The Runaways (6 page)

The keeper stood in the centre of the path trembling with shock. No fool, he began to move quickly back up the path towards the open fields at the top of the wood. The wood was no place to stay in with an animal like a cheetah about. Recognition had come to him only after he had impulsively fired. Ten minutes later he was telephoning from his cottage to the Warminster police station.

That morning, after Yarra had gone, Smiler stayed in the loft. He waited patiently to see if the postman was going to call or perhaps Mrs Bagnall, come to do some morning housework in the cottage. Eventually he saw the postman ride by the cottage on his bicycle, but he did not deliver any letters.

An hour later Smiler was in the cottage, the back door locked with the key on the outside so that he would have warning if anyone came. He had a drink of water from the tap, sluiced himself for toilet over head and neck, and then opened a tin of baked beans and ate them with a spoon from the can. He tidied up meticulously and then started another inspection of the house.

The hallway running to the front door was red carpeted and hung with small, coloured pictures of birds and flowers. There was a big oak chest in it with a wide shallow glass bowl on top. The bowl was full of odds and ends. On either side of the hall were a dining-room and a large sitting-room, one wall of which was covered entirely with bookshelves. In the window stood a flat-topped desk. Its surface was inlaid with red morocco leather and tooled around the edges in gold-leafed designs. It was as nice a room as Smiler had ever been in in his life. The chairs and settees were comfortable and well-worn. He was sure there would be no fuss if you put your feet up on them.

On the top floor, which you went up to by way of an open staircase with roughly carved bannisters and supports were three bedrooms. One was large with two beds in it. The others had a single bed each. Leading off the big bedroom was a bathroom. The bathroom, wide and spacious, had a long window that looked out over the well-yard at the back. The bath was blue and tiled on two sides. Each tile had a picture of a fish on it. Smiler had never seen a bathroom like it, and it had a nice scented smell which he liked. If it had been his. Sister Ethel's, he thought, no one would have been allowed in it without having a bath first. He poked about in it for a while and opened a mirror-fronted cabinet that hung on the wall. There were lots of bottles, tubes, toothbrushes, packets and sprays and pill boxes in the cabinet. When Smiler closed the cabinet his reflection confronted him in the mirror, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, freckles all over his face like the markings on a skylark's egg, and his blond hair tousled all over his head. He took a comb from the shelf under the cabinet, wetted it under the cold tap, and tidied his hair.

Then he went down to the sitting-room and looked at the books on the shelves. Smiler liked books. Although he preferred adventure stories, strip comics and do-it-yourself books, he would read anything even if he didn't understand half of it. At Fishponds, if it were raining or he felt bored or he didn't want for a while to be with the other lads, he would often go into the Public Library and sit over a book in the Reading Room. The woman who ran the place was a bit sniffy with him at first but she had got to know him and, providing his hands were clean, she let him stay as long as he liked.

There were hundreds of books on the cottage shelves, a lot of them about fishing and hunting, rows of novels, a pile of Ordnance Survey maps at the end of one shelf, and on the bottom shelf a row of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Smiler knew all about the encyclopaedia. His father had once told him that you could find out about everything in it. And it was true, as Smiler had more than once proved in the Reading Room.

For two hours Smiler sat on the floor enjoying himself. Although the curtains were drawn plenty of sunlight filtered through. Because of the central heating which had been on all night, it was not cold. He looked up all about cheetahs in the encyclopaedia. Not that there was much about them, just twenty lines or so. Smiler was interested to read that, for centuries in Persia and India, cheetahs had been used for hunting small game and antelopes. They were hooded, then taken out, and, when the hood was slipped, away they went after whatever it was. He remembered Yarra coming out of the barn. Yarra and Tarzan. Yarra and Samuel M.… He lay back on the floor, saw himself with a cheetah on the leash, the cheetah hooded, and the two of them moving along a great hillside then … Wheeeh! Off came the hood, the leash was slipped, and Yarra was away after a deer!

He sat up and grinned to himself. Some hope, Samuel M., he thought. Anyway that cheetah was miles away by now if it had any sense. He pushed the book back on to the lower shelf. As he did so he saw that at the end of the shelf, wedged between the last volume and the wooden upright, was a large glass bottle. Smiler recognized it at once. His Dad liked his whisky at night and had had bottles like this. It was a nice old green bottle. In the top was a home-made cork with a slit cut in it that you could drop money through. The bottle was three-quarters full of fivepenny pieces. Smiler picked it up. It weighed like a bomb. He shook it, and then wondered how much there would be in it … Pounds and pounds. Ten at least.

As he put the bottle back be suddenly heard a key scraping at the back door lock. Smiler was up and into the hall and out of the front door like a shot. He ran across the garden away from the road and bridge. He raced up the hillside and turned into a small clump of stunted yews. From here he could look down on the cottage and barn.

Although he couldn't see all the courtyard at the back, he could see the big white gate at the entrance. While he watched he was pleased to think that he had not left any tell-tale traces in the house. He was on the run and could not afford to give himself away. The whisky bottle was back in its place, and all the books. And he had tidied up the kitchen, wiping the sink fairly dry from his washing, putting the spoon away in its drawer, and dropping the empty baked-bean tin in the waste bin. If his Sister Ethel could have known how tidy he had been she would have thought he was sickening for something or working up to some outrageous request to be allowed to do something she would normally have refused. Then he began to worry about the baked-bean tin. Whoever had gone in might look in the bin and see it. That would give the game away. Or say they knew exactly what had been in the cupboards and spotted how he had helped himself? Well, there was nothing he could do about it now.

After about five minutes Smiler saw a woman come across the little bit of the yard he could see. She had a blue woollen hat on and a thick brown coat, and she wheeled a bicycle with a black shopping bag hanging from the handlebars. She was dumpy-looking and oldish. She pushed her bicycle through the side wicket gate and then rode away over the river bridge and up the slope beyond.

Smiler gave her a few minutes to get clear and then he began to move back. But he did not go to the cottage. He went along the hillside through the trees and dropped down into the side road. He walked down the hill, looking as though he were out for a stroll, past the big white gate and on to the bridge. Here he leaned over the parapet and pretended to be looking at the river. But his eyes were on the house and the front door, and the curtained windows. For all he knew more than one person might have gone into the house and only the woman had come out. It proved a very wise precaution. He had hardly been there a few minutes when the front door opened and a girl came out. She slammed the door to lock behind her, and then came across the lawn, out on to the road, and towards Smiler who was still hanging over the bridge parapet.

She was a nice-looking girl – with a tanned complexion and shoulder-length black hair – wearing a shiny red plastic coat and high black boots. Back in Fishponds there had been plenty of girls who hung about with Smiler's friends. Smiler didn't dislike girls, but he hadn't got a lot of time for most of them. They never seemed to say or do anything that was particularly interesting. Just laughed and giggled most of the time, or talked about clothes and a lot of nonsense.

As the girl came on to the bridge she saw Smiler. Smiler stared down at the river and hoped she would pass on. She didn't. She stopped behind him and said, ‘ Hullo.'

Smiler half-turned. ‘Hullo,' he said.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Just looking at the river,' said Smiler. She seemed all right. She had a friendly smile and it suddenly occurred to him that he might get some useful information from her. He nodded his head at the cottage. ‘You live there?'

‘No. My mum does for them. Once a week. I just come down with her.'

‘She the one that went up on the bike?'

‘Sright.'

‘Whyn't you go back with her?'

The girl laughed. It was a nice laugh and her teeth showed very white against her tanned face. ‘You're a one for questions, aren't you?'

‘Sorry. I was just asking.'

‘Well, I comes down with her on the back of her bike. But as it's all uphill going back … well, I walk. She came down to pick up the letters, but I stopped to dust the dining-room.'

‘Don't nobody live there, then?'

‘They're away. I haven't seen you around before, have I?' The girl leaned over the parapet a yard from him.

‘No.'

‘Where you from, then?'

For a moment Smiler hesitated and then he said, ‘Oh, over Warminster way.' To forestall further questions along that line, he went on, ‘ Where do you live?'

‘Up the hill. 'Bout a mile. Lodge Cottage. You know it?'

‘No.'

The girl, who clearly had time on her hands and, like all girls, welcomed a chat – which didn't surprise Smiler – picked a lump of moss from one of the bridge stones and dropped it into the river, saying, ‘She's going down fast.'

‘Puzzled, Smiler said, ‘ Who is?'

‘The river, of course. After all that rain. She's going down.'

‘Plenty of fish in there, I suppose?'

‘Trout and grayling. My father's the water keeper. There's big trout under this bridge. Over three pound some. What's your name?'

Feeling easier in himself and now alert to gain any advantage that would help him, Smiler said, ‘Johnny. Johnny Pickering.' Johnny Pickering was a boy that Smiler knew but didn't like. ‘What's yours?'

‘Ivy, but I don't like it much. All my friends call me Pat.'

‘I like Pat best, too. How often do you and your mother come down here?'

‘Once a week. Every Wednesday, mostly. But I don't always come. See that –' She suddenly nodded downstream.

Smiler followed her indication just in time to see a blue streak of fire flash across the water and disappear round a bend lower down. He said, ‘ That's a kingfisher. I know that. Seen them when I been fishing with my Dad.'

‘My Dad don't like 'em. They eat the young trout.' She straightened up and gave him a bright smile. ‘Well, I got to go. But if you live in Warminster I might see you sometime. I'm starting a job there next week. In Woolworth's. Bye.'

‘Bye.'

She walked away up the hillroad and just before she turned a corner she looked back and gave him a wave of her arm. As girls went, Smiler thought, she wasn't too bad, and she hadn't got her face all plastered with lipstick and eyeshadow and stuff.

He waited another ten minutes and then slipped into the courtyard to the back door. Mrs Bagnall, for he had no doubt about that now, had left the key on the rafter. He went in, leaving the key outside as usual.

The letters had gone from the basket behind the door. His baked-bean tin was still in the waste bin under the sink. He put it in his pocket. Then he took another tin of sardines from the cupboard, some frozen bread rolls from the deep-freezer and went back into the barn loft, carefully shutting the barn door after him.

He put the rolls in the sunshine on the window sill to thaw out, and then lay back on his hay and decided that he had to do some serious thinking. It was now very clear to him that his plan of campaign was not good enough.

No, Samuel M., he told himself, it just was not good enough. What he was doing was living from day to day and from hand to mouth. Also, he was living in dangerous territory where he could easily make some silly slip-up that would give him away … like that baked-bean tin, for instance. Mrs Bagnall could easily have looked in the waste bin and found it. Then the fat would have been in the fire. Or she might just as easily have spotted that the sink, although he'd wiped it over with a dishcloth, wasn't really dry. Or even that the dishcloth – which ought to have been dry – wasn't. And all this food that he was nicking! … Mrs Bagnall might spot things gone … No, he had to make himself really safe. Not just for a few days. That was no good. He had to keep away from trouble until his father got back and sorted things out. Nobody else could, because nobody else was going to believe him about that old lady's handbag … That old geezer in the juvenile court, when he'd tried to tell the truth, had just looked over his glasses, made a sour face, and grunted.

He lay back and stared at the barn rafters and began to think it out. It was hard work because almost at once problems began to come up. By the time he had worried
them
out they had given birth to other problems. It was nine months before his father would be back, maybe a year, and he had to keep from being caught all that time … And, what's more – he was going to keep from being caught!

Sustained thought was hard, fatiguing work. The hay was warm and soft. After about two hours – with a break to eat sardines and half-thawed bread rolls – Smiler dropped off to sleep.

After being shot at by the keeper, Yarra kept moving fast. She was angry and disturbed; but the few small shot which had caught her left flank had caused no real harm to her. Her pelt was rough and wiry, without the natural sleekness of most felines, and not more than two or three pellets had penetrated her skin. The line she took across country was along the valley side, well above the river. At one place she dropped down the ivy-coated bank of the small road that led down to Ford Cottage and crossed into a plantation of young Conifers. She moved diagonally down through the young trees until she reached their boundary. Below her the ground fell sharply away to the river.