Precious Time (12 page)

He had offered Miss Costello and her son the field because he had been genuinely concerned about their welfare. What if she was too tired to find a decent campsite and had dropped anchor in any old place and attracted further trouble? He might be considered in some quarters to be a bad-tempered old devil, but he was not the kind of man who would let a young woman go without somewhere safe to stay.

Smiling to himself, he thought of all the names he had been called that day.

A miserable old bugger.

An old skinflint.

A crazy old fool.

A cantankerous and mean-spirited man.

Not bad for starters.

He switched off the light and wondered what he might be in for tomorrow morning. Then he remembered that his feisty little guest had said they would be gone by first thing in the morning - ‘It will be as though we’d never been here.’

He turned the light back on, reached for his clock and set the alarm for six thirty. Just in case he overslept. It would be a shame to miss out on a parting shot.

That night, unable to sleep, Archie stared at the ceiling above his bed.

The curtains at the window were thin and unlined, and from the street-lamp outside, a glow of orange light shone through the cheap fabric. It was sufficient, though, for his eyes to follow the cracks in the plasterwork as if he was tracing a route on a map. That’s me, he thought tiredly, I’m looking for the way out. Or, at least, some kind of direction.

He turned on to his side, hoping sleep would come if he lay in a different position. It didn’t. Now he could hear a gang of youngsters coming back from the pub: they were kicking a tin can between them and their carefree banter jarred on his troubled thoughts.

He had received a letter from Stella’s solicitor. The grey paper with the overly pedantic language had told him what he already knew, that more than two decades of marriage was to be reduced to Mrs S.

Merryman versus Mr A. F. Merryman. The tone of the letter

suggested that the matter could be brought to a swift conclusion as Mrs Merryman was happy to leave her husband’s business concerns out of the negotiations, but the house was another matter. As Mr Merryman no doubt understood, Mrs Merryman had been a party to the original purchase of the property as well as a regular contributor to the mortgage payments, so she was entitled to her share of the matrimonial home.

Archie had no argument with that. It was all true. And as much as he wanted to avoid the upheaval of selling the house, he knew he had no choice: he had no other means to pay off Stella.

Still restless, he rolled over on to his left side and tried to relax. But his mind was racing through the years he and Stella had shared. The good times, and the bad times.

It mattered to him that the past was kept intact, just as it mattered to him that, for now, there were still traces of Stella’s presence in the house, painful as they were. Like the brush she had left on the dressing-table with hairs caught among the bristles; the clothes she hadn’t taken with her; the magazine on the kitchen worktop, still open at a page showing some film star with the new love of his life.

Ten minutes later, as sleep continued to elude him, he let out a sigh of defeat.

Insomnia was a new phenomenon to him, and other than getting out of bed and making himself a brew, he didn’t know what to do.

He slipped on his towelling dressing-gown and went downstairs quietly, not wanting to disturb his mother. She had taken to waking during the night and thinking it was time to get up. She had done it last night: at three o’clock, he had heard a noise coming from the kitchen, and had shot downstairs ready to confront whoever had broken in. What he found was Bessie setting out the breakfast things: plates and bowls, packets of cereal and slices of bread ready to go under the grill. His appearance in the kitchen had startled her so much that she hadn’t been able to get a coherent word out. It had taken him some time to convince her that it was still the middle of the night. As he led her back to her room, she had launched into a long, heartfelt and impassioned speech, not one word of which could he understand. He had sat on the edge of her bed, coaxing the words of lucidity from her, soothing her frustration, until gradually he had realised that she felt guilty Stella had left him and was trying to help by seeing to things around the house. ‘But, Mum,’ he had said, ‘I can manage perfectly well. I don’t want you to worry about anything like that.’ He had wanted to add that Stella had never made the breakfast anyway, that it had always been his job.

He had spent an hour reassuring his mother that he could cope, before he got back to his own bed. But by five o’clock she was up again, running herself a bath.

When it came to Bessie having a bath, the golden rule was that somebody had to be on hand to help her … just in case.

Just in case she slipped.

Just in case she fell asleep.

Just in case she scalded herself.

But if Archie’s golden rule was that her bath time had to be supervised, her own golden rule was that he was not allowed in the bathroom while she was in a state of undress. With the door ajar, he could sit outside on the landing, keeping up a steady flow of conversation about the shop, Samson, Comrade Norm, and the customers that came in to haggle over a stainless-steel egg-cup.

Now, in the harsh glare of the overhead strip-light, he stood in the kitchen, listening to the kettle coming to the boil. The speech therapist at the hospital had said that Bessie was improving, and he hung on to this glimmer of hope, wanting to believe that his mother would make a good, if not full, recovery.

He poured boiling water into the badly stained teapot, thinking how unfair it was that Bessie should now be cheated of enjoying life.

She had worked hard down the years, had accepted and overcome every challenge thrown at her. Most had been a direct result of Archie’s father having walked out on her when she was pregnant, leaving her to cope with the daily grind of making ends meet while struggling to bring up a child on her own. If he had stayed away for ever, it would have been better all round, but he took advantage of Bessie’s generous nature and returned to sponge off her when the mood took him. It was always a relief when he grew bored of regular meals and her willingness to forgive, and left them alone.

Archie sat at the kitchen table to drink his tea, and tried to remember what Dr Singh had said about there being swings and roundabouts to face. He’d heard a snippet on the radio, too.

Something about keeping the stroke patient as active as possible, not just physically, but mentally. Apparently the precariously balanced mental capacities had to be exercised and shored up. Boredom was to be avoided at all costs. Loneliness too.

It occurred to him that maybe he could get Bessie into the shop for a few hours a day. She might like that. As kind as the neighbours had been, Bessie hadn’t made a lot of effort to get to know them and, anyway, it wasn’t easy for her to talk to strangers now. Her speech embarrassed her, and she knew that it embarrassed them.

No, the solution was to get her involved in the shop. Give her small tasks to do, such as polishing some of the small pieces of furniture. And those horse brasses from the house-clearance job he’d done the other day would come up a treat with a bit of tender loving care. As would the box of commemorative plates, which were covered in dust and grime. If he planned it carefully, there would be any number of little jobs he could find for her to do. But he would have to be subtle about it: his mother was no fool. He would have to make out that she was doing him a big favour, that he needed her help. There again, one look at Samson’s huge clumsy hands would tell her that the big guy wasn’t made for cleaning delicate china.

He swallowed the last of his tea, rinsed the mug under the tap, put it ready for his breakfast in the morning, and went back upstairs to bed. As he pulled the duvet over him, life didn’t seem so bad after all.

He had always believed that for every problem there was a

solution. It was just a matter of reasoning it through.

Drifting off to sleep, he felt better than he had in days. Maybe things would start to pick up now.

Clara woke to the sound of rain pattering on the roof of the camper van. Stretching beneath the duvet, she opened her eyes and looked at her watch. It was eight o’clock. Goodness, as late as that. Still, there was no hurry, and as Ned was sleeping soundly, she could savour a rare lie-in. She closed her eyes, listened to the rain, and hoped it wouldn’t develop into a full-blown downpour. Sadly, it seemed that the waitress’s prediction at the cafe yesterday had been less than accurate: the rain had come early. They had been lucky so far on their trip: this was their first wet day. ‘Captain’s Log, Star Date 2.9

March,’ she thought, with a smile, ‘Day Five - rain.’

She should be keeping a diary. In years to come, when she was slogging away on the treadmill, it would make interesting reading. It would be nice for Ned, too. A keepsake to prove that they had been brave enough to flout convention.

Well, it wasn’t too late to start. She would buy a book in Deaconsbridge and encourage Ned to play his part too. He could write his own entries, draw a few pictures, and maybe stick in postcards of where they had stayed. Another oversight. Postcards.

She was supposed to be keeping her friends and parents up to date with their travels, but somehow she just hadn’t got round to it. Nor had she phoned Louise. But that had been a conscious effort on her part to distance herself from home: to get the most out of this trip, she had wanted to separate herself from what she had left behind.

So, buying some postcards was another job for today, she thought, her orderly mind now putting together a list of things she had to do.

They needed a supermarket, and a launderette would be useful. She didn’t mind hand-washing a few pairs of pants and socks, but larger items were a drag. After yesterday, and their several changes of clothes, she could do with throwing everything into a machine, while she and Ned had a nose round the shops in the market square.

Maybe they could have another meal at the Mermaid cafe and decide what they were going to do next. If it looked like the rain was going to settle in for the day, they could perhaps drive across to Castleton and visit the underground caverns, some of which, according to the guide books, were open all year.

She stretched again, and sighed contentedly. How pleasant it was to know that one’s only concern for the day was to find a washing machine and something to eat, with a little amusement thrown in. It was a far cry from worrying about meeting the latest production-line quotas. She didn’t miss any of it - except, perhaps the silly e-mails from the boys - Guy and David - and their antics. Guy had lifted the tension on many a head-banging-against-the-wall day. He would burst through her door like a member of the SAS, rolling across the floor and jumping up to declare that he had her covered - usually with a staple gun. The first time he had done it she had nearly fallen off her chair in alarm. It was also the first time she had met him. ‘Hi,’

he’d said, slipping the staple gun into the waistband of his suit trousers. ‘I’ve been sent to introduce myself, seeing as you’re new to the department. How’re you getting on, Miss Clarabelle Costello?’

‘Fine until you burst in and tried to staple me to the spot. Could you try knocking in future? You never know what I might be doing in here. And my name’s Clara, not a ding-dong to be heard.’ He never did knock, but she soon got used to his entrance - and the pet name.

She smiled at the memory. It was the camaraderie she missed, not the job. Already she was discovering that, away from home, her sense of perspective was undergoing further change. Though she and Ned had had holidays before, this one was different. There was no rush to their days. They did not have to cram everything into a week.

Even yesterday’s horrible incident hadn’t dampened her enthusiasm.

She wasn’t nervous by nature, but last night she had been

grateful to Mr Liberty for allowing them to stay here - for her own peace of mind and Ned’s. But she need not have worried about him: Ned had tucked into his supper with relish and gone to bed happily.

The campsites they had stayed at previously had never been free of noise - of caravan doors clicking shut, toilets flushing, radios and televisions playing. Here, in the courtyard at Mermaid House, it had been the quietest night she had known. Other than a faint rustling of leaves on trees and the occasional distant animal noise, it had been as silent as the grave.

Which probably accounted for the good night’s sleep she’d had.

Overcome with a general sense of well-being, she thought that perhaps when she and Ned went into Deaconsbridge that morning they would buy a small present for Mr Liberty to thank him. She also wanted to try to make amends for being so rude to him - fear and tiredness must have got the better of her. She wondered if he was a one-off, or whether there were more like him inside Mermaid House.

A whole family of eccentric Libertys slowly driving each other round the bend. If so, it was straight out of Cold Comfort Farm.

Putting aside its cranky, eccentric owner, the house was a veritable piece of whimsy. She had never seen anything like it before. She hoped there would be a chance, if she made peace with Mr Liberty, to have a look round. Maybe she could get Ned to ask him. It would sound less intrusive coming from a four-year-old boy.

Thinking of Ned, Clara rolled onto her side and looked towards his sleeping compartment. There was still no sign of movement from behind the curtain. He must have been shattered last night to sleep so long. It’s all the fresh air, she thought. That would meet with her mother’s approval. As babies, she and Michael had been put outside in their prams in all weathers. ‘Toughened you up nicely,’ said her mother, who had tried to do the same with Ned. ‘Just airing him,’ she claimed, when Clara arrived to collect him after work and found him on the patio with a strong wind buffeting the pram.