The Hour of the Donkey

assisted . . . to proceed to Colembert— signed—squiggle-squiggle, staff-captain et cetera ... permitted and assisted—

splendid fellow! If I really was the assistant deputy sub-prefect I'd be halfway to heiling Hitler for this piece of paper

—' Wimpy waved the paper under Bastable's nose '—

wouldn't you, Harry? wouldn't you, by God?'

Colembert?

Bastable goggled at him: the lines of fatigue were twisted into an extraordinary mask of elation, and the fellow was bobbing on his one good leg as though the paper in his hand was the winning ticket in the Irish Sweepstake—

Colembert!

In all the world, from Berlin to Abbeville, Colembert was the very last place Bastable wanted to go to—to go back to. It was unthinkable, and Wimpy was stark, staring mad to think of it.

'Harry—'

'I'm damned if I'm going back to—to Colembert—I'm, damned if I will!'

'Not back, Harry—don't you see?'

Not back?

Harry Bastable didn't see.

'I saw his map—he showed me his map—so I could show him where our chaps were, on the Ridge ... I told him I'd come dummy4

from Calais to collect my daughter from her grandparents—I told him I wanted to take her to my sister at Colembert—to the south, inside the German lines, don't you see? It didn't worry him—he didn't know what's happened there, why should he? And even if he did . . why should he worry?'

Why indeed? thought Bastable bitterly. 'I'm ... not going back to Colembert—and that's final.'

'So . . . where do you want to go, old boy?'

So where did he want to go?

Harry Bastable stared at Wimpy for a moment; and beyond him, to the closing-in distance behind him.

This alien place—this filthy nowhere-in-France—this empty no-man's- land which might as well be that country-of-the-dying with which Wimpy had frightened him yesterday—

'So where do you want to go?' Wimpy looked at him slyly, as though he already knew, lifting his damned scrap of paper again.

'Not to Colembert!'

'No?'

Bastable looked at the child, and then back to Wimpy. He knew now that he hated Wimpy, but that he still needed him more than he hated him—he was so tired that he couldn't think straight, but he needed Wimpy all the more for that reason, to think for him, to make his decisions.

And yet now he had to think for himself, to dissuade Wimpy from returning to Colembert.

dummy4

So—why should Wimpy want to go back? Why?

Of all places, Colembert was the last one in which the Germans would look for them now! But even if that was a reason for going back there he still wasn't going back.

The damned paper waved under his nose. Damned paper!

'If anyone catches us with that—anyone other than the Germans—they'll shoot us,' he snapped.

They will?' Wimpy echoed the thought carelessly. 'You think so?'

'They'll take us for Fifth Columnists.' Bastable pressed his point without quite knowing how it might help him.

'They will?' Wimpy looked at the paper. 'I hadn't thought of that . . .'

'You bet your life they will!' Bastable stared at the paper. 'If I caught a damn Frenchman with that—or an Englishman—I'd put him up against the nearest wall.'

'You would?' Wimpy continued to study the paper. 'Hmm . . .'

There were no British troops between where they were standing in a darkening nowhere and the ruins of Colembert, so the execution was purely hypothetical, thought Bastable hysterically. And even if there were, and he was the officer-in-charge, he wouldn't shoot a dog on such evidence, never mind a lame Frenchman with a child in tow.

Or would he?

'Without a second thought, man!' he said, trying to inject dummy4

brutality into his voice. 'The nearest wall. And no damned court martial, either.'

Perhaps he would.