The Hour of the Donkey

bent over him at close quarters.

'Look up ... look down ...' Wimpy's face was two inches from his own. 'And don't say anything— up again . . . not a word more than you have to— and down again—' Wimpy's instructions fluctuated between a barely audible whisper and the unnecessarily loud up-and-down command,'—that's fine!

Now... just you lie still there for a moment or two, Captain.

Doctor's orders—do you understand?'

Bastable didn't understand at all, but he nodded weakly.

With German soldiers all around him it hardly mattered what he did, in any case.

'Good!' Wimpy nodded back at him and straightened up, wiping his hands on the damp rag.

Bastable rolled his eyes to the left and right of him. He seemed to be lying on the grass verge in a gap between two lorries. There were German soldiers sitting in the lorries, and others standing beside the tailboard and around the cabs of the vehicles, but they didn't seem to be taking a lot of notice of their prisoners. As he watched one group they burst out laughing, as though one of them had cracked a joke. Then, just as suddenly, they stiffened into attention—he could even see, from his worm's-eye-view, how one of them, who had dummy4

been smoking, palmed his dog-end between thumb and forefinger into his hand.

Wimpy cast one quick glance clown at him. 'Steady the PROs,' he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. 'Top brass in sight.'

The blood rose to Bastable's cheeks as he glimpsed the newcomers in the gaps between the rigid soldiers. As they reached the open space in front of him one of them spoke conversationally, and Bastable knew what he had said even before the casual words had been translated into a command by an NCO—

'Stand the men easy, Sar-Major!'

'Sir!' Pause. 'STAND—EASY!'

The German soldiers relaxed. The speaker addressed them again, in the same easy voice. For a moment there was silence, then there was a burst of laughter as the soldier with the dog-end realized he was the centre of attention and sheepishly produced what he had hidden.

So that must have been .. . 'And Fusilier Arkwright may smoke,' or something very like . . . which wouldn't have happened in Captain Bastable's company, because he had never been able to make such a joke of Fusilier Arkwright's weakness; but which just might have happened in Wimpy's company, or Nigel Audley's, because they had the gift which he lacked—which, when he had tried to exercise it, had always fallen flat on an unappreciative audience.

dummy4

The soldiers laughed again, and Bastable thought: So they're no different from British soldiers, to be led or driven—no different.

Then he remembered Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts.

Misery and despair weren't the worst things any more: now it was I picked Doc Sounders's blouse off the peg at the top of the stairs, but it smelt down there—Christ!

Fear choked Harry Bastable's throat. He was going to die now

— this man with the nice casual voice was about to kill him, as they had killed Major Tetley-Robinson and Captain Harbottle and Sergeant Heppenstall and Corporal Pollock, and all the rest of them— DearGod!—DearGod!— God—

Mother! everything that was Harry Bastable was about to be wiped out and extinguished as it lay there in the gutter now, like a dog in the street—

The fear was paralysing. He felt his muscles relaxing, and knew that if there was anything in his bowels he would be shitting himself now—but instead there was only choking fear.

'Well, Doctor?'

'Sir . . .' Wimpy drew a deep breath. 'This officer is in shock.

And he is also mildly concussed—perhaps more seriously in shock as the result of a blow on the head... And under the Geneva Convention he cannot be subjected to interrogation, dummy4

sir.'

'Cannot, Doctor?'

'Under the Geneva Convention, sir... All that is required of him is his name, his rank and his number. And as a wounded combatant, not even that is required of him, I believe . . . sir.'

The German officer looked down at Bastable, and Bastable blinked back up at him in fear and confusion.

'He looks... un-wounded to me, Doctor—if I may say so.' the German officer paused.''Captain—?'

'Bass-tabell,' said someone else, out of the group.

'Bass-tabell?'

The someone—from his peaked cap, another officer—offered the German officer some evidence to support this contention.

Bastable was aware that he had lost his equipment. His webbing belt and his pouches, and of course his revolver, had all been removed, and his battledress blouse gaped open on his chest.

The German officer studied the documents—

My dear Henry,