The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  ‘Merci—danker,’ said Wimpy.

  The officious NCO looked down at him belligerently, obviously about to speak.

  ‘D’low, seevooplay,’ said Wimpy. ‘Wasser?’

  The NCO snapped his fingers at the soldier. ‘Wasser!’

  The soldier handed Wimpy his water-bottle, watched him drink, and brought it to Bastable in turn. Bastable looked at him helplessly, unable to let go of the handles of the cart.

  ‘ Ach-sso!’ The soldier held the water-bottle to his lips and he glugged thirstily, the water running down his chin. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he had been, and that seemed very strange to him, And, at the same time, he felt guilty at drinking all the soldier’s water; drinking another man’s water wasn’t right.

  But the soldier grinned at him. ‘Goot? Goot?’

  It tasted rather odd, with a chemical tang to it, and it was stale and luke-warm. But it was good.

  ‘G—‘ Bastable started to say as much, but cut off the word just in time, turning it into a guttural sound. ‘G-g-g!’ he nodded at the soldier, who nodded back at him as though delighted.

  ‘Schown!’ snapped the NCO, pointing to the queer French signpost at the crossroads.’ Rraymee-der-soo—Dayzay vrez—huh?’

  Bastable squinted at the signpost.

  REMY-DEUX-SOUS 5.5—to the left.

  ‘Desevres—oui!’ said Wimpy, nodding.

  ‘Les Moolinz—‘ The NCO pointed to the right’—verboaten—verboaten! Nicht Les Moolinz—ja?’

  LES MOULINS 6.5—to the right!

  ‘Desevres—Colembert!’ Wimpy pointed to the left. ‘Ja!’ The NCO nodded vigorously, and started to turn away.

  ‘Mo-mong!’ exclaimed Wimpy, stopping him. ‘Mine hair—jay bezwa’n dern pistolay—rayvolvur . .. kanone—comprenay?’

  The German NCO frowned at him, and then shook his head.

  What the devil—? thought Bastable, swivelling the cart handles in already-sweating palms. Pistolay?

  ‘Nine! Nicht pistole!’ The NCO shook his head again.

  The meaning came to Bastable with a rush of blood to his brain: Wimpy was mad again—he was spoiling everything, just as they had achieved the impossible! He was asking for a gun!

  Things happened simultaneously. Wimpy was mad, and the NCO was shaking his head, and the no-longer-poker-faced soldier, who had been watching events with interest while reattaching his water-bottle to his equipment, was banging on the tailboard of the lorry and shouting into it.

  Wimpy had produced his piece of paper again, and was gabbling a mixture of French-and-German at the NCO with the same pedantic, schoolmasterish obstinacy as he so often used on Bastable himself.

  The soldier returned to them, and promptly presented a revolver to his NCO—an odd-shaped thing—with a nod of his own towards Wimpy.

  The NCO stared at the revolver in his hand as though it was a snake about to bite him; and then fumbled with it—and swore at it, and finally changed hands before succeeding in breaking it open and swore again.

  Somebody shouted from up ahead, and banged his hand on the side of the lorry insistently—it was the driver leaning out of his cab, eager as all drivers were to get moving again.

  The NCO snapped the revolver again, and shook his head, but with resignation this time, and slapped the weapon into Wimpy’s hands—while the soldiers in the lorry cheered and stamped their feet—and swung away angrily, pretending to ignore the noise—and the soldier winked again at Bastable and said something meaningless; and turned away himself, and was hauled into the lorry by his comrades—legs, boots, disappearing into the darkness—even as it started to roll forwards again … and someone was waving from the back of the lorry; and then the next lorry cut off the view, and the next, and the next, and the next—noise and dust swirling around them—until the last one, with curious white faces peering at them out of it, disappeared in its own cloud of dust and fumes, and they were alone.

  Bastable looked around him.

  ‘French?’ Wimpy addressed himself as he examined the revolver. ‘Probably French—but made for a contortionist … no—made for a left-handed contortionist—‘ He fumbled with it just as the German NCO had done and finally found the release button of the cylinder ‘— but—fuck it! — only two bullets … so that’s why he let us have it, the sod. Just a souvenir—‘ he raised the weapon close to his eye ‘— something d’armes—St Etienne—a souvenir from a left-handed French contortionist!’

  There still wasn’t a soul in sight. The whole of France might be empty: the long columns of refugees of yesterday—the day before yesterday?—had disappeared like flies in the wintertime of the German Army’s advance.

  The sound of the lorries was fading into the distance, but there were other sounds now to take their place—the rumble and drone of aircraft ahead of them and away to their right … and their left …

  ‘But two will have to do.’ Wimpy twisted towards him. ‘Come on, old boy—right for Les Moulins—at least they’ve given us that on a plate, thank God!’

  Bastable stared at him.

  ‘Les Moulins, Harry—‘ Wimpy pointed to the right. ‘At the bridge between Les Moulins and Carpy’—remember? And, by Christ, if it’s forbidden for us to go there, then by golly, that’s where it is, Harry—at the bridge between Les Moulins and Carpy, that’s where the bastard’s going to be, and they’re keeping it clear to make sure of it, the crafty swine!’

  Bastable thought he saw a curtain move in the house on the right-hand corner of the crossroad. So there was perhaps somebody still alive in France, besides themselves.

  Wimpy pointed to the right with the revolver. ‘Come on, Harry—no more time to admire the countryside. Just look for the next river, old boy—‘

  But there had been no river.

  Bastable looked at Wimpy’s back, the stale taste of the alcohol furring his tongue, as Wimpy peered round the edge of the bridge again.

  ‘Still all clear,’ said Wimpy over his shoulder, and then consulted the old Frenchman’s watch. ‘Eleven-forty-two, and all clear!’

  Bastable raised himself on his stinging hands and peered down to his left, into the railway cutting. The fall of the bank beside the bridge was much steeper than where the cutting began, so that this side was invisible to him beyond the edge of the thirty-foot drop to the line, and he could only see the cliff on the opposite side, with the rails of the single-track line itself hidden from view where they disappeared under the bridge.

  He looked down to the south—so far as he could make out it was north-south that the line ran, with the road crossing it east-west. The further away, the less steep the sides of the cutting, until it ceased to be a cutting and became an embankment: that was the logic of railway building, he remembered, to iron out the rise and fall of the land into a billiard-table; and the smaller the gradients, the more economical the line—that was the logic.

  And Wimpy too was very logical …

  It had been Wimpy who had first realized that it wouldn’t be a river, but a railway line. Bastable had only known that he was sweating to push the cart upwards on to a plateau, not holding it back from running away into a river valley; and he had drawn no conclusions from that, except that he was sweating.

  But then Wimpy had worked it all out, after he had made sure that the roofs and the spire a couple of miles ahead down the road must be Les Moulins, with no other bridge to cross before they could reach it.

  Wimpy was very logical.

  ‘If the Germans are in Carpy, then Les Moulins must be still ours—they’ve left it, to let the Brigadier get to the bridge!’

  Was that logic? Bastable’s head ached too much to deny it, anyway.

  ‘Which means … they’re coming up, round the coast—Le Touquet, Boulogne—Christ!’ Wimpy had trailed off, leaving the implications of that unsaid. ‘No wonder they want to know what’s up ahead of them!’

  It was all beyond him. Or, not quite—

  ‘Then we can go on to Les Moulins—if our chap
s are still there. We can stop him there.’

  ‘No, Harry.’ Wimpy considered Bastable-Iogic, and rejected it. ‘If our chaps are there .. . But if they aren’t—if the Germans are simply passing him through to talk here—then we’ll have had it, by God! All we know is that he’s coming here.’

  Bastable had lost the thread of it there. Wimpy was too clever for him, too logical, and he was too tired to argue.

  ‘We know he’s coming here,’ repeated Wimpy.

  ‘We know?’

  ‘I heard it. When we were under the table—the bridge between Carpy and Les Moulins—midday—that’s what they said. And this is the bridge, Harry — and all we have to do is wait!

  Bastable was too beaten to argue, but not too beaten to want not to go on living when there was still a chance of life.

  ‘But—‘

  ‘No, Harry. I know what you want to do—you want to go at everything like a bull-in-a-china-shop—‘

  That wasn’t what Harry Bastable wanted at all. But there wasn’t any way of admitting what he wanted, now that what he had dreamed of had actually happened—and had become a nightmare.

  ‘—but it won’t do—with only two bullets … it won’t do. Being brave isn’t enough—we have to think—‘

  It wasn’t being brave at all—that was what Harry Bastable was thinking.

  Wimpy shook his head. ‘We can’t risk it, that’s all. He’s coming here, so we’re staying here.’

  Think—

  Wimpy looked at him. ‘The Destined Will, Harry—you thought of it first. You always think of everything first! And when there wasn’t a chance in hell of getting here, you still thought of it.’

  But that wasn’t it at all! Or, if he had, then he had thought of it when he thought it couldn’t happen.

  Think—

  He saw the child staring at him with her solemn eyes out of her dirty face. What would happen to the child? ‘What about her?’ She had always helped him: she would help him now! ‘You can’t look after her—you can’t bloody well walk, Willis!’

  Wimpy looked at him, and at the child, and then back at him, and smiled—that was the first glimpse of that terrible obstinate serenity.

  ‘Harry, Harry … trust you to get it wrong, old boy!’

  ‘What?’

  The serene smile. ‘That’s the point, Harry—trust you to want to do it!’

  Do it?

  ‘I can’t get away—that’s the whole point—the jolly old Destined Will, old boy, eh?’

  ‘What d’you mean, Willis?’

  Wimpy pointed towards Les Moulins. ‘The Brigadier—our own special Fifth Columnist, the bastard—has to come up that road, to this bridge—there—‘ he pointed to the middle of the road, at the mouth of the bridge ‘— while Jerry trots along from his side side—from Carpy—eh?’

  Bastable stared down the empty road towards Carpy, and then back to Wimpy.

  Serene smile. ‘And since when could you ever hit a barn door—at point-blank range, Harry old boy? Since when?’

  Since never. The only shot he’d ever fired in anger—two shots— had been at point-blank range, at the German soldier two yards from the Brigadier’s shoulder, and God only knew where they had gone, but they certainly hadn’t hit anything.

  ‘Since when?’ challenged Wimpy.

  A smaller part of Bastable wanted to deny the truth. But only a smaller part.

  ‘We wait here until the Brigadier turns up—you take the child and the cart and snug ‘em down in the wood there first—‘ Wimpy pointed into the undergrowth ‘—and then we wait until he comes in view—‘ Wimpy pointed down the road to Les Moulins’—and you scarper and keep the child quiet… and bang-bang!—you lie low until the coast is clear again right?’

  Logical.

  Wimpy couldn’t run away.

  Wimpy couldn’t run anywhere.

  ‘And if I can’t hit a barn door— you take the child and head for home, and tell ‘em what happened. Which makes you the small print on the bottom of the Destined Will, old boy. Like … an insurance policy, eh?’

  It did seem a very good idea—

  ‘Logical?’ suggested Wimpy serenely.

  Very logical. A very good idea, and also logical.

  ‘So … you take the child—and the chariot—and tuck ‘em away out of sight … and come back and have a bit of a kip until eleven-hundred hours, or thereabouts—‘ Wimpy consulted the Frenchman’s watch—because you’ll need all the rest you can get—off you go then, there’s a good fellow.’

  He watched Wimpy survey his surroundings critically.

  ‘An absolutely ideal spot … plenty of cover right up to the roadside … if I crawl around from the back, without disturbing the front—I can see up and down the road for half a mile too! Ideal!’

  Unarguably logical. So why argue with it?

  Wimpy turned back to him. ‘Look, Harry—I know what you’re thinking. But you don’t have to prove anything to me, my dear fellow … It’s simply that this makes sense, that’s all.’

  So it did, of course.

  It isn’t as though you’ll be running away—it’s just as vital that someone gets through with the information as it is that someone else puts the kybosh on the bastard. Swopping jobs … that would be a nonsense.’

  And so it would be, of course.

  Wimpy half-smiled. ‘I always used to tell my boys that nonsense must be wrong—all they had to do was to think logically, because Latin is a logical language. Patriam amamus: eam servabimus—illustrating the use of the pronoun—so I’ll do the job. End of lesson—class dismissed, Harry.’

  Class dismissed.

  The nettle stings throbbed as Bastable turned away from the railway line, back to the contemplation of Wimpy’s black-suited back half-shrouded by the tall grass and nettles in which he lay.

  He had slept without dreaming at all, but before he had slept he had recalled something which until that moment he hadn’t remembered for half his lifetime.

  Mr Voight had promised Form Vc, the bottom French division of no-hopers, that the last class before the exam would be painless—he would read them Maupassant’s La Dernière Classe (‘classe’ feminine—‘dernière’ e-accent grave-e).

  Not that Vc cared a toss for accents—but wasn’t Maupassant that writer of sexy stories who had died of the clap practising what he preached … ? Good for Old Voighty!

  Except that he hadn’t understood a word of the story; and even those who had puzzled out some of it had dismissed it as a shameless ‘have on’; because it wasn’t about filles de joie (Vc knew about them) at all, but about boys like themselves having a last French class before the Prussians conquered Alsace-Lorraine and abolished the French language there—and Good for the Prussians was Vc’s considered verdict on that!

  Only now, by the bridge from Carpy half a life later, Harry Bastable remembered what Henry Bastable had instantly forgotten—the difference Old Voighty had painfully taught them between la classe dernière and la dernière classe!

  Only now it was Wimpy who was teaching him the difference: Wimpy’s very last lesson—the last lesson he would teach anyone—wasn’t about logic, or about Latin. It was about what sort of man Harry Bastable really was—that was what it was about.

  ‘Give me the gun, Willis,’ said Harry Bastable.

  ‘They’re a bit late,’ said Wimpy. ‘What?’

  ‘Give-me-the-gun.’

  Wimpy looked at him quickly. ‘Don’t let’s go through all that again, Harry.’ And turned away.

  Bastable crawled alongside him.

  ‘There isn’t time to fuck about now,’ said Wimpy.

  ‘Give me the gun.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  ‘I’m the senior officer.’

  ‘Balls!’

  ‘Give me the gun, Willis. That’s an order.”

  ‘Balls.’

  ‘I’m taking the gun, Willis.’ Bastable reached out through the nettles. ‘Give it to me.’

  �
�No you’re not—there isn’t time.’

  ‘I’m taking it!’

  ‘Watch out! Christ, man! It’ll go off— mind what you’re doing!’ hissed Wimpy.

  Bastable had the barrel, but Wimpy still had the butt. They wrestled with each other silently, each pushing against the other, fighting for control of the revolver.

  ‘It’ll go off!’ gritted Wimpy.

  ‘Then let go of it!’

  ‘No!’ Their cheeks rasped against one another, sandpaper against sandpaper. ‘Don’t be a fool, man!’

  Bastable dug his heel into the ground to anchor himself. It occurred to him that Wimpy couldn’t do that, not with his bad ankle. In fact … all he had to do was to kick at that ankle with his other foot—

  Suddenly, Wimpy relaxed against him. He didn’t let go of the revolver—he still held it as firmly as ever—but he relaxed, as though the fight had gone out of all of him except that one hand which held the weapon.

  ‘G—‘

  ‘Sssh!’ whispered Wimpy. ‘Sssh!’

  Bastable held himself rigid. For ar instant he coud hear only his own heart thump inside his chest. And then—

  A faint crunching? Was it?

  The crunching faded, and then became more distinct.

  I am an idiot, thought Bastable. He’s quite right—

  Wimpy was staring at him: their faces were so close that he could see every detail of Wimpy’s features with microscopic sharpness, sweat beaded among the bristles, dirt ingrained into the lines crinkling the skin, the crater of a pock-mark on the cheek-bone—eyes huge with surprise questioning him.

  ‘Sssh!’ Wimpy’s free hand pressed down on his back.

  There was something wrong—something more wrong than just that Wimpy was looking at him like this, and not fighting any more. Even his hold on the revolver was weakening.

  ‘They’re…’ Wimpy’s mouth opened on the word so softly that it was more like a breath than a whisper ‘ … not … on the road … they’re … in … the cutting—Harry!’

  In the cutting.

  At the bridge—but not on the bridge.

  Under the bridge.

  Logic, thought Harry Bastable emptily.

  The line ran north-south. The Germans were advancing to the north. It was a good place to meet, under a bridge, out of sight.