The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  ‘M’sieur—je vous rr-mercy.’

  He was turning away—

  ‘M’sieur!’ cried Wimpy suddenly. ‘Siv-oo-play, M’sieur—Capitaine!’

  Please?

  The German caught himself in mid-turn, and turned back. ‘M’sieur?’

  Was Wimpy mad? For Christ’s sake—the German had been leaving them, and Wimpy had stopped him—for Christ’s sake!

  Wimpy hopped forward towards him painfully. ‘M’sieur—Capitaine—‘—and plunged into another stream of French, of which Bastable could only catch the pleading tone.

  ‘Kommon?’ The German frowned, following the words and the gestures doubtfully—Wimpy gesticulated to himself, and to his bandaged foot as he spoke, and to Bastable himself, and to the child, finally towards the road.

  ‘Colembert,’ concluded Wimpy.

  Colembert?

  ‘Kolombert?’ repeated the German.

  ‘Oui, m’sieur,’ Wimpy nodded obsequiously, pointing again. ‘Sate-oh-sood … oon-peteet-vee … va-kilomatre—Co-lem-bear …’ He pronounced the name with appalling clarity. ‘Pray de Belléme.’

  The German consulated his map, still frowning. ‘Ko-lem-bear … Ach-so! Kolembert! Oui!’

  This time Wimpy really was mad—stark, staring, raving mad! There was no other possible explanation. On the outside he still presented the nervous and voluble servility to be expected of a French civilian in his predicament. But on the inside …

  The German officer looked up again from his map, pursing his lip as though he shared Bastable’s doubts. ‘Hmmm …’

  The moment of doubt and uncertainty elongated, stretching Bastable’s nerves with it until their tautness became a physical sensation quivering down his back. With the child in his arms, he knew that it would be useless to try and run. But with his knees trembling like this he couldn’t have run if he’d wanted to. And there was still nowhere to run, anyway.

  The German stiffened suddenly. ‘Zair-voll—‘ he gave Wimpy an abrupt nod, and reversed the map case ‘—votre nom, m’sieur?’

  Wimpy swallowed. ‘Ah—ahem!—Laval, m’sieur—Gaston Laval.’

  The German had produced a stub of indelible pencil: he was writing on a piece of greyish paper — on a message pad clipped to the back of the map case.

  He nodded towards Bastable. ‘Ay votre fee?’

  ‘Alys—Alys Dominique Marie Laval—‘

  ‘Alys… Laval…’ The German looked at Bastable again.

  ‘Bloch—Onri Bloch,’ supplied Wimpy.

  Onri?

  Henri, damn it. Fool? Half-wit!

  ‘Bloch …’ The German continued to write, moistening the tip of the pencil from time to time on his tongue—an action which reduced him from a figure of terrifying menace to one of everyday ordinariness, who had the same problems with army-issue indelible pencils as Harry Bastable himself had experienced.

  ‘Say sar,’ The German signed the paper with a flourish.

  But… Gaston Laval, and Alys Laval—Alys! and Henri Bloch—

  Onri Block-headed Bastable … what the blue-blazes had the German written?

  And now he was handing the paper to Wimpy—and Wimpy was gabbling effusive gratitude, and bobbing and bowing over the scrap of paper in his hand, until the German finally cut him off with a curt ‘M’sieur’, half embarrassed and half contemptuous (or maybe simply scared, like any British officer in the same position, thought Bastable, that he was about to be embraced and kissed on both cheeks by an unshaven, garlic-breathed Froggie).

  But whatever it was, it turned him away hastily, and marched him back down the pathway towards the group by the staff car at the roadside. Bastable watching him incredulously, aware that he had understood only a tenth of what he had seen with his own eyes, and that even that tenth was unbelievable.

  ‘Quite a decent fellow, that,’ murmured Wimpy. ‘For a damn Jerry …’

  ‘W—‘

  ‘Sssh, old boy!’

  The German had reached his colleagues. He presented the map to the most formidable of them and pointed to something on it.

  ‘Better not show too much interest in the proceedings.’ said Wimpy softly, swivelling awkwardly towards Bastable, trying to keep his weight off his bad ankle. ‘Don’t stare, old boy—come on and get some of the things out of this damn cart, and help me into it—the sooner we remove ourselves from the scene, the better, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t stare, Harry!”

  Bastable started guiltily, aware that he had been watching the Germans pore over their map with a fascination unbecoming a French peasant.

  ‘Put the child down—here, give her to me—‘ Wimpy held out his arms.

  The limpet was again unwilling to leave Bastable’s arms at first, and Bastable himself was almost as unhappy to surrender her; but with reassuring squeezes and comforting noises the thing was done again at last.

  He started to unload the cart.

  Leave me something soft to sit on.’ murmured Wimpy at his elbow. ‘And … that parcel there looks like the one in the kitchen—if it’s food, we need it … Is it?’

  Bastable tore at the corner of the long package.

  It’s bread—leave it in,’ hissed Wimpy. ‘And those bottles of wine—leave them in too.’

  Bastable grunted irritably at the unnecessary instructions. The schoolmaster in Wimpy, which was never far below the surface, seemed to have assumed control of both of them. ‘Hurry it up, old boy—hurry it up!’

  Damn the man! thought Bastable hotly. There was a welter of unanswered questions in his head, jostling each other furiously for precedence.

  What had Wimpy said to the German?

  What was written on that piece of paper?

  And … Colembert—for Christ’s sake—Colembert!

  ‘That’ll do. Now … help me in … Not that way, you idiot—‘ Wimpy resisted Bastable’s efforts to manoeuvre him towards the rear of the hand-cart, between the handles on the ground ‘—the front end, man, the front end!’

  Bastable frowned at him, and then at the cart. Because of its makeshift construction and its lack of supporting legs at the back, it was canted on to its handles with its body at an angle of sixty degrees.

  ‘Don’t just stand there!’ Wimpy mouthed desperately at him. ‘I want to get in at the front so I can see where we’re going—I’ll navigate . .. you just push the bloody contraption—right?’ He glared at Bastable. ‘So-just-lift-your-bloody-end … and-let-me-get-in … eh?’

  So that was the idea: Harry Bastable was to be the donkey between the shafts, pushing rather than pulling, and Wimpy would hold the reins, and do the thinking. Which, to Wimpy, was the natural order of things.

  Bastable sighed, and stepped between the handles, and lifted them. It was the natural order of things.

  Wimpy clasped the child to him firmly with one arm and hopped painfully round the cart, supporting and steadying himself on it with his free hand.

  He looked at Bastable for a moment. ‘Sorry I was rude just then, Harry old boy—‘ the corner of his mouth twitched’— bit of nerves … the old wind-up, eh?’ The twitch was trying to turn itself into a smile. ‘Can’t all be like you, old boy—eh?’

  Like me? thought Bastable, with a bitter pang of self-knowledge. It was hard to accept that Wimpy was a member of the same secret club of cowards, to which he belonged. But then … perhaps the membership was bigger than appearances suggested if they were each so deceived by the other. Maybe everyone belonged to it?

  Wimpy looked away suddenly, towards the road, and Bastable followed the glance. Everything was still happening there: the whole German Army seemed to be flowing past, only a couple of dozen yards away, regardless of them. He had been aware of it all the time he had been listening to Wimpy and obeying Wimpy’s orders, he had never been free of the knowledge of it for a second. It was as though that part of his senses which handled such information was full of it, and could handle no more. It was terrifying, but neither more nor less so than it had been at firs
t sight.

  Their eyes met again, and Bastable knew and shared Wimpy’s thoughts: at the moment they were French refugees, but every second’s delay increased the danger of discovery.

  The German officer might come back to them.

  The SS officers who had spotted them might still be alive.

  ‘I’ll have to talk French out there, Harry. If I say “arraytay-voo” that means “stop”. “Ah-gowsh” is “left” and “Ah-droowa” is “right”—got that? And “on-avon” is “go”—right? “Arraytay-voo”, “ah-gowish”, “ah-droowa” and “on-avon”,’ said Wimpy, projecting the words at Bastable with painstaking clarity. ‘Have you got that, Harry?’

  Have you got that, Batty?

  Bastable flinched at the memory.

  ‘I’ll signal as well—okay?’

  Just do as I say, Batty!

  Bastable ground his teeth. ‘Get in the cart, Willis. Just get in the cart.’

  The handles jerked violently and the frail contraption shuddered and creaked as it took the strain of twelve-stone of British officer and three-stone of French girl.

  Batty Bastable, thought Bastable an he swivelled the cart.

  The German Army was still on the march up the road on which they were about to travel.

  Batty Bastable, right enough. Only a mad idiot would do this—and maybe that was the only thing they had going for them, at that: the last place any sane German would expect to find escaping British officers was right in the middle of their army-on-the-march.

  But which way?

  ‘Ah-gowsh, Onri!’ commanded Gaston Laval to Onri Bloch, and pointed against the tide of grey.

  The cart shot through a gap, under the nose of a soldier bowed down under the weight of a light machine-gun.

  The grey lines flowed by on each side, but Bastable didn’t dare look up, to run the gauntlet of their eyes. Yet, though he didn’t dare look at them, they filled his mind so that he could see nothing but Germans, all looking at him: they were there inside his head, in his mind’s eye, like a newsreel film synchronized with the actual sounds he could hear of them on either side of him—boots crunching and cracking and dragging, equipment clinking and clanking and clunking, voices muttering and calling out and laughing and jeering—but mostly no voices at all, mostly no human sounds … because they were tired—they must be tired, because it was evening now, and also because they were trudging not towards their billets and a meal but towards—

  Towards the British Army.

  That was a thought arousing pain, not fear.

  It was painful because, wherever he was going (and at the moment that wasn’t a matter of choice and decision), he was going away from the British Army—away from the certainty and comfort and safety of khaki uniforms and English voices … and that was a desolate pain beyond anything he had experienced, like the home-sickness of the first, lost night at boarding school multiplied by an infinitely greater loneliness which he felt now—

  He was aware of laughter again, and suddenly the pain was fear, because of the realization that there was no more any certainty and comfort and safety in France, even where there was khaki, even where there were English voices—

  They were laughing at him, and at Wimpy in his ridiculous hat, with his legs dangling ridiculously over the front of the ridiculous orange-box cart.

  But they were really not laughing at him at all: they were laughing because they were winning.

  No. Damn it—no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—

  Yes. All those tanks, in the field.

  All those bombers—those bloody bombers—and he hadn’t even seen an RAF plane … he hadn’t even heard an RAF plane, let alone seen one—all those bloody planes—

  All those tanks, in the field—

  The field—The farm—The Brigadier!

  Bastable raised his eyes from the old Frenchman’s black hat on Wimpy’s head, which he had been staring fixedly at, and not seeing at all, and forced himself to look into the faces of his enemies.

  And saw only the Brigadier.

  The damned, treacherous, false, murdering, Fifth Columnist, fucking-bastard-swine-shithouse Brigadier.

  He had forgotten—

  It seemed impossible that he should have forgotten, even for a second. He had forgotten, and then remembered, and then forgotten again, and then been reminded—reminded by Wimpy, too—and then forgotten again.

  It seemed impossible, but it had happened.

  But now it would never happen again. Even when he was thinking of other things it would be there, like a great hoarding erected inside his head advertising what he would never forget again—never, never, never.

  Everything that had happened to him was because of that damned traitor— Traitor?

  ‘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.)

  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 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 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—

  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 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 …