The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  The sausage went down with a painful gulp; the stairs reared in front of him and he took them at the double, in a rush, driven upwards by the sound of the tanks outside. It occurred to him as he went up that the cellar—if the house had a cellar—would be a safer place in which to take refuge, But then, of course, that would probably be the first place the Germans would look.

  The rush took him to the top of the stairs—and also to the bleak thought that if the cellar wasn’t safe, the bedrooms were hardly likely to be safer; he had come up here simply because Wimpy had told him to, and he was now accustomed to doing whatever Wimpy ordered for lack of any initiative on his own part. But unless Wimpy had another bright idea to go with his last order they were even more hopelessly trapped up here than at ground level.

  There were only three doors to choose from on the tiny landing, and he was just about to ask if Wimpy had a preference when he caught sight of another stair through a gap in a curtain which at first glance he had dismissed as concealing a cupboard. Of course—the house had another floor above this one!

  Driven by the same instinctive obedience which had taken him up the first stair, he plunged through the curtain up the second. It was much narrower and steeper—so narrow and steep that with Wimpy on his shoulder he could only keep his balance by accelerating up it with his face only inches from bare wooden treads in front of him, until he issued out through the square hole of a trap-door and fell sprawling on to the floorboards of the attic above.

  The sole contents of the attic were two large tin trunks, wide open, with clothes strewn around them.

  In between them, crouched under the eaves, was a little girl.

  XIII

  HARRY BASTABLE and the little French girl stared at each other in dumb horror.

  Little girls, of all the different species of children, were tht worst, the very worst—

  LOST CHILDREN … in the case of female children, male staff will at once summon a lady assistant to deal with the child. On no account—

  The very worst. Where he hated the mindlessness of babies he actively feared little girls—had feared them ever since that hideous occasion during his time as a trainee manager in London when one irate mother had reclaimed her lost child not with gratitude but with foul suspicions and wild threats—

  Stop pawing at ‘er, you dirty rotter — I saw you! I’ll report you, I will—I know your sort—I’ll report you, I will!’

  He had only been trying to comfort her. She had put her arms round his neck, and she had seemed to like him, and he had only been trying to comfort her—he hadn’t known what else to do to stop her crying.

  In Bastable’s of Eastbourne it had been different, it had been easy:

  ‘Miss Brown! Miss Gartland! Mrs Summers—see to this child, please — at once!’

  The little French girl’s chest inflated with one long shuddering breath, and Harry Bastable didn’t know what to do—was incapable of either words or action—to stop her from crying it out, to quench the sound before it burst forth from her.

  Miss Brown, Miss Hartland, Mrs Summers—

  ‘Sssh! Sssh, ma petite—nous-somme-der-amis—sssh!’

  Wimpy had rolled off him like a sack of potatoes, as though half-stunned, as he collapsed on to the attic floor a moment before. But now, incredibly, Wimpy was on his hands and knees—or on one hand and two knees, the other hand lifted into a finger at his lips cautioning the frightened child into silence.

  ‘Sssh!’

  The child lifted her hands to her face—two small, grubby hands tipped with black finger-nails—and subsided noiselessly through them. Bastable looked quickly from her back to Wimpy, and back to her again, and back to Wimpy, torn apart by relief, and by contempt for himself—Sssh! was a universal round: why hadn’t Sssh! come to his lips?—and admiration for Wimpy’s astonishing resilience in adversity, which made time stand still when there was no time left.

  ‘Clothes!’ said Wimpy.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Clothes, man—clothes!’ Wimpy rummaged in one of the tin trunks. ‘Clothes, by god!’

  He was ignoring the child now: he was kneeling beside the trunk, holding up one garment after another, throwing this one aside, measuring that one against himself, feverishly, as though his life depended on outfitting himself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look in the other one—don’t just lie there, old boy—find yourself some togs … Ah! Now that’s more like it … and that — go on, man, for Christ’s sake—look in the other one!’

  Wimpy spread his arms, crucifying himself against a blue-striped shirt as he spoke, then throwing the shirt down in a growing pile beside him. ‘Yes—? No … Ah—‘

  It was unreal—it was a nightmare. Bastable rose to his knees and swivelled to the second trunk. He knew what Wimpy was about, but he didn’t want to do what Wimpy intended, yet there was nothing he could do to stop the blighter, he knew that too: the nightmare wasn’t unreal, it was truly and irrevocably what was happening to him.

  An overpowering smell of camphor assailed him.

  Layers of tissue paper, crumpled and uncrumpled—

  A feather boa—long cylinders, which he knew contained ostrich feathers: his mother had ostrich feathers in cylinders just like that—ostrich feathers—from grandmother’s day.

  Dresses … he tore the tissue paper from them. White silk—white, but with a touch of yellowing age: white silk and lace fluffed up … It was a wedding dress—a wedding dress—

  The old woman lay in the road in her black coat with the fur collar, her thin legs in their black stockings—and the carpet slippers, the carpet slippers —

  The camphor-smell sickened him, and he felt his throat contracting and rising, summoning up the undigested garlic sausage from his stomach.

  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 ha
nd, 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.