Borrowed Time (16 page)

“Hadn’t it occurred to you, Robin? I mean, just as a theoretical possibility?”

“No. It hadn’t.”

“I was so worried it must have. And that you’d say so to Rowena. She mustn’t be allowed to think of it. It would be disastrous. She sees Mummy as perfect in every way.”

“But you don’t?”

“She was human. Like the rest of us. And she kept a great deal to herself. If she’d had enough of her marriage, it would be just like her to conceal the fact from Rowena and me. And to endure it until we were no longer dependent on her. Well, I was already off her hands. And Rowena was about to follow. Maybe last year seemed the obvious time to make the break.”

“Where would she have gone?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she didn’t either. Perhaps it was sufficient just to strike out on her own. A few days with Sophie, then . . . If she really meant to go to Sophie’s, that is.”

“You’re not suggesting she and Oscar Bantock—”

“No, no. I’m sure not. But . . . perhaps some other man I never met was waiting patiently. Somebody she’d known years before, still carrying a torch.”

I remembered the man who’d nearly driven me down in Butterbur Lane and was tempted to describe him to Sarah in case she knew him. Then resentment of her honesty overcame me. Why say anything to support her theory when she’d kept it from me so long? Why reinforce a suspicion I wanted no part of? “You could be wrong about this, couldn’t you?” I asked, silently willing her to agree. “As a lawyer, wouldn’t you say the evidence was purely circumstantial?”

“Oh yes. I could be wrong. Easily. I hope I
am
wrong. I love my father. I don’t like to think of what he must have gone through if I’m right. To learn Mummy had deserted him only a few hours before he learned she was dead. And then not to be able to tell anyone. To love her and to lose her. Twice over. That’s real suffering, don’t you think?”

“I think you’ve all suffered. In your different ways.”

“And Rowena responds by trying to commit suicide. While Daddy makes a fool of himself with a glamorous widow.” She smiled, mocking me as well as herself. “Where does that leave me, Robin?”

“It leaves you taking it in your stride. Apparently.”

“Don’t you think I am?”

“You tell me. Being the strong dependable sister can’t be easy. If you’ll forgive me for saying so . . .”

“Yes?”

“You look . . . just a little stretched.”

“Rubbish.” She reddened and took a sip of her drink. “Absolute rubbish.”

“Is it?”

“I believe in facing facts.” She tossed her head, the haughty public schoolgirl peeking from behind the composed professional. “If necessary, facing them down.”

“But these aren’t facts, are they? Only suppositions.”

“Exactly.” She stared at me impatiently, as if I were being irritatingly obtuse. “That’s why I want to protect Rowena from them. Because what can’t be proved can’t be disproved.”

“Then stop worrying. She’ll learn none of this from me.”

“No. I don’t suppose she will.” She sat back and studied me intently through narrowed lids. “You’re a puzzle, Robin. You really are.”

“In what way?”

“Why do you care about us so much? We don’t give you much encouragement. We’re not even as grateful as we should be. When you met Mummy on Hergest Ridge— By the way, that
was
the first time you’d met her, wasn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“It’s just . . . well . . . we only have your word for it, don’t we? That it was a chance meeting, I mean.” Yes. They did. So did I. Only my word. Only my fallible recollection. And now, worming its way into Sarah’s mind, was the half-formed thought that had already strayed into mine. I’d met Louise Paxton by chance. The purest of chances. It couldn’t have been anything else. Could it? “Go on then, Robin. Say that’s what it was. Why don’t you? What’s stopping you?”

“Nothing.”

“But still you don’t say it.”

“Because I can’t prove it. To you. Or to anyone else.” Her eyes were open wide now, staring at me in amazement. This was the last reply she’d expected. And the last one she’d have wanted to hear. “I can’t prove it, Sarah. Even to myself.”

Waiting for the train at Temple Meads, sobered by cold air and the rowdy dregs of a football crowd further down the platform, Sarah and I looked sheepishly at each other. We both regretted the turn our conversation had taken. We were ashamed of the accusations we’d almost levelled, the inner truths we’d almost revealed. They were intimacies we weren’t ready for. Arenas we weren’t prepared to enter.

“I’m sorry,” she said haltingly, “for some of the things I . . . Forget it. Please. All of it.”

“Consider it forgotten.”

“But it isn’t, of course, is it?”

“No.” I risked a smile and she bowed her head in understanding. “Shall we agree . . . simply not to mention it again?”

“Let’s.”

“If there’s anything more I can do to help Rowena . . . or you . . . you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“If you’re sure you want me to. Wouldn’t it be safer . . . to walk away from us altogether? Safer for you, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I can’t. So . . .”

“I’ll remember the offer.” She looked round. “Here’s your train.” Then she leant up and kissed me. “Safe journey, Robin.”

Sarah was wrong. I told myself so over and over again as the train sped towards Reading. She was wrong, even though her explanation fitted the facts with greater exactitude than any other. She was wrong, even though, in my weaker moments, I feared she might be right.

C  H  A  P  T  E  R
EIGHT

M
y mother’s death deprived the Timariot family of a centripetal force I’d never realized she embodied. This first became apparent over Christmas 1991, when the traditional mass gathering at Adrian and Wendy’s went by the board. I spent the day alone, tramping the lanes around Steep and wondering whether I oughtn’t to feel deprived or deserted—rather than strangely content.

On Boxing Day, I drove down to Hayling Island to see Uncle Larry. He lived in a chalet bungalow overlooking Chichester Harbour, with a telescope permanently erected in the bedroom window to study the comings and goings of sea birds on the mud-flats. His other passion—cricket—was evident in the daffodil ranks of
Wisdens
on his bookshelves and the desk-load of notes and documents he’d been trying for ten years or more to distil into a definitive history of Timariot & Small. But the company’s future, not its past, was what he wanted to discuss with me.

“I had lunch with Les Buckingham the other day,” he announced. (Les Buckingham had been his opposite number at one of our biggest rivals in the bat-making business.) “He said something about Viburna Sportswear that worried me. I didn’t know what to make of it. He’s probably got the wrong end of the stick, but, according to Les, Viburna are very much in Bushranger’s pocket. Bushranger Sports, that is.” The clarification was unnecessary. Bushranger Sports of Sydney and Auckland had been making cricket bats for less than twenty years, but had already carved out a large chunk of the Australian market for themselves. “He doesn’t see how they’d let Viburna get away with selling our bats under their very noses.”

“They can hardly stop them now we effectively
are
Viburna.”

“That’s what I said. But Les . . . Well, he was unconvinced. Reckoned Bushranger had . . . ways and means. Couldn’t say
what
ways and means, of course. That’s why I thought he was just flying a kite. But I wanted to check you’d heard nothing similar. We’ve invested a lot in this takeover. And borrowed to do it, Jenny tells me. With interest rates where they are at the moment, we can’t afford to have it turn sour.”

“I agree. But it’s not going to turn sour.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, Adrian, Jenny and Simon are sure. So I am too. As for Les Buckingham, now he’s retired, isn’t he bound to be just a bit . . . out of touch?”

“Like me, you mean?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, you may be right. You’ve all got your heads screwed on. I suppose I ought to just let you get on with it.”

“Probably.”

“And stop worrying?”

“Yes. Believe me, Uncle, there really is nothing to worry
about
.” But there was, of course. Plenty.

The truth emerged in progressively more disturbing morsels during the first few months of 1992. Rumours no more substantial than Les Buckingham’s began to coagulate into doubts nobody quite seemed able to pin down or dismiss. Unexplained problems delayed—then prevented—placements of Timariot & Small bats in Viburna’s retail outlets. Technical hitches, according to Greg Dyson. Rather more than that, I began to suspect.

Then, in March, came two simultaneous bombshells. Danziger’s, the nationwide Australian sports goods retailer, confirmed in writing that a legally enforceable agreement with Bushranger Sports prohibited them from handling cricket bats originating from Bushranger’s domestic rivals. Our ownership of Viburna meant we now fell within that classification. The whole point of taking them over in the first place—readier access to the Australasian market—was vitiated if Danziger’s doors were closed to us. And the lawyers agreed they
were
closed—
if
the agreement was valid. Well, Bushranger were bellicose enough in their assertions to suggest they had no doubts about its validity. And Danziger’s insisted Greg Dyson had long known of its existence. Naturally, we wanted to hear Dyson’s response to that. But he chose this moment to send us a perfunctory letter of resignation and quit Melbourne without leaving a forwarding address behind him.

There was worse to follow when Adrian and Jennifer hurried out to Melbourne to investigate. Previously undisclosed creditors of Viburna came to light. Along with details of substantial foreign exchange transactions in the last few weeks of Dyson’s tenure of office which he’d apparently used to camouflage the diversion of Viburna funds to overseas bank accounts held in names which sounded horribly like aliases. Viburna funds were of course Timariot & Small funds. More ominously, they represented moneys lent to us on the assumption that we could repay them from the profits our takeover of Viburna would bring in. But now there weren’t going to be any profits. Just escalating losses made worse by legal fees, hidden debts and outright theft. I don’t know whether Dyson had ever tried his hand at sheep-shearing. But he’d certainly done a thorough job of fleecing us.

The recriminations began straightaway. Simon and I felt Adrian, who’d had more dealings with Dyson than the rest of us, should have realized he was a crook. We also reckoned Jennifer should have spotted the holes in Viburna’s books. There were acrimonious meetings and blazing rows; simmering resentments and incipient feuds. Adrian brazened it out, insisting we’d been taken in by a master fraudster: no blame could attach to him. Jennifer took a different line, admitting she should have smelt a rat sooner and offering to resign her directorship. She was genuinely appalled that we’d been so easily deceived. Well, so were all of us. In the end, there was nothing to be gained by making Jennifer a scapegoat. Her offer was never taken up. And Adrian remained in charge. But his authority—along with our faith in him and in each other—was damaged beyond repair. The anxious debates and stifled accusations left us divided and dispirited. Timariot & Small could never be the same again.

Worse still, it couldn’t be prosperous either. The Petersfield operation remained as viable as ever. We were actually doing very well. But the Viburna connection was an open wound we couldn’t staunch. To cover the debts Dyson had accumulated on our behalf and wind up Viburna Sportswear committed us to several years of corporate loss. Nothing could change that, even if the Australian authorities caught up with Dyson—which they showed no sign of doing. Uncle Larry never once said “I told you so.” But the affair saddened him more than any of us. He’d been researching Timariot & Small’s financial record for his company history and knew a profit, however small, had been turned in every year of its existence. Every one of a hundred and fifty-six years, to be precise. But the hundred and fifty-seventh was going to be different. And so were quite a few more after that. The future had lost its certainty. It was no longer a safe place to go.

Caustic though she was in her criticism, Bella refused to become embroiled in the consequences of the Viburna disaster. As Lady Paxton, I suppose she thought she should remain aloof. And Sir Keith’s money meant she could afford to. They’d sold the London house and taken to using The Hurdles as their base in England. More and more of their time, however, was spent in Biarritz, which Bella found convenient both for Pyrenean skiing and Côte d’Argent sunbathing. I saw little of them and remained unsure whether Sir Keith had been told about Rowena’s suicide attempt. If not, I didn’t propose to break the news. Especially since she seemed to have recovered from it so well.

My evidence for that assessment was admittedly limited. But it was persuasive. Early in April, I was driving back through Bristol from a visit to an engineering firm in Pontypool who claimed they could solve our saw-dust extraction problems at a stroke. I diverted on a whim to Clifton and called at the flat in Caledonia Place on no more than an off-chance that anybody would be at home. It was, after all, the early afternoon of a working day. But Rowena’s Easter vacation had just begun and she welcomed me warmly, plying me with non-herbal tea and repeated assurances that she’d put the neuroses of the autumn well behind her. I found it easy to believe. She looked, sounded and behaved like a relaxed and self-confident twenty-year-old. The baggy black outfit she wore was unflattering, the taped music she turned down for my benefit excruciating, but both were fashionable. She hadn’t cut her hair though and I hoped she never would, but it
was
tied back under some sort of bandana. Her strangeness—her ethereality—was fading. And part of me regretted its going. But I knew she’d be happier without it.

One other encouraging sign came in a telephone call which occupied Rowena for a whispered ten minutes in the hall. A boyfriend called Paul, she later admitted. “It’s nothing serious,” she added. But I couldn’t help suspecting her blushes told me more than her words.

I’d studied a framed photograph that stood on the mantelpiece while she was out of the room. It was of her and Sarah with their mother and couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. An unremarkable snapshot, casually posed. But even there, in Louise Paxton’s distant half-quizzical smile, you could read the tentative beginnings of her enigmatic end. From the shadow of which Rowena was at last emerging.

What shall I give my daughter the younger

More than will keep her from cold and hunger?

I shall not give her anything.

By June, I’d had a bellyful of Timariot & Small’s intractable problems and was in need of a break. To my surprise, Bella offered me one, in the form of an invitation to visit her and Sir Keith in Biarritz. I’d been too preoccupied to book any kind of a holiday for myself, so I accepted with well-disguised alacrity.

I went out as soon as I could arrange a fortnight’s leave and found the resort still hanging back from the tumult of high summer. Its white façades and terracotta roofs lined three miles of surf, sand and crumbling rock with dilapidated but undeniable dignity. Torquay with a Gallic swagger, if you like. And like it I did. Its empty dawn beaches. Its stinging salt winds. Its dazzling afternoons and languorous evenings. Its never obsequious air of being every man’s haven. And every woman’s too.

L’Hivernance was at the northern end of the town, where the Pointe St.-Martin and its lighthouse stood guard over the Plage Miramar. The villa had been built in the twenties for an exiled Chilean politician. Its site was sheltered but panoramic, its design plain yet boldly curvaceous, all peach-washed bays and balconies, with wide arched windows like the heavy-lidded eyes of some bosomy dowager. It was easy to imagine its first owner glaring out at the Atlantic as he’d once glared out at the Pacific, ruminating on the rights and wrongs of the latest
coup
in Santiago. Perhaps because he’d been afraid of political enemies sending agents in search of him, there was no entrance visible from the street. Just a doorless frontage commanding a prospect of the ocean, flanked by the sub-tropical foliage of the garden. A driveway, leading in by one gate and out by another, curved round to the rear, where access could be discreetly obtained. Or not, as the case might be.

The interior was altogether less discreet. High ceilings and broad staircases suggested a larger and grander residence than it actually was. Dudley Paxton had loaded its conventional comforts with assorted ethnographia collected during his African postings. His son assured me most of it was now mouldering in a museum basement in Bayonne, but plenty of ivory, beaten copper and bolt-eyed statuary remained, along with leopard-skin antimacassars and elephant-foot wastepaper bins.

What Louise had made of this gruesome clutter I couldn’t begin to conjecture. She’d evidently thought better of trying to impose her personality on the villa, however, contenting herself with converting just a couple of rooms to her vision of what it should have been. An airy pale-curtained boudoir with its own south-facing balcony. And a gallery at the back of the house devoted to a dozen or so Expressionist paintings. Not the best, of course. They’d always stayed in England. Latterly in a bank vault, Sir Keith told me. There were a couple of Ensors in the vault. And a Rouault, Louise had always believed, though it still awaited accreditation. The pictures left at L’Hivernance were strictly second division. Which was where the critical establishment had placed Oscar Bantock. So it was no surprise to find him represented by a pair of vividly tempestuous works.
The Drowning Clown
and
Face at the Window
. With an empty patch of wall between them where
Black Widow
may have been destined to hang. But about that Sir Keith was saying nothing.

Staying at the villa focused my mind on Sarah’s all too plausible theory of what had happened there in July 1990. I couldn’t ask whether it was true, of course. Bella and I had struck an unspoken bargain when I accepted her invitation. Her side of it was to avoid cross-questioning me about the Viburna fiasco. Mine was to play the part of a cultured but reticent relative whose presence reassured her new friends that her background in England wasn’t a discreditable blank. Hence, I assumed, the hectic round of dinner parties she arranged while I was with them. And hence the embargo on any expressions of curiosity by me about the first Lady Paxton—and the circumstances of her last departure from L’Hivernance.

But that didn’t stop me thinking. Or imagining. Slammed doors and raised voices echoing through the sea-lit rooms. Louise standing on the beach at sunrise, slipping a ring from her finger and hurling it towards the cream-topped breakers. Or sitting on the boudoir balcony, writing a farewell note to her absent husband.
By the time you read this, Keith
. . . I looked at him often when he didn’t realize he was being observed and wondered just what her message had been. If Sarah was right, you couldn’t blame him for destroying it. It made no difference, after all. Nothing could bring Louise back to life. Certainly not the missing jigsaw-pieces of the truth about how she’d died. Even if I found them, I could never find her. She was gone for ever. Though sometimes—when a curtain moved or a silence fell—you could believe she wasn’t quite out of reach.

My fortnight in Biarritz was half done when Rowena telephoned her father with news that clearly took him aback. She’d got engaged and wanted to come out straightaway to introduce him and Bella to her fiancé. His name was Paul, as I could have predicted. Not a student, apparently, but a risk analyst for Metropolitan Mutual, an insurance company with headquarters in Bristol. In a separate call, Sarah explained that Rowena had met him through her. She and Paul Bryant had been a year apart at King’s College, Cambridge. He’d looked her up on realizing they were both living in Bristol and had instantly fallen for Rowena. As she had for him. Sarah reckoned Sir Keith couldn’t fail to like him.