NOT SO LONG AGO

8

Run again. Farther than him.

Since the all-seeing Enoch Cay was able to flush them out of a mundane petrol station, miles away from home, they would never stop running.

So, run again and farther was their only escape.

Their strides continued long after their pursuers had given up. And when they were on the verge of exhaustion, with a desire to vomit that burned their throat, dizziness that lit icy comets on their scorched, suffocating brows, their feet in porridge, well, they did the only thing that came to mind: they ran farther and farther.

And then, finally, they fell.

Adam and Roland, stretched out on their backs, their noses to the sky filled with blinking stars, and tried to regulate their breathing. The adrenaline that left their exhausted bodies gave birth to splitting headaches so quickly that they were jolted upright. When the pain compressed their brains, they closed their eyes and clenched their teeth.

Erma was in the same state but, resigned, she had dragged herself to the side of an unusually shaped ash tree—stunted foliage that stretched horizontally, but a thick, knotty, twisted trunk of intertwining roots that joined and separated to plunge into the ground covered with fragrant deciduous leaves. Propped up well between two slightly jutting, lichen-covered pieces of bark, her back flat, she read.

School for Crusoes was an adventure novel. In her oldest memories, Erma had always experienced an incomprehensible attraction for books. Yet, it was neither her father nor mother who could have been responsible for this passion. As soon as she had laid her small hands and child’s eyes on this curious object, she became infatuated to the point of feeling a certain melancholy when she spent several days without reading.

She felt a little guilty, thinking back to the strict instructions she had made to her brother about not taking his comics, and then there was nothing in the world but the tribulations of Godfrey and Tartlett. At the moment when the first lines of Jules Verne struck her eye as a myriad of coloured letters swaying furiously to find the right order, the only order, the true order, all disappeared. It didn’t matter what kind of embers still stammered in her lungs, or the anguish of hearing the savage cries of the beast to whom she owed her life, only Godfrey’s love for the beautiful Phina and the ability of the adventurers to survive on the desert island after their sinking.

On their deserted island, aptly, Erma, Roland, and Adam found themselves to be trapped. Except that, theirs wasn’t surrounded by water, but rather lush expanses that never ended. Green to the point of nausea. And the sounds, such noise, the sinister sounds, the mournful echoes that moaned, the roaring beasts, the Sylvan ghosts if you believed the legends...

They fell asleep. Paralyzed by fatigue, stiff, frightened. Erma was the last to close her eyes. And she, she dreamed.

Roland stifled a curse. He searched the bottom of his bag, praying for crumbs, but when he scanned his outstretched forefinger, after removing it, he cursed his naivety.

“We have nothing to eat, is that it?” asked Adam, the action hadn’t escaped him.

“Not much, no. We’ll have to find a solution. In any case, poking around farms, it’s over.”

“And the money?”

“We have some left. We can go to the nearest village and refuel.”

Unanimously, since Erma also recognized that they couldn’t hide in the woods indefinitely, they started again. As they did not know which direction to choose, they relied on Scram’s instincts and followed him without question.

It only took them two hours to arrive in a small village—barely a hamlet—located about one mile from the road they had joined. They crossed it westward and were going to write off their hope of finding a place to get fresh supplies when they saw the storefront of a small grocer’s.

They entered the place after pushing past Scram. When she heard them, a fat woman with a striped periwinkle blouse and hair up in a bun at the top of her head appeared. She stared at them grimly.

Roland took a look at the two narrow aisles in search of food that they could keep. He thought of stealing a few cans of tuna, but the owner didn’t take her eyes off him. From time to time she snorted loudly and made an ape-like pout.

“You all hurry up, you jokers. I have other things to do with my time”

They consulted each other out of the corner of their eyes and concluded that pilfering here would be like throwing themselves into the mouth of the wolf. But discreetly, Roland picked up a piece of dried meat wrapped in cellophane and stashed it in his sleeve.

Roland and Erma whispered and agreed to buy only a loaf of bread and a block of cheddar cheese from the region. Not enough to feast on, but their fortunes didn’t allow them anything else.

They put loaf and cheese on the counter, gave their last coins, and slipped the change into the purse.

“Wait a minute, you. Show me what you got in your jacket.”

“Me?” Roland was indignant.

“Yes. I saw you hanging by the meat just now. But you didn’t pay for meat. Just bread and cheese. Where’s the meat?”

The fat woman walked around the counter. Roland resisted for the sake of form, but his complaints had no response. The woman pressed the pockets on his chest, went down to the sides, and then lingered on the sleeves. She made a small sceptical pout and Roland didn’t regret having finally not swiped the meat.

“Good. Come on, out. There’s your mutt waiting out front and I don’t like it. Get out of here.”

“Many thanks for your charming welcome, madame,” exclaimed Roland as he cleared out, followed by an outraged Erma and Adam who had never seen anything so embarrassing.

They left the village along a track strewn with potholes and found themselves at the edge of the main road that led to Canterbury. The mood was perky.

“We had a narrow escape,” admitted Roland restlessly. “I had pinched some meat which I put back just before paying. A little longer and I would’ve been caught.”

“We got away. But we have almost nothing to eat,” added Erma, unsettled.

Adam was in the lead. As he said nothing and didn’t contribute to relieving the general hopelessness, Roland asked him in a voice that betrayed his annoyance: “And you, you don’t care?”

The youngest of the trio turned. A huge smile lit up his red face.

“What are you laughing at, Bambino?”

Adam dropped to his knees. Erma thought he was holding his ribs to contain his laughter, but he wasn’t. Adam pulled out his arms and squirmed as if a creature—one of those mice she hated, for example—had crept into his clothes. From under his shirt fell two enormous sausages with dark, almost black, skin, half a dozen slices of smoked ham, a block of hard cheese, a can of corn, and a meatloaf.

“I didn’t dare take eggs because I was afraid of breaking them. Sorry...”

Fed, the three children took a nap which revived them. Roland had managed to make a fire without difficulty. Away from the road, where the smoke wouldn’t be visible from afar, they agreed to a break that they felt was well deserved.

Roland didn’t stop gently teasing Adam, punctuating his sentences with extravagant language. Adam was henceforth the “Prince of Thieves”, the “Robin Hood of the group”, the “Godfather”, the “Kingpin”, the “King of the Hill”. To hell with the inferiority complex and cowardice that spoiled his life. Adam no longer thought himself a loudmouth who chickened out and ran; he was smart, streetwise and brave. He could be counted on, he had just proved it.

The children started walking again that same evening, just a few hours before setting up their rough camp near a rock. The next two days they remained on their guard. They hitched twice, but only for short trips.

Then they made a one-night stop at Bilting, during which they thought they had lost Scram for good, but at dawn, eyes a bit puffy by the lack of sleep, they saw him come strolling back, wagging his tail, proud of his escapades. When Erma noticed that Roland had worried about the animal’s absence, she realized that Scram was part of the group.

A lorry driver delivering hay bales into St Mary’s Bay brought them to Kennington. They avoided the urban area of Ashford and its over-motivated police and crossed to Hothfield and down to Bethersden, preferring the deserted country roads to the overpopulated streets of the town.

In their minds, they had to go straight south. Once in the South Downs, they could turn west until they found these famous scrublands. Roland had assured them that the scrublands were in the Mendip Hills, but Erma, she was convinced that there were scrublands throughout the South of England.

“But what are the scrublands?” asked Adam.

“They’re a sort of mountain area where no one goes, and there’ll be caves” answered Roland with confidence. “It’s somewhere safe, no one to give you a hard time.”

“But we live off what?”

“Well, I don’t know, me... poaching and fishing.”

“But we can’t just do that, by ourselves.”

“And why not? I don’t see why we couldn’t do it. You’ll see, Adam, we’ll be like hogs in the fat. You know, I’m sure it’ll be great.”

“Anyway,” added Erma, “what we wanted was to leave. Where we go, frankly, we don’t care. What matters is to be out of Herne.”

“Far from Daddy...”

“That’s it, Bambino. Far from Daddy. When we don’t want to be found, we go underground, that’s how it works.”

“Even if we don’t know what they are, the scrublands?”

“Even, yes. We’ll see when we get there.”

“And if we don’t find them? If they’re not in the Mendip Hills?”

“Then we’ll go elsewhere. To Wales, if we must.”

“To Wales? What would we do in Wales?”

“That’s where Shirley Bassey comes from. It must be great, Wales, it has to be...”

Faced with this evidence, Adam nodded.

The next day, almost a week after their departure, they changed their minds and agreed to head west sooner than expected, when an old gentleman driving an antique van told them he was going to Basingstoke and that he agreed to them joining him.

Their method of finding transportation was not efficient, but it at least had the merit of limiting the risks of people being too curious about them. The runaways operated primarily in the car parks. They spotted the lorry drivers, the cattle transporters or those who were driving pick-up trucks and flatbeds and explained that they were going to their uncle’s home with the consent of their parents. When the drivers asked too many questions, they abandoned the game and fled. And when they found a charitable soul—even gullible—to take them, they took advantage of it. Most of the time, when the person was suspicious, they had to stop, apologize politely and get out. Then, it was impossible to repeat the same thing nearby. The curious driver might go to the police to warn the authorities that he had been approached by very young kids; too young to travel alone. In this case, the children would move away from the area before looking for another vehicle.

Once in Basingstoke, they camped one night in a small wood, on the edge of the town, and felt that if they were not yet “in the scrublands”, they were finally safe.

“We did it!” concludes Roland. “You’ll see, from now on, everything will be like clockwork.”

He was wrong.