feelings of relief for their own immediate prospects and disappointment for the British Army. In this part of the battlefield the counter-attack had clearly failed: the tanks he had seen, when rescue and safety had seemed for a moment to be only minutes away, must have marked the furthest point of the assault, unsupported by infantry, the final wave of a tide already ebbing. It had been just enough to create a fortunate confusion, without which their madcap escape from the aid post would almost certainly have failed—he realized that with a shiver of fear at the so-nearly might-have-been. It had saved them . . . but it had still left them high-and-dry in enemy territory—or in a no-man's-land the enemy had been quick to recapture.
It all depended on how speedily those SS officers returned to hunt for their missing prisoners ... Unless, of course, the British tanks or the German dive-bombers had accounted for the bastards . . .
The savage hope that they had been shot to pieces, blown limb from limb, or crushed to bloody pulp under steel tank treads flared within him, so that he tightened his grip on the limpet which was attached to his body.
The limpet returned the grip, holding him as though her life depended on it.
And there was no answer to that—except that it did depend on him now.
The moment was up.
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Very carefully, blindly but very carefully, forcing himself to concentrate on each narrow tread in turn rather than on the fearful unknown beyond the curtain, Harry Bastable descended the attic stair.
Now the curtain was ahead of him.
It wasn't the unknown: it was the Germans who were beyond that curtain, and this was the last frontier between him and them—and Wimpy was mad to make him do what he was doing, quite mad, and he had been just as mad, and weak and foolish too, to let himself be pushed and stampeded into this folly.
Wimpy had to be stopped before it was too late!
He pushed between the curtains.
It was too late: Wimpy was already almost at the bottom of the main staircase; he had changed his method of locomotion from hands-and-knees to hands-and-bottom, sliding from tread to tread with his bandaged foot and ankle stuck out stiffly ahead of him and carrying small avalanches of fallen plaster along with him, the dust of it rising all around.
'Willis!'
It was too late. Even as he cried the name Wimpy reached the ground floor of the hall, grasped the newel-post, pulled himself upright and started to hop towards the open front door. Four desperate hops brought him within arm's length of the door; steadying himself on one jamb he began to wave the white square of linen frantically with his free hand.
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The die was cast, Wimpy had cast it, and there could be no going back to the attic now. This was still madness, but it was madness without choice—he had been conscripted into it and was part of it, and could only go forward with it.
He crunched hurriedly across the landing and on to the main stairs. At least they were less steep than the ones which led to the attic—
The attic! He had forgotten to hide their uniforms in the attic! Their battledress blouses, with their captains' pips plain to see, and their trousers and their gaiters— they were still lying there in the middle of the floor, for the first German to recognize—oh, God!
Panic swirled around him half-way down the stairs, starting the sweat all over him. It was too late— he couldn't go back now, he had to join Wimpy at the door— it was too late, but the first German into that attic . . Oh, God!
'Good man!' murmured Wimpy out of the corner of his mouth. 'Now—hold the child for them to see and wave the jolly old white flag so they can't mistake us.'
They?
Bastable's awful knowledge of his failure to hide the uniforms thumped simultaneously inside his head and in his chest as he stared out of the doorway.
They were there, unimaginably, in the road outside—in the very garden itself— men and vehicles, only a few yards away.
And in the attic above, also just a few yards away—
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'Wave it, old boy—wave it,' murmured Wimpy.
Bastable stared hypnotically at the Germans. 'We've got to get away,' he hissed.
Wimpy nodded, and continued to wave his white square.
'I mean right now!'
'Soon . . . soon,' murmured Wimpy reassuringly.
'Now!'
Wimpy didn't look at him. 'I-can't-walk-Harry...' his lips hardly moved as he spoke ' . .. we'll have-to-wait. . . to-get . . .
the-cart.'
Bastable focused on the hand-cart in the gateway, with its scatter of bundles and belongings. Not ten yards from it a large grey open car was parked in the track,with a group of German officers in and around it. A long file of soldiers was threading its way along the track, past the car. From behind him, coming from the open fields behind the house, he could hear the roar-and-squeal of tanks.
He was aware of being squeezed by two equal fears, each the more terrible for its inevitability.
They would come . . . and they would search the house, and they would find the battledress . . . which he had left, which he had left. And that would be the end of it, then.
That was inevitable. It would happen.
Therefore, because that was his fault—the end of it ...
therefore he had to get the cart first— now.
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That was also inevitable: he would make it inevitable because he would do it, because he had left himself no choice but to do it. Now—
'I'm-going-to-get-the-cart,' he whispered to Wimpy. 'You . . .
take-the-child.'
The little limpet held on to him like grim death, as he had known she would, tightening matchstick arms and legs convulsively round him and sobbing wordlessly s he prised them loose.
'Harry—' Wimpy began doubtfully.
' Take-her-damn-you!'
At last he was free of her. For a final instant he met Wimpy's eyes across her shoulder.
'Harry ... act stupid—dumb . .. and frightened, Harry—'
Bastable turned away, towards the garden and the enemy, lifting both arms above his shoulders, the square of white linen dangling from one hand.
His legs felt weak, yet stiff at the same time, and the sweat lay cold on his face. He could hear all the sounds around him, each one an individual sensation, but they were all meaningless: only what he could see ahead of him mattered.
The hand-cart was nearer.
The German officers were arguing. One of them had a map held open—no, a map-case of some kind—
Suddenly they looked up at him, and in the same instant dummy4
someone shouted loudly and angrily.
Bastable looked in the direction of the shout and saw a German soldier running towards him The German shouted again and threw his rifle to his shoulder. Bastable stopped in instinctive terror, cringing from the rifle.
Someone else shouted—it was one of the officers from the group by the car. The German soldier lowered his rifle, but still kept it levelled at Bastable's chest. The officer barked out another order, and the soldier advanced menacingly, until he was within two yards of him.
Now it was finished. It had all been madness from the start, from the very beginning, but row it was finished.
The soldier swore guttural words at him, unintelligible sounds which could only be questions or orders, but which only served to increase his abject helplessness.
He looked around desperately, taking in the sharp images of his despair, knowing that they couldn't help him: the garden, with its sweet-williams flowering brightly, the trees—