The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  She smiled at him. It was for him, of course!

  He took a gulp of the stuff, and coughed on it, and choked on it, as always, as it burned his empty stomach.

  He couldn’t give it to Audley, therefore. Audley had no stomach.

  It was a bloody miracle Audley was still alive. With what was under the blanket Audley should have been dead long ago.

  He took another, more controlled gulp, and felt it burn all the way down, and turned back to the dying officier anglais.

  The eyes were open, and they were suddenly brighter, and they were looking at him.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Audley, pre-empting his own question with unbearable clarity. ‘The battalion?’

  Bastable stared at him in an agony of indecision. That was his question, and he no longer knew what to ask, if Audley didn’t know the answer himself.

  ‘Where’s Willis?’ asked Audley. ‘I want to talk to him.’

  ‘What happened?’ The question sounded empty now, but it was still the only one he could think ot.

  ‘Where’s Willis?’ The dirt-encrusted lips compressed themselves obstinately.

  ‘Nigel—what happened?’ Bastable bent over the dying man, pushing aside the question with his own. ‘Tell-me-what-happened?’

  ‘Willis—?’

  ‘Captain-Willis-is-coming. The-Germans-attacked … ?’ Under desperation Bastable could feel anger rising.

  The lips trembled. ‘Amateurs… Came across the fields… and down the road … open order—like, they didn’t care —like, we weren’t there … But we were…’ The lips quivered again.

  ‘Yes?’ Bastable willed the lips to open again. ‘Yes?’

  ‘After that… bombers… Stukas—smashed up everything …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tanks … infantry … professionals …’ The eyes lost Bastable’s face, and the voice trailed off again.

  He had to get both back again. ‘Sir—Nigel?’

  He couldn’t shake a dying man. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Bloody shambles, naturally.’ The eyes transfixed him. ‘Where’s Willis?’ The voice seemed stronger.

  A horrible certainty loomed out of the mist in Harry Bastable’s mind—and advanced into the clear light of inevitability as he stared at it.

  He recognized it, because it had been there all the time, waiting to show itself to him—he had known about it and had expected it, but had refused to look at it. Instead, he had made pictures in his imagination and shared them with Wimpy, and they had both believed in those pictures because they had both been unwilling to accept the reality, even when it stared them in the face.

  That was why Wimpy had insisted on ‘scouting around’, with that sly, withdrawn look on his face—Wimpy was much brighter than he was, much quicker on the uptake, so he had needed to have those pictures (which he didn’t believe in) proved or disproved by the evidence ot his own eyes, which he knew he would find.

  The battalion had never left Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts.

  That was really why he had wanted to go north, to Arras —because there wasn’t anything to the south to follow.

  And that was why Wimpy had said ‘To the French?’, and not ‘To catch up with the battalion?’, of course.

  ‘Where’s Willis?’ repeated Major Audley, almost petulantly.

  And … a bloody shambles, naturally … naturally.

  That was how it would have been, with tanks up against soft aluminium anti-tank ammunition, over the ridge against C Company—a bloody shambles, naturally—

  But there was no time for tears for C Company, and poor incompetent acting-acting-company-commander Waterworks, and young Christopher Chichester, whose knowledge of the Boys anti-tank rifles would have availed him nothing with that bloody-fucking-useless practice ammunition up the spout—Oh God!

  ‘I’ll go and get him,’ said Harry Bastable.

  ‘No —‘

  There was a slight, impossible movement under the blanket, as though Major Audley had found the use of one blackened claw.

  ‘No. No time …’ The feverish eyes truly transfixed him now. ‘My boy, David …’

  Bastable was pinned down by those eyes.

  ‘Tell Willis … My boy, David—he knows my boy, David—‘ Audley stopped abruptly.

  Suddenly, Bastable knew what Audley was talking about: he had a son named David, and Willis was an acquaintance, if not a friend, and more than that a schoolmaster, if not an acquaintance, who had admitted teaching Audley’s ‘my boy, David’—that was who he was talking about.

  ‘Yes, Nigel—‘ he leaned forward again. ‘—your son, David—?’

  ‘Not my son—not my son—but my boy, damn it —‘ Major Audley took one great rattling breath, and then a second shallower one.

  Bastable couldn’t make head nor tail of that, for the man was obviously rambling now, but he forced himself to lean over to place his ear closer to catch the words.

  ‘Your son, David?’ He found himself staring at the heavy brocaded cushion on the back-rest of the settee. It was old-fashioned, but very high-class material, he noted. And very expensive too—not unlike the curtains he had sold to Mrs Anstruther last spring—was it only last spring?

  Major Audley seemed to have had second thoughts about the message he wished to pass on to Wimpy about his son David, or the propriety of giving it to someone else, perhaps.

  ‘Your son, David?’ Bastable felt himself belittled by such lack of confidence. ‘Tell Wimpy what?’

  In the far distance, faint but clear enough in the silence surrounding them, there was the sound of someone kick-starting a motor-cycle. The engine roared for a moment, and then stalled.

  That would be Wimpy, thought Bastable. Wimpy’s passion for riding motor-cycles was unbridled, and he had even been known to break battalion rules to satisfy it. But if there was no battalion any more, then the rules no longer applied—and if the battalion had left a motor-cycle behind then Wimpy was the man to nose it out, like a dog sensing the presence of a bone.

  The French lady had touched his shoulder, he realized. And she was speaking to him again.

  He turned towards her. ‘Ne comprenez pas,’ he said.

  She stared at him for a moment. Then she reached past him and drew the blanket up over Audley’s face.

  Bastable looked down at the blanket, then back to the French lady, then down at the blanket again.

  ‘He can’t be dead. He was just speaking to me —‘ He pulled the blanket down.

  The motor-cycle started up again in the distance.

  IX

  BUT IT WASN’T Wimpy on the motor-cycle.

  It was one of the khaki machines the battalion had acquired at Boulogne—British Army property, and certainly not the property of the spotty-faced French youth who was sitting proudly astride it outside the shop where the old man and the women had been standing.

  Bastable felt a sudden vicious anger well up inside him. There were dead British soldiers lying in the street—he had only this moment left another one of them, newly-dead —killed in France and not yet buried. And the dirty bastards were already picking up the spoils—the dirty thieving swine!

  He launched himself down the street in a red haze of rage, kicking obstructions out of the way, and fetched up within striking distance of the youth before another coherent thought could cross his mind.

  ‘Get off that machine!’ he barked. ‘Get off— d’you hear me — this instant!’

  And that might not be an order delivered in French, but—by God! it’s meaning out to be plain enough, he told himself hotly.

  The youth tossed his head insolently and rotated his hands on the handlebars.

  ‘Get off!’ shouted Bastable. ‘At once!’

  The youth smirked at him—he was hardly older than the errand boys Bastable’s retained for their parcel deliveries —and pronounced a single word. And although it was a French word its vulgar meaning was also immediately clear to Bastable.

  His anger passed the point of inca
ndescence, consumed itself and suddenly became deadly cold. He knew now, as he fumbled with his webbing holster—he knew now with a horrible icy certainty that he would shoot this youth dead in five seconds if he refused to get off the motor-cycle.

  Then something hard poked him in the back, just below the right shoulder blade.

  ‘Non,’ said someone behind him.

  Bastable swung round and found himself staring into the twin mouths of a double-barrelled shotgun.

  The shotgun was held by a villainous-looking bandit whose expression indicated not only that he was quite capable of squeezing both triggers but also that it would give him great personal satisfaction to do so.

  Bastable’s own murderous anger dissolved into fear as he identified the emotion behind the expression: it was the same one that he himself had experienced seconds before—the mad glare of impotent rage which had at last found something to expend itself on. It was his own finger on the trigger of the gun that was pointed at him.

  The understanding of his own imminent death froze him into immobility, hand on holster.

  ‘Levez … Poot up … the ‘ands.’

  There were other men behind the man with the shotgun, and it was one of them who spoke. It seemed impossible to Bastable that he should not have seen or heard them behind him, but he hadn’t.

  He put up his hands so quickly that for a heart-stopping moment—as he did so, but before he could stop himself— he thought the shotgun man would blow him to pieces.

  Someone detached himself from the blur of individuals: a short, fat little man in a dusty black suit but no collar and tie, only a gold collar-stud.

  Not the face, but the whole man and the air of authority he still carried sparked Bastable’s memory. He had seen this one before, only once and from afar, but the image was there—of a short, fat little man arguing with the Adjutant outside the Town Hall of Colembert.

  It was the Mayor.

  This deduction fanned a quick flame of hope in him. The Mayor might be anti-British—he might even be a damn Red, if Wimpy was to be believed. But he was still an official of local government, and presumably a man of substance as well. Even in Colembert—even if Colembert wasn’t Eastbourne—that must count for something.

  God! He could remember the last time he had talked to the Mayor, when he had offered the services of Bastable’s lady assistants to help assemble the town’s sixty thousand gas masks just after Mr Chamberlain had come back from Munich, not long after the first air-raid siren trials—

  Somewhere below, in the lower town, there came a rumble and crash of falling masonry.

  Colembert wasn’t Eastbourne.

  And the Mayor of Colembert wasn’t the Mayor of Eastbourne.

  The Mayor of Colembert was speaking to him now —hissing those meaningless words at him, which he couldn’t understand. If only Wimpy was here!

  Assassin. That was a word he could understand.

  Assassin?

  That wasn’t fair.

  ‘I am a British officer!’ he snapped back. ‘Britain and France—‘

  He felt a movement at his side, where his holster was: the youth was relieving him of his revolver! But before he could think of lowering his arm to prevent the theft the shotgun jerked menacingly at him, countermanding the movement.

  God! It wasn’t possible—it wasn’t happening to him!

  One of the other men came forward from behind the Mayor to take the revolver from the youth. And then, before Bastable had time to think, let alone to duck, the man slapped him hard across the face.

  ‘Assassin!’

  The shock of the blow brought tears to Bastable’s eyes, even more than the stinging pain of it. He wanted to cringe, but his body wouldn’t cringe, it only swayed upright again, tensing itself against the next blow.

  The man swung his arm back. Bastable closed his eyes.

  But the blow never landed—he heard a sound at his side, a scrunching footfall and then the sound of another slap, loud as a pistol shot, yet not on his own cheek.

  He opened his eyes quickly, and caught a black blur. For an instant the tears obscured the blur as it passed him, then his vision cleared.

  The black-shawled woman hit the man with the revolver again.

  Well, it was more of a vigorous push than a hit, but it was just as good: in backing, the man tripped on the pavé and fell over in a wild confusion of arms and legs into the rubble behind him.

  The woman swung round and knocked the shotgun barrel up. The shotgun exploded with an ear-splitting concussion as the owner staggered back.

  The Mayor stepped forward and shouted at the woman.

  The woman shouted—screamed—back at the Mayor.

  The Mayor took another step forward, and it proved to be an unwise step. As he lifted his finger at her and opened his mouth to speak she back-handed his arm out of the way, putting him off-balance, and then caught him on the side of the head with her return swing. Something pink-and-white shot out of his mouth and fell at Bastable’s feet.

  Bastable looked down at a set of false teeth.

  As he looked down the woman stepped sideways and trod—either deliberately or accidently, he never knew which—on the Mayor’s teeth.

  Then she started to revile them. As usual, as always, the words were lost on him, and he couldn’t even guess at their exact content. But their effect was as concussive as the shotgun blast, he could see that.

  Finally she swept an arm out to the side, pointing past and behind him. And as she did so there came a shrill answering wail which Bastable recognized instantly.

  Alice!

  There was another woman alongside him now, on his left side, with the unforgettable shawl-swathed bundle in her arms which she held up for him to inspect, as though for his approval, quite unmoved by the increasing noise which came from it.

  He lowered his arms, and lifted one grimy finger to touch the little, scarlet, unrecognizable face. He felt that that was what the woman wanted him to do.

  ‘Alice—little Alice,’ he said, nodding at the woman.

  Alice. Little nameless, parentless, lost, unknown, bereaved and abandoned Alice —

  ‘Al-ees?’ The woman looked at him questioningly. ‘Al-ees?’

  ‘Alice,’ said Bastable. ‘Alice.’

  At which Alice, being Alice, quietened down in her arms, her crying trailing off into hiccoughs punctuating a tearful chuntering sound, which expressed only mild dissatisfaction where before there had been angry protest.

  ‘Al-ees.’ The woman nodded at him and lifted the baby high on her shoulder, out of his view once more, rocking her vigorously.

  The first woman started to speak again, addressing the men contemptuously now, as though the matter was settled, and there was really no more to be said. Indeed, when one of them started to say something she cut him off before he had reached the third word, in the same contemptuous tone, completing her own sentence with a two-handed gesture of dismissal which seemed to cow them utterly.

  The Mayor, who looked as if his head was still ringing from the buffet he had received, mumbled something, and pointed towards her feet. Bastable realized that if he had been able to catch the words he might have been able to add ‘false teeth’ to his French vocabulary.

  The woman was implacable. She ignored the Mayor, pointing at the man who had received Bastable’s revolver and then opening her hand to receive the weapon. Only when she had it in her hand did she shift her ground, turning without a second look at the men to return it to Bastable.

  She was the ugly woman with the crooked teeth, who had taken Alice from him in the first place, and he could have kissed her. But as it was, he didn’t know what to say, and knew that even if he had known what to say he wouldn’t have been able to say it to her in a language which she could understand.

  ‘Merci, Madame,’ he said. And because he could think of nothing else to do, he saluted her, touching the brim of his steel helmet in salute with the tips of his stiffened fingers.

 
‘Merci, Madame,’ he said again, aware as he spoke that the would-be lynching party behind him was dispersing.

  She scrutinized him for a moment, this time neither speaking nor smiling. Indeed, he could see no friendliness in her face at all: it was as though they were back where they had been when he first saw her, before he had revealed Alice to her. So perhaps that was where they were, with all debts settled—his life for Alice’s—and nothing left for him but to leave her alone in the ruins of her town, to go away and never ret urn.

  ‘M’sieur,’ she said finally, and then nodded, and turned away into the dark interior of her wrecked shop. He heard her picking her way carefully over its littered floor, but eventually the crunch of her footsteps on fallen plaster faded into silence.

  Now he was alone again, with the motor-cycle, and he felt oddly light-headed. It must be the French lady’s brandy, he decided. He had drunk rather a lot of that, and on a stomach containing only the bread he had shared with Alice in the half-light of early dawn… though by the position of the sun it was still only early morning, even though so much had happened to him since then. Indeed, the French lady’s brandy must also be to blame for that sudden blinding, murderous rage he had surrendered to, which had nearly been the death of him.

  He started to wonder what else would happen to him, but resolutely stopped wondering when the first instant possibility to occur to him was that this could be the day of his death—the odds on that lay all around him.

  Wimpy must have wandered out of earshot, or out of range of the sound of the motor-cycle’s engine-noise anyway, for that would surely have summoned him back at the double.

  But … supposing Wimpy didn’t come back?

  Then he would truly be alone. The last, the very last, of the Prince Regent’s Own South Downs Fusiliers, outside death and captivity.

  That thought was unbearable, so he turned his mind away from that too, and busied himself with examining the motorcycle. He had never ridden a motor-cycle— Father had refused point-blank to permit it. But if … but it shouldn’t be too difficult to work the thing out, one way or another. If …