The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Chapter 15

I had timed sunrise during my stay at the house and knew exactly when it came.

I waited what I estimated to be an hour after before crawling out of my den, and was the first, mud-stained, feather-brushed man to walk up to Hoxley post office even as the postmistress, a sour woman with a flushed round face, unlocked the door. With the shillings I had stolen from my guards I bought two envelopes and a couple of stamps, and pressed my letters into her hand.

“You’re very kind,” I said in my best Scottish accent, and she raised her eyebrows to hear a stranger.

It was a poor attempt at disguise, but if my would-be captors were to ask, I wished to confuse the matter of my presence there as far as possible. I watched her slip my two letters into her bag and left.

The day was hot, bright and beautiful.

Rather reluctantly, I abandoned my stolen coat, which had done sterling service in the coldest parts of the night. It was, I felt, too easily recognisable and marked too heavily with my night’s trudging. Without it, underneath, I was an almost respectable, if rather muddy gentleman.

The silver car I had seen in the night was prowling the edge of Hoxley. I ducked down behind a tenement wall smelling of soap and the outdoor privy that it protected as the over-expensive, over-fuelled vehicle rumbled by. The time had come to strike out overland again, away from the daylight danger of the roads.

I headed north, on a largely arbitrary whim, and for a few brief hours felt liberated by the daylight and the warmth, until thirst, hunger and the fuzzy quality of my own teeth began to distract annoyingly. I looked for a dip in the land, or a place where trees grew despite human carving, and by these signs found my way to a shallow stream aspiring to be a river, slippy fat round rocks pressed along its bed. I washed my face, my hands, my neck, and drank deep. I brushed my teeth and watched the white foam of my spit drift busily downstream. I counted the pennies I had left from my night’s theft, and wondered how far to the next town and how heavily patrolled it would be. I was too old to set snares for rabbits, so I gathered up my goods and walked on.

I reached the next village in the early afternoon.

Phearson’s men stood out like flies crawling in the wild horse’s eye. There was a baker, the smell of yeast almost unbearable. I watched for Phearson’s men to move on, then strode confidently in and declared, this time in my most received pronunciation, “A loaf and any butter you may have, please.”

The baker moved with glacial speed as he considered the question of butter. “Well, sir,” he concluded at last, “will lard do you now?”

Lard would do me fine, as long as it came soon.

“You not from here, sir?” he asked.

No, I wasn’t from here; I was out walking and needed to join my friends.

“Beautiful weather for it, sir.”

Yes, wasn’t it just. Let’s hope it holds.

“Would it be your friends what came into town this morning, sir? They said they were looking for someone?”

He talked so slowly, so amiably, that it was almost tragic to perceive the sound of suspicion, the quiet accusation in his voice.

Did they look like they were here for the hunting?

No, no, they didn’t.

Ah well then. They couldn’t be my friends. Thank you for the bread, thank you for the lard and now—

“Harry!” Phearson too, it turned out, could do RP when he needed to. I stood frozen in the door, bread under one arm, bundle of lard half-unwrapped and ready to smear. Phearson walked right up to me and threw his arms around me with gigantic affection. “I was so worried we were going to miss you!” he exclaimed, voice bouncing hugely down the quiet stone street. “Thank God you made it in time.”

His car was parked not twenty yards away, a roaring beast in a fairy-tale forest. The rear passenger door was already open, one of my anonymous guards–quite possibly the one I’d stolen the coat from–holding it open. I looked at it, looked at Phearson, and then, not feeling particularly confident about the gesture but feeling it needed to be made, dropped the bread and hit him as hard as I could in the face with the sharp end of my elbow.

I am pleased to say something went crack, and when I drew my arm back, there were flecks of blood staining the sleeve.

Regrettably I got no more than ten yards before the baker, moving with surprising speed for such a sedentary man, took me down with a well-placed rugby tackle and sat on my head.