The Hour of The Donkey (12 page)

He didn’t want to remember, but it wasn’t something a man could easily look at, and once having seen forget at will—the pathetic bundles strewn over the road and along the ditches, some of which were not bundles at all, but the owners of the bundles; the smashed carts, with dead horses between the shafts; and the abandoned cars riddled with bullets, some of which had not been abandoned, because their owners were still in them …

And, in the midst of that desolation, the baby crying.

‘It was bad, was it?’ It wasn’t just a question; Wimpy spoke gently, as though he understood what Bastable was seeing.

The baby had been crying in its pram on the edge of the road, miraculously untouched with all the bodies around it—he hadn’t even been able to make out which body belonged to her—which was her father, or her mother, or her aunt, or her little brother, or a passing stranger. There hadn’t been any way of knowing—or any
point
in knowing, they were all the same now.

He turned to Wimpy in the same agony he had felt then, with all his priorities in ruins around him. ‘I couldn’t just leave her, don’t you see?’

‘Of course not, old man. You did absolutely the right thing—absolutely the right thing,’ Wimpy nodded at him decisively, as if to reassure him that that was a man’s proper duty, as laid down by the book, when the choice was between a French baby girl and the British Expeditionary Force in France. ‘Quite right!’

Yet it hadn
’
t really been quite like that at all
, thought Harry Bastable.

Of course, she might have died there, on the road last night, without him. Of thirst, or hunger, or whatever it was abandoned babies died from.

Except—the fragment of conversation between his mother and her friends surfaced again in his memory, like all the other bits of overheard and observed child-lore and baby-care that he had overheard and forgotten, but not forgotten, which had surfaced these last few hours:
babies are very tough
—
otherwise they
’
d never survive all the frightful things young mothers do to them, my dear
.

The baby had been crying.

Any moment now there would be more Germans—armour, or those ubiquitous motor-cyclists, and motor-cycle-and sidecar troops who scorned roadblocks and obstacles.

But he couldn’t leave her to go on crying at the roadside while he passed by. And, after what he had seen there, he hadn’t another hundred yards in his legs anyway.

He had to go back to her.

Of course, she was just
it
then —just an insistent noise in the dead quiet of the evening at the crossroads, which he couldn’t leave behind him, and which drove the thought of all sounds out of his head.

He had been very busy after that: she had needed him and he had needed her.

‘Well, you do seem to have a way with babies, I’ll say that,’ murmured Wimpy. ‘Or is it with women in general?’

Bastable only grunted to that, neither denying nor admitting his expertise.

‘Or this baby in particular,’ said Wimpy.

Bastable looked down at the baby. Wimpy had got it right the third time, anyway.

‘She’s a good baby,’ he admitted.

‘And you know about babies?’ Wimpy could never resist poking and prying, even if it meant occasionally listening instead of talking. And on this occasion, since
he
well knew that Bastable was a bachelor, he was certainly poking and prying.

‘One learns about these things,’ he murmured loftily.

‘Younger brothers and sisters, eh?’ Wimpy was more cautious about ascribing special qualities to Captain Bastable now. ‘Has she eaten recently? Or do they only drink at that age?’

That was a problem which had specially exercised Harry Bastable’s mind, and more this morning than the previous evening. Because the little mite had had a bottle of what he assumed was milk in her pram when he’d found her and it had been that which had eventually silenced her … Or very eventually, after he had discovered how uncomfortably damp she was.

(That was another memory from home, from an impossible other life: how Arthur Gorton’s young wife attended to another shrieking bundle which had been disturbing one of those awful showing-off-the-new-arrival teas which his mother had insisted he attended.)

(
Why—my Precious is soaking wet, isn
’
t he now!—
he had dredged that one up too, from his subconscious, never dreaming that he would do the same, so far as he could recall that Evelyn Gorton had done it, for another Precious in a French ditch two hundred yards from where Precious’s parents lay machine-gunned to death with the flies already buzzing busily around them.)

Positively sodden, if not soaking wet, in fact. But the next morning—this morning—when there had been no more milk, and only the remains of what was in his water-bottle, and the rest of the stale loaf of bread he had rescued from the food left by the roadside, then he also had wondered
Do they eat, or do they only drink, at this age
?

He had dried her up, and cleaned her up too as best he could, and had concluded that although she was a very little baby, with no teeth or anything like that, she was still substantially bigger than Evelyn and Arthur Gorton’s Precious.

But she obviously couldn’t eat hard bits of stale French bread (of the sort that didn’t make satisfactory toast) with her soft little pink toothless gums—it would have to be crunched and crushed and
munched
to a watery pulp, and there was just as obviously only one way he could do that … with alternate mouthfuls of stale bread and army ration water, out of his own mouth.

But, then, she
was
a very good baby.

And, in a way—a rather wet, messy way—she was the first French girl that Harry Bastable had ever kissed, more or less, in the process.

But he couldn’t tell Wimpy that, it was a private thing between him and the baby, a very personal matter and not the important matter at all, which he had been half-way to forgetting.

‘Wimpy, I’ve got some extremely important information—vital information.’

‘Join the club, old boy. The Sixth Panzer Division—at least, that was so far as I could make out. But there are others as well—I heard ‘em mention the First and Second, I think.’

‘Who mention?’

‘Jerry, Harry—the Germans. And you know where the Second was heading for? Abbeville—
Abbeville
?

Bastable could only stare at him. Yesterday
Peronne
had echoed like a thunderclap, because it was only sixty or seventy miles from the coast, as the crow flew. But
Abbeville—
Abbeville was on the estuary of its river… the Somme was it?
. .. on the coast!
It wasn’t possible that the Germans should be thinking of going there—it wasn’t possible —

Wimpy read his expression. ‘I know—that’s what I thought. It’s just too far … and I know my German’s not perfect… But I tell you, Harry—these Germans were a bit windy too… Or the top brass one was—the younger chap was raring to go. He said the Second was going to be there by this evening—yesterday evening, that is—and his chaps were keen to be in on it, and they didn’t want to be left behind by the lousy Second … And the brass-hat was all for a bit of caution and consolidation, but he gave in finally—that’s as far as I could make out. So they went.’

Bastable blinked at him. ‘What Germans were these?’

‘The blighters who stopped on my bridge.’

‘Your bridge?’

‘Well, it wasn’t exactly my bridge. It wasn’t really a bridge, either—it was a sort of culvert. But there was water in it … and mud. And I was in it.’

Bastable could believe that: everything about Wimpy’s appearance testified to the truth of that.

Abbeville—?

‘I saw these Jerries in the wood—they were coming towards the wood, that is—after you left me, old boy … Not the ones on my bridge, that was later on … they were in the fields, and there were tanks behind ‘em. So I scampered back towards the car at the double, and I’d just about reached it when I heard firing from your way, up in the trees.’ Wimpy looked at Bastable apologetically. ‘Frankly, after what I’d seen I thought you’d bought it for certain . . ‘ He paused. ‘So I ran for it.’

Wimpy still looked uncomfortable, almost guilty, and in doing so reminded Bastable of Batty Evans’s fate.

‘I couldn’t have got back to you anyway.’ He shrugged. ‘Had to beat it smartly in another direction.’

Even that didn’t assuage Wimpy’s discomfort completely. ‘To be honest, old boy … I was into that little car and away like a streak of greased-lightning. I’ve never been so scared in my life!’

At least the disgrace was shared, then! So it was a proper moment for confession. ‘I’m afraid I lost Fusilier Evans, Willis. That is to say … I told him to follow me, but he didn’t.’

Wimpy accepted the loss of Fusilier Evans philosophically. ‘Batty never was very quick on the uptake, you can’t blame yourself for that—it would have happened sooner or later. We should never have taken him in the PROs— another of that old swine Tetley-Robinson’s errors of judgement.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Like taking on damn useless schoolmasters … you know, you’re absolutely right—she
is
a good baby. See how she’s got her thumb in her mouth and her arm round that kangaroo!’

‘Rabbit,’ corrected Bastable automatically.

‘Rabbit, is it? So it is, by golly! Alice’s White Rabbit—we shall have to call her “Alice”, Harry. Poor little Alice …’ He trailed off. ‘I just hope he got close enough to them to use his bayonet. That was all he ever wanted, poor old Batty —just to take one with him. I hope he got his chance.’

Under the cold-bloodedly philosophical Wimpy, so sharp and eloquent, there was another one he had never glimpsed before until now, thought Bastable. But there was nothing to be gained by mentioning that final burst of small-arms fire if that was the way of it.

Abbeville.

‘You were under this bridge—?’

‘Culvert.. . yes.’ Wimpy pulled himself together. ‘I drove out of the wood like the clappers, over the next rise .. . And as I was going down the other side I saw a Jerry tank on the next skyline—a Mark Two—so I knew I wasn’t going to make it. Thank God, he didn’t see me … But when I pulled up at the bottom I could hear the blighters, they seemed to be all around me by the sound of them. So I whipped out of the car. But then I didn’t know which way to go—the fields were so damn
open
… And there was this stream … Or it wasn’t really a stream, it was just where the rainwater comes down under the road in winter, I suppose, and takes off down the lowest part of the land—that was open too, they’d have seen me for sure. I really didn’t know where to go, as I said … but I naturally jumped straight into the ditch . .. And there was this culvert, under the road. So I thought “The blighters haven’t seen me yet, but they’ll see the car any moment now, and if there’s no one in it they’ll think the driver has run away. So I’ll just crawl into the culvert and keep my fingers crossed.” And I did. And
they
did, thank God!’

He drew a deep breath, almost a sigh.

‘What actually saved me, you know, was these two Jerry officers, though … One of them was brass, and the other one sounded like a very young regimental commander—a real fire eater. He was the one who wanted to go like hell, a proper cavalry-type. The older was more cautious, he said “Just because you haven’t had anyone to fight, you think war is all roses.” Or something like that—they were pacing up and down right over my head. And the younger one said “When I find someone to fight, then I’ll fight him. I’m only trying to find someone.’”

Another deep breath.

‘During which I was lying in the mud with all my fingers crossed, hoping that it wasn’t me the blighter was going to find —I was praying that he would win the argument—by that time they were arguing about how much fuel there was, and where the fuel-tankers were, I think … They lost me there rather … But I was hoping the young one would convince the old one quickly—and I was bloody lucky that he didn’t. Or not right at that point, because —

He took a deep breath, and little Alice sucked furiously at her thumb, her eyes closed tight, aid hugged her white rabbit, oblivious of British and Germans.

‘Because … then there was this sound of boots running on the road, and a new argument started with someone else—another officer. And the older fellow finally shouted “No, no, no! We have been here all the time, you fool! Go away, and don’t bother me!” And then they went back to the original argument, and finally the older one gave in and said “All right, all right! Go and find someone to fight—and find this English officer for that idiot—he’ll be out there somewhere, running like a jack-rabbit”—‘

Harry Bastable stared down at Alice’s rabbit. That was just about how he had been running at the time, the description tallied exactly.

‘Which was me, of course,’ said Wimpy. ‘Except I was burrowing into the mud by then—‘

‘Me, actually,’ murmured Bastable.

‘—right under their feet. And then the whole bloody Sixth Panzer division and half the Luftwaffe came over. I was stuck there for hours, I tell you—‘

By which time I was safe under a Bren carrier
, thought Harry Bastable,
and dead to the world and the German Army both
.

‘After which I had other adventures too boring and horrendous to relate. I could write a definitive monograph on the nature of French ditches and water-courses, Harry, I tell you. I even got quite close to Belléme before I gave up. But I’m afraid that’s all finished now, though they must have put up one hell of a fight, the Mendips—there was a lot more dive-bombing at one stage. Real Stuka stuff.. . while I was face-down in another ditch, naturally, quietly shitting myself.’

Bastable had missed that. Or, he had been quietly dying under the carrier at the time, anyway. Time and Harry Bastable, and the German Army and Captain Willis, had all been inextricably mixed up yesterday afternoon and evening, more than somewhat at cross-purposes.