The Runaways (15 page)

Tonks met him at the gate with a welcome bark, but Smiler gave him a sharp word of warning and Tonks was obediently quiet. He rode round to the stable and put all his stuff up into the loft under a bale of straw. Then he went up to the garden and let the Twelve Apostles out into their run, picked up the eggs which had been laid overnight, and took them down to the kitchen.

While he was there Mrs Lakey came in. She gave him an odd look and said, ‘You're around early this morning, Boy. Bad conscience or bad dreams, or both?'

‘It, was all that rain, Mrs Lakey. I couldn't sleep.'

‘At your age you should sleep through a hurricane.'

She gave him his coffee and then Smiler went about his morning jobs. Although he did his work well his mind wasn't really on it. Last night in making his plans he had been confident, but now as the moment for putting them into action grew nearer and nearer he wasn't so sure about them. People liked you and were friendly to you, and all that. But when it came to doing a real favour – and without asking too many questions… Well, that was a horse of a different colour. However, he couldn't be gloomy for long. It was such a splendid morning after the rain. The April sun was a burnished ball in the sky. The rooks were cawing their heads off in their nesting colony at the top of the roadside elms. Blackbirds and thrushes were filling the air with riotous song and the paddock, when he exercised the dogs, was a sheet of green enamel. A wren had nested in the stable and flitted fussily around while Smiler was mucking it out. Half-way through the morning Lemon Drop and Captain Black's Alsatian had a fight and Smiler had to break it up. Outdoor work had made him strong now and he held them apart easily, giving them both a good talking-to.

At mid-day Miss Milly gave him boiled beef and carrots and his favourite jam roll with custard. When she asked him what he had done on his Sunday off he felt that it was better to say he'd gone for a bike ride, rather than tell her about Joe and the peewees' eggs. But she gave him an awkward moment when she said, ‘I saw you come from my bedroom window this morning, Johnny. What on earth was all that stuff on your back?'

‘Stuff, Miss Milly?'

Miss Milly grinned. ‘Yes, stuff, Johnny. A big package on your back.'

Smiler thought fast. ‘ Oh, that, Miss Milly. That's some stuff my auntie wants me to take to the cleaners in Warminster on the way back.'

‘You don't leave till half-past five, Johnny. They'll be shut.' Smiler's working time had been extended with the lengthening evenings.

‘Not till six, Miss Milly. I can just make it.'

Miss Milly shook her head. ‘I don't want you cycling like a mad thing up that dangerous main road.' She winked at him. ‘Mrs Lakey's taking Bacon to be shoed at four. You leave at five. But keep it to yourself, Johnny, or there will be considerable dissension between ever-loving sisters.'

‘Thank you, Miss Milly.'

So Smiler left at five, laden with his household goods, to face the most testing part of the day.

He rode up the valley to Joe's cottage and left his bicycle and belongings just inside the garden gate. He went round the back of the cottage and found Joe repainting the faded sign on the side of his green van. The sign read – JOE RINGER – DEALER – ALL GOODS HANDLED – LOWEST PRICES. Joe had got as far as the word PRICES.

He turned and saw Smiler and paint dripped off his brush to the yard floor.

He grinned and said, ‘ Hullo, Johnny. Finished for the day?'

‘Yes, Mr Ringer.'

Joe frowned. ‘Joe it is and Joe it must stay.' He turned and pointed to the fresh white sign. ‘Eye-catcher, eh? Lowest Prices – know what that means? If
they
got something to sell – I pays the lowest prices. But if
they
wants something from me … well, then if I don't like their face
they
pays the highest prices. Economics, that is. What you hoppin' about from one leg to the other for?'

‘I'm all right, Joe.'

‘Then why you lookin' as though you'd lost a tenpence and found five?'

Smiler hesitated for a moment and then decided to plunge. ‘ I got a bit of a problem, Joe.'

‘We all have, lad. Is it economic, personal, or religious? Help offered for all but the last. Like a glass of cider to loosen your tongue?'

‘No thank you, Joe.'

‘Then I will – to give me strength. From the look of your face you must have murdered the Lord Mayor of London. Here, hold this brush.'

Joe handed the brush to Smiler and went to the house. He returned with the cider jar and an old chipped china mug. He filled the mug and sat down on a box.

‘Now then, Johnny me lad. Let's hear your problem.'

Smiler hesitated for a moment and then he blurted out, ‘I got to find lodgings, Joe. And … and … I thought you might be able to help me.'

Joe grinned. ‘Seeing as we're friends, and that's what friends is for, eh? Helping one another. But don't let's give the old horse a good gallop afore we knows where we're goin'. What you want lodgings for? You got a perfectly good auntie over at Crockerton. Don't tell me you've had an up-and-downer with her?'

‘No, we haven't quarrelled. It just is … well…' Smiler didn't like telling a lie to Joe, but for safety's sake he had to.

‘Well, she's gone away. This morning. And she won't be back for a month. More maybe. And she thought it would be better if I found lodgings near the job. I could pay about two pounds a week. And if wanted give a hand around the place. And then –'

‘Whoa!' cried Joe. ‘Rein her in a bit! Your auntie's gone off this morning?'

‘That's right.'

‘Why, me lad?'

‘Her sister's very sick. Down in … in Bristol.'

Joe considered this and said slyly, ‘You sure it's Bristol and not, say, Yarmouth?'

‘It's Bristol. She's very old and very sick, this sister. She's my auntie, too.' Smiler was rather pleased with this last touch.

‘Naturally;' said Joe. ‘And your aunt only heard about this this morning and had to pack her gear and hump it away to Bristol?'

‘Yes.'

‘Short notice, eh? But then sisters is always inconsiderate to one another – they tell me. Who's going to look after Hillside Bungalow?'

‘The woman next door.'

‘As a good neighbour should. You'll go there now and then to run an eye over it, like?'

‘Most week-ends, yes.'

Joe finished his mug of cider and refilled it. He sat considering Smiler very closely, his face, brown as polished oak, half-thoughtful, half-smiling.

Then he said, ‘You want to give me a straight answer to a straight question, Johnny?'

‘Of course, Mr Ring – … I mean, Joe.'

‘Well, then Johnny, me lad, you listen carefully. I'm a man as likes to keep his own business to hisself. I make a living and the ways I do it ain't always by the book. But I haven't never done anything really bad. You know what I mean by that?'

‘I think so, Joe.'

‘You'd better
know
so, Johnny. By really bad I means something you wake up and think about in the night – and you know it was really bad and you wish you'd never done it. You get what I mean, Johnny?'

‘I think so, Joe.'

‘I mean like I wouldn't want to help anyone to find lodgings that had, say, pinched money out of the church box, or knocked off the till in a shop, or had been some kind of tearaway who'd think nothing, say, of bundling a poor old lady off a pavement and pinching her handbag. Them's the kind I wouldn't help. So give me a straight answer, Johnny. You ever done anything like that?'

Smiler hesitated. He liked Joe and he wasn't going to lie to him over this – not even to get a good lodgings.

He said, ‘I pinched a few comic books sometimes. And, maybe, nicked a bottle of milk or a bar of chocolate that just happened to be there. But I didn't ever do anything bad like you said. Not ever. Cross me throat and hope to die!' He pulled the edge of his hand across his neck.

Joe nodded. ‘Just like I thought.' He stood up. ‘Well then, about these lodgings. I got to admit that they're hard to come by. Specially at the price you're offerin'. But it just so happens that I like a bit of young company about the place. And, it just so happens that there's two bedrooms here and I only uses one. And, it just so happens, Johnny me lad, that not bein' hard up for an odd penny I ain't out to make a profit from a friend – so you can have the room for a quid a week. Make your own bed, keep your room tidy, help in the house – and the yard! And neither of us ask awkward questions of the other when we can see as how they ain't in place. Suit you?'

Delighted, Smiler cried, ‘Oh, thank you, Mr Ringer!'

Joe frowned. ‘'Nother thing. Every time you call me Mr Ringer you muck out the pig pen. Joe it is.'

‘I won't forget, Joe.'

‘Don't mind if you do now and then – that pig pen's an awful chore. Now then, pop out and get your bike and your stuff. I seed you comin' along the lane humped up like a bloomin' camel. And Johnny, another thing.'

‘Yes?'

‘I don't think as I would mention your change of address to Mrs Lakey and Miss Milly. They mightn't think I was a fit and proper person for you to lodge with.'

‘Of course they would. You're super.'

‘All the same. Don't let on. What women don't know won't worry ' em. Though I must say, they usually finds out in the end. Bring your stuff in, and then we'll go get ourselves a couple of fat trout for supper.'

At the time when Smiler was taking his belongings into Joe's cottage Yarra was coming out of her den on the hillside. Imber village had been full of training soldiers all day and they had stayed rather later than they usually did. Yarra, too wise now to risk showing herself when there were human beings about, had kept in the den or at its mouth all day. When the cubs were full of milk and sleeping, she had lain half in and half out of the entrance watching the valley and the village below. All day there had been a movement of tanks and trucks through the place, the crackle of blank ammunition being fired and, now and again, a green or red flare would burst in the bright air and drift earthwards with a plume of tawny smoke rising from it. Higher up the combe a squad of soldiers had been firing two-inch mortar bombs over the ridge at an unseen target. Once a badly aimed mortar bomb had exploded on the ridge thirty yards behind the cave. It had shaken loose chalk and small stones from the roof. Yarra, touchy now that she had young to protect, had grown angry and hungry. But she would not leave the den until the men had gone from the village.

When at last the valley and the village were peaceful, Yarra left the cave. She moved swiftly up on to the ridge and then passed along it just below the skyline. The dry, tawny grasses of winter were marked now with new growths. Trefoils and small harebells showed their blossoms on the rabbit-bitten bare patches. Hungry, Yarra's keen eyes marked every movement around her: the flight of an early bee; the dance of a small hatch of flies above a rain pool; the flirt of wing and the scut of a rabbit's tail. But she wasn't interested in a rabbit. She wanted more substantial game.

High above Yarra three pairs of eyes watched her. The two circling buzzards, lazing aloft on a rising thermal current, saw her and drifted in her wake. While they mostly hunted for themselves, taking small birds, rodents and young rabbits, they were not too proud to feast at the remains of another animal's table. In the past Yarra had provided them with free hare and deer leftovers. So they followed her, spiralling round and round, waiting for her to make a kill.

The carrion crow, an ancient, weathered bird of the plains, watched Yarra too. Sliding across wind above her, but far below the buzzards, he turned a neat somersault and came down under the stiff breeze to perch on a solitary thorn that marked the valley ridge a few hundred yards from the cave. The crow knew the buzzards were watching Yarra's movements. He knew that if she made a kill they would give him no peace to take a supper from the leavings. It was not that he was afraid of them; but they were big, flappy-winged birds. They would – as they had often done – come sailing down above him, rolling and mewing a few feet above his head and upsetting him. This evening the crow felt in the mood for a more peaceful meal. And at this time of the year he knew where to find one. This was the time of the year when Nature began to spread her banquet for the predators. Nests were filling with young birds. The rabbit holes and warrens held young. The hare forms in the young bracken and tall grasses sheltered leverets, and almost every dead mole hill held a mouse's nest that could be dug out. The carrion crow knew that any hole or cranny was likely to hold something good to eat.

For many days now he had seen Yarra coming out of her cave entrance and he was curious. He watched her move away into the distant folds of the plain and then he flapped slowly down to settle on an ash outside the entrance.

He cocked his head and listened for any sound from the cave. He could hear nothing because the cubs were deep in milk-gorged sleep. He sat there for ten minutes and considered the entrance. It was bigger than most he knew. He was a wise old bird and realized that once inside a rabbit hole there was little chance of using wings for flight. All he would have was his great black beak and claws to defend himself. He considered the cave entrance for a while, the westering sun striking turquoise and purple sheens from the long feathers of his great square tail. He uttered a bad-tempered
kwaarp
, and then flew down to the cave entrance. Slowly he began to stalk inside, jerking his great head about, on the alert for the slightest sound or movement. He turned the corner of the small tunnel run and was faced with the gloom of the cave itself. Although a fair amount of light seeped through into the cave, the crow stood there for a while until his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. After a moment or two, the crow saw a slight movement at the back of the cave as one of the cubs stirred in its sleep. The crow moved forward, deliberately, cautiously, step by step, his great black beak held ready to thrust. One blow with his beak would break and pierce the skull of a young rabbit or kitten.