The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  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.

  To her?

  Christ! He had clean forgotten about the child! She was still crouched there in her little ball of fear under the eaves, to one side of the broken windows—hands lowered now, clenched in front of her cheap print dress, dirty little dried-tear-stained face turned towards him now—and he had forgotten about her so completely that he had stripped off down to his filthy underwear, right in front: of her as though she hadn’t been there at all. It didn’t seem possible that he could ever have done such a thing. But he had.

  ‘Go on, man—ma petite—‘ Wimpy switched into a string of French words, soft and soothing, amongst which Bastable was only able to distinguish ‘shoc-o-la’, and then chiefly because Wimpy pointed to the chocolate in his hand.

  ‘Say something,’ murmured Wimpy.

  Bastable opened his mouth, but no words came to him: he could think of nothing to say in English, let alone French. The child was plainly terrified anyway, and therefore beyond reasoning with, even if he had known what to say, if indeed there were any words for such a situation, she was in no condition to understand them The soothing sounds Wimpy had made hadn’t registered in the slightest. All he could communicate was his own helplessness and fear, which could only make matters worse.

  ‘Give her the chocolate.’ Exasperation edged Wimpy’s voice. ‘I’ll look out of the window—you calm her down, Harry. You know how to handle kids.’

  It was useless to protest that this was the very reverse of the truth, before he had even finished speaking Wimpy had pivoted on his good leg and had commenced moving down the attic towards the other window.

  Meanwhile, the chocolate was melting into a sticky mess between Bastable’s fingers. He looked at the little girl hesitantly, extending his arm towards her, offering her the mess.

  ‘Chocolate … chocolate … er … pour … vous?’ he managed.

  No recognition. If anything, the poor little thing seemed to contract into an even tighter ball.

  ‘Bon … chocolat—bon?’ Their eyes were almost on the same level. Hers were huge and round and dark, looking at him and yet not looking at him—not properly focused on him. Her hair was black, under a coating of dust and small fragments of plaster—blacker even than his own. It was unusual to see a child with such black hair … not that he had ever been in the habit of staring at children, or even noticing them. But that was the sort of hair which would shine like a raven’s wing with proper brushing.

  He was being stupid, offering her his chocolate at this distance, a yard beyond her reach. Even if she wanted it, she wasn’t going to move.

  But it would be a mistake to stand up, above her.

  Why was he doing this?

  It would be a mistake, therefore he must crawl that yard, through the wreckage of her grandmother’s linen sheets, through the tangle of her grandmother’s wedding dress—her mother’s wedding dress?—which she would never wear in her turn.

  Mustn’t take his eyes off her, either.

  He moved on knees and one hand, the other still extended towards her.

  ‘Chocolat?’

  She was focusing on him, and the little clenched hands moved as the flat chest behind them inflated with a long fearful breath.

  Poor little mite, thought Harry Bastable—poor little mite and poor Harry Bastable, both equally stretched beyond endurance!

  The chocolate was disgusting—revolting—a dead man’s possession; he flung it to one side with a twitch of his wrist and stretched out both arms to her, opening his hands to offer her the only thing he had that was his, the comfort of his own loneliness, his own confusion and fear.

  She was in his arms.

  ‘Good man!’ said Wimpy. ‘I knew you could do it, old boy.’

  ‘What?’ Bastable moved his head just enough to take Wimpy in, without disturbing the child more than was necessary.

  ‘I said “I knew you could do it”—you’ve got a way with them, Harry—that’s all. But now we must go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We must go—downstairs—on the double, too—‘

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The fields are crawling with Jerries., old boy—tanks and infantry—crawling with the blighters … what we want is … something white to wave—‘ Wimpy bent down and picked up the remains of the torn linen sheet ‘— this’ll do fine.’

  ‘Why?’ With the child hanging on to him so desperately, Bastable was unwilling to move from the safety of the attic.

  Wimpy tore savagely at the sheet. ‘I told you—the Jerries are all around … and if they start searching the houses for our chaps before we can get outside, then I want to be ready for them, old boy. That’s why!’

  ‘But … won’t we be safer here?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to bet on it—here, take this strip—‘ Wimpy thrust a large square of sheet into ore of Bastable’s hands ‘—wave that as you go out—‘

  ‘Out?’ The word squeaked.

  ‘That’s right—out. Now’s the time to go through them, if there’s ever going to be a time—before they’ve got themselves organized, don’t you see?’ Wimpy examined the piece of sheet he had torn for himself. ‘If I could attach this to a stick or something … Now’s the time: we’ll just be civilians running away—with a bit of luck they won’t bother about us, they must have seen thousands of civilians trying to beat it out of the line of fire. The sooner we get out of their way, the better—for them as well as us—don’t you see?’

  Bastable saw. But now, he also saw, things were different. The little limpet which was attached to him made them different.

  ‘But what about the child?’

  ‘We take her with us—of course.’ Wimpy frowned at him. ‘It was your idea in the first place, Harry—and a bloody good idea, too, by God!’

  ‘My—idea?’ Bastable stroked the little girl’s back with his empty hand, feeling the back-bone through her dress, quietening the sobs to an irregular trembling.

  ‘With the baby—our little Alice that was.’ Wimpy peered down the trap-door opening. ‘The child will take Alice’s place, that’s all.’

  ‘What
?’

  ‘She’s part of our disguise, don’t you see?’ Wimpy looked up at him. ‘Come on.’

  Bastable tightened his own hold on the limpet protectively. ‘No, Willis. I won’t have it! We can’t risk her.’

  ‘We won’t be risking her. The Germans won’t shoot a child. They’re not savages.’

  ‘No, damn it!’

  ‘She’ll double our chances… They’ll not look twice at two civilians with a child.’ Wimpy shook his head in surprise. ‘You took the baby, Harry—what’s the difference taking the child?’

  Bastable blinked at him. ‘I … I couldn’t leave the baby—on the road … ‘ He trailed off, baulking at the truth.

  ‘Then you can’t leave her—here.’ Wimpy gestured round the attic. ‘What’ll happen to her if our chaps counter-attack again? For God’s sake, Harry—what’ll happen if they don’t counter-attack, come to that? Do you want to leave her behind?’

  Whatever they did would be wrong. To stay here was out of the question. But to take her with them … or to leave her behind … each of those alternatives was equally monstrous, the way Wimpy had put them to him. If there had been no Germans outside he would surely have reversed his argument, but so long as there were Germans to be bamboozled the child wasn’t an encumbrance—she was the best part of their disguise.

  And Wimpy was right, of course—as always.

  But that didn’t make it right—

  ‘Harry …’ Their eyes met, and Bastable understood that Wimpy already knew exactly what he was doing, and why he was doing it, and the price of the doing. ‘Remember the Brigadier, Harry. We’ve still got a job to do—remember?’

  Bastable remembered, and was ashamed and angry with himself.

  He had forgotten again. He had been so busy saving his own skin, so preoccupied with his own fears, he had forgotten that the mischief the false Brigadier could do far outweighed this little life in his arms, however defenceless and innocent.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ said Wimpy.

  ‘No—‘ It was all academic, anyway. He couldn’t stay here, and he couldn’t prise the limpet loose.

  ‘Yes.’ Wimpy swivelled awkwardly beside the trap-door opening, and sank to his knees above the top step. ‘I’ll have to go down backwards … my bloody ankle, and all that.’

  Bastable watched him descend on hands and knees, towards the curtain at the bottom of the steep stair, and was doubly ashamed.

  He had always regarded Wimpy as a slightly ridiculous figure as well as an irritating blighter: the archetypal talkative, know-all schoolmaster, full of useless information and Latin tags, over-critical of his seniors and prone to lecturing his equals—equals like Harry Bastable, who had made their way in the real world of business and commerce where there was no captive audience of small boys to tyrannize over and punish … a ridiculous figure, too clever by half but often not half clever enough, and never more ridiculous than now. backing down a dusty stair on his hands and knees in ill-fitting black coat and pin-striped trousers and wing-collar.

  But the better man, nonetheless: not only cleverer than Harry Bastable, but also braver and more resourceful and more resilient—quite simply better, and never more obviously better than now, in the old Frenchman’s Sunday best, half-crippled but still leading the way, damn it!

  ‘Okay, then!’ Wimpy rose to one foot, steadying himself on the wall with one hand and clasping his white flag in the other, at the bottom of the stair. He looked up at Bastable. ‘Now, Harry—give me a minute or two on the other side of the curtain . .. and if nobody starts shooting, then come on down and join the party—okay?’

  Bastable watched him disappear through the curtains. The sound of gun-fire in the distance was as continuous as ever, but it was definitely in the distance, he noted with mixed feelings of relief for their own immediate prospects and disappointment for the British Army. In this part of the battlefield the counter-attack had clearly failed: the tanks he had seen, when rescue and safety had seemed for a moment to be only minutes away, must have marked the furthest point of the assault, unsupported by infantry, the final wave of a tide already ebbing. It had been just enough to create a fortunate confusion, without which their madcap escape from the aid post would almost certainly have failed—he realized that with a shiver of fear at the so-nearly might-have-been. It had saved them … but it had still left them high-and-dry in enemy territory—or in a no-man’s-land the enemy had been quick to recapture.

  It all depended on how speedily those SS officers returned to hunt for their missing prisoners … Unless, of course, the British tanks or the German dive-bombers had accounted for the bastards …

  The savage hope that they had been shot to pieces, blown limb from limb, or crushed to bloody pulp under steel tank treads flared within him, so that he tightened his grip on the limpet which was attached to his body.

  The limpet returned the grip, holding him as though her life depended on it.

  And there was no answer to that—except that it did depend on him now.

  The moment was up.

  Very carefully, blindly but very carefully, forcing himself to concentrate on each narrow tread in turn rather than on the fearful unknown beyond the curtain, Harry Bastable descended the attic stair.

  Now the curtain was ahead of him.

  It wasn’t the unknown: it was the Germans who were beyond that curtain, and this was the last frontier between him and them—and Wimpy was mad to make him do what he was doing, quite mad, and he had been just as mad, and weak and foolish too, to let himself be pushed and stampeded into this folly.

  Wimpy had to be stopped before it was too late!

  He pushed between the curtains.

  It was too late: Wimpy was already almost at the bottom of the main staircase; he had changed his method of locomotion from hands-and-knees to hands-and-bottom, sliding from tread to tread with his bandaged foot and ankle stuck out stiffly ahead of him and carrying small avalanches of fallen plaster along with him, the dust of it rising all around.

  ‘Willis!’

  It was too late. Even as he cried the name Wimpy reached the ground floor of the hall, grasped the newel-post, pulled himself upright and started to hop towards the open front door. Four desperate hops brought him within arm’s length of the door; steadying himself on one jamb he began to wave the white square of linen frantically with his free hand.

  The die was cast, Wimpy had cast it, and there could be no going back to the attic now. This was still madness, but it was madness without choice—he had been conscripted into it and was part of it, and could only go forward with it.

  He crunched hurriedly across the landing and on to the main stairs. At least they were less steep than the ones which led to the attic—

  The attic! He had forgotten to hide their uniforms in the attic! Their battledress blouses, with their captains’ pips plain to see, and their trousers and their gaiters—they were still lying there in the middle of the floor, for the first German to recognize—oh, God!

  Panic swirled around him half-way down the stairs, starting the sweat all over him. It was too late—he couldn’t go back now, he had to join Wimpy at the door—it was too late, but the first German into that attic . . Oh, God!

  ‘Good man!’ murmured Wimpy out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Now—hold the child for them to see and wave the jolly old white flag so they can’t mistake us.’

  They?

  Bastable’s awful knowledge of his failure to hide the uniforms thumped simultaneously inside his head and in his chest as he stared out of the doorway.

  They were there, unimaginably, in the road outside—in the very garden itself— men and vehicles, only a few yards away. And in the attic above, also just a few yards away—

  ‘Wave it, old boy—wave it,’ murmured Wimpy.

  Bastable stared hypnotically at the Germans. ‘We’ve got to get away,’ he hissed.

  Wimpy nodded, and continued to wave his white square.

  ‘I mean right now!’r />
  ‘Soon … soon,’ murmured Wimpy reassuringly.

  ‘Now!’

  Wimpy didn’t look at him. ‘I-can’t-walk-Harry…’ his lips hardly moved as he spoke ‘ . .. we’ll have-to-wait… to-get … the-cart.’

  Bastable focused on the hand-cart in the gateway, with its scatter of bundles and belongings. Not ten yards from it a large grey open car was parked in the track,with a group of German officers in and around it. A long file of soldiers was threading its way along the track, past the car. From behind him, coming from the open fields behind the house, he could hear the roar-and-squeal of tanks.

  He was aware of being squeezed by two equal fears, each the more terrible for its inevitability.

  They would come … and they would search the house, and they would find the battledress … which he had left, which he had left. And that would be the end of it, then.

  That was inevitable. It would happen.

  Therefore, because that was his fault—the end of it … therefore he had to get the cart first—now.

  That was also inevitable: he would make it inevitable because he would do it, because he had left himself no choice but to do it. Now—

  ‘I’m-going-to-get-the-cart,’ he whispered to Wimpy. ‘You … take-the-child.’

  The little limpet held on to him like grim death, as he had known she would, tightening matchstick arms and legs convulsively round him and sobbing wordlessly s he prised them loose.

  ‘Harry—‘ Wimpy began doubtfully.

  ‘ Take-her-damn-you!’

  At last he was free of her. For a final instant he met Wimpy’s eyes across her shoulder.

  ‘Harry … act stupid—dumb . .. and frightened, Harry—‘

  Bastable turned away, towards the garden and the enemy, lifting both arms above his shoulders, the square of white linen dangling from one hand.

  His legs felt weak, yet stiff at the same time, and the sweat lay cold on his face. He could hear all the sounds around him, each one an individual sensation, but they were all meaningless: only what he could see ahead of him mattered.

  The hand-cart was nearer.

  The German officers were arguing. One of them had a map held open—no, a map-case of some kind—