The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  Oh, shit! thought Bastable. The matter had been settled for them by the Germans.

  ‘Take good care of the child, Willis,’ he whispered.

  The revolver came out of Wimpy’s hand—Wimpy wasn’t even holding it.

  Crunch-crunch-crunch … from below them.

  He rolled sideways silently, and then crawled the last yard or two to the fringe of grass-and-nettles at the edge of the cutting.

  There were three of them: one in German uniform, and two in brown leather coats, belted at the waist, and dark snap-brim hats—civilians of some sort—German civilians. This was the German end of the tunnel under the bridge.

  The soldier halted, saluted someone under the bridge, and disappeared from view.

  The civilians also disappeared from view.

  Logic.

  Oh, shit! thought Harry Bastable, and then stopped thinking.

  He got up and stepped over the edge of the cutting, steadying himself for the first second with his free hand on the brickwork as he dropped into space.

  He was conscious in the same second of several physical sensations: the surprising warmth of the bricks under his palm, and their roughness against the nettle-stings; the brightness of the sunshine in the cutting beneath him; the sound of an aeroplane engine droning somewhere up above him.

  The cutting was very steep, but not altogether vertical: it was a green cliff layered in a succession of narrow terraces; and beside the bridge itself, between the terraces, a series of crude footholds had been trodden into slopes.

  His body, not his mind, was in charge of movement and balance. Nevertheless, the fall of the cutting was too great, the terraces too narrow and the footholds too smooth and sloping for him to be in full command of his descent; he could only try to beat gravity by denying it the chance of betraying him—since he was unable to descend slowly he had to do so in a succession of extraordinary leaps, far beyond his normal capabilities.

  The last leap almost jarred the breath out of him as his boots crashed into the granite chippings beside the railway lines. Yet his body had been already turning in the air as it fell, and his legs straightened again, driving him into the shadow of the arch above him before the shock-wave could register.

  Someone shouted—

  He had expected the tunnel to be dark— it had seemed pitch-black from the angle above— but it wasn’t dark at all; it wasn’t a tunnel at all—it was only a high-arched bridge, with the sunshine streaming into it—

  There were men left and right of him, staring at him in astonishment. He swung the revolver left and right, searching for khaki-and-red-tabs—but encountering only a brown leather coat: it fell away from him is though it had been jerked from behind—but there was no khaki-and-red-tabs that side—Christ! there was no khaki at all—only civilians—Christ!—

  ‘What the devil—?’ began the Brigadier angrily.

  The Brigadier was wearing a pork-pie hat, and a sports jacket, and a striped tie.

  ‘Traitor!’ shouted Bastable, and pointed the revolver at the Brigadier, stiff-armed across the railway lines, and shot him twice in the face.

  The force of the bullets hurled the Brigadier backwards into the civilian behind him. Bastable’s head was filled with a loud ringing noise, but he was aware of the other brown coat coming at him. He dodged sideways and threw the empty revolver at the German soldier, who was standing in his way—and ran—

  Sunlight burst around him.

  And ran—

  He was twenty yards—thirty yards—out into the cutting before any shred of thought came back to him.

  He was running, his boots crashing and crunching into the granite chippings beneath him. The silver railway lines stretched away ahead of him, shimmering into infinity—there was a small concrete hut recessed into the side of the cutting just ahead, which he didn’t recognize—it was alongside—he had passed it—

  He had run right through the bridge, and now he was heading north, towards, the British lines! Towards safety!

  The cutting was coming to an end; he could see the edge of it dropping, and the land opening up on each side—

  There was someone running behind him!

  The air pounded in his chest painfully—he must go on running—if he could only go on running—he had run away before—he had escaped before!

  But he was weaker now. All the weary miles and hours, and the lack of sleep and proper food, and all the fears which had sapped his strength, were accumulating in his legs now, slowing him down.

  He looked from one side of the shallower cutting to the other, to the lines of the embankment ahead: on this side was open country, but there were trees and there was undergrowth on the other. His pursuer would run him down in the open, but in those bushes—perhaps—perhaps—

  ‘Stop!’

  The bushes were nearer. Just a few more yards, and he could cross the line and throw himself into them—down the embankment—

  ‘Stop … or I fire!’

  — only ten yards away. Nothing in the world was going to stop him now—not lead nor steel—

  He altered direction slightly, to leap across the lines.

  First one line—the sleepers were black and greasy-looking, and he judged their distance to match his running strides, to avoid them .. Now the other one—he heard the shot behind him as he leaped, and knew that it had missed him a fraction of a second before the toe of his boot caught the edge of the line. For the following fraction he was airborne, legs lost behind him; then he crashed headlong into the granite chippings, their sharp edges tearing into his chin and his palms and his knees.

  He tried to get up, scrabbling at the chippings, but his leg gave way under him.

  ‘Halt! Don’t move!’

  The voice was at his back. He stared at the bushes in front of him with utter despair.

  ‘Are you hit? Did I hit you?’

  Bastable sank sideways on to one buttock and one hand, and looked his pursuer in the face.

  Sandy hair—no hat—double-breasted grey suit, bad ly cut, with a foreign look, but the voice was unmistakably British.

  The sharp-faced staff captain, remembered Bastable belatedly. He wasn ‘t there in the farmyard with the Germans so I forgot all about him! I should have saved the second bullet for him! But now it was a million years too late.

  ‘English?’ Sandy-hair was sweating, red-faced and breathless.

  He didn’t have to answer. It was all the same now. It was finished. It didn’t matter what he said.

  ‘Get stuffed!’ he said.

  Sandy-hair nodded. ‘English. Who are you?’

  Damn! He should have held his tongue.

  ‘Ten seconds.’ Sandy-hair pointed the pistol.

  Bastable was disappointed to discover that he was still very frightened, even though it didn’t matter any more. On the other hand, maybe it did matter: if the swine was still on the look-out for Wimpy—for Captain W. M. Willis—there was one thing he could do that might help. One last thing.

  ‘Willis,’ he said.

  Sandy-hair’s jaw dropped. ‘Willis?’

  Bastable nodded. ‘W. M. Willis. Captain, Prince Regent’s Own South Downs Fusiliers,’ he said defiantly. He was rather pleased with his own cleverness; it was satisfying to know that he had done one clever thing, worthy of Wimpy himself, even if it was the very last thing he did.

  Now all he had to do was to keep his mouth shut, so as not to give himself away. But as he usually didn’t know what to say that shouldn’t prove difficult.

  Sandy-hair was frowning at him. ‘Willis?’ he repeated to himself as though he couldn’t believe his ears. And then he looked quickly down the track and held up his hand. ‘Go back! It’s all right—go back!’

  He looked at Bastable again. ‘Willis?’

  It was as good a name as any other to die under.

  ‘My God!’ murmured Sandy-hair. And looked down the line again quickly—and back to Bastable again. ‘Fall—like you’re dead—now!’ He raised the pist
ol. ‘Now! Willis—now!’

  The order was so categorical that Bastable obeyed it without thinking, letting himself fall flat on his back. And before he could question his own irrational obedience the pistol jerked above him with a loud cracking sound—the blast from its muzzle hit his face and granite chips struck his ear like stinging nettles. He flinched at the shock and tensed himself against the impact of the bullet he would never hear.

  ‘Lie still.’ Sandy-hair hissed, bending over him, fumbling at the buttons of his denim jacket. ‘Where’s your identification?’

  Identification?

  He had no identification—

  ‘For God’s sake—where’s your identification?’

  ‘Trouser pocket!’ Bastable heard himself say to the blurred red face and blue sky above him, without knowing what he was saying.

  The hands left his chest: they patted the pockets of his denim trousers, and felt a lump in one of them—a knotted lump which, until this confusion of light and thought in his brain, hadn’t been in any conscious reckoning there.

  Sandy-hair retrieved the lump—the lump unravelled itself above Bastable as Sandy-hair stood up, into the primrose-yellow-and-dove-grey lanyard of the Prince Regent’s Own South Downs Fusiliers—the symbol of pride and privilege!

  ‘Lie still. ..’ Sandy-hair looked down at him again—and then away again, and waved down the track. ‘. .. stay dead until I come back … if I come back … or we’ll both be dead, Willis—savvy?’

  Bastable heard the chippings crunch once more, away into a distance of sound made up of aeroplane-drone and the blood in his own ear-drums.

  He had been dead so many times that being dead was no longer a burden, it was a memory drilled into him by long practice and experience. So many pieces of him had died along the way, during these last hours, that another piece made no difference. One piece lay under the carrier, and another was among the Tynesiders and Germans on the grass behind the field hospital, where he had dropped the lanyard—and picked it up; and another piece remained in the attic, with his uniform, where he had consciously-uncon-sciously transferred the lanyard from one pocket to another—the last surviving piece of his identity as himself.

  And now even that was gone. He was stripped bare to the bone in the sunlight, full of separate pains—hands and knees and face stinging, the unyielding stones beneath him digging into his aching back.

  Yet the pains were as nothing compared with the utter bewilderment he was experiencing; rather, they were the spur to an awareness that he was still alive, when he should be finally dead at last. For although he could otherwise have argued with himself that some fragment of consciousness might still continue after death-that the brain might continue kicking and twitching with thoughts as darkness closed in—he could not reconcile such an imagining with the ordinary discomfort he continued to feel.

  He was alive, when he ought to be dead.

  Sandy-hair had quite deliberately spared him, when that should have been the coup-de-grace—

  And more, and more confusing than that: Sandy-hair had quite deliberately pretended to kill him—

  ‘Lie still! Stay dead until I come back!’

  It didn’t make sense.

  For it had been Sandy-hair who had fired at him from behind, as he had jumped the rails; and it had been that which had made him miss his footing and fall.

  But then Sandy-hair had fired that second time—but to miss—

  It didn’t make sense, and the nonsense of it made his head ache with the effort of thinking about it.

  And now Sandy-hair had returned to his German friends, to complete whatever treason he was transacting with them …

  It didn’t make any sense at all.

  Time was passing.

  He toyed with the idea of seizing this opportunity to start running again—to spring to life and start running— but finally rejected it as unsound. He dare not move to test the strength of his leg, which he had damaged in his fall, but he could add its likely weakness to the greater tiredness and lassitude which enveloped him, and to the doubts within him; and the addition told him that if he ran he would not run far before they caught him.

  And, also, if he ran he would be disobeying Sandy-hair’s explicit instruction: Lie there! Stay dead until I come back—or we’ll both be dead. Savvy?

  So he lay there, and stayed dead, even though he didn’t savvy at all. Because it didn’t make sense at all.

  Eventually he heard the familiar crunching footfalls again, far away but coming closer.

  He thought: Now it will make sense, and the thought so filled his mind that there almost wasn’t room in it to be frightened.

  He closed his eyes and held his breath.

  ‘Don’t move,’ murmured Sandy-hair above him. ‘They’ve gone, but I said I’d dispose of you, and it’s not safe in the open, so that’s what I’m going to do— for appearances’ sake … I’m going to drag you off the line into the bushes— right?’

  If it was right it was also decidedly uncomfortable as Bastable felt his wrists being seized and his arms stretched, and his boots bumped and scraped over the granite chip-pings of the railway track. But at least he knew what was happening to him.

  Then the going became softer, and the light penetrating his eyelids was shadowed.

  He opened his eyes, and beheld a nightmare, and closed them again instantly because the nightmare was impossible.

  Bushes swished around him, and twigs cracked underfoot ahead of him.

  He opened his eyes again fearfully, and saw that he was in a small clearing enclosed by bushes.

  The bushes parted and the nightmare came back, scowling frightfully at him.

  The Brigadier was alive.

  XVI

  ‘SIT UP, WILLIS!’ said the sandy-haired staff officer.

  Bastable stared up through a tracery of leaves at the blue sky far above. He didn’t want to sit up. He wanted to die.

  He had failed.

  ‘Sit up!’ repeated Sandy-hair sharply.

  He had not merely failed: he had failed miserably and shamefully and impossibly. He had failed at point-blank range.

  ‘Don’t play silly buggers with me, man!’ rasped the Brigadier. ‘Sit up this instant!’

  Harry Bastable raised himself on to his elbows and faced his failure.

  Its extent was printed on the Brigadier’s face, across his cheek and the side of his neck in a fiery red powder-burn—and also in the ferocious expression of anger on the rest of the Brigadier’s face.

  And finally in the pistol in the Brigadier’s hand which pointed unwaveringly at his heart across the little clearing in which they lay.

  ‘Now then—‘ The Brigadier spoke through clenched teeth, as though his face hurt him. ‘Now then—‘

  ‘Sir!’ The sandy-haired staff officer raised his hand. ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir—he’s mine.’

  ‘Yours?’ The Brigadier started to turn towards Sandy-hair, and then winced as the movement creased his powder-burn. ‘Well… he’s certainly your responsibility, Freddie—I grant you that. Because when you deceived Obergruppenfuhrer Keller you risked both of us getting the kybosh. God only knows what you would have said if he’d decided to examine the corpse!’

  ‘I should have said that I wanted to interrogate him myself, sir—without delay and without interference,’ said Sandy-hair suavely.

  ‘And you think Keller would have let you?’

  ‘Our need is greater than his, sir—he isn’t going straight back to British lines, and we are. So it’s our risk .. . Besides which, Keller’s got a far-more-urgent job than interrogating British agents; the sooner he gets the details of Operation Dynamo back to Berlin, the better.’

  ‘Hmmm … well, I’m glad you didn’t have to put that theory to the test. Keller’s awkward enough as it is.’ The Brigadier lifted his arm to bring his wrist-watch level with his eyes. ‘And we’ve not got a lot of time, anyway.’

  The railway line will be safe until thirteen-t
hirty hours, sir. Keller was positive about that. We’ve a clear thirty minutes.’

  ‘If you say so … But I wouldn’t like to come a cropper at the last fence.’ The Brigadier lowered his arm. ‘Very well—he’s yours. Only just remember that my vote is for shooting him here and now. Better to be safe than sorry is my motto.’

  His wish was going to be granted, thought Bastable bleakly: they were going to kill him.

  ‘But he did try to shoot you, sir,’ said Sandy-hair. That’s pretty strong evidence on his behalf.’

  ‘True.’ The Brigadier fixed his fierce pale eyes on Bastable. ‘But he missed.’

  ‘Only by a hair’s-breadth.’

  ‘Also true.’ The Brigadier lifted his free hand to touch his neck gingerly. ‘It undoubtedly wasn’t for lack of trying …’ The eyes bored into Bastable. ‘You’re a monstrously bad shot, whoever you are.’

  ‘Willis, sir,’ said Sandy-hair quickly. ‘Captain, Prince Regent’s Own—those Terriers at Colembert, remember?’

  ‘Yes. The ones the Huns scuppered.’ The Brigadier’s eyes flickered. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Do you recognize him?’

  The eyes ran up and down Bastable, chilling him. ‘Never saw him before in my life, so far as I can recall, Freddie. Looks a damned ugly customer—doesn’t look like a British officer to me, even a Territorial. They used to be fairly presentable.’

  ‘He’s not the one who took a shot at you in the yard at Beaumont Farm, then?’

  Again the eyes flickered. ‘Can’t honestly say for sure, you know—it all happened rather quickly, as I recall. It was a British officer—captain’s pips … and a fancy lanyard like the one you showed to Keller back there under the bridge, right enough. But he had his tin hat tipped over his eyes and the strap across his chin … Could be him, I suppose—and he was a damn bad shot too, that’s a similarity if you like! But I can’t say for sure, Freddie … my eyes aren’t what they were . ..’ He squinted at Bastable. ‘But you say he’s Willis?’

  ‘He says he’s Willis.’

  ‘And you’re inclined to believe him? Hmmm … Keller would have found out quickly enough, with his experience from Poland. And Spain …’ He started to nod again, and caught himself just too late. ‘Damn! Just get on with it, Freddie—that’s all!’