The Hour of The Donkey (17 page)

Then something hard poked him in the back, just below the right shoulder blade.

‘Non,’ said someone behind him.

Bastable swung round and found himself staring into the twin mouths of a double-barrelled shotgun.

The shotgun was held by a villainous-looking bandit whose expression indicated not only that he was quite capable of squeezing both triggers but also that it would give him great personal satisfaction to do so.

Bastable’s own murderous anger dissolved into fear as he identified the emotion behind the expression: it was the same one that he himself had experienced seconds before—the mad glare of impotent rage which had at last found something to expend itself on. It was his own finger on the trigger of the gun that was pointed at him.

The understanding of his own imminent death froze him into immobility, hand on holster.

‘Levez … Poot up … the ‘ands.’

There were other men behind the man with the shotgun, and it was one of them who spoke. It seemed impossible to Bastable that he should not have seen or heard them behind him, but he hadn’t.

He put up his hands so quickly that for a heart-stopping moment—as he did so, but before he could stop himself— he thought the shotgun man would blow him to pieces.

Someone detached himself from the blur of individuals: a short, fat little man in a dusty black suit but no collar and tie, only a gold collar-stud.

Not the face, but the whole man and the air of authority he still carried sparked Bastable’s memory. He had seen this one before, only once and from afar, but the image was there—of a short, fat little man arguing with the Adjutant outside the Town Hall of Colembert.

It was the Mayor.

This deduction fanned a quick flame of hope in him. The Mayor might be anti-British—he might even be a damn Red, if Wimpy was to be believed. But he was still an official of local government, and presumably a man of substance as well. Even in Colembert—even if Colembert wasn’t Eastbourne—that must count for something.

God! He could remember the last time he had talked to the Mayor, when he had offered the services of Bastable
’
s lady assistants to help assemble the town
’
s sixty thousand gas masks just after Mr Chamberlain had come back from Munich, not long after the first air-raid siren trials—

Somewhere below, in the lower town, there came a rumble and crash of falling masonry.

Colembert wasn’t Eastbourne.

And
the Mayor of Colembert wasn’t the Mayor of Eastbourne.

The Mayor of Colembert was speaking to him now —hissing those meaningless words at him, which he couldn’t understand. If only Wimpy was here!

Assassin
. That was a word he could understand.

Assassin?

That wasn’t fair.

‘I am a British officer!’ he snapped back. ‘Britain and France—‘

He felt a movement at his side, where his holster was: the youth was relieving him of his revolver! But before he could think of lowering his arm to prevent the theft the shotgun jerked menacingly at him, countermanding the movement.

God! It wasn’t possible—it wasn’t happening to him!

One of the other men came forward from behind the Mayor to take the revolver from the youth. And then, before Bastable had time to think, let alone to duck, the man slapped him hard across the face.

‘Assassin!’

The shock of the blow brought tears to Bastable’s eyes, even more than the stinging pain of it. He wanted to cringe, but his body wouldn’t cringe, it only swayed upright again, tensing itself against the next blow.

The man swung his arm back. Bastable closed his eyes.

But the blow never landed—he heard a sound at his side, a scrunching footfall and then the sound of another slap, loud as a pistol shot, yet not on his own cheek.

He opened his eyes quickly, and caught a black blur. For an instant the tears obscured the blur as it passed him, then his vision cleared.

The black-shawled woman hit the man with the revolver again.

Well, it was more of a vigorous push than a hit, but it was just as good: in backing, the man tripped on the pavé and fell over in a wild confusion of arms and legs into the rubble behind him.

The woman swung round and knocked the shotgun barrel up. The shotgun exploded with an ear-splitting concussion as the owner staggered back.

The Mayor stepped forward and shouted at the woman.

The woman shouted—screamed—back at the Mayor.

The Mayor took another step forward, and it proved to be an unwise step. As he lifted his finger at her and opened his mouth to speak she back-handed his arm out of the way, putting him off-balance, and then caught him on the side of the head with her return swing. Something pink-and-white shot out of his mouth and fell at Bastable’s feet.

Bastable looked down at a set of false teeth.

As he looked down the woman stepped sideways and trod—either deliberately or accidently, he never knew which—on the Mayor’s teeth.

Then she started to revile them. As usual, as always, the words were lost on him, and he couldn’t even guess at their exact content. But their effect was as concussive as the shotgun blast, he could see that.

Finally she swept an arm out to the side, pointing past and behind him. And as she did so there came a shrill answering wail which Bastable recognized instantly.

Alice!

There was another woman alongside him now, on his left side, with the unforgettable shawl-swathed bundle in her arms which she held up for him to inspect, as though for his approval, quite unmoved by the increasing noise which came from it.

He lowered his arms, and lifted one grimy finger to touch the little, scarlet, unrecognizable face. He felt that that was what the woman wanted him to do.

‘Alice—little Alice,’ he said, nodding at the woman.

Alice. Little nameless, parentless, lost, unknown, bereaved and abandoned Alice —

‘Al-ees?’ The woman looked at him questioningly. ‘Al-ees?’

‘Alice,’ said Bastable. ‘Alice.’

At which Alice, being Alice, quietened down in her arms, her crying trailing off into hiccoughs punctuating a tearful chuntering sound, which expressed only mild dissatisfaction where before there had been angry protest.

‘Al-ees.’ The woman nodded at him and lifted the baby high on her shoulder, out of his view once more, rocking her vigorously.

The first woman started to speak again, addressing the men contemptuously now, as though the matter was settled, and there was really no more to be said. Indeed, when one of them started to say something she cut him off before he had reached the third word, in the same contemptuous tone, completing her own sentence with a two-handed gesture of dismissal which seemed to cow them utterly.

The Mayor, who looked as if his head was still ringing from the buffet he had received, mumbled something, and pointed towards her feet. Bastable realized that if he had been able to catch the words he might have been able to add ‘false teeth’ to his French vocabulary.

The woman was implacable. She ignored the Mayor, pointing at the man who had received Bastable’s revolver and then opening her hand to receive the weapon. Only when she had it in her hand did she shift her ground, turning without a second look at the men to return it to Bastable.

She was the ugly woman with the crooked teeth, who had taken Alice from him in the first place, and he could have kissed her. But as it was, he didn’t know what to say, and knew that even if he had known what to say he wouldn’t have been able to say it to her in a language which she could understand.

‘Merci, Madame,’ he said. And because he could think of nothing else to do, he saluted her, touching the brim of his steel helmet in salute with the tips of his stiffened fingers.

‘Merci, Madame,’ he said again, aware as he spoke that the would-be lynching party behind him was dispersing.

She scrutinized him for a moment, this time neither speaking nor smiling. Indeed, he could see no friendliness in her face at all: it was as though they were back where they had been when he first saw her, before he had revealed Alice to her. So perhaps that was where they were, with all debts settled—his life for Alice’s—and nothing left for him but to leave her alone in the ruins of her town, to go away and never ret urn.

‘M’sieur,’ she said finally, and then nodded, and turned away into the dark interior of her wrecked shop. He heard her picking her way carefully over its littered floor, but eventually the crunch of her footsteps on fallen plaster faded into silence.

Now he was alone again, with the motor-cycle, and he felt oddly light-headed. It must be the French lady’s brandy, he decided. He had drunk rather a lot of that, and on a stomach containing only the bread he had shared with Alice in the half-light of early dawn… though by the position of the sun it was still only early morning, even though so much had happened to him since then. Indeed, the French lady’s brandy must also be to blame for that sudden blinding, murderous rage he had surrendered to, which had nearly been the death of him.

He started to wonder what else would happen to him, but resolutely stopped wondering when the first instant possibility to occur to him was that this could be the day of his death—the odds on that lay all around him.

Wimpy must have wandered out of earshot, or out of range of the sound of the motor-cycle’s engine-noise anyway, for
that
would surely have summoned him back at the double.

But … supposing Wimpy didn’t come back?

Then he would truly be alone. The last, the very last, of the Prince Regent’s Own South Downs Fusiliers, outside death and captivity.

That thought was unbearable, so he turned his mind away from that too, and busied himself with examining the motorcycle. He had never ridden a motor-cycle— Father had refused point-blank to permit it. But if … but it shouldn’t be too difficult to work the thing out, one way or another. If …

‘Hullo there,’ said Wimpy, conversationally, from behind him. ‘You’ve found one of the bikes, then.’

‘Yes.’ Bastable was surprised at Wimpy’s lack of enthusiasm.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Oh . ..’ Past time flowed for an instant before Bastable’s eyes, as for a drowning man, and then was gone. It didn’t really matter: it was over.’… The Frogs supplied it, old boy.’

‘They did?’ Wimpy looked at him incuriously. His face had an unnatural look; it had lost its healthy tan, and was like the piece of upper arm which showed through the tear in his battledress blouse—pasty white under dirt. ‘That was deuced civil of them.’ He bent down to examine the motorcycle.

‘Yes, it was.’ Wimpy’s lack of interest decided Bastable finally to keep the details of his own experiences to himself.

‘The 500 cc Norton … I would have preferred the Ariel,’ murmured Wimpy ungratefully.

‘The Ariel?’

‘Only 350 cc, but more nippy … And damn good front suspension…’ Wimpy tweaked the machine. ‘Petrol’s okay, that’s one good thing. Right!’ He stood up. ‘Hold this, will you?’

He threw a battledress blouse to Bastable, and then started to unbuckle his equipment. Bastable stared at the blouse, which belonged to a captain in the RAMC.

‘Is this Doc Savmders’s?’ It was a stupid question, really.

Wimpy stripped off his own blouse and held out his hand for the exchange.

‘He won’t be needing it.’ Wimpy handed his own blouse to Bastable in exchange for the RAMC one.

‘What?’

‘My need is greater than his.’ Wimpy buttoned up the blouse and picked up his equipment. ‘Wrap it up and put it on the baggage thing at the back and sit on it. I’ll take my stuff out of it later —‘ he pointed to the metal carrier on the back of the Norton’—it’ll protect your arse in the meantime. Let’s get the hell out of this bloody place.’

Bastable blinked unhappily at him. This was a strangely-altered Wimpy, and he preferred the old one.

‘For Christ’s sake, come on, Harry!’ snapped Wimpy, throwing his leg astride the Norton.
Let
’
s get out of here
!’

Even before Bastable could reply he stood fiercely on the kick-starter. The engine turned over, but didn’t fire.

‘Fuck!’ spat Wimpy. ‘Start, damn you!’

He kicked again, and the engine roared explosively. Bastable wrapped the battledress blouse into an untidy bundle and placed it on top of the metal carrier, and himself on top of it, astride it.

‘Hold on,’ commanded Wimpy.

Bastable clasped him desperately. The road ahead was scattered with rubble and pock-marked with holes in the pave, but before he could protest at Wimpy’s assumption of command the motor-cycle was moving, and all consecutive thought was jolted out of his mind.

Except—
the last time I rode up this road was in DPT 912, with Batty Evans at the wheel—

Wimpy was a skilful rider: the Norton bumped and twisted and swerved, but it never faltered over its obstacle course.

Sergeant Hobday’s driver in the carrier had been a skilful man, but that hadn’t saved them —

Think of England —

Or, not of England, but his duty, which transcended survival, but survival was essential to it:
he had to tell someone in authority about the false Brigadier—that was his sole reason for existence
.

The Norton negotiated the last scatter of debris; the fallen trees—Audley’s trees—were ahead; Wimpy twisted the machine between two empty slit-trenches, out into the open field alongside the road, and opened up the throttle. ‘Hold on!’

The wind whipped Bastable’s face, sweeping away the smell of Wimpy’s sweat and the faint medical smell—so faint that it might only be in his imagination—of Doc Saunders’s battledress blouse, which mingled with it.

He held on for dear life. He couldn’t look back, and he didn’t want to look back, at that hated skyline—that ruined skyline, without its spire, without anything that he wanted to remember —

Alice?

The ugly woman with the bad teeth?

The Norton jumped and jolted his own teeth, so that he rolled his tongue back for fear of biting it, as they swept up on to the road again—he must hold on for dear life, because life
was dear—surviving
was dear—he had felt that already, because there had so far been his duty to survive—to pass on his message—and he hadn’t yet had to make the choice between the one and the other, and he hoped he would never have to make that choice, because —