Precious Time (30 page)

She climbed down, sat on the bed, and pulled at the frayed satin ribbon that held them together. Picking one at random, she opened it, expecting to find nothing more interesting than a rambling extension of the cluttered woman she had so far glimpsed - a variety of recipes for prize-winning chutney, perhaps.

But she saw straight away that what she had in her hands was a diary.

She knew she shouldn’t but she couldn’t stop herself reading the erratic writing that covered the lined pages.

Sunday, 16 September

There are times when I hate this dreadful house! I know that sounds overly dramatic, but there it is, that’s how I feel today.

I warned Gabriel something like this would happen, that

Caspar wasn’t above such an appalling act of treachery. But, as usual, the stubborn old fool refused to do anything about it.

‘They’re grown men, they should be able to deal with this

themselves,’ he said, when I told him this evening what had been going on. ‘No man is ever fully grown,’ I said, but he just gave me one of his baleful looks and went off to his wretched library.

The trouble started the moment Caspar and that dim girlfriend of his (whose name escapes me, I doubt we’ll ever see her again, so it doesn’t really matter) arrived to celebrate Jonah and Emily’s engagement. During dinner I could see what Caspar was up to (I’ve seen him do it countless times before, so I could recognise the signs) and knew that no good would come of the weekend, and that it was my fault - it was me who had insisted on

everyone being present. As soon as that silly girl Emily started giggling, I knew she had been taken in. Poor Jonah, he just sat there quietly seething, his head down, his mood darkening by the second. ‘Do something!’ I wanted to shout at him, but he didn’t.

He just let his brother walk all over him as he always has. He’s frightened of him, I know. Frightened of Damson too. And

Damson could see what Caspar was up to, and I think that

maybe even she was a little shocked. But she made no attempt to stop him - she’s the only one who can rein him in - and in doing nothing, she condoned his behaviour. Though to be fair, she’s so caught up in herself she probably doesn’t care. Half the time I can’t understand what she’s talking about. She hasn’t got enough to do, of course. That’s the real problem. If she had some real direction in her life, she wouldn’t be like this. So airy-fairy.

By lunchtime today it was all over. Jonah left without saying a word. I watched him from the kitchen window as he drove out of the courtyard - I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so angry and so unable to express themselves.

Minutes later, Caspar’s girlfriend came hobbling into the house in my borrowed boots and, glory be, there’s a creature who can express herself! Such language! (Calls herself a model too - not a model of decorum, that much is clear!) From what I could gather from her highly colourful language, she and Jonah had seen Caspar kissing Emily, in Jonah’s favourite haunt by the rocks, where he likes to go and think. And while she waited for Caspar and Emily to reappear, she phoned for a taxi and packed her bag. When Caspar did deign to show his face, she slapped it hard for him and left. (Can’t say I blame her!) Emily, the stupid girl, had the grace to look ashamed of what she had done, but Caspar was his normal arrogant self. ‘Well,’ he said, in that annoyingly cocky voice of his (I know it’s wrong but my hand always itches to slap him when he puts that voice on!), ‘there goes a girl with some spirit. I wish her next sparring partner all the luck in the world.’ He then had the gall to say to me, ‘Val, old love, it looks like lunch is off. Another time perhaps?’

And during all this commotion, where was Gabriel? Where he always is. Hiding in the library, of course. Why won’t he deal with his family? Why does he always leave it to me? I’m tired of it, truly I am. I often wonder what would become of them all if I was no longer here.

A flurry of footsteps out on the landing had Clara shoving the books back into the hatbox, slapping the lid on it, and standing guiltily to attention. The door flew open and in came Ned. ‘Mummy, guess what? I beat Mr Liberty at draughts.’

‘Aren’t you the clever one?’ She went to him, knelt on the floor and hugged him.

Wriggling out of her grasp, and staring intently into her face, he said, ‘It’s a real grown-up game, Mummy, and I still won. I did, really I did. No help from anyone. Well, maybe a tiny bit from Mr Liberty’s son.’

She kissed the tip of his nose, basking in the shining rays of his euphoria. ‘Do you want to help me up here now? Or would that be too boring?’

He looked around the room, eyeing it for the fun factor. His gaze slid over the piles of clothes and he shook his head. ‘I’ll do my scrapbook downstairs with Mr Liberty.’ He was already moving towards the door.

‘Okay, then, but don’t make a nuisance of yourself, will you?’

‘I won’t.’

‘Oh, and while you’re with Mr Liberty, remind him to bring me up some coffee. It’s well past eleven.’

As soon as she was alone again, Clara slipped the lid off the hatbox and reached for another diary. Just a couple of pages, she told herself.

Friday 2 December

Well, he’s finally done it. I never thought he would, but he’s sold up. And I know he feels terrible about it. He won’t say anything, of course, but the whole thing has taken a far greater toll on him than he will ever admit to.

And why did he have to sell to a rival firm of engineers? A firm he’s despised for as long as I can remember. A firm that will strip his business for its assets and throw the rest to the dogs. It’s as if he’s done it deliberately. As though out of spite he’s wants the whole thing to implode in on itself. He says he doesn’t care what happens to it. ‘I’ve washed my hands of it,’ he said this afternoon, when he came home after his meeting with the lawyers and accountants and poured himself a large glass of his most expensive malt whisky. But I simply can’t believe he meant it.

‘What about all those men and women who have worked so

loyally for you?’ I asked him. ‘Don’t you care what will happen to them?’ He grunted something I couldn’t make out and told me I didn’t understand. Maybe I don’t. But what I do understand is that what Gabriel devoted his life to, and his father before him, has to mean something. I also understand how much it hurt him that none of his children wanted to step into his shoes - he so badly wanted at least one of them to do that. But I can see it from their point of view too: they have their own dreams to follow.

Why does he always have to take things so personally?

Again, the sound of footsteps - less hurried ones this time - had Clara furtively hiding the diary. She stuffed it back into the hatbox and pretended to be folding a matted Fair Isle sweater.

‘Dad sent me up with your elevenses and an apple for being late.’ It was Jonah with a mug and a plate of ginger nuts He handed her the mug and put the plate on the dressing-table, clearing a space for it among the mess. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Slowly.’

He looked about the room. ‘I guess it’s easier if you’re detached from it. I know I’d struggle to be objective. I did try to do it for Dad, but it was probably too soon for him.’ He settled his gaze on the sweater she had just folded. I remember Val knitting that. It was a Christmas present for Dad but it shrank and ended up fitting her better than him. She only ever wore it in the garden, and if it helps things between us, apparently the engagement’s off.’

For a moment she thought he was referring to what she had just been reading in the diary - the engagement between him and Emily but then she realised he couldn’t possibly be talking about that.

‘Sorry?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to carry on with the game any more. Dad’s told me the truth. It was a wind-up for my brother’s benefit last night.’

‘Oh, so I don’t even get the chance to be jilted at the altar. How disappointing. And to think I was so looking forward to being your wicked stepmother.’

Given the room they were in and its contents, Clara wished she hadn’t said that. Her cheeks burned. How could she have been so insensitive?

He spoke before she could apologise. ‘Not all stepmothers are wicked, you know.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Wanting to make good the damage, and intrigued by the entries in the diary, she said, ‘What was your stepmother like?’

He hesitated fractionally, then said, ‘To put up with us Libertys, Val was two parts saint and one part sergeant-major. On reflection I think we gave her a terrible time. I don’t think she was always very happy.’

Though she couldn’t comment on its accuracy, she was impressed by the incisiveness of his reply. ‘How old were you when she married your father?’ she asked.

He moved away from the bed, went over to the window. ‘A little younger than Ned, and before you ask, no, I can’t remember a time before that.’

‘Not even your real mother?’

‘Not likely, given that it was my birth that killed her.’

Once more Clara wished she could retract her words. ‘Oh dear.

I’m sorry. I keep putting my foot in it.’

‘“Oh dear”, indeed. It’s quite the party-stopper, that line, isn’t it?’

He was moving again, this time towards the door. ‘Don’t forget your coffee. Lunch is in an hour, so you’d better not scoff too many ginger nuts or you’ll upset Chef.’

‘And we all know the consequences of annoying your father.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not my father’s culinary delights you’re being treated to. Lunch is on me.’

For the next hour, Clara worked doubly fast to make up for the time she had spent reading. But all the while she was sorting through Val Liberty’s things she kept thinking what kind of a woman she must have been to take on such a family. What an enormous

challenge she had accepted the day she had agreed to marry Mr Liberty - or Gabriel, as she now knew him as - a widower with three young children who between them must have tested her love and patience beyond endurance.

Clara had done many things in her life of which she had later thought better, but this one was perhaps the most unworthy. She knew she had no right to do it, but she was hooked. Having begun to see the Liberty family in a new light, she wanted to know more, understand them better.

She took the diaries from the hatbox and slipped them into a bag with the intention of reading them later. She would return them to Mermaid House tomorrow morning with no one else the wiser.

Where would be the harm in that? She was only borrowing them.

In bed that night, long after Ned had fallen asleep, Clara was reading the diaries. As she turned the pages in the soft beam of light, she was conscious that while she might refer to the diaries as ‘borrowed’, she was actually stealing the private thoughts of a woman who, if she were alive. would have every right to be furious at Clara’s intrusion into her honest record of her own failings as well as the shortcomings of others. Clara knew from what she had read that Val had been a fair worhan. She had tried hard to see a difficult situation from every angle.Yet there were times when Clara got annoyed with Val’s ‘understanding’. She longed to shout, ‘Stop making excuses for them all!’ The tricks that had been played on her by Caspar and his sister wer breathtakingly diabolical, and as their father had turned a blind eye to what was going on, he was no better than his scheming brats.

The first diary began a month after Val, in her own words, had ‘taken on the job of nanny and housekeeper at Mermaid House’.

This bleak description of herself, so soon into her marriage, seemed to have been prompted by a case of good intentions on her part that had gone disastrously wrong.

I cannot believe what happened today! I’m still shaking with anger and indignation. The whole situation is so gruesomely destructive I have to get my thoughts and shock down on paper - hence this journal, something I haven’t done in years, not since I was a child with TB and had to spend so much time in the sanatorium and thought I would die of loneliness. N.B. Clearly there is a connection here!! Will think about this in more detail when I have calmed down!

The trouble started last week, and I really could kick myself for not seeing how I was being manipulated - just like the heroine of Rebecca at the hands of Mrs Danvers - but in all truth, how was I to know? I suggested to Caspar and Damson that the three of us ought to get our heads together and do something about Jonah’s birthday. ‘How do you know it’s his birthday?’ Damson had asked, her closed face watching me slyly from behind her long curtain of hair. ‘Why, is it a secret, darling?’ I replied (and yes, I do try to call the children something endearing, even if I don’t mean it half the time). She didn’t say anything and I didn’t think it strange that until that moment no one had mentioned the fact that Jonah’s fourth

birthday was just round the corner. I only found out about it by chance when I had been putting away some papers - just another example of the stuff that Gabriel is for ever leaving about the house. Putting the letters and documents away in his desk I saw a card that must have come in the post that I hadn’t seen. It was from the doctor’s surgery in Deaconsbridge recommending that Jonah be brought in for his pre-school booster. It was then that I saw the date of his birth. The only thought that crossed my mind at that point was that it was lucky I had seen the card as otherwise, and knowing Gabriel arid his lack of foresight when it came to anything to do with his children, the child’s birthday would probably have been and gone without any of us realising.

Still sitting at the table with Caspar and Damson - Jonah was upstairs in bed - I asked them why neither of them had thought to tell me when their brother’s birthday was. Damson shrugged and said, ‘If you’d wanted to know, you only had to ask.’ There was something in her voice that made me want to snap back at her. Cold and patronising, she was treating me no better than char-lady. Restraining myself, I said, ‘Why don’t we arrange i party for him? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Help me blow up the balloons and make the jellies.’ I thought I was doing t;he right thing, involving them in something by treating them as equals, rather than tiresome children. (Goodness, how weary I am from trying to win them over! When all the time they begrudge me the very air I breathe!)