Like everything else in Colembert, the garden was a ruin now, fragments of stone and brick and wood scattered across its flowerbeds, its surviving flowers covered with ashes, and its trees broken and shredded by the blast—it was strange how the bomb's effect hadn't snapped them cleanly, but had splintered them into frayed fibres of wood —
'M'sieur!'
Bastable realized he had been left behind—he had been stopped in his tracks, staring at the ruined garden which had been turned into a wilderness not by the slow action of dummy4
neglect but in one hot, shattering blast.
'Madame!' He was in a world of new experiences, and every one of them was beastly, and this one in its way was not less horrible than those which had preceded it. Yet, although his imagination had failed to prepare him for the reality, he must grow accustomed to each shock at first sight, without ever being daunted by it again. This was what a bomb blast did to a garden full of flowers and carefully-nurtured trees—he had already seen what the same forces could do to a steel Bren carrier and a carefully-nurtured human being. They would do the same to every garden, every human being —
To his own garden.
To himself —
'Coming, Madame,' he said.
The house was set back from the road —a good, solid, three-storeyed house, in its own garden.
His family house, it might have been, allowing for the difference in styles, instinctively, he knew that it was her house, for she seemed a good class of woman, with something of his mother's look about her.
A good, solid house: it had caught the blast, but had resisted it bravely. The stonework was chipped and pockmarked, every window was gone, the slates on the roof were disarranged and the front door was off its hinges. But it was still a house within the meaning of the word. He had seen worse.
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The French lady led him up the steps to the buckled front door.
An absurd inclination to wipe his filthy boots checked Bastable for a moment. The absurdity of such an action was overtaken by the first glimpse of the chaos ahead, which triggered a hysterical fragment of a poem he had once been set to learn as a boy—a poem he had learnt, but had not thought of again ever since —
If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
'Do you suppose,' the Walrus said,
'That they could get it clear?'
The bomb had dislodged every fragment of plaster from the ceiling of the hall—and, indeed, from the walls too—to lay bare the laths to which the plaster had been attached.
His eyes became more accustomed to the gloom.
The bomb had also detached every ornament and every picture from the walls to smash among the plaster on the floor —
I doubt it,' said the Carpenter,
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And shed a bitter tear—
The French lady spoke to him again, and indicated a doorway, so that there was no time for bitter tears.
A big room—the lounge, if that was what the French called it.
A gloomy room—gloomy because the tattered curtains were drawn across the windows, admitting the light of what must still be early morning through innumerable rents.
Shattered china and glass. A fallen chandelier in the middle of the floor amongst the plaster —
Soft furnishings, furniture, china and glass— if England is bombed like this, thought Bastable, then Bastable's of Eastbourne will make a fortune in replacements.
There was someone lying on the huge high-backed settee, covered from chin to boots by a blanket.
The French lady whispered unintelligible words softly in his ear. All he could make out from them was the familiar
'officier anglais'.
He crunched across the floor towards the settee, skirting the chandelier. In the half-light all he could make out was a dirty white face—grey-white against the brown-white of the enveloping blanket-which he couldn't recognize. He realized that he had had the feeling, for no rational reason, that the wounded officer would be Tetley-Robinson, he couldn't think why. But this must be one of the new subalterns, like Chris dummy4
Chichester, whose names and faces alike were still vague to him. This wasn't either Tetley-Robinson or Chris Chichester, certainly ... yet—yet —
The eyes opened slowly, as though the crunching of his boots had awakened the wounded man from sleep.
The head moved and the eyes fastened on him.
'Who's that?' The voice was weak, but instantly recognizable.
And yet the act of recognition only left Bastable more confused: how could he have failed to recognize Major Audley, whose face he knew so well, at that first glance?
He knelt down beside the settee.
'M— . . . Nigel?' he stared at the recognizable-unrecognizable mask. Audley's face had been stretched and had fallen in on itself, and then covered with sweat and grime and coated with fine dust which adhered to the twenty-four-hour bristles on his chin and cheek. The eyes, which had darker shadows under them, like bruises, had sunk into his head.
'Who's that?' Audley repeated.
'Harry Bastable,' said Bastable.
'Harry . . . ?' Audley could make nothing of the Christian name.
'Bastable.' Harry Bastable swallowed. 'C Company —
Bastable, Nigel.'
'Bastable!' The exclamation was little more than a whisper.
The eyes closed, then opened again. 'Bastable ...?'
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'I'm here, Nigel. Captain Willis and I are here.'
The eyes disengaged from Bastable's. 'Willis?'
'We came back, Nigel. What happened?'
Audley moved his head, still peering past Bastable.
'Willis . . . Where's Willis?'
Bastable had the feeling that he had been rejected. 'He's not here at the moment. He'll be here eventually, Nigel.'
'Willis . . .' The voice-trailed off and the eyes closed.
Bastable leaned forward and lifted the blanket, first a little, then more, and finally (when the eyes still didn't open to accuse him) enough to see what lay beneath it.
The French lady said something, and although Bastable didn't understand a word of what she said he knew what she was saying.
So this was another new experience, he thought as he lowered the blanket gently. He had seen dead men, so now he was seeing a dying one. It was just another new experience.
The French lady's presence behind him also had a steadying effect. He must not disgrace himself, or the Prince Regent's Own. He was going to see a lot of this, and, at a guess, it would more often be worse than this, hard though that was to imagine.
Just another new experience. He had to hold on to that, and not be sick.
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In the meantime . . .
'Nigel?' He paused. 'Can you hear me, Nigel?'
The eyelids fluttered, but remained closed. Bastable turned towards the French lady. 'Madame ... s'il vous plait . . .' he searched for the word, and as usual found nothing in his vocabulary except 'ou est' and 'combien', and now 'pour le chien'. 'Damn!'
She looked at him questioningly. 'M'sieur?'
He turned his hand into a cup and lifted the cup to his lips.
'Water, Madame. Water?'
'Oui.' She nodded, and left the room without another word, crunching regardless over the wreckage of her treasures.
A brave lady, thought Bastable. Audley hadn't been hit here, or there would have been blood everywhere, so she must somehow have found him and brought him in—perhaps with someone's help, but into her house, to her settee, under her blanket... and a very good quality blanket too, as good as the best Witney blankets stocked by Bastable's of Eastbourne, by the feel of it. Would Mother have behaved so well, in the ruin of her house, with a dying French officer on her hands?
Well . . . well, perhaps she would at that, he thought suddenly with a stab of guilt at his disloyalty. Mother had sold her jewels, everything down to her wedding ring, in the bad times in the early thirties, when it had been touch-and-go in the firm, so maybe she would at that, by God!