The Hour of The Donkey (35 page)

Their eyes met again, and Bastable knew and shared Wimpy’s thoughts:
at the moment they were French refugees, but every second
’
s delay increased the danger of discovery
.

The German officer might come back to them.

The SS officers who had spotted them might still be alive.

‘I’ll have to talk French out there, Harry. If I say “arraytay-voo” that means “stop”. “Ah-gowsh” is “left” and “Ah-droowa” is “right”—got that? And “on-avon” is “go”—right? “Arraytay-voo”, “ah-gowish”, “ah-droowa” and “on-avon”,’ said Wimpy, projecting the
words
at Bastable with painstaking clarity. ‘Have you got that, Harry?’

Have you got that, Batty?

Bastable flinched at the memory.

‘I’ll signal as well—okay?’

Just do as I say, Batty!

Bastable ground his teeth. ‘Get in the cart, Willis. Just get in the cart.’

The handles jerked violently and the frail contraption shuddered and creaked as it took the strain of twelve-stone of British officer and three-stone of French girl.

Batty Bastable
, thought Bastable an he swivelled the cart.

The German Army was still on the march up the road on which they were about to travel.

Batty Bastable, right enough. Only a mad idiot would do this—and maybe that was the only thing they had going for them, at that: the last place any sane German would expect to find escaping British officers was right in the middle of their army-on-the-march.

But which way?

‘Ah-gowsh, Onri!’ commanded Gaston Laval to Onri Bloch, and pointed against the tide of grey.

The cart shot through a gap, under the nose of a soldier bowed down under the weight of a light machine-gun.

The grey lines flowed by on each side, but Bastable didn’t dare look up, to run the gauntlet of their eyes. Yet, though he didn’t dare look at them, they filled his mind so that he could see nothing but Germans, all looking at him: they were there inside his head, in his mind’s eye, like a newsreel film synchronized with the actual sounds he could hear of them on either side of him—boots crunching and cracking and dragging, equipment clinking and clanking and clunking, voices muttering and calling out and laughing and jeering—but mostly no voices at all, mostly no human sounds … because they were tired—they must be tired, because it was evening now, and also because they were trudging not towards their billets and a meal but towards—

Towards the British Army.

That was a thought arousing pain, not fear.

It was painful because, wherever he was going (and at the moment that wasn’t a matter of choice and decision), he was going away from the British Army—away from the certainty and comfort and safety of khaki uniforms and English voices … and that was a desolate pain beyond anything he had experienced, like the home-sickness of the first, lost night at boarding school multiplied by an infinitely greater loneliness which he felt now—

He was aware of laughter again, and suddenly the pain
was
fear, because of the realization that there was no more any certainty and comfort and safety in France, even where there was khaki, even where there were English voices—

They were laughing at him, and at Wimpy in his ridiculous hat, with his legs dangling ridiculously over the front of the ridiculous orange-box cart.

But they were really not laughing at him at all:
they were laughing because they were winning
.

No. Damn it—no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no—

Yes. All those tanks, in the field.

All those bombers—those bloody bombers—and he hadn’t even seen an RAF plane … he hadn’t even heard an RAF plane, let alone seen one—all those bloody planes—

All those tanks, in the field—

The field—The farm—
The Brigadier
!

Bastable raised his eyes from the old Frenchman’s black hat on Wimpy’s head, which he had been staring fixedly at, and not seeing at all, and forced himself to look into the faces of his enemies.

And saw only the Brigadier.

The damned, treacherous, false, murdering, Fifth Columnist, fucking-bastard-swine-shithouse Brigadier.

He had forgotten—

It seemed impossible that he should have forgotten, even for a second. He had forgotten, and then remembered, and then forgotten again, and then been reminded—reminded by Wimpy, too—and then forgotten again.

It seemed impossible, but it had happened.

But now it would never happen again. Even when he was thinking of other things it would be there, like a great hoarding erected inside his head advertising what he would never forget again—never, never,
never
.

Everything that had happened to him was because of that damned traitor— Traitor?

‘
I shall make allowances for the fact that you are a territorial officer, Major—
‘

(The crushed, bloody thing under the blanket: that was another thing to remember.)

No German, German-born, could achieve that accent, that ultimate Englishness!

Traitor.

Everything that had happened to him, and to that crushed thing under the blanket, and to the PROs—every humiliation, every agony, every death—was because of that damned
traitor
.

Traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor—

He looked down again. The sound of the word inside his brain was superimposed on all the other sounds, just as the face had been superimposed on all those faces which were passing him. He could still hear all those sounds, and he had seen the faces—

Big, thrusting nose … bushy eyebrows… fierce pale-blue staring eyes: the face of authority, staring him down even when it wasn’t turned towards him—it had only been turned towards him once, for one surprised instant, in the farmyard—

Traitor!

All those other faces… young faces and older faces; tired, incurious faces looking through him; eyes looking at him, dismaying him with their curiosity; pale faces and swarthy faces … all different faces, with different expressions, but all the same face, all the faces of his enemies, all German faces.

But
that
face—
that
face was different from all them:
that
face was the face of
his enemy!

He was sweating.

Traitor!

He could feel the sweat swimming on his forehead, gathering and soaking up on the damp-greasy line of the Frenchman’s cap across his brow, except at one place on the left where it escaped and ran down the side of his face, like the brush of a cobweb, until the breath of an evening breeze cooled it at his jawline; and he could feel it under his armpits, squeezing wetly as the cart bumped him from side to side over the uneven road surface and he could feel it running down his back, and down his throat and neck, and down his chest—the sweat of fear and anger and desperate exertion saturating him.

Noises—

But also another noise, a new one hornet-snarling at him from the distance ahead—

He looked up again, simultaneously aware that Wimpy had been trying to twist round to attract his attention. It was like a grey rippling funnel down which they had been forcing themselves against the flow of movement on either side of them, but now the distant end of the funnel was no longer empty.

Bastable blinked and narrowed his eyes to adjust their focus. The road was arrow-straight, but the blue haze of evening obscured its furthest point—it was that sound which made up the picture of what was beyond his vision.

And now the hammering of the powerful motor-cycle engines was fuzzed by that of bigger engines labouring in low gear—

Bastable pulled back at the cart, trying to slow it down.

‘Non! non!’ exclaimed Wimpy, pointing ahead. ‘Par la, par la—ah-droowa—veet! veet!’

Ah-droowa? Bastable looked left, and then quickly to the right—ah-droowa!—and saw nothing but German infantrymen, and was the more confused because Wimpy was still pointing straight ahead—or even pointing more to the left than to the right—

Then he saw it, to the left, above the line of steel helmets bobbing up and
down
, what Wimpy was pointing at: the arm of a signpost directed
ah-droowa
across the road, twenty yards away—fifteen yards—ten yards—

Bastable swung the cart sideways and halted, waiting for a gap in the grey line which would let him into the opening of the side-road.

No gap appeared.

The sound of the approaching vehicles increased.

No gap. They saw him—they stared at him, the same mixture of faces and expressions—and ignored him, and dismissed him, and passed on without sparing him a thought.

No gap.

He pleaded silently with each face
please—oh, Christ!—please—

The sound was a roar now, motor-cycle and lorries together drowning all other sounds.

No gap—

Please—

A boy—a mere boy, with cropped blond hair, his helmet hanging from his slung rifle—threw out both arms to hold back those behind.

Gap!

There was no time for recognition or gratitude—the boy wasn’t even looking at him, he was merely letting a piece of flotsam dislodge itself— there was the momentary glimpse of another pale anonymous young face, and of grey uniforms and dusty jackboots only inches away as Bastable drove the cart through the gap to the safety of the side-road, from under the very wheels of the motored column.

The roar of the engines enveloped him for a moment. Then, almost abruptly, it fell away into the background behind him, further and further away, losing its identity in the sound of the blood thumping inside his brain.

He continued to push the cart at top speed, like an automaton, without any conscious thought of where he was going or why he was pushing, and even without any awareness of his surroundings. In so far as he was aware of anything, it was a mixture of physical discomfort in his arms and shoulders and emotional exhilaration which made light of the discomfort. His arms were slowly being pulled out of their sockets by the cart, but that seemed quite natural, and only to be expected, and didn’t matter at all really … Or didn’t matter at all when compared with his miraculous escape from the middle of the German Army.

All he had to do was to keep on pushing—

It was more than an escape …

All he had to do was to keep on pushing—

It was a deliverance—

Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.

A deliverance!

The sound behind him was no more than an intermittent hum now—
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him—
punctuated by the faraway murmur of gunfire—
so that it be not the Destined Will
!

‘Julian Grenfell,’ said Wimpy.

Bastable came to himself with a jolt as Wimpy spoke. He had been staring at the black hat on Wimpy’s head—he knew he had been staring at it because when he leaned forward to keep the cart moving it was only a foot from his nose, and it was all he could see, that black hat… the old Frenchman’s Sunday hat—but he was not aware of doing so until now, when Wimpy tried to turn towards him, and couldn’t quite manage it.

‘What?’ The word was hard to say: he hadn’t spoken a word for so long, the sound of his voice was unnatural to him.

‘Julian Grenfell, Harry—

He shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.

Very apposite, old boy—I… didn’t know you were poetically inclined … other than a bit of the old
Play up, play up, and play the game!
You’re a bit of a dark … horse, old boy—a dark … horse.

Bastable felt the blood rise in his cheeks beneath their coating of clammy sweat. He must have spoken those words—those lines from that secret poem of heart-breaking beauty which was utterly private to him—he must have spoken them aloud, without knowing that he had done so. He must take a grip of himself, a much firmer grip—it was fatigue on the surface that had made him light-headed for a moment, but there were accumulated layers of gibbering cowardice under that, and if he let go of himself they would surely take over.

Wimpy was still trying to turn towards him, while continuing to hold on to the child on his lap. The child’s face was turned towards Bastable, and she was staring at him with huge dark eyes devoid of expression. Where it wasn’t smudged with grime, her skin showed very pale, contrasting with Wimpy’s, which was greyish and etched with lines he hadn’t noticed before.

‘A dark—‘ Wimpy started to repeat himself, but then clenched his teeth and grimaced as the cart bumped over a pot-hole ‘—horse.’

The fellow was in pain. Although he had appeared to be lolling back in comfort, with his legs dangling over the front of the cart, every time the cart bumped—which was all the time—his bad ankle must have been jarred against the frame. And, although he hadn’t made a sound, the addition of those clenched teeth and that grey complexion to the memory of the angrily-swollen joint produced a degree of painfulness which made Bastable ashamed of his own minor aches.

He pulled back at the cart, trying to slow it. For some time now he hadn’t really been pushing it at all, it had been travelling downhill of its own accord, carrying him along with it.

He looked around him, seeing the landscape for the first time. How far he’d come from the road, it was impossible to tell, for they were down in another of those long, shallow folds of damned, featureless, foreign countryside in the middle of nowhere, devoid of comforting houses and hedges and telegraph poles. The trackway along which they’d come—it was hardly wide enough to be called a road—stretched straight from one blue-misted crest behind them to another equally indistinct one ahead there were woods, already dark and uninviting, a few hundred yards to the right, and to the left the fold curved away out of sight.

The moment of exhilaration was entirely gone. As the cart finally creaked to a standstill the leaden weight of responsibility took its place, bowing down Bastable’s spirit. Even the thought of their recent deliverance rang empty in his mind. It was still a miracle, in a succession of miracles, but it was a miracle in the midst of a far greater catastrophe—a catastrophe so huge that he was unable to imagine its full extent, but could only guess at it.