In the evening that bloody goddamn cormorant was still bloody bumping its bloody head against the side of the bloody cabin why couldn’t it just
Theo made supper, and she didn’t really eat, and conversation was stilted, and she didn’t check the cards as they sailed north.
In the land of the dead
in the place where the dead people lie
the real Theo Miller
the one who actually fell on the field by the river
looks up at the world of men and is, in his own quaint, deceased, skull-grinning way,
mildly amused at the way things have panned out.
Chapter 58
Three days after arriving at Kirsty’s house, Theo and Helen sneaked across the Cotswolds border at night.
They got out in the back of a horse trailer.
The trailer was owned by Kirsty’s sister. She had two horses, one doing quite well for the season. Whenever the horses left the farm, a sheep called Mitts would stand by the gate bleating piteously for her companions to return, her own species ignored until at last the horses came back and the sheep would snuggle up against the legs of its favourite runner, which tolerated the intrusion as a lazy cat might tolerate the nuzzling of a toothless pup.
Theo and Helen hid under blankets at the back of the trailer, sheltered from the door by the horses as they rocked and swayed down the soft hills of the valley. At the border fence they were stopped, papers examined, a torch shone briefly into the back of the trailer, illuminating animal, tack and hay, and waved on.
In Oxfordshire Kirsty blurted, “I’m not sure about this, I don’t think this is…”
“This is necessary. This is what I need to do.”
“But what about Philip what about the hall I mean Danesmoor is—if you leave now it’ll be…”
“This is important. This is absolutely what needs to be…”
“There are people out there. It’s not safe. It’s not safe out there you’ve seen the news you know that they don’t even show the bad things—everybody knows!”
“I have to do this,” she repeated, firmer. “It’s what is required.”
Theo watched in silence, huddled beneath a tree as the cold morning rain thickened to sleet, and Helen waited to watch as Kirsty and her sister drove away.
Theo tried to steal a car.
Stealing a car proved harder than reading about it in Audit Office reports. He remembered something clever about chips and Wi-Fi networks and maybe hijacking…
…and then there was this thing you could do with a coathanger, wasn’t there, but that was only on certain models and…
Pull out the key socket somehow you sorta popped it out and then twisted the green and the red or maybe the yellow and the blue or maybe just maybe twisted everything together or did something with a hairpin to make a connection and…
In the end Helen stole the car keys from a vicar she spotted putting them in his far-too-baggy jacket as he parked in his private space beside the church. Bumping into him and exclaiming, “Oh, my, sorry!” as she dipped a hand into his pocket turned out to be incredibly easy, and she was glowing with self-satisfaction for nearly ninety miles, until the wail of a police siren just outside Birmingham brought them back to reality with a hard thump.
Theo pulled onto the hard shoulder as the police car approached, M6 traffic rushing by.
Helen said, “Isn’t that going to…”
The policeman pulled up fifty yards behind, got out, walked along the edge of the turf, knocked on Theo’s window, which he wound down.
“Excuse me, sir, do you have any—”
Theo slammed his foot onto the accelerator, leaving the policeman cursing and puffing, running back to his own vehicle as Theo pulled away into the traffic, peeling around the streaming cars before turning late and hard onto the slip road off the motorway.
The police car followed, but as Theo tore across the roundabout at the top of the exit ramp, their pursuer vanished from the mirror, and another sharp turn pulled them into a petrol station a hundred yards further up.
“Out,” hissed Theo, and Helen was already halfway out, scampering for the pavement.
They walked briskly together, away from the petrol station into the small, scraggly mess of single-storey white-walled houses that clung together on the edge of the motorway, shaggy temporary homes which had become permanent, with a tin-roofed church and Portaloo school, marching stiff and upright as if they belonged. Behind the sirens wailed and the police car swept into the garage to find their abandoned vehicle.
They walked, a village with no name, as the skies drizzled, then sleeted, then drizzled again. On a hill above were silent concrete chimney towers. A gate led to a public footpath climbing towards a mobile-phone mast. They followed the muddy route in silence. A golf club to the left, blue lights behind, and after a while a helicopter overhead. Theo gripped Helen by the arm, felt her flinch, hadn’t realised he was holding so tight, relaxed, whispered, “Just walk. We’re just walking.”
“I know,” she muttered, and they walked.
The mud path narrowed to the width of one person, brambles pulling at legs, then widened again to a pebbled thing that crunched underfoot, then split in two. Theo chose a fork at random, followed it down to a country lane, shuddering whenever a car went by.
Another path away from the road brought some relief, and they walked until they came to another village, smaller than the first, the houses white-timbered and spread apart, a flag hanging limply from the branch of a tree overhead, the café shut, the charity shop boarded up, the chippie still doing a roaring trade.
Theo bought fish and chips.
They sat a while on a little wooden bench as the drizzle blew in sideways, threatening something close to rain, and ate in silence. After a while Theo realised that he’d put so much vinegar on his chips that the paper bag was starting to tear through, and he pulled off a strip of paper from the top to secure the greasy mess at the bottom before his meal ended up in his lap.
Helen ate one chip at a time with a little wooden fork, but struggled to find a decorous way to eat the fish, and eventually used her fingers, holding it by the tail to bite off chunks. There they sat, and no one looked at them, and no one asked any questions, and the helicopter vanished from the skies, and the rain gave up before it could really get going, and the sun began to set.
A cemetery, busier and neater than the village that protected it, spread behind a well-trimmed dark green hedge. White stones in perfect rows, a white pillar at its core. Monuments to soldiers fallen in battle. D. Aaron, d.1917. W. Acroyd, d.1915. E. Dwyer, d.1916. S. Gilson, d.1918.
FOR THEIR TOMORROW, WE GAVE OUR TODAY.
Theo looked down and saw that his legs were splattered in mud.
Helen’s fingers shimmered with grease, and her lips were blue.
He murmured, “We can’t stay here,” and she nodded, and they waited by the bus stop to catch the fourth and final bus of the day, going north towards Stafford, and kept their heads down and eyes turned away from the CCTV cameras as it bounced and rattled its way through the country lanes.
They stayed in a room above a pub called the Stag. The pub advertised itself as being authentically historical, and the taps splurted and spluttered yellowish water into the sink. They stayed there because the landlord was impressed by Helen’s accent, and needed a cataract operation, and had to stumble his way up the stairs by memory, and knew the feel of a £20 note more than he could remember the face of the monarch that adorned it.