There was a rough path out of the beech trees to begin with, an old, hard deeply rutted cattle path which wound its way along by the stream through clumps of furze which gave me reasonable cover from the more thinly wooded hills above me on either side. After half a mile the stream narrowed, then became a broad, flat trickle filled with watercress, which finally spread out, losing itself in a delta of marshy ground which was its source. There were clumps of marigold and yellow iris here, a still, airless place, like a cavern, overhung by a semicircle of sheer limestone walls, the remains of an old quarry, it seemed. And there, running along the top of the quarry, was the great, ten-foot-high barbed-wire fence, the same that I’d crashed into on my first evening in the woods, here again, obviously circling the entire estate, making me a prisoner.
Retracing my steps, and then walking round onto the top of this limestone bluff, standing just inside the fence, I saw the long lengths of much more open pasture beyond, with sheep everywhere, some of them within a stone’s throw of me, many with lambs, the great fields dotted with winter feeding troughs. A mile or two away to the north, down this long gentle slope, a car windscreen flashed in the slanting afternoon sun: there was a small by-road there leading to Chipping Norton. To my left, on a rise half a mile away, I could see what must have been the home farm at the back of the estate, some big dutch barns and a straggle of other farm buildings. This was the end of the hidden valley: the end of my world.
I came back round the other side of the quarry and here, shrouded in elder and blackthorn, I found a much older Cotswold stone barn, with the stump of a metal wind-pump next to it that had once drawn water up for the animals from the spring below. But now the whole place was unused, except for storing animal feed in winter, for there were several broken hay bales scattered about on the earth floor. And here I found any amount of strong red baler twine, along with a dozen or so yellow plastic fertiliser sacks, the discarded remains of some previous attentions to the big pasture beyond. I left the sacks where they were but took as much of the twine back with me as I could, stopping on the way to pick great bunches of watercress in the flat shallows of the stream, stuffing this salad into all my pockets.
Back at the lake, I looked along its margins for a boat. But I could see nothing. I hid near the island then, on the eastern side of the water, and gazed out at the roof of the little mausoleum. I waited till it was almost dark and fish had begun to jump in the long twilight, watching. But no one came. No barque, no mysterious passenger, set out on the still waters to comfort the dead. And yet I hadn’t imagined the vase of fresh roses.
That evening I needed the watercress. The cheese and Ritz biscuits were gone and I ate it up like an animal, stuffing it into my mouth in great ham-fisted bunches. Yet when I’d finished it all I realised I was still starving. On the other hand the news on the radio was more encouraging: the police were definitely looking for me elsewhere now, in London, in Oxford. It was thought that I had managed to get a lift out of the Cotswolds that night. Car drivers travelling in the area at the time were being asked to report any such movement. The chase for the time being seemed to have passed over me.
I contemplated lighting the gas burner and cooking up some of the Knorr Spring Vegetable Soup in Spinks’s billycan. But the light might have given me away and in any case the branches about me allowed no firm base for any such cuisine. I went hungry. And it was cold again too that night, even in Spinks’s Army-surplus pullover and sleeping-bag, wrapped up like a cocoon in the hammock. But on the plus side, having left my few matches out, the box half opened — tied to a branch to dry in the sun for the past two days. I found they worked now. I had a cigarette, which was marvellous. I now had seventeen left. I counted the matches. There were only twelve of them.
And I thought, in the time it takes me to build a tree house, in order to make a firm base for the gas burner, in order to cook the soup, in order to survive, I may well have used up all the matches, tempted by the smokes, so that the gas would be no use to me in any case. Never mind, I thought for a moment: I can pop down the road to some local village shop and replenish these vital supplies.
And it was then that I realised that I hadn’t yet faced up seriously to the problems of survival in the open at all, that I still viewed the whole business as something of a game. For, after all, even if I did risk going to any local shop, I remembered then that I had absolutely no money with me. I slept in a wind that came up that night — waking distractedly three or four times, hearing the branches rustle about like witches above me. What if it rained — a long spell of English summer rain? I’d pack it in then. I’d give myself up.
But it didn’t rain. The hot sun was there again at daybreak and later on I found the tree I thought I needed — one of several very old oaks in the valley, with a big collar of twigs and leaves about twenty feet up its trunk which completely hid the centre of the tree, if anyone looked up into it directly from beneath. The foliage in any case was much more dense than that of the beech trees. And the branches, I could just see, were thicker and more numerous. It was a vast tree, almost in full leaf, set about five yards back from the water, a little below the island and ruined footbridge, in the southern end of the lake. The only problem was to climb it. From beneath that was obviously impossible.
After ten minutes moving about it, I saw the beech tree, on the steep sides of the valley above the oak, and noticed how its branches interlocked in places with the other tree. If I could climb the beech I might be able to cross onto the oak. And so it was. I found a long sloping limb on the beech tree, running down to within a few feet from the ground, near the top of the valley, which gave me ready access, like a gangway, up onto the main trunk of the tree. And from there, moving carefully out along one of its great central branches, I found that I could cross over onto the oak fairly easily getting into its middle, about thirty feet above the ground.
Right at the centre of the oak, higher up, the trunk splayed out, like an upturned hand, into half a dozen smaller limbs, forming just the kind of support I needed for the old rafters in the pumping-shed on the other side of the lake. It seemed ideal. I could see nothing of the outside world at all here. Yet by climbing upwards another fifteen feet or so, to where the branches thinned, I found I could peek out over the whole northern end of the lake — and by moving outwards horizontally along another thick branch lower down I found myself looking straight down into the smooth, coppery water forty feet beneath me.
With some lengths of baler twine attached to Spinks’s canvas water carrier, and with a stone to weight it in the bottom, I could then lower it into the lake and ensure myself a constant supply of drinking-water without ever leaving the tree. With some long single strands of the same twine, attached to the nylon leader of one of Spinks’s Woolworth fishing hooks and a worm, I might even have fish for my supper with no more inconvenience. With such thoughts, some hidden boy scout emerging in me, I forgot about the vase of roses in the little mausoleum on the island.
I built the tree house right in the heart of the green oak. It took me all of three days, pushing the rafters out one by one late that evening from the old pumping-shed and letting them drift down the lake in the current during the night, so that next morning they had all arrived by the island, lodged against its shores or caught in the ruined footbridge supports.
From there I hoisted them up into the tree with Spinks’s nylon mountain rope, and fastened them securely with the baler twine, like floorboards, across the cradle of branches. I had to cut some of the smaller oak branches out of the way so that the rafters would fit, and prune some of the beams themselves as well. Spinks’s flexible pocket saw made this a possible, if laborious, business. Later I’d set other planks or branches upright round this floor, tie the fertiliser sacks to them and build a roof, too. I’d make a proper house out of it all. Why not? For the thought had come to me even then: if this tree-house was successful, if I remained free, I’d somehow rescue Clare from wherever she’d been taken and bring her to live with me. I didn’t think about how exactly I’d manage this. At the time, since things were going well, I took only the broad view. I was filled with mad optimism.