He looked down again. The sound of the word inside his brain was superimposed on all the other sounds, just as the face had been superimposed on all those faces which were passing him. He could still hear all those sounds, and he had seen the faces—
Big, thrusting nose ... bushy eyebrows... fierce pale-blue staring eyes: the face of authority, staring him down even when it wasn't turned towards him—it had only been turned towards him once, for one surprised instant, in the farmyard
—
Traitor!
All those other faces... young faces and older faces; tired, incurious faces looking through him; eyes looking at him, dismaying him with their curiosity; pale faces and swarthy faces ... all different faces, with different expressions, but all the same face, all the faces of his enemies, all German faces.
But that face— that face was different from all them: that face dummy4
was the face of his enemy!
He was sweating.
Traitor!
He could feel the sweat swimming on his forehead, gathering and soaking up on the damp-greasy line of the Frenchman's cap across his brow, except at one place on the left where it escaped and ran down the side of his face, like the brush of a cobweb, until the breath of an evening breeze cooled it at his jawline; and he could feel it under his armpits, squeezing wetly as the cart bumped him from side to side over the uneven road surface and he could feel it running down his back, and down his throat and neck, and down his chest—the sweat of fear and anger and desperate exertion saturating him.
Noises—
But also another noise, a new one hornet-snarling at him from the distance ahead—
He looked up again, simultaneously aware that Wimpy had been trying to twist round to attract his attention. It was like a grey rippling funnel down which they had been forcing themselves against the flow of movement on either side of them, but now the distant end of the funnel was no longer empty.
Bastable blinked and narrowed his eyes to adjust their focus.
The road was arrow-straight, but the blue haze of evening obscured its furthest point—it was that sound which made up dummy4
the picture of what was beyond his vision.
And now the hammering of the powerful motor-cycle engines was fuzzed by that of bigger engines labouring in low gear—
Bastable pulled back at the cart, trying to slow it down.
'Non! non!' exclaimed Wimpy, pointing ahead. 'Par la, par la
—ah-droowa—veet! veet!'
Ah-droowa? Bastable looked left, and then quickly to the right—ah-droowa!—and saw nothing but German infantrymen, and was the more confused because Wimpy was still pointing straight ahead—or even pointing more to the left than to the right—
Then he saw it, to the left, above the line of steel helmets bobbing up and down, what Wimpy was pointing at: the arm of a signpost directed ah-droowa across the road, twenty yards away—fifteen yards—ten yards—
Bastable swung the cart sideways and halted, waiting for a gap in the grey line which would let him into the opening of the side-road.
No gap appeared.
The sound of the approaching vehicles increased.
No gap. They saw him—they stared at him, the same mixture of faces and expressions—and ignored him, and dismissed him, and passed on without sparing him a thought.
No gap.
He pleaded silently with each face please—oh, Christ!—please dummy4
—
The sound was a roar now, motor-cycle and lorries together drowning all other sounds.
No gap—
Please—
A boy—a mere boy, with cropped blond hair, his helmet hanging from his slung rifle—threw out both arms to hold back those behind.
Gap!
There was no time for recognition or gratitude—the boy wasn't even looking at him, he was merely letting a piece of flotsam dislodge itself— there was the momentary glimpse of another pale anonymous young face, and of grey uniforms and dusty jackboots only inches away as Bastable drove the cart through the gap to the safety of the side-road, from under the very wheels of the motored column.
The roar of the engines enveloped him for a moment. Then, almost abruptly, it fell away into the background behind him, further and further away, losing its identity in the sound of the blood thumping inside his brain.
He continued to push the cart at top speed, like an automaton, without any conscious thought of where he was going or why he was pushing, and even without any awareness of his surroundings. In so far as he was aware of anything, it was a mixture of physical discomfort in his arms and shoulders and emotional exhilaration which made light dummy4
of the discomfort. His arms were slowly being pulled out of their sockets by the cart, but that seemed quite natural, and only to be expected, and didn't matter at all really ... Or didn't matter at all when compared with his miraculous escape from the middle of the German Army.
All he had to do was to keep on pushing—
It was more than an escape . . .
All he had to do was to keep on pushing—
It was a deliverance—
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so That it be not the Destined Will.
A deliverance!
The sound behind him was no more than an intermittent hum now— Nor lead nor steel shall reach him— punctuated by the faraway murmur of gunfire— so that it be not the Destined Will!
'Julian Grenfell,' said Wimpy.
Bastable came to himself with a jolt as Wimpy spoke. He had been staring at the black hat on Wimpy's head—he knew he had been staring at it because when he leaned forward to keep the cart moving it was only a foot from his nose, and it dummy4
was all he could see, that black hat... the old Frenchman's Sunday hat—but he was not aware of doing so until now, when Wimpy tried to turn towards him, and couldn't quite manage it.
'What?' The word was hard to say: he hadn't spoken a word for so long, the sound of his voice was unnatural to him.
'Julian Grenfell, Harry—
he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so That it be not the Destined Will.
Very apposite, old boy—I... didn't know you were poetically inclined ... other than a bit of the old Play up, play up, and play the game! You're a bit of a dark . . . horse, old boy—a dark . . . horse.
Bastable felt the blood rise in his cheeks beneath their coating of clammy sweat. He must have spoken those words—
those lines from that secret poem of heart-breaking beauty which was utterly private to him—he must have spoken them aloud, without knowing that he had done so. He must take a grip of himself, a much firmer grip—it was fatigue on the surface that had made him light-headed for a moment, but dummy4
there were accumulated layers of gibbering cowardice under that, and if he let go of himself they would surely take over.
Wimpy was still trying to turn towards him, while continuing to hold on to the child on his lap. The child's face was turned towards Bastable, and she was staring at him with huge dark eyes devoid of expression. Where it wasn't smudged with grime, her skin showed very pale, contrasting with Wimpy's, which was greyish and etched with lines he hadn't noticed before.
'A dark—' Wimpy started to repeat himself, but then clenched his teeth and grimaced as the cart bumped over a pot-hole '—horse.'
The fellow was in pain. Although he had appeared to be lolling back in comfort, with his legs dangling over the front of the cart, every time the cart bumped—which was all the time—his bad ankle must have been jarred against the frame.