Out of Time (4 page)

In the Council Chamber Helmuth listens disdainfully to what has occurred. What fools these men are, not worth their keep.

He is puzzled by accounts of this boy. He does not appear to be like the usual fugitive, but older, cannier. Helmuth wonders whether it is by chance that he is going in the direction of the community. He suspects not. This suits him well. Its stubborn dissidents are a thorn in his side, the last remnants of his erstwhile enemies. If they are harbouring the boy they will in time be eliminated. But not quite yet. There is a reluctance in Helmuth for this final deed.

*

The moon cast a clear light above the wood. Joe spent the night in a tree, the mysterious pads and rustles, the odd painful cry of an animal, the hoots and screeches of birds, preventing any hope of sleep. A grey owl, sharing his eyrie, brushed his face with outspread wings. Once he thought he heard hounds baying.

With the first light he jumped to the ground, relieved to be on the move. He walked all day, pausing only occasionally to gather berries at the forest’s edge. The ground was rising and the stream changing into a fast flowing torrent, tumbling headlong towards its destination. Broad-leaved trees gradually gave way to darkening conifers, firs and pines. Their tangy resin smell reminded him of other places, other times.

When night fell he tried lighting a fire but the matches were still damp from his plunge into the stream and failed to ignite. Angry and frustrated, he threw them to the ground, unable to combat any longer the misery and fear that overwhelmed him. He sat in the enveloping dark for countless hours while invisible night creatures bustled round, slithering, creeping, flying, an unheeding world at his feet and above his head. Eventually he fell into a light slumber, only to be invaded by nightmares in which he saw his mother’s face loom over him while he lay, pinned to a bed, imprisoned in a straitjacket, trying to explain, to speak, feeling his lips move but knowing that no sound came. He strains to warn her that there is danger, danger but he is gagged and as he struggles against his bonds an unearthly cry, a long, low howl, pulls him back into conscious thought. A tremor starts in the base of his spine, speeds through his body, his eyes bulge, his skin prickles and his hair stands on end. The cry rises again and again, culminating in a long high crescendo like the howl of a banshee, predatory and primeval.

Six pairs of yellow eyes glower through trees. Joe stares at them. Wolves. The leader of the pack crouching low, creeps towards him, growling, tail sweeping the ground, fangs bared. Mesmerised, Joe watches its savage shadow approach. Others in the pack are circling round. He is trapped.

Joe springs to his feet and advances on the wolf. Raising arms and head to the sky he lets out a primordial shriek that reverberates through the forest; then with the pent-up terror of his plight, another and another.

Man and beast are locked in confrontation and, as he has always done, man wins. The wolves turn tail and slink into the forest.

THE morning found Joe scrambling for his discarded matches. He recovered twenty-three and the box, damp but still intact. Pushing them gratefully into his jeans pocket he set off up the hill. Conifers converged on either bank, somber, impenetrable and threatening. He hurried on along the thin strip of sunlight beside the stream and stopped at midday to rest and allow his matches to dry. He needed urgently to light a fire in the coming night and cook more fish but made do with handfuls of wild raspberries and small, sharp strawberries. It was a sparse meal; he did not want to stop a minute longer than was necessary.

Nothing in Joe’s existence had prepared him for the ordeal he was now experiencing. There had been no premonition, no warning that his ordinary life, spent in a kind of scowling indifference that, he knew well enough, masked other deeper and unrealised feelings, could be disrupted and destroyed. That he was one moment in a normal day, in an activity as tame as going home from school, and the next in this wild improbable country hunted by packs of men, was the stuff of nightmares, part of the confused jumble that haunted him at night. But this time he was not going to be released by waking to his old surroundings because this time he was not asleep.

He trudged on, on automatic pilot. In the late afternoon as the shadows lengthened, the trees, releasing their resinous smell, pressed closer, lines of pine, fir and yew.

The forest filled him with terror. He had never succeeded in banishing its mythological figures, familiar from fairy tales that used to people his imagination. Though their power faded as he grew older, he realised now that they had been lying in wait, ready to take revenge for their dismissal. Here, they had him at their mercy and they taunted him, witches, warlocks, demons, hobgoblins. He kept his head well covered by his hood for if he looked he might see, and if he saw succumb to their power. The impossible had already happened. Anything could follow. He broke into a run, hoping to escape, but the forest stretched as far as he could see, on and on, perhaps forever, perhaps it covered the whole world. Its evil spirits were closing in on him. He felt their hot breath on his neck.

Though he was unaware of it for it had never been put to the test, Joe carried inside him a reservoir of courage. This now came to his rescue. He stopped running, he stood still, he faced the enemy and he sang. He sang every song he could remember, he shouted out the words, he bellowed his defiance, his confidence growing with every note. Joe felt the forest’s inmates shrink before his onslaught, conceal themselves in the darkness to which he had banished them. He walked on steadily, along the thin strip of bank, towards the summit of a hill. His repertoire exhausted and his throat aching, he kept command over his fears by playing mathematical games, number one, double it to two, then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two. Iteration. He did the same with square roots, pushing them higher and higher until his mind reeled; then primary numbers that stretched to infinity. These he had always relished. Because they went far beyond any calculation made either by computer or by man, they had served to give him a sense of eternity, symbols of the immutability of existence, a safeguard against mortality.

He stopped as the light failed, gathered dry grasses, branches and twigs, lit a fire and flung himself gratefully beside its Promethean flame, his guard against wolves and unholy spirits. Sensing that he was no longer easy prey, they left him alone.

*

There is no moon tonight. The park is dark. Skip, skip, skip. Susie is taking her nightly exercise. Her mother watches anxiously, her father walks the perimeter of the grassy clearing, then nods. The girl stops skipping and the procession, man, child, woman, moves stealthily forward, past the trees and to the park’s railings. Here a small gate is opened. The man looks to right and left and beckons child and woman to follow. Keeping low, they cross Bridge Road, walk stealthily up Rose Avenue and across to number fifty six Jarvis Road.

A face appears briefly at number fifty four but Susie’s parents do not see it. They are desperate to reach their home.

The girl sits on a high stool in the kitchen and eats hungrily from a plate of meat and vegetables. She drinks a mug of milk, eats some fruit.

‘Time to go, Susie,’ her mother says.

The girl shrinks away but the parents, grasping her firmly by the shoulder, march her upstairs to a third floor attic and push her unwilling form through a small door. The mother follows into a windowless room that contains a truckle bed, chair, table, some wooden toys and a doll. Susie lies down on the bed and the mother caresses her forehead but the father gestures impatiently. The mother leaves, closing the door firmly behind her. Susie listens to the familiar sounds of a large cupboard being placed against it.

Once she is alone, she picks up the doll her mother has made from a wooden spoon. She is called Susie Two and is dressed in a wide blue skirt and yellow top. Susie tucks her in beside her, cradles her in her arms and goes to sleep.

In the morning, when light filters through the roof, Susie looks at her for a long time. Susie Two is smiling today. Susie removes a brick from the wall under her bed, pulls out a sheet of parchment and a stick of charcoal. She draws lips that curve down at the corners. Susie Two is no longer looking happy. She is put into the bed and covered up.

Susie begins to write on the parchment. She has never been taught but she has invented her own symbols. These follow a simple pattern with an upright stroke and one, two or three shorter horizontal strokes added respectively for different sounds. In some cases the horizontal strokes run left to right, in others, right to left of the upright. Over a period of time Susie has added circles and diamonds for vowel sounds. She is now able, though it is a laborious process, to express her thoughts and feelings with some sophistication. Susie is as resourceful as Joe is courageous.

*

Joe woke at sunrise. The forest still cast its looming shadow but he ignored it and set about catching fish in the now turbulent water. He was lucky. Two were idling in a pool formed by the eddying water and he scooped them up with his net, cooked and ate them, doused the fire with water from the stream and dispersed the ashes. He set out again, still anxious to put greater distance between himself and the town. The land was rising sharply and the trees were thinning. By mid-morning he had seen the last of the conifers.

The comforting greens of deciduous trees, now in the full bloom of summer, welcomed him. He threw himself down gratefully under the generous branches of an ancient elm, exulting in the terrors vanquished. Later, as the sun reached its noonday height, he caught more fish and hung them from a stick to dry, he picked berries and what he hoped were harmless mushrooms which he ate raw. Then he pushed on, uphill. The stream increased its force with every rise, cascading over boulders and stones, its roar dominating the landscape. By mid-afternoon he had reached its source, wilder and more fierce than when he and Martin had last seen it. He sat beside it and dangled his feet in the water, regretting that he had to move on and away. The stream had been his friend, it had given him food and water, it had saved his life.

In the late afternoon the tree-line stopped abruptly as though drawn with a ruler and he emerged onto soft springy turf on the green summit of a chalk escarpment studded with thorn trees, shrubs and gorse. On either side hills rose in long undulations, some wooded, others bare. Birds of prey, harriers and hawks wheeled overhead. Tired but triumphant, he surveyed a broad valley stretching into the distance, blue hills rising at its furthest edge. Of human habitation there was no sign. He was alone, the only person in this lush countryside.

Joe climbed down the cliff, using sparse bushes and stunted trees as footholds on the steep incline. A grassy plateau a little lower down, a sapling beech growing at its edge, offered an opportunity for pause. He rested, lost in contemplation of the luminous perspectives below. Here, safe from predators, he would stop for the night and press on in the morning.

The plateau was damp from a thin ribbon of water trickling out of the rock. He put his face to it and drank thirstily and, stripped bare, showered with a sense, if not of happiness, at least of satisfaction and relief. Behind the waterfall a narrow fissure opened in the rock. He moved closer and, on hands and knees, crawled through. Inside was dark but as his eyes adjusted he saw that it concealed a bigger cave, high enough to stand in, spacious enough to allow movement. Some daylight filtered in. It offered perfect shelter from wild animals, from humans that might be lurking and from the elements. Here he would stay until, until… he knew not what.

He laid the sack and his meagre possessions carefully inside the cave and climbed to the top with the net, seeking food. A patch of bilberries yielded a sparse meal but the rabbits that hopped carelessly around him offered better fare. His net, patience and ingenuity should keep him in meat for an almost indefinite period. He climbed down again, gathered dry twigs in the fading light from beneath the beech and, under the narrow overhang of rock, lit a fire. This he resolved to keep alight. That night he slept inside the cave while it kept guard.

Early next morning he was back on the escarpment, gathering wood. He cut bracken for his bed and set out to stalk rabbits in the clear morning light. Unused to the ways of humans they offered little resistance. Guiltily, he caught a small one, killed it and took it to his fire. Skinning it was messy and difficult and made him retch but he was learning the ways of the wild world. He dug up stones, laid them round the fire and cooked his prey. Essentials were now provided for. He had water, food and shelter, he had eluded his pursuers and he had unexpected company. Its morning song revealed a thrush nesting in the beech. Sometimes Joe sang back. He took to talking to himself aloud, or to the thrush, the tree, the grass.

Days passed in a timeless progression of hunting, gathering firewood, cooking and making his eyrie habitable. This, to his surprise, he found satisfying, imagining himself as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe. Wild housekeeping, he called it and wondered what his mother would say if she could see him cleaning his cave, shaking his bracken bedding.