only this moment left another one of them, newly-dead —
killed in France and not yet buried. And the dirty bastards were already picking up the spoils—the dirty thieving swine!
He launched himself down the street in a red haze of rage, kicking obstructions out of the way, and fetched up within striking distance of the youth before another coherent thought could cross his mind.
'Get off that machine!' he barked. 'Get off— d'you hear me —
this instant!'
And that might not be an order delivered in French, but—by God! it's meaning out to be plain enough, he told himself hotly.
The youth tossed his head insolently and rotated his hands on the handlebars.
'Get off!' shouted Bastable. 'At once!'
The youth smirked at him—he was hardly older than the errand boys Bastable's retained for their parcel deliveries —
and pronounced a single word. And although it was a French word its vulgar meaning was also immediately clear to Bastable.
His anger passed the point of incandescence, consumed itself and suddenly became deadly cold. He knew now, as he fumbled with his webbing holster—he knew now with a horrible icy certainty that he would shoot this youth dead in five seconds if he refused to get off the motor-cycle.
Then something hard poked him in the back, just below the dummy4
right shoulder blade.
'Non,' said someone behind him.
Bastable swung round and found himself staring into the twin mouths of a double-barrelled shotgun.
The shotgun was held by a villainous-looking bandit whose expression indicated not only that he was quite capable of squeezing both triggers but also that it would give him great personal satisfaction to do so.
Bastable's own murderous anger dissolved into fear as he identified the emotion behind the expression: it was the same one that he himself had experienced seconds before—
the mad glare of impotent rage which had at last found something to expend itself on. It was his own finger on the trigger of the gun that was pointed at him.
The understanding of his own imminent death froze him into immobility, hand on holster.
'Levez . . . Poot up ... the 'ands.'
There were other men behind the man with the shotgun, and it was one of them who spoke. It seemed impossible to Bastable that he should not have seen or heard them behind him, but he hadn't.
He put up his hands so quickly that for a heart-stopping moment—as he did so, but before he could stop himself— he thought the shotgun man would blow him to pieces.
Someone detached himself from the blur of individuals: a short, fat little man in a dusty black suit but no collar and tie, dummy4
only a gold collar-stud.
Not the face, but the whole man and the air of authority he still carried sparked Bastable's memory. He had seen this one before, only once and from afar, but the image was there—of a short, fat little man arguing with the Adjutant outside the Town Hall of Colembert.
It was the Mayor.
This deduction fanned a quick flame of hope in him. The Mayor might be anti-British—he might even be a damn Red, if Wimpy was to be believed. But he was still an official of local government, and presumably a man of substance as well. Even in Colembert—even if Colembert wasn't Eastbourne—that must count for something.
God! He could remember the last time he had talked to the Mayor, when he had offered the services of Bastable's lady assistants to help assemble the town's sixty thousand gas masks just after Mr Chamberlain had come back from Munich, not long after the first air-raid siren trials—
Somewhere below, in the lower town, there came a rumble and crash of falling masonry.
Colembert wasn't Eastbourne.
And the Mayor of Colembert wasn't the Mayor of Eastbourne.
The Mayor of Colembert was speaking to him now —hissing those meaningless words at him, which he couldn't understand. If only Wimpy was here!
dummy4
Assassin. That was a word he could understand.
Assassin?
That wasn't fair.
'I am a British officer!' he snapped back. 'Britain and France
—'
He felt a movement at his side, where his holster was: the youth was relieving him of his revolver! But before he could think of lowering his arm to prevent the theft the shotgun jerked menacingly at him, countermanding the movement.
God! It wasn't possible—it wasn't happening to him!
One of the other men came forward from behind the Mayor to take the revolver from the youth. And then, before Bastable had time to think, let alone to duck, the man slapped him hard across the face.
'Assassin!'
The shock of the blow brought tears to Bastable's eyes, even more than the stinging pain of it. He wanted to cringe, but his body wouldn't cringe, it only swayed upright again, tensing itself against the next blow.
The man swung his arm back. Bastable closed his eyes.
But the blow never landed—he heard a sound at his side, a scrunching footfall and then the sound of another slap, loud as a pistol shot, yet not on his own cheek.
He opened his eyes quickly, and caught a black blur. For an instant the tears obscured the blur as it passed him, then his dummy4
vision cleared.
The black-shawled woman hit the man with the revolver again.
Well, it was more of a vigorous push than a hit, but it was just as good: in backing, the man tripped on the pavé and fell over in a wild confusion of arms and legs into the rubble behind him.
The woman swung round and knocked the shotgun barrel up. The shotgun exploded with an ear-splitting concussion as the owner staggered back.
The Mayor stepped forward and shouted at the woman.
The woman shouted—screamed—back at the Mayor.
The Mayor took another step forward, and it proved to be an unwise step. As he lifted his finger at her and opened his mouth to speak she back-handed his arm out of the way, putting him off-balance, and then caught him on the side of the head with her return swing. Something pink-and-white shot out of his mouth and fell at Bastable's feet.
Bastable looked down at a set of false teeth.
As he looked down the woman stepped sideways and trod—
either deliberately or accidently, he never knew which—on the Mayor's teeth.
Then she started to revile them. As usual, as always, the words were lost on him, and he couldn't even guess at their exact content. But their effect was as concussive as the shotgun blast, he could see that.
dummy4
Finally she swept an arm out to the side, pointing past and behind him. And as she did so there came a shrill answering wail which Bastable recognized instantly.
Alice!
There was another woman alongside him now, on his left side, with the unforgettable shawl-swathed bundle in her arms which she held up for him to inspect, as though for his approval, quite unmoved by the increasing noise which came from it.
He lowered his arms, and lifted one grimy finger to touch the little, scarlet, unrecognizable face. He felt that that was what the woman wanted him to do.
'Alice—little Alice,' he said, nodding at the woman.
Alice. Little nameless, parentless, lost, unknown, bereaved and abandoned Alice —
'Al-ees?' The woman looked at him questioningly. 'Al-ees?'
'Alice,' said Bastable. 'Alice.'
At which Alice, being Alice, quietened down in her arms, her crying trailing off into hiccoughs punctuating a tearful chuntering sound, which expressed only mild dissatisfaction where before there had been angry protest.
'Al-ees.' The woman nodded at him and lifted the baby high on her shoulder, out of his view once more, rocking her vigorously.
The first woman started to speak again, addressing the men dummy4
contemptuously now, as though the matter was settled, and there was really no more to be said. Indeed, when one of them started to say something she cut him off before he had reached the third word, in the same contemptuous tone, completing her own sentence with a two-handed gesture of dismissal which seemed to cow them utterly.