NOT SO LONG AGO

9

“I’m not a coward.”

Erma and Roland turned to Adam, surprised, taken out of their soft slumber by the unexpected protestation.

“I’m not a coward,” he repeated.

“We know, Bambino. Who said you were a coward?”

“And I’m not fragile.”

“But, who said that?”

“I can walk as fast as you. And maybe longer.”

“But why are you telling us this?”

“You know, Erma, Daddy’s beatings, they hardened me.”

“...”

“I’m not a coward and I’m not fragile.”

Their camp was rough and their comfort rudimentary. After a night under the storm, sleeping in these conditions was lived as a luxury. Nobody was complaining. And since they were safe and they had enough to “swell the belly”, as Roland said by imitating the gargantuan voice of one of his former teachers, so they might as well take this opportunity to get back on their feet.

The fugitives stayed one more night in Basingstoke, away from the town. A small road rippled west towards the village of Worting. They followed it and found a space between two rocks, surrounded by tall beeches. Nearby was the Loddon River. Once their bivouac was completed—it consisted only of a pile of rocks to circle the hearth and half a dozen large branches quickly extended above their blankets—they sat down on the bank.

It was Roland who first ventured to raise the question that everyone was asking.

“What are we waiting for?”

Erma looked at Adam. Even if they did bicker, the brother and sister knew each other inside and out.

“It’s just... we don’t have bathing suits...” Erma said in a low voice.

“So what? We are Crusoes, right? Like in your book. Crusoes, real ones, living with nature.”

“Do you know who that is, Crusoe?”

“Of course! It’s Crusoe the Crusader, right? The man that did the Crusades with Arthur and Merlin. It’s in a movie, I think …”

He got up, took off his shirt and trousers without the slightest embarrassment, and stood on tiptoes with his toes balanced on a rock closest to the water.

“Close your eyes if you’re scared to see my noodle!” he shouted, diving forward.

The splashing reached the others. They hesitated as to what to do. Finally, won by the high spirits, the levity and openness of their friend, they got up and cast off their modesty by wiggling awkwardly on the bank.

“Come, Erma,” Roland laughed.

“Then, close your eyes as I enter the water, okay?”

“I promise.”

“I’m not kidding, Roland. If I see you’re looking at me, I’ll never talk to you again.”

“I promise, I told you. Here, look, I’ll turn around.”

“You too, Bambino,” she said, holding out a threatening index finger to her brother, who complied.

Erma went into the cold water and laughed.

“Your turn, Bambino. Go ahead, we won’t look.”

Then the three of them swam while regularly splashing each other. Never had they laughed so much.

The next day, after a night under the beautiful stars, they found sweet chestnuts and hazelnuts. They looked for mushrooms, convinced that with a little luck, they could cook a small pan of early button mushrooms, but this wasn’t the case. Their grazing was, however, embellished with berries picked from a bush which extended over an area of several yards, and which Roland had assured them were edible. They hadn’t yet started the second sausage.

The trio had visited the town taking care not to be noticed. There was no love for gipsies anywhere, and they would be forcibly removed if anyone learned that they were camping in the area.

Despite the modest comfort of their camp, Roland, Erma, and Adam accepted this without complaint, so happy not to have to submit to a father’s brutality and the hollow existence of an orphanage. If the gurgles of their hungry stomachs were too noisy, they covered them with bawdy tunes started by Roland. If they were cold at night, they thought of the coming storms that would overwhelm them and the feeling faded. If they were bored, they would throw themselves into the river or walk to the drinking fountain in the market, near the town hall, to fill their flasks.

“And if we settled down here indefinitely?” Erma asked, one evening after finishing the last page of School for Crusoes.

“Right here? Here, here?” asked Roland.

“Yes. We’re fine, right?”

Roland shook his head vigorously from left to right.

“In a little while, it’ll be the end of the summer, and then, my dear, we’ll freeze.”

“And if we made a real cabin?”

“The people of the city will see it and we’ll be finished.”

“And if we made it further in the forest?”

“We’ll be too far from the water.”

“And if we planted trees around so that no one could see it?”

“They’ll take years to grow.”

“And if…”

“Erma,” interrupted Roland gently. “We must get to the scrublands. We’re Crusoes, don’t forget, and we have to go west. There, we’ll be warm until the end of October and in the scrublands, nobody will chase us. The scrublands, Erma, the scrublands...”

Adam seldom interfered in the conversations of his friends about their future. He let them develop the plans. He was ready to walk. As long as the old man wasn’t there to make him taste his studded leather belt, he was up for everything.

“Then we must go,” Erma agreed. “It’s a shame, I like it here. We have water, fruits, and hazelnuts. Soon, there’ll be mushrooms and chestnuts. Eggs and corn can be stolen from local farms without any problem.”

Roland scraped the bottom of his bowl with the little stick he used as a fork. He spoke with his mouth full and Erma had to ask him to repeat himself.

“In the scrublands, there’ll be all that, too.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, it makes sense. During the war, there were plenty of people there. If they could survive, then it’s possible.”

Swirls of smoke from the omelette cooked up by the girl rose in columns above them, and their noses followed the movement reflexively to catch the aroma. For the kitchen, they had only a few pewter utensils—three mugs, three bowls and a kind of dish with rounded edges—but Erma had done the cooking for the whole family at home, and she had adapted with flair to the difficult conditions of their camp.

“Then we have to leave quickly,” she assured him. “We mustn’t wait for it to be too cold for travelling.”

“It should be July 19th. We still have time before we have to leave the camp.”

“No. We must leave or we’ll be so good that we’ll not want to anymore. We’re leaving, it’s decided.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

When Erma spoke with so much vitality, Roland was beaten and could only agree with her. He would never have risked contradicting her or persuading her otherwise. At night, sometimes, when some of the day’s compromises were on his mind and bothering him, he turned to Erma, asleep, curled up next to him, and gazed at her face, on which the last glimmers of the dying fire were playing. The tawny reflections danced on her, highlighting those freckles that Roland knew by heart. He would have been able to put them on paper to the nearest millimetre. So he said to himself that everything they would undertake wouldn’t matter as long as he was with her. And nothing could happen to them. Erma, a sacred Katchina with coppery hair, bewitching and invincible, a blessing from the heavens; being at her side, he felt pure.

However, he dreaded a tomorrow when he would be plunged into hell and would doubt the divine nature of her beauty.

“Are we children or teenagers?”

“Before we ran away, we were children. Now, we are teenagers.”

They prepared their packs and abandoned the rickety construction of the last several days. They would soon have to learn more about the location of the famous scrublands, but it was difficult for them to approach this subject with the few locals they met.

Since the easiest way was to go to Bath, they alternated long journeys on foot and hitch-hiking. They would rest a day or two in Andover, then head towards the hospitable Salisbury where one could live sparingly. Once at Barford St Martin, they would walk, hurrying westward, sleeping in the vast fields and enjoying the small hamlets, passing unnoticed.

A lorry carrying pallets of mineral water led them to Popham without the driver needing to be intrusive. They piled up in his cab and listened to him recount his life on the back roads and highways.

“Scrublands?” he replied, exclaiming when Erma asked him about them. “But the scrub, children, is everywhere. It’s everywhere in the mountains or in remote corners, where you hide to escape police or problems. And very often, where there are police, there are problems.”

“They’re not in the Mendips, the scrublands?”

“Ah! Maybe so. It must be a regular thing, there, to be hiding out.”

When he deposited them at the edge of Blackwood Forest, they debated and decided on their final destination. It was of little importance. They would go where the sun was.

The fugitives didn’t linger in the area. They walked half a day south, then, finding that they were tired, they left the footpath on which they had been walking on for two hours and hitchhiked. Only Scram held the pace.

The drivers of the first two vehicles who stopped for them asked too many questions about the presence of kids of this age on the road. Erma decided to put an end to it by a relaxed: “We live just a little further. We’ll continue on foot.”

It was the turn of a livestock haulier to stop nearby, on a parking area by the side of the road.

They approached the driver who had just come down to relieve himself on a bush. His appearance contrasted with the state of his lorry. Wearing a grey flannel suit, a white shirt with a buttoned-down collar and black braces, he wasn’t like a farmer or a lorry driver. For sure, this type of man isn’t going to take us as passengers without knowing why we’re hitchhiking without adults with us, Erma thought.

Roland raised a hand to say hello. Taken aback, the man tugged on the lower edge of his jacket and motioned them forward. A silk handkerchief with red polka dots protruded in a tulip fold from his breast pocket.

He had clean, carefully combed hair—a side parting, over to the left with a coating of hair cream—wore a small handlebar moustache and sisal trilby on his head. A beau Brummell driving a filthy lorry.

“Hello sir,” said Roland, displaying his most impressive smile. “Where are you going?”

“To Andover,” answered the dandy affably. “And you kids, what’re you doing here, eh?”

“We have to meet our mother. In Andover, actually.”

As if by chance, Erma thought with a smile.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. It’s just that our father broke down just outside Basingstoke. He let us go hitchhiking.”

“You’re a little young to hitchhike.”

“Don’t believe it, sir. I’m sixteen, but I’m small for my age. Can you take us?”

The man put his hand on his hairless chin and began massaging it. He hesitated, but Roland knew that if he had not answered immediately in the negative, then it meant that things were on track.

“You’ll not be inconvenienced, I promise,” he insisted. “That would be kind of you.”

“You’re from Basingstoke, you say?”

“Yes, Yes.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Barker.”

The first name that came to the mind by the roadside was that of the coachbuilder, next to the orphanage, reputed to buy the shells of stolen cars at a good price. The dandy, at first puzzled, nodded, widening his eyes.

“Yes, Barker, that name sounds familiar. I know Basingstoke very well, I go there every Sunday to see my sister. Your father, he’s working on Blacklands farm, eh? I’ve never met him but I’ve heard of him before.”

“Yes, that’s it! At Blacklands farm.”

“Good. So, that’s different. I can take you, but you’ll have to ride with the animals, I don’t have enough space in the cab.”

“What are the animals you carry?”

“Sheep. All right?”

Erma smiles.

“We already stink like pheasants, so a little more, a little less...”