The stove drew with a soft droning. Its heat woke his sluggish blood and thinned it to filter back into his dead feet and nose and fingers and ears. The pain laid him on his back gasping and whimpering at the agony of the flesh scorched back to life by fresh blood. At the back of his mind he thought of the plume of smoke drifting off down the wind. Acute noses could pick up the scent miles away if some quirk of turbulence carried it down to ground level.
When he next was aware, he was sprawled half off the bed. A wan light filled the single window. He looked down at himself and saw the overalls were caked in mud. The stove was still warm, but the fire had gone out, so he rekindled it with the rotating drum flint and charcloth and soon had the luxury of heat once more. The smoke was a risk—but so was gangrene caused by frostbite. On balance, he felt the risk was worth taking while it was overcast and misty and the smoke went straight up. The flying boat would not be out today.
The visibility was only about a hundred yards. Even so, he moved about on all fours, grazing the natural larder, keeping under cover behind stone walls, aware the mist could clear suddenly. The ruins had been a small church with a graveyard and a couple of cottages, now shells, their rafters looted decades ago. Amid the tangle of bushes and wild grass, a few old gravestones still endured, plastered with lichen. The bothy was a lean-to shed against the remains of the church. Its thoughtful builder had included a water butt to collect run-off from the roof. The remains of couple of mice rested on the bottom of it, despite which it tasted fine to Lawrence’s parched palate—there was no other source of fresh water apart from some muddy puddles.
With his thirst and hunger abated, there was now a ritual he anticipated with relish after laying his hands on a pair of rusty pliers. With these, he twisted at the pin of his Value System tag until it broke and he was free, the hated thing was there in the palm of his hand. The wild meal of winter chanterelle and shaggy parasol had by now induced a certain urge; it was with utmost pleasure he smothered the tag with the result of that urge before burying the lot.
His boots and clothes now being dry, he decided to get moving while the light lasted.
Chapter 15
Drizzle frosted the window. Lawrence swore. After all the effort to dry out, this. Although the Value System overalls were waterproof, for a while at least, his woollen hat was not. A rummage around the bothy yielded a whetstone wrapped in oil cloth—just the job. With the whetstone he gave his knife a much-needed sharpen, while the oil cloth made a fair sou’wester wrapped around his head and draped over his collar, even if it did smell of mouse piss and stale oil. There were also some ancient woollen socks. Despite their filthiness, he filled them with fungi and slung them around his neck tied together with twine. Lastly, he needed some way of carrying water. Despite a thorough hunt both inside and around the bothy, the only container he could find was the bulky old kettle.
All the while, his mind was pondering. He was averse to doing the obvious. To take a direct south-west bearing to Peterborough was the shortest although not the easiest route. The problem was that he could easily miss Peterborough completely and perish in the wastelands beyond. What he needed was a target he could not miss. He recalled that a public drain ran due north of Peterborough for twenty miles to connect with the Norwich-Nottingham drain at a big crossroads. Long ago as a trooper going up to Nottingham on furlough with some pals, the lot of them had got drunk in an inn at those crossroads. By trekking due west to that drain, he cut by half the distance across sodden wilderness. Plus, The Captain was less likely to look for him that way. Of course, the route might have a bloody great inland lake on it. It was a chance he decided to risk—once he reached the public drain, it was a simple walk to Peterborough; that was the pay-off.
He weaved in and out of woodland, staying on open grass where the going was easier and he left less of a trail. For direction, he used the more exposed trees, which had been permanently bent by the prevailing south-westerly wind. That was all he had to go on unless the sun came out. This vagueness of direction dogged him constantly with a feeling of wasting time going the wrong way, against which he had to respect the risk of the weather suddenly turning arctic—the longer it took him to reach Peterborough, the greater that risk. On top of which, he was getting weaker all the time, for mushrooms and worms really do not provide the thousands of calories needed by a man trekking across-country in cold weather. Dreams of feasting taunted his thoughts—even nostalgic fancies of Sunday breakfast in the Value System. Breaking into his first sock of mushrooms did not help much.
In these early hours the ground remained good with plenty of cover from patches of woodland and bushes. The curtain of mist thinned and visibility increased out to about a quarter of a mile. He kept to higher ground as much as possible to avoid boggy areas where his boots would leave marks,
