them away in the old tin trunk in the attic—for some reason, for some reason, for some unfathomable reason—
He didn't want to put them on, but more than that he didn't want to take off the wreckage of his battledress: that would be to burn his boats finally, to cross the last frontier between Captain Bastable and a nameless fugitive.
'I say, Willis—look here . . . '
Wimpy had already stripped himself down to a filthy string vest, and was unbuttoning his trousers.
'What is it?' Wimpy frowned at him.
'I mean ... is this . . . wise?'
What did he mean? He searched in his confused thoughts for what he meant, that would make sense to Wimpy.
'If we're not in uniform they can shoot us, I mean.'
The frown became pitying. 'I rather thought that was their general idea anyway, old boy.' Wimpy transferred his attention to removing his collar studs from his shirt and attaching them to the civilian shirt. When he had completed that task he rummaged again in the trunk and finally produced a collar-box.
Bastable watched him with a growing sense of desperation.
In another moment it would be too late, he felt.
'Out of hand, I mean—Willis!'
'Eh?' Wimpy upended the box and selected a stiffly-starched wing-collar. 'Out of hand? Yes ... I haven't worn one of these dummy4
since Repton ... And one size too big, I'd guess—but better too big than too small. . . Yes, well that's what I meant too, Harry—out of hand or in hand, it amounts to the same thing now that we've done a bunk, I shouldn't wonder.' He looked up at Bastable. 'Frankly, old boy, I don't believe we've got a prayer together—in uniform. But out of uniform.. .as civilians
—as refugees—the Jerries don't give a damn for refugees, they're too busy winning the war . . . out of uniform, maybe we do have a chance still—that's what I mean.'
'But—I can't speak a word of French—'
'Then don't speak at all. Let me do the talking—I'll say you're dumb.' Wimpy gave him a calculating look. 'I'll say you're a half-wit too, if you like, old boy.'
That was too close to the bone, and Bastable had a shrewd idea that it was intended to be so. 'You think you can pass as a Frenchman, then?' He tried to infuse sarcasm into the question.
'Not among Frenchmen—no. But to a German, Harry—could you tell a French-speaking German from a French-speaking Frenchman? Because I'm damned if I could.' So saying, Wimpy pulled the civilian shirt over his head and plunged his arms into its sleeves, as though to leave unsaid but clearly stated that the matter was over, the conversation ended and the decision made.
Bastable eyed the faded work-clothes on his lap. Wimpy had set aside a smart black coat and pin-striped trousers for himself, which, with the wing-collar, was the universal dummy4
uniform of the bank manager and the senior civil servant—
which, taken all together, must have been the old man's very best suit for formal occasions, presumably—while leaving him, Harry Bastable, with the role of the dumb servant, the stupid peasant, the half-wit!
It was a damnable, downright offensive thing to do without consultation. But the bitter truth which he had to face, although it was nonetheless insulting for being true, was that if this was what they were going to do, then this was the way it had to be done: without one word of French he was no better than an idiot—he had learnt that already. And, what hurt even more, was that beneath that humilitation there was a dark suspicion about his own lack of sense and courage, which the last twenty-four hours had raised within him.
He closed his eyes and stripped off his battledress blouse and shirt—ripped them off, rather, spilling buttons and feeling the filthy sweaty material tear, hating what he was doing and what he was about to do with equal misery.
Harry Bastable was dying again: just another death to add to all those previous deaths he had submitted to, on the way to that one real, inevitable one, waiting for him somewhere ahead—
'That's better ... a bit big, maybe, but I can hitch them up as high as possible—not bad, though ... not bad at all—'
Wimpy was mumbling to himself in the background, against another background of the noises of war which were still all dummy4
around them, but which the pounding of his own head blotted out as he fumbled with the buckles of his gaiters and tore his mud-caked trousers down over his equally muddy boots.
Damn, damn and damn! Where Wimpy's borrowed clothes were too big, his were almost too smalclass="underline" one heavily-patched knee, the stout material thinned down by a thousand wash-days, stretched and split under the pressure, to reveal the dirty white leg beneath—damn! And the final buttons of the trousers were impossible, and even though the gap was covered by the tunic, which was mercifully designed for a looser fitting, there were three full inches of hairy wrist sticking out of the sleeves.
'Ooof!' Wimpy exclained. 'My-bloody-ankle!'
Bastable stopped looking at the travesty of a French working-man which was himself, and looked at Wimpy.
He knew, as he looked, that there had been one part of his mind which had been chattering in the background all the time while he had been stripping off his own uniform and cramming himself into the denim tunic and trousers . . .
which had been chattering all the time What will Willis look like? What will Willis look like? because this mad scheme depended on what Wimpy looked like, and because he knew in his heart that there was no chance, no possibility, that Wimpy in an ill-fitting black coat and pin-striped trousers and wing-collar could look anything other than . .. ridiculous and laughable and utterly impossible.
dummy4
And yet, it wasn't so—even standing there without his boots on, balancing himself on one leg in his stockinged feet, it wasn't so—
The clothes were too big, not much too big, but no floorwalker in the men's department of Bastable's of Eastbourne would have dared to send a customer out in those clothes and still hope to keep his job when the customer's wife stormed back into the store: they had the same effect that such over-sized clothes always had on their wearer, shrinking him smaller than his own size—just as the clothes he himself was wearing would make him bigger and more awkward than he really was.
'Well?' said Wimpy, brushing dust from one black sleeve.
'Well?'
He was smaller, and he wasn't Wimpy—Wimpy, whom he had only ever seen in well-fitting tweeds, other than in the different uniforms of the regiment, from sharply-pressed battledress to the immaculate mess-kit of the Prince Regent's Own, with its primrose-yellow-and-dove-grey facings—it wasn't that Wimpy, those Wimpys, whom he already knew.
But it was another Wimpy.
'Well?' repeated Wimpy.
Another Wimpy—adam's apple prominent as it never had been before above the too-roomy collar, with its tightly knotted black tie: a Wimpy from behind some desk stacked with invoices and printed forms and bank statements, whom dummy4
he didn't know.
'For God's sake, Harry—'
'You look all right. Except for the feet, Willis.'
'You look . . . bloody marvellous, old boy—feet and all.'
Wimpy looked down at his own feet. 'But my ankle's going to be a problem again, I'm afraid.' He shook his head. 'I don't think I can even get my boot back on again, either.'
'Marvellous?'
Wimpy raised his eyes. 'Ferocious, let's say—if you could just manage to look a bit more frightened and stupid, that would be more proletarian ... But you damn well don't look like a British officer on the run, old boy. In fact, all you need is a cloth cap, and I've got one here . . . It's a bit too clean, but if you rub some mud from your uniform on it—and then some dust from the floor . . . then, you'll do, Harry, you'll do, by God!'