The ultimate viva voce question: even if he'd answered it, they'd probably have shot him. But I'll bet he didn't answer it
—not him!'
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Wimpy continued to stare at hirn, and through him into the past of yesterday evening, outside the barn beside the stream, beside the bridge, on the edge of Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts, in the middle of nowhere that mattered in the whole of France—
'I'll bet he told them to get stuffed. So they shot him pour encourager les autres' said Wimpy. 'And of course that's exactly what it did, by God! But not in the way they expected.
Because once they'd shot Tetley-Robinson, they got the same answer from the next man— get stuffed— and the next man—'
Abruptly he was no longer looking through Harry Bastable, but at him. 'He coined "Wimpy", old boy, did Major Tetley-Robinson, because he was a man of limited reading. The Times was much too difficult for him—too many words, and not enough pictures, don't you know. He pretended to read it but he always preferred the popular papers—the yellow press. Don't you remember how he used to grab the News of the World in the Mess at breakfast on Sunday, Harry?
"Vicar's daughter tells of Night of Terror" and "Scoutmaster jailed after campfire Orgies", that was his favourite reading.
And first look at Lilliput and London Opinion for the girl with the bare tits? Don't you remember?'
Bastable remembered. Everybody in the Mess knew which papers and magazines not to touch until the Second-in-Command of the Prince Regent's Own South Downs Fusiliers had abstracted them from the array on the huge mahogany table and tossed them down, crumpled and dogeared on the dummy4
floor beside his chair. Green subalterns had been mercilessly savaged (since, by custom, nobody warned them) for contravening that unwritten law.
But what did that have to do with 'Wimpy'? And 'that ultimate viva voce question', whatever that meant? And outside the barn at Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts, where it had all ended in senseless bloody murder?
'My dear chap—"Wimpy" is a character in a comic strip in one of those awful rags,' said Wimpy simply. '"J. Wellington Wimpy" is one of Popeye's friends—he has a weakness for eating some sort of American toasted meat bun—a sort of hot sandwich, I suppose . . . And for speaking in complete sentences—that was what Tetley-Robinson found so absolutely outrageous in me ... Let's say ... let's just say he thought that I talked too much, old boy, eh?'
He regarded Bastable with the merest twitch of a smile.
'Which I do, of course. But then, it comes from being exposed to whole generations of small sullen boys—and larger boys too, I'm sorry to say—who don't know the subjunctive of amo and haven't mastered their reflexive pronouns in any recognizable form of the Latin language . . . I'm afraid that a captive audience of recalcitrant middle-class boys is bound to bring out the worst in a man, he has to fill the silence with his own voice ... It isn't often that one encounters a really clever boy like Nigel Audley's young David—Latin irregular verbs were a Goliath well within reach of that young David's slingshot. He had no trouble with them, but then he was an dummy4
exception—' he caught the expression on Bastable's face '—
but have I said something wrong now, old boy?'
'No . . . no . . .' Bastable tried not to look at him. That mention of 'young David' 'Nigel Audley's young David'— my boy David—not my son, not my son—but my boy— took him back hideously to the room in the French lady's house, and that final bubbling death rattle which had cut off Audley's last message to Wimpy. But he couldn't pass that on now, this was not the time and the place for it, if there was ever a time and place.
Yet now he was in another situation where he had to say something to head Wimpy off from any further question about Nigel Audley, or Nigel Audley's young David, who had known all the answers to Wimpy's questions, and was therefore exceptional among his fellow schoolboys—like father, like son, for God's sake: Nigel Audley had never been at a loss to know what to say—unlike Herbert Bastable's young Henry, who could never make head nor tail of hic, hoec, hoc and Caesar's Gallic Wars, any more than he could conjugate ê tre and avoir in all their variation, or handle the Boys anti-tank rifle properly—
'What did you do?'
It was exactly like Why are you called ' Wimpy', except that it was the real question at last, inadequately phrased but still the one he had been searching for all along in the midst of the other questions.
'What d'you mean—what did I do?' Wimpy frowned.
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Bastable seized the chance of elaborating what he had said, necessity cancelling out the delicacy of the enquiry. 'Why do they want... Captain Willis? What have you done?'
'Oh—I see!' Wimpy's face cleared. 'You haven't got the point, old boy—I thought you had! I haven't done anything—'
'What?'
'Not a damn thing! Except run away, that is — and hide in a drain, and a lot of other uncomfortable places, like in hedges and behind dungheaps, don't you know.'
'But—but . . . ?'
'You haven't got the point at all. But then neither did I at first... But... it's you they want, Harry—don't you see? It isn't me at all—' Wimpy cut off the explanation quickly '—now, just lie back and take it easy, Captain—and that's an order . . .
doctor's orders, in fact. Right?'
Bastable was aware that there were Germans in his immediate vision, to Wimpy's left. He rolled his eyes uneasily to take them in more accurately as Wimpy rose to his feet to face them.
They were new Germans—or at least not the senior officer and the young fresh-faced one, certainly. With a sudden spasm of fear he searched their collars for the deadly lightning zig-zag which he had first seen on the tunic Wimpy had exhibited as a trophy on the edge of the wood outside Colembert. But these soldiers, he saw with relief, had no such distinguishing marks of death: they were heavily armed, and dummy4
dusty and dirty like the men lounging among the vehicles a few yards away, but they appeared to be ordinary, run-of-the-mill soldiers.
Also, they bore themselves deferentially, almost apologetically, not like captors with prisoners but more as other ranks in the presence of officers.
The foremost one, who was built like a tank and had badges of rank on his arm, came to attention in front of Wimpy, clicking his heels and raising his arm in a military salute.
'Yes?' said Wimpy sharply, half-lifting his arm to return the salute, and then remembering at the last moment that he was wearing nothing on his head. 'But nicht . . . nicht speaken . . .
Deutsch, old boy. Understand—comprenez?'
Evidently Wimpy was not going to reveal that he had a good working knowledge of German, as well as French and Latin and Greek, so long as that secret might be of service to them.
The German started to say something, the tone of his voice matching his bearing, but then thought better of it and stood to one side, gesturing to the men behind him. The ranks parted to reveal two men carrying a stretcher.
'Oh, Christ!' murmured Wimpy.
The stretcher-bearers advanced towards the ex-schoolmaster and deposited the stretcher at his feet. Bastable lifted himself on to his elbows to get a better view of its occupant.
The wounded man was a German soldier.
Bastable craned his neck. The German was dark-haired and dummy4
white-faced, and very young, and his tunic and trousers were undone, but there was no sign of any wound on him. As Bastable stared at him the boy moved his head and for an instant their eyes met. Then he twisted his head away, as though embarrassed, and at the same time arched his body and gripped the side of the stretcher as if the sudden movement had hurt him.