The Runaway Summer (10 page)

‘It’s a grotto,’ Simon said. ‘An artificial grotto. The people who owned the house built it—oh, about two hundred years
ago. I read about it in an old book Uncle Horace had in his shop. They copied it from a real grotto, in Italy.’

‘Why?’ Krishna said.

‘For fun, I suppose. For picnics. There’s a landing stage in the main part, only it’s rotted now.’

‘They must have been fabulously rich,’ Mary said.
‘Bil
lionaires.
Are these diamonds on the walls?’

Simon laughed. ‘Only quartz, I think. It’s brick underneath. You can see in the places where the crystals have come off.’

They walked round, marvelling. Simon led them into a higher chamber than the others, where the floor was dry, beaten earth and a grilled window let in a leafy, speckled light. In one corner there was a hole, covered with branches and full of tinned food—salmon, sardines, baked beans. ‘I bought them with my newspaper round money,’ Simon said. ‘A few tins, every week. I thought we’d sleep here, Krishna. You’ll be quite comfy. I’ve got my blanket and you can have my sleeping bag …’

Krishna looked at Simon worshipfully. ‘I am so glad you are staying too,’ he said.

Simon glanced rather shyly at Mary. ‘I told my Mum I was going camping. I often do, in the holidays. She didn’t ask any questions.’

Mary said, ‘You didn’t tell
me,
did you? Not that I
care
…’

Her throat had begun to ache. It was so unfair.
She
had found Krishna and rescued him, and now they had arranged this between them, plotting behind her back. Boys were all the same. They would make friends with a girl if there was no one else around, but as soon as another boy came along, they were off and away …

‘I’d better go and feed Noakes, I think,’ she said, and walked straight-backed out of the chamber, down to the main cave.
She got out milk, eggs and brandy, and mixed them in a billy with a stick. She hummed a cheerful tune, so that Simon would think she was quite happy.

He came and stood behind her, watching Noakes who was balancing uncertainly on his three legs, and lapping at the milk.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, at length.

‘Sorry for what?’ Mary put on an astonished face.

‘You know

Mary shrugged her shoulders. ‘Two’s company, I suppose.’ Her eyes were smarting.

‘T’isn’t that.’ Simon squatted beside her. ‘I had to, didn’t I? I mean, I couldn’t leave him alone, not to begin with. And there wasn’t time to explain, last night … He paused. ‘You could stay, too. I was going to suggest that. If you want to run away from your Aunt. As she’s so foul …’

He was looking at her rather oddly, Mary thought. As if he were testing her, or something …

What could she say? Not, ‘Aunt Alice would worry.’ That would sound silly.

She found an answer. ‘She’d set the police on to me. Then we’d none of us be safe.’

‘They’d never track you here. I wish you would. It would be more fun with you.’

Mary’s heart lightened. ‘T’isn’t worth risking,’ she said firmly. ‘And I can come every day and bring milk, and anything you want. I’d be more useful, that way.’

He nodded, accepting this. ‘You can always change your mind,’ he said.

After that, it was a perfect day. They built a fire in the clearing above the bluff, and baked some potatoes Simon had brought with him. They were a bit charred and flaky, as they didn’t wait for the fire to burn down to the right kind of
glowing ash, but they went down very nicely with lashings of butter, and cold chicken, and the beetroot sandwiches. They drank the bottle of milk and ate the Garibaldi biscuits and the cheese and the fruit; then, stomachs tight as drums, lay on their backs and went to sleep in the sun.

When they woke, Noakes, who had shared the chicken and then curled up in his basket, had vanished. They found him, stalking a grasshopper on the edge of the clearing, crouching low and moving silkily and expertly as if he had been used to balancing on three legs all his life.

Simon bent to touch him and he growled and spat and arched his back like a wild cat. Simon drew back hastily and Mary laughed. This was the old Noakes, come back!

‘He’s better,’ she said. ‘Better already. It’s like magic.’

Simon went pink. It’s a magic place, ‘he said shyly and earnestly.’ I always felt that. Anyone ‘ud get well here.’

‘My foot’s well,’ Krishna said. ‘It was hurting on the walk, but it is better now.’ He unwound the bandage and stretched out his ankle. ‘I feel like playing a game.’ he announced. ‘A running, jumping,
playing
game.’

*

And they did. They ran, and whooped, and shouted, and laughed, and climbed trees, and splashed in and out of the lake. They were really very silly. Mary hung upside down from a tree and pulled the most frightful faces and Krishna laughed, high and shrill, like a bird. Mary realised she had only heard him laugh like that once before—when she had fallen into the dustbin in the alley. She dropped from the tree and chased him, making madder and madder faces, until he fell in a heap on the ground and clutched his stomach and cried, ‘Stop I shall
die
.’

Simon, who was usually so sober and quiet and responsible.
made most noise of all. He yelled and screamed and stood on his head, waggling his heels in the air.

He behaved like someone who had been shut up for ages—and suddenly set free.

When they were quite exhausted, they sat down by the remains of the fire, and stretched and yawned.

‘I like it here,’ Krishna said. ‘It is the best place I have ever been. I am glad I came to England. You are so kind to me.’

*

‘I wish I was sure we were being kind,’ Simon said, a little later on. It was time for Mary to go home and he had come with her as far as the road, leaving Krishna behind on the island, to keep the fire going and look after Noakes.

‘I mean, hiding him,’ Simon said. ‘I wish I was sure that was the right thing.’

Mary said nothing. She was thinking about Noakes who had followed them as far as the bridge, but stayed behind when they crossed, watching them and switching his tail. Mary wondered if he thought she had abandoned him.

‘I mean,’ Simon said slowly, ‘there’s usually two ways of looking at something. Looked at
one
way, you could say we were rescuers …’

‘Aren’t we?’ Mary said.

‘Well.
I
think we are—at least, I
think
we are—and
you
think we are, but some people might think different.’ Simon paused for a minute, frowning. Then he said. ‘Some people might think we looked more like kidnappers!’

It was queer, Mary thought. On the island, Simon had behaved like a normal boy without a care in the world, but now, as soon as he had left it, he had started being solemn again, weighing things up and worrying over nothing.

‘I think you’re just
ridiculous
,’
she said.

*

Later that evening, though, something happened to make her think again.

She had had her bath after supper and come down to say goodnight. Grandfather was watching the television news, and Aunt Alice put her finger on her lips to warn Mary to keep quiet.

Mary settled down at her feet, feeling pleasantly sleepy—so sleepy, indeed, that she actually leaned her head against Aunt Alice’s boney knee and felt very comfortable there.

Aunt Alice kept very still.

Mary didn’t listen to the news. She closed her eyes and let the sound drift over her head. It was only because Grandfather said, ‘That’s enough. Turn it off, Mary dear, my bones feel old tonight,’ that she heard the last item.

She had her hand on the switch when the announcer said, ‘There is no further news of the boy, Krishna Patel, who disappeared from the London bound charter flight from Nairobi. His Uncle, with whom the boy was expected to stay in England, flew to Paris this morning to assist the French police in their enquiries. At the Airport, Mr Patel said …’

Mary turned the knob, silencing Uncle Patel. After the first, stunned moment, she felt quite calm.
Just
as
well
Simon
didn’t
hear
that,
was all she consciously thought.

She turned round, smiling, and turned the smile into a yawn.

‘You look tired, dear,’ Aunt Alice said. ‘I hope you didn’t overdo things today.’

‘I had a lovely time,’ Mary said. ‘I’m having a lovely time all the time now. I want it to go on and on …’

‘Is there any reason why it shouldn’t dear?’ Aunt Alice said.

A
ND THE GOOD
time did go on. Each day dawned bright and still and so hot that the dew dried before breakfast. The first day on the island, the second, the third … After a week, Mary lost count of time; the days seemed to slip, like warm sand, through her fingers.

If her conscience troubled her, it was only the merest twinge, and only at the beginning, when she had thought
what
would
Simon
do
if
he
knew?
—
and decided that he would write to Uncle Patel at the address Krishna had given them. They still couldn’t be sure he lived there, of course, but Simon would say they ought to try, just the same.

She had written a letter one morning, using block capitals—
YOUR NEPHEW IS IN GOOD HANDS, HAVE NO FEAR FOR HIS
SAFETY—
and signed it,
A FRIEND
. But after looking at it for a while, she had torn it into little pieces and flushed it down the lavatory. If she sent it, the postmark would give a clue, and the police might come, looking.

The island was the safest and most secret place imaginable, but there was a risk. And even the smallest risk wasn’t worth taking.

It wasn’t just that
she
wanted the adventure to go on and on! Krishna was better off on the island, living free and running wild, than he would be in prison. And even if they didn’t put him in prison, but let him live with his Uncle, stuffy old
London was almost as bad as prison, in weather like this. Mary remembered hot summer days in the flat, with nothing to do and nowhere to go except the Park and shopping with her mother.

Perhaps if her parents had been different sort of people, Mary might have thought how Krishna’s must be feeling, not knowing where their son was, or even if he were alive and well. But Mary’s father didn’t write, and although her mother sent her postcards from time to time, Mary knew this didn’t mean a thing. Everyone sent postcards when they went on holiday, and often to people they didn’t care about at all!
Darling,
Mary’s mother wrote,
this
is
such
a
lovely
place,
I
wish
you
were
here—
but
of course, if Mary were there, her mother would be bored to tears! As bored as Mary herself would be, trailing round foreign shops and cafes and having to wear her best clothes and be polite to the dull people her mother made friends with.

Children were a nuisance to parents, Mary considered, and parents a nuisance to children. They were better off apart from each other.

If Simon thought differently, if he worried sometimes about Krishna’s parents, he kept it to himself. Perhaps the truth was that deep down he was more frightened than Mary of what they were doing, and so, quite deliberately, didn’t think about it; just lived for the moment and was happy.

*

‘Simon is much nicer now,’ Krishna said one day.

They had just finished lunch; Simon was digging earthworms somewhere, and Krishna was fishing. This was a pleasantly idle occupation, suitable for a hot afternoon and a full stomach: Krishna had thrown out the line with a bunch of worms on the hook, taken a half hitch round a tin can
perched on a pile of stones, tied the end to his ankle, and now lay comfortably on his back, watching the sky.

‘What d’you mean? Simon’s always nice,’ Mary felt obliged to say, though she was too sleepy to be properly indignant.

‘Well,’ Krishna said, ‘when we first came, he was always making me wash. All over at night and my hands before meals. Now he does not say anything about washing, and I like that better.’

Mary giggled until her stomach shook. ‘I expect the habit’s just worn off,’ she said. ‘At home, you see, he’s always doing things like that—teaching Polly-Anna proper manners and making them change their socks and clean their teeth.’

‘In my family,’ Krishna said, ‘men do not look after children.’

‘Things are different in England,’ Mary said. ‘And though Simon’s mother is nice, she’s sort of vague, and she doesn’t bother much. Simon doesn’t have to, either—I mean, no one makes him, and if I was him I wouldn’t.’

‘Nor would I,’ Krishna said.

They turned their heads and grinned at each other.

‘Pull some faces, Mary,’ Krishna said.

‘I’m too tired.’

‘Tell me a story, then. Tell me some more about your Horrible Aunt.’

‘I’ve told you it all.’ Mary felt uncomfortable suddenly. She raised her head to see if Simon was anywhere around. He wasn’t, but the uncomfortable feeling remained. She said crossly, ‘Why do you keep on and on?’

‘I like stories,’ Krishna said. ‘What will happen if she finds out what you are doing? Being with us, on the island?’

Mary pretended not to hear. She stared up at the sky.

Krishna shifted closer, leaning on his elbow so he could look into her face.

‘Will it be something dreadful?’ he said. ‘Will she cut off your hands and feet?’

Mary was shocked. She saw his eyes, shining like lamps.

She said, in her sternest voice, ‘Of course not. I expect she’d just shut me in my room and feed me on bread and water.’

She could tell by his disappointed expression that this was not nearly horrid enough for him, and sighed inwardly. She wished she had never begun on this silly story about Aunt Alice—and not just because she was bored with telling it. It struck her that telling lies was really rather a lot of trouble! Once you started, you had to go on and on. It was like pouring water into a hole in the sand; there was never any end to it, never any finish …

‘Tell me about the time she tried to poison you,’ Krishna said. ‘About the blue bottle marked Poison, and how you found it and poured the poison away and filled it up with water.’

Mary said quickly, ‘You didn’t tell Simon that did you?’

Krishna had promised, but you never knew!

‘I said I would not,’ Krishna said. ‘Besides, he would not believe me. Simon likes things to be true, always.’

Mary looked at him. She wasn’t sure what he meant—whether Simon wouldn’t believe some of the more far-fetched things she had told Krishna, or whether Krishna himself didn’t.

Krishna said, ‘I mean, he would believe about your Aunt being cruel, but not about the poison.’

Mary sat up. She realised that it would be perfectly easy to say, ‘But none of it is true, none of it at all,’—and later on she was to wish she had said that—but then the tin can rattled over and she forgot all about it, in the excitement of landing a fish.

Krishna untied the line from his ankle and began to pull it
in, making his way down the bluff to a small beach. He brought in a brown trout that flapped and wriggled on the gravel.

‘Too small,’ Mary said. She unhooked it carefully and threw it back in the lake. Krishna, who was squeamish, turned his back.

It’s all right, ‘Mary said.’ You can look now. Though if you like fishing, you ought to be able to do this part of it, too.’

But she felt relieved herself. She hated it, when the trout was big enough to kill.

‘It was under eight inches,’ she said to Simon, who had appeared at the top of the bluff.

He nodded, squatted on the bank, and fitted a fresh lot of worms on the hook. ‘Not much chance of a big one, really,’ he said as he threw the line out. ‘Sun’s getting round to this part of the lake.’

‘Why eight inches?’ Krishna asked.

‘It’s the law. If you eat all the little ones, they get no chance to grow big and breed.’

‘I thought we were outlaws,’ Krishna said. ‘Outlaws do not take notice of the law.’

‘Some laws make sense and some don’t,’ Simon said. ‘And we’re not outlaws, really. More refugees.’ He replaced the tin can on the pile of stones.

‘Me from the English police,’ Krishna said, trying to see if he could hop one-legged up the steep bank. He collapsed halfway up and rolled down and lay on his back, grinning. A shaft of sun shone in his dark eyes and on his hair, which was shiny but dusty. Like blackberries at the side of a busy road, Mary thought. ‘And Mary from her horrible Aunt,’ Krishna said.

Mary glanced at Simon, who was fastening the heavy line
round the tin, and then on to a tree root that stuck out of the bank. She had the feeling that he was deliberately not looking at her.

She said, to change the subject, ‘What about Noakes? What’s Noakes a refugee from?’

Simon said, ‘Noakes? Oh, Noakes is a refugee from civilisation. He’s the biggest refugee of us all.’

*

After the first few days they had hardly seen him. He had gone wild. Now he came sometimes, when they were cooking fish, and crouched, waiting for his share, but mostly they only saw him at a distance: a flash of fur in the undergrowth. Once, when Simon had got up in the night, he had seen him playing on the bluff in the moonlight; a lolloping creature, a black shadow, dancing on three legs and growling and playing with his own tail, like a kitten. In the daytime he was often near, but liked, it seemed, to remain unseen; stalking them through the rhododendrons and the brambles, and lying still, belly to earth, whenever they came close to him. His bandage had fallen off and he had grown fat and glossy. He caught his own food: field mice and birds that he scrunched up delicately, leaving only feathers, and once Mary had found him with a small rabbit. He had snarled at her menacingly, glaring with his one eye, and she had backed away.

She was afraid that one day he would disappear altogether, but Simon said he would stay.

‘He can’t get away, actually,’ he said. ‘Not unless he learns to swim. I mean, there’s only one way, across the bridge, and I don’t suppose he can balance on the beam, not with only three legs. He’ll never leave the island.’

‘Nor am I going to,’ Krishna said. ‘Never.’

‘Never is a long time,’ Simon said.

‘Not too long for me. I shall stay until I am an old, old man.’

‘In this book I read,’ Simon said, ‘the people who built the grotto hired a man to live here and pretend to be a hermit. They thought it would be romantic to have a real live hermit living in their grotto to show their friends when they brought them on picnics, and they paid him two hundred pounds to wear ragged clothes and sit and think, but he got fed up after a while and went away.’

‘He must have been mad,’ Krishna said.

‘Oh, I dunno. I expect he just got bored, being on his own.’

‘I would never be bored,’ Krishna said. ‘I shall stay here and be a hermit, Simon, when you go back to school.’

‘Don’t use dirty words,’ Simon said, and groaned.

Krishna giggled. ‘Don’t you like school, Simon?’

Mary said quickly, ‘No one does, in their right mind.’ She thought this was an unfortunate subject to have got on to. Simon was looking thoughtful, which was a bad sign. He had never said how long he could stay on the island, away from home, and she hadn’t asked him. She didn’t want him to start thinking about it now.

She said, ‘Do you know, the nuts are ripe? I looked this morning. The cob tree, by the rowan.’

They knew which tree she meant. They knew every tree, every bush. The island was perhaps half a mile long and a quarter wide; the boys never left it, and every morning when she came, balancing easily on the bridge beam now, Mary felt as if she were entering a fortress, a castle. The lake was the moat round it and the grotto its inner keep, its sanctum. Sometimes they built a fire in the centre chamber and watched the flames change the colour of the crystal roof.

It was damp there, because the lake ran through it, but the inner room where Simon and Krishna slept, was warm and
dry. They had covered the floor with dried, crinkly bracken that smelt sweet and musty.

Mary envied them this heavenly bed. Sheets seemed so dull—as indeed, everything seemed so dull now, off the island. Leaving it at night and going home, was like stepping into a black and white film, after colour …

*

‘I’m afraid you’re having rather a boring time, Mary,’ Grandfather said. ‘My fault. I’m sorry.’

He had rheumatism in his knees and couldn’t swim. ‘Typical,’ he grumbled, ‘absolutely typical. Best summer for years, and here I am, laid up!’

‘You’d only get heat stroke on the beach,’ Aunt Alice said. ‘Filthy, too. All that oil.’

‘It’s nicer inland,’ Mary said. ‘In the woods.’

‘Which woods?’ Grandfather looked at her frowning.

‘Oh—just woods.’

‘Not the same as the beach, though. What d’you find to do? With that chum of yours—what’s his name? Trumper?’

‘Trumpet,’ Aunt Alice said.

‘Nothing much,’ Mary said. ‘Just messing about.’

‘You must do something. Day after day. Out of the house as soon as breakfast is over, not back till supper. Can’t
just
mess
about
all that time!’

Mary wished her grandfather would stop asking questions. He didn’t usually pry, but the pain in his legs made him fretful.

‘There’s nuts to pick,’ she said. ‘And blackberries …’

Even if she could tell him the truth, it would be hard to explain what they did. Every day was the same, and yet marvellously different …

‘Leave her alone, Father,’ Aunt Alice said. ‘Messing about’s
a good occupation, for someone her age. I used to like the woods, too. More than the beach

She smiled at Mary, as if they shared a secret.

‘All right,’ Grandfather said. ‘All right, Alice. I’m a crochety old man. A crochety, tetchy, curmudgeonly old man with creaky knees. Don’t get old, Mary.’

Mary shook her head. It seemed easy advice to take. She felt quite sure at this moment that she would never change from the person she was now, and that things would go on as they were, for ever and ever …

*

They had picked all the blackberries on the island. ‘There’s some good ones at the side of the path coming down,’ Mary said. ‘Before you get to the lake. By the fallen tree. They’re a bit high up, but we could reach them with sticks.’

Simon shook his head. ‘I want those for my Mum. I always pick her a good lot for jam, before I go back to school.’