Escape and Evasion

by Christopher Wakling

  Joseph staggers after the Labrador, crashing through this bracken and that bush-scrub thing, his breath quick and hard in his ears, and by the time he’s there the dog is in reverse, dragging the stick free, its rump exposed. He kicks it. Hardish. Sharply enough at any rate to prompt a yelp and make it squirm away, back into the bush, through it, and out the other side. Joseph sees the dark shape stop and turn and look at him through the tangles. Does he feel bad? Yes. Particularly because the blow doesn’t seem to have worked. The dog has put some distance between them but still, apparently, wants to be friends. It’s looking at him sort of reproachfully, the stick still clamped between its teeth, possibly still considering bringing it back?

  Damn dog!

  Joseph is at a complete loss.

  Just then, though, the dog stiffens, all four legs rigid. It cocks its head to one side, listening. To what? Joseph strains to hear someone calling but cannot. Seems the Labrador can, though. Without warning it springs away, crashing through the bracken up to the spine. From there it dashes along the little ridge and runs off up the hill out of sight.

  84

  The woods are marvellously quiet again. Even the uppermost leaves are still, framed in blue, hyper-real. They look painted. A new, fuller heat has made its way into the cool heart of the woods. Whatever the date, this is a beautiful May day. Not the sort you’d want to waste inside. That always used to get to him about working in the City: sometimes he’d pause by one of the ceiling-height smoked-glass windows up on the thirteenth floor and look out across the rooftops and see, wow, that it was a nice day, and realise, just for a second or two, that an unedited version of the same day was going on in woods like these ones here, and also in fields and fells and fens, and on hilltops and up mountains and beside streams and rivers and even out at sea, and he’d wonder: what on earth am I doing standing here, air-conditioned and UV-filtered, theoretically at the top of the pile – or near it! – but somehow also wasting away?

  Was it his choice?

  Well, yes, but it didn’t feel like one.

  What it actually felt like in moments like that was a happy-enough-but-actually-possibly-a-bit-sad accident, courtesy of Major Very Nice Man, a baker with a triangular hole in his head, a dead mother in Alicante and a father, also dead, in his armchair.

  None of any of this is or was or ever will be anyone’s fault but his own!

  Joseph takes a deep breath, coughs, doubles up, coughs weakly again. He crouches down and holds onto himself. Every bone in his body feels misaligned. When he tries to stand straight and draw his shoulders back, things don’t get any better: everything aches. He feels wobbly. That’s because he’s wobbling! He puts his hands on his hips as if that might help him steady himself. Christ, his trousers are so loose on his thighs, hanging low despite the twine belt. It just needs retying tighter. He decides to take off his jacket, plaid shirt, and base layer, to survey the situation, so to speak, and … Holy crap! That’s not him! He leans back from himself and his hip bones jut out sharply, obvious as fists. Above them, where the complacent swell of his belly used to sit, there’s just a pallid, concave emptiness. Wow: he can pretty much count his ribs. The skin covering them is waxy and seems to be thinner than it was, making his nakedness somehow nakeder. He stands there swaying in the dappled sunlight and pinches a little grey flap of belly skin, doubtful it still has any elasticity. But of course it shrinks redly back into place when he lets go. Maybe it’s the bright light, but his chest hair appears to have gone silvery. He runs his hand over the new boniness of his chest, up to his throat, now soft with beard. When he cups his jaw he can feel it hard and sharp, and his cheeks, pinched between grimy forefinger and thumb, are hollow beneath the bristles.

  What has he become?

  Somewhat thinner, that’s what.

  Well, he could afford to lose a bit.

  Don’t be an idiot: he’s dangerously weak.

  That’s no bad thing, though, or at least not entirely bad.

  What are you talking about now?

  This good feeling within the achy, wobbly weakness. He’s not about to give up on himself, or anyone else for that matter.

  Better start by finding himself something to eat. Sadly all the stuff he fetched from the freezer thawed out and spoiled days ago. None of it is edible. But these two ice lollies, sloppy in their cardboard tubes, well, they’ve got to be drinkable, haven’t they? Yes. So he drinks them, thinking: possibly today isn’t a good day to stay in the hide anyway. The dog could lead its owner back here, for example. And so what if he’s a bit dirty. He can shake these clothes out, get rid of the grubby jacket, give his face and hands a good wash in the stream, en route to …

  85

  He knows he’s going back.

  And in broad daylight!

  Look, it probably makes no difference: the kids will be at school, Naomi at work. He’ll keep himself to himself, go there the back way, case the place properly before approaching, et cetera.

  That’s what he does. A good wash in the brook helps him feel a little better about himself, newly spruced, sort of, presentable enough to make his way through the woods and over the stile and down the footpath with its little acorn sign to the back of Nine Pines, at any rate. Aside from the hush of car noise from the lane, plus a couple of roof-glints over the hedgerow as they take the long bend, he sees no sign of life. If he were to come upon a neighbour walking the thin path, he doubts he’d be recognised anyway: even before his transformation it would have been unlikely; the hedges work! He makes his way to the beech gap at the rear of his own – former – slice of the privacy pie, pushes through it and skirts the big lawn heading for the garage. Look at those fresh stripes. Tremendous to see the place properly looked after. Tad costly, though. Or perhaps Naomi has taught Lara to mow it, finally? She was always urging him to do that. Get the kids to pull their weight a little. Yes, maybe ‘moving on with our lives’ has a lawn-mowing dimension?

  Nobody has changed the garage pass-code.

  Or returned the Lexus to its spot, or the jet ski for that matter. There’s a new gap, in fact: the go-kart is gone.

  Oh well.

  It’s not all bad news. Joseph pops the monster-freezer lid and discovers the fortnightly food shop has happened. Thank God! Naomi – or the automatically repeating Ocado order – has laid in some more chicken thighs, sausages and whatnot, but Joseph thinks twice about borrowing those, and not just because the sight of the packets makes him sit down on the lawn tractor, catch his breath, and take a moment. No. It’s just that he considers it would be more subtle to liberate something – this bit of smoked haddock, for example, and that tub of bolognese – from the permafrost.

  Unlike his last visit, this time Joseph stops there, carefully replacing the newly bought items on top of all the older food before he shuts the coffin door.

  No point in lugging too much stuff back to camp, is there?

  That’s not the point, though.

  Because the point is: he can always come again.

  And he does.

  Two days later, at night this time, he’s rummaging through the freezer again, and three days after that he’s back in the middle of the day. He takes a risk that afternoon, deciding – and why not? – that it’s a sensible idea to hide away in (hell, why not use the old army term: incrementally populate) the culvert beyond the compost, a vantage point from which he knows he’ll be able to see.

  See what?

  It’s obvious! The drive, plus the west side of the house.

  Which is a good thing why?

  Because that’s where they’ll come back to, after school.

  He only has to wait a couple of hours before his patience is rewarded with the sound of a car turning onto the gravel, and there’s the old Golf lurching to a stop, revealing Zac, who immediately spills out of the nearside rear door, dragging his school bag with him. He’s just there! Clearly visible through this leaf-gap, not fifty yards away, leaning back into the car to retrieve some more kit, and
standing up again and laughing about something, his brow clear and his smile wide and, wow, his whole self sort of stretched since Joseph last saw him, something to do with the collarless sports top he’s wearing, which somehow emphasises the new elongation of his beautiful neck.

  Jesus: he’s grown.

  The nails of Joseph’s right hand are digging quite hard into his other palm.

  Both Lara and Naomi climb out of the other side of the car, meaning they’re mostly obscured, damnit, but Joseph sees Lara’s familiar wagging ponytail as she walks towards the house, and also the length of Naomi’s bare right arm as she raises the tailgate to let Gordon jump down.

  Gordon.

  Joseph tenses up.

  Is the dog scenting the breeze? Possibly. But now he’s shaking himself loose after being cooped up in the back of the car, shaking and scratching and trotting off towards the back door, with Naomi following on behind. The sight of her further hollows out Joseph’s already empty stomach. That right arm of hers is the one he lay next to (they kept to their own side of the bed, and Naomi always slept on her stomach) for twenty-odd years. Oh come off it, the sight of either arm would have had the same effect: it’s the Naomi-ness of Naomi that’s hitting …

  Home.

  Look! There they go.

  The bang of the big side door shutting behind them reaches Joseph a half-beat out of sync, placing him emphatically over here, behind the compost enclosure, peering through this blackthorn bush at the house, in which they all are, without him.

  His knees are a little damp; he’s kneeling in mud.

  So what?

  He sinks his bum lower into the hardness of his boot heels.

  Because he can’t move on, not right now, not, in fact, for a bit. The sight of them just makes leaving too hard. And it’s a good job he doesn’t go, because half an hour later, when he’s still planted there in the hedge, head bowed, the shallow in and out of his own breathing is overtaken by a faint, repetitive squelching noise, and his head snaps up as he realises, yes, it’s the trampoline calling to him, from round the other side of the house. He can’t see it, but that’s definitely the sound of someone bounce-bounce-bouncing. Meaning one of the kids is using it!

  He should see which one.

  Why not? He’s perfectly capable of retreating through the hedge, leopard-crawling somewhat muddily along the culvert between Nine Pines and the bottom of the Norton-Soames’ orchard, and inserting himself back into the hawthorn again some seventy metres to the northwest. Don’t worry about the odd scratch, plus prickles. More of a problem is the newish shiplap fence running alongside the hedge just here. Up close it still smells of wood stain. He does a very slow chin-up on the fence top, inching his eyes above the parapet, knowing that from here he should be able to see whoever is doing the bouncing.

  And he can!

  Partly, at least.

  One half of the trampoline enclosure is in view, the other is hidden by the big oil tank. Half a view is better than none, though. And of course it’s Zac doing his flips, letting off steam before Naomi calls him in for supper, because that’s what he’s loved to do ever since Joseph bought him pretty much the biggest and best trampoline he could find: the Skyhigh Xtreme 360!

  There Zac is, somersaulting into view.

  Look at the way his hair catches up with his head.

  And there he goes, flipping back into the bit Joseph can’t see.

  Here again, plus late hair.

  Gone.

  Joseph hangs on the fence for quite a long time, his fingers numb, his back locked, his biceps burning, all of him straining for one more glimpse, and another, and another.

  Squelch-bounce-squelch-bounce-squelch.

  Zac is in his own world, concentrating on landing that backflip again and again and again.

  Ha.

  Now you see him.

  Now you …

  Damn the oil tank. It holds 3,500 litres. Quite painful to fill up, particularly in a suboptimal bonus year.

  But … now: look at Zac go!

  Possibly, just possibly, in one of the non-flip-focused sectors of Zac’s brain, there’s a Dad-thought turning?

  Flip, hello.

  Flip, goodbye.

  Flip, hello.

  A non-flip thought is unlikely, face it.

  What if Joseph shouted out, though? He wouldn’t even have to call that loudly from here. In fact, what’s he thinking, he doesn’t have to call out at all. He has strength enough yet to swing his leg across the fence panel, flop down the other side and amble over to the trampoline for – ‘Hey, Zac, remember to tuck your chin in’ – a proper father–son chat.

  But he doesn’t.

  Because he can’t.

  Instead, he just watches until his son leaves, and then he leaves too, and his hands smell of creosote for days.

  86

  He couldn’t say hi! He knows that. But it’s strange the way the brain works. For example: he also knows that he’s been lowering the freezer level bit by bit with his visits, meaning at some point Naomi has to notice, but somehow that truth is more easily avoided, simply by cooking the other way.

  Looking.

  There is no other way to cook, just him and his little fire, lit to one side of the wide-open door-hatch, late at night, with some of whatever he’s cooked – thoroughly! – left to one side for the morning. Two little meals a day do him just fine: though he’s regained no weight that he can tell, he has strength enough to make the slow walk, gather a little wood, check his pointless snares.

  It strikes him: it’s a good job they never actually had to survive off the land whilst soldiering. The only rabbit he ever killed was handed to him out of the back of a Land Rover, next to a frozen Dartmoor stream. He was hungry! He broke its neck, skinned it, gutted it, cooked it, and ate it, as instructed. But he hadn’t actually caught the bloody thing.

  No doubt Lancaster’s snare worked.

  Joseph is out of water purification tablets now, but isn’t really relying on the stream in any case: the yellow-and-green garden hose is click-locked to the tap round the back of the garage, and since he’s not taking much at a time from the freezer, there’s plenty of room in his backpack for a half-full water container, more than enough to last him until his next visit.

  It’s while he’s using the tap, his midday shadow squat beneath him, one precautionary eye on the back of the house for good measure, that he spots Zac’s open window. It’s only ajar, but still: he knows that if that window is open a little all he’ll have to do is slide the safety catch out of its groove to open it all the way.

  There’s a whole other fridge of immediately edible food behind that wall: he could make himself a goddamn sandwich, eggs on toast, anything!

  All he has to do is climb the wisteria, itself firmly bolted to the wall, up to that porch roof, and he’ll pretty much be able to step sideways onto the window ledge. It’s quite a big step, now that he’s taking it, and that patio down there looks further away and harder than he’d like, but he has one hand inside the window already, and the catch works exactly as he knew it would, and look, here’s the window open, Zac’s little desk unit thing beneath it, on which he, Joseph, Zac’s very own father, is now sitting, unlacing his boots, because we don’t wear shoes upstairs, do we, not at home!

  Home.

  Amazing.

  What’s Zac reading, then? Seems to be a biography of Lionel Messi? He doesn’t even like football.

  Doesn’t: didn’t.

  At least the Percy Jacksons are still there on his shelf. Plus the catapult Naomi’s father made with him when he was what, eight? Joseph remembers catching Zac standing at the end of the gravel drive, elastic taut, waiting to wang stones at passing cars. Happily he’d not yet hit one – if he had the driver would surely have stopped? – but that was testimony to the expensively secured lack of traffic in this corner of Surrey, and not Zac’s poor aim. After the bollocking (possibly he was too hard on the boy; it being the weekend the Italy deal fell
through could well have skewed his judgement) Joseph felt bad and set up some tin cans in front of the back beech hedge and the two of them had spent a happy half hour denting them up.

  Die, Italian competition tsar, die!

  What’s this, though? A pot of hair gel? Last time Joseph checked, Zac paid about as much attention to his hair as he did every other aspect of his appearance, namely: zero.

  Everything changes.

  But not … Joseph steps out onto the landing and immediately hears the bip-bip-bip of the burglar alarm warning signal … that!

  Boots in hand, he hotfoots it down the central staircase, knowing he has thirty seconds to deactivate the alarm before it goes off, deafeningly loud here, plus clinical fifteen-minute response time in the Guildford police HQ.

  Marble flooring is damn slippery under sock.

  (She hadn’t really expected him to arrange a fitter to lay it while they were on that Florence minibreak, had she? No! And despite her ‘upscale hotel’ jibe, she couldn’t quite hide her admiration for the underfloor heating touch.)

  Never mind the heating system: Joseph’s feet fly out from under him as he takes the glassy corner between the hall and the boot room, and he lands hard on his less-padded-than-it-was hip.

  Ow!

  But there’s no time to lose: the damn bip-bip-bips wait for no man. He claws himself upright and hop-limps through to the boot room, thinking: please God don’t let her have changed the code.

  Fourteen Seven Ninety-Four.

  The date they met.

  He jabs in the numbers with a shaking hand.

  And bip-hip-bip-hip …

  Nothing.