The Runaways Read Online Free PDF Page A

and ate it.
    It was over an hour later when Smiler woke. He was warm and dry and he felt better. He lay back on the hay looking out of the dusty window. Over the top of the cottage he could see the tips of a tall row of poplars on the far side of the river. Two starlings sat on the television aerial fixed to the chimney of the cottage. Through a broken pane of the window came the sound of sparrows quarrelling under the barn eaves, the belling of tits from the stark apple trees in the orchard and the distant drone of an airplane. From its dark perch right up in the angle of the rooftree of the barn, the owl opened one eye briefly to observe Smiler and then closed it again.
    Smiler lay thinking. The first half hour of waking in the morning was his best time for thought. It was a time of day when things seemed to present themselves fresh and clear. At the moment it was impossible for him to work out any grand plan of campaign for the future. He had to be content with a short-term view, and his short-term view was that he had to keep out of sight of people as much as possible and have a base which would give him shelter, warmth, and food and drink. Ford Cottage seemed a good base if it were empty and going to be empty for some time. That was something he had got to find out if he could. The deep-freezer and the food cupboards were well stocked as he knew. The question of making use of someone else’s house and supplies didn’t worry him very much. After all, he told himself, if things were the other way round and he was the bloke that owned the house and there was a young chap like himself on the run – because everyone had just got everything wrong – he wouldn’t have minded a bit if that young chap had helped himself. His father often said – didn’t he? – that God helped those who helped themselves but God helped those most who helped others. There was no questioning that. Thing Number One, then, was to find out if the cottage was really unoccupied and, if possible, for how long it might stay that way.
    Now Smiler, when he had put his mind to it, could be extraordinarily patient and industrious about any job he under-took. If you’re going to do something, then make a proper job of it, his father was always saying, because, if you don’t, you’ll founder in the first stiff breeze that comes along.
    So, from his barn window Smiler watched the cottage all that morning. The only person who came to the house was a postman who appeared at mid-morning and pushed some letters through the back door slot. Twice a red tractor came down and back the side road, moving over the bridge and up the steep wooded rise beyond. For lunch Smiler ate all the salt biscuits that remained and drank the little cider that was left.
    An hour later he had a shock. From the window he saw an elderly man come walking down the road. He wore a tweed coat and a checked cap and he stopped at the courtyard gate and looked across to the barn. Smiler saw him shake his head and then come through the wicket gate at the side of the large gate and cross to the barn. Down below Smiler heard the open barn door being banged-to on its catch. His heart beating fast, he saw with relief the man moving back across the yard to the lane. When the man was gone Smiler gave himself a black mark for carelessness. The door had originally been closed on the catch and he had left it open. The elderly man was probably some neighbour who could have fancied it had blown open in the night’s wind and had taken the trouble to close it. But if he had, Smiler argued, then it probably meant that the neighbour knew there was no one in the cottage. After all, you didn’t go around shutting a friend’s barn door if you knew the friend would be back soon, say like that evening, or the next day.
    An hour after the man had gone Smiler went out of the barn – closing the door after him. Keeping his eyes smartly open, he slipped across to