The Broken Chariot (5 page)

His packet of day-old bread unwrapped from a clean handkerchief surprised him by its quality, when in school they had complained of it tasting like baked mud. He sat on a step to eat, and couldn't decide whether the lion on its plinth was sternly telling him to call his freedom a day's outing in London, and to get back to school by dark, or encouraging him to look sharp and stir himself to move further away than he was already.

Flights of pigeons swooped for his crumbs, though few enough were left. A pall of exhaustion came over him. He hadn't eaten enough, but it would have to do. When you had escaped from a prison camp it was dangerous to go into a café, and if he had to sooner or later that would be soon enough. He stood up, determined to go his way, a glance at the stone man with one eye and one arm high on his pillar who, he felt, would approve of his escape and watch over him.

Traffic was turmoil, people disturbing. He turned about and went into the post office to buy an air-letter form and zip off a paragraph telling his mother what he had done. She wasn't to worry, but if she did, so what? such concern being her affair and not his. It was a matter of protocol more than filial tenderness. You always let your parents know where you were.

He carried his case up Charing Cross Road, wondering whether he had done right in sending the news. It was vital not to betray his whereabouts, but they were so far away that the letter would take weeks to reach what outstation such folks were holed up in. By then he would be somewhere else altogether. Anxiety was lessened by looking in bookshop windows, at the gaudy covers of bigamy and murder. He wanted to buy one, for a real adult read, but money was for food and train tickets. On wiping his nose, he felt a firm tap at the shoulder.

Anybody could outrun such a granddad of a copper, if the only course was to bolt. A Woodbine packet sent spinning along the gutter by a damp wind was run over by a bus. The constable was smiling, so widely it was a wonder his false teeth stayed in. ‘You've dropped your Identity Card, sonny.'

‘Oh, thank you, officer. That was careless of me.'

The old fool even picked it up for him. ‘Can't lose your identity card, lad, or you won't know who you are, will you?'

‘Not much difficulty there.' Herbert gave the expected laugh. That bloody cold, with its runny nose calling for the handkerchief so often, had almost done for him. He stowed the card safely in his wallet and looked again at the cover of
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
set temptingly behind the glass, meanwhile waiting for the Special to turn the corner.

A mindless and happy wandering among carts and lorries in Covent Garden was ended by a violent splashing of rain. Horse piss was washed away, petrol fumes mellowed, but the wind was cold after rain, the sun fickle.

At the clarity of the air a sudden panic sent him back to the safety of the Underground, going down at Holborn and getting out at St Pancras. A shadow passed over him in the great space. He was threatened by odours of smoke and steam, wanted to flee but the street was even rowdier. What to do or where to go was the greatest problem on earth. The worst thing was to look bereft in the booking hall of a mainline station.

His heart thumped at the peculiar sensation of freedom, of having to deal with choice, take risks with reference to nobody else, lock into throngs of people who had a purpose and knew what they had to do. In a German town soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets might surround him any moment and march him back to the prison camp. At least you'd know what was what.

The cheerful scene, even an educational experience, told him he would be safe as long as he kept moving and appeared certain of what he wanted to do. But what was that? He could only say it was good to be in England now that April was here. Instinct, welcome reinforcement to his fix, said that other people were his best camouflage, the commoner the better, so he stood at the back of a queue and stayed till an army sergeant in front asked for a ticket to Nottingham. Why not? Herbert's twenty-one shillings and eight pence was at the ready. Whoever will imagine I've gone to such an outlandish place?

There was a rush along the line to get on board and, well trained in games of murder ball, he forced his way through. A balding middle-aged man in spectacles glared as Herbert fell into a spare seat. Simpson had put the NCOs through a course of unarmed combat, so if it came to a fight he could hurl the weedy twerp through the window.

He was disappointed. A scrap would have been fun, made him feel less tight, though it wasn't on because you didn't draw attention to yourself when on the run. The pathetic man, a clerk most likely, folded his newspaper to read standing up. Maybe he had been wounded in Normandy and was now demobbed, you never could tell, which thought made Herbert give up his seat to a woman and her child.

He stood in the crowded corridor, back to
Caged Birds
, though the narrative seemed less gripping now. The train moved slowly through railway yards, and he was glad to be on his way, almost gloating. Let them find me. I'm safe for a hundred and thirty miles, unless we go into a river like the train at the Tay. Life was exciting, helped by the metallic thump-thump of the wheels. The only thing wrong was in being hungry, but that was also part of the escape. Dismal buildings bordered the line, bare bulbs glowing between in the partially lifted blackout. A man stood at one in his undershirt, perfectly still, as if watching every face in the train, like a policeman off duty.

What peculiar places people lived in. If he had to hole up in such style – he pushed a soldier away who was trying to lean on his shoulder and go to sleep – he might not like his freedom at all. On the other hand maybe he would be glad to live in such a room. He'd be glad to live in even worse at the moment, except that he had to vagabond as far as possible, go somewhere else after – where was it? – Nottingham, and lay a twisting trail to mystify and wear out the most fanatical hue-and-criers.

The market square seemed vast in the semi-blackout. But for a single trackless bus it looked like an encampment that had been abandoned to flowerbeds and low stone walls. Herbert wasn't worried about finding a place to sleep, but knew he would sooner or later have to discover a niche into which a policeman was unlikely to poke his nose. His money was almost gone, and his gas mask had been left behind, though he didn't think there could be any use for that at this late stage of the war.

Eight boomed from the clock above the Council House and it felt like midnight. On a further exhausting perambulation of the square, pausing again to look at the lions, those same old lions, he saw a pub, or rather heard it, the noise sounding as if the whole population of the town was carousing inside. He edged a way to the bar through a crowd of mostly servicemen.

Sixpences were draining away but he scorned to spend them carefully. Glancing at an old man close by, dressed in a clean blue overcoat, a cap and scarf, and with an empty half-pint glass by his side, he said: ‘Have a drink on me.'

The man's look of surprise was more obvious than his expression of distrust. ‘All right. I'll have the same again.'

Herbert, celebrating his escape from school, called for two, and along they came for a shilling.

‘Throwing your money around, aren't you?'

‘Not particularly.' Herbert refrained from sneering. Parsimony was the last refuge of – he couldn't think what. ‘Perhaps I want to get rid of it. Anyway, it's a great occasion for me.'

‘Is it, then? How much money have you got?'

Herbert wiped his nose, and explored the cloth caverns of his pockets. ‘Another two shillings.'

‘Where did you pick up that stinking cold?'

The whole damned school had had one. ‘On the train, I suppose.' Colds were loathsome, only inferior types stricken – till you caught one yourself. ‘It was packed.'

‘They usually are. Here's to your health, which seems a fair toast.'

Wasn't there a line in Lullabalero about Nottingham's fine ale? He'd never tasted anything so good. ‘And to yours, as well.'

‘I'm Isaac Frost.' A frail hand was held out for shaking. ‘What might yours be?'

He touched the cold fingers. ‘Herbert.'

‘Is that all?'

‘For the moment.'

Isaac looked at him pityingly. ‘I've met some funny chaps in my time, but not one that throws his money about when he's got so little.'

Herbert supposed that his lavish father would easily spend his last shilling treating someone he didn't know to a drink, especially if he came into a place like this and met one of his old soldiers – except that he most probably wouldn't set much store by this dive. He took his foot from the brass rail and stood full height. ‘As soon as I've nothing left it will collect my mind wonderfully towards getting some more.'

Isaac adjusted his glasses on hearing such pretentious nonsense. ‘Sounds a cock-eyed notion to me. And you're a bit too young to be a philosopher. You're from London, I suppose?'

Herbert had heard of coppers' narks, and wondered whether he shouldn't make a run from this noisy and exuberant den, though pride decided him not to. Either that, he thought, or I'm too done in to care. ‘Thereabouts.'

‘What hotel do you propose to put up at?'

Being laughed at encouraged him to more openness, whether the man was a nark or not. ‘I'm not on the run, if that's what you mean. I'm seventeen, and want to get a job. As soon as I'm eighteen, though, I'll enlist.'

Isaac was appalled at what the war had done to the young. ‘Why do you want to do that?' A tinkle of broken glass came from further down the hall, and a woman's scream was followed by such male effing and blinding as made Herbert turn his head, though slowly, to look. The smack of a fist on flesh sounded even over shouts and laughter, and a burly man in evening dress frogmarched a capless glaze-eyed soldier out on to the pavement. ‘There's always a bit of that going on,' Isaac said, ‘with so many women on the loose. And you know what soldiers are. But the doormen are very good here at dealing with it.'

Herbert turned to his drink as if nothing had happened. ‘The army will take care of me for a few years. I need to learn how to kill properly.'

Isaac laughed in such a way that Herbert wondered if he had asthma, knowing what it sounded like because Dominic had a touch of it when he first came to school. ‘You don't have to learn a thing like that. Necessity will tell you, if ever you need to. In any case, who would a nice young chap like you want to kill? There's been enough of that going on in the last five years.'

‘My parents, for a start.'

‘They seem to have made a good job of you.' His thin lips curved even more in amusement, as if to say: who the devil have I got here? ‘You should be grateful.'

‘They packed me off to boarding school from India when I was seven.' The laughter at some jokester further down the bar diminished. Herbert, not knowing the right thing to say, or even what he really believed before this sceptical old man, said whatever came to mind. ‘I'd have been quite happy staying where I was.'

‘I wish my parents had been able to send me to such a place. I left a hellhole of a school at thirteen to work on a market stall. And then I fought my way up, if you can call it that. Anyway, the best thing you can do is take my advice, and never blame your parents for anything. Whatever you think they did, it wasn't their fault. And whatever they did do can't be altered now.'

‘Really?' Herbert hoped his attempt to resist an outright sneer would be obvious to the most imperceptive, or so Isaac surmised. The silly kid's trying to seem more adult by blaming his deficiencies and troubles on his parents.

Two half-pints, and the ever biting famishment, not to mention tiredness, made him grip the brass rail to stay upright, while trying to show interest in whatever other rubbish the little man had to say.

‘I was a printer for much of my life. Now I'm retired, and live on my own. Why? Well, I like it that way, that's why. I've got a couple of beehive rooms up one of those narrow streets across the square, and as I can see you're in a fix you're welcome to come back and sleep on the floor. I won't be the perfect host and offer my bed, because I'm sixty and need it myself.'

Herbert knew he should say no, thank you very much, it's awfully kind, I must be getting on, but he put himself into the hands of this stranger because he was too much starving and done for to know what to do or where to go next.

Stars spun over the sky; he looked at pavements and tarmac to get his equilibrium settled. ‘It's not good to drink on an empty stomach,' Isaac said. ‘Certainly not Nottingham ale.' He led the way up the stairs of a damp-smelling decrepit building of offices and store rooms, turning from the landing to say: ‘I've told you my full name. What's yours? And I don't want an alias, either.'

The question signified a Rubicon that would have to be crossed sooner or later, a turbulent river for Herbert after his determination to follow the
Caged Birds
code of concealment, but he had blabbed plenty in the pub so he decided that a little more truth wouldn't get him turned over to the law. Trust was laziness, a deadly sin, but even so he answered: ‘Herbert Thurgarton-Strang.'

‘One of them?' Isaac worked his keys at the lock. ‘We'll have to find you a shorter monicker, otherwise the blokes in the factory will make your life a misery.'

‘I'm not going to have anything to do with a factory.'

‘You'll want a job won't you?'

Herbert followed him into the small room. The old man's brain must have been working overtime. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I do. Or I well might.'

‘You've got problems, and I'm wondering what to do with you. Anyway, Thurgarton-Strang, in the meantime, I'll cook us some chips.' He took off his hat, overcoat and scarf. ‘I've got spuds, fat, and a loaf of bread, so you won't go to sleep on an empty stomach, which it looks like you've got with that bony face. There's tea and milk as well but, alas, no sugar.'