Rogue Male

by Geoffrey Household

  Together with the trousers I let myself float down to the islet which I had seen from the top of the ridge. I could only use my arms for swimming. My generation never normally learned the crawl, and my old-fashioned frog’s leg-stroke was too painful to be possible. However, I managed to keep myself and my soggy raft of trousers well out into the river, and the current did the rest.

  The islet was bare, but with enough low vegetation on its shores to cover me, provided I kept close to the edge, from observation by anyone on the high ground where I had lain that morning. There were four notices, neatly spaced, to the effect that it was forbidden to land. I can’t conceive why. Perhaps because any idle person in a boat would naturally want to land, and anything that encourages idleness is considered immoral.

  I spread out myself, my clothes, and the breeches to dry in the afternoon sun. I did not attempt to examine my body. It was enough that the soaking had separated textile from flesh with no worse result than a gentle oozing of matter.

  I remained on the islet for the Monday night and all the following day. Probably I was there for the Tuesday night too. I do not know; as I say, I lost a day somewhere. It was very heavenly, for I lay on the sand naked and undisturbed, and allowed the sun to start the work of healing. I was barely conscious most of the time. I would hunch myself into the half-shade of the weeds and rushes and sleep till I grew cold, and I would hunch myself back again and roast and scar my wounds. I had but those two pleasures within attaining, and both were utterly satisfying. I did not want food. I was, I suppose, running a fever, so my lack of appetite was natural. I did suffer from the cold at night, but not severely. I had all the various garments to cover me, and, at any other time, I should have thought the weather too hot and still for easy sleep.

  I awoke, feeling clear-headed and ravenously hungry, at the false dawn of what turned out to be Wednesday. I chose the riding-breeches—holding them against my body they seemed roomy enough not to rub my hide—and threw shorts and trousers into the river. I hope that their small change was not too great a loss to the owners. Only one had a wallet, and that, since it stuck out from his hip-pocket, I had managed to slip on top of the rest of his clothes.

  I tied two bits of driftwood together with my belt, and put all my possessions on this improvised raft. I found that I could splash with more ease—though the regular motions of swimming were still beyond me—and reached the farther bank, the raft helping, without being carried more than a hundred yards downstream.

  On dry land and within a stone’s throw of a main road, I had to take stock of my appearance. So far my looks had mattered no more to me than the condition of its fur to an animal; but now I proposed to re-enter the world of men, and the impression I made was vitally important. Only my shoes and stockings were respectable. I couldn’t bend to take them off, so the river had cleaned them.

  item: I had to shave off a four days’ beard. That was far from being the mere prejudice of an Englishman against appearing in public with his bristles. If a man is clean shaved and has a well-fitting collar and tie—even reasonably dirty—he can get away with a multitude of suspicious circumstances.

  item: Gloves. The ends of my fingers had to be shown while paying money and taking goods, and they were not human.

  item: An Eyeshade. My left eye was in a condition that could not be verified without a mirror. The eyelid had stuck to a mess of what I hoped was only blood.

  item: A Clothes Brush. My tweed coat had no elbows, but it might pass provided I brushed off the mud and did not turn away from anyone I spoke to.

  I had to have these things. Without them I might as well have given myself up. I had not the will to crawl and hobble night after night to the frontier, nor the agility to steal enough to eat; but if I entered so much as a village shop as I was, the proprietor would promptly escort me to the police or a hospital.

  The putting-on of the breeches was an interminable agony. When at last I had them up, I couldn’t fasten the blasted buttons. I managed three and had to forgo the rest for fear of leaving bloodstains all over the cloth. Shirt buttons were quite impossible.

  I crossed a field and stood for a moment on the empty main road. It was the hour before dawn, the sky an imperial awning fringed with blue and gold. The tarred surface of the road was blue and calm as a canal. Only the trains were alive, dashing across the flat vale as if striving to reach the mountains before day. At my disposal, as the map had told me, were river, road, and railway. I was inclined to favour escape by river. A man drifting down the current in a boat doesn’t have to answer questions or fill up forms. But again there was the insuperable handicap of my appearance. I couldn’t present myself as I was to buy a boat, and if I stole one and it were missed, my arrest was certain at the next village down-river.

  On the far side of the road was a farm-cart, backed against the edge of a field of wheat. I knelt behind it to watch the passers-by. Men were already stirring, a few peasants in the fields, a few walkers on the road. From the latter I hoped to obtain help, or at least, by observing them, an inspiration how to help myself.

  There was a workman bound for some small factory in the town to whom I nearly spoke. He had an honest, kindly face—but so have most of them. I had no reason at all to suppose he would protect me. Two aimless wanderers went by together. They looked to be persons who would sympathize, but their faces were those of scared rabbits. I couldn’t trust them. Then there were several peasants on their way to the fields. I could only pray that they wouldn’t enter mine. They would have had some sport with me before handing me over to the police; they seemed that sort. There was a wretched fellow mumbling and weeping, who raised my hopes for a moment. But misery is in some way as sacred as happiness; one doesn’t intrude—not, at any rate, if there is a risk that one might merely add to the misery. Then came another factory-worker, and then a tall, stooping man with a fishing rod. He cut across to the river and began to fish not far from where I had landed. He had a melancholy, intellectual face with a deal of strength in it, and I decided to have another look at him.

  Their tiresome conception of the State has one comforting effect; it creates so many moral lepers that no one of them, if he has a little patience, can long be lonely. The flotsam of the nation is washed together into an unrecognized, nameless, formless secret society. There isn’t much that the bits of scum can do to help one another, but at least they can cling and keep silence. And dawn, I think, is the hour when the pariah goes out. Not for him is the scornful morning with its crowds pointing the fingers of their minds at him, nor the evening when all but he may rest and be merry; but the peace before sunrise cannot be taken from him. It is the hour of the outlawed, the persecuted, the damned, for no man was ever born who could not feel some shade of hope if he were in open country with the sun about to rise. I did not formulate these thoughts at the time. I have developed them in the curious and lonely circumstances under which I write. But I give them for what they are worth to account for my intuition in choosing the right face and the fact that there were so many to choose from.

  There was no cover on the farther side of the road and precious little on the bank, so that I had to make up my mind about the fisherman as I slowly and silently crossed the field towards him. He was paying more attention to his thoughts than to his rod. By the angle of his float I could see that he had hooked the bottom, but he was quite unaware of it. I walked up behind him and wished him good morning and asked if he had had any luck. He jumped to his feet with the butt of the rod pointed towards me as if to keep me off. I expect he hadn’t seen a creature like me in a long time; they haven’t any tramps. Even considering me the last word in villains, he thought it best to propitiate me. He apologized for his fishing, and said he didn’t think there was anything wrong in it. He did his best to look servile, but his eyes burned with courage.

  I held out my hands to him and asked if he knew how that was done. He didn’t answer a word, just waited for further information.

  ‘Look here!�
� I said to him, ‘I swear there isn’t a soul in this country who knows I am alive except yourself. I want gloves, shaving tackle, and a clothes brush. Don’t buy them. Give me old things that have no mark on them by which they could be traced back to you if I am caught. And if you don’t mind putting your hand in my inside coat-pocket you will find money.’

  ‘I don’t want money,’ he said.

  His face was absolutely expressionless. He wasn’t giving anything away. He might have meant that he wouldn’t help a fugitive for all the money in the world, or that he wouldn’t take money for helping a fugitive. The next move was up to me.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ I asked.

  I saw a flicker of interest in his eyes, but he made no sign that he had understood me. I carried on in English. I was completely in his power, so that there was no point in hiding my nationality. I hoped that the foreign tongue might break down his reserve.

  ‘I won’t tell you who I am or what I have done,’ I said, ‘because it is wiser that you shouldn’t know. But so long as no one sees us talking together, I don’t think you run the slightest risk in helping me.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he answered in English. ‘What was it you wanted?’

  I repeated my requirements and asked him to throw in an eye-patch and some food if he could manage it. I also told him that I was a rich man and he shouldn’t hesitate to take any money he might need. He refused—with a very sweet, melancholy smile—but gave me an address in England to which I was to pay what I thought fit if ever I got home.

  ‘Where shall I put the things?’ he asked.

  ‘Under the cart over there,’ I answered. ‘And don’t worry. I shall be in the wheat, and I’ll take care not to be seen.’

  He said good-bye and moved off abruptly. In one stride he had dissociated himself from me completely. He knew by experience that among the proscribed the truest courtesy was to waste no time in courtesy.

  The traffic on the road was increasing, and I had to wait some minutes before I could safely cross into the shelter of the wheat. The sun rose and the landscape budded men and business—barges on the river, a battalion out for a route march on the road, and damned, silent bicycles sneaking up every time I raised my head.

  The fisherman was back in an hour, but the road was too busy for him to drop a parcel under the cart unseen. He solved the problem by fetching his rod and sitting on the cart while he took it apart and packed it. When he got up he accidentally left the parcel behind.

  To get possession of it was the devil of a job, for I could not see what was about to pass until the traffic was nearly opposite me. I knelt in the wheat, bobbing my head up and down like a pious old woman divided between silent prayer and the responses. At last I plucked up courage and reached the cart. A stream of cars went by, but they did not matter; the danger was a pedestrian or a cyclist who might be tempted to stop and talk. I kept my back to the road and pretended to be tinkering with the axle. A woman wished me good morning, and that was the worst fright I had had since they pushed me over the cliff. I answered her surlily and she passed on. To wait for a clear road was exasperating, but I needed a full minute free from possible observation. I couldn’t plunge boldly back into the wheat. I had to tread gently, separating the stalks so as not to leave too obvious a track behind me.

  At last I knelt in peace and unpacked the parcel which that blessed fisherman had left for me. There were a bottle of milk well laced with brandy, bread and the best part of a cold chicken. He had thought of everything, even hot shaving-water in a thermos flask.

  When I had finished his food I felt equal to looking in the mirror. I was cleaner than I expected; the morning swim was responsible for that. But I didn’t recognize myself. It was not the smashed eye which surprised me—that was merely closed, swollen and ugly. It was the other eye. Glaring back at me from the mirror, deep and enormous, it seemed to belong to someone intensely alive, so much more alive than I felt. My face was all pallors and angles, like that of a Christian martyr in a medieval painting—and I had the added villainy of bristles. I marvelled how such a beastly crop could grow in so poor and spiritual a soil.

  I put on my gloves—limp leather, God reward him, and several sizes too large!—then shaved, brushed my clothes, and dressed myself more tidily. My coat and shirt were patterned in shades of brown, and the blood stains, weakened by my swim to the island, hardly showed. When I had cleaned up and adjusted the eye-patch, I came to the conclusion that I aroused pity rather than suspicion. I looked like a poor but educated man, a clerk or schoolmaster, convalescent after some nasty accident. That was evidently the right part to play.

  As soon as I was ready I left the wheat, for now I did not care how wide a track I made so long as no one actually saw me emerge. The road was clearer; it had ceased to feed and empty the town, and become an artery in a greater life. Lorries and cars sped by with the leisurely roar of through traffic. Their drivers had no neighbourly feelings towards that mile of road, no damned curiosity about a lonely pedestrian. I covered the mile into town, limping along as best I could and stopping frequently to rest. At need I could walk very slowly and correctly, hanging on each foot, as if waiting for somebody.

  I was desperately nervous when first I engaged myself between two lines of houses. There seemed to be so many windows observing me, such crowds on the streets. Looking back on it, I cannot think that I passed more than a score of people, mostly women shopping; but, at the best of times, I have a tendency to agoraphobia. Even in London I avoid crowds at all cost; to push my way through the drift of suburban idlers in Oxford Street is torment to me. The streets of that town were really no more full nor empty than those of my own country town, and normally I should not have been affected; but I seemed to have been out of human society for years.

  I cut down to the river by the first turning, and came out on to a paved walk, with flower-beds and a bandstand, where I could stroll at my artificial pace without making myself conspicuous. Ahead, under the bridge, were moored a dozen boats. When I came abreast of them I saw the expected notice of ‘Boats for Hire’ in a prettily painted cottage. There was a man leaning on the fence, meditative and unbuttoned, and obviously digesting his breakfast while mistaking that process for thought.

  I wished him good day and asked if I could hire a boat. He looked at me suspiciously and remarked that he had never seen me before, as if that ended the discussion. I explained that I was a schoolmaster recovering from a motor accident and had been ordered by my doctor to spend a week in the open air. He took his pipe out of his mouth and said that he didn’t hire boats to strangers. Well, had he one for sale? No, he had not. So there we were. He evidently didn’t like the look of me and wasn’t going to argue.

  A shrill yell came from a bedroom window:

  ‘Sell him the punt, idiot!’

  I looked up. A red face and formidable bust were hanging over the window-sill, both quivering with exasperation. I bowed to her with the formality of a village teacher, and she came down.

  ‘Sell him what he wants, dolt!’ she ordered.

  Her small, screaming voice came most oddly from so huge a bulk. I imagine he had driven her voice higher and higher with impatience until it stuck permanently on its top note.

  ‘I don’t know who he is,’ insisted her husband with stupid surliness.

  ‘Well, who are you?’ she shrieked, as if I had repeatedly refused her the information.

  I told my story: how I couldn’t yet walk with any ease, and so had thought of spending a holiday in drifting down the river from town to town and realizing a dream of my youth.

  ‘Where’s your baggage?’ asked that damned boatman.

  I patted my pockets, bulging with the thermos flask and shaving tackle. I told him I needed no more than a nightshirt and a tooth-brush.

  That set the old girl off again. She skirled like a sucking-pig separated from the litter.

  ‘You expect him to travel with a trunk? He’s a proper man, not an ignorant, shamele
ss idler who wastes good money on clubs and uniforms and whores, and would rather go to the river than raise his hand to pull the plug. He shall have his boat! And cheap!’

  She stamped down to the waterfront and showed me the punt. It was comfortable, but far too long and clumsy to be handled by a man who couldn’t sit to paddle. It wasn’t cheap. She asked about double its fair price. Evidently her kindness was not at all disinterested.

  There was a twelve-foot dinghy with a red sail, and I enquired if it was for sale. She said it was too expensive for me.

  ‘I shall sell it again wherever I finish the trip.’ I answered. ‘And I have a little money—compensation for my accident.’

  She made her husband step the mast and hoist the sail. How that man hated the pair of us! He announced with gusto that I should certainly drown myself and that his wife would take the blame. A child couldn’t have drowned himself. That boat was exactly what I wanted. The sail was hardly more than a toy, but it would be a considerable help with the wind astern, and was not large enough to be a hindrance if I let go the sheet and drifted with the current. I knew that some days must pass before I felt equal to the effort of tacking.

  While she raved at her husband, I got out my wallet. I didn’t want them to see how much I had, nor to wonder at my fumbling with gloved hands.

  ‘There!’ I said, holding out to her a sheaf of notes. ‘That’s all I can afford. Tell me yes or no.’

  I don’t know whether it was less or more than she intended to ask, but it was a sight more than the little tub was worth to anyone but me. She looked astonished at my rural simplicity and began to haggle, just for form’s sake. I sympathized; I said that no doubt she was right, but that sum was all I could pay for a boat. She took it, of course, and gave me a receipt. In five minutes I was out on the river, and they were wondering, I suppose, why the crazy schoolmaster should kneel on the bottom-boards instead of sitting on a thwart, and why he didn’t have his coat decently mended.