armageddon to the 1917 reckoning!
Roche concentrated his wits and his memory. Wimpy had said (or was it Sir Eustace, or Colonel Clinton, or Stocker? Or had it been in the records, merely?) that Mr Nigel's father had been killed in 1917—
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It had been Wimpy: My father was at Oxford with his father
— the one that was killed in 1917—take away the right number of years and that was where to look—was it?
But why should that be worth looking at?
All the same, he looked—frowned, rather—at the Hoplites of the generation before Passchendaele: a double row of languid young men, none of whom could have imagined himself as a rotting corpse in thick mud, and none of whom he recognised . . . although the list of names underneath indicated that there was a D. N. D. Audley (hon. secretary) in it somewhere, next to The Hon. W. de V. Pownell-Lloyd (president) . . .
Wimpy's own father ought to be here somewhere, though hardly among the rich young Hoplites, because he had been clever but poor, and that ruled him out of their company.
Maybe he would be among the oarsmen in the next picture—
a crew comic not only for their close-fitting but elongated rowing uniforms, but also for their deadly-serious expressions, as though it had been the battle of Salamis in which they'd distinguished themselves, not Oxford in eighteen-ninety-something. But at least he could instantly identify the Audley in this crew—the familiar face stared at him out of the photograph—the Audley face, minus the broken nose, plus the rowing cap and the frail undergraduate moustache!
And there was a Willis in this crew, too—another plain plebeian W. Willis (another Wimpy?), but Captain of Boats dummy5
no less, and in a victorious Eights Week, judging by the list of defeated colleges beneath the names of the oarsmen. So both families had something to be proud of in this particular photograph, clearly—
He studied the picture for a moment, and then shifted to the Hoplites Society group just below it, and then returned to the oarsmen. They bore the same date, and the same photographer's name, but the oarsmen were clearer—much clearer, much less faded—
Buried in the bottom drawer!
It was here, in this picture, on the wall for everyone to see—it was here, somewhere among J. R. Selwyn (No.4) and D. N. L.
Audley (stroke) and N. B-R. Poole (cox) . . . and W. Willis (bow, Captain of Boats), but he couldn't see it.
He looked at Wimpy again, and knew for certain that it was there in front of him—it was in Wimpy's face, by God!
He stared at the oarsmen again, and then at the Hoplites, and then at the oarsmen.
And saw at last, what had been there all the time—what had been there half the afternoon, but not in Wimpy's face.
Literally, not in Wimpy's face.
He checked the names underneath to make doubly sure.
The chickens had come home to roost, and W. Willis (bow, Captain of Boats) had rowed them all the way from the eighteen-nineties: he was the spit-and-image twin, minus the broken nose, of David Audley.
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ADVANCE TO CONTACT:
Madame Peyrony's young ladies