'Come on, Harry. You've got to be moving,' said Wimpy softly.
Bastable was already resigned to the inevitable. What he didn't know was which way the inevitable ought to be. But that, at least, he could leave to Wimpy.
'Okay.' He looked expectantly at Wimpy. 'Let's go, then.'
Wimpy shook his head. 'Not me, Harry old man. You.'
The thunder of the bombs was getting louder: he had lip-dummy4
read the words, but had misunderstood them.
'What?'
Wimpy held out his hand. 'Good luck, old man—' his voice rose against the thunder'—
it comes to the same thing, anyway. You'll get through somehow.'
It wasn't the bomb-sound that was ringing in his ears, it was consternation verging on panic.
'No!' he shouted, as the bombs got closer.
'Yes!' Wimpy shouted back at him. 'You're a good chap, Harry
—I TAKE BACK ALL THE THINGS I'VE EVER THOUGHT
ABOUT YOU—DO YOU HEAR? ONE OF THE BEST—I KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO LEAVE ME, BUT YOU'VE
BLOODY WELL GOT TO—DO YOU HEAR?'
'NO!' He shook his head vehemently. Leaving Wimpy didn't come into it: without Wimpy he would be as helpless as a baby—he would do the wrong thing at the first opportunity.
'NO!'
The earth shook so violently around them that fragments of soil fell from the lip of the ditch into the bottom, displaced by the shock wave.
Wimpy shouted at him, but this time the words were lost in noise, Bastable was aware suddenly that he was kneeling almost upright, and crouched down quickly to Wimpy's level.
Clods of earth showered down, descending through the half-dummy4
canopy of vegetation like bombs all around them.
Bastable cowered down beside Wimpy on the bottom of the ditch until the thunder died away. For a moment or two he was unable to think clearly of anything, but then his brain cleared and he was conscious that he was miserable, not frightened.
Wimpy looked at him, white-faced under the grime. 'Phew!
That last one was close!'
Obstinacy was what was called for, decided Bastable.
'No,' he snapped.
Wimpy regarded him curiously. 'Clod! Doesn't anything frighten you?'
Therefore—obstinacy.
'No,' he said.
'That's what I thought. I just find it hard to believe,' said Wimpy, banging his ear with his palm and then trying to extract dirt from it with his finger.
'We'll go together, or not at all,' said Bastable, abandoning the idea of trying to explain what that 'no' had referred to; if Wimpy had the wrong notion, maybe it would be better not to disabuse him of it, just so long as he stopped arguing as a result of it. 'Come on.'
dummy4
Wimpy shrugged. 'All right. If you think you can carry me, I can't stop you trying, I suppose . .. even if it doesn't make sense — I shall only hold you back—'
Once Wimpy got started, there was no way of stopping him, he could argue the hind leg off a donkey. All Bastable could think of was to ignore him by standing up and looking around again.
Except for the farm cart, which stood untouched, the field was still empty, but it was different now: there were several large bomb craters in it, the nearest of which was so near that it surprised Bastable that he was still alive to see it.
Down the road, the German lorry was still burning; and now columns of black smoke were also rising up from the village itself in several different places, beyond the trees on the other side of the road. Either accidentally or deliberately there was another Colembert in the making.
He wondered what had happened to the Tyneside soldier who had baffled the Germans, and to the wounded men in the house down the track. So far as he could make out, the house wasn't on fire yet, but he looked away deliberately from it before he was sure, putting the wounded out of his mind. He couldn't do anything for them, so there was no point in thinking about, them.
What was worth thinking about was that if they were going to move, then now was the time to do it, while the
