Len Deighton - The Harry Palmer Quartet

I crouched down in the wet grass and I heard the front door open and saw a torch flash in the room I had just left. No one tried the window. I remained crouching. A car started up and I could hear two people speaking loudly close by, but the sound of the engine blotted out the words.

I walked without hurrying towards the rear of the house. I probably put too much reliance on my peaked cap. I fell into some soft earth, and backing out of it grabbed some thorny bushes. A dog barked, too close for comfort. I could see the rear wall now, it was about as high as I was. I ran a tentative finger along it, but there was no barbed wire or broken glass. I had both palms on it but it required more strength than I had, to pull myself up bodily. That damn dog barked again. I looked back at the prison building. Someone was in the conservatory now, with one of those powerful portable lights. They had only to swing it round the walls. Perhaps I should lie down flat in the grass, but when the big beam shot out I managed to get the side of one foot on the wall top. I flexed my leg muscles, and as the light skimmed the wall I rolled my empty belly over and fell down the far side. I knew I mustn’t stay down, although it was very pleasant, breathing long grassy lungfuls of the wet night air. I felt soaked and hungry, free and frightened, but as I started to walk, I found myself entrapped in an intricate framework of slim wooden rods and wires that enmeshed head and limbs; the more I tried to free myself, the more tangled I was. A narrow slit of light ahead of me grew fatter to become a rectangle, and a man’s silhouette was centred in it.

‘Here! Is someone there?’ he called, then, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, ‘Here, get out of my bloody “runners”, you silly—!’

I heard a clock strike ten P.M.

1 This method of opening a lock with a pencil has been withdrawn from the MS.

It would be easy now, to pretend that I knew all the answers at that stage. Easy to pretend that I’d known they were holding me in a big house in London’s Wood Green from the word go. But I didn’t. I half guessed, but the conviction had oozed from my body day by day. As I languished underfed and miserable, it became more and more difficult to think of anything outside of my little cell and K.K. In another ten days the theory that London was just over the garden wall would have been totally beyond my comprehension. That’s why I’d escaped. It was then or never.

Getting away from Mr Keating’s house, ‘Alf Keating’s my name, spelt like the powder’, was relatively easy. I told him I had had a fight with my brother-in-law who was drunk and much bigger than me, and I’d climbed over the garden walls to get away after a neighbour phoned for the police.

‘Uh!’ said Alf, revealing teeth like rusty railings.

To be running away from the police was terrible enough for him not to suspect worse; to admit to being physically inferior and cowardly guaranteed the story’s veracity. I must have been quite a sight. The brambles had drawn blood on my hands, and mud was spattered all over me. I saw Alf looking at the old man’s uniform jacket. ‘I’ve got to get to work,’ I said. ‘I’m on the door at Shell-Mex house.’ Alf stared. ‘Nights,’ I said lamely. ‘I just can’t seem to sleep in the day-time somehow.’ Alf nodded. ‘I’ll pay for the bean frames,’ I said.

Alf growled, ‘Yes, you ought to do that, I reckon.’ Alf took a huge watch out of his greasy waistcoat in order to get at a little bent tin of snuff that had been polished by years of use. He offered me a pinch, but if I sneezed there was a good chance my head would fall off and roll under Alf’s gas stove. I didn’t risk it.

I promised Alf an oil stove at cost price. He let me wash. Would Alf walk down the road with me? My brother-in-law wouldn’t make trouble if I was in company I said.

Alf exploded with volubility. ‘I don’t care if he does, mate. You won’t catch me climbing garden walls to get away from him.’ I was suitably admonished. It was very kind of Alf, and could he wait till Friday for the bean frame money. ‘Today’s Friday,’ said Alf. He had me there.

‘Yes, next Friday,’ I said, deciding to complete the picture for him. ‘I’ve given my wife my wage packet for this week. Nights get paid first thing Friday morning.’

‘Cor blimey!’ said Alf.

At the last minute Alf gave me sixpence and some coppers and a really withering look as I got on the bus. I was what things are coming to these days.

[ Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) If you are a stick-in-the-mud you’ll get nowhere. Widen your social horizons. Go somewhere gay and relaxing .]

I heard the operator asking Charlie if he’d accept a reversed charge call. He said OK. ‘This is a friend of Reg,’ I said.

‘I recognize the voice.’

‘I’m in quite a bit of trouble, Mr Cavendish.’

‘That’s right,’ said Charlie. ‘You got it?’ He was referring to the cable I’d had in Tokwe.

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘’s OK. What can I do for you, my boy?’

‘Could you meet me? Now?’

‘Sure. Where?’

‘Thanks.’

‘’s OK,’ said Charlie. ‘Where?’

I paused. I’d prepared the next bit: ‘“A dungeon horrible, on all sides round …”’ I paused and Charlie completed it for me.

‘“As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible.”’

That may not appeal to you, but to Milton and Charlie it was just the thing. ‘That’s it,’ I said.

‘OK. I’ve got you. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. I’ll go in first and pay for you. Anything special you want?’

‘Yes, a job.’

Charlie gave a squeaky little laugh and rang off.

There are no lights inside but through the huge windows that form one wall of the little chamber two lights that wouldn’t have chagrined a medium flak battery, stare relentlessly. The view through the glass is impressionist; the world outside muted by the constant dribble and trickle of hot water across the glass. The endless crash of sheets of water hitting the red stone floor provided a banshee background to the sudatory heat. Through the dense vapour Charlie’s pale pink and white blotchy body wrapped in a small gingham towel could just be seen.

‘Good idea,’ Charlie said. He was six inches shorter than me and he stared up with bright myopic eyes, now more shiny than ever. ‘Good idea this.’ I was flattered at Charlie’s enthusiasm. ‘I brought you some clothes. A white shirt – one of Reg’s. I thought you’d take about the same size as Reg. Socks and a pair of old canvas shoes size ten. Too big for me.’

There was a crash as someone leapt into the cold plunge.

‘Turkish baths,’ said Charlie, ‘and sleep here too if you want.’

The pain was beginning to trickle out of my pores. I said, ‘You see, Mr Cavendish …’ the wet heat struck the back of my lungs as I opened my mouth ‘… I had no one else to go to.’

‘’s OK. I would have been furious if you hadn’t come to your Uncle Charlie.’ It was a joke we had between us, like the joke of Charlie reciting those stanzas of Paradise Lost here in the steam room on previous occasions. Charlie was looking at the cuts on my face and my bruised cheek. The steam had probably made them much more visible. ‘You look like you got caught in a combine harvester,’ Charlie said gently.

‘Yes, and now they’ve sent me a bill for the damages.’

‘Go on. What a sauce,’ said Charlie seriously, then he did his squeaky laugh. Charlie wouldn’t hear of me going anywhere but back to his place. Although the Turkish bath was very therapeutic I was still as weak as a half-drowned kitten. I let him put me into his 1947 Hillman that was parked right outside the door in Jermyn Street.