coast was quite miraculously clear.
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He reached down and dragged Wimpy to his feet.
'— and together we'll stand out like sore thumbs, too—'
Wimpy had been rabbiting on all the time down below, but the effect of being raised up into the open closed his mouth at last.
He looked around him jerkily, pivoting on his good leg while leaning against Bastable for support.
'Oh, Christ!' he murmured, and sat down again in the mud.
Bastable ducked down to join him. 'What's the matter? It's all clear, damn it—?'
'All clear?' Wimpy grimaced. 'So—we're in the middle of bloody no-man's-land then, old boy, that's what. So we'll probably get the chop from whoever arrives here first—'if it moves, shoot it', that'll be the order of the day,' Wimpy's voice trembled as he spoke.
Bastable felt disappointed that Wimpy had nothing better to offer than a conclusion he had already reached himself, more or less. 'So what do we do?'
Wimpy grimaced again. 'We get out of here—this bloody ditch is too handy, whoever comes this way'll be certain to take cover in it. If we can hide somewhere less obvious we can wait and see how things turn out, maybe.'
This time it was Bastable's turn to grimace. 'Hiding somewhere' sounded like going back into the village, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. Also, waiting to see how things turned out struck an uneasy note of doubt in his mind dummy4
from which he shied away instinctively.
'There's a house all by itself on this side, just down the road
—' Wimpy indicated the direction with a nod. '—maybe we can find something to eat there, I'm famished—and something to wear, too—' He pushed at Bastable '—so get moving, Harry— go on, go on! Crawl, and I'll follow— go on!'
Bastable started crawling. Food was something he hadn't thought about for hours, and even now, although his stomach hurt, he wasn't noticeably hungry. But he was, he realized, quite desperately thirsty and his tongue filled his mouth like a sausage.
To wear?
Wimpy pushed him from behind. 'Go on, damn you—go on!'
To wear? What did Wimpy mean—to wear?
Fifty yards down the ditch, level with the smouldering lorry, a dead German soldier lay waiting for them.
Sweat had rolled down Bastable's forehead into his eyes, until the way ahead had become a green-and-brown blur which he had wanted to clear, but which, with his hands slimy with mud and Wimpy pushing and grumbling at him from behind, he was unable to attend to so long as no obstacle barred his way.
But then there was an obstacle, ard the obstacle was the dead German.
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Bastable knew the German was dead even before he had wiped all the sweat from his face, not so much because the German didn't move as because nothing could lie there in the mud so uncomfortably—so ridiculously— contorted, regardless of where legs and arms ought to be, and still be alive, so he wasn't frightened, only momentarily shocked, and the shock was momentary because it was overtaken first by revulsion at the thought of having to navigate across the body and then by irritation with the dead man for being where he was, quite unnecessarily occupying the ditch when he hadn't any use for it.
Wimpy had half overtaken him by the time all this had gone through his head.
'Go on—get past him!' The blighter sounded positively eager.
He won't bite you, poor bastard!'
Passing the German was much more horrible than he had imagined: the body was unbearably soft and for one sickening instant it seemed to be actually trying to embrace him as he squeezed past it, pushing it sideways against the ditch so that an arm flopped over on to his back.
Wimpy had no such qualms; no sooner had he clambered over the body than he turned back to it and started fiddling with its equipment.
'Hold on a tick, Harry ... we'll have his water-bottle, he doesn't need it now . . . Damn! It's got a bullet through it!' He dropped the water-bottle in disgust and began to pat the dummy4
dead soldier's pockets. 'Well, then... we'll see what else he's got that's worth having . . . '
Bastable closed his eyes on the scene. He knew that it made sense—he himself had robbed the first dead man he had ever encountered, he remembered. But there was something too unpleasantly businesslike about the way Wimpy was setting about the job, as though it was the most natural action in the world.
'Ah!' Wimpy let out an exclamation of pleasure. 'Just the ticket and
Bastable opened his eyes, and found he was being offered a large bar of Nestle's milk chocolate.
Wimpy was already eating his, positively wolfing it. 'Here—
go on, take it, man—bags of energy and whatnot in it—take it!'
Bastable took the chocolate bar. It was limp and broken, and distorted by heat—the body-warmth of the man who had carried it—and the very thought of eating it sickened him.
Even the sight of Wimpy munching made his throat contract painfully.
