but efficient, because you can still get away with being crude on the Gulf. Or you could then, anyway."
For a moment he was far away, and then suddenly both he and the smile came back simultaneously.
"What it means is that you and Richardson go on as scheduled. But I shall have to leave you for a time to do some checking of my own—quite unavoidable. All you have to do is to keep your ear to the ground. And make sure Daniel McLachlan doesn't go running out of your sight, too."
"But who the hell is he?" Richardson waved his photograph despairingly.
"Alek?"
"Alek who?"
"All I knew was plain Alek. But Alek isn't a 'who'—he's a 'what'. He's what they used to call in the Mobile Groups a 'marksman'. With a rifle he's as sure as the wrath of God."
XV
THE KNOT IN his regimental tie was far too small, Butler decided, checking his reflection in the big gilt-framed mirror in the hallway. Too small, too tight and too old-fashioned. It was a knot that pinned him in status and time as surely as did the tie itself, probably more surely since there wouldn't be many here at Castleshields who would recognise the magenta and yellow stripes of the 143rd.
He worried the knot with a few savage little tugs. It was no use, of course: the tie was old and this was the only way it permitted itself to be tied now. And in any case it didn't matter, for the face above it was equally old-fashioned and regimental. Only the eyes mocked and betrayed the face's brutality, reminding him of the sole virtues his old grandma had found in it: "Ah'll say this f t' little lad—'is years be close to
'is 'ead an' 'e's got 'is mother's eyen . . ."
He abandoned the tie in disgust and continued towards the noise of the common room. This, it seemed, was the first convivial hour of the day, the beginning of a carefully graduated loosening of tongues and nerves designed to prepare these young mental athletes for record-breaking assaults on the summer's exam papers. Modern educationists would probably condemn it, but Gracey and Hobson were unashamedly old-fashioned, and they had this system of theirs all worked out and laid on, despite the superficial casualness of the place.
He paused beside the open window at the end of the passage, outside the common room door. The volume of noise coming through indicated that the tea was doing its job—and from the noise coming from the lawn outside the game of croquet there fulfilled much the same function.
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It was a fiercely played game, judging by the powerful swing of the player directly in front of the window—more a golf stroke than a croquet tap; players and onlookers scattered and the striker shook the fair hair out of his eyes and waved his mallet in triumph.
McLachlan.
Instantly Butler craned his neck out of the window to take in the whole setting of the game.
The grey sky still had a wind-driven look about it, but in the protection of the great L-shaped house with the fir tree plantation on its third side the croquet lawn seemed to draw the last heat from the westering sun. Away to the south the land fell away for a mile or more and he could glimpse the smooth, dull expanse of the lake. Beyond and above lay the rolling skyline of the crags; here they were north of the wall, in the ancient no-man's-land of the Picts.
"It's all right, Colonel. I've got my eye on him," a quiet voice murmured. For a moment a shadow blocked out the sun and then Richardson sauntered past along the terrace, a tea cup nursed to his chest.
Butler grunted to himself and drew his head back inside the house. It was well enough to risk one's own precious skin and perfectly proper to hazard a subordinate like Richardson, who should know the score.
But it was a hard thing to send an innocent into danger, and a risky thing too, no matter how well the thing could be justified.
Audley didn't care, because he'd done it before and because deep down he liked doing it. And Richardson didn't care because as far as Butler could see Richardson didn't care very deeply about anything: life was just a joke to him, because it had never been a struggle.
But Butler knew that it damn well wasn't in the least funny—least of all as it concerned young Daniel McLachlan. The man Alek was loose somewhere out there and young McLachlan was happily swinging his croquet mallet, and if they ever came within range of each other then he, Butler would be to blame and must answer to himself for it. He had undertaken to see to the boy's safety and he had let himself offer the boy to Audley—like any damn black-coated, pin-striped politician he had mortgaged away his honour to conflicting requirements. It was duty's plain need and he would do it again, but that didn't make him dislike it less. Nor was it reassuring to tell himself that Audley and Richardson had accepted responsibility for watching over the action outside Castleshields House.
Richardson's attitude was too cavalier by half, and Audley's skill lay more in making things happen and then drawing his own clever conclusions than in preventing them. Even so, all these were surface worries. Beneath them was an atavistic disquiet, the caveman's instinct that warned him of danger when his fourth sense had failed him.
"Colonel—hullo there!"
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Polly Epton waved at him vigorously from behind a miniature bar. No danger in Polly!
"I'm duty maid this afternoon, Colonel, so you've got nothing to worry about. Daddy, Colonel Butler's here."
A kaleidoscope of images. Young men and young-old men, long hair and open shirts, eyes bold and appraising. More brains, more potential, packed in this panelled room than in any regimental mess, more even than in Staff College.
Polly's voice opened up an avenue in them to where Epton himself stood, cup in hand.
No small talk, Epton. Not much, anyway. Left-wing, sociologist—blue-blooded intellectual—you know the type, Colonel. Doesn't like the Yankees, but he dam well doesn't trust the Russians either—had a bellyful of them when he was with the International Brigade in Teruel in '37. If you wonder how he sired a filly like Polly, just remember Teruel. And they think the world of him, the students do —he doesn't talk down to them, or round them either . . .
He must have been a mere baby in the Spanish Civil War, thought Butler, looking up again into the grey, gaunt face above the outstretched hand. But Richardson confirmed Stacker: Epton was a man to be wary of. No traitor, but no establishment man either.
"Glad you could make it, Butler."
Grunt. The man would keep his mouth shut even though it might be the ruin of him, which was what a sudden demo out of Castleshields House might well be.
"We're looking forward to hearing what you've got to say about Belisarius. I'm afraid most of us only know what Robert Graves wrote about him in that novel of his."
"Hah!" That one at least he could parry. "Graves lifted it all from Procopius of Gaesarea, and maybe some from Agathias. But I'm more interested in the purely military implications."
"And are the purely military implications of any relevance for today?"
The new voice had a slight upward inflection of challenge that had been absent from Epton's—for all his lack of small talk, Epton was still the host in the house that had once been his, and that blue blood would tell no matter what he thought of the strange colonel who had been foisted on him. Whereas this young puppy—
"Oh, hell, Terry—don't start pitching into the Colonel as soon as he's arrived."
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Polly materialised at his elbow with a cup for him in her hand. "You mustn't mind about Terry. He's got a bee in his bonnet about the military. Which is jolly funny because Terry's about the most militant civilian you're likely to meet up here."
Terry—?
Terry Richmond—if there's anything going he'll be in it, you can bet on that. Not a Communist, he wouldn't give the Russians the time of day, not since Prague. And he was over in Paris in '68, and he got the message then because I've heard him talk about 'communist racism' among the old-timers. He's bloody bright, but he does believe in action and he was damned lucky not to get sent down in his first year at Oxford . . .