Graham Swift - Shuttlecock

I began immediately to scratch away at the mortar with the nail, close to where the air, through some unseen crack, was periodically infiltrating. Even as I did so I was hastily working out possibilities and precautions. When next my cell door was opened I must look quickly at this part of the wall to make a visual note of what I could only, so far, feebly gauge by touch. But if I did this I would draw the attention of the guards. I must therefore hide my work. But how? The latrine-can. This was about eighteen inches tall. Placed against the wall, it would hide some of the patch in question; as for the rest, I must make do. To conceal my chipping and scraping I must rub and scuff the area worked on with dirt from the cell floor. This would still show, but I could only hope the guards would not notice. To darken the mortar-dust made by my chipping I must use the only means available to me: my own urine. They would not think twice about a leaking latrine-can. I must hide the nail in between two bricks where it can be readily placed in a hurry but remain invisible to someone standing in the doorway. I must work in short, concentrated stints so as to be able to conceal my activities before visits by the guards. I must chip away not individual bricks but a complete section of brickwork so that even when I am able to remove it, it will stand in position. Will I possibly have the time? And the luck?

But all these methodical, if hasty conjectures I do not remember applying — not consciously at least. Perhaps, when your life is at stake, practical measures are implemented instinctively and automatically — since the cost of omitting them is so great. I only remember that I worked away feverishly with my nail. My universe — my existence — depended on that piece of rusty metal and that small patch of brick. My precautions for concealing my work must have been effective, for when the guards came, a first time, a second, they detected nothing. This went on — I cannot say how long. Scratching, chipping with the nail; interrupted by sessions with grey-hair and fat-cheeks. It was a race against time, and against my own dwindling physical resources. At any moment I might be the target for one of those fusillades that came from the courtyard. Or before I could finish my work I might lose the strength to continue. I might crack, before then, under interrogation. And yet, in fact, the merest chance of escape, the slenderest factor in my favour, renewed, double-fold, my power to resist and endure. I was carried along, despite all, on a wave of almost exalted emotion. I was not powerless. I had found a means of escape.

Tuesday. In the Tube today, a strange incident. The train stopped for a long time at Stockwell. Word got round that someone had been taken ill in one of the carriages; and, looking down the platform, we saw him: a short, chubby man with thin wisps of hair, being led away by a couple of porters. His jacket and tie were crumpled over one arm. His shirt was partly unbuttoned. His exposed chest glistened with sweat. And as they led him to the exit his face was reddened and contorted. He was crying like a child.

And the strange thing was the expression of everyone watching. Perhaps they felt shock, pity, curiosity. Perhaps they even felt a little bit afraid. But the dominant look on their faces was one of satisfaction, of relief, even of renewed strength.

… There was a strong temptation to hack away blindly at the gradually loosening brickwork, breaking it off in lumps. But this would have meant almost certain discovery. I somehow kept to my plan of removing a single, replaceable section. Since I was working in the dark I was constantly afraid that I might cut a hole too small for me to squeeze through, but my reckoning proved sound. Either that, or I had not realized how thin even a few days in Gestapo hands would make me.

At length, there came a moment unreal in its simplicity. I chipped away a final length of mortar. I felt the whole section loosen and wobble. I pushed gently at the bottom of the section and it fell forward on to my hands. My first feeling was, oddly, disappointment. No light flooded into my cell. I had already begun bitterly to conclude, from the lack of light visible through the cracks made as I worked, that, if my chute theory were correct, and ruling out, on the grounds of the incoming draught, that the outer wall was also blocked, then there must be, as in the case of my grandfather’s house, some metal plate on the outer wall stopping the passage of daylight. But, after removing the section of brick, I expected to see at least some glimmer of brightness. I had not prepared myself for two simple things. Firstly, that when I ‘broke through’ it would be night. Secondly (so desperately did I cling to the comparison with my grandfather’s cellar), that there could be something else blocking the entry of light other than a plate or hatch. Had I used the evidence of my senses I might have put two and two together.

Scarcely pausing, I thrust my head, and then my upper body into the opening. If light was not entering from outside, then fresh air certainly was, in abundance, together with the lavender fragrance I had already detected. I found myself — just as I had hoped — in a steeply inclining passage of rough brick. Crawling up it — I was, remember, quite naked — was painful. But these were the least of my pains at the Château Martine. At the point where, in order to get any further, my feet would have to leave the floor of the cell, my head bumped into something fibrous and yielding. It was the dense, woody undergrowth of a lavender bush.

A more careful soul might have hesitated at this point; might have crawled back into the cell, replaced the brickwork, sat down and formulated a detailed plan of escape. I did not. I had heard many escape stories while I was in France. The successful ones were either scrupulously worked out in advance or they were the result of sudden, hazardously seized opportunities. It was the ones in between which failed. I had neither the time nor the detailed knowledge of the Château and how it was guarded — nor the resources of self-discipline left — to make elaborate plans. It was night. I had made a hole in the wall. If I was spotted and shot in the Château grounds — well, doubtless I would have ended up shot anyway. My only precaution was to squirm back into the cell and daub my already quite filthy, scarred and bruise-covered body with dust. A nude escape had numerous drawbacks, the most immediate of which was easy detection.

I clambered back up the chute, listened carefully for several moments, then parted the thick stems of the lavender bush. My heart was throbbing with a strange thrill, a genuine, wild elation.

I knew I would emerge beneath the wall of the south wing of the Château. The front of the Château was to my right, the ‘Watteau’ garden to my left. I did not know precisely what lay immediately south of the Château but I resolved on making for the nearest cover in a direction half-left.

The lavender bush provided an excellent screened vantage-point. My eyes, free of the pitch-darkness of the cell, quickly penetrated the lesser darkness of the open air. There was a narrow border of shrubs, of which the lavender bush was an occupant, running along the base of the Château wall. Then a wide gravel path. Then an area about thirty yards square, which alarmed me first of all by seeming to be enclosed on three sides by a high wall. It contained a jumbled array of flowerbeds, low walls, paths and glass frames. I guessed this was the old kitchen garden of the Château. On the right was an open space occupied by two trucks and heaps of miscellaneous supplies, oil drums and so forth, under tarpaulins. No sign of my hosts. There was clearly an exit at either end of the gravel path, close to the Château wall, but these were dangerous routes. I looked along the walls of the kitchen garden. I spotted a doorway — whether it actually contained a door I could not see — on the left-hand wall, perfectly placed for the half-left, south-easterly line of escape I planned. If I could get to that doorway and pass through it, I ought to find myself in the gardens proper, with plenty of cover, and well clear of the rear of the Château.