The Hour of The Donkey (26 page)

The door banged and boots stamped and scraped metallically on the stone floor within inches of his ear.

Now they were going to be discovered. It was impossible that they could escape, it had always been impossible—he might just as well throw back the blanket himself, rather than wait to have it ripped off him, and surrender to the inevitable with dignity and courage … except that it wouldn’t be dignity and courage, it would be in the fear and horror of death, shaking like the coward he was—he could feel his hands shaking at the very thought of it and his body turning to water in physical rejection of what was about to happen to it.

Oh God— he
‘
d wet himself
! He could feel the uncontrollable spasm of the muscles in his penis as they relaxed, and the warm damp spread in his trousers as his bladder emptied itself, the warmth turning colder even as he tried unavailingly to stem the flood.

Oh, God—
oh, God—oh, God—

Now he couldn’t stand up even if he wanted to. If he stood up now they would see a great dark patch in his trousers, and they would know he had wet himself— the great dark hateful badge of shame—

‘
Listen to me carefully—
‘

An English voice—? Bastable’s senses reeled with the shock of it.

‘I will ask you a question. You will answer it.’

Not
an English voice: it was too perfect—each word was too distinct and complete in itself, not like the related parts of a whole sentence, but like carefully chosen samples picked deliberately from a rack in order to make a sale to a customer who didn’t really know his own mind.

And he knew the voice, too—

‘If you do not answer .. . correctly …
truthfully
… I will have you taken out and shot—do you understand? Shot—do you understand that?

No answer.

‘You do understand.’

Not a question, but a promise. And with such pure and careful English, without either accent or passion, it was impossible not to understand.

‘Two of your soldiers entered this building— officers. You assisted them. One of them was wounded, the other was an officer of your medical … corps.’

Not questions, but facts, the words stated.

‘Now … and think correctly before you answer—remember that which I have told you . .. that if you do not answer … truthfully … you will be shot. Yes?’

Not a sound. But then, the question had not been asked yet.

‘Where-are-those-officers?’

The cold feeling round Bastable’s crutch spread upwards.

‘I ask one more time. Where—‘

‘Ootside.’

‘What?’

‘Ootside.’

There was a pause, while both Bastable and the SS officer worked out the meaning of
ootside
.

‘What is that?’
Ootside
was evidently not in the SS man’s dictionary.

‘Ootside in the garden, man—ootside!’ The Tynesider addressed the SS man with a mixture of incredulity and contempt, as any intelligent man might do to a hopeless idiot. ‘Ootside—divunt yew understan’ plain English? Do yew not naa what aah’m sayin’?’

There was a pause.

‘In … the garden?’

‘Aye. Ootside in the fukken garden—oot there, man. Aah left ‘em oot there, aah’m tellin’ yew. Thar!’ Now pity joined contempt.

‘Where? Show me!’

Footsteps passed on each side of Bastable.

‘
Thar
, man!’

It was a nice distinction, thought Bastable hysterically, that the Tynesider was refusing point-blank to call the enemy ‘sir’.

‘But they are not there now.’

‘Well, that’s where aah left them—settin’ thar.’

‘Why did you leave them there?’

‘Haddaway, man! They wor fukken officers, an’ aah’m oonly a fukken orderly, aah niver had aany say in it. Aah told them aarl the beds is full oop. So the one says “Alreet, we’ll set doon ootside until yew find me marra’ somewhere to lay.” An’ they set doon thar, aah tell yew—an’ aa doon’t care. It’s no ma job to lewk after fukken officers, aah’ve got men
deein
’
back
inside … an’ this one, he canna walk, but he’s no deein’, aa can see that. So aah doon’t care where they set.’

Pause. As well there might be, thought Bastable, as he struggled to disentangle the sense of it, from which ‘It’s not my job to look after fucking officers’ rang clearest and loudest and truest to life.

‘So you have no idea where those officers are now?’ The SS man sounded more desperate than angry.

‘Aah doon’t noo—haddaway, man—aah’m tellin’ yew—aah’ve got better things t’doo than lewk after the likes of them. “Fukken find me marra’ a bed”, he says to me. But aah’m not after findin’ a bed for a man that’s no bad hurt—fukken officers!’ The Tynesider loaded a world of bitterness into his words, the weight of their deeper truth adding conviction to the lie. ‘So aah left them settin’ thar ootside, an’ that’s the last aah see uv them like aah said. An’ if they’ve buggered off it’s none uv ma dooin’—aah’m noo their keeper, aah’ve got better bliddy things t’doo.’

The SS man digested that in silence again for a moment, as he had done the Tynesider’s previous outbursts, aid Bastable could almost conjure up a tiny spark of sympathy for him out of his own bitter experiences with other ranks whose ability to lie their way out of any situation had alws ys defeated him.

Except that this man was lying to save his own life—and theirs!

Then fear took over again, and he lay bathed in it as the voices and sounds snarled and shouted and cracked and stamped all around him in the darkness, beyond fear and despair and understanding—it couldn’t be Harry Bastable, Captain Bastable, Mr Henry Bastable of Gloves and Hosiery,
wash-your-hands-and-comb-your-hair
Henry—it couldn’t be any of those— oh, God! it couldn’t be any of those lying now in sweat and urine under a blood-stiffened blanket.

‘Harry!’ The whisper reached him in the darkness. They had gone. It seemed impossible, when they only had to look under the table—it seemed so impossible that perhaps that was why they hadn’t looked under the table.

‘Harry!’

Why couldn’t Wimpy leave him alone. Anger stirred in Bastable at the prospect of being forced into activity, with the Germans all around them, when they didn’t stand a chance. And anyway, one thing he had learned was that however bad things were, whatever happened next was bound to be worse. So, better to lie here and hope—that was preferable to any madcap scheme Wimpy might have in mind.

He felt the anger spreading, engorging him.

‘Harry—‘ Wimpy cut off abruptly.

The door banged again. He knew the sound of that bloody door by heart, and the loud, insistent firing beyond it, and hated both sounds, and hated Wimpy, and hated himself—

The blanket was ripped from him before he had time to draw breath, and he found himself staring at a German face which had been thrust under the table.

The German’s eyes widened in astonishment and his mouth opened even wider. All Bastable’s rage transferred itself in that instant from the rest of the world to this one man, the final disturber of his misery.

The German dropped the edge of the blanket, and started to draw back and to shout at the same time as—Bastable caught his wrist. The grip was too weak—it was too slow off the mark to tighten in time—but it held the man just long enough to destroy his co-ordination: instead of ducking back and straightening up and shouting, he failed to clear the table in time and caught the back of his head with a loud crack on the underside of it, which reduced the shout to an exclamation of pain. At the same time his soft forage cap tipped over his eyes and he let go his rifle, which fell with a clatter on the stone floor.

Bastable grabbed wildly with his other hand, and felt his fingers close round the leather ankle of a jackboot. He pulled back with all his might, felt the German begin to overbalance, and rolled himself violently off the stretcher against the man’s legs in an attempt to sweep him off his feet.

The space between the table and the wall on this side of the room was so constricted that for a desperate moment he thought the man wasn’t going to fall. Then the hobnails on the jackboots lost their purchase with the stone, and the man fell with a scrape and a crash in the narrow aisle, with Bastable’s face between his legs. A field-grey knee raked the side of his head in passing, and then a thigh pressed against his face: he bit into the thigh savagely, like an animal, through the thick material. One of his arms was now imprisoned under the German’s leg, but with his other he could reach upwards, towards a face—a snapping mouth, like his own—a rough chin—and a throat—

He clamped his fingers on the throat, but as he did so a hand fastened on his own throat, the thumb digging agonizingly into the soft angle of his jaw. He lashed out furiously with his leg, which was half across the German’s chest. For a moment the fingers on his throat lost their grip, but then the German managed to wrap his other arm round the leg and the fingers tightened again, pushing his head back. He abandoned the attempt to free his leg and concentrated on his enemy’s throat, but the pain of the grip on his own windpipe was too great.

Suddenly, he realized that he was no longer trying to subdue the German, he was fighting for his life. The realization caused him to heave wildly in an attempt to break free, but the convulsion failed to loosen the pressure—it was his own grip that was weakening as his neck was forced back towards breaking point, which he could only relieve by pressing downwards into the very neck-grip that was squeezing the life out of him. He could feel his strength ebbing.

His enemy was the stronger man—
his consciousness was slipping into darkness—he had taken his enemy at a disadvantage, but his enemy was the stronger man—and defeat was red agony as the carrier burst into flame and cane crushing down on top of him—

A great fiery gulp of air, more painful than anything he had ever experienced, burned his chest, straining it to breaking point.

And now another gulp of air— and light: and shapes swimming out of focus in the pain, under a crushing weight—

‘
Harry!
’

The air was cold now, and he was swimming in sweat, and the weight was gone, and Wimpy was bending over him—Wimpy’s face expanding like a balloon, then receding, then expanding again, and finally stabilizing.

He tried to speak, but the words clogged around a great lump in his throat.

‘Come on, Harry—we’ve got to get out of here, old boy—come on!’ Wimpy pulled ineffectually at his hand from far away.

His throat hurt abominably, and his ears were ringing. Wimpy’s voice, and other noises, came from beyond the ringing, muted by it. He felt sick, and utterly confused by his surroundings.

Wimpy was supporting himself on a rifle, steadying himself with it. He reached out again.

Bastable came to himself with a jolt. He was still lying between the table and the wall, alongside the German—his right arm was still imprisoned under the German’s legs.

There was a loud bang, and the house shook under him, around him. Pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling, exploding on the table.

‘We’re being shelled—come on!’ Wimpy’s voice rose. For Christ’s sake, Harry—come on, man! Now’s the time!’

Bastable struggled to his feet from under the dead weight of the German, steadying himself on the edge of the table. Wimpy turned, and began to hobble towards the outside door. Bastable could see the bright sunshine through the glass panels of the door. It surprised him that the glass wasn’t broken. It surprised him that he was still alive. The glass ought to be broken, and he ought to be dead.

He looked down. The German’s face was grey-white, except where there was a great bloody contusion on his temple, just above his left eye—the blood was bright red, and as he stared at it a globule of it rolled sideways into the hairline above the man’s ear, into a congealing clot.

Dead men didn
’
t bleed—
the thought came into Bastable’s brain as a matter-of-fact observation, divorced from reality. Then, suddenly, he remembered everything, and was very frightened.

Wimpy was fumbling with the door handle. As he opened the door Bastable’s fear had resolved itself into its component parts: he didn’t want to go out into that fearful outside world of sunlight and Germans, but he couldn’t stay here, where there were those great strangling hands coming for him again—or where there would be other Gennans any moment now—
Oh, God
!

He lurched forward, steadying himself between the wall and the table. The German groaned under him, and the groan added panic to the lurch, making his final decision for him.

The sunlight was blinding.

Wimpy was hopping ahead of him, half-way across, using the German’s rifle to steady himself—

Bastable checked in mid-stride:
the garden was full of dead bodies
!

Wimpy was negotiating the first of two lines of bodies, two neat lines of corpses—British soldiers lying shoulder to shoulder with their boots towards him, wedged so close together that Wimpy was having difficulty getting between them, stanping with his good leg while he stretched his bad leg across to place it alongside the butt of the rifle—

God! now he was losing his balance—he was sitting down in the middle of the dead men!’

Bastable heard himself cackling hysterically as he raced across the open space towards the living and the dead … And he could hear Wimpy swearing incoherently as he dragged him off the dead man he was sitting on—

Something had fallen out of his hand. On the trampled grass between the two lines lay the yellow-and-gray lanyard he had clasped in his hand. He frowned stupidly at it: it seemed impossible to him that he hadn’t dropped it when he had fought with the German—it must have been clenched in the hand which had been trapped under the man’s body—but there it was, the symbol of fucking pride and death, still with him!

He reached down automatically to pick it up and stuffed it back into his pocket—he mustn’t leave it there, whatever he did, he must keep it secret and hidden, no one must ever find it.