The Hour of the Donkey dda-10

by Anthony Price

  '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.)

  dummy4

  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 dummy4

  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 dummy4

  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 dummy4

  —

  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 dummy4

  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 dummy4

  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 dummy4

  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. Althou
gh 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 dummy4

  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.

  'Ahhh . . . that's better!' said Wimpy, easing himself gingerly into a more comfortable position, and then finally succeeding in turning his head sufficiently to look at Bastable. 'Still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, old boy?'

  'I'm all right.' Bastable returned the look without betraying himself. 'How's your ankle?'

  'Ah . . . inconvenient, let's say.' Wimpy considered the bandaged extremity in silence for a moment. 'I think ... if you could help me to alight ... we might make a structural adjustment in my chariot which might make life easier for me, if not for you . . . Also ... I think it's time for a spot of dummy4

  refreshment, too.' He swivelled to Bastable again, smiling lopsidedly. 'And then we can discuss the Destined Will perhaps, eh?'

  The old, well-worn feeling stirred within Bastable's breast, half irritation, half admiration. Even in pain and weariness the blighter couldn't resist mocking him. But also, even in pain and weariness, the blighter was still unbeaten, and thinking for himself when Harry Bastable was full of despair and self-pity.

  He was the better man still, damn it!

  Wimpy shifted his hold of the child. 'However... if I help our little Alice Mark Two over the side first—and if she helps to steady my descent—do you think you could avoid unloading me like a ton of coal this time, Harry old boy?'

  Without the child's weight, it was easy. Or maybe it was easy simply without the onlooking presence of the German Army?

  He rubbed his aching arms and looked at Wimpy.

  'But first things first while it's still light enough to read...'

  Wimpy balanced himself on one leg, steadying himself with one hand on the cart, and felt in the top pocket of the Frenchman's jacket. 'It's here somewhere—'

  'What?'

  'What everyone needs—what Mr Chamberlain brought back from Munich ...' Wimpy dug down deeper. 'Ah! And what we need most of all, Onri Bloch, mon ami—'

  A scrap of paper?

  dummy4

  The German officer's note—of course!

  'What did you—' Bastable broke off helplessly as too many temporarily forgotten questions came flooding back.

  Colembert?

  'What did I ask him for?' Wimpy shook the paper one-handed in an attempt to flutter it open. 'I asked him for our ticket, Harry—damn thing!—for a laissay-passay— He looked up at Bastable '— for a pass—a chit—a bit of paper . .. What all armies run on—and all schools, too—"Have you got your chit?"—oh, damn!'

  He had dropped the paper. Bastable stooped to retrieve it. It was some sort of German Army message form, not unlike its British equivalent—except for the stylized Wehrmacht eagle which clutched a wreathed swastika in its talons, and for the totally indecipherable foreign scrawl slanting across it.

  Wimpy reached out and snatched it back. 'Thanks, old boy.

  Now . . . let's see ...' He squinted at the scrawl. " To all whom it may concern" would be a nice start, but I don't see that—'

  'You asked him for a pass?'

  'Yes . . .' Wimpy frowned at the paper. 'Chap writes as illegibly as Tetley-Robinson, almost—but .. " To all German troops"— well, that's actually better than "To all whom it may concern", I shouldn't wonder—yes, I asked him for a pass .. .

  der Vorzeiger— because one good turn deserves another— der Vorzeiger?'

  'One good turn?'

  dummy4

  ' Der Vorzeiger dieses . . . "the bearer of this", that must be, with our old friend Gaston Laval following, and his daughter Alys, and his servant Onri Bloch—Vorzeiger must be

  "bearer", it can't be anything else—'

  'What good turn?'

  'What good turn . . . Vorzeiger ... I told him where the British Army was—'

  'You did what?'

  Wimpy continued to frown at the paper.

  'You told him where the British Army was?'

  'Ye-es... Dug in on Vimy Ridge, I said—told him I'd seen 'em with my own eyes: lots of tanks and little guns—didn't think I ought to be able to identify them as anti-tank guns, being a civilian, but I described them so he couldn't be in much doubt . . . but surely "bear" is tragen, isn't it?'

  Bastable was appalled. 'Why did you do that?'

  'It must be "bearer"—because he asked me, old boy,' Wimpy looked up at him, 'and I thought it prudent in the circumstances to be as helpful as possible. And also because it put the fear of God up him—all those imaginary tanks and anti-tank guns—so maybe they'll think twice before trying to outflank Arras. What the hell would you have done?'

  There was no answer to that.

  Wimpy regarded him obstinately. 'He came up and said he regretted what had happened to the old lady—"une tragedie dummy4

  de guerre", he called it—and that was when I guessed he was after information, if he could get it. So I blamed the British—

  I gave him a bit of the old perfidious Albion fighting to the last Frenchman, and then betraying France—and he liked that. He said Germany wasn't the enemy of France, and I agreed with him. I said France had been betrayed by Daladier and the British, and the sooner we got rid of both, the better—and the Communists too.

  'And I also let slip that I was an assistant deputy sub-prefect, and I implied that if God and the Germans spared me I would work for a better Franco-German understanding, preferably against the British.

  'And he liked that too. Because the next thing he asked me was if I had been in Arras, and what things were like there.

  So that was when I gave him a cock-and-bull story about tanks and guns—and lots of Scotsmen with kilts playing bagpipes, because that ought to put the fear of God into him too—and he was grateful . . and that's when it occurred to me to ask for this—' Wimpy lifted the paper '— so, for Christ's sake, Harry, let me read the bloody thing and find out what he's written before it gets dark!'

  Bastable opened his mouth, and then shut it again. What Wimpy had done was... it was beyond his imagination, and there was no word for it—cheek? treason? daring?—and no words, either!

  ' To all German troops . . . The bearer of this . . . Gaston Laval . . . et cetera, et cetera . . . Onri Block . . . is to be dummy4

  permitted and assisted— by God! that is "assisted"—

  assisted . . . to proceed to Colembert— signed—squiggle-squiggle, staff-captain et cetera ... permitted and assisted—


  splendid fellow! If I really was the assistant deputy sub-prefect I'd be halfway to heiling Hitler for this piece of paper

  —' Wimpy waved the paper under Bastable's nose '—

  wouldn't you, Harry? wouldn't you, by God?'

  Colembert?

  Bastable goggled at him: the lines of fatigue were twisted into an extraordinary mask of elation, and the fellow was bobbing on his one good leg as though the paper in his hand was the winning ticket in the Irish Sweepstake—

  Colembert!

  In all the world, from Berlin to Abbeville, Colembert was the very last place Bastable wanted to go to—to go back to. It was unthinkable, and Wimpy was stark, staring mad to think of it.

  'Harry—'

  'I'm damned if I'm going back to—to Colembert—I'm, damned if I will!'

  'Not back, Harry—don't you see?'

  Not back?

  Harry Bastable didn't see.

  'I saw his map—he showed me his map—so I could show him where our chaps were, on the Ridge ... I told him I'd come dummy4

  from Calais to collect my daughter from her grandparents—I told him I wanted to take her to my sister at Colembert—to the south, inside the German lines, don't you see? It didn't worry him—he didn't know what's happened there, why should he? And even if he did . . why should he worry?'

  Why indeed? thought Bastable bitterly. 'I'm ... not going back to Colembert—and that's final.'

  'So . . . where do you want to go, old boy?'

  So where did he want to go?

  Harry Bastable stared at Wimpy for a moment; and beyond him, to the closing-in distance behind him.

  This alien place—this filthy nowhere-in-France—this empty no-man's-land which might as well be that country-of-the-dying with which Wimpy had frightened him yesterday—

  'So where do you want to go?' Wimpy looked at him slyly, as though he already knew, lifting his damned scrap of paper again.

  'Not to Colembert!'

  'No?'

  Bastable looked at the child, and then back to Wimpy. He knew now that he hated Wimpy, but that he still needed him more than he hated him—he was so tired that he couldn't think straight, but he needed Wimpy all the more for that reason, to think for him, to make his decisions.