Read Online Fellow Passenger by Geoffrey Household - Free Book Online
Authors: Geoffrey Household
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I’ll be hanged for High Treason, anyway?’
That really broke through his arrogance, and he sounded ready to panic. I certainly did not want hysterics, so I passed my own trousers in his general direction to restore mutual confidence and asked for his own. They had the quid in the pocket, too — as well as some small change that he was in too much of a hurry to remove.
He was restive during the afternoon. I do not think he had ever sat still for so long in all his life. Whenever we heard ‘Erbert’s voice droning away in the hall below, he was inclined to make little noises - accidentally as it were. I had to remind him that, since he had no use for patriotism, he had nothing to lose by keeping quiet, and that if he didn’t I had a wooden mallet handy.
After nightfall we walked out together, and in the cathedral close I said good-bye to him with apologies. I felt inclined, as the older man, to tell him to mend his ways, but under the circumstances he was hardly likely to care for my opinion. I merely impressed it on him that if the police got hold of me through any information of his I should tell them to check the fingerprints inside the collecting-box with others on their files.
‘Howard-Wolferstan,’ he replied, ‘I sincerely hope you get away. I want to read some morning that you have been liquidated with every possible Russian refinement.’
I put my faith in his drawing-board and sketches, which I held carelessly open on a level with my chest, as if I were just on my way home, deep in thought, from an evening’s work. For the rest, my face had three days’ scrub on it, and I arranged my hair to make myself unrecognizable to a casual glance. After all, a woman can change her whole appearance, and character as well, by monkeying with her hair, so why not a man? I have always worn my own neat, parted and rather long over the ears. I wetted it from a puddle - for no one could tell the difference between grease and water in the dark - and then made it look as if it were only kept out of my eyes by continual, nervous movements of the fingers.
I simply trusted to different clothes and different bearing, and whether I was ever closely examined by police I do not know. Keeping my eyes helplessly on my sketches, I made little effort to avoid lights or people, and tried to keep an even, innocent pace until I was clear of the town. Then I took to open country and footpaths, moving fast but very cautiously south-east, and by two a.m. had the best part of twelve miles between myself and Saxminster.
I was impatiently hungry. Impatiently rather than physically. Wine and a pound of biscuits - to say nothing of a substantial slice of cake - are quite enough to keep a man going for fifty-six hours so long as he is well-fed to start with. I have known much worse. But I had to think, sanely and impudently. You can’t do that on an empty stomach. And at the beginning of June the English countryside produces absolutely nothing to eat: no berries, no harvest.
I had asked my nihilistic friend in the cellar what he did when he was broke and really hungry. ‘Pinch milk bottles, of course,’ he replied, as if everyone knew that. To swipe the baby’s milk off the doorstep before the family woke up was a crime entirely in keeping with his character. But what of it? My own crime fitted my character, too - or at any rate my upbringing. A fat and sleepy lamb. I cut him up with my pocket-knife and built a small fire in the middle of a copse and grilled his chops, inadequately, on the ashes. It was an anxious business, but, when there was light enough to see smoke, only red embers and a pleasant smell remained.
Burying all traces of my sheep-stealer’s feast, I lay down out of the wind and considered what on earth was to be done next. My strong impulse was to make for the nearest port, Bristol or Southampton; but it stood to reason that the ports were just where the police net would have the
That really broke through his arrogance, and he sounded ready to panic. I certainly did not want hysterics, so I passed my own trousers in his general direction to restore mutual confidence and asked for his own. They had the quid in the pocket, too — as well as some small change that he was in too much of a hurry to remove.
He was restive during the afternoon. I do not think he had ever sat still for so long in all his life. Whenever we heard ‘Erbert’s voice droning away in the hall below, he was inclined to make little noises - accidentally as it were. I had to remind him that, since he had no use for patriotism, he had nothing to lose by keeping quiet, and that if he didn’t I had a wooden mallet handy.
After nightfall we walked out together, and in the cathedral close I said good-bye to him with apologies. I felt inclined, as the older man, to tell him to mend his ways, but under the circumstances he was hardly likely to care for my opinion. I merely impressed it on him that if the police got hold of me through any information of his I should tell them to check the fingerprints inside the collecting-box with others on their files.
‘Howard-Wolferstan,’ he replied, ‘I sincerely hope you get away. I want to read some morning that you have been liquidated with every possible Russian refinement.’
I put my faith in his drawing-board and sketches, which I held carelessly open on a level with my chest, as if I were just on my way home, deep in thought, from an evening’s work. For the rest, my face had three days’ scrub on it, and I arranged my hair to make myself unrecognizable to a casual glance. After all, a woman can change her whole appearance, and character as well, by monkeying with her hair, so why not a man? I have always worn my own neat, parted and rather long over the ears. I wetted it from a puddle - for no one could tell the difference between grease and water in the dark - and then made it look as if it were only kept out of my eyes by continual, nervous movements of the fingers.
I simply trusted to different clothes and different bearing, and whether I was ever closely examined by police I do not know. Keeping my eyes helplessly on my sketches, I made little effort to avoid lights or people, and tried to keep an even, innocent pace until I was clear of the town. Then I took to open country and footpaths, moving fast but very cautiously south-east, and by two a.m. had the best part of twelve miles between myself and Saxminster.
I was impatiently hungry. Impatiently rather than physically. Wine and a pound of biscuits - to say nothing of a substantial slice of cake - are quite enough to keep a man going for fifty-six hours so long as he is well-fed to start with. I have known much worse. But I had to think, sanely and impudently. You can’t do that on an empty stomach. And at the beginning of June the English countryside produces absolutely nothing to eat: no berries, no harvest.
I had asked my nihilistic friend in the cellar what he did when he was broke and really hungry. ‘Pinch milk bottles, of course,’ he replied, as if everyone knew that. To swipe the baby’s milk off the doorstep before the family woke up was a crime entirely in keeping with his character. But what of it? My own crime fitted my character, too - or at any rate my upbringing. A fat and sleepy lamb. I cut him up with my pocket-knife and built a small fire in the middle of a copse and grilled his chops, inadequately, on the ashes. It was an anxious business, but, when there was light enough to see smoke, only red embers and a pleasant smell remained.
Burying all traces of my sheep-stealer’s feast, I lay down out of the wind and considered what on earth was to be done next. My strong impulse was to make for the nearest port, Bristol or Southampton; but it stood to reason that the ports were just where the police net would have the
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