The Hour of the Donkey

'What?'

'There's a hand-cart in the road there. You can sit in that.'

Bastable split the end of the bandage, knotted the split, and then knotted the ends. The foot did look a bit like a football now, or the swollen extremity of a gouty admiral; and as a bandaging job it lacked the layered neatness by which the first-aid instructor had set such store. But it would do—it would have to do, anyway. 'There!'

'Oh...' Wimpy's face was beaded with sweat, and chalky white under the sweat, so that Bastable was suddenly ashamed at dummy4

his professional disregard of the pain he had caused. 'That's good thinking—I'd quite forgotten about that, Harry. That's very good thinking!'

Bastable looked at him quickly, and the shame was cancelled by the surprise in the voice: one thing Wimpy didn't expect of him, apart from bull-at-a-gate courage, was thinking of any sort, clearly.

There's a pair of old shoes here—I'll put one on my other foot, it doesn't matter if it's too large . . . And you get rid of the uniforms—stuff them down somewhere out of sight, just in case.' Wimpy's voice had regained its sharp note of command before the sweat had dried: the three weeks'

seniority had only been momentarily re-imposed and the reality was back again.

'And take a look out of the window, too ...' Wimpy rose carefully to his feet. 'Remember to stand well back, or they'll see your face— aaah! Not so bad ... bad enough, but not so bad . . . until Boadicea can reach her chariot—go on, man, go on!'

Bastable fished around among the ruined finery and the heirlooms from the old woman's bottom drawer for the fragments of his uniform. As his hand closed on the battledress blouse he felt something hard in one of the pockets, which surprised him for a second; of course, the Germans had taken everything from him—his identification, Mother's letters, his money and his pocket-knife, and even his broken watch from his wrist—but this . . . what was this?

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This was the bar of chocolate from the dead German soldier, which Wimpy had plundered—it reminded him that he was still hungry.

It reminded him also that there was one other thing in his pockets; there was still the lanyard, of the Prince Regent's Own in his trousers. It was something he could neither safely take with him or safely leave behind, damn the thing!

He was ravenously hungry: he tore at the wrapper on the chocolate, his fingers suddenly clumsy with desire.

He stuffed a piece into his mouth, and then remembered guiltily that he ought to be disposing of the uniforms and peering out of the window, and looked towards Wimpy—up towards Wimpy, who was still gently trying his ankle above him.

'Do you want some?' He offered up a wedge as an expiation for not doing what he ought to be doing.

'Give it to her,' Wimpy nodded to his right.

To her?

Christ! He had clean forgotten about the child! She was still crouched there in her little ball of fear under the eaves, to one side of the broken windows—hands lowered now, clenched in front of her cheap print dress, dirty little dried-tear-stained face turned towards him now—and he had forgotten about her so completely that he had stripped off down to his filthy underwear, right in front: of her as though she hadn't been there at all. It didn't seem possible that he dummy4

could ever have done such a thing. But he had.

'Go on, man—ma petite—' Wimpy switched into a string of French words, soft and soothing, amongst which Bastable was only able to distinguish 'shoc-o-la', and then chiefly because Wimpy pointed to the chocolate in his hand.

'Say something,' murmured Wimpy.

Bastable opened his mouth, but no words came to him: he could think of nothing to say in English, let alone French.

The child was plainly terrified anyway, and therefore beyond reasoning with, even if he had known what to say, if indeed there were any words for such a situation, she was in no condition to understand them The soothing sounds Wimpy had made hadn't registered in the slightest. All he could communicate was his own helplessness and fear, which could only make matters worse.

'Give her the chocolate.' Exasperation edged Wimpy's voice.

'I'll look out of the window—you calm her down, Harry. You know how to handle kids.'

It was useless to protest that this was the very reverse of the truth, before he had even finished speaking Wimpy had pivoted on his good leg and had commenced moving down the attic towards the other window.

Meanwhile, the chocolate was melting into a sticky mess between Bastable's fingers. He looked at the little girl hesitantly, extending his arm towards her, offering her the mess.

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'Chocolate . . . chocolate ... er ... pour . . . vous?' he managed.

No recognition. If anything, the poor little thing seemed to contract into an even tighter ball.

'Bon . . . chocolat—bon?' Their eyes were almost on the same level. Hers were huge and round and dark, looking at him and yet not looking at him—not properly focused on him.

Her hair was black, under a coating of dust and small fragments of plaster—blacker even than his own. It was unusual to see a child with such black hair . . . not that he had ever been in the habit of staring at children, or even noticing them. But that was the sort of hair which would shine like a raven's wing with proper brushing.

He was being stupid, offering her his chocolate at this distance, a yard beyond her reach. Even if she wanted it, she wasn't going to move.