Running to Paradise by Virginia Budd Read Free Book Online

called out, had a whistle on a string round his neck: he seemed uncertain what to do next.
    The man whispered in my ear: ‘I’m going to make a run for it; I haven’t a cat’s chance, but it’s the only way. Sit still and you’ll be alright.’
    ‘ Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.’ I was sobbing now and quite beyond coherent thought.
    ‘ Shut up, you stupid little ass and sit still. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of,’ the man whispered furiously, then very gently relaxed his grip on me. There was silence, only the soft noises of the countryside and far away the clopping of a horse along the road from the town.
    Suddenly, with one movement, the man was on his feet, hurling the terrified monkey straight at the momentarily off balance sergeant, now only a few feet away. With one bound he had jumped over the embers of the fire and, like a rabbit that, trapped in the last, small, square of uncut corn at harvest time, somehow manages to escape the ring of jeering men and boys armed with sticks, shot through the cordon of policemen and stumbled away over the Common. Knocked to the ground by the man ’s sudden bolt, I was by this time screaming blue murder; then there were other arms around me, another man’s voice, friendly, cajoling. ‘It’s alright, Miss Char, nothing to be afeared of. It’s PC Willis. You remember, I brought you back your kitty t’other day after you’d lost him.’ Refusing to be comforted, I continued to sob and wriggle in a futile attempt to escape, when suddenly a shot rang out. Then yet another voice, this one full of excitement: ‘We’ve got ‘im, Sarge. Bullet went straight through the back of ‘is ‘ead; good, clean shot it wure.’
    ‘ Best thing all round, really.’ The sergeant’s voice: ‘He were a bad un, but all the same I’ll have to make a report—’
    ‘ What on earth is going on? Has Bagland Common suddenly become part of the Wild West of America?’
    ‘ Ma! Oh Ma! It’s me. They’ve shot the nice man. Oh Ma!’ For once in my life the presence on the scene of my mother was what I wanted most in the world and there, miraculously, she was. I was placed (no doubt with considerable relief) gently in her arms by a deferential PC Willis.
    ‘ There, there, my pet, Ma is here now. There’s nothing more to be afraid of.’ And I, lying limp across my mother’s shoulder, too tired to think any more, thrust my still sticky thumb in my mouth and let her take over.
    It was as I was being lifted into the waiting dog cart — Ma had been driving home from her committee when she had heard the shot and seen the police on the Common — that I saw the man for the last time. He lay on his back on a rough stretcher covered by a red horse blanket. His face was white and his beautiful eyes closed. His poor, mangled hand seemed to be clutching at his throat and there was a little smear of blood on his forehead. Suddenly, I remembered: ‘Ma, where’s the dear little monkey? He was so funny, he—’
    ‘ He’s gone to the animals’ heaven, dear. He’ll be quite happy there and he will be able to play all day long and never be hungry; you musn’t be sad about him.’ Ma’s voice was unusually gentle as she turned my face away from the grisly scene at the roadside. Over her shoulder she crisply addressed the police sergeant: ‘You’ll be up to make your report shortly, no doubt, Sergeant. Meanwhile, I will telephone the Chief Constable.’ With a flick of her whip, she brought Snowball, the grey mare, to life and the dog cart slowly trundled down the road and turned into the drive gates of Renton House.
    And that was the end of my first great adventure. Or rather, the end of the adventure itself. There were to be many repercussions, not the least of which being that for a few, brief, exciting days I became quite famous.
    The case of the man, ‘my’ man, had, it seemed, become quite a cause célebre. I did not, of course, learn the full story until many