He stared down at Major Audley's face. There was nothing he dummy4
could do for Audley—and nor could Doc Saunders have done anything either, for what lay under the blanket.
But there was still something Audley could do for Harry Bastable and for England, perhaps And if there was, then he must do it.
He heard the familiar crunching sound of feet on broken plaster and china and glass behind him.
'M'sieur.'
Damn and damn and damn! He had wanted water, to moisten Audley's lips and wipe his brow—and she had brought him brandy in a mug, half a mug of it—he could smell it even before he could see it. Damn, damn, damn!
She smiled at him. It was for him, of course!
He took a gulp of the stuff, and coughed on it, and choked on it, as always, as it burned his empty stomach.
He couldn't give it to Audley, therefore. Audley had no stomach.
It was a bloody miracle Audley was still alive. With what was under the blanket Audley should have been dead long ago.
He took another, more controlled gulp, and felt it burn all the way down, and turned back to the dying officier anglais.
The eyes were open, and they were suddenly brighter, and they were looking at him.
'What happened?' asked Audley, pre-empting his own question with unbearable clarity. 'The battalion?'
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Bastable stared at him in an agony of indecision. That was his question, and he no longer knew what to ask, if Audley didn't know the answer himself.
'Where's Willis?' asked Audley. 'I want to talk to him.'
'What happened?' The question sounded empty now, but it was still the only one he could think ot.
'Where's Willis?' The dirt-encrusted lips compressed themselves obstinately.
'Nigel—what happened?' Bastable bent over the dying man, pushing aside the question with his own. 'Tell-me-what-happened?'
'Willis—?'
'Captain-Willis-is-coming. The-Germans-attacked . . . ?'
Under desperation Bastable could feel anger rising.
The lips trembled. 'Amateurs... Came across the fields... and down the road ... open order—like, they didn't care —like, we weren't there ... But we were...' The lips quivered again.
'Yes?' Bastable willed the lips to open again. 'Yes?'
'After that. . . bombers. . . Stukas—smashed up everything . . .'
'Yes?'
'Tanks . . . infantry . . . professionals . . .' The eyes lost Bastable's face, and the voice trailed off again.
He had to get both back again. ' Sir— Nigel?'
He couldn't shake a dying man. 'Sir?'
dummy4
'Bloody shambles, naturally.' The eyes transfixed him.
'Where's Willis?' The voice seemed stronger.
A horrible certainty loomed out of the mist in Harry Bastable's mind—and advanced into the clear light of inevitability as he stared at it.
He recognized it, because it had been there all the time, waiting to show itself to him—he had known about it and had expected it, but had refused to look at it. Instead, he had made pictures in his imagination and shared them with Wimpy, and they had both believed in those pictures because they had both been unwilling to accept the reality, even when it stared them in the face.
That was why Wimpy had insisted on 'scouting around', with that sly, withdrawn look on his face—Wimpy was much brighter than he was, much quicker on the uptake, so he had needed to have those pictures (which he didn't believe in) proved or disproved by the evidence ot his own eyes, which he knew he would find.
The battalion had never left Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts.
That was really why he had wanted to go north, to Arras —
because there wasn't anything to the south to follow.
And that was why Wimpy had said 'To the French?', and not
'To catch up with the battalion?', of course.
dummy4
'Where's Willis?' repeated Major Audley, almost petulantly.
And . . . a bloody shambles, naturally . . . naturally.
That was how it would have been, with tanks up against soft aluminium anti-tank ammunition, over the ridge against C
Company— a bloody shambles, naturally—
But there was no time for tears for C Company, and poor incompetent acting-acting-company-commander Waterworks, and young Christopher Chichester, whose knowledge of the Boys anti-tank rifles would have availed him nothing with that bloody-fucking-useless practice ammunition up the spout— Oh God!
'I'll go and get him,' said Harry Bastable.
'No —'
There was a slight, impossible movement under the blanket, as though Major Audley had found the use of one blackened claw.
' No. No time . . .' The feverish eyes truly transfixed him now.
'My boy, David . . .'
Bastable was pinned down by those eyes.
'Tell Willis . . . My boy, David—he knows my boy, David—'
Audley stopped abruptly.
Suddenly, Bastable knew what Audley was talking about: he had a son named David, and Willis was an acquaintance, if not a friend, and more than that a schoolmaster, if not an acquaintance, who had admitted teaching Audley's 'my boy, dummy4
David'—that was who he was talking about.
'Yes, Nigel—' he leaned forward again. '—your son, David—?'
'Not my son—not my son—but my boy, damn it —' Major Audley took one great rattling breath, and then a second shallower one.
Bastable couldn't make head nor tail of that, for the man was obviously rambling now, but he forced himself to lean over to place his ear closer to catch the words.
'Your son, David?' He found himself staring at the heavy brocaded cushion on the back-rest of the settee. It was old-fashioned, but very high-class material, he noted. And very expensive too—not unlike the curtains he had sold to Mrs Anstruther last spring—was it only last spring?
Major Audley seemed to have had second thoughts about the message he wished to pass on to Wimpy about his son David, or the propriety of giving it to someone else, perhaps.
'Your son, David?' Bastable felt himself belittled by such lack of confidence. 'Tell Wimpy what?'
In the far distance, faint but clear enough in the silence surrounding them, there was the sound of someone kick-starting a motor-cycle. The engine roared for a moment, and then stalled.
That would be Wimpy, thought Bastable. Wimpy's passion for riding motor-cycles was unbridled, and he had even been known to break battalion rules to satisfy it. But if there was no battalion any more, then the rules no longer applied—and dummy4
if the battalion had left a motor-cycle behind then Wimpy was the man to nose it out, like a dog sensing the presence of a bone.
The French lady had touched his shoulder, he realized. And she was speaking to him again.
He turned towards her. 'Ne comprenez pas,' he said.
She stared at him for a moment. Then she reached past him and drew the blanket up over Audley's face.
Bastable looked down at the blanket, then back to the French lady, then down at the blanket again.
'He can't be dead. He was just speaking to me —' He pulled the blanket down.
The motor-cycle started up again in the distance.
IX
But it wasn't Wimpy on the motor-cycle.
It was one of the khaki machines the battalion had acquired at Boulogne—British Army property, and certainly not the property of the spotty-faced French youth who was sitting proudly astride it outside the shop where the old man and the women had been standing.
Bastable felt a sudden vicious anger well up inside him.
There were dead British soldiers lying in the street—he had dummy4