And, although he hadn't made a sound, the addition of those clenched teeth and that grey complexion to the memory of the angrily-swollen joint produced a degree of painfulness which made Bastable ashamed of his own minor aches.
He pulled back at the cart, trying to slow it. For some time now he hadn't really been pushing it at all, it had been travelling downhill of its own accord, carrying him along with it.
He looked around him, seeing the landscape for the first time. How far he'd come from the road, it was impossible to tell, for they were down in another of those long, shallow dummy4
folds of damned, featureless, foreign countryside in the middle of nowhere, devoid of comforting houses and hedges and telegraph poles. The trackway along which they'd come—
it was hardly wide enough to be called a road—stretched straight from one blue-misted crest behind them to another equally indistinct one ahead there were woods, already dark and uninviting, a few hundred yards to the right, and to the left the fold curved away out of sight.
The moment of exhilaration was entirely gone. As the cart finally creaked to a standstill the leaden weight of responsibility took its place, bowing down Bastable's spirit.
Even the thought of their recent deliverance rang empty in his mind. It was still a miracle, in a succession of miracles, but it was a miracle in the midst of a far greater catastrophe—
a catastrophe so huge that he was unable to imagine its full extent, but could only guess at it.
'Ahhh . . . that's better!' said Wimpy, easing himself gingerly into a more comfortable position, and then finally succeeding in turning his head sufficiently to look at Bastable. 'Still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, old boy?'
'I'm all right.' Bastable returned the look without betraying himself. 'How's your ankle?'
'Ah . . . inconvenient, let's say.' Wimpy considered the bandaged extremity in silence for a moment. 'I think ... if you could help me to alight ... we might make a structural adjustment in my chariot which might make life easier for me, if not for you . . . Also ... I think it's time for a spot of dummy4
refreshment, too.' He swivelled to Bastable again, smiling lopsidedly. 'And then we can discuss the Destined Will perhaps, eh?'
The old, well-worn feeling stirred within Bastable's breast, half irritation, half admiration. Even in pain and weariness the blighter couldn't resist mocking him. But also, even in pain and weariness, the blighter was still unbeaten, and thinking for himself when Harry Bastable was full of despair and self-pity.
He was the better man still, damn it!
Wimpy shifted his hold of the child. 'However... if I help our little Alice Mark Two over the side first—and if she helps to steady my descent—do you think you could avoid unloading me like a ton of coal this time, Harry old boy?'
Without the child's weight, it was easy. Or maybe it was easy simply without the onlooking presence of the German Army?
He rubbed his aching arms and looked at Wimpy.
'But first things first while it's still light enough to read...'
Wimpy balanced himself on one leg, steadying himself with one hand on the cart, and felt in the top pocket of the Frenchman's jacket. 'It's here somewhere—'
'What?'
'What everyone needs—what Mr Chamberlain brought back from Munich ...' Wimpy dug down deeper. 'Ah! And what we need most of all, Onri Bloch, mon ami—'
A scrap of paper?
dummy4
The German officer's note—of course!
'What did you—' Bastable broke off helplessly as too many temporarily forgotten questions came flooding back.
Colembert?
'What did I ask him for?' Wimpy shook the paper one-handed in an attempt to flutter it open. 'I asked him for our ticket, Harry—damn thing!—for a laissay-passay— He looked up at Bastable '— for a pass—a chit—a bit of paper . .. What all armies run on—and all schools, too—"Have you got your chit?"—oh, damn!'
He had dropped the paper. Bastable stooped to retrieve it. It was some sort of German Army message form, not unlike its British equivalent—except for the stylized Wehrmacht eagle which clutched a wreathed swastika in its talons, and for the totally indecipherable foreign scrawl slanting across it.
Wimpy reached out and snatched it back. 'Thanks, old boy.
Now . . . let's see ...' He squinted at the scrawl. " To all whom it may concern" would be a nice start, but I don't see that—'
'You asked him for a pass?'
'Yes . . .' Wimpy frowned at the paper. 'Chap writes as illegibly as Tetley-Robinson, almost—but .. " To all German troops"— well, that's actually better than "To all whom it may concern", I shouldn't wonder—yes, I asked him for a pass .. .
der Vorzeiger— because one good turn deserves another— der Vorzeiger?'
'One good turn?'
dummy4
' Der Vorzeiger dieses . . . "the bearer of this", that must be, with our old friend Gaston Laval following, and his daughter Alys, and his servant Onri Bloch—Vorzeiger must be
"bearer", it can't be anything else—'
'What good turn?'
'What good turn . . . Vorzeiger ... I told him where the British Army was—'
'You did what?'
Wimpy continued to frown at the paper.
'You told him where the British Army was?'
'Ye-es... Dug in on Vimy Ridge, I said—told him I'd seen 'em with my own eyes: lots of tanks and little guns—didn't think I ought to be able to identify them as anti-tank guns, being a civilian, but I described them so he couldn't be in much doubt . . . but surely "bear" is tragen, isn't it?'
Bastable was appalled. 'Why did you do that?'
'It must be "bearer"—because he asked me, old boy,' Wimpy looked up at him, 'and I thought it prudent in the circumstances to be as helpful as possible. And also because it put the fear of God up him—all those imaginary tanks and anti-tank guns—so maybe they'll think twice before trying to outflank Arras. What the hell would you have done?'
There was no answer to that.
Wimpy regarded him obstinately. 'He came up and said he regretted what had happened to the old lady—"une tragedie dummy4
de guerre", he called it—and that was when I guessed he was after information, if he could get it. So I blamed the British—
I gave him a bit of the old perfidious Albion fighting to the last Frenchman, and then betraying France—and he liked that. He said Germany wasn't the enemy of France, and I agreed with him. I said France had been betrayed by Daladier and the British, and the sooner we got rid of both, the better—and the Communists too.
'And I also let slip that I was an assistant deputy sub-prefect, and I implied that if God and the Germans spared me I would work for a better Franco-German understanding, preferably against the British.
'And he liked that too. Because the next thing he asked me was if I had been in Arras, and what things were like there.
So that was when I gave him a cock-and-bull story about tanks and guns—and lots of Scotsmen with kilts playing bagpipes, because that ought to put the fear of God into him too—and he was grateful . . and that's when it occurred to me to ask for this—' Wimpy lifted the paper '— so, for Christ's sake, Harry, let me read the bloody thing and find out what he's written before it gets dark!'
Bastable opened his mouth, and then shut it again. What Wimpy had done was... it was beyond his imagination, and there was no word for it—cheek? treason? daring?—and no words, either!
' To all German troops . . . The bearer of this . . . Gaston Laval . . . et cetera, et cetera . . . Onri Block . . . is to be dummy4