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the course of it he said that the name of the escaped cheetah was Yarra and that it was a female.
    Before sleeping Smiler lay comfortably in the hay thinking about the cheetah. He’d often gone to the Bristol Zoo but he couldn’t remember whether he had ever seen a cheetah there. Actually he didn’t care much for zoos. Having animals in big parks like Longleat was much better. Pacing up and down a cage was no way to live. Being at a reform school – although he hadn’t stayed there long – was a bit like that. Do this, do that, and being watched all the time, feeling and knowing every moment that you were a prisoner. Even having a big enclosure to live in wasn’t really good enough, he felt. Not if you were a wild animal. All right for cows and sheep. But not for a leopard or a lion or a cheetah. Yarra … that was a nice name … same sort of name in a way as Tarzan. Yarra and Tarzan. He saw himself in a loin cloth swinging through the jungle trees. His faithful cheetah, Yarra, followed him far below, looking up when he gave his jungle cry. He liked animals, though he had never had many. The best had been a mongrel dog, black with white patches and a head that had a bit of Alsatian in it, called Tessa. His father had brought it home for him one day. Tessa would do anything for him. When he went to stay with Sister Ethel, while his father was at sea, she had made a terrible fuss. Tessa’s hairs got all over the furniture and carpets. In the end, he was sure, Tessa had got fed-up with all the fuss, too, because one day while he was walking her on the downs she had gone off and never come back … Tessa … Yarra … and Tarzan. He yawned, switched the radio off and stretched out to go to sleep.
    So far Smiler and Yarra had been lucky. No one had sighted either of them. Two of the wardens from Longleat had tried to follow Yarra’s spoor marks from the point of her breakout. After a time they had to give it up because the rain had washed them away. Nobody had tried to follow Smiler’s tracks. The police had sent out their signals and had alerted all patrol cars and the local constabulary with a description of Smiler. Now they were pretty confident that the need for food or shelter would make Smiler show up somewhere pretty soon. It was no time of the year for living rough, particularly as Smiler was far from being a country boy. The police had, of course, got in touch with Sister Ethel, giving her the news, and telling her that if Smiler appeared she must report him at once.
    Ethel and her husband, Albert, were at this moment in the sitting room of their little villa in Fishponds having cocoa before going to bed. It was a small neat room, everything shining and brushed, and polished and dusted. Albert had his slippers on. He was never allowed in the room without them. Albert was much easier going than Ethel, though he would never have dared to break any of her rules in the house. He was master only in his own workshop.
    Ethel said, ‘That boy’s always been a trouble and always will be. He’s got a wild, stubborn streak in him – and I wouldn’t know where it came from.’
    Albert knew that everybody had streaks of some kind in them. You just had to make the most of the streak you were handed out with as – he had no doubt – Smiler would do with his one day. He liked Smiler.
    He said, ‘My opinion is he run away from that place because he knew be didn’t ought to have been there in the first instance.’
    Ethel put her cocoa mug down precisely in the middle of a little table mat and said, ‘He went there because he was a bad one. Knocking an old lady over and taking her bag. And before that always lifting and taking things. Bad company makes bad habits.’
    Albert sighed gently. ‘He was light-fingered, yes. But I’m not sure he was any more than that. Not violent. Not Smiler. He wouldn’t harm a fly, let alone an