The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(18)

The silver car I had seen in the night was prowling the edge of Hoxley. I ducked down behind a tenement wall smelling of soap and the outdoor privy that it protected as the over-expensive, over-fuelled vehicle rumbled by. The time had come to strike out overland again, away from the daylight danger of the roads.

I headed north, on a largely arbitrary whim, and for a few brief hours felt liberated by the daylight and the warmth, until thirst, hunger and the fuzzy quality of my own teeth began to distract annoyingly. I looked for a dip in the land, or a place where trees grew despite human carving, and by these signs found my way to a shallow stream aspiring to be a river, slippy fat round rocks pressed along its bed. I washed my face, my hands, my neck, and drank deep. I brushed my teeth and watched the white foam of my spit drift busily downstream. I counted the pennies I had left from my night’s theft, and wondered how far to the next town and how heavily patrolled it would be. I was too old to set snares for rabbits, so I gathered up my goods and walked on.

I reached the next village in the early afternoon.

Phearson’s men stood out like flies crawling in the wild horse’s eye. There was a baker, the smell of yeast almost unbearable. I watched for Phearson’s men to move on, then strode confidently in and declared, this time in my most received pronunciation, “A loaf and any butter you may have, please.”

The baker moved with glacial speed as he considered the question of butter. “Well, sir,” he concluded at last, “will lard do you now?”

Lard would do me fine, as long as it came soon.

“You not from here, sir?” he asked.

No, I wasn’t from here; I was out walking and needed to join my friends.

“Beautiful weather for it, sir.”

Yes, wasn’t it just. Let’s hope it holds.

“Would it be your friends what came into town this morning, sir? They said they were looking for someone?”

He talked so slowly, so amiably, that it was almost tragic to perceive the sound of suspicion, the quiet accusation in his voice.

Did they look like they were here for the hunting?

No, no, they didn’t.

Ah well then. They couldn’t be my friends. Thank you for the bread, thank you for the lard and now—

“Harry!” Phearson too, it turned out, could do RP when he needed to. I stood frozen in the door, bread under one arm, bundle of lard half-unwrapped and ready to smear. Phearson walked right up to me and threw his arms around me with gigantic affection. “I was so worried we were going to miss you!” he exclaimed, voice bouncing hugely down the quiet stone street. “Thank God you made it in time.”

His car was parked not twenty yards away, a roaring beast in a fairy-tale forest. The rear passenger door was already open, one of my anonymous guards–quite possibly the one I’d stolen the coat from–holding it open. I looked at it, looked at Phearson, and then, not feeling particularly confident about the gesture but feeling it needed to be made, dropped the bread and hit him as hard as I could in the face with the sharp end of my elbow.

I am pleased to say something went crack, and when I drew my arm back, there were flecks of blood staining the sleeve.

Regrettably I got no more than ten yards before the baker, moving with surprising speed for such a sedentary man, took me down with a well-placed rugby tackle and sat on my head.





Chapter 16


Drugs.

More drugs.

They strapped me to my bed, just like Dr Abel had, but unlike Dr Abel they didn’t have the medical instruments so fell back on a mixture of ties and belts. They didn’t beat me more than was necessary to achieve submission, merely enough to make it clear that submission was the only option. Then Phearson said, “I’m really sorry it came to this, Harry, I really am. I hoped you would understand.”

Scopolamine made me laugh; temazepam made me sleep. They tried sodium amytal and I couldn’t stop crying, though I didn’t feel very sad. They misjudged the first dose of barbiturates and my heart nearly popped out of my ears. They modified the dose and Phearson sat as I drooled nonsensical nothings.

He said, “We don’t want to hurt you, Harry. Christ, I’m not that guy, I’m just not; I’m one of the good guys. I’m a good guy trying to do the best. We don’t want to hurt you, but you gotta understand this is bigger than you or me, much, much bigger.”

Then they brought up the jump leads from the garage downstairs and he pressed his face close to mine and said, “Harry, don’t make me do it. Come on, we can do this. We can make things better, you and me. We can make this world a better place!”

When I didn’t answer, they pumped me full of antipsychotics and stuck the leads into a socket on the wall. But one of the guys got it wrong and touched the wrong bit, and shocked himself, yowling like a cartoon character and jumping a foot in the air. They had to take him downstairs to put ice on his hand and didn’t try anything else electric that night.

“Come on, Harry,” whispered Phearson. “Do the right thing. Make a difference, damn it! Make a difference!”

I laughed and rode on the warmth of the temazepam wave.





Chapter 17


Complexity should be your excuse for inaction.

This was ever the mantra of the Cronus Club, and I say it to you now. It is not noble, it is not bold, it is not righteous, it is not ambitious, but when you are dabbling with the sweep of history, with time itself, it is a sacred vow which should be pinned above every Cronus Clubhouse door. I had said as much to Phearson, and he could not understand.