The Hour of The Donkey (31 page)

The wedding dress between the tissue paper—the carpet slippers in the dusty road, beside the ridiculous hand-cart piled with bundles—and the sweat cold on his forehead, and the vile garlic in his mouth—
nightmare!

‘You’ve got the woman’s trunk—there’ll be nothing in there … Here—try this … try these, Harry—go on, take them, man—‘ Wimpy thrust garments into his hands.

Bastable looked down at what he had been given: a jacket of some sort… or more like a tunic … of coarse blue denim cloth, old and patched and faded to a pale indeterminate blue-grey, with trousers to match. He had seen French labourers, wearing clothes like these in Colembert; if they belonged to the old man downstairs—the old man lying dead in his parlour, in the ruin of his home, with his wife lying dead in the road outside—they must date from another age, another time, many years ago, before the old man had come up in the world to the dignity of this ugly little house; and yet, for some reason, the old woman hadn’t thrown them away, but had washed them and ironed them, and stowed them away in the old tin trunk in the attic—for some reason, for some reason, for some unfathomable reason—

He didn’t want to put them on, but more than that he didn’t want to take off the wreckage of his battledress: that would be to burn his boats finally, to cross the last frontier between Captain Bastable and a nameless fugitive.

‘I say, Willis—look here … ‘

Wimpy had already stripped himself down to a filthy string vest, and was unbuttoning his trousers.

‘What is it?’ Wimpy frowned at him.

‘I mean … is this … wise?’

What did he mean? He searched in his confused thoughts for what he meant, that would make sense to Wimpy.

‘If we’re not in uniform they can shoot us, I mean.’

The frown became pitying. ‘I rather thought that was their general idea anyway, old boy.’ Wimpy transferred his attention to removing his collar studs from his shirt and attaching them to the civilian shirt. When he had completed that task he rummaged again in the trunk and finally produced a collar-box.

Bastable watched him with a growing sense of desperation. In another moment it would be too late, he felt.

‘Out of hand, I mean—Willis!’

‘Eh?’ Wimpy upended the box and selected a stiffly-starched wing-collar. ‘Out of hand? Yes … I haven’t worn one of these since Repton … And one size too big, I’d guess—but better too big than too small… Yes, well that’s what I meant too, Harry—out of hand or in hand, it amounts to the same thing now that we’ve done a bunk, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He looked up at Bastable. ‘Frankly, old boy, I don’t believe we’ve got a prayer together—in uniform. But out of uniform.. .as civilians—as refugees—the Jerries don’t give a damn for refugees, they’re too busy winning the war … out of uniform, maybe we
do
have a chance still—that’s what I mean.’

‘But—I can’t speak a word of French—‘

‘Then don’t speak at all. Let me do the talking—I’ll say you’re dumb.’ Wimpy gave him a calculating look. ‘I’ll say you’re a half-wit too, if you like, old boy.’

That was too close to the bone, and Bastable had a shrewd idea that it was intended to be so. ‘You think you can pass as a Frenchman, then?’ He tried to infuse sarcasm into the question.

‘Not among Frenchmen—no. But to a German, Harry—could you tell a French-speaking German from a French-speaking Frenchman? Because I’m damned if I could.’ So saying, Wimpy pulled the civilian shirt over his head and plunged his arms into its sleeves, as though to leave unsaid but clearly stated that the matter was over, the conversation ended and the decision made.

Bastable eyed the faded work-clothes on his lap. Wimpy had set aside a smart black coat and pin-striped trousers for himself, which, with the wing-collar, was the universal uniform of the bank manager and the senior civil servant—which, taken all together, must have been the old man’s very best suit for formal occasions, presumably—while leaving him, Harry Bastable, with the role of the dumb servant, the stupid peasant, the half-wit!

It was a damnable, downright offensive thing to do without consultation. But the bitter truth which he had to face, although it was nonetheless insulting for being true, was that if this was what they were going to do, then this was the way it had to be done: without one word of French he was no better than an idiot—he had learnt that already. And, what hurt even more, was that beneath that humilitation there was a dark suspicion about his own lack of sense and courage, which the last twenty-four hours had raised within him.

He closed his eyes and stripped off his battledress blouse and shirt—ripped them off, rather, spilling buttons and feeling the filthy sweaty material tear, hating what he was doing and what he was about to do with equal misery.

Harry Bastable was dying again: just another death to add to all those previous deaths he had submitted to, on the way to that one real, inevitable one, waiting for him somewhere ahead—

‘That’s better … a bit big, maybe, but I can hitch them up as high as possible—not bad, though … not bad at all—‘

Wimpy was mumbling to himself in the background, against another background of the noises of war which were still all around them, but which the pounding of his own head blotted out as he fumbled with the buckles of his gaiters and tore his mud-caked trousers down over his equally muddy boots.

Damn, damn and damn! Where Wimpy’s borrowed clothes were too big, his were almost too small: one heavily-patched knee, the stout material thinned down by a thousand wash-days, stretched and split under the pressure, to reveal the dirty white leg beneath—damn! And the final buttons of the trousers were impossible, and even though the gap was covered by the tunic, which was mercifully designed for a looser fitting, there were three full inches of hairy wrist sticking out of the sleeves.

‘Ooof!’ Wimpy exclained. ‘My-bloody-ankle!’

Bastable stopped looking at the travesty of a French working-man which was himself, and looked at Wimpy.

He knew, as he looked, that there had been one part of his mind which had been chattering in the background all the time while he had been stripping off his own uniform and cramming himself into the denim tunic and trousers … which had been chattering all the time
What will Willis look like? What will Willis look like
? because this mad scheme depended on what Wimpy looked like, and because he knew in his heart that there was no chance, no possibility, that Wimpy in an ill-fitting black coat and pin-striped trousers and wing-collar could look anything other than . .. ridiculous and laughable and utterly impossible.

And yet, it wasn’t so—even standing there without his boots on, balancing himself on one leg in his stockinged feet, it wasn’t so—

The clothes
were
too big, not much too big, but no floorwalker in the men’s department of Bastable’s of Eastbourne would have dared to send a customer out in those clothes and still hope to keep his job when the customer’s wife stormed back into the store: they had the same effect that such over-sized clothes always had on their wearer, shrinking him smaller than his own size—just as the clothes he himself was wearing would make him bigger and more awkward than he really was.

‘Well?’ said Wimpy, brushing dust from one black sleeve. ‘Well?’

He was smaller, and he wasn’t Wimpy—Wimpy, whom he had only ever seen in well-fitting tweeds, other than in the different uniforms of the regiment, from sharply-pressed battledress to the immaculate mess-kit of the Prince Regent’s Own, with its primrose-yellow-and-dove-grey facings—it wasn’t that Wimpy, those Wimpys, whom he already knew.

But it was another Wimpy.

‘Well?’ repeated Wimpy.

Another Wimpy—adam’s apple prominent as it never had been before above the too-roomy collar, with its tightly knotted black tie: a Wimpy from behind some desk stacked with invoices and printed forms and bank statements, whom he didn’t know.

‘For God’s sake, Harry—‘

‘You look all right. Except for the feet, Willis.’

‘You look … bloody marvellous, old boy—feet and all.’ Wimpy looked down at his own feet. ‘But my ankle’s going to be a problem again, I’m afraid.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think I can even get my boot back on again, either.’

‘Marvellous?’

Wimpy raised his eyes. ‘Ferocious, let’s say—if you could just manage to look a bit more frightened and stupid, that would be more proletarian … But you damn well don’t look like a British officer on the run, old boy. In fact, all you need is a cloth cap, and I’ve got one here … It’s a bit too clean, but if you rub some mud from your uniform on it—and then some dust from the floor … then, you’ll do, Harry, you’ll do, by God!’

Bastable accepted the cap, half reassured, half choked with distaste. He had never worn a cloth cap in his life, clean or dirty—

‘Pull it down a bit more—and push the peak up … that’s it—marvellous! Bloody marvellous—you look absolutely bang-on now, if you can only get the right expression . .. The only trouble is … my … bloody … ankle—‘ Wimpy set his stockinged foot down flat on the floor and gingerly put his weight on it ‘—
aargh
! It’s no good, Harry—you’ll have to go without me. Even with a stick—even if we could find a crutch—I shall only hold you back.’

The ankle wasn’t the only trouble, thought Bastable savagely: it was only the beginning of their troubles. But now, dressed as he was, he was finally committed to Wimpy beyond any alternative plan of escape. Without Wimpy to speak for him he was helpless. Even if he had to carry the fellow—even if he had to drag him … Or even—

Or even?

‘Sit down, man.’

‘It’s no good, Harry—‘

‘
Sit down
!’ Bastable turned back to his own trunk, throwing out the feather boa and pushing the wedding dress aside. The old woman had thrown nothing away—there were garments here which hadn’t been stocked on Bastable’s shelves for twenty years—but he had caught the feel of something he recognized down there at the bottom—damask table-cloths at worst, but … sheets at best—?

Sheets. Fine linen sheets, not common-or-garden cotton!

He commenced ripping the fine linen sheets into strips.

‘Harry.. .it’s still no good. If you wrap it up like a football I still won’t be able to walk more than a dozen yards on it—it’s no good—‘

‘Shut up!’ Bastable piled all his bruised self-esteem into the order, and felt the better for it. For this moment at least, if only for this moment, he was in command. For he had seen what Wimpy had missed, or had remembered what Wimpy had forgotten.

He was further rewarded with an indrawn hiss of pain as he drew the sock off the foot: the injured ankle was discoloured and hugely swollen, to the point of being misshapen. If it was only a very bad sprain, then Wimpy was lucky. So much for being such a clever motor-cyclist, then!

‘This is going to hurt.’

‘Tell. .. ahh! . .. Tell me something I don’t know … old boy!’ Wimpy drew a deep breath.

Bastable frowned over his work, trying to remember what he had learned in his first-aid lessons about bandaging. Under there, and over there, and round there—that was it.

‘It… still won’t.. . keep—keep . . me going more than … a few yards—‘ Wimpy was gritting his teeth now; there had to be a broken bone there somewhere, for an uninformed guess.

‘I only want a few yards. Just as far as the road.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a hand-cart in the road there. You can sit in that.’ Bastable split the end of the bandage, knotted the split, and then knotted the ends. The foot did look a bit like a football now, or the swollen extremity of a gouty admiral; and as a bandaging job it lacked the layered neatness by which the first-aid instructor had set such store. But it would do—it would have to do, anyway. ‘There!’

‘Oh…’ Wimpy’s face was beaded with sweat, and chalky white under the sweat, so that Bastable was suddenly ashamed at his professional disregard of the pain he had caused. ‘That’s good thinking—I’d quite forgotten about that, Harry. That’s
very
good thinking!’

Bastable looked at him quickly, and the shame was cancelled by the surprise in the voice: one thing Wimpy didn’t expect of him, apart from bull-at-a-gate courage, was thinking of any sort, clearly.

There’s a pair of old shoes here—I’ll put one on my other foot, it doesn’t matter if it’s too large … And you get rid of the uniforms—stuff them down somewhere out of sight, just in case.’ Wimpy’s voice had regained its sharp note of command before the sweat had dried: the three weeks’ seniority had only been momentarily re-imposed and the reality was back again.

‘And take a look out of the window, too …’ Wimpy rose carefully to his feet. ‘Remember to stand well back, or they’ll see your face—
aaah
! Not so bad … bad enough, but not so bad … until Boadicea can reach her chariot—go on, man, go on!’

Bastable fished around among the ruined finery and the heirlooms from the old woman’s bottom drawer for the fragments of his uniform. As his hand closed on the battle-dress blouse he felt something hard in one of the pockets, which surprised him for a second; of course, the Germans had taken everything from him—his identification, Mother’s letters, his money and his pocket-knife, and even his broken watch from his wrist—but this … what was this?

This was the bar of chocolate from the dead German soldier, which Wimpy had plundered—it reminded him that he was still hungry.

It reminded him also that there was one other thing in his pockets; there was still the lanyard, of the Prince Regent’s Own in his trousers. It was something he could neither safely take with him or safely leave behind, damn the thing!

He was ravenously hungry: he tore at the wrapper on the chocolate, his fingers suddenly clumsy with desire.

He stuffed a piece into his mouth, and then remembered guiltily that he ought to be disposing of the uniforms and peering out of the window, and looked towards Wimpy—up towards Wimpy, who was still gently trying his ankle above him.

‘Do you want some?’ He offered up a wedge as an expiation for not doing what he ought to be doing.

‘Give it to her,’ Wimpy nodded to his right.