The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Chapter 14

I had to leave.

The feeling had been growing upon me for a while, and now it reached its ultimate proof. I could see no good outcome of remaining and had to go. It would not be as simple as walking out of the front door, but then sometimes the best escape plans are the simplest.

Why, in all my years in the east, had I not bothered to learn even a little kung fu?

The question seemed ridiculous now as I sat in my room and waited for dusk. There were guards–not dressed as guards clearly, but in my time I had learned enough of the rhythms of that place to recognise no fewer than five men on duty at any given moment, loitering quietly in the background waiting for a command. At seven every evening they swapped shifts, and the new team was usually still digesting its evening meal. That made them sloppy, slower and a little too relaxed. The land beyond my window was a mix of gorse and heather, and the milkman when he made his delivery had the thick accent of the North. I didn’t need much more than that. I had been a groundsman raised in these parts; I had lived and died by this soil in my first life and knew how to survive on a moor. Phearson, for all his resources and his men, struck me as a city boy not used to the wild hunt. All I needed was to get beyond the walls.

As the land began to turn to a faded grey and 7 p.m. approached, I gathered up what resources I could. A kitchen knife I had stolen from dinner, a metal cup and a small metal plate purloined from the kitchen, a box of matches, bar of soap, toothbrush, toothpaste and a couple of candles. Phearson had been careful: there was little else readily available to an eager thief. He had given me paper to write down my recollections; on it I wrote two letters ready for my departing. I wrapped everything in my blanket and tied it to my back with strips of the sheet from my bed. At five minutes past seven, as the last light began to fade across the moor, I eased open my bedroom door, feeling every bit a ridiculous child, and headed downstairs.

There would be guards on the main and kitchen doors, but several slept on site and no one bothered to guard the bedrooms of the guards themselves. I found a heavy-duty coat and several pairs of socks in one of them, and a few precious shillings on the dresser, then headed towards the rear of the house to where a window opened on to a low coal-shed roof. I eased myself out feet first, balancing precariously on the edge, then dropped with a metal thud that rattled me to my very bones, and waited for retribution.

No retribution came, so I slipped further down, easing on to the gravel path that snaked around the house. To run was to declare my escape, so I walked at an easy swagger as I had heard the guards do, heart racing with every step, until I was finally behind the yew hedges and ready to run, which at last I did.

I was out of shape, having never been in much of a shape to get out of, and my confinement had hardly aided the process. But I wasn’t hugely burdened, and an odd exhilaration, a recollection of the sounds and smells of childhood and the moor, a liberation in the length of my own stride, powered me on. There was a wall all around the grounds, which I had noticed on my supervised walks in the garden, but it was a wall designed more for keeping strangers out than prisoners in, and it was a minimal challenge to find an old oak tree whose lowest branch dangled over the yellow brick like a pirate’s gangplank. I climbed up, fingers brushing aside insects feeding on rotting wood, slipped along the branch as I had so many times as a boy, and dropped down the other side. And, like that, I was free.

If it had been that simple.

I had a plan, within which there were other plans which could end a number of different ways, depending on how the overall plan proceeded. I considered the prospect of my recapture to be highly likely, in light of how inexperienced I was at evading authorities and how much of myself I had given away, but the intermediate time was mine.

Whatever happened, I needed to find where I was, to determine how hard the rest of my scheme would be. A tatty road ran between great banks of untamed trees; I followed it to the west, hiding in the forest at the sound of the three cars that passed by in all the hours of my walking. Creatures rustled in the woods beside me, wondering what I was doing; it would have been romantic to say an owl hooted, but it had more common sense and kept clear of me as I passed. I estimated that, at the outside, I would have three hours before the alarm was raised back in the house. It could be a lot less, if I was unlucky.

A T-junction stood just beyond a stream crowned with a tiny brick bridge. It offered two choices–Hoxley in five miles, or West Hill in seven. I chose Hoxley, knowing it to be the more obvious decision but also the fastest, and set out parallel to the road. My forest covering quickly gave way to more open fields framed with low stone walls; I hopped on to the muddy side of these and ducked down behind whenever I heard the rumble of an engine, no matter how far off. The moon was half full–optimum in terms of providing just enough light to see, but not so much to expose me. The air, so hot in the day, now turned cold enough for my breath to steam. The ground was still muddy from the rain, my trousers splattered and my socks soaked through to a ubiquitous squelch. I found the North Star, Orion’s Belt, Cassiopeia and the Great Bear. Cassiopeia was high, the Bear was low, which made the first car that tore by me at the speed of urgency a little past midnight. I had got lucky: they’d taken several hours to notice my absence and now they had little choice but to drive around the countryside with headlights on full in search of me while I could navigate by starlight.

Hoxley was a little stone village on the edge of a little stone hill where once they’d mined and now they declined. I crept in sideways between the houses, down the little back streets that ran out at fields and fences. Though it could not have held more than four hundred souls, Hoxley had a war memorial in a tiny centre square, bearing the lists of names of those who’d died in two wars. A silver car was parked beside it, lights on, a figure lost inside. It had stopped by the one pub and clearly disturbed the landlord, who stood in the doorway arguing with a second man, indignant at his night being broken. I crawled away from the square up what had to be called the High Street, with its one little grocer selling fresh tomatoes and lamb, and the post office, proudly painted in chipped bright red. Now I knew where it was, I slunk again to the edge of town and crawled between the loose planks of a lopsided barn, to hide among the rusted wheelbarrow, bundled stacks of hay and dusty chicken feathers lost in a fight.

I did not sleep, and that was not a problem.