They had been demobbed and gone back to England, but two or three came over in civvies for a holiday at different times that summer and stayed at Wallaballoo. The one I remember was Clive Holyoak, and I also heard a lot about him from Archie Mauger. If Raymond was the most popular N.C.O. in the battalion, Clive Holyoak was certainly the most favorite Private. When he came over for a holiday, Raymond invited me to go down to Wallaballoo and hear him play his violin, though I had already heard him once at a concert when he was in khaki. He was only a little chap and had silky golden hair and a face, I thought, like a sulky girl. In civvies he was smartly dressed in a loose woolly suit and didn't look too bad; but, as a soldier he was hopeless. Raymond used to let him fall out for most of his P.T., or otherwise he'd faint; and Archie Mauger said that in Ceremonial Drill, when he sprung to attention to present arms, his puttees fell down on his boots.

Archie was in the barrack-room when our Clive arrived with his draft from England. While the other fellows was getting unpacked and laying out their kit for inspection he, if you please, was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed like an Indian snake-charmer, playing his violin. Sergeant Strudwick happened to be crossing the barrack square. I used to see the one-time Sergeant Strudwick the years after the war peddling his barrow of fruit and vegetables from door to door. He was the toughest, ugliest, wickedest-looking scoundrel I have ever seen; except for old Steve Picquet, who lived after the Second World War in a bunker at Pleinmont called Onmeown and died a few years ago. As might be expected, Raymond liked Sergeant Strudwick and said he had a heart of gold. Archie Mauger said he was the best blasphemer in the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry and, he was willing to bet, in any regiment in the whole of the British Army. He had been Bandmaster of the Manchesters in peace-time and now played a one-stringed banjo he had made himself. When he heard Clive playing his violin, he stopped dead in the middle of the square as if he was struck by lightning, raised his fists to heaven and, in words I dare not write down, called on God the Father Almighty and His bastard Son, Jesus Christ, and Mary, the mother thereof who, according to Sergeant Strudwick, was anything but a virgin, to come down and listen to this! Then he was across the square and up the steps and along the verandah and into the barrack-room like a lion let loose.

The fellows dropped everything they was doing: he looked so fierce. They thought he was going to murder Clive. Clive took no notice whatever, but, lost to the world, went on playing his piece to the end. The Sergeant stood listening with one eye screwed up, and the other swivelling round like a lobster's, in case any fellow dared to move, or make a sound. When Clive had done playing and put his violin back in its case, Strudwick said, "Report to me in the Orderly Room! At once!" and marched out. "Poor old Clive!" the fellows said. "Twenty days C.B.," said one. "Twenty years, more likely," said another.

Raymond was never tired of talking to me about Clive Holyoak; even after he hadn't seen him, or heard of him for years. Raymond was a boy of deep feelings and never forgot anybody he had once admired. Horace remained first in his heart always; but I think Clive had a great influence on his mind. Raymond was the only one who knew what happened between Strud and Clive that morning. When Clive came back to the barrack-room, all he said was, "The sergeant wants to take care of my violin for fear you fellows smash it." Actually, Strudwick had gone for him with all the blasphemous language of which he was a master, and which used to make the toughest fellows on parade quake and tremble in their Army boots. Clive didn't tremble. He listened with a smile. Strud swore at him for joining the Army; when he didn't join it: he was conscripted. Strud swore at him for imagining he could be of any use as a soldier; when he didn't imagine anything of the sort. Strud swore at him for longing to get into the trenches as soon as possible and have his hand smashed by a bullet from a Boche. Well, he wasn't going to be allowed to do it, that was all; and Sergeant Strudwick, with the help of God the Father and His disreputable Family up above, was going to see to it that he wasn't. "Then I won't, if you say so, Sergeant," said Clive sweetly.

If the War had lasted twenty years, he would never have finished his training anyhow; for he was always having to do a part again, because he hadn't passed the test. He was pulled up by every N.C.O., except Raymond, and given punishments galore. If he had done all the fatigues he was given, he would have dropped dead; and if he had done all the C.B., he would never have got out of the barracks at all. For some mysterious reason his name was for ever left out of the defaulters' roll. The nearest he came to being punished was over Church Parade. He was like Archie Mauger and objected to going on Church Parade; but he wasn't dishonest enough to change his religion when it suited him. He did go on Church Parade once "for the experience", as he said; but he refused to go again. He was warned and warned, and almost begged on bended knees to go; until at last, against everybody's wishes except his own, he had to be brought up before Colonel Nason, or the whole business of Military Discipline would have been made ridiculous. When the fellows in his barrack-room said it was rotten luck, he said, "It will be interesting to experience the luxury of martyrdom." They gaped. I knew Colonel Nason from when I was in the Militia. He was more of a Colonel than any Colonel on the stage ever was; and I could just see young Clive standing to attention in front of him, rooted to the spot by the Colonel's glass eye. The Colonel's other eye would be searching hopelessly for help, while he was wondering what the hell he could do to get himself out of an awkward corner with flying colours. "Now tell me, my man," said the Colonel to Clive, "on what grounds do you object to attending Divine Service conducted by teh Very Reverend Dean Penfold, the Chaplain of our Battalion? I see you have attended once." "I was bored," said Clive. "BORED!" bawled the Colonel. "Never in my whole military career has a man dared to stand up and tell me to my face that he was bored by Church Parade! Dismiss!"

Though he wasn't punished by the Colonel, he was marked on his papers as having no religion; and Sunday mornings those who had no religion was put on fatigues, usually cleaning out the latrines. Actually, he was put on scrubbing the floor of the Sergeant's Mess. He was down on his knees just going to begin, when in walked Sergeant Strudwick. The Sergeant's Mess nearly caught fire from his language. Clive didn't scrub the floor. Sundays he spent with various people on the island who was interested in music. He was soon known among the officers and played at Regimental Concerts, and was the first violin of the string quartette used to play for Sir Reginald Hart, the Lieutenant Governor, when he gave one of his dinners. Clive was given what amounted to a permanent pass to go out of the Fort whenever he wanted to. The guard was instructed to let him pass the Barrier Gate any time he was carrying a violin case. The little monkey bought an empty violin case he kept under his bed in the barrack-room and, when he wanted to go out and wasn't going to play anywhere, he walked out with it and dumped it in the hedge along the Fort Road, and picked it up on his way back. Naturally, when the 'flu broke out, he was among the lucky ones to be stranded on Fort Hommet; and Raymond said he used to pass his time sitting on the rocks playing to the gulls.

I heard him play first at a smoking concert for the troops in the canteen of Morley Chapel with Raymond at the piano. I must give it to Clive Holyoak that he was a wonderful violin-player. I will never forget the way he used to rise up on his tip-toes on his little short legs to reach the top notes. It wasn't so much as if he was playing the fiddle as if the fiddle was playing him. That night he played good pieces first, and the few officers present in the front rows gave him a loud clap. I don't think the fellows liked those pieces much; but they kept quiet while he was playing, and gave him a few claps at the end. Then he let them have what they liked. He played "It's a long way to Tipperary" and "There's a long, long, trail of winding" and "Way down in Tennessee"; but from the way he slammed his old violin, you could tell he felt nothing but contempt for what he was playing and for the fellows he was playing it to; yet he roused them to singing and roaring and cheering and, when they gave him encore after encore, he just smiled.

I didn't take to him as a fellow when I met him at Raymond's. He was great while her was up in the clouds playing, and he played lovely music Raymond said was by Mozart and was like clear water singing; but when he came down to Wallaballoo, Braye Road, he wasn't so good. I can understand how it was Raymond was for him. He was so much out of it at the Fort, and yet managed to hold his own, though he wasn't given a bad time. By all accounts, the fellows treated him as a pet and was quite proud of him really. I reckon the ordinary run of chaps in the Army was much better natured than he was. He struck me as a mean little sod. He wasn't even very nice to Raymond, considering he was staying in the house for nothing. He said to me, "Ray is going to be a Bible-puncher. Asinine!" Raymond laughed. "I'm not going to punch the Bible," he said, "it's much too hard!" Clive said, "Bernard Shaw says, 'He who can, does: he who cannot, teaches.' I say, 'He who can, lives: he who cannot, preaches.'" Raymond said, "How about if preaching is my way of living?" Clive said when he was sixteen he played at a Revival Meeting in Birmingham and was converted by Gipsy Smith. "When I recovered," he said, "I came to the conclusion there is no God." I said to Raymond after, "I don't mind people attacking this religion, or that, but I don't like to hear anybody say there is no God. It's unlucky. It come back on you." Raymond said, "Clive has more faith in his little finger than you have in your whole body, you old infidel!" I could never get the better of Raymond in an argument.