The Hour of the Donkey

'Ootside.'

'What?'

'Ootside.'

There was a pause, while both Bastable and the SS officer worked out the meaning of ootside.

'What is that?' Ootside was evidently not in the SS man's dictionary.

'Ootside in the garden, man—ootside!' The Tynesider addressed the SS man with a mixture of incredulity and contempt, as any intelligent man might do to a hopeless idiot. 'Ootside—divunt yew understan' plain English? Do yew not naa what aah'm sayin'?'

There was a pause.

'In ... the garden?'

'Aye. Ootside in the fukken garden—oot there, man. Aah left

'em oot there, aah'm tellin' yew. Thar!' Now pity joined contempt.

'Where? Show me!'

Footsteps passed on each side of Bastable.

' Thar, man!'

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It was a nice distinction, thought Bastable hysterically, that the Tynesider was refusing point-blank to call the enemy 'sir'.

'But they are not there now.'

'Well, that's where aah left them—settin' thar.'

'Why did you leave them there?'

'Haddaway, man! They wor fukken officers, an' aah'm oonly a fukken orderly, aah niver had aany say in it. Aah told them aarl the beds is full oop. So the one says 'Alreet, we'll set doon ootside until yew find me marra' somewhere to lay.'

An' they set doon thar, aah tell yew—an' aa doon't care. It's no ma job to lewk after fukken officers, aah've got men deein'

back inside ... an' this one, he canna walk, but he's no deein', aa can see that. So aah doon't care where they set.'

Pause. As well there might be, thought Bastable, as he struggled to disentangle the sense of it, from which 'It's not my job to look after fucking officers' rang clearest and loudest and truest to life.

'So you have no idea where those officers are now?' The SS

man sounded more desperate than angry.

'Aah doon't noo—haddaway, man—aah'm tellin' yew—aah've got better things t'doo than lewk after the likes of them.

'Fukken find me marra' a bed', he says to me. But aah'm not after findin' a bed for a man that's no bad hurt— fukken officers!' The Tynesider loaded a world of bitterness into his words, the weight of their deeper truth adding conviction to the lie. 'So aah left them settin' thar ootside, an' that's the last dummy4

aah see uv them like aah said. An' if they've buggered off it's none uv ma dooin'—aah'm noo their keeper, aah've got better bliddy things t'doo.'

The SS man digested that in silence again for a moment, as he had done the Tynesider's previous outbursts, aid Bastable could almost conjure up a tiny spark of sympathy for him out of his own bitter experiences with other ranks whose ability to lie their way out of any situation had alws ys defeated him.

Except that this man was lying to save his own life—and theirs!

Then fear took over again, and he lay bathed in it as the voices and sounds snarled and shouted and cracked and stamped all around him in the darkness, beyond fear and despair and understanding—it couldn't be Harry Bastable, Captain Bastable, Mr Henry Bastable of Gloves and Hosiery, wash-your-hands-and-comb- your-hair Henry—it couldn't be any of those— oh, God! it couldn't be any of those lying now in sweat and urine under a blood-stiffened blanket.

'Harry!' The whisper reached him in the darkness. They had gone. It seemed impossible, when they only had to look under the table—it seemed so impossible that perhaps that was why they hadn't looked under the table.

'Harry!'

Why couldn't Wimpy leave him alone. Anger stirred in dummy4

Bastable at the prospect of being forced into activity, with the Germans all around them, when they didn't stand a chance.

And anyway, one thing he had learned was that however bad things were, whatever happened next was bound to be worse.

So, better to lie here and hope—that was preferable to any madcap scheme Wimpy might have in mind.

He felt the anger spreading, engorging him.

'Harry—' Wimpy cut off abruptly.

The door banged again. He knew the sound of that bloody door by heart, and the loud, insistent firing beyond it, and hated both sounds, and hated Wimpy, and hated himself—