‘He was caught,’ I said.
The guard nodded.
When Jake Tilney appeared in front of the tribunal, claiming that he belonged in the Green Quarter, the judges laughed at him. In the very manner of his escape attempt, they said, he had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was unqualified to live there.
Perhaps if you had done something less practical, they said, less daring —
But then it wouldn’t have worked, Jake cried.
The judges exchanged a knowing glance.
Jake was transferred back to the Yellow Quarter. Two years later he died of a heart attack, a common cause of death for those of a choleric disposition. His ladder, now known as the Tilney, won him a posthumous award for significant achievement in the field of industrial design.
‘A cruel irony,’ I said.
The guard nodded again and looked at the ground, his roll-up dead between his fingers. He was not at all the kind of brute or bully I would have expected to encounter at the border. Though he seemed a little indiscreet — should he be telling me about escape attempts? weren’t all those details confidential? — I felt he was a man I could get along with. I offered him a light, which he accepted.
‘There is another possibility, of course,’ he said, removing a strand of tobacco from his tongue. ‘You could have something hidden in the grass. Or up there’ — and his eyes lifted to the ridge behind me — ‘among the trees.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like maybe a pole,’ he said. ‘As in pole-vault.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I would never have thought of that.’ And it was true. I wouldn’t.
‘We had one of those last month. Ex pole-vault champion. Fellow by the name of Alvis Deane.’
‘Can’t say I’ve heard of him.’
‘Well, nor had I, to be honest.’
‘Did he make it?’
‘Yes and no.’ The guard fell silent. The art of suspense appeared to come naturally to him. ‘There was something on the other side,’ he said, tossing the soggy stub of his roll-up into the grass. ‘A greenhouse.’
I imagined the scene. ‘Noisy.’
‘And painful,’ the guard said. ‘He broke his pelvis and both his legs. An elbow too, if I remember rightly. And there were severe lacerations, of course.’ He shook his head.
It had all been going so easily. We were like two men talking in a pub, so much so that I had been lulled into believing that the guard could be disarmed by the mere fact of conversation, that any suspicion he might normally have felt in a situation like this could be overridden, and that, in no time at all, I would be allowed to continue on my way without further ado. During his most recent silence, however, his eyes had been roving across my suit, which was creased and stained, and he gradually assumed a resigned, almost forlorn expression.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to search you,’ he said.
‘In case I’ve got a ladder on me?’
Smiling bleakly, the guard stepped off his motorbike and heaved it up on to its stand. ‘Could you empty your pockets?’
I did as he asked, producing the lighter, my toothbrush, some loose change, a pair of underpants and some socks.
‘Nothing else?’ he said.
‘That’s it.’
The guard pushed his hands into all my pockets, much as Leon had done a few hours earlier. Then, like a customs officer, he ran his hands over the outside of my clothes, along both my arms, down both my legs. Up close, he smelled of wintergreen, as if he might be carrying a sporting injury. I looked beyond him, at the wall, its smooth blank concrete unable either to help or to remember.
At last the guard stood back. ‘You don’t appear to have any papers.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, I was attacked, you see.’
‘Attacked?’
‘Three people in a pickup truck. They attacked me. They took my papers and all my money. They took my coat as well.’
‘You’re aware, of course,’ the guard said slowly, ‘that it’s a criminal offence to travel anywhere without your papers?’
‘I just told you. They were stolen.’
We weren’t like two men in a pub any more. The mood had altered, the sense of common ground had dropped away. A hierarchy had been established in its place. The guard was beginning to work himself up into a state of necessary indignation. He might even achieve outrage. And if that happened, I would be in trouble.
You have to act like them.
I snatched up the guard’s helmet and hit him full in the face with it. He cried out. Hands covering his face, he sank to his knees and toppled sideways, bright blood dripping through his fingers. I took the gun out of its holster and used the butt to smash the radio, then I hurled the gun over the wall. It landed on the other side with a dull thud like ripe fruit dropping from a tree. No greenhouse there, then. I grabbed my possessions and stuffed them back into my pockets. As I turned away, the motorbike fell over, crushing one of the guard’s legs. He cried out again, even louder this time. I hesitated for a moment, then I started running.
I leaned against a tree at the top of the hill. My mouth tasted of tin, and I felt sick. I had never hit anyone before. Maybe that was why. Down below, the guard was on the ground, the motorbike still lying across his leg. My mind began to spin, hurling out thoughts the way a lawn-sprinkler hurls out water. A motorbike like that might weigh as much as three hundred pounds. It would be hard to shift. There was even a possibility that his leg was broken. Without a radio he wouldn’t be able to raise the alarm, in which case he’d have to wait until a colleague came along, and that might not be for hours. Still, it was only a matter of time before word got out. There’s a man on the loose. He’s wearing a dark suit. He’s not carrying any documents. A pause. He could be dangerous. With a hollow, frightened laugh, I turned and plunged into the woods. I couldn’t form a coherent strategy as yet. I was simply trying to put some distance between myself and what had happened.
Half an hour later I waded out of waist-high bracken and on to a farm track. On the far side, behind metal railings, was a field of green wheat. A light wind blew. The wheat ears swayed. It was peaceful, but suspiciously so, as though the crops hid an entire battalion of soldiers. When the signal was given, they would all rise up, the barrels of their rifles trained on my head and heart. As I started along the track, I tried to put myself in the guard’s position. There he was, trapped under his motorbike, and with a bloody nose into the bargain. It was an absurd predicament. Humiliating too. Would he be prepared to admit that someone had hit him in the face with his own helmet? Imagine the teasing that would go on at his local barracks! Imagine the nicknames he’d be given! Helmethead, Nosebleed. Arse. Rounding a bend, I saw a five-bar gate ahead of me. A country lane beyond. My mind was still whirling with theories, hypotheses. What if the guard claimed that his bike had skidded in the mud? What if he pretended that he’d never even set eyes on me? I began to see how his discomfiture might work in my favour. It seemed conceivable that I might not be reported after all — in which case I could return to the Axe Edge Inn, where Fay would help me.