Flight of the Grey Goose Read online

  Bacon came back from foraging around the lakeside and thrust a wet muzzle against his ear. Smiler got up and began to go slowly back to Mr Bob and the truck. He had made a quick decision. He would sleep the night in the truck, but early in the morning he would be up and away before Mr Bob was awake. Mr Bob was nice but there was nothing he could do if the police or anyone else spotted him. Yes, that’s what he would do. Take off and keep clear of roads and towns until the hunt for him had cooled off a bit. After that he could look for a job of some kind. Thank goodness, too, the weather was good. He could sleep rough in the open for weeks yet if he had to.

  He moved through the trees, away up the slope from the lake. A jay scolded him from the shelter of a hawthorn bush. A grey squirrel ran up the side of an oak trunk and somewhere, high up in one of the trees, a thrush began to sing. For a moment Smiler felt very sad. He liked company, and he liked Mr Bob. He liked being settled and having a job and knowing that he only had to wait out time till his father got back and sorted out the approved school mix-up. Perhaps, he thought, he’d risk riding just a bit farther with Mr Bob.

  He reached the top of the small rise and began to move down towards the picnic area and Mr Bob’s truck, Bacon at his heels. Through the trees he could glimpse part of the white side of the track. Then, as he drew nearer, he saw that a car was drawn up behind the truck and he heard the sound of men’s voices. At this moment a man passed by the car, and the sight of him was enough to send Smiler diving for cover behind a bush. It was a police patrolman.

  Smiler worked his way round to the other side of the bush and got a clearer view of the picnic area. What he saw made him give a quiet groan and his heart thump fast.

  Drawn up by the truck was a police car. The blue light on its roof was still flashing. Standing by the car were two patrolmen and Mr Bob. Mr Bob had a newspaper in his hand and one of the policemen was pointing to something in it. The other policeman went quickly back to the police car and Smiler saw him pick up the hand microphone and begin to speak over the radio.

  Smiler didn’t wait for any more. He was bright enough to guess what could have happened. Mr Bob had bought the evening paper in the transport café where the chap in the kitchen there had given him an odd look. ‘Samuel M.,’ he told himself, ‘if you want to keep out of trouble, this is no place for you.’

  He crouched down and moved away into the trees, taking all the cover he could. When he reached the top of the rise above the lake and was well out of sight, he straightened up and began to run. He found a grass-covered ride cut through the wood and jogged down it at a steady pace. It was then for the first time that he realized that Bacon was with him still, keeping close to his side, loping easily along, his red tongue flopping out of his mouth.

  Two hours later the policemen, after having made a close search of the nearby woods for Smiler and Bacon, returned to Bob Peach.

  ‘He must have come back and spotted us,’ said one of the policemen. ‘Took off again. Why won’t a boy in trouble realize that you don’t get anywhere by running away?’

  Bob Peach gave a small grin and said, ‘If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. Because he’s a boy, and all boys is young animals with an instinct to keep away from you boys in blue. Here –’ he reached inside the cab and pulled out Smiler’s battered case ‘–you’d better have this. Stuffed full of the crown jewels it probably is.’

  The policeman gave him a sour look and took the case.

  The other policeman said, ‘What was this dog like he had with him?’

  Bob Peach screwed up his face for a moment in thought and then said, ‘Well, I’d say it was kind of smallish. Half-terrier, half-corgi. All white, except for one brown ear. You could recognize it a mile off ’cause it runs with a kind of limp.’ He paused, and then added, ‘The left ear – that’s the brown one. I know you chaps like all details to be exact.’

  2. The Professor Takes A Hand – and

  More

  For two days Smiler and Bacon avoided civilization as much as they could. If they had to cross a road they waited until it was more or less clear and crossed quickly. When Smiler had to buy food and drink he would slip into a small village store and then be gone like a shadow. He had found an old sack and some binder twine and made himself a small haversack to carry provisions. He washed the sack and his only shirt by a stream and dried them in the sun. He bought himself a cap in a country shop to cover his fair hair and he made a collar and a lead from the binder twine for Bacon. But there was little need for the lead because Bacon kept faithfully to his heels and – somebody in the past had well-trained Bacon – if Smiler told him to sit and mind his haversack, Bacon would sit and guard it until he returned.

  Right from the start Smiler established what he considered was the safest routine. Once the sun was well up they stopped travelling and found a place to hide and rest. The first night they slept on piles of pulled green bracken in a little woodland dell five miles from Mr Bob’s truck. As he lay there Smiler looked up and picked out the Big Bear and then the North Star. From his father he knew most of the principal stars and he had already decided to head northwards. They were up before dawn and, steering now by the sun, kept going until almost mid-day when they found a place to rest until the afternoon was almost worn away.

  The second night they found a stack of fresh cut hay, burrowed into it, and slept warm and comfortable with the sweet smell of new mown grass in their nostrils. Between them they ate meat pies, sausage rolls, corned beef, tinned sardines, biscuits, buns, apples, oranges and once – as a treat for Smiler – a small bottle of pickled onions. They drank spring and river water with now and then – for Smiler – a bottle of beer or a can of shandy or Coca-Cola. And once Smiler bought half-a-dozen brown eggs from a cottage and a new loaf from a village store. He made a fire and boiled the eggs hard in an old tin. He and Bacon finished the lot between them for supper with a can of salmon. Bacon showed no signs of distress, but Smiler was awake half the night with a violent stomach ache.

  They went north steadily if slowly and erratically, and Smiler had no idea where he was. The names of the villages meant nothing to him. Some time, he decided, he must buy a map so that he could find Greenock on it. Thinking things over he had come to the decision that if his father was going to berth at Greenock in October, then there was no reason why he shouldn’t go to Scotland as soon as he could. England was all right but the police here knew all about him and had long memories and sharp eyes. Up in Scotland probably no one knew about him. He’d heard, too, that it was a wild sort of country of mountains and lochs and rivers with plenty of room for a person to find a niche for himself without risk of meeting a policeman at every turn of the road.

  On their fourth day at large, as they were travelling after their afternoon rest, it began to rain in a steady downpour. They were moving across a wide stretch of orchard country, the trees globed with green, unripened apples. Within five minutes the two were as wet as fishes and far more uncomfortable. With Bacon at his heels, long bushy tail bedraggled and lowered to a half-mast position, Smiler ploughed on looking for some shelter. The trees gave no cover. They just seemed to drip more water as well as rain on them. There wasn’t a tractor shed or a barn in sight without going near a farmhouse. After two hours of wet and miserable walking they came out on to a main road. In the fading light Smiler saw, stacked just off the road, a pile of large section concrete pipes which had been unloaded there in preparation for some drainage works. A few cars were zipping up and down the road, their lights on and their tires hissing on the wet surface.

  Smiler surveyed the pipe sections. Bacon at his side gave himself a shake and sprayed water from his coat. ‘Samuel M.,’ said Smiler, ‘any port in a storm and beggars can’t be choosers.’

  He crawled into the cover of one of the pipes. Bacon went with him and drew close to him so that Smiler could feel the dog shiver now and then. Smiler sat there and watched the occasional car go by. All the food he had left in his sodden sack was a
sliced loaf and a piece of cheese. He pulled them out. The loaf slices were sodden with rain. Smiler broke the cheese in half and wrapped two limp, doughy, soggy slices of bread round each half. He gave one to Bacon who ate it ravenously. He ate the other himself and tried to pretend that it was a delicious cheese roll. A cold draught blew through the pipe and the concrete was hard on his bottom, elbows and shoulders as he tried to make himself comfortable. It was, he knew, going to be a long and uncomfortable night.

  To cheer himself up, he began to think of his father. Living in Bristol with his Sister Ethel and her Albert was all right, but nothing like as good as the times when his father was ashore and they lived together in lodgings, went on fishing expeditions and to football matches. Where was his father now, he wondered? Berthed in some foreign port? A warm, tropical night all around and palms rustling in the soft breeze and fireflies flitting about their tops. Probably he’d be sitting on deck in the cool after the heat of the galley and giving the other lads a song. A great singer was his father and he, Smiler, knew all his songs. Perhaps, he thought, if he gave himself a song, pretended that he was warm and comfortable, it would help. He began to sing one of his father’s favourites –

  There were two ravens that sat on a tree

  And they were black as they could be;

  And one of them I heard him say –

  Oh where shall we go to dine today?

  Shall we go down to the salt, salt sea –

  Or shall we go dine by the green-wood tree?

  Shall we go down to the salt, salt sea –

  Or shall we go dine by the green-wood tree?

  But as he finished the first verse, Bacon raised himself on his forefeet, lifted his head up and began to howl like a wolf. He made so much noise that Smiler had to stop singing in case someone heard them both. There was nothing for it but to try and get some sleep, so Smiler curled himself up and, using Bacon as a damp pillow, shut his eyes and wooed sleep. It was a long time coming, but when it did he slept soundly.

  Smiler woke the next morning just as the sun was coming up. The rain had gone. Early morning traffic was beginning to move up and down the road. Stiffly, he and Bacon emerged from their pipe and went back over the hedge to get away from the road. Both of them were damp, bedraggled and hungry. They ploughed through the wet long grass of a meadow, the grass starred with tall ox-daisies and creamy spikes of meadowsweet above which the bees were already long busy. The top of the meadow was bounded by a small, fast-running stream. Smiler took a look at the sun and saw that the stream was running from the north to the south, so he began to move upstream with Bacon at his heels.

  After about a hundred yards Smiler suddenly stopped and raised his head and sniffed. He sniffed two or three times and slowly his mouth began to water. He looked down at Bacon and said, ‘Bacon, my lad – if there’s one morning smell that you can’t mistake it’s eggs and bacon frying.’

  Slowly the two moved cautiously upstream, following the delicious smell. They came to a small clump of willows growing at the stream side and went into them. The smell grew stronger. In the middle of the clump, close to the stream’s edge, they saw a large sheet of black plastic material which had been tied in a canopy between four trees with the loose ends pegged down on three sides to make a snug shelter. The opening faced away from them. Over the top of the sheeting a thin, blue curl of wood smoke showed and the smell of cooking was very pungent and appetizing.

  With Bacon close to his heels Smiler moved around the side of the shelter. Just in front of it was a small fire, burning in a neat fireplace made from stones taken from the stream. On the fire was a large frying-pan which held four rashers of bacon, two eggs and a sausage, all sizzling gently away. It was a sight which made Smiler’s midriff ache. Sitting just outside the tent affair on a small canvas folding stool was a man with a long twig in his hand with which he was turning the sausage and bacon as they cooked.

  He looked up at Smiler without surprise. Then he looked at Bacon. And then he looked back at Smiler and slowly winked.

  Smiler, anxious to establish good relations, said politely, ‘Good morning, sir.’

  The man said, ‘ Good morning, boy.’ He looked Smiler up and down again and it was the kind of look that missed nothing. Then he said, ‘A good morning after a bad night. How did you and your companion, canis mongrelis, make out?’

  ‘Not very well, sir,’ said Smiler. ‘ We slept in a drainpipe by the road back there.’

  The man nodded. ‘ In my time I have done the same, but it is not to be recommended. Man was not framed to sleep on the arc of a circle. It is a question of the relative inflexibility of the human spine. I presume that it was the aroma of a traditional English breakfast that brought you this way?’

  ‘We’re both pretty hungry, sir. That’s if you’ve got enough to spare. I could pay for it. I’ve got some money and –’

  The man raised a warning hand. ‘ Please, boy – do not mention money. Friendship and shared adversity are the only coinage recognized by true gentlemen of the road. Would I be right in putting you at two eggs and three rashers – plus a sausage? And for your faithful hound I have an old ham bone somewhere in my gear and he can have the pleasure of licking the frying-pan clean later.’

  ‘Gosh!’ said Smiler. ‘That would be jolly super – if you can spare it.’

  ‘Say no more.’

  The man turned, reached back into his shelter, and dragged out a battered old perambulator with a tatty folded hood and began to ferret in it for provisions. In no time at all he had found eggs, bacon and sausage and they were in the frying-pan. The ham bone was unwrapped from an old newspaper and handed to Bacon. Then from the battered pram the man pulled out another folding canvas stool and handed it to Smiler saying, ‘Rest your juvenile posterior on that.’

  Smiler opened up the stool, sat down, and watched the man as he now began to give serious application to the cooking of an extra breakfast.

  He was a funny-looking old boy, thought Smiler. He had long black hair to his shoulders and a straggling black beard. His face was brown and furrowed with wrinkles. Above a nobly beaked nose his eyes were as bright as a hedge-sparrow’s eggs. Smiler, who wasn’t much good at guessing ages, felt he must be much older than his father. For clothes, starting at the top, he wore a bowler hat whose blackness had a nice green shine like verdigris on copper, and his jacket was made of green and brown tweed and was patched and torn. His trousers were of blue denim and tucked into a pair of green gum boots. Underneath his open jacket he wore a red T-shirt on the front of which was a printed head of a man with long flowing hair and the word – Beethoven – under it.

  The man looked up from his cooking and asked, ‘And what would your name be, boy?’

  For a moment Smiler hesitated. Then he decided that this man didn’t look the kind who would read the newspapers much or listen to the radio, so he decided to tell the truth.

  ‘Samuel Miles, sir. Most people call me Smiler. But I don’t care for it much.’

  ‘Neither do I since I don’t care for half-cooked puns anymore than I do for half-cooked buns. I shall call you Samuel. And your four-legged friend?’

  ‘That’s Bacon.’

  ‘A good name. Of course, after the great philosopher and not the comestible of that ilk.’ Then seeing the baffled look on Smiler’s face, he went on, ‘Never mind. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Professor Roscoe Bertram Crimples. That, of course, is my true name. I have others which necessity from time to time makes it desirable to employ. But then, as a gentleman of the road yourself, you, no doubt, understand that perfectly well.’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir … I mean Professor,’ said Smiler.

  ‘Capital, Samuel. We who live outside society must be allowed our little stratagems.’

  ‘What are you a Professor of?’ asked Smiler.

  The Professor reached back into the pram for two plates and cutlery and said over his shoulder, ‘I am a Professor of all the Ologies. You name one and I am a Pro
fessor of it.’ He turned and began to dish the breakfast from the frying-pan with a knife and fork. The sight and smell made Smiler’s stomach feel hollow.

  ‘Name an Ology,’ said the Professor severely.

  A bit stumped for the moment, all his eyes and attention on the coming breakfast, Smiler searched around in his mind desperately and finally said, ‘What about Geology?’

  ‘A fine subject. One of the oldest. Granite is hard and sandstone is soft, but Time’s withering hand turns all to dust. I am, you see, also a bit of a poet – although the rhyme is bad which is due to the early hour of the day. Now let us eat while the water boils for our coffee.’

  He handed Smiler his plate and knife and fork, put an old tin can full of water into the embers of the fire, and then began to attack his own breakfast.

  The two of them tucked into their breakfast while, a little way to the side, Bacon cracked and gnawed at the last of his bone. A bluetit came and sat on a branch above the canopy, scolded them, and then flew down to investigate a slip of bacon rind that Smiler tossed into the bushes for it. The stream ran behind them, making a pleasant musical sound, and the morning sun slid higher and bathed them with its warmth. It was one of the best breakfasts Smiler could remember and it was crowned by the Professor’s coffee which was strong and laced with liberal dollops of sweet condensed milk.

  Over his coffee, the Professor produced a small cheroot from the inside pocket of his jacket and lit it. He tipped his bowler hat back, blew a cloud of blue smoke, and contemplated Smiler. After a few moments he said, ‘Well, Samuel, state your problem.’