The Runaways (7 page)

She sat on her haunches looking down into the valley. It was growing darker every moment now. Up the river away to her left was the bridge and the grey roof thatch and white-plastered end-wall of Ford Cottage. Beyond it the bulk of the barn roof showed against the darkening sky. Away to her right, farther downstream and towards the north and Warminster, she could see the lights of houses and cottages. Sometimes the movement of car headlights swept along the main road.

After a time she dropped down to the river, found the fishing path and walked slowly upstream toward the stone bridge. She came out on to the road at the bridge side, crossed, and leapt the big white gate. She moved like a shadow close to the cottage and then across to the barn door. It was shut.

She sniffed around its lower edges for a moment. Then she leaned against it with the left side of her body, not to try to open it, but to rub her flank against it and ease the slight irritation of the gun shots in her skin. That the door should be shut she could not understand. Always the hut door was open at night in Longleat Park for the entry of the cheetahs. This was now her hut. The door should be open. She lazily stretched her jaws and gave a low, protesting rumble from her throat. Then she padded the length of the barn and moved around the open car bay. It smelled of oil and petrol and she wrinkled her nostrils in displeasure. She knew the smell and did not like it. Sometimes in high summer, when the cheetah enclosure was packed with parked and slowly moving cars, the same smell got so strong that she with the other cheetahs would move away upwind in the enclosure to avoid it.

She moved back to the barn door and raised herself against it, drawing the talons of her left forepaw in a great rasp down the rough wood surface. The movement shook the door and made it rattle on its hinges.

Up above in the loft the noise came faintly through to the sleeping Smiler.

Yarra rasped at the door again, more vigorously, rattling and shaking it. When it did not open she snarled and spat angrily.

The noise this time came clearly through to Smiler. He came out of sleep with a start just in time to hear Yarra rattle the door again.

Heart thumping, sure that someone was coming to take him, his brain still fuddled with sleep, he was on his feet quickly and at the window. At that moment Yarra moved back, squatted on the ground, and sat staring at the door. Smiler saw her clearly.

His eyes wide with surprise, for in mulling over his plan of campaign all thought of Yarra had gone from him, he clapped his hand to his forehead and cried, ‘Cor, Blimey O'Reilly – she's back again!'

There was no doubt in Smiler's mind of what he must do. Although he hadn't thought about Yarra much in the course of the day, he instinctively accepted that, since she was a fugitive like himself, he could not refuse her shelter. They were both in the same boat.

He got his home-made pole and opened the barn window. It was getting darker every minute now. Yarra heard him and saw the movement of the window. She backed away a few yards and raised her blunt head, stretching her jaws wide, and giving a low rumble. She knew this human being now and so far he had presented no threat.

Smiler, pushing the pole through the window, murmured, ‘All right, old girl. Won't take a moment.'

He jabbed down in the gloom at the barn door latch. After a few tries, he hit the thumb press and the door swung back slowly. He pulled the pole back through the window and watched Yarra. The tension went from her. She padded in a small semi-circle around the open door, looked up at him once, and then moved slowly into the barn.

Smiler closed the window and then went to the trap in the loft floor and listened. He could hear the restless movements of Yarra scraping and shaping her straw and then a heavy thump as she dropped to her bed.

Well, that was all right, thought Smiler. She was all comfy for the night. She would be gone just after first light in the morning and he could go down and close the door. However, right now, he took the precaution of shooting the bolt across the trap door.

He went back to his own bed and turned the radio on softly. An hour later the news came on. The local news was given before the national news. The local, South of England news made no mention of one Samuel Miles, but it had plenty to say about Yarra, the cheetah, who was sleeping a few feet below him. The public were warned that she had been sighted that day a couple of miles from the village of Crockerton in the valley of the River Wylye. It was felt that she was still in the area and people were warned to watch out for her. She would be dangerous only if cornered or suddenly surprised. She was most likely to be dangerous to young children and parents were warned not to let them move about unaccompanied. Everyone was warned that it was unwise to walk alone in lonely woods and remote areas. A cordon was being thrown around the area of the river valley where Yarra had been sighted. It was confidently expected that she would soon be captured. Then there was an interview with the Cheetah Warden from Longleat Park, who was asked some questions about cheetahs, their habits and what they ate, and how dangerous they really were, and so on. Smiler chuckled to himself through all this. Yarra was in the news, and she was just below him.

But after the news was over, Smiler got a bit worried. Yarra was no trouble to him, and it didn't worry him that she might go about taking a few chickens … but she was dangerous to small children! Well, oughtn't he to do something about it? Oughtn't he to drop out of the barn window now and go and find the nearest policeman so that Yarra could be caught?

And if he did?

Well, Samuel M., he told himself, that would be the end of you. They would all think you were a good lad and had done the right thing. They'd probably interview you on television and radio – but in the end you'd be shipped back to that school.

It was a difficult problem. Yarra would go off tomorrow and almost certainly she would be caught – and he would still be free. Anyway, he wasn't too keen about dropping out of that window right now, landing with a thump on the gravel, and having Yarra, maybe, come out after him like a streak of greased lightning. That wouldn't do anyone any good, particularly Samuel M. But if Yarra weren't caught tomorrow? Then she would come padding back here to her shelter. Well, that one wasn't difficult to work out. Tomorrow evening he would leave the barn door open and he would stay in the cottage. He could watch the barn from the bathroom window. The moment he saw Yarra come back he would go out through the front door and up to the village of Crockerton. Bound to be a public telephone box there. He could call the police, say where Yarra was, refuse to say who he was – and then he would have to take off smartly.

Down below him, he heard Yarra stir on her straw, and he said aloud, ‘Old girl – if you got any sense you won't come back tomorrow. And I hope you don't, because I don't want to lose a soft billet.'

He dropped off to sleep, thinking that it was hard that on top of his own problems he had the problem of the right thing to do about Yarra.

The sun was well up over the valley ridge when Smiler woke. The owl was back on its king post roost after a night's hunting. On the floor below the post were two or three fresh pellets which the bird had spewed up, little wet balls of fragile mouse and shrew bones, fur and feathers from a wren that it had taken at the first paling of morning light. Smiler stretched and yawned. He had a busy day ahead of him, and maybe a dangerous one. He had his own problem to deal with and he meant to tackle it properly. No half measures. He lay for a moment, going over it in his mind, and then suddenly remembered Yarra.

He got up, unbolted the trap and looked down. The lower part of the barn was empty. Yarra had gone.

Smiler went down, peered cautiously around the corner of the open barn door to make sure that the coast was clear and then, closing the barn door, he went across to the cottage.

He went into the kitchen, had a drink of water and some biscuits and then washed his hands. There was no point in having a good wash yet, he thought.

Although he had bad habits – like smoking an occasional cigarette – and was no respecter of small items of other people's property when he was bored and idle and needed some excitement to make the day shine a little, Smiler was fundamentally a good sort. When he wished, he could be methodical, industrious and reasonably honest. In addition he was intelligent and a quick learner. He was also shrewd and far-thinking in an emergency; and he was in an emergency now. The emergency of keeping Samuel M. out of the hands of the police and all the other busybodies who wanted him to go back to that school. No thank you. Not for Samuel M. He was going to stay free until his father came back and sorted things out…

After giving
his
problem much thought the previous day he had come to the following very clear conclusions:

1. He couldn't hang around Ford Cottage and the barn for nine months, cadging food and shelter.

2. So long as Major Collingwood was away, however, he could just use the barn for a sleeping place.

3. He had to find out exactly where he was (somewhere near Warminster was all he knew), and he had to go out and get a job so that he would have money for food and other things.

4. But to get a job wasn't all that easy, because the moment he showed his face anywhere some policeman with a long memory would recognize his fair hair and freckled face. He had, therefore, to disguise himself somehow – though there wasn't anything he could do about the freckles! But he could do something about his hair and about his clothes.

5. As for the job, well, he was strong and bandy and people were always advertising for help around the place. He would have to get a newspaper and see what was going.

6. And, to do all this – because people were always full of questions – he had to have answers as to who he was, where he lived, and so on and so on. For public purposes Samuel M. would have to go and a new lad take his place.

7. And if he stuck it out and wasn't caught, then some time he would have to telephone the shipping company offices in Bristol and find out what date his father was due back so that he could meet him.

It was a long list but Smiler felt that he had worked out the answers to most of the immediate problems, and he now set about them with a will. If there was something to be done he liked to get on with it.

He went first into the sitting-room and from the green whisky bottle he shook out five pounds' worth of fivepenny pieces and wrapped them in his handkerchief. Then he went through the pile of Ordnance Survey maps and, after some time, found the one he wanted. It was Sheet 166 and on the red cover the town of Warminster was marked with a lot of others. Smiler liked and knew about maps. When he and his father had gone off on their trips they always used a map.

Smiler spread the map on the floor and he soon found Warminster. A mile and a half south of it was the village of Crockerton in the valley of the River Wylye. Smiler picked out the side road running down to the river bridge at Ford Cottage. He decided to take the map with him. Mrs Bagnall was not likely to miss it on her weekly visit.

Next, Smiler went up to the bathroom. In ferreting through the bathroom cabinet he had seen two things which he had remembered when he was tussling with his problem.

One was a bottle of tanning lotion and the other was a tube, in a packet, of hair colouring. Dark Brown, the label said. There was a leaflet of instructions with the tube. Smiler read them carefully. One, wet your hair and apply half the cream as you would a shampoo. Two, lather it up and then rinse it off and squeeze, surplus water from the hair. Three, apply the rest of the cream and lather well. Now leave the foam on for five, ten or twenty minutes according to how dark you want the hair to go. Four, rinse until the water runs clear. Then set your hair in your favourite style. Smiler grinned. His favourite style!

He stripped off his shirt, ran some water into the basin and set to work. It wasn't as easy as the instructions made it sound. He got the stuff over his face, neck and hands. It was a chocolate brown colour but when he tried to wash it off his hands and face it paled to a sort of sunburnt red. But – after twenty minutes – it looked all right on his hair. He wouldn't have called it dark brown, but it was brown enough – though there was a slight greenness about it. He then took the tanning stuff and worked it into his face and hands and around the back of his neck. It didn't cover the freckles by any means but it looked all right. Quite good, really, Samuel M., he told himself. After that it took him some time to clean up the basin using an old nail brush and a piece of soap from the bath holder. He combed his hair in his natural style, which was straight back without a parting, admired himself, and then began to explore the house for clothes. He was going to keep his own jeans, but he wanted some shirts and socks and something to replace his brown tweed jacket. The clothes he had been wearing at his escape he knew would have been listed in his description by the police.

Major Collingwood was a small man, Smiler soon realized. He found two old blue flannel shirts that would be a fair fit, three pairs of thick woollen socks, a thick grey pullover with a hole in the elbow and a well-worn green anorak with a penknife in one of the pockets. In a cupboard under the stairs he found, too, a pair of Wellington boots that fitted him. As his own shoes were the worse for wear he took them.

Conscious of the liberties he was taking and not overlooking the fact that the moment he went out into civilization he
might
be unlucky and be picked up, Smiler felt he had to try and put himself square with Major Collingwood. He went to the desk in the sitting-room and found a pencil and some sheets of note-paper. It took him some time to get the letter the way he wanted it and he screwed up the spoilt sheets of paper and put them in his pocket.

His letter read:

Dear Major Collingwood, I hope you find this and will understand that I am really only borrowing and will make it alright when my Dad comes back, like paying for the food, and so on, and making up the bottle fivepenny pieces if I don't get to do it myself – the fivepenny pieces, I mean – when I get the job I hope to get. I have tried not to make a mess, except for some hair dye on the corner of the bathroom curtins. It is a nice house and I hope your wife gets much better.

Signed, Hunted. (P. S. I can't give my right name right now, for reasons) Also the bike, and some other odds and ends, which maybe I will have returned. Signed, H.