Flight

Hollystones, a decrepit old farmhouse on a windy hill in Cumbria,
had creaking floorboards. Jenny Sanger crept about her bedroom with
painful care in the middle of that February night but to her mind made
so much noise that at any moment her father or one of her four brothers
were bound to awake and come and find her packing her belongings to run
away from the house she had lived in for all sixteen years and nine
months of her life.
At last she had packed into her sturdy school backpack all she deemed
essential, but as she opened the bedroom door to creep away for the
last time her eyes fell upon her guitar leaning in a corner. It would
be awkward to carry on the bike, but she decided she must have it. She
dragged the guitar case from under the bed and then took up the
instrument itself, but one of her fingernails caught on a string and a
loud note sounded throughout the house. Jenny froze and heard the
springs creak as a body turned over in bed in the next room. She waited
for several minutes in suspense, but nobody came. She laid the guitar
carefully in its case, then went downstairs and left her note on the
kitchen table.
"Dear Dad, I was willing to pull my weight and to look after you and
the boys to the best of my ability, whilst still trying to keep up with
my school work, because I love you all, and I made a promise to Mother
before she died But tonight when you hit me it was the last straw. I am
off to live a life of my own. To Fred: I have taken your mountain bike
to the railway station because mine has a puncture. You can pick it up
there tomorrow. Best love from your daughter and your sister -
Jenny."
She opened the back door and walked to the byre, where her brother
kept his mountain bike. The four cows grumbled and snorted quietly
behind their bars but she shushed them with a whisper. She tied the
guitar case to the saddle bag carrier, walked out of the gate and down
the lane to the road, then climbed on the bike and pedalled away
without looking back.
She reached Humbleford station an hour later, well in time for the
4.10 a.m. mail train from Glasgow, and bought a one-way ticket to
London. The ticket clerk looked at her curiously as she held a hand
over her blackened right eye. The platform was deserted, but five
minutes before the train was due a man in a cape and a broad-brimmed
hat stepped into view and headed towards her. Jenny stepped out of the
light as he drew near, and turned her head away, and he carried on down
the platform, sat on a bench, crossed his legs and lit a pipe.
The train was late. The stranger in the hat rose from his seat and
walked slowly towards her but before he could draw level Jenny started
in the opposite direction. But the man followed and when Jenny reached
the end of the platform there was no escaping him.
"Good evening, or good morning," he said, raising his grey velvet hat.
His voice was deeply rich and cultivated and he carried an
expensive-looking leather overnight bag. "Does this train usually run
late or am I just out of luck?"
"I really wouldn't know," she said, trying to hide her black eye.
"I've never used it before."
"Have you been in an accident?" he said with concern.
"No," she said too hastily. "I mean yes. I fell off my bike."
"May I take a look?"
"No, it's quite all right. Excuse me." She walked briskly back towards
the booking hall.
The train arrived two minutes later and the man climbed into a first
class carriage near the front and Jenny into a second class one near
the back. There were few people on the train and she had no trouble
finding an empty compartment. She peered out to see the last of her
home town, but all she saw was her own sad, strained face staring back
at her. After a mile or two the door of her compartment slid open and
the man in the velvet hat looked in.
"Excuse me once again," he said, raising his hat. "But I think I must
have a word with you." He placed his overnight bag on the rack and sat
down opposite her.
"I'll pull the communication cord if you don't leave me alone," she
said, starting to rise to her feet.
"Please don't do that. I'm here to help. " He had a small grey beard
on the point of his chin and silver eyebrows that swept almost to his
ears and gave him the air of a devil or a stage magician.
"I've heard that one before," said Jenny.
"I think someone has hurt you and you're running away from home," he
said gently.
She was too surprised to deny it.
"Where are you heading?"
"London," she said.
"Oh dear, oh dear," he said, shaking his head. "What a bad choice. So
many children of your age do that and they end up living on the
streets, or worse. Please take the advice of an old man."
"I'm going nowhere with you," she said. He was not all that old. About
the same age as her father, in his middle forties.
"What would I do with a grown child?" he asked. "My life is far too
exhausting already. Are you still at school?"
"I'm doing my A-levels but I don't see what that's got to do with
you."
"Is that one of the things you're running away from? Can't stand the
pace at school?"
"I can stand the pace at school," she said hotly. "I just can't stand
the pace at home."
"Did that happen at home?" He touched his cheek under his right
eye.
"It's nothing to do with you."
"Do you want to continue with your A-levels and go on to
university?"
"What do you think?"
He studied her for a quiet moment and nodded his head. "I think you
do. You have a studious face. Let me give you some free advice."
"Why, do folks usually pay for it?"
"As a matter of fact they do and they pay through the nose. At a rough
guess you're getting about a thousand pounds worth. My advice to you is
to leave the train at Nuneaton."
"Nuneaton? Why Nuneaton?"
"I know someone there who will look after you."
"Oh yes?"
"Yes. One moment. I just want to scribble a little note."
He took a flat black case from his overnight bag. It opened on his
knee to form a small desk. He took a sheet of thick yellowish paper
from a compartment and wrote for few moments with a scratchy fountain
pen. He took an envelope of the same yellow colour from another
compartment, folded the note and slipped it inside, then wrote briefly
on the envelope, before licking and sealing it.
"If you take my advice you will get off this train at Nuneaton
Junction, then take a taxi to this address," he said, handing her the
envelope.
Jenny stared at the address written in large, flowing letters : "Miss
Annie Perigorde, Parsonage Mount, via Nuneaton. "
"What's this?" said Jenny. "A knocking shop?"
"Quite the reverse," he said, with a smile. "Now I bid you goodbye and
good fortune."
He rose, returned the writing case to the overnight bag, opened the
door of the compartment, raised his hat, and left. In a moment he was
back again. He took out a wallet, extracted twenty pounds and put it in
her hand. "You' ll need this for a taxi to Parsonage Mount. Goodbye
again, and once again, good fortune." Then he was gone, finally.
Jenny had more than two hundred miles in which to make up her mind.
After one hundred she tore open the envelope and read what the man had
written: "Dear Miss Perigorde, This girl has been beaten and is running
away from home. Don't send her back there unless she expresses a desire
for it. Please give her every possible assistance. - Kind regards,
Rigby."
Rigby? Was that his first name or his last?
At Nuneaton she got off the train, had breakfast in the platform
buffet, then climbed into a taxi waiting at the rank outside. It had
been raining but now the sun was coming out.
"Where to, Miss?"
"Parsonage Mount," she said, glancing at the envelope and half hoping
the driver would say he had never heard of it.
"Righto, Miss," he said and drove off. Jenny glanced at her watch. It
was a quarter to nine.
They sped through the town and into the countryside of Warwickshire
and finally, at the end of a long winding lane, stopped at a formidable
pair of black wrought-iron gates supported by honey-coloured granite
posts surmounted by giant stone pineapples. In gold paint on a black
ground was the legend: "PARSONAGE MOUNT PUBLIC SCHOOL."

A school, Jenny thought, a public school, then she surveyed the
structure of the place. It was like an overgrown house and had ivy up
the walls. Blimey, she thought, I didn't think they did buildings like
this any more. The writing on the sign was gold and very neatly carved.
Underneath it said opened by the earl of something or other. An earl,
oh gosh, how elitist.
The taxi crunched up the drive over gravel so fine and beautiful in
the strong sunlight that it might have been composed of millions of
tiny, multicoloured diamonds. Acres of lawn stretched out to the
horizon on either side and a few impeccably white sheep were cropping
the rich green grass. Girls in big straw hats, mustard yellow blazers
and bottle green skirts were strolling toward the buildings. What
chance have I here? Jenny thought, with panic. Even the sheep look
swanky.