Out of Time (6 page)

There was no reply.

He moved forward cautiously, scanning the branches of trees, moving stealthily behind bushes, stalking an unknown prey in the long grass. He inspected the footprints once more. There were six leading inland. Joe placed his own foot in one. It was bigger than his own. The adversary, if such he was, might be formidable.

His pile of clothes, his sling and a bunch of reeds he had cut to use as ropes were untouched, exactly as he had left them. Dressing quickly he made for home, arriving next day on the plateau after dark. He approached the entrance to his cave cautiously. The fire was untouched, its embers glowing consolingly inside the circle of stones. His treasures at the back of the cave, when he later examined them, were intact.

*

Helmuth is holding a meeting round the refectory table in the Meeting Room. He is listening to a citizen, standing deferentially before him. The man is gesticulating wildly and saying something that he thinks important. He waits to be thanked or rewarded but Helmuth is impassive and dismisses the man with a nod. Though he has left them little alternative he is tired of these people ingratiating themselves, tired of the stupidity with which he is surrounded, tired of the necessity of constant plotting. He almost wishes there was someone to challenge him, someone strong and clever. He forgets that he has conveniently eliminated anyone who posed the slightest threat; and many who did not.

Three men are brought in. They are in uniform, black tunic, black trousers, a knitted hat concealing all but their eyes and mouth. They receive orders and leave.

Helmuth rises and goes. The gaggle of grey men waits respectfully and then disperses. The Meeting Room is left in shadowed depth.

The three men move swiftly through the night-still town. They tread softly. They go first into the park and stand behind the trunks of the same trees that recently protected Joe. They too are watching Susie skipping. As her parents wind up the rope and move towards Jarvis Road they follow on silent feet.

The neighbour is keeping watch. He sees Susie and her mother and father walk unawares up Rose Avenue. He sees the men following, he sees them pounce on the family who struggle helplessly against their attackers, he sees them being marched away. The curtain falls and he gives what one may think a little sigh of satisfaction, or perhaps it is something else.

*

Joe slept uneasily. He was no longer alone. Other people, probably hostile, lived in the wilderness. He no longer felt safe on his cliff.

The next morning dawned clear but white cumulus was gathering. He spent the day making a jacket from his rabbit skins. Sharpening his knife on a flint he cut out several pieces, three for the back of a jerkin, two each for left and right fronts. It was hard and difficult work and he was left with uneven, unwieldy sections of hide. Cobbling them together took all day. He shaped armholes and pulled clumsy strips of hide through holes that tore, but he finally had something that resembled a garment. And it was warm. He made rough shoes but knew they would not last. Something tougher was needed, the skins of goat or reindeer, and that necessitated returning to the river and killing one from the herds he had seen. It also meant returning to the threatening presence of another human who, Joe almost hoped, would show himself, even if only to attack. He would at least know his adversary.

A thin drizzle turned by midday into windswept rain. He spent most of the day by the fire, climbing upward only to fetch wood that was too damp to burn. He stacked it in the cave.

The sky cleared next morning and he set out at dawn to bag a deer with sling and stone, a tricky operation without certainty of success. He slept warily in his bivouac, ready to spring up at any moment and defend himself. No one came. He reached the river before midday. The footsteps in the sand had gone.

Diving into the water, he swam far out into the current, turned and looked back. Both banks seemed alarmingly far away but, fitter than he had ever been, he knew that he was ready to reach the far side. He floated and let the current carry him, then struck sideways. By the time he hit ground he was a good mile distant from his clothes and sling and walked back, cold in the now constant wind. He dressed and turned into hitherto unknown territory. Coming to a steep incline beyond a group of birch, he climbed to the top and scanned the area ahead. In the distance, close to where the hills turned sharply inland, a reindeer herd grazed. Getting close enough for a shot meant going further than he had ever been for they were at least an hour distant. Joe trudged on, hoping that with the wind blowing in his face the animals would not pick up his scent.

He came on them suddenly, on the other side of a copse and approached silently, sling and stone at the ready. One shot would make or mar the hunt for, once disturbed, the deer would be away. He concealed himself behind a bush and fixed his target, a small doe, grazing immediately outside the herd. Somewhere to his left the grass rustled. A wild animal. He hoped it would not disturb his prey. Discarding his unwieldy rabbit shoes he advanced slowly. The doe’s belly was white, a delicate brown darkening towards her neck and to her dappled back. Her ears, relaxed, flopped sideways.

Joe took aim. The heavy stone, sent with force, hit her on the head and she fell, stunned. The herd, alarmed, flew away and, as the doe struggled to stand, Joe ran to her, pushed her down and, ignoring the appeal in her eyes, beat her again and again with a heavy stone until her legs ceased to twitch and her head lay open, scattering blood and brains on his arms.

‘Well done.’

Joe stood up, electrified, blood spattered, clothes torn, the doe bleeding between his legs. A tall young man with light brown hair, dark eyes, freckled face and a short gingery beard stood before him.

‘It’s my first one.’

Joe wiped his bloody hands on the grass.

‘What did you want to do with her?’

‘I need the hide.’

‘We’d better take her back before you skin her,’ the young man said. Joe looked at him, uncomprehending. Take her back?

‘Who are you?’ he asked ‘Randolph. And you?’

‘My name is Joe. Joe Harding.’ ‘I’ll carry it.’

Randolph slung the carcass over his left shoulder and started towards the hills, not doubting Joe would follow.

‘You can’t take her, she’s mine!’ He could feel his anger rising. ‘I need her here.’

Randolph stopped. ‘You’re coming, aren’t you?’

‘Where to?’

‘Back to the Manor, of course. Surely you’re joining us?’

Joining them?

‘Who?’

‘We’re a group living together.’

‘How many of you?’

‘Five, including me. You’ll make the sixth.’

Who the hell was this stranger? Joe resented his confident manner and the assumption that he would meekly follow. He teetered between a nuclear response and total compliance but came down on the side of the latter. Randolph did not seem overtly aggressive and the prospect of human company was tempting. He doubted in any case that he had any choice. If he refused the man might attack him and there might be more, hiding in the bushes.

‘How far is it?’

‘Far,’ Randolph said shortly.

‘I’ve got my fire to attend to.’

‘You’d do better to let it go out. It can be seen for miles.’

‘I’ve kept it low.’

‘Not low enough. Come on,’ Randolph said, ‘it’s getting late.’

He started towards the far hills. Joe followed reluctantly, stepping carefully in bare feet.

‘No shoes, boots?’

Joe looked enviously at Randolph’s skillfully crafted leather boots. He was well if roughly dressed, a woven tunic falling over a pair of knee length trousers.

‘They’re back there. They’re not very…’

‘You’d better get them.’

Randolph watched him coolly.

‘You’ll need better ones than that.’

Joe bridled.

‘They’re good enough.’

But they weren’t and he was embarrassed as they walked on and he had constantly to adjust them on the rough terrain, flat but overgrown. They stopped only once to drink water from Randolph’s leather bottle and then moved on at a fast pace.

‘How long since you escaped?’

The question immediately made Joe suspicious. How did Randolph know that Joe had been hunted and had escaped? Was he part of a plot, luring him to his death?

‘I’m not sure.’

He was not prepared to give away information that might later be used against him.

He regretted nevertheless that he had failed to keep a count of the days, he felt defeated at abandoning his long-planned journey across the river and he regretted leaving the cave and all that it had meant.

THEY emerged from the tree line as the sun was setting. Wooded hills rose on their left towards the far end of a semicircle, forming a bow shaped valley. Here Joe expected Randolph to turn further inland but he kept parallel to the river, across sporadic marsh, its vivid greens contrasting grotesquely with the more muted colours of a long dry summer. They regained the wooded hills by nightfall and stopped. Randolph pulled a hunk of bread and a piece of white cheese out of a leather bag carried over his shoulder, gave them to Joe with a drink of water and ordered curtly,

‘Wait here.’

He was soon out of sight.

Joe felt exposed and alone. He fell asleep and in his sleep the chase at Bantage re-enacted itself with all the vividness of the reality. He woke abruptly, shaking with terror, astonished that he had allowed himself to be led into unknown territory to join a group of people unheard of and unknown. He had always despised his craven tendency to fall in line with the herd, to conform to political correctness in the way he looked, dressed and behaved. It was never what he had wanted. An image of himself far removed from what he appeared to be had always hovered uncertainly in his mind but even now, in the bizarre situation that had become his life, he had been unable to stand firm. He was now in an impossible, a probably dangerous situation. Worst of all, he had been forced to abandon his meagre possessions, the only tokens from his erstwhile home. Home... The word had acquired a different meaning. Home now meant the cave, the cliff, the river. He had left home twice this summer and could no longer define the base to which he belonged. He had become a stranger in a strange land.

And a fool. What proof had he that Randolph was not an emissary of the townspeople, sent to succeed where the nets had failed? At this moment he could be getting reinforcements while he, Joe, like a tethered animal, waited to be captured and taken away. He sprang up, ready to retrace his steps, but flight was hopeless. He was exhausted, his shoes had disintegrated and his feet, bruised and scratched, would carry him no further. It was impossible, in any case, to hide in the dark in unknown territory from people who knew every inch of the ground and would have no difficulty in following him, no matter where he went. Could he reach the river and swim across, as he had so long planned to do? He was too tired, too confused, and no longer certain that he cared; he half hoped that a pack of wolves would come out of the trees and tear him to pieces, relieving him of the necessity, unbelievably tedious and irksome, to survive.

As though on cue a twig snapped with a sound like gunshot. Joe leapt to his feet and felt for sling and stone. Someone was closing in on him. He pulled the stone back, ready to release it. A shadowy shape emerged from the bushes and stopped, a long snout sniffed the air, slit eyes from a face covered with long bristly hair stared at him. Wild boar. It had no interest in Joe and ambled on. Joe collapsed in a heap of unnatural laughter.

The stars came out, brilliant in the clear air, and a half moon rose on the horizon. He felt numb, unable to think or reason. Nothing made sense, he did not make sense. He wondered if he was he insane, a schizo inhabiting a world that did not exist. He sank into the ground as though wanting to bury himself.

Footsteps crashed through the trees and roused him. Randolph appeared and with him a younger boy, shorter, slighter, pale, clean shaven with a mop of black wavy hair and, his most distinguishing feature, black penetrating eyes.

‘This is Otto,’ Randolph said.

Otto examined Joe carefully, scrutinising him for an uncomfortably long period. Then he gave a nod. Randolph produced a pair of serviceable leather boots and these Joe put on. They proceeded, single file, Joe in the middle, through the wood. Stark images filled his mind, reminders of bygone days at the cinema with just such a trio, the middle man’s hands tied behind his back, the lining up, the shout of ‘Fire’, the body lifeless on the ground. Was this his fate?

They walked uphill for some two hours. It seemed to Joe like ten. The way continued thickly wooded. Eventually the trees thinned.

‘We’re here.’

The moon was high now. Stars swirled overhead. Joe wondered yet again at how much larger and brighter they were than at home, shedding an unnatural brilliance over the landscape.

They cleared the wood and came at last to a large, rambling house. No light showed. He was ushered through a wooden door, down a dark stone flagged corridor and into a kitchen lit by a flickering lamp casting shadows into far corners. Three people sitting round a table turned expectantly towards him.