Precious Time (25 page)

‘Here, let me see.’ It was the efficient Miss Costello.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, but he allowed her to inspect his hand.

‘Keep it under the tap while I go and fetch my first-aid kit,’ she instructed.

While he watched her through the window as she hurried across the courtyard, his father joined him at the sink. ‘You wouldn’t be attention-seeking, would you, boy?’

And you wouldn’t be making a fool of yourself over a pretty young girl, would you? Jonah wanted to retort.

Within minutes she was back and showing him a tube of cream.

Slightly out of breath, she said, ‘It will sting at first, but then it will feel quite cool.’

‘What is it?’ he asked, turning off the tap and reaching for a clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket to dry his hand.

‘A homeopathic remedy for burns. Works every time. Now

remember, I said it would sting at first—’ ‘Ouch!’ He pulled away his hand.

‘You’re worse than a baby. Honestly, men, you’re all the same.

Merest hint of pain and you go pathetically weak-kneed.’

‘Whereas you brave women lap it up and ask for more.’

‘No, we simply grin and bear it.’

He forced a grin and held out his hand again. ‘Go on, then. I’ll bear the agony just to prove to you that I’m no coward. I’m sure inflicting pain on a mere man will give you great pleasure.’

She smiled unexpectedly and for the first time he registered that there was more to her than the prim, judgemental woman he had thought her. ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ she said, ‘but I get my kicks in a much more satisfying way. There, that’s it. And not one tear shed.

Give yourself a pat on the back.’

‘I would if I had any feeling left in my hand.’

‘You have two hands, Mr Liberty Junior, or is the glass always half empty for you rather than half full?’

Before he could answer, she was screwing the top back on the tube of cream and had turned to his father. ‘I think Ned and I have earned ourselves the rest of the day off. Eight o’clock suit you tomorrow morning? I want to finish sorting out the laundry room. Then I’ll make a start on getting the dining room into apple-pie order.’

He grunted. ‘Eight o’clock? Working part-time already, are you?

Thought you were too good to be true.’

‘And you’re too full of sweetness. Come on, Ned. Time for some supper and our own more congenial company.’

Suppressing a yawn, Ned climbed down from his chair. ‘Goodnight, Mr Liberty,’ he said. ‘You will teach me that game in the

morning, won’t you?’

‘A promise is a promise, young man. Now be off with you before you fall asleep and I have to carry you across the courtyard to your bed.’

Both Jonah and his father saw them to the back door and watched them go. When a soft light glowed from the windows of the camper van, giving it a warm, cosy look, Gabriel shut the door, led the way back into the kitchen and said, ‘Right, then, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

Remembering why he was here, Jonah suddenly felt every inch the coward that only moments ago he had denied.

It didn’t matter how many times Jonah replayed the scene at Mermaid House, or how often he tried to convince himself that he was overreacting, he knew that last night he had been judged by the snappish Miss Costello and, worse, that he had been found wanting.

It was Saturday morning, and he was lying in bed, trying to enjoy the slow, potentially relaxing start to the day. But it wasn’t working.

His enjoyment levels were at an all-time low. He laced his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. His mood took a further nosedive when he noticed that the indigo-blue paint he had applied earlier that week looked patchy in the bright sunlight shining through the uncurtained window.

No doubt that would never happen to Miss Costello. Anything she painted would be perfect.

Irritated that she had come into his thoughts again, and that he was forced to refer to her so formally - as though she were an old fashioned school marm - he reminded himself that what she didn’t know, and could never understand, was that there were other dimensions to the truth about his family. A whole kaleidoscope of dimensions that no outsider could appreciate. But far from making him feel better, this added to his guilt. He was making excuses for himself.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again, hoping he had

imagined the flaw in the paintwork. No, he hadn’t. Haphazard crisscrosses were clearly visible. It was an infuriating mess. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? And why hadn’t he done something about his father instead of leaving him to turn to a stranger?

Frustrated with going round in this same futile circle, which kept dumping him where he had started, he launched himself out of bed.

He went to the window and gazed down at the long stretch of garden at the back of the house, which he was in the process of taming. It ran parallel to the churchyard and fell away to merge with the landscape of gently rolling hills. At the bottom of the garden there was a tangle of brambles, which for years had got the better of a beautiful old rose that must once have reigned supreme. Against the wall of the brick-built shed there was a forsythia that had also taken more than its fair share of space, and that, too, needed his attention.

He had always thought it was just the kind of space in which Val would have liked to potter. The garden at Mermaid House had never lent itself to a quiet afternoon’s pottering. It was too big, much too wild and exposed for anything tender to flourish in it.

Normally the view from his bedroom window cheered him: the lush green pastureland had a pleasantly soothing effect. But this morning his mood was still clouded by the severity of Miss Costello’s words and the reproachful way in which she had treated him. There had been something unnervingly proprietorial in her manner towards his father. He had wanted to explore this with Gabriel after she and her son had left them alone last night, but there had been no opportunity to steer the conversation in that direction, not without annoying his father. He had soon sensed that the proprietorial thing went both ways. Gabriel hadn’t been prepared to divulge any information about her. Or maybe he hadn’t anything to divulge.

Certainly he didn’t seem to know much about Miss Costello.

‘What does it matter where she’s from?’ he had said, in response to Jonah’s probing. ‘She’s on holiday with her son and doing some work for me. What more do I, or you, need to know about her?’

‘But I still don’t understand why you wanted to play a practical joke on Dr Singh.’

‘And frankly, Jonah, I don’t understand why you’re suddenly paying me so much attention. Do I interfere in anything you do? No.

I leave you to get on and cock up your own life, just as you told me to do when you walked out on me.’

Those words reminded Jonah too poignantly of the scene in the library when his father had struck him, so he had changed the subject and suggested that he cook them supper. But Gabriel had turned the offer down flat. ‘I’m quite capable of getting my own supper. Why don’t you stop wasting our time and get to the point as to why you’ve come here?’

Which he did, but only when his father was searching the

cupboards for a bottle of whisky, banging doors and muttering, ‘Where the hell did that infernal girl put it?’

‘Dad, have you thought that maybe it might be a good time to think about selling Mermaid House?’

The last of the cupboard doors crashed shut and his father turned round, a bottle of single malt in hand. He banged it down on the table, spun off the top, poured himself a large measure and, without saying anything, raised it to his lips. He took a long gulp. ‘And why would I want to do that?’ he asked finally.

‘Because you might be more comfortable in something smaller, easier to manage.’

Gabriel topped up his glass. ‘How small were you thinking? Coffin size?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad.’

‘That’s rich! You don’t think you’re being ridiculous by coming here and suggesting I change my lifestyle to suit your conscience?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with my conscience.’

‘No? Then perhaps it’s more to do with lining your pockets.

Caspar and Damson’s bottomless pockets as well, no doubt. Have they bullied you into coming here tonight to convince the old duffer that it’s in everybody’s best interest for him to sell the house so they can get their hands on the loot?’

‘Of course not!’

He gave a contemptuous snort. ‘You never did have any talent for lying, Jonah. Unlike your brother. So what’s the line he’s taking?

Death duties? Am I expected to sell my home and make a gift of the proceeds to my beloved children in the hope that I would live long enough for there to be no heavy tax penalties to pay? A happy-ever after scenario for everyone … except me.’

‘Whatever Caspar may or may not have in mind, you don’t have to go along with it.’

He snorted again. ‘What’s this? Rebellion in the ranks?’

‘Look, Dad, you might get some kind of vicarious thrill from pitching me against Caspar, but the truth is, I’ve come here tonight to suggest that it might be in your interest to think about moving to a house that would be more convenient for you to live in. No one else should come into the equation. What’s more, what you chose to do with the proceeds of Mermaid House would be your affair.

Personally, I’d rather you used it for your own pleasure and satisfaction, or gave it away to someone a whole lot more deserving than anyone with the name of Liberty.’

‘A dog’s home, perhaps? Or how about Miss Costello? She strikes me as being eminently deserving.’

In spite of himself, Jonah had looked up sharply at this. ‘It’s your money, you can do with it what you will. If you think Miss Costello would benefit from it, then give it to her.’ Slipping his jacket on, he’d added, ‘I’ve said all I came to say, so now I’ll go before either of us says anything we’ll regret. Goodnight.’

It wasn’t until he was driving home that he knew he had omitted to say one important thing: that above all else, he cared about his father’s welfare and happiness.

Downstairs in the kitchen, eating a piece of toast and scanning his mail, Jonah thought of how his father could never resist fanning the smouldering flames of a difficult conversation into a roaring argument. His comment that Miss Costello was an eminently

deserving case had been a blatant attempt to keep their heated exchange going. Even so, he couldn’t help wondering how Caspar would react if he thought there was a chance that the threat might be carried out.

The thought stayed with him for the rest of that day. So when the telephone rang later that afternoon and Caspar demanded to know the outcome of his visit to Mermaid House, he couldn’t stop himself pursuing what could only be described as a wanton act of malicious stirring.

It was petty and foolish, but none the less he relayed the goings-on at Mermaid House to his brother, labouring the point that their father seemed very taken with the attractive woman who had appeared from nowhere to work for him.

To hear the taut shock in his brother’s voice and visualise his fuming face was worth every second of the ear-bashing to which he was then subjected.

Caspar gave the matter no more than a minute’s thought. He cancelled his plans for that evening - the opening of a new restaurant in Manchester - and phoned Damson. Not that he held out much hope of speaking to her.

Poor deluded Damson, so fully immersed in mystical mumbo

jumbo that she was away with the fairies at the bottom of some sacred garden, getting high on pungent candles and herbal tea-bags while extolling the merits of Celestial Sex.

It vexed him that he couldn’t remember the last sensible conversation they had shared. She was constantly on about biorhythms and her karma. It was like being with her in an Edward Lear poem at times: the words came out fluently enough but he was damned if he could understand a word she was saying. As far as he was concerned, she was going from bad to worse. ‘It’s all New Age funk, Damson,’

he’d said, ‘shallow and meaningless. Dare one ask how much you’re paying for the privilege of being brainwashed?’

‘Darling Caspar, I know you only have my best interests at heart but, please, the reward of finding one’s centred self is beyond measure. You should give it a try.’

Yes, he’d thought, when hell froze over. The idea that she could be taken in by such a massive con appalled him, though part of him admired the person who had set up the scam: as commercial ventures went, it had the potential to be a lucrative money-spinner.

Still waiting for some idiot in Northumberland to get off his or her backside and answer the phone, he crossed one leg over the other and stared around him. Of all the things he had ever possessed, his loft apartment was the one from which he derived the most pleasure. It was a conversion of an old brewery warehouse in close proximity to Manchester’s gay village, and though a high percentage of his neighbours were gay, they had good taste, were tidy, and seldom gave him much trouble - so long as they kept their mattress-wrestling behind closed doors, he had no complaints. The local restaurants and wine bars weren’t bad either, pandering to the strength of the local currency, the vibrantly pink pound.

Since the day he moved in, he had felt at home: the stark

barrenness of the place appealed to his keen sense of the aesthetic.

Not for him the wild confusion with which he had been surrounded while growing up at Mermaid House. He preferred everything stripped back to the purity of line and form. And that was exactly what he had achieved here: polished wooden floors, white-painted brickwork, large sheets of plate glass, stainless steel and slabs of granite gave him the austerity he craved. He had kept away from colour too, never straying into the garish palette of vulgar tones for which so many people opted. The only relief to this hard-edged simplicity was a large cream leather sofa and a specially commissioned circular bed on the mezzanine level.

But unless he could work a miracle in the next month or so, there was a danger that he would lose it. His car too. In his line of business he didn’t need to own a car - a perk of the job was that he could have the use of more or less whatever he fancied - but such a transient arrangement didn’t suit him. Outright ownership was what counted, and selling his Maserati would be a last resort. And he’d be damned before he did that. That was why his father had to see the sense in selling Mermaid House and freeing up its considerable capital. It was going to happen one day, no matter what. The old man couldn’t stay there much longer, not at his age, so why not get it over and done with now and let his children have the benefit of the money that would come to them anyway?