The Hour of the Donkey

'So . . . you take the child—and the chariot—and tuck 'em away out of sight . . . and come back and have a bit of a kip until eleven-hundred hours, or thereabouts—' Wimpy consulted the Frenchman's watch—because you'll need all the rest you can get—off you go then, there's a good fellow.'

He watched Wimpy survey his surroundings critically.

'An absolutely ideal spot . . . plenty of cover right up to the roadside ... if I crawl around from the back, without disturbing the front—I can see up and down the road for half a mile too! Ideal!'

Unarguably logical. So why argue with it?

Wimpy turned back to him. 'Look, Harry—I know what you're thinking. But you don't have to prove anything to me, my dear fellow . . . It's simply that this makes sense, that's all.'

So it did, of course.

It isn't as though you'll be running away—it's just as vital that someone gets through with the information as it is that someone else puts the kybosh on the bastard. Swopping jobs . . . that would be a nonsense.'

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And so it would be, of course.

Wimpy half-smiled. 'I always used to tell my boys that nonsense must be wrong—all they had to do was to think logically, because Latin is a logical language. Patriam amamus: eam servabimus— illustrating the use of the pronoun—so I'll do the job. End of lesson—class dismissed, Harry.'

Class dismissed.

The nettle stings throbbed as Bastable turned away from the railway line, back to the contemplation of Wimpy's black-suited back half-shrouded by the tall grass and nettles in which he lay.

He had slept without dreaming at all, but before he had slept he had recalled something which until that moment he hadn't remembered for half his lifetime.

Mr Voight had promised Form Vc, the bottom French division of no-hopers, that the last class before the exam would be painless—he would read them Maupassant's La Derniere Classe ('classe' feminine—'derniere' e-accent grave-e).

Not that Vc cared a toss for accents—but wasn't Maupassant that writer of sexy stories who had died of the clap practising what he preached . . . ? Good for Old Voighty!

Except that he hadn't understood a word of the story; and dummy4

even those who had puzzled out some of it had dismissed it as a shameless 'have on'; because it wasn't about filles de joie (Vc knew about them) at all, but about boys like themselves having a last French class before the Prussians conquered Alsace-Lorraine and abolished the French language there—

and Good for the Prussians was Vc's considered verdict on that!

Only now, by the bridge from Carpy half a life later, Harry Bastable remembered what Henry Bastable had instantly forgotten—the difference Old Voighty had painfully taught them between la classe derniere and la derniere classe!

Only now it was Wimpy who was teaching him the difference: Wimpy's very last lesson—the last lesson he would teach anyone—wasn't about logic, or about Latin. It was about what sort of man Harry Bastable really was— that was what it was about.

'Give me the gun, Willis,' said Harry Bastable.

'They're a bit late,' said Wimpy. 'What?'

'Give-me-the-gun.'

Wimpy looked at him quickly. 'Don't let's go through all that again, Harry.' And turned away.

Bastable crawled alongside him.

'There isn't time to fuck about now,' said Wimpy.

'Give me the gun.'

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'Don't be an idiot.'

'I'm the senior officer.'

'Balls!'

'Give me the gun, Willis. That's an order.'

'Balls.'

'I'm taking the gun, Willis.' Bastable reached out through the nettles. 'Give it to me.'

'No you're not—there isn't time.'

'I'm taking it!'

'Watch out! Christ, man! It'll go off— mind what you're doing!' hissed Wimpy.

Bastable had the barrel, but Wimpy still had the butt. They wrestled with each other silently, each pushing against the other, fighting for control of the revolver.

'It'll go off!' gritted Wimpy.

'Then let go of it!'

'No!' Their cheeks rasped against one another, sandpaper against sandpaper. 'Don't be a fool, man!'