She looked at him questioningly. 'M'sieur?'
He turned his hand into a cup and lifted the cup to his lips.
'Water, Madame. Water?'
'Oui.' She nodded, and left the room without another word, crunching regardless over the wreckage of her treasures.
A brave lady, thought Bastable. Audley hadn't been hit here, or there would have been blood everywhere, so she must somehow have found him and brought him in—perhaps with someone's help, but into her house, to her settee, under her blanket... and a very good quality blanket too, as good as the best Witney blankets stocked by Bastable's of Eastbourne, by the feel of it. Would Mother have behaved so well, in the ruin of her house, with a dying French officer on her hands?
Well . . . well, perhaps she would at that, he thought suddenly with a stab of guilt at his disloyalty. Mother had sold her jewels, everything down to her wedding ring, in the bad times in the early thirties, when it had been touch-and-go in the firm, so maybe she would at that, by God!
He stared down at Major Audley's face. There was nothing he dummy4
could do for Audley—and nor could Doc Saunders have done anything either, for what lay under the blanket.
But there was still something Audley could do for Harry Bastable and for England, perhaps And if there was, then he must do it.
He heard the familiar crunching sound of feet on broken plaster and china and glass behind him.
'M'sieur.'
Damn and damn and damn! He had wanted water, to moisten Audley's lips and wipe his brow—and she had brought him brandy in a mug, half a mug of it—he could smell it even before he could see it. Damn, damn,
She smiled at him. It was for him, of course!
He took a gulp of the stuff, and coughed on it, and choked on it, as always, as it burned his empty stomach.
He couldn't give it to Audley, therefore. Audley had no stomach.
It was a bloody miracle Audley was still alive. With what was under the blanket Audley should have been dead long ago.
He took another, more controlled gulp, and felt it burn all the way down, and turned back to the dying
The eyes were open, and they were suddenly brighter, and they were looking at him.
'What happened?' asked Audley, pre-empting his own question with unbearable clarity. 'The battalion?'
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Bastable stared at him in an agony of indecision. That was his question, and he no longer knew what to ask, if Audley didn't know the answer himself.
'Where's Willis?' asked Audley. 'I want to talk to him.'
'What happened?' The question sounded empty now, but it was still the only one he could think ot.
'Where's Willis?' The dirt-encrusted lips compressed themselves obstinately.
'Nigel—what happened?' Bastable bent over the dying man, pushing aside the question with his own. 'Tell- me-what-happened?'
'Willis—?'
'Captain-Willis-is-coming. The-Germans-attacked . . . ?'
Under desperation Bastable could feel anger rising.
The lips trembled. 'Amateurs... Came across the fields... and down the road ... open order—like, they didn't care —like, we weren't there ... But we were...' The lips quivered again.
'Yes?' Bastable willed the lips to open again. 'Yes?'
'After that. . . bombers. . . Stukas—smashed up everything . . .'
'Yes?'
'Tanks . . . infantry . . .
He had to get both back again. '
He couldn't shake a dying man. 'Sir?'
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'Bloody shambles, naturally.' The eyes transfixed him.
'Where's Willis?' The voice seemed stronger.
A horrible certainty loomed out of the mist in Harry Bastable's mind—and advanced into the clear light of inevitability as he stared at it.
He recognized it, because it had been there all the time, waiting to show itself to him—he had known about it and had expected it, but had refused to look at it. Instead, he had made pictures in his imagination and shared them with Wimpy, and they had both believed in those pictures because they had both been unwilling to accept the reality, even when it stared them in the face.
