The Hour of the Donkey

they've got at least three of them, that I saw. They'll be reserving their Boys for the small stuff, after the main course, if Jerry ever gets so far. I tell you, they make our lot look like Boy Scouts, Harry old boy ... So the sooner we get in there and find out what's cooking, the better.'

The damn butterflies were flapping again in Bastable's guts.

'You don't think we ought to get back to battalion?'

'Not bloody likely!' Wimpy emitted another snort. 'We still have to pick up that armour-plating, in case Jerry infiltrates round the side roads . .. And besides, I want to see what's happening over there. Drive on, Batty!'

Batty Evans remained motionless.

'Drive on!' snapped Bastable.

'Can't sir,' said Fusilier Evans. 'Bloody cart broken down in road.'

'So there is!' exclaimed Wimpy. 'Well—get it out of the way then, man!'

'Right, sir,' said Fusilier Evans, bursting open his door.

Without Batty's huge hunched figure in the way, half the windscreen became suddenly clear—and so was the accuracy of Batty's statement: a horse drawing a two-wheeled cart had chosen to founder precisely at the junction of the minor road dummy4

with the major one. And the owners of the horse and cart were now grouped round the horse, attempting to cajole it to rise, while the rest of the traffic crawled round it regardless.

Batty Evans shouldered his way through the family group without attempting to discuss the matter and delivered a vicious kick to the horse.

The horse shuddered—and received an even more vicous kick. The aged owner of the cart remonstrated with Batty, and was sent spinning out of the way with an almost casual backhander. Batty went round to the front and took hold of the horse's harness alongside its mouth and jerked its head upwards. The horse did not wish to get up, but recognized force majeure: it rose first on to its hind legs, then on to its forelegs, as the only alternative to having its neck broken.

But having stood up, it positively refused to be pulled forward, and not even Batty's strength could move the combined weight of horse and cart (which, among the latter's contents included an enormous grandfather clock, Bastable observed).

Batty stood back and pushed his steel helmet back on his head, as though to let the air get to his brain. He stared at the horse for a moment or two, and then lifted his fist threateningly. The horse observed the fist and tried to back away from him.

This was exactly what Batty had wanted (so it seemed to Bastable), because he laid into the terrified creature like Jack Dempsey, first with one fist, then with the other, backing it dummy4

up until the cart tipped into the ditch at the corner of the road junction. The shafts rose brutally, practically lifting the unfortunate animal's feet off the ground, while the grandfather clock slithered off the pile of bundles on the cart, landing upright in the ditch with a musical crash.

Batty surveyed his handiwork for two satisfied seconds, and then doubled back to the car. The gears clashed again, and as DPT 912 moved forward Bastable caught a last, heart-rending glimpse of the owner of the cart holding his head in his hands.

'Well done, Batty,' said Wimpy. 'Now—right for Belleme.'

At first it looked as though that was a reasonable order, for the refugees passing at the moment were all on foot, weighed down by suitcases and bundles, and the car was able to nose through them, on to the main road, against the stream.

Then Batty stopped the car abruptly. 'Never get down through that lot, sir —' he stared at the clot of heavier vehicles which was pushing its own way through the people on foot, '—the bleeders are jammed solid, sir.'

Wimpy was still standing up in the front, chest and shoulders above the roof. He addressed a French soldier in the passing throng. 'Ou sont les allemands, soldat?' he shouted.

The French soldier shrugged and continued to shuffle past.

Batty sprang out of the car again, this time with astonishing speed: it was as though he had been coiled up into it like a spring waiting to be released—Bastable had never seen him dummy4

move so fast. Before the astonished French soldier could react Batty had him pinioned against the radiator, facing Wimpy.

'Answer the officer when he speaks to you, you cheeky fucker!' he howled in that unnatural voice of his, which anger raised to a hoarse treble.

Bastable had just about understood Wimpy's first French phrase—it was one of those in his private notebook of French phrases, in which 'ou est' and 'ou sont' were basic openers, with 'combien' and 'je ne comprends pas' close behind, and

'allemand' as essential as 'francais'. But the French language in general had been almost as much of a crucifixion to him at school as Latin, and the Frenchman's replies to Wimpy's questions—punctuated as those replies were by gasps of pain every time Batty encouraged him to speak up—were quite beyond him, only serving to remind him that it was useless to learn questions if one couldn't make head-nor-tail of the answers.

'All right—let the blighter go, Batty,' said Wimpy finally.

'Sir!' howled Batty, propelling the Frenchman westwards with a contemptuous kick.

There came a loud hooting from the vehicles they had delayed, while the smaller fry on two wheels and two feet had flowed round them. Batty turned towards the sound, feet apart, hands on hips, like a one-man roadblock.

'What did he say?' asked Bastable.

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