Borrowed Time (2 page)

“You . . . come here often?” I asked, wincing at the inanity of the question.

“Not as often as I’d like. But that may be about to change. What about you?”

“Never before. I live . . . a long way away.” Thinking of Brussels, I added: “But that may be about to change as well.”

“Really?”

I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“You’re walking Offa’s Dyke?”

“Part of it.”

I stepped across to the cairn, lowered my rucksack to the ground and sat down on a boulder beside her. She looked round at me, her smile fading into the gentlest of appraising frowns. Closer to, my earlier guess was confirmed. She was older than me, in her mid-forties perhaps, but younger in spirit. There was something graceful but also skittish about her, something elegantly unpredictable. Hers was the face you’d notice across a crowded room, the voice you’d strain to hear, the quiet air of mystery you’d long to breathe.

I glanced at her left hand where it rested on her knee. There was no ring on the fourth finger. But there was a pale band of untanned flesh where one had recently been. Some flicker of her blue-grey eyes suggested she knew I’d noticed. But she didn’t withdraw her hand. I coughed to cover my embarrassment and said: “Yours is the Mercedes parked in the lane?”

“Yes.” She laughed. “Pathetic, isn’t it? That it’s so obvious, I mean.”

“It was the only car there. I—”

“Can we really change anything, do you think?” Her tone had become suddenly urgent. Her hand tightened on her knee. “Can any of us ever stop being what we are and become something else?”

“Yes,” I said, taken aback by her intensity. “Surely. If we want to.”

“You think it’s as simple as that?”

“I think it is simple, yes. But not easy. I think the real problem is . . .” I hesitated. We were talking about each other’s life without knowing what the other’s life comprised. It made no sense. And yet it seemed to.

“What is the real problem?”

“
Knowing
what we want.”

“Deciding, you mean?”

“If you like.”

“But once we have decided?”

“Then . . . it’s still not easy. But at least it’s possible.”

“You believe that?”

She was staring at me intently, as if what I said—as if my exact choice of words—might make a real difference. For a fleeting instant, I was convinced she was asking me to make up her mind for her. What about I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. The freedom to choose a future mattered more than our separate pasts. That freedom was what she was silently urging me to assert. So I did—for my sake as well as hers. “I believe it,” I said, with quiet emphasis.

She nodded in satisfaction and glanced down at her wristwatch, then back up at me. “Where are you heading tonight?”

“Gladestry.”

“Then I should let you get on.”

“I’m in no hurry. But perhaps you . . .”

She chuckled faintly. “I’m in no hurry either. But, still, I must be going.” She rose to her feet, leaning forward as she did so. I caught a lacy glimpse of bra—a cool hint of flesh—between the buttons of her blouse. Then I stood up as well and realized how much shorter she was than I’d thought, how much slighter and more vulnerable than her eyes and voice had implied. “Yes, I really must be going,” she murmured, scanning the horizon. She turned to me with a broad smile. “Can I offer you a lift to Gladestry? Or would that be cheating? I know what sticklers you hikers are.”

I was tempted to contradict her, to say no, on the contrary, a lift to Gladestry—perhaps a drink in the pub there—would be delightful. But somehow I knew she didn’t want me to say that. The true value of a stranger lies in his never becoming anything else. “I’ll walk it, thanks.”

“Goodbye, then,” she said. “And good luck.”

I grinned, thinking she was casting humorous doubt on my hiking abilities. “You reckon I’ll need it to reach Chepstow?”

“I’m sorry.” She blushed slightly and shook her head. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Never mind. I probably will. Good luck to you too.”

“Thank you.”

I found myself shaking her hand. One fleeting touch of palms and fingers. Then the same dazzling smile she’d greeted me with. Before she turned and walked away down the broad grass track towards Kington. I watched her for a minute or so, then, fearing she’d look back to find me staring dolefully after her, I too turned, heaved on my rucksack and started on my way. I glanced at my watch as I did so and noted the time. It was just after a quarter to eight. She would still have been in sight then. The future would still have been retrievable. But by the time I next stopped to look back, near the summit of the ridge, she’d vanished. And the future had taken its invisible shape.

I reached Gladestry at dusk. A cluster of stone cottages by a drought-sapped brook, complete with church, school, post office and pub. I lingered long enough in the bar of the Royal Oak to eat a hearty supper. Then I went up to my feather-mattressed bed and slept the log-like sleep of the long distance walker. Early next morning, I set out for Hay-on-Wye.

That day and the four following settled into a pattern of prompt starts, midday lay-ups to dodge the heat and evening arrivals at comfortable inns. The landscape varied from the bleak grandeur of the Black Mountains to the soothing beauties of the Wye Valley. On a conscious level, I thought of little beyond mileages and map references. But subconsciously, as I realized at the end of the walk, my mind was hardening itself against a return to the life I’d led in Brussels. I’d have to go back, of course, if only to resign, but I could never go back in the true sense. Somewhere behind me on the path, a bridge had been decisively burnt. If I’d had to specify where, I’d have opted for Hergest Ridge. The woman I’d met that first evening didn’t fade from my memory. On the contrary, my encounter with her seemed to grow in significance as I went on. Not because of the words we’d exchanged so much as the suspicion that somehow, by letting her go so easily, I’d let some opportunity—sexual, psychological, altogether magical—slip from my grasp. I didn’t know her name or where she lived. I knew nothing about her at all. And now I never would. It was a melancholic reflection, heightened by solitude. Yet it steeled my resolve. Whatever happened, I wasn’t going back to the life I’d left behind.

During those six days on Offa’s Dyke, I was effectively sealed off from the outside world. I read no newspapers, watched no television, heard no radio. My conversation was limited to trifling exchanges with publicans, shopkeepers and fellow hikers. I suppose it was a little like retreating to a monastery for a week. As a source of refreshment, it equalled the most ravishing scenery. Being out of touch came to seem a deliciously pleasant condition. I didn’t want it to end. But it had to, of course. Every journey has a destination. And mine was the real world.

At sunset on Sunday the twenty-second of July, I stood on Sedbury Cliffs, at the very end of the Dyke, gazing across the Severn Estuary at the motorway suspension bridge, thick with traffic speeding back to London and the cares of the working week. I remember thinking at the time how pointless their haste was. With the perspective of six days walking behind me, I saw their ant-like bustle as stupendously futile. I felt momentarily superior to them all, detached from their petty struggles and enlightened beyond their power to imagine. Which was ironic, since most of them probably already knew. Had known, anyway, even if they’d subsequently forgotten. What I’d not yet found out. But very soon would.

I stayed overnight in Chepstow, at the George Hotel, and left late the following morning after treating myself to a long lie-in and a leisurely breakfast. The rail route back to Petersfield was time-consumingly indirect, though I can’t say I much minded, dozing in sun-warmed carriages as various trains rattled me around South Wales and Wessex. With my mind made up, I was no longer in any hurry.

When my father retired from Timariot & Small, he and my mother sold the house in Petersfield where I’d been born and bought a bungalow in the nearby village of Steep. It was where I was heading that day: a thirties construction of tile and brick set on sloping ground near the foot of Stoner Hill, easily mistakable for an ancient cottage thanks to swags of wisteria, patches of lichen and a riotously fertile flower garden. Its name—Greenhayes—
was
ancient, belonging to a demolished dwelling whose stones had survived in a rockery. Steep’s famous dead poet, Edward Thomas, is supposed to have mentioned Greenhayes in one of his prose pieces, though I’ve never bothered to track it down, so I don’t know what he made of the original. As for its successor, it was looking at its best that late summer’s afternoon when I climbed from the taxi. But I never forgot the mists that rolled down from the combes in winter and stayed for days, shortening, I maintained, my father’s life. Greenhayes’ welcome was for me always double-edged.

My mother, by contrast, loved the house without reservation. She’d filled it to the brim with the hotchpotch furnishings and bric-à-brac of the family home and had become an ever more demonic gardener as the years of her widowhood passed. She’d also acquired a yappy little cross-bred terrier called Brillo (on account of his strong resemblance to a wire scouring pad) who rendered a doorbell redundant. As usual, he alerted her to my arrival before I’d done much more than lift the latch on the front gate.

“Who’s that, Brillo?” she called from out of sight as he growled at the scent of alien soil on my boots. Then she emerged round the side of the house, rubber-gloved and panting from some vigorous bout of weeding. She was in her gardening outfit of faded frock and broken-down shoes, bare-headed despite my gift to her two birthdays back of just the wide-brimmed straw hat she’d claimed to want. It had lain unused in a supermarket carrier bag on top of her wardrobe ever since and I’d stopped asking why she never wore it. “Oh, it’s Robin. How lovely to have you back, dear,” she said, advancing to give me an elderflower-perfumed hug. “Nice walk?”

“Fine, thanks.” And so eighty miles of Offa’s Dyke were somehow written off as no more than a stroll down the lane.

“You’re just in time for tea.”

“I thought I might be.”

“And in need of it, by the look of you.” Stepping back to examine me, she frowned and said: “You’re getting too thin, dear. Really you are.” Actually, it was she not me who was growing thinner with the years. But any of her offspring who were less than two stones overweight were anorexic in her eyes. “We’ll have to feed him up, won’t we, Brillo?” At which Brillo barked in what she took for agreement but I knew to be an automatic reaction to any mention of food.

I followed her into the house, scarcely listening as she described the difficulties she was having with her runner beans on account of the heat. I wondered when—if I said nothing—she’d ask what decision I’d made about joining the company. Around the time she offered me a third cup of tea and a second slice of cake—or earlier?

I dumped my rucksack at the foot of the stairs, pulled off my boots and ambled into the sitting-room. On the mantelpiece, propped between framed photographs of two of Adrian’s children, was my postcard from Kington. But of the other two I’d sent—one from Hay-on-Wye, one from Monmouth—there was no sign.

“Only one card so far, Mother?” I shouted into the kitchen, where crockery was rattling and the kettle already sizzling.

“What, dear?”

“There are two more cards on their way.”

“Cards?” She bustled in with a cloth for the coffee table and pulled up beside me. “It’s there, look. Staring at you.” She nodded at the fuzzy shot of Kington Market Hall.

“Yes, but—”

“Which reminds me. Simon was here for lunch yesterday. He was peering at that card. Said what a coincidence it was.”

“Coincidence?”

“Said I was to ask you whether you’d seen anything. Police. Film crews. Journalists. I suppose the place was crawling with them.”

“Sorry?”

“Kington. Where you sent the card from.” She snatched it up and squinted at the postmark. “The eighteenth. When was that?”

“Wednesday. But it was Tuesday when I—”

“Wednesday! There you are. That’s when it was on the news.”

“What was?”

“The two people who were murdered. You must have heard about it. They’ve arrested somebody now, according to the papers. Haven’t you seen today’s?”

“No. Nor any—”

The kettle began to boil. “It’s there, by my chair.” Pointing vaguely at the crumpled wreckage of her
Daily Telegraph
, she hurried out. Puzzled, I grabbed up the paper and riffled my way to the front page. A single-column headline towards the bottom caught my eye.
KINGTON MURDERS
:
MAN HELD
.
Police investigating last week’s brutal double murder in Kington yesterday confirmed that a man is helping them with their enquiries. They did not indicate whether charges were imminent, but the shocked population of the quiet Welsh borders market town will be hoping this brings an early end to the hunt for whoever was responsible for strangling internationally renowned artist Oscar Bantock and raping and strangling a woman since identified as Louise Paxton, wife of royal physician and society doctor Sir Keith Paxton, at Mr. Bantock’s home in Kington on the evening of July 17. The man, who has not been named, was arrested in London yesterday afternoon and taken to Worcester Police Headquarters for questioning. A spokesman for West Mercia C.I.D. said it was unlikely that—

The evening of July 17. I’d left Kington at seven o’clock and walked along Hergest Ridge to Gladestry. And on the way I’d met— There was no reason why there should be any connection. There were lots of reasons, in fact, why there shouldn’t be. But my hands were still shaking as I pulled the previous day’s paper from the canterbury. It was Sunday’s and therefore likely to have a feature on the case. I knelt over it on the floor and began turning the pages. Then I stopped. There was her face, gazing out of the black-and-white photograph as she’d once gazed past me at the sunset-gilded horizon. And the caption beneath the photograph read:
Rape and murder victim Louise Paxton
. I’d let her walk away from me that evening—to her death.