Escape and Evasion

by Christopher Wakling

  He’s lost a good half an hour. Nothing for it but to strike out again, this time pushing straight up to the sandy track bordering the top of the wood, so he can follow it west along the ridge top, making much quicker progress unobstructed, these hoof prints little lunar craters in the half-light, and there, where the mottled charcoal treetops hit a line of deeper blackness, that must be where the old woods end and the plantation begins, meaning if he follows this iron fence line downhill, crosses this little lane, and takes the footpath opposite, it will – finally – lead him down to the stream.

  Which surely he should be able to hear about now?

  But he can’t.

  He’s just beginning to worry that he’s wrong again when he makes out the spikiness of reeds up ahead. And yes, there beyond them, a movement of light that is the water’s surface. But it’s not flowing at a noise-making pace. It’s just a silent, mirrored blackness, narrow enough to step over in places, and not more than a foot or two deep. Joseph has to kneel in the wet edge to submerge the water carrier, which burbles as he fills it. He fills his bottle for good measure, and is tempted to drink from it straight away, but he’s not about to make that mistake. This stream flows alongside hedge fund managers’ hedges, past private equity investors’ ‘Private!’ signs, and through bankers’ back yards. It could be full of anything! He must boil this water before risking drinking it.

  Let’s get back to camp and do that, then.

  But Jesus, this now-full water carrier is palm-cuttingly heavy.

  Should have brought it in the pack.

  Rather than lug the thing all the way back up the hill and around the top of the wood, Joseph opts to follow the fence line the other way. Just along here it borders an open field. He approaches slowly, aware that the darkness is losing its clout, not yet dawn but not far off it. As the field opens up before him, there’s a sudden movement ahead that makes him flinch. But it’s just rabbits. A lot of them, bouncing for cover. Dropped marbles, Joseph thinks, the hedgerow a sofa they always end up under. No, snooker balls.

  Takes him back.

  Rabbits, in clusters, on the edge of the school field, visible through the classroom window in the early evening, nosing the hardbitten grass while he, Joseph, was supposed to be working, but couldn’t, because of the rabbits.

  He was what, ten?

  He liked rabbits!

  He wanted to get close to them.

  But when the class burst outside, the rabbits scattered like, yes, a pack of snooker balls broken hard. One minute they were there, the next they’d ricocheted into the bracken.

  So one morning, almost as early as this, he’d crept out of bed and gone down through the boot room at the back of the dormitory building. Smelled of wet cement, the boot room. The door wasn’t locked. He circled wide into the school woods, found the boundary fence, picked his way along with wet pyjama legs from the bracken. Worked forward slowly. Got to the edge of the grassy bank, on which: more rabbits than he’d ever seen. Fifty, at least, nibbling about in ones and twos and threes.

  He was close enough to see the pale pinkness inside the nearest rabbit’s ear. For a long time he just stood there staring at it. The pinkness made him want to do two things at once. First, take aim with a catapult. And second, stop anyone (including himself) from doing anything like that at all. If he’d seen himself about to do it, he’d have stamped his foot in warning, because that’s what rabbits did.

  A spider’s web strung with dew beside him was just as confusing: absolutely beautiful, but he still wanted to tear it apart.

  He didn’t break the web or stamp his foot, just went to take another soft step forward. How close could he get before the rabbits fled?

  No closer. Either he’d been standing still too long or he was trying to move forward too slowly; he lost his balance and pitched forward onto one knee. His steadying hand landed in a clump of nettles. Damn! When he looked up the rabbits were gone.

  He still likes rabbits.

  Possibly, though, he’ll have to come back and set trips.

  Traps.

  Because: needs must.

  Right now, he needs to drink.

  He makes it back to the woods as the sky beyond them lightens. There’s a spreading mat of quilted cloud in the east, the edge of which is now pink. It makes him think of setting fire to the torn edge of a newspaper.

  Ah, news.

  What he’d give for some.

  But it’s not his priority now. Today’s all about bedding in, staying hidden, doing a professional job. He approaches the den site cautiously, double-checks nobody has disturbed his camp, which of course they haven’t, because he’s picked an excellently surreptitious spot, right in the middle of the tangliest, most awkward bit of the scrubby wood.

  He moves slowly, tuned in. Look, for instance, at that incredible flame of orange lichen up the side of that big beech tree, and the mini flower-shaped moss on the fallen log beneath it. There are mushrooms of some sort growing along the rotting bark, inky spokes on their undersides. He has no idea whether they are poisonous or edible and isn’t about to find out. Pushes on further up the bank instead, noticing that there are more pines mixed into the tree-scape higher up, which makes the ground prickly with needles and cones. Round to the west, beyond the spine, it’s all beech nuts and bracken, and yes, now he’s closer in to the camp he sees where the rhododendrons really take over, providing marvellous tight cover, within which, softly softly, he comes upon the hide.

  Yes, the wood is all just as he remembered it.

  Home sweet home.

  73

  Down in the bomb hole he unpacks his Primus stove and the little aluminium kettle, fills the latter with water and sets it on to boil. While he’s waiting, he dig-smooths an area to the left of the entrance within the crater on which to set out his cooking utensils and provisions, remembering that they did pretty much the same thing when they were kids, creating little shelves in the bomb holes’ sides, places to hide the stolen matches, loaves of Sunblest white bread, pocket knives. The kettle takes a while. In fact, he’s too thirsty to wait, so he pops one of his water purification tablets in the water bottle and gives it a shake, waits sixty seconds.

  Christ, that burnt metal taste.

  Odd, but so good!

  Takes him right back to time in the field.

  Time with Lancaster.

  Strange.

  That was what Joseph felt when Lancaster approached him asking for his backing with the Airdeen Clore job, after a gap of some three and a half years. He’d half expected, or even hoped, he would never hear from him again, and it was at once reassuring and discombobulating to take the call and agree to meet up. By which he meant: here was Lancaster giving Joseph back the upper hand.

  Or was he?

  ‘You owe me for my silence. You help me get this job. And … we’re all square.’

  That was what he meant, really, but of course that wasn’t what he said.

  What he said was more like:

  ‘I wouldn’t want to tread on your toes.’

  They were three pints in already, standing at a tall table – no stools or chairs – in an All Bar One somewhere in the City, at 10 p.m., Joseph having agreed to meet up after work. Around them: a gallery of bloated pink faces, cufflinks, et cetera.

  ‘Another?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Lancaster somehow cut straight to the front of the bar queue. What was this about? Christ, the noise in this place, people not so much talking as bellowing. Joseph had had to reschedule a conference call with Dallas to be here. Not great, boss-wise. Here was Lancaster again, parting the crowd. Same certainty around the eyes, but a lot else had changed. The size of his neck, for starters. And, as he turned sideways, the slab-like chest. You would get out of the way for him. Still favoured the squaddie haircut but now it looked more … freighted with intent.

  They raised their glasses.

  ‘It’s just that the Kroll job has limitations,’ Lancaster explained. ‘I’ve
been wanting to move in-house for a while. This Airdeen Clore role looks bang on, and the headhunter reckons I’ll stand a good chance.’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  ‘Yeah, a very good chance, she said, particularly if someone in your position could put in a word.’

  Joseph took a gulp of cold fizzy lager and nodded, while actually thinking: me? In the scheme of things he was still more or less plankton in the Airdeen Clore sea. Still, no sense undoing the misconception.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘But only, you know, if having me around wouldn’t complicate things for you.’

  ‘’Course not. Just think hard before you jump. They’re a pretty aggressive employer: all up-or-out, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I think I can handle that.’

  The lager was so cold it made the backs of Joseph’s eyes ache, while simultaneously helping him not give a damn about that or much else. A man in his position. Ha. It hadn’t been a particularly stellar month. Quarter, even. What with the dressing down Sara Blumenthal gave him after the pulp plant refinancing debacle, shaking her head at him in the lift like that, almost hard enough to dislodge her stupid Alice band. But maybe he was past that now, ladder-wise. Up or out! He was still there! Joseph shrugged and said, ‘I’m sure you can, Ben. Anyway, what are you talking about: it’ll be great to have you around.’

  Lancaster’s smile looked genuine enough, relieved, almost.

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ Joseph heard himself say.

  ‘You too, mate. You too.’

  74

  Joseph’s kettle is agitated, shivering on the little stove. Happily, it doesn’t whistle. A brew, that’s what he wants. He lets the kettle boil a good long bug-killing while, then puts a teabag in his lightweight aluminium cup and pours the steaming water on top. It’ll have to be powdered milk torn out of one of these sachets and stirred in with the clean end of the spork, but never mind. The mug is instantly hot in his hands, a sort of anti-thermos. He holds it reverently, trying to remember the name of the corporate catering firm the bank uses. Purdles & Co.? Pendles? The number of their monogrammed napkins he’s used over the years; how can he have forgotten? He thinks of the platters of assorted sandwiches set out on big walnut boardroom tables during deals made in meeting rooms on the ninth floor. The crab ones are the best, washed down with Darjeeling tea. Would you like a cup? Food plays a part in even the keenest negotiations. I’ll just think of my next point while I pour this out for you. Biscuit? And so forth. Generally, as a Big Beast, someone else would do all this, but, you know, never underestimate the personal touch.

  Also, tea in bed.

  The first time Lara brought some up at the weekend for him and Naomi, teabags still floating murkily within. That was a negotiating tool, too: what she really wanted was to be allowed to watch Saturday-morning cartoons.

  Sure! Go ahead.

  But to be honest, this first sip now, here in the hide, with the mineral earth smell rising and the birdsong outside, the trap door raised a couple of inches to let the morning light, filtered by the trees above, stream in, well, this brew tastes pretty much as good as any other cup of tea he’s ever drunk, full stop.

  Simple pleasures.

  Sadly, he knows they’ll end.

  Meaning: he knows there’s only so long he can put it off.

  ‘It’ being?

  Stop!

  Best off staying practical.

  Consider the weather, for example. He’s been lucky to have had the chance to get set up in the dry, but knows it won’t last. Soon he’ll have to deal with a bit of pain.

  Rain.

  Yes, yes. But what was it that chap with the ponytail said during the induction week, outlining the bank’s ethos and so forth? He had a German accent and wore brown suede loafers and paced about as he shouted, ‘What are we best at here? Making hay while the sun shines, at all costs, right?’

  Joseph had nodded along with the others.

  ‘Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! I mean, of course what we do here is make money when the market is good, but …’ the ponytail shook excitedly as he slapped the lectern and went on, ‘… but any idiot can do that! The hard part, and this is what we do best, is to make even more money when the shit is hitting the wall!’

  ‘Fan,’ Joseph thought, or thought he thought, because it turned out he said it aloud.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Startled, Joseph realised the man was asking him to repeat himself.

  ‘The shit hits the fan,’ he said. That’s the expression. ‘Or possibly you mean, “We make even more money when our backs are up against the wall.”’

  ‘What’s your name again?’

  ‘Ashcroft. Joseph.’

  ‘Ashcroft.’ Joseph recognised the ‘you’re dead’ look in the man’s eye, because he’d seen it in Drill Sergeant Atkinson’s, back in the day, and the memory of being bollocked in the army made the man’s ponytail laughable. ‘Right,’ the man went on. ‘Wall, fan, whichever, both! When the shit hits the fan and our backs are to the wall, that’s when we make most money of all!’

  Well, that was a nice idea, wasn’t it? From time to time it sort of worked. Got them through 2008 better off than most. But 2008 was ancient history: Big Beasts stalked a different landscape now, with different obstacles.

  But enough of that.

  This is the landscape that matters now.

  Take a deep breath; enjoy it!

  He has his cot to lie on, these lovely reasonably dry earth walls, treetop-filtered sunlight, et cetera. Look at that root he exposed when digging the little shelf. It has a knobbly bend in it, making it a sort of J-for-Joseph shape, possibly; either way it’s useful as a handhold when climbing out of the den.

  Let’s call it what it is: home!

  For now.

  That’s normal. A home is only ever temporary. Doesn’t stop you caring about it, though, does it? Christ no. That shitty little flat he and Naomi first bought, well, he felt as fond of that when he first put the key in the lock as he did closing the deal for Nine Pines.

  He puts his hands behind his head and shuts his eyes. Ah, that first flat. Nineteen ninety-five, April, the scabby cherry tree in improbable bloom, up the Vauxhall Bridge end of the Wandsworth Road. It was an admirably central location but also a complete hole. The corner shop sold fried chicken, VHS cassettes and four-packs of Stella through a metal grille. Back then a junior army officer and charity worker’s combined income got you one floor of a rundown Victorian terrace. One room really, divided by double doors that didn’t shut properly. To find the toilet you had to go through the galley kitchen.

  He remembers the smell of the place: damper than this bomb hole, that’s for sure. With that wonky wall out the front, beyond which: buses. Interminable buses! What numbers were they again? How can he have forgotten? Either way, the people on the top deck of the double-deckers were at exactly head height if you were sitting on the sofa in the front half of the living room. Head height and no more than twelve feet away through double glazing that didn’t work, because the soundtrack to that period was buses, eight of them an hour, grinding by day and night. He and Naomi used to sit on the old second-hand sofa she covered with a throw, watching ER on the television as the passengers rolled noisily along outside.

  Did they care?

  No!

  Because they were together, and this was their place, or the mortgage provider’s. To think that when he came out of the army, stopped defending the realm and so forth, and joined Airdeen’s instead, he paid off that loan with one bonus.

  Good times ahead, property-wise.

  They were. Think of Nine Pines! He cased the joint properly before asking Naomi’s opinion. Knew where the sun hit the columns in the morning, and which terrace caught the last light. Distance to the station and thence the City: acceptably close. Distance to neighbours: acceptably far away. The hedge height more or less edited out the other fund managers, CEOs, accountancy partners and so forth anywa
y. The place had a pool! And big mature trees, set well back from the sort of sweeping lawn you imagined when you imagined big sweeping lawns, the horse chestnut, the beech, the two big maples, and of course the big Scots pines, all of them encasing the grounds in a display of here we are, grown-up goddamn trees at last.

  Naomi, when he took her to see it. She was having trouble persuading Zac to drink formula from a bottle at the time, all twisted round in the car, wrestling with him in his seat. Joseph had to cut the engine and say, ‘Look!’ before she would take it in.

  ‘At what?’

  ‘The gates. And the drive. The house at the end of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This is the one.’

  She craned forward in her seat, her lovely neck taut before it bobbed back incredulously.

  ‘I’ve seen smaller conference centres.’

  ‘We’ll fill it. Mostly with plastic baby toys to begin with.’

  ‘Is that a roundabout at the end of the drive?’

  ‘Pretty gauche, eh, but we can get rid of the statue. The place needs completely redoing. That’s why it’s on at only two point nine. But the size of the plot, and the location.’

  ‘Two million nine hundred thousand pounds?’

  ‘Yeah, renovating will be a stretch, but.’

  Naomi’s mouth – lovely but compressed now – said she disapproved of the idea as a matter of principle, but the way she leaned forward in her seat again to take a better look gave her away, and five months later he offered her a piggyback across the threshold (corny, but what the hell) as the estate agent stood coyly to one side.

  A stretch.

  That’s the thing, bonus-wise. You never can tell.

  The statue, a stag with its head lowered, was metal, some sort of alloy, not bronze. They put a Santa hat on it at Christmas when the kids were young – Naomi’s idea – and the stag is still there now.

  He’d love to see it again.

  Here in the woods, though: real deer. Beat that!

  The way you had to mow up to its feet, hooves, whatever, with the little mower. They had a contractor sort the big lawn out back. He also did the pool. Quite expensively.