The Hour of the Donkey

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 dummy4

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 dummy4

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 . . .

dummy4

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 dummy4

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?'