The Hour of The Donkey (30 page)

Bastable pushed back out of the room so hurriedly that he ran into Wimpy in the passage.

‘W—!’ Wimpy staggered on one leg, reaching for the support of the wall. ‘I say—steady on, old boy!’ he protested.

Bastable shouldered the second door open without bothering to try the door-handle.

This was the kitchen.

Pots and pans, a sink with a hand-pump for water, a great black range—there was still a fire smouldering in it.

They had left it too long, they had left it too long and too late, the old couple had! They had been too old to take the road—too old and too foolish and too afraid—and too late…

Or… this had been all they had, everything they had in the world, and they hadn’t wanted to leave it, couldn’t bring themselves to leave it— the barometer and the hat-stand and the artificial fruit and the pots and pans—

And the British had gone,
anyway
.

And the Germans had come — God! Maybe they could remember another time, the old couple—maybe they had been here that other time, when the British hadn’t gone, and the Germans hadn’t come—but this time the British had gone, and the Germans had come, and they had been safe after all, because not even the Germans would bother about an old couple in their ugly little house on the edge of the village.

And then the British had come back and it had been too late.

God damn and blast it all to hell!

‘The old boy’s dead too, poor old bugger,’ said Wimpy from the doorway behind him.

Bastable turned towards him.

‘Is that a parcel of food on the table there?’ Wimpy pointed with one hand. In the other hand, with the gold chain dripping down between his fingers, was the old man’s watch. ‘And what’s in that jug?’

‘What are you doing with that watch?’

‘It’s still going—is that milk, by any chance?’

‘What-are-you-doing-with-that-watch?’

‘Don’t shout, Harry—the Germans took my wrist-watch—we need a watch … Is that milk?’ Wimpy frowned at him. ‘Don’t be a fool. Harry—
he
doesn’t need it. And we do.’

The blood stopped drumming in Bastable’s head. He had been about to make a fool of himself by losing control, like the coward he was, while Wimpy was behaving like a soldier.

There was an untidy parcel on the green-and-white chequered oil-cloth which covered the kitchen table, and a tall white jug beside it—all in the inevitable litter of plaster.

He reached forward and picked up the jug. There was plaster also on the thick yellow cream, and a large black fly moving feebly in it, drowning slowly in the midst of plenty.

He stuck a dirty finger into the cream and flicked the fly out of the jug, and lifted the jug to his lips.

The milk under the cream and plaster was thin and sour, and marvellously, gloriously cool and refreshing as it ran down his sandpaper throat, and out of the corner of his mouth down his chin. He had never drunk anything so beautiful in his life, it was all the drinks he had ever drunk, on all the occasions when he had been thirsty, rolled into one blissful quenching.

‘Hold on, old boy—leave some for
me
then,’ said Wimpy reproachfully, reaching across the corner of the table.

Bastable looked down into the jug, and found that he had drained two thirds of it already.

‘Thanks—‘ Wimpy hopped round and grabbed the jug from him ‘—thanks
a lot—
‘
he tipped the jug against his face, the watch-chain swinging from one hand in a spatter of overflowing milk.

Well, fuck you too, old boy
, thought Bastable unrepentantly, aware that he was still thirsty—and there was the pump at the sink, just waiting for him!

For the first dozen strokes the thing only squeaked and wheezed as he banged the handle up and down with increasing fury. Then he felt the pressure draw and pull against the plunger, and in the next instant a powerful stream of water splashed into the sink beside him.

He lowered his face into it, still pumping with one hand; this was better than the sour milk even—it went into his mouth and on to his cheeks and into his eyes and down his neck, slaking his thirst and washing away mud and sweat at the same time, making him alive and almost human again.

He was aware that Wimpy was waiting his turn, but Wimpy could bloody-well wait his turn, and that was that—he managed to get his neck under the jet, and felt the delicious coldness spread across his scalp, soaking in and saturating, and driving everything out of his head with the relief of it, even the awareness—just for a moment, the awareness — that the whole bloody world was full of dead people—dead Fusiliers—dead officers and dead men—and dead Mendips and dead Tynesiders, and dead Germans, and old women dead in the dusty road and old men dead in the chairs—
dead fucking everyone, except him and Wimpy, who ought to have been dead ten times over, but weren
’
t, but were alive
—
alive—

In the end, he let Wimpy have his turn under the pump, starting him off and then fastening his hand on the pump-handle as he also spluttered and porpoised with relief under the deluge.

He was hungry now—dripping wet, and with his uniform still caked with mud—but too hungry to care about that.

He tore open the parcel on the table. There were the usual long French loaves—yesterday’s bread, or maybe last week’s by the crumbly hardness of it—and a smelly round cheese, and an even smellier sausage, full of garlic, which he hated, but which he bit into nevertheless.

‘
Harry!
’

Wimpy grabbed him by the arm and swung him round just as the panic in the cry got through to him.

‘What?’

‘
Christ—
‘
Water was dripping down Wimpy’s face, but words for once had failed him, he could only point through the broken window, down the length of the kitchen garden at the back of the house, towards the field beyond.

Tanks—

German tanks—

Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!

Panic again!

‘Wait for me—help me!’ cried Wimpy.

Bastable was already at the door, and he had no intention of coming back, but Wimpy had no intention of being left behind either and he had somehow reached Bastable before Bastable was able to get through the door into the hallway, and he hung on like grim death once he’d made contact.

They lurched down the passageway, bumping from one side to the other.

‘Up the stairs—up the stairs,’ cried Wimpy, pushing him sideways towards the newel-post.

Bastable looked up the staircase. It was steep and it was narrow, and he was never going to be able to haul Wimpy up there, one step at a time .. . But he was also never going to get Wimpy out through the front door and down to the safety of the ditch in time, either: this was the moment to drop him and run—it had come at last—

Clear through the open front door came the hideously familiar squeal-and-roar, terrifyingly loud.

They were trapped. They had waited too long, just as the old couple—the old man and the old woman—had done before them. They had left it too long and too late, and now they were trapped—just as the old couple had been.

‘Up the stairs—‘ Wimpy pawed at him ‘—
carry me!
’

Bastable bent down automatically at the word of com mand, and Wimpy followed it himself by flopping down across his shoulder in obvious preparation for a fireman’s lift.

‘Okay—
oof!!
’
The next part of the command was cut off as Bastable stood up and Wimpy’s head crashed against the barometer.

Bastable found himself staggering round in a circle. It wasn’t that Wimpy was too heavy—he was actually much lighter than he looked … but there was a mouthful of sausage stuck in Bastable’s throat which he had forgotten about, but which now refused either to go down or come up while all his muscles were concentrating on holding his burden in position: he gagged and choked, and Wimpy’s head hit something else—either the newel-post or the hat-stand—or maybe it was Wimpy’s feet…

The sausage went down with a painful gulp; the stairs reared in front of him and he took them at the double, in a rush, driven upwards by the sound of the tanks outside. It occurred to him as he went up that the cellar—if the house had a cellar—would be a safer place in which to take refuge, But then, of course, that would probably be the first place the Germans would look.

The rush took him to the top of the stairs—and also to the bleak thought that if the cellar wasn’t safe, the bedrooms were hardly likely to be safer; he had come up here simply because Wimpy had told him to, and he was now accustomed to doing whatever Wimpy ordered for lack of any initiative on his own part. But unless Wimpy had another bright idea to go with his last order they were even more hopelessly trapped up here than at ground level.

There were only three doors to choose from on the tiny landing, and he was just about to ask if Wimpy had a preference when he caught sight of another stair through a gap in a curtain which at first glance he had dismissed as concealing a cupboard. Of course—the house had another floor above this one!

Driven by the same instinctive obedience which had taken him up the first stair, he plunged through the curtain up the second. It was much narrower and steeper—so narrow and steep that with Wimpy on his shoulder he could only keep his balance by accelerating up it with his face only inches from bare wooden treads in front of him, until he issued out through the square hole of a trap-door and fell sprawling on to the floorboards of the attic above.

The sole contents of the attic were two large tin trunks, wide open, with clothes strewn around them.

In between them, crouched under the eaves, was a little girl.

HARRY BASTABLE
and the little French girl stared at each other in dumb horror.

Little girls, of all the different species of children, were tht worst, the very worst—

LOST CHILDREN …
in the case of female children, male staff will at once summon a lady assistant to deal with the child. On no account—

The very worst. Where he hated the mindlessness of babies he actively feared little girls—had feared them ever since that hideous occasion during his time as a trainee manager in London when one irate mother had reclaimed her lost child not with gratitude but with foul suspicions and wild threats—

Stop pawing at
‘
er, you dirty rotter — I saw you! I
’
ll report you, I will—I know your sort—I
’
ll report you, I will!
’

He had only been trying to comfort her. She had put her arms round his neck, and she had seemed to like him, and he had only been trying to comfort her—he hadn’t known what else to do to stop her crying.

In Bastable’s of Eastbourne it had been different, it had been easy:

‘
Miss Brown! Miss Gartland! Mrs Summers—see to this child, please — at once!
’

The little French girl’s chest inflated with one long shuddering breath, and Harry Bastable didn’t know what to do—was incapable of either words or action—to stop her from crying it out, to quench the sound before it burst forth from her.

Miss Brown, Miss Hartland, Mrs Summers—

‘Sssh! Sssh, ma petite—nous-somme-der-amis—
sssh!
’

Wimpy had rolled off him like a sack of potatoes, as though half-stunned, as he collapsed on to the attic floor a moment before. But now, incredibly, Wimpy was on his hands and knees—or on one hand and two knees, the other hand lifted into a finger at his lips cautioning the frightened child into silence.

‘Sssh!’

The child lifted her hands to her face—two small, grubby hands tipped with black finger-nails—and subsided noiselessly through them. Bastable looked quickly from her back to Wimpy, and back to her again, and back to Wimpy, torn apart by relief, and by contempt for himself—
Sssh!
was a universal round: why hadn’t
Sssh!
come to his lips?—and admiration for Wimpy’s astonishing resilience in adversity, which made time stand still when there was no time left.

‘Clothes!’ said Wimpy.

‘What?’

‘Clothes, man—clothes!’ Wimpy rummaged in one of the tin trunks. ‘Clothes, by god!’

He was ignoring the child now: he was kneeling beside the trunk, holding up one garment after another, throwing this one aside, measuring that one against himself, feverishly, as though his life depended on outfitting himself.

‘What?’

‘Look in the other one—don’t just lie there, old boy—find yourself some togs … Ah! Now
that
’
s
more like it … and
that —
go on, man, for Christ’s sake—look in the other one!’

Wimpy spread his arms, crucifying himself against a blue-striped shirt as he spoke, then throwing the shirt down in a growing pile beside him. ‘Yes—? No …
Ah—
‘

It was unreal—it was a nightmare. Bastable rose to his knees and swivelled to the second trunk. He knew what Wimpy was about, but he didn’t want to do what Wimpy intended, yet there was nothing he could do to stop the blighter, he knew that too: the nightmare wasn’t unreal, it was truly and irrevocably what was happening to him.

An overpowering smell of camphor assailed him.

Layers of tissue paper, crumpled and uncrumpled—

A feather boa—long cylinders, which he knew contained ostrich feathers: his mother had ostrich feathers in cylinders just like that—
ostrich feathers—
from grandmother’s day.

Dresses … he tore the tissue paper from them. White silk—white, but with a touch of yellowing age: white silk and lace fluffed up … It was a wedding dress—a wedding dress—

The old woman lay in the road in her black coat with the fur collar, her thin legs in their black stockings—and the carpet slippers, the carpet slippers —

The camphor-smell sickened him, and he felt his throat contracting and rising, summoning up the undigested garlic sausage from his stomach.