I’d seen part of a field of young corn immediately to the left of the cricket pitch, beyond a post-and-rail fence which formed the boundary. The corn wasn’t high. But it was deep enough to duck down and hide in, I thought, if anyone appeared while I was in the open moving towards the pavilion. And if I followed this fence, it led directly behind the strange building.
Ten minutes later I had left the steep side of the valley, moved down through the cover of the beech wood, and was out on the edge of the cornfield. The pavilion was on the other side, a few hundred yards away, with the wooden fence for cover as well, if I could get safely across the field to it.
I did, and after that it was relatively easy, skirting along, with my head well down behind the fence, until I got in behind the back of the pavilion. There was a door here, next some rough latrines, which led through into a small open kitchen with a circular counter beyond. The trays were on top of it, covered in tea-towels, together with the cake tins and the crisps. When I lifted the towels my hand was shaking again.
And then the sandwiches were suddenly there, like a stupendous conjuring trick. They struck me with the greedy force of some great restaurant display; moist, luscious, neatly cut, lightly buttered, in brown and white bread with all the crusts removed. There was ham; there was beetroot and grated cheese; there was egg; there was egg and tomato; there were some with a sort of spam filling which I didn’t fancy and others just filled with plain watercress which I left entirely aside.
I gobbled one up there and then, unable to resist it, like a madman, scattering crumbs on the floor which I had to clear up. But from then on I was more careful. I took eight half-rounds from the two trays, carefully rearranging the rest so that the gaps wouldn’t show. I looked in the cake tins then: one was filled with flour-dusted scones, the next with raspberry-jam and lemon-curd tarts, the last with small, fluffy cream cakes. I took a careful selection from all three tins. There was a big plastic bag filled with sausage rolls. I took four of these, stuffing the lot into every pocket. The big carton of crisps hadn’t been opened so I had to leave them.
I looked round the rest of the cricket pavilion. There was a nice smell of linseed oil and leather and old grass in the air. The main room beyond the kitchen was lined with trestle tables covered in red check cloths; old team photographs ringed the rough log walls. Though so quintessentially English in purpose, the place had somehow the air of a Swiss mountain chalet. There was a small bar at one end, with soft drinks and tins of shandy on shelves behind. I tiptoed across the room and pinched a bottle of lemonade. And then, on my way out through the kitchen I saw the box of matches by the Calor-gas ring, where they boiled up a great urn for the tea. I took the matches, too. The box was nearly full. I was saved.
And yet, I thought — a last whiff of leather and old linseed oil in my nose — I thought how much I’d like to have stayed on that afternoon and had a game of cricket. But as I left through the back door I saw my face in a mirror by the gents for a moment: there was the scar across my forehead which I’d forgotten. And I had a beard now, which I hadn’t seen before, a nasty half-growth about the jowls. My hair, since I’d no comb with me, was a dirty, tangled mess, while my rust-green cord suit was caked in streaks of different-coloured mud. The idea of my playing cricket seemed suddenly laughable then. I was a world away from those smart, crisp white clothes. But I didn’t laugh. Instead, I realised it was no fun at all being a savage.
I managed to watch the cricket, though, for most of the sunny afternoon, up in the top of the beech tree in my look-out post, a bottle of pop in one hand and a succession of sandwiches and squelchy cream cakes in the other. It wasn’t a bad match either. One of the teams, the visiting team I thought, had several West Indian players, and one of these, a small, wiry, afro-haired fellow, clouted the ball repeatedly for fours and sixes over the boundary, straight driving them in huge arcs into the cornfield.
I played his game for him, vicariously, enjoying it all more than anything since I’d arrived in the valley. A few huge plum-bruised clouds ran in over the ground after tea, and the wind increased, with a slight chill in it now. But still it didn’t rain. Instead, great slanting shafts of sun pierced the tumbling clouds, apocalypse-fashion, brilliant beams low in the west, spotlighting odd parts of the parkland, setting the small white figures on fire. And I was happy again, seeing the match out, and happier still that I was fed at last, with energy once more to think, to move, to plan a future.
I lit a cigarette when I’d finished half the food, keeping the rest for later. The sickness was quite gone now. I drained the lemonade bottle. It was like school, years before: behind the cricket pavilion taking a quick drag before first prep. Then I saw the flash of light, where the late sun had caught something moving in front of the manor away to my right.
Training Spinks’s glasses on the building I saw that a huge Mercedes had just drawn up in front of the house. A man in a chauffeur’s cap got out of the car and a minute later he was carrying luggage, several heavy suitcases, down the porch steps. Finally the well dressed, dank-haired, middle-aged man that I’d seen in the conservatory appeared. There was no one with him as he hurried with a briefcase into the back seat. Then the car was gone, the dust rising, as the great hearse-like vehicle sped down the front drive away from me. And now I thought about this man and the woman and what had passed between them the previous night.
The food, at last, had revived my interest in such things. And yet, after a few initial points had struck me, I realised there wasn’t all that much to think about them. The woman wasn’t mad — just high-spirited, immature perhaps, with something of the actress in her, remembering her sudden change from merry outdoor girl to sorrowing pre-Raphaelite maiden. The man — her husband I presumed, the American business magnate — had appeared wary, world-weary and perhaps he was cruel. Certainly it was obvious they weren’t getting on together. He had just left, as a result of their row maybe, with sufficient baggage to suggest a prolonged absence. What more was there to say? Even the very rich had their domestic agonies.
But then it struck me, a wild, faint thought: perhaps, where he had failed, I might succeed. I put it out of my mind at once, watching the end of the cricket.
But later that night, as I leant over the darkening waters of the lake from my oak branch, some bread paste and cheese instead of worms on two of Spinks’s Woolworth hooks, I thought about it all again. The wind had dropped completely. Bats whipped about above the water; there were flies and midges up in the tree and the fish were moving, jumping, splashing in the deep silences beneath me. I had time to think. And I realised then that, if I was ever properly to make use of my freedom in these woods, to get Clare back, to clear myself, to take the various sorts of revenge I had in mind, I would have to have some help. I couldn’t do what I wanted all on my own. And what better help, perhaps, than that of a high-spirited, immature, theatrical woman?
If I continued as I was, without moving from the valley, I could only arrive at a dead end. At best I might survive till the bad weather came in the autumn. But meanwhile, on my own unaided, I could never break out of this fenced prison and do something constructive: or destructive. I had no money, no shaving gear, my clothes were filthy, my hair appalling: I looked like a savage. Even if no one was looking for me, I’d be noticed at once in any local town or village, bus or train. However successfully I managed to survive in these woods, I was stuck in them. And it was not my purpose just to survive: I had ambitions … That was why I’d run in the first place: in order to fulfil them. And if I never made the effort to fulfil them, well then, I might as well give myself up now. Yet I couldn’t achieve them, I saw, without help. Thus all these factors in the equation led to a neat answer: if, in some fashion, I managed to persuade the woman to help me, and she refused, then I had really lost nothing — for without such help I had no future. She would phone the police and that would be that. If on the other hand she agreed to help …