It wasn't the kitchen, it was a parlour of some kind, and it was almost filled with an immense table covered with a biege moquette cloth on which a bowl of artificial fruit was the centre-piece. Both were covered with fallen plaster.
In the corner of the room, by the window, an old man with white hair and a bushy white moustache sat staring at him from the depths of an armchair. A gold watch on a chain hung down from the centre button of his waist-coat. Like the moquette table-cloth and the bowl of artificial fruit, he was covered with dust and fallen plaster.
Bastable pushed back out of the room so hurriedly that he ran into Wimpy in the passage.
'W—!' Wimpy staggered on one leg, reaching for the support of the wall. 'I say—steady on, old boy!' he protested.
Bastable shouldered the second door open without bothering to try the door-handle.
This was the kitchen.
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Pots and pans, a sink with a hand-pump for water, a great black range—there was still a fire smouldering in it.
They had left it too long, they had left it too long and too late, the old couple had! They had been too old to take the road—
too old and too foolish and too afraid—and too late. . .
Or... this had been all they had, everything they had in the world, and they hadn't wanted to leave it, couldn't bring themselves to leave it— the barometer and the hat-stand and the artificial fruit and the pots and pans—
And the British had gone, anyway.
And the Germans had come — God! Maybe they could remember another time, the old couple—maybe they had been here that other time, when the British hadn't gone, and the Germans hadn't come—but this time the British had gone, and the Germans had come, and they had been safe after all, because not even the Germans would bother about an old couple in their ugly little house on the edge of the village.
And then the British had come back and it had been too late.
God damn and blast it all to hell!
'The old boy's dead too, poor old bugger,' said Wimpy from the doorway behind him.
Bastable turned towards him.
'Is that a parcel of food on the table there?' Wimpy pointed with one hand. In the other hand, with the gold chain dripping down between his fingers, was the old man's watch.
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'And what's in that jug?'
'What are you doing with that watch?'
'It's still going—is that milk, by any chance?'
'What-are-you-doing-with-that-watch?'
'Don't shout, Harry—the Germans took my wrist-watch—we need a watch ... Is that milk?' Wimpy frowned at him. 'Don't be a fool. Harry— he doesn't need it. And we do.'
The blood stopped drumming in Bastable's head. He had been about to make a fool of himself by losing control, like the coward he was, while Wimpy was behaving like a soldier.
There was an untidy parcel on the green-and-white chequered oil-cloth which covered the kitchen table, and a tall white jug beside it—all in the inevitable litter of plaster.
He reached forward and picked up the jug. There was plaster also on the thick yellow cream, and a large black fly moving feebly in it, drowning slowly in the midst of plenty.
He stuck a dirty finger into the cream and flicked the fly out of the jug, and lifted the jug to his lips.
The milk under the cream and plaster was thin and sour, and marvellously, gloriously cool and refreshing as it ran down his sandpaper throat, and out of the corner of his mouth down his chin. He had never drunk anything so beautiful in his life, it was all the drinks he had ever drunk, on all the occasions when he had been thirsty, rolled into one blissful quenching.
'Hold on, old boy—leave some for me then,' said Wimpy dummy4
reproachfully, reaching across the corner of the table.
Bastable looked down into the jug, and found that he had drained two thirds of it already.
'Thanks—' Wimpy hopped round and grabbed the jug from him '—thanks a lot—' he tipped the jug against his face, the watch-chain swinging from one hand in a spatter of overflowing milk.
Well, fuck you too, old boy, thought Bastable unrepentantly, aware that he was still thirsty—and there was the pump at the sink, just waiting for him!
For the first dozen strokes the thing only squeaked and wheezed as he banged the handle up and down with increasing fury. Then he felt the pressure draw and pull against the plunger, and in the next instant a powerful stream of water splashed into the sink beside him.
He lowered his face into it, still pumping with one hand; this was better than the sour milk even—it went into his mouth and on to his cheeks and into his eyes and down his neck, slaking his thirst and washing away mud and sweat at the same time, making him alive and almost human again.
He was aware that Wimpy was waiting his turn, but Wimpy could bloody-well wait his turn, and that was that—he managed to get his neck under the jet, and felt the delicious coldness spread across his scalp, soaking in and saturating, and driving everything out of his head with the relief of it, even the awareness—just for a moment, the awareness —
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that the whole bloody world was full of dead people—dead Fusiliers—dead officers and dead men—and dead Mendips and dead Tynesiders, and dead Germans, and old women dead in the dusty road and old men dead in the chairs— dead fucking everyone, except him and Wimpy, who ought to have been dead ten times over, but weren't, but were alive—
alive—
In the end, he let Wimpy have his turn under the pump, starting him off and then fastening his hand on the pump-handle as he also spluttered and porpoised with relief under the deluge.
He was hungry now—dripping wet, and with his uniform still caked with mud—but too hungry to care about that.
He tore open the parcel on the table. There were the usual long French loaves—yesterday's bread, or maybe last week's by the crumbly hardness of it—and a smelly round cheese, and an even smellier sausage, full of garlic, which he hated, but which he bit into nevertheless.
'Harry!'
Wimpy grabbed him by the arm and swung him round just as the panic in the cry got through to him.
'What?'
' Christ—' Water was dripping down Wimpy's face, but words for once had failed him, he could only point through the broken window, down the length of the kitchen garden at the back of the house, towards the field beyond.
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Tanks—
German tanks—
Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!
Panic again!
'Wait for me—help me!' cried Wimpy.
Bastable was already at the door, and he had no intention of coming back, but Wimpy had no intention of being left behind either and he had somehow reached Bastable before Bastable was able to get through the door into the hallway, and he hung on like grim death once he'd made contact.
They lurched down the passageway, bumping from one side to the other.
'Up the stairs—up the stairs,' cried Wimpy, pushing him sideways towards the newel-post.
Bastable looked up the staircase. It was steep and it was narrow, and he was never going to be able to haul Wimpy up there, one step at a time .. . But he was also never going to get Wimpy out through the front door and down to the safety of the ditch in time, either: this was the moment to drop him and run—it had come at last—
Clear through the open front door came the hideously familiar squeal-and-roar, terrifyingly loud.
They were trapped. They had waited too long, just as the old couple—the old man and the old woman—had done before dummy4