Precious Time (24 page)

‘No point in considering it. It’s too late.’

‘Says who?’

‘Old Ma Wilson for one.’

Jonah mentally cursed Larry Wilson, remembering now that he was Jase’s form teacher. What hope was there for this disillusioned sixteen-year-old boy if the person who was supposed to be offering support and guidance was consigning him to the burgeoning number of disenfranchised young people the length and breadth of the country?

A shrill bell announced that whoever would be attending to Jase was ready to see them. Looking at his watch and seeing that they had only been waiting a short while, Jonah was glad that Dick High’s policy was to use the local surgery in Deaconsbridge rather than the hospital.

Expecting a nurse to stitch up Jase’s finger, Jonah was surprised to be greeted by a slightly built man, who introduced himself as Dr Singh.

‘I’ve heard of educational cutbacks,’ the doctor said, unravelling the bandage from Jase’s hand and focusing his attention on his patient, ‘but removal of a pupil’s finger is going a step too far in my opinion. Ah, there we are, and what an impressive attempt has been made to slice through this fine finger. And what a lot of blood you have to spare.’

It was at this point that Jase’s eyes rolled back and he fainted.

Jonah caught the boy before he slid off the chair and helped the doctor resettle him. Then, at his instruction, he went over to the small sink in the corner of the room and filled a paper cup with cold water.

Conscious again, Jase took the cup from Jonah, but without meeting his eyes. Jonah knew that he was embarrassed by what had happened and would have liked to reassure him that nobody would hear of it from his lips, but the doctor was gesturing for him to get out of the way.

‘Now, Mr O’Dowd, to avoid a repeat performance, I suggest you avert your eyes while I tidy you up.’ While Jase studied a poster that advocated a healthy diet of fruit and vegetables, the doctor completed his task with speed and efficiency. His small-talk never once dried up as the needle dipped and rose, and a layer of gauze and a finger bandage were expertly applied. ‘I see from your notes that you’re up to date with your injections, which means you’ll be spared the ignominy of a tetanus jab, so it’s not all bad today, is it? Now, tell me, is school as awful as I remember it? Are your teachers, present company excluded, of course, as sadistic as they were in my day?’

Jase shrugged. ‘Some of them are, but Mr Liberty’s okay.’

Standing at the sink now and ripping off his surgical gloves, the doctor looked at Jonah. ‘Either the young man is terrified of you, or you have a loyal and devoted fan.’

‘He’s terrified of me,’ Jonah smiled. ‘Terrified I’ll do a better job of chopping off a finger next time.’

Coming back to his desk, the doctor paused. ‘Forgive my

inquisitiveness, but are you by any chance related to Mr Gabriel Liberty of Mermaid House?’

Surprised at the question, Jonah confirmed that Gabriel Liberty was his father.

The doctor sat down and rearranged his sleeves. ‘Well, how extraordinary. And isn’t life strange? Suddenly the world is full of Libertys. They are crawling out of the woodwork, so to speak.’ He laughed at his own joke.

‘I’m sorry, Dr Singh, I’m not with you.’

‘Forgive me again, please. But in one week I meet first your father, then your sister, and now you.’

‘You’ve met my sister?’ It was news to Jonah that Damson was in Deaconsbridge. What had brought her here? Then he remembered Caspar. Of course, the two of them were planning a pincer move on their father.

‘Oh, yes,’ Dr Singh said. ‘I met her yesterday, your nephew too.

They’re staying with your father, didn’t you know?’

Jonah gaped. Nephew? Good grief, Damson had had a baby!

There was no point in going back to Dick High - school had finished twenty minutes ago. Jonah dropped off Jase at home, and headed back towards town and the supermarket, as he usually did at this time on a Friday afternoon. Next he went to Church Cottage where he left his own shopping, then drove on to Mermaid House, still unable to get his head round the idea that Damson was not only staying with their father but was a parent herself. He hadn’t seen her since Val’s funeral, but he couldn’t imagine she had changed in the interim to the extent that she was now a doting mother.

The light was fading when Clara remembered to bring in the washing. It was dry enough to be ironed, so she folded it neatly into the pitiful excuse for a laundry basket, thinking that if she wasn’t too tired, she might tackle it later that evening. She was just adding the last of Mr Liberty’s threadbare underpants to the pile when she heard an almighty racket. The throaty rumble grew louder and nearer. Someone’s car was in need of a new exhaust.

She went inside the house to find Mr Liberty, to warn him that he had a caller. It was probably Dr Singh again. And if it was, she needed to know if Mr Liberty wanted her to keep her head down, or to be a visible presence in the guise of helpful daughter.

Interrupting a rumbustious game of Snap in the library, she told Mr Liberty he had a visitor. Like her, he assumed it was Dr Singh.

Instantly every inch of him was bristling, ready for battle. She followed a few steps behind him, but stayed out of sight when they reached the kitchen. Peeping round the doorframe, she saw that they had leaped to the wrong conclusion. Standing beside the table, and with several plastic bags at his feet, was a tall man in a leather jacket.

His collar-length hair was thick and wavy and, as he stared round the kitchen in obvious amazement, his profile and stance reminded Clara of a Renaissance painting.

‘Good God, Jonah, what are you doing here?’

He turned. ‘It’s Friday, Dad, the day I always go shopping for you, and the day we agreed I’d come and see you. What’s been going on here? It looks fantastic. Has Damson done this?’ He plonked the bags on the table, carefully avoiding the vase of flowers.

Mr Liberty looked incredulous. ‘Damson?’ He snorted. ‘Damson be damned!’

Having sized up the situation, that this was the youngest of her employer’s uncaring darlings made flesh, Clara decided to leave them to it. She turned to join Ned, who was still in the library, but a commanding voice bellowed, ‘Oh, no you don’t, Miss Costello. You come right back here and take the credit for all your hard work.’

She stepped into the kitchen. ‘I’m in no need of credit,’ she said briskly, making her tone hostile. Irrationally she wanted this casual looking Renaissance man to know that she disapproved of him. That she despised him for being too weak to take his father by the frayed scruff of his neck and whip him into shape.

‘Miss Costello and I have what one might call an arrangement, Jonah,’ Mr Liberty explained, a wry smile twisting his mouth. ‘For an exorbitant sum of money, she is staying with me for the week to do my bidding.’

‘What your father is trying to say, in his clumsy way,’ Clara said sharply, ‘is that I’m here to tidy up Mermaid House.’ She gave them both an accusing look. ‘And since you’re clearly about to settle in for a family bonding session, Ned and I will be off.’

Mr Liberty guffawed loudly.

But his son continued to stare, confused. ‘Could someone please explain exactly what’s going on here?’ he said. ‘And where’s Damson?’

‘Hell’s bells, what makes you think she’s here?’

‘I was told she was. Apparently I have a nephew, who I’m curious to meet.’

Clara exchanged glances with Mr Liberty. She said, ‘Have you been talking to a certain Dr Singh?’

‘Yes, this afternoon. I was at the surgery with a pupil and he told me—’

‘That your sister was staying here,’ interrupted Mr Liberty. He smiled triumphantly at Clara. ‘Didn’t I say we’d taken him in? Hah!

We reeled in the poor stupid fool good and proper! What a team we make.’

But Clara wasn’t so triumphant. ‘Hang on a moment. Before you start ringing the bells of victory, hadn’t you better check with your son that he didn’t dispute the matter and blow your little scam out of the water?’

Liberty Junior held up his hands. ‘Whatever scam it is that you’ve got going here, I’m not guilty of trying to spoil it.’

His father needed convincing. ‘You sure about that?’ His tone implied he might reach for a shotgun if the answer wasn’t to his liking.

‘I played my part beautifully, dumb schmuck, right to the end.’

‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ muttered Clara.

Even by her standards the remark sounded more caustic than she had intended, and Liberty Junior frowned at her. He started to unpack the bags of shopping, and said to his father, ‘I’m sorry to run the risk of repeating myself and appearing doubly foolish, but would it be too much to ask you why you’ve gone to the trouble of duping Dr Singh into believing that you have a daughter staying with you?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious.’

‘Please, indulge me.’

A short while later, the shopping put away, a pot of tea made and explanations given, Jonah watched his father leave the kitchen to fetch Miss Costello’s son. Standing in front of the Aga, and running his fingers over the shiny surfaces, he was overwhelmed by the shame this acerbic, one-woman dream-team had made him feel. He wanted to thank her for what she had done, and for what she was prepared to go on doing for the rest of the week, but he was mortified that a stranger had walked into his father’s life and achieved what no member of his own family could do. Or, more precisely, what none of them had even tried to do.

Behind him he could hear her opening a packet of biscuits he had brought. He turned and watched her tip the chocolate chip cookies on to a plate to form a perfect spiral. He wondered if things always turned out so well for her. ‘This must seem strange to you,’ he said.

‘From the outside looking in, it must appear as though we, his children, don’t care.’ He hoped she wouldn’t judge him too harshly.

She gazed at him severely. Astutely. Assessingly. ‘You probably don’t care. Not enough, anyway.’

‘That’s not fair,’ he said, defensively.

She crumpled the empty packet into a tight ball and put it into the swing bin. ‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll be generous and say you’ve simply got used to the chaos and squalor in which your father has been living and turned a blind eye to it.’

‘Are you always so blunt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then that’s probably what my father likes about you. Few people ever gain his approval. And just because one is related to a person, it doesn’t mean you understand each other. Or even get on.’

She surveyed him steadily, her eyes cool and measuring. Unnerved, he turned away.

As unlikely as it was, Jonah had never seen his father talk to a child before, and intrigued, he watched him with Miss Costello’s young son, Ned. He was a sweet-faced boy, whose expression ran the gamut from solemn to bright as if at the flick of a switch. He was immensely confident, not at all shy, and seemed extraordinarily comfortable with Gabriel, whom Jonah would have expected to terrify the child senseless. He had a shiny cap of dark brown hair, the same colour as his mother’s, intensely dark, alert eyes and an engaging smile. Jonah had no way of knowing if his mother had passed this on to him, too, because he had yet to see her smile. But from the disapproving glances she flung at him, Jonah was getting the message that she despised him for not doing more to help his father.

Though Jonah was more used to teenagers, he had to admit that, for four years old, Ned was remarkably well behaved, never once spilling his drink or dropping crumbs. The nearest he got to making a faux pas was when he had told his mother with his mouth full that Mr Liberty was going to teach him to play draughts tomorrow morning. ‘He says I can be white and go first. He’s shown me the board, it’s very old.’

‘Mr Liberty won’t teach you anything if you spray everyone with biscuit crumbs, Ned,’ his mother reprimanded him gently. ‘Finish what’s in your mouth, then talk to us.’

His lips tightly sealed now, he was chewing extra fast, his miniature eyebrows rising up and down. He swallowed hard and continued excitedly, ‘But he says I might not be clever enough to play draughts because I’m so young. Do you think I’m clever enough to play, Mummy?’ Suddenly he looked grave, his eyes wide.

‘You’re as clever as you need to be, Ned,’ she said reassuringly.

‘No more, no less.’

‘Another of your inscrutable replies, Miss Costello. Bravo. Do you lie awake in bed at night practising them when you can’t get to sleep?’

‘Not at all, Mr Liberty. I’m naturally inscrutable. Moreover, I never have trouble sleeping. I put it down to having a guilt-free mind.’

As he got up to add more hot water to the teapot, Jonah felt strangely isolated. There was a level of light-hearted repartee going on between this woman and his father that seemed designed to exclude him. It was as if he had walked in on the middle of something - which, in a way, he had. Oddly, he felt as though he was playing gooseberry to their extraordinary double act of sparky lovebirds.

He stared out across the darkening courtyard to where the yellow skip stood and, beyond, to where Miss Costello’s campervan was parked. Lifting the kettle, he poured freshly boiled water into the pot and wondered what was really going on here. Who was this

confident, efficient woman who could sit so at ease at his father’s table playing verbal pit-pat with him? And why did their obvious rapport rankle so much with him? Why did it make him feel even more of a failure than he usually did at Mermaid House? It was the same every visit, as if the bricks and mortar contained a magnetic force that made him revert to the anxious boy he had once been.

Hearing his father laughing behind him - and not the usual scornful barked-out guffaw he was more used to but full-throated good cheer - an ugly thought occurred to him: he was jealous.

Jealous that this stranger with her sharp no-nonsense way of talking, who had probably never suffered a moment’s doubt, could make his father happy and he could not.

Suddenly he felt a flash of searing pain. He hadn’t been

concentrating on what he was doing and had poured boiling water over his hand. Stifling a yelp of pain, he moved to the sink and shoved his fist under the cold tap.