And down the drive I went, carrying a heart blocked up like Boulder Dam across my arteries, the nail-bag clamped down tighter and tighter as though in a woodwork vice, yet with my feet like birdwings and arms like talons ready to fly across the field except that I didn’t want to give anybody that much of a show, or win the race by accident. I smell the hot dry day now as I run towards the end, passing a mountain-heap of grass emptied from cans hooked on to the fronts of lawnmowers pushed by my pals; I rip a piece of tree-bark with my fingers and stuff it in my mouth, chewing wood and dust and maybe maggots as I run until I’m nearly sick, yet swallowing what I can of it just the same because a little birdie whistled to me that I’ve got to go on living for at least a bloody sight longer yet but that for six months I’m not going to smell that grass or taste that dusty bark or trot this lovely path. I hate to have to say this but something bloody-well made my cry, and crying is a thing I haven’t bloody-well done since I was a kid of two or three. Because I’m slowing down now for Gunthorpe to catch me up, and I’m doing it in a place just where the drive turns in to the sportsfield — where they can see what I’m doing, especially the governor and his gang from the grandstand, and I’m going so slow I’m almost marking time. Those on the nearest seats haven’t caught on yet to what’s happening and are still cheering like mad ready for when I make that mark, and I keep on wondering when the bleeding hell Gunthorpe behind me is going to nip by on to the field because I can’t hold this up all day, and I think Oh Christ it’s just my rotten luck that Gunthorpe’s dropped out and that I’ll be here for half an hour before the next bloke comes up, but even so, I say, I won’t budge, I won’t go for that last hundred yards if I have to sit down cross-legged on the grass and have the governor and his chinless wonders pick me up and carry me there, which is against their rules so you can bet they’d never do it because they’re not clever enough to break the rules — like I would be in their place — even though they are their own. No, I’ll show him what honesty means if it’s the last thing I do, though I’m sure he’ll never understand because if he and all them like him did it’d mean they’d be on my side which is impossible. By God I’ll stick this out like my dad stuck out his pain and kicked them doctors down the stairs; if he had guts for that then I’ve got guts for this and here I stay waiting for Gunthorpe or Aylesham to bash that turf and go right slap-up against that bit of clothes-line stretched across the winning post. As for me, the only time I’ll hit that clothes-line will be when I’m dead and a comfortable coffin’s been got ready on the other side. Until then I’m a long-distance runner, crossing country all on my own no matter how bad it feels.
The Essex boys were shouting themselves blue in the face telling me to get a move on, waving their arms, standing up and making as if to run at that rope themselves because they were only a few yards to the side of it. You cranky lot, I thought, stuck at that winning post, and yet I knew they didn’t mean what they were shouting, were really on my side and always would be, not able to keep their maulers to themselves, in and out of cop-shops and clink. And there they were now having the time of their lives letting themselves go in cheering me which made the governor think they were heart and soul on his side when he wouldn’t have thought any such thing if he’d had a grain of sense. And I could hear the lords and ladies now from the grandstand, and could see them standing up to wave me in: ‘Run!’ they were shouting in their posh voices. ‘Run!’ But I was deaf, daft and blind, and stood where I was, still tasting the bark in my mouth and still blubbing like a baby, blubbing now out of gladness that I’d got them beat at last.
Because I heard a roar and saw the Gunthorpe gang throwing their coats up in the air and I felt the pat-pat of feet on the drive behind me getting closer and closer and suddenly a smell of sweat and a pair of lungs on their last gasp passed me by and went swinging on towards that rope, all shagged out and rocking from side to side, grunting like a Zulu that didn’t know any better, like the ghost of me at ninety when I’m heading for that fat upholstered coffin. I could have cheered him myself: ‘Go on, go on, get cracking. Knot yourself up on that piece of tape.’ But he was already there, and so I went on, trot-trotting after him until I got to the rope, and collapsed, with a murderous sounding roar going up through my ears while I was still on the wrong side of it.
It’s about time to stop; though don’t think I’m not still running, because I am, one way or another. The governor at Borstal proved me right; he didn’t respect my honesty at all; not that I expected him to, or tried to explain it to him, but if he’s supposed to be educated then he should have more or less twigged it. He got his own back right enough, or thought he did, because he had me carting dustbins about every morning from the big full-working kitchen to the garden-bottoms where I had to empty them; and in the afternoon I spread out slops on spuds and carrots growing in the allotments. In the evenings I scrubbed floors, miles and miles of them. But it wasn’t a bad life for six months, which was another thing he could never understand and would have made it grimmer if he could, and it was worth it when I look back on it, considering all the thinking I did, and the fact that the boys caught on to me losing the race on purpose and never had enough good words to say about me, or curses to throw out (to themselves) at the governor.
The work didn’t break me; if anything it made me stronger in many ways, and the governor knew, when I left, that his spite had got him nowhere. For since leaving Borstal they tried to get me in the army, but I didn’t pass the medical and I’ll tell you why. No sooner was I out, after that final run and six-months hard, than I went down with pleurisy, which means as far as I’m concerned that I lost the governor’s race all right, and won my own twice over, because I know for certain that if I hadn’t raced my race I wouldn’t have got this pleurisy, which keeps me out of khaki but doesn’t stop me doing the sort of work my itchy fingers want to do.
I’m out now and the heat’s switched on again, but the rats haven’t got me for the last big thing I pulled. I counted six hundred and twenty-eight pounds and am still living off it because I did the job all on my own, and after it I had the peace to write all this, and it’ll be money enough to keep me going until I finish my plans for doing an even bigger snatch, something up my sleeve I wouldn’t tell to a living soul. I worked out my systems and hiding-places while pushing scrubbing-brushes around them Borstal floors, planned my outward life of innocence and honest work, yet at the same time grew perfect in the razor-edges of my craft for what I knew I had to do once free; and what I’ll do again if netted by the poaching coppers.
In the meantime (as they say in one or two books I’ve read since, useless though because all of them ended on a winning post and didn’t teach me a thing) I’m going to give this story to a pal of mine and tell him that if I do get captured again by the coppers he can try and get it put into a book or something, because I’d like to see the governor’s face when he reads it, if he does, which I don’t suppose he will; even if he did read it though I don’t think he’d know what it was all about. And if I don’t get caught the bloke I give this story to will never give me away; he’s lived in our terrace for as long as I can remember, and he’s my pal. That I do know.