chestnut trees—the long grey car and its occupants—its peak-capped officers festooned with field glasses and pistols and maps—and the pathetic contrast of the handcart, with the old couple's belongings— Oh, God, help me! Help me!
The soldier shouted at him again, jerking the rifle to point his questions.
Bastable lowered one arm cautiously and pointed at the hand-cart.
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The soldier cast a quick glance at the cart, then returned to Bastable wearing an expression of irritation rather than anger on his face.
'Nein, nein—' The short explosive gibberish which followed was accompanied first by a vigorous shake of the steel-helmeted head and then by a nod towards the house which translated the likely meaning of the words.
'Clear off at once, you stupid bugger!'
Bastable stood his ground. He was still frightened—he was indeed so frightened that even if he had decided not to stand still he wasn't sure that his legs would have obeyed his brain
—but he was also prey to other fears which refused to release him.
Simply, he had to have that bloody cart.
He pointed at it again.
The soldier sighed, reversed his rifle, took two quick steps forward and hit Bastable in the chest with the flat of the stock.
The blow wasn't hard, it was more of a push than a thump, but Bastable knew with a sickening certainty that if he still refused to retreat then the next one would be very hard indeed.
'Halt!'
The sharp command came from the right, out of his vision, but the soldier's instant obedience to it transformed Bastable's choice of evils into no choice at alclass="underline" that was an dummy4
officer-voice, and now it was discovery, not injury or retreat, which he faced.
Not that faced was the right word, for he was too scared to lift his eyes from the patch of dirt on which they had focused sullenly after the thump on the chest, a circumference which just included the muddy jackboots of his tormentor.
As he watched the jackboots they came to attention.
The officer spoke sharply again, and the boot-heels clicked.
A very small pebble and fragment of dried mud stood out in high relief in the pathway. A small black beetle scrambled frantically across it, zig-zagging and lurching as though aware of its danger but obstinately determined to disregard it.
'M'sieur—'
Oh God! The German officer was addressing him in French!
'M'sieur . . . kes-ke-voo-voolay, m'sieur?'
Meaningless. The beetle mounted a larger pebble, slithered sideways and rolled over on to its back, its legs waving helplessly in the air. Bastable raised his eyes five degrees, to take in a new pair of jackboots. They were noticeably superior to the soldier's boots, not only recently polished under their coating of dust but also narrower and better-fitting.
'M'sieur?'
The voice went with the boots. There were Germans and Germans, as he had good cause to know from his own dummy4
experience now; yet it seemed more strange that any one of them should speak to a French peasant so courteously, thought Bastable suspiciously.
But whatever the question he had no reply to it, only a gesture. Without looking up, he pointed once more at the hand-cart.
'Comment?' There was a moment's pause. 'Ach—so! Mein Gott—' The German officer rapped out an order so peremptorily that Bastable was startled into looking up.
'Schnell, schnell!' the officer chivvied the soldier.
The soldier grounded his rifle hastily and pushed back the hand-cart, revealing the little old Frenchwoman, who had lain almost hidden among the fallen bundles on the far side of it.
The German soldier bent down and gathered her up into his arms, her head cradled in the crook of one arm, her legs hanging down limply from the other. As he lifted her, one of the carpet slippers dropped to the ground. He looked questioningly at his officer, who nodded towards Bastable.
The soldier marched stiffly round the cart and presented the tiny black-clad corpse to Bastable, extending her as though she was weightless.
Indeed, she was a mere featherweight. The child he had held in his arms a few minutes ago had more substance to her, so it seemed, though perhaps that had been an illusion created by the limpet-grip and the beating heart. Either way, he had dummy4
no experience on which to draw other comparisons, this was his first dead grandmother, just as little nameless Alice had been his first live baby. All he could think of was that, of all the experiences he had tried to imagine, and to steel himself against these last months, no wildest dream had prepared him for such realities.
'Ay be-an, m'sieur,' said the German officer, nodding again at him. 'Noos aliens parlay aveck votrer patron.'
Parlay?
Speak.
Bastable didn't want to speak.
He wanted the hand-cart.
He lowered the corpse of the old woman into the cart and swung the handles to point it towards the house, ignoring the Germans—
And stopped abruptly, as he saw that the German officer was already ahead of him, striding purposefully up the pathway towards the doorway, towards Wimpy.
XIV
Wimpy had acquired a hat from somewhere. When he had got it, Bastable had no idea; but now it was on Wimpy's head
—the old Frenchman's Sunday hat, something like an Anthony Eden homburg, but a French version of it from an earlier era, with different proportions of brim and crown.
dummy4
The trouble was, it suffered from the same defect as the suit itself: it was just one full size too big, so that it came down low on Wimpy's forehead and appeared, indeed, to be resting on his ears; and the net effect of the whole outfit turned Wimpy into a preposterous figure, out of a Charlie Chaplin two-reeler.
But Harry Bastable was a million miles away from the back stalls of the Tivoli Cinema and laughter, as the German officer advanced towards this travesty; half of him wanted to run away, but didn't know where to fun, and the other half wanted to help Wimpy, but didn't know how to do it.
Yet he had to do something, because he couldn't just stand there holding the cart with the old woman on it.
He had come for the cart, and he had got the cart. Only now he had also got the old woman, because that was what the German officer had assumed he had come for. So now he had to behave as the German officer would expect him to behave
—he had to behave as the man he was supposed to be would behave!
The decision was like a spark igniting him into action, releasing him from indecision. One moment the cart was stationary, the next it was almost running away with him: it lurched and bucked as its unsprung bicycle wheels rebounded off unseen obstacles. The old woman lost her second carpet-slipper, bouncing up and moving horribly as though she was alive again before settling finally among the bundles on which she lay. The German officer heard the dummy4
sound of the cart behind him just in time to jump out of its way, almost losing his balance in a clump of delphiniums.
'Onri! Onri!' cried Wimpy. 'Non! Non!'
Bastable pulled back at the cart's momentum, swinging it broadside in front of the doorway, almost tipping its contents at Wimpy's feet—he was aware simultaneously as he fought to hold the handles down that the child was struggling in Wimpy's arms on one side of him and the German officer was trampling down the delphiniums in an effort to keep his footing on the other, and that the old woman's black arm had swung out of the cart and was entangling itself in the spokes of the wheel.
For an instant everything was moving. Then everything stopped: the child, imprisoned in Wimpy's arms, the officer, steady in the flower-bed, and the cart stationary, dusty black arm and limp white hand, veined and mottled with old age, hanging down against the wheel.
He caught his breath and stared at Wimpy anxiously, beginning now to doubt the wisdom of his impetuous action.