The Hour of The Donkey (38 page)

‘Laval—Gaston Laval?’

‘Eessee! Laval—say mwa!’ said Wimpy. ‘Heil Hitler!’

Not less frightening. But there was simply a limit to fear, that was all.

They stood beside the cart, at the side of a road, against a brick wall, in the darkness, to let the German Army pass by.

Bastable finally dared to lean against the wall, which seemed a daring action, but which was almost a necessity in the end, as his knees weakened and the petrol fumes filled his head and his lungs. And it was a little easier then.

Slowly, the shape on the other side of the road ceased to be a shape, and became a building; and then a house, with a shop underneath it; and then a shop with a sign above its front—

POMPES FUNEBRES EL___ — the last letters of the owner’s or company’s name were obscured by a queer metal-latticed pole at the edge of the pavement, and the vaguer shapes inside its windows provided him with no clue to its merchandise—it could be selling Paris fashions or sanitary-ware for all he could tell, and it would certainly benefit from a lick of brighter paint and a more enticing window-display of the sort that he had introduced to BASTABLE’S OF EASTBOURNE—

‘Laval! Gaston Laval!’ snapped a voice.

The last part was the easiest of all—the most friendly—and the most frightening.

It was easy because they didn’t even expect him to hoist the cart into the back of the lorry—and because they helped him in after it—took the child out of his arms, and helped him in, and handed her up to him, too.

But then they tried to talk to him.

It wasn’t night any more, it was grey half-light, and he looked desperately to Wimpy for support.

Wimpy tapped his temple meaningfully. ‘Eel ay dum-kopff, miner hairen—dum-kopff!’

They looked at Blastable with added interest.

One of them leaned forward until his face was six inches from Bastable’s, and pointed to himself. ‘Oo-see, oo-see—je … swee … dum-kopff!’

Everyone burst out laughing, including Wimpy. The joke was lost only on Bastable and the French child.

And apparently also on the speaker himself, who held Bastable’s attention with poker-faced gravity for a moment, and then pointed at his comrades in turn. Too—too lay soldaten—dum-kopff!’

More laughter. The soldier pointed at Wimpy.

Bastable looked at Wimpy, and Wimpy stopped laughing.

‘Der Foonfter Kolonner—‘ The soldier waved his finger negatively in front of Bastable’s face ‘— nicht Dumkopff!’ The finger pointed at Bastable ‘Ay-byan—voos-
nicht
-Dumkopff!’

Even more laughter. They positively fell about—all except the poker-faced soldier, who made great play of disagreeing with them and even of trying to restrain them, shaking his head and waving his hands extra vagantly before squaring up to Bastable again.

Bastable didn’t know what to do. The best thing might well be to laugh, like everyone else. But his face wouldn’t laugh for him, it was frozen stiff with fright.

‘Voos—‘ The soldier reached out and tapped him on the chest.

‘Voos—‘ The laughter died away and the rest of the audience suddenly became hideously attentive. ‘Voos—‘

The child in Bastable’s arms gave an explosive sob and then burst into tears, burying her head in his shoulder.

The effect on the poker-faced soldier was instantaneous: the poker-face fragmented into anguished concern.

‘Leebshun! Leebshun!’ But the touch of his hand on her head only increased the weeping to wailing and the same convulsive clutching and burrowing that Bastable remembered from their first coming-together in the attic. The sound filled the back of the lorry for a moment, against the background of the engine and the tyre-hum, and it was the most beautiful music he had ever heard: he opened his ears to it, and closed his eyes to concentrate on it, and hoped that it would go on for ever.

Much too quickly, the engine-noise came back. But then, to his relief, no one dared to break the silence which the child had created around both of them, protecting them both, until at last the engine-noise itself changed, as the lorry slowed to a snail’s pace.

Someone in the cab up front hammered on a door-panel.

‘Kar-pee! Kar-pee!’

Carpy!

The poker-faced soldier, no longer in the least poker-faced, was foremost in helping to unload them, winking encouragingly at Bastable and totally ignoring the officious NCO who tried to hurry them up.

They were at another crossroads, amidst a scatter of mean houses and a decrepit garage boasting one antique petrol pump. It was almost full daylight at last, but the sky still had its grey early-morning look, and apart from the Germans, there wasn’t a soul in sight, and the only sound was of lorry engines idling.

Bastable and the soldier between them assisted Wimpy to the cart, and while Bastable held the handles (the familiar aches protested, and then surrendered) the soldier fussed Wimpy into his throne of bundles. It was almost too easy to bear.

‘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.
P
istolay?

‘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 chaps 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.