Peter May - Runaway

‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ I said. ‘But you’re going to have to find someone else to experiment with.’ And I hurried out of the room.

Even as I ran down the hall, pulling on my T-shirt, I heard him shouting after me from the bedroom.

‘You owe me, Jack. Remember? You all owe me.’

I started down the stairs and he raised his voice to a bellow, like an elephant trumpeting its anger.

‘Or maybe you’d rather be back on the street where I found you, with nothing more than the clothes you stand up in!’

In the downstairs hall I passed Simon Flet on his way in. He threw me his usual cursory glance of disdain.

And then something in my face must have sounded an alarm, because he stopped and called after me as I ran down the stairs to the basement. ‘What’s wrong?’

I didn’t reply until I got to the foot of the stairs and looked back to see his head turned up towards the first-floor landing. I raised my voice so that he would hear me. ‘Nothing.’

He glanced down at me very briefly before turning and taking the stairs to the first floor, two at a time.

I was startled to find Rachel in the basement sitting room, and stopped in my tracks. I am not sure what she was doing there, but she was just as startled to see me. We stood looking at each other during several long moments of uncomfortable silence. Then I saw a slightly quizzical look in those dark, dark eyes and her head canted a little to one side.

‘What’s wrong?’ An echo of Simon Flet.

I didn’t tell her. ‘Where is everyone?’

She shrugged. ‘I have no idea. At the hall probably.’

I lifted my jacket from the back of a chair and pulled it on. And we stood in more awkward silence.

I said, ‘See you around, then.’

But I didn’t move until she had nodded and turned away, and I ran back up the stairs to the ground floor. Then out into the glorious May morning, breathing hard and ready to weep, if I could have been sure that no one would see me.

I took the tube across town to Bethnal Green. In the weeks since our arrival in London, I had begun to get some kind of sense of the place. But only vaguely. I had spent so much time underground that I had only become familiar with those parts of the capital around the tube stations that I travelled to and from. Like some subterranean creature that pops its head up for a few minutes to get its bearings before plunging back down into the dark.

Like everyone else, I sat on the train lost in private thought, cocooned from the people around me by my very indifference to them.

They were the same thoughts I took with me as I walked through the leafy, littered streets of Bethnal Green in the spring sunshine. Dark, desperate thoughts.

I knew now that it had all been a big mistake. That the streets of London were not paved with gold, but with illusion. That no matter how far you run, the things you are trying to flee are there waiting for you when you arrive. Because you always take them with you.

In my desperation to escape I had done a dreadful thing. I had made a girl pregnant and taken a life. And the verse from Omar Khayyám that I had learned at school came back to me as my feet beat down on the warm asphalt. I am sure my English teacher, Mr Tolmie, would have been pleased to know that I not only remembered it but fully understood it now, perhaps for the very first time.

But, oh, how I wished it was possible.

There was no sign of the others when I got to the hall. One of the residents was up a ladder outside, nailing a board across a broken window. There was shattered glass all over the pavement, and the main door appeared to have been damaged somehow, split open in places, with jagged shards of wood lying around the entry. I recognized the resident as a man called Joseph.

‘What’s happened here, Joe?’

He interrupted his hammering and looked down at me. ‘Bunch of locals got drunk last night and attacked the hall when they came out of the pub. Threw stones at the windows and tried to break down the door with an axe. We were all locked inside. It was quite terrifying.’

There was no one around in the hall itself. Except for Alice. Thankfully, for once, she was covering her nakedness with a flimsy white gown and dancing around a long strip-painting that hung on the far wall. The paint, still wet where it had been freshly daubed on the paper, glistened in the sunlight that fell through arched windows on the south side. Music boomed out from the Dansette in the common room. The Kinks version of the Martha and the Vandellas hit ‘Dancing in the Street’.

‘Where are the boys?’ I asked her.

‘Haven’t a clue, darling.’ She pirouetted around me, dabbing the air with a long paint brush. ‘Dance with me.’

‘No thanks, Alice. Is Dr Walker around?’

I needed someone to talk to. Someone to give me a perspective, and I’d always felt a connection with JP, ever since discovering that we had both attended the Ommer School of Music.

‘Ahhhh, Johnny, poor Johnny. Chief of the sanity police, punishing me with his cures. Physician, heal thyself.’

‘Is he here?’

‘Try his office, darling.’

There didn’t appear to be anyone around as I made my way through the building, up the dark back stairway, through slashes of light from windows high up in the stairwell, and I wondered where all the residents had gone.

J. P. Walker’s office was on the first floor. It was simply furnished with a scarred desk, an office chair, and two worn old leather armchairs with the horsehair bursting through the arms. As I approached its open door I could hear someone softly sobbing. A contained sob, held back and smothered in the chest. Without thinking, I slowed my walk to push up on tiptoes so that I wouldn’t be heard.

Daylight flooding in from the office window spilled out through the open door into the darkness of the corridor, and I edged cautiously into the light, craning round the door jamb so that I could see who was crying in JP’s office.

I was stung immediately by a sense of shock. JP was sprawled in his office chair, legs stretched out in front of him, face tipped forward so that his forehead was resting in his open palm. The doctor’s face was shiny with tears, and deep, dark lines were etched into the grey skin below his eyes.

He was crying like a baby. I had no idea why, and I forgot myself for a moment, standing there and looking at him with unabashed curiosity. He lifted his head suddenly and saw me. For a moment I thought he was going to speak, then he leaned forward to push the door shut in my face.

I walked back along the corridor feeling both guilty and chastised. Guilty because of the prurient pleasure I had taken for a moment in witnessing his misery. Chastised because the door closed in my face had told me more eloquently than words that, whatever the reason for his tears, it was none of my business.

I heard voices in the common room as I came back down the stairs, and went in to find Dave and Luke and Maurie making tea. They seemed surprised, and a little embarrassed to see me.

‘You want some tea?’ Dave said.

‘Sure.’

Luke put a tea bag in a fourth mug, and Maurie said, ‘What are you doing here?’

I sat down at the end of the table, in JP’s seat, and stared at my hands in front of me. The Kinks had progressed to the final track on Side One and were so tired of waiting. Alice was still dancing and painting out in the hall.

I looked up and said, ‘I’m leaving.’

All three looked at me. Clearly surprised.