The Runaways (4 page)

Smiler snored gently in his sleep. A barn owl looked down on him from a dark roof recess at the end of the loft and then took off through an eave opening on silent wing to forage. Down below Yarra slept, jerking her head now and then as a stiff stem of straw tickled her muzzle.

Just before first light Yarra woke and left the barn. She went through the orchard and down to the river where she crouched at the stream-side and drank. Flicking water from her muzzle, she turned away and moved slowly up the narrow footpath that fishermen used in the trout season. A hundred yards from Ford Cottage an unwary moorhen got up from a dead patch of reeds almost under Yarra's nose. She took it with one swift pounce. She carried it to the cover of a thicket of briars and ate it.

It was over an hour later when Smiler woke. He was warm and dry and he felt better. He lay back on the hay looking out of the dusty window. Over the top of the cottage he could see the tips of a tall row of poplars on the far side of the river. Two starlings sat on the television aerial fixed to the chimney of the cottage. Through a broken pane of the window came the sound of sparrows quarrelling under the barn eaves, the belling of tits from the stark apple trees in the orchard and the distant drone of an airplane. From its dark perch right up in the angle of the rooftree of the barn, the owl opened one eye briefly to observe Smiler and then closed it again.

Smiler lay thinking. The first half hour of waking in the morning was his best time for thought. It was a time of day when things seemed to present themselves fresh and clear. At the moment it was impossible for him to work out any grand plan of campaign for the future. He had to be content with a short-term view, and his short-term view was that he had to keep out of sight of people as much as possible and have a base which would give him shelter, warmth, and food and drink. Ford Cottage seemed a good base if it were empty and going to be empty for some time. That was something he had got to find out if he could. The deep-freezer and the food cupboards were well stocked as he knew. The question of making use of someone else's house and supplies didn't worry him very much. After all, he told himself, if things were the other way round and he was the bloke that owned the house and there was a young chap like himself on the run – because everyone had just got everything wrong – he wouldn't have minded a bit if that young chap had helped himself. His father often said – didn't he? – that God helped those who helped themselves but God helped those most who helped others. There was no questioning that. Thing Number One, then, was to find out if the cottage was really unoccupied and, if possible, for how long it might stay that way.

Now Smiler, when he had put his mind to it, could be extraordinarily patient and industrious about any job he under-took. If you're going to do something, then make a proper job of it, his father was always saying, because, if you don't, you'll founder in the first stiff breeze that comes along.

So, from his barn window Smiler watched the cottage all that morning. The only person who came to the house was a postman who appeared at mid-morning and pushed some letters through the back door slot. Twice a red tractor came down and back the side road, moving over the bridge and up the steep wooded rise beyond. For lunch Smiler ate all the salt biscuits that remained and drank the little cider that was left.

An hour later he had a shock. From the window he saw an elderly man come walking down the road. He wore a tweed coat and a checked cap and he stopped at the courtyard gate and looked across to the barn. Smiler saw him shake his head and then come through the wicket gate at the side of the large gate and cross to the barn. Down below Smiler heard the open barn door being banged-to on its catch. His heart beating fast, he saw with relief the man moving back across the yard to the lane. When the man was gone Smiler gave himself a black mark for carelessness. The door had originally been closed on the catch and he had left it open. The elderly man was probably some neighbour who could have fancied it had blown open in the night's wind and had taken the trouble to close it. But if he had, Smiler argued, then it probably meant that the neighbour knew there was no one in the cottage. After all, you didn't go around shutting a friend's barn door if you knew the friend would be back soon, say like that evening, or the next day.

An hour after the man had gone Smiler went out of the barn – closing the door after him. Keeping his eyes smartly open, he slipped across to the back door. He took the key and opened it. The lock was a Yale. Smiler put the key back on the porch rafter and, once in the cottage, closed the door on the free catch. He could get out from the inside by turning the latch. He went through the hall to the front door and found that the lock there was a Yale too. That was fine, because if he heard anyone coming in the back he could slip out of the front unseen.

In the kitchen he picked the mail from a wire basket that hung under the letter flap. There were two letters in white envelopes addressed to a Major H. B. Collingwood, Ford Cottage, Crockerton, Near Warminster, Wiltshire, and a picture postcard addressed to Mrs B. Bagnall at the cottage. The picture on the card was a view of Mont Blanc across the Lake of Geneva and the message on it cheered Smiler up a lot. It read:

Dear Mrs B.

Mrs Collingwood and I send our regards and I am happy to say she is much improved in health though it will be a good month yet before the medico will be able – we hope – to give her a clean bill of health.

When you next come in and find this will you please check the level of the central heating oil tanks as I don't trust that oil fellow to call regularly to top it up.

Kind regards to you, Mr B., and family.

Sincerely, H. B. Collingwood

So, thought Smiler, the Major is away with his wife for quite a time and Mrs Bagnall, whoever she was, came in now and then to keep an eye on things. Well, all he had to do was to keep a weather-eye open for Mrs Bagnall. Considerably perked up, whistling gently to himself, he gave himself a good wash at the kitchen sink. He dried himself on a roller towel fixed to the back of a door next to the washing machine. Opening the door, he discovered that it held a small central heating plant. Now from Sister Ethel's Albert – who was a plumber and electrical engineer – Smiler knew quite a lot about heating plants. Albert had often taken him on jobs and was, anyway, forever talking about his work. This plant was set at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and the time clock was adjusted so that it came on at nine o'clock at night and went off at eight in the morning … enough, Smiler knew, to keep the cottage warm and damp free and to avoid any danger of pipes freezing up.

Smiler put the letters and the postcard back in the mail basket and tidied up the sink from his washing. As a precaution he pulled the roller towel up so that no one could see that he had used it. He then made a quick tour of the cottage, promising himself a more detailed one later. This done, he slipped out of the back door and over to his barn, closing the door after him.

He took with him – strictly on loan – a small portable transistor set which he had found in the Major's study. The inside of his shirt was pouched with a can of corned beef, key attached for opening, a packet of Ryvita biscuits, and a bottle of orange juice. He ate and drank unhurriedly, although he was considerably sharp-set with hunger. While he ate he turned the radio on very softly.

Some time before it got really dark Smiler gathered up his empty sardine tins and the corned-beef can and the now empty packet of salt biscuits and the cider bottle. Holding the rubbish clasped to his breast he went down the ladder frontwards, without the use of his hands, bumping his bottom from rung to rung to keep his balance. At the door he jerked up the catch with one shoulder and hooked the door open with his foot. The dusk was thickening. There was no one about. He slipped out. Because he was only going to go a few yards to the river to dump his rubbish he left the door open. To close it would have meant the nuisance of putting all the tins on the ground and using his hands.

He went quickly round the corner of the barn and through the garden to the river which was still running high with the previous day's rains. He threw his load into the flood water and then bent down to wash his hands which had become sticky with sardine oil.

Yarra came wraith-like through the gloom at the top of the garden. She saw Smiler by the river, her head turning at the movement of his arm as he tossed his rubbish into the water, her nostrils catching his scent almost at the same time. She moved on without pausing and without any great interest in him. The scent was the same as she had caught the previous night, though the shape was leaner and no flapping came from it. Had she been hungry and in a bad temper just the sight of him might have stirred resentment. But she was well-fed and wanted only the comfort of her hut and the litter of warm straw. That morning she had worked her way upstream on the right bank of the river through steep plantation slopes of young firs and old woods of bare trees. She had taken a grey squirrel – tempted out by the sunshine – as it had scurried for the trunk of a tall beech, jumping and pawing it down from the smooth grey bark when it was six feet from the ground. Full of her waterhen meal, she had done no more that take a bite from its soft belly and leave it. Most of the day she had passed in the river woods, moving away whenever she heard voices or sounds that disturbed her. During the late afternoon she had come out of the woods at the top of the river slope. Here, on a long, rolling down, she had put up a hare from a clump of dead bracken. Yarra had seen hares before moving across the parkland pasture outside her Longleat enclosure. They had always excited her just as did the young deer that also moved beyond the wire in freedom. She had gone after the hare, hearing the thump of its feet as it raced away. The hare had had a fifteen-yard start on her but, although it had twisted, zig-zagged and doubled at top speed, she had moved like an orange-gold blur and taken it within a hundred yards easily. She had eaten it, relishing the meat which was strange to her.

Now, full of food, wanting only her resting place, she passed around the barn and through the open door to find her litter of straw. In the darkness she pawed with her claws at the flattened straw to shape and bulk it. Satisfied after a while, she dropped flat on it. She stretched her legs stiffly, tightened her shoulder muscles, and then relaxed, her head cocked over one shoulder watching the open doorway.

A few moments later Smiler came through the door, humming softly to himself. Momentarily Yarra's mask wrinkled and she opened her jaws, half-threatening, but making no sound. There was no real malice in her.

Smiler closed the door on the latch, felt for the ladder rungs in the darkness and went up to his loft and dropped the trapdoor quietly.

That evening before going to sleep Smiler listened to the radio for two or three hours. He had the set turned down very low and tucked into the hay close to his head. When the news came on he was interested to hear whether there would be anything about his escape on it. But he was disappointed. It would have been quite something to have had his own name broadcast.

However, there was something about another escaper. A cheetah (Smiler tried to picture what a cheetah was like and fancied it was something like a panther or leopard) which had escaped from the Longleat wild life reserve the day before had not so far been found. Smiler – whose home was at Fishponds on the outskirts of Bristol – had heard of Longleat and its lions though he had never been there. No one had yet reported seeing the animal but the Longleat authorities had said that it was not likely to travel far. It was probably still quite close to the park or somewhere in the large tract of country in the triangle made by the towns of Frome, Warminster and Mere. Anyone seeing the animal was asked to keep well away from it and to inform the police or the Longleat Park authorities. At the end of the news there was a short interview with a man from Longleat Park who gave some general information about cheetahs. In the course of it he said that the name of the escaped cheetah was Yarra and that it was a female.

Before sleeping Smiler lay comfortably in the hay thinking about the cheetah. He'd often gone to the Bristol Zoo but he couldn't remember whether he had ever seen a cheetah there. Actually he didn't care much for zoos. Having animals in big parks like Longleat was much better. Pacing up and down a cage was no way to live. Being at a reform school – although he hadn't stayed there long – was a bit like that. Do this, do that, and being watched all the time, feeling and knowing every moment that you were a prisoner. Even having a big enclosure to live in wasn't really good enough, he felt. Not if you were a wild animal. All right for cows and sheep. But not for a leopard or a lion or a cheetah. Yarra … that was a nice name … same sort of name in a way as Tarzan. Yarra and Tarzan. He saw himself in a loin cloth swinging through the jungle trees. His faithful cheetah, Yarra, followed him far below, looking up when he gave his jungle cry. He liked animals, though he had never had many. The best had been a mongrel dog, black with white patches and a head that had a bit of Alsatian in it, called Tessa. His father had brought it home for him one day. Tessa would do anything for him. When he went to stay with Sister Ethel, while his father was at sea, she had made a terrible fuss. Tessa's hairs got all over the furniture and carpets. In the end, he was sure, Tessa had got fed-up with all the fuss, too, because one day while he was walking her on the downs she had gone off and never come back … Tessa … Yarra … and Tarzan. He yawned, switched the radio off and stretched out to go to sleep.

So far Smiler and Yarra had been lucky. No one had sighted either of them. Two of the wardens from Longleat had tried to follow Yarra's spoor marks from the point of her breakout. After a time they had to give it up because the rain had washed them away. Nobody had tried to follow Smiler's tracks. The police had sent out their signals and had alerted all patrol cars and the local constabulary with a description of Smiler. Now they were pretty confident that the need for food or shelter would make Smiler show up somewhere pretty soon. It was no time of the year for living rough, particularly as Smiler was far from being a country boy. The police had, of course, got in touch with Sister Ethel, giving her the news, and telling her that if Smiler appeared she must report him at once.