Precious Time (45 page)

‘Please, Jonah,’ his father had said, ‘I know I’ve done everything wrong, but I want to change all that now. It’s not too late, is it?’

A shake of the head was as much as he could manage and with an unsteady hand, he had taken the glass of whisky his father had just poured for him. He’d downed it in one, willing its warmth to relax his throat so that he could speak. It worked. ‘It’s okay, Dad. Really.

I’ve never held anything against you. I knew it was all down to circumstances.’

It was then that his father had told him about going down into the copse with one of his shotguns - just as Jonah had feared he might.

‘No, Jonah,’ he’d said, raising his hand to stop him from interrupting, ‘and don’t look at me like that. I don’t deserve your sympathy.

Not one ounce of it. I’ve been a damned silly fool. I can’t promise to change over night, but I want you to know that I do care about you.

I care very much. Another drink? You look like you could do with it.’

‘I’d better not, I’m driving.’

‘Of course.’

An awkward silence then followed when neither of them spoke.

Not until Jonah said, ‘It’s getting late. I ought to go.’

They parted at the back door, not with a great show of new-found emotion, not with an uncharacteristic hearty embrace, but with a warm handshake, as though they were two people who had just met for the first time and had decided they quite liked each other.

Turning from the drystone wall, Jonah got back into his car and drove home.

That same night, in Cross Street, Archie was eating his supper in front of the television. The news was on, but he wasn’t listening to it.

He was too tired. It was as much as he could do to cut into the chicken and mushroom pie he’d picked up on the way home.

It had been a long, long day with a house clearance in Whaley Bridge that had taken more effort and time than he’d anticipated.

Valuable hours had been wasted because the relatives of the deceased owner of the house couldn’t decide who should have what. It should all have been settled before he and Samson had arrived but it hadn’t, and they were soon caught up in a classic family dispute with the dead woman’s daughters-in-law arguing over who had been promised a pretty little carriage clock from the front room. When things had got ugly, he and Samson had retreated to the kitchen to start on the cupboards, leaving the rapidly dividing family to resolve matters alone. It wasn’t as though there was much worth fighting over: the house was small and the possessions meagre. Maybe that was the problem: the fewer the bones to pick over, the more frantic and bitter the feeding frenzy.

Perhaps it was some folk’s way of handling grief, letting off steam by bickering among themselves; it distracted them from what was really going on. But this lot had been mean and grasping. They hadn’t been interested in sentimental keepsakes: they only wanted the stuff they thought had a bit of value.

It had been left to him and Samson to clear out the rest, which the family plainly regarded as rubbish. Archie always felt he owed it to the person who had spent a lifetime gathering these mementoes to do his best by them. It was the bedside tables that invariably got to him.

It was in those little drawers that, often, the most personal and poignant objects had been kept, and which gave the deepest insight into that person’s habits and thoughts. Today’s bedside table had revealed the usual old tubes of ointment, packets of indigestion tablets, buttons, rusting safety-pins, bent hairpins, and a string of cheap, gaudy beads. There was a tiny-faced watch that didn’t work, a money-off voucher for washing powder (dated October 1988), a pair of tweezers, a throat lozenge that had oozed a sticky trail across an envelope of black and white holiday snaps, a crumbling bath cube that had lost its scent, and a small trinket box containing a collection of Christmas cracker jokes, unused party hats, two plastic whistles and a key-ring. There was also a small Bible, its pages thickened with use.

He had got away from the house just in time to nip home, clean himself up, then drive to the hospital. He went every day, hoping for some sign of improvement in his mother. He always came home disappointed. Her condition had remained the same since she had been admitted: unmoving, lost in a world where he couldn’t reach her. He talked to her all the time, though, needing to believe that while she couldn’t make any movement, not even a flicker of her eyelids, she could still hear him. He couldn’t bear the thought that she might be lonely, that she might feel he had abandoned her. So he kept her abreast of everything that was going on around her. He told her about the attractive nurse who had just got engaged and was planning to marry on a far-away Caribbean island, and with his voice deliberately low, he gossiped about her fellow patients - the uppity woman opposite who was always complaining about the food, the woman who was addicted to crossword puzzles, and the woman in a risque nightdress whose husband was smuggling in a regular supply of illicit hooch for her. He didn’t tell her about the woman in the nearest bed who had died and whose place had been taken by someone new. She had appeared on the ward yesterday, an elderly woman with badly fitting dentures who wouldn’t stop interrupting Archie as he talked to Bessie. Maybe she was lonely and didn’t have anyone to visit her, but she had tested his patience. ‘What did you say your name was?’ she had asked him, for the hundredth time.

‘Archie,’ he replied, for the hundredth time.

‘I knew an Archie once. He was a terrible man. Kissed me outside the butcher’s for all the world to see.’ She laughed loudly, her loose teeth sliding around in her mouth. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Archie.’

‘I knew an Archie once. He was a terrible man. He—’

Feeling trapped, and hating himself for his rudeness, he had drawn the curtain around his mother’s bed. Looking down at her still body, it was as if her features had been stolen from her face. All the warmth and light had gone from it. The true essence of Bessie Merryman was no longer there.

He ached for her to open her eyes and say something. Anything would do. ‘Archie, be a love and fetch me a cup of tea will you?’ Or: ‘Archie, where am I? What am I doing here with all these poor old dears?’

Oh, to have one last conversation with her, to say all the things that needed saying. What he’d give to hear just one of her nonsensical words from her creative lexicon.

Forking up the remains of his chicken and mushroom pie, he realised that he’d never hear another word from Bessie, that he was days away, maybe hours, from the end.

When the telephone rang again, Caspar could have knocked whoever it was to the ground. He was sick of the phone ringing constantly.

Word had soon gone round that he was on his uppers and the vultures had gathered. Friends, they called themselves, well-wishing friends who were concerned about the rumours they had heard.

To hell with that! They just wanted to gloat.

He poured himself another glass of wine from the second bottle he’d opened that evening, staggered to his feet, and grabbed the cordless phone. ‘Whoever you are, why don’t you take a one-way trip to hell.’

‘Mr Liberty?’

‘Sorry, did I make that too complicated for you to understand?’

‘Mr Liberty, this is Roland Hall. You might recall that we have spoken before.’

‘Too right I remember. You’re the patronising wimp who wouldn’t let me speak to my sister. What do you want? Are you hoping I might be as stupid as Damson and want to join you?’

‘No. I’m calling to say that I think you should come and visit her.’

Though Caspar was very drunk, enough of his brain was

functioning for him to hear something in the man’s voice to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. ‘Why? What’s going on?

And why isn’t Damson saying this to me?’

A pause.

‘Damson doesn’t know I’m making this call.’

‘Is that how you operate, then, sneaking behind your punter’s backs, tittle-tattling to friends and relatives?’

‘Mr Liberty, our alternative way of life here at Rosewood Manor may not—’

‘Look, buddy, I’m all out of rapture and patience, so cut the drivelling waffle about your Arcadian existence and get to the point.’

There was another pause. ‘Your sister is ill and I think you should come to see her.’

After drinking copious amounts of head-clearing espresso coffee, Caspar lay in bed cursing the day Damson had ever been introduced to Rosewood Manor Healing Centre. Oh, he knew what had

happened up there, all right. They’d fed her some wishy-washy diet of ginseng and cabbage, had made her ill and were now frightened at what they’d done to her.

He punched his fist into the pillow, regretting the amount of wine he had drunk. If he hadn’t knocked so much of it back he would have been able to drive straight up there and fetch Damson home. As it was, he had to wait until he was free of the risk of getting done for drink-driving. He already had six points on his licence, and on top of everything else, a year-long ban would be the final straw.

As soon as it was light, Caspar was ready for the journey north. He’d managed a couple of hours’ sleep, and with yet another fix of strong black coffee inside him, he gripped the steering-wheel with steely determination. He had it all worked out. He would arrive at Rosewood Manor, give that Roland Hall a piece of his mind, put Damson in the car and get the hell out of it.

Then he would drive south, stopping somewhere for the night.

Harrogate perhaps, somewhere half decent. He had enough cash on him to stump up for a twin-bedded room for him and Damson, but he would have to be careful: credit cards were a no-go area now. He had a bit stashed away that not even his accountant knew about, but that was real rainy-day stuff. And, of course, there was always Damson. Once she knew of the bother he was in, she would tide him over until he got himself sorted and was on his feet again.

Unless, of course, those manipulative, brainwashing weirdos had bled her dry.

This thought had him pressing down on the accelerator and, flashing his lights at the car in front of him, he sped on towards Northumberland.

Clara opened her eyes, wanting to believe that she would feel better today.

But she wasn’t. She was worse. Her skin was so flushed and sensitive it felt raw all over, as if someone had taken a cheese-grater to her in the night. Her joints seemed to have tightened while she slept and ached horribly. Her throat was so sore she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that she had gargled with broken glass.

Her chest ached from prolonged bouts of coughing and her head throbbed. Added to this, her stomach was cramping painfully.

She eased herself into a sitting position and reached for the box of tissues, then took a sip from the glass of water someone had thoughtfully left for her and forced down a couple of painkillers.

From downstairs, she could hear voices: one high, one low. She glanced at her watch on the bedside table and saw that it was half past nine. This was no good, she had to get herself moving - she had to get back into the land of the living. She pushed away the duvet and swung her legs out of bed, her mind set on having an

invigorating shower - on the other hand, given that the plumbing at Mermaid House was not for the faint-hearted, a bath might be a better option.

But when she reached the bathroom, it was as much as she could do to brush her teeth and use the loo. Then she shuffled back to bed and pulled the duvet over her. A knock at the door interrupted a coughing fit. ‘Come in, if you.dare,’ she rasped.

‘How’s the patient?’ asked Gabriel.

‘Are you feeling better, Mummy?’

The look of hope on their faces was enough to make her cry.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but I think I’m worse.’

‘I’ll send for Dr Singh,’ said Gabriel, so resolutely that she knew it would be useless to try to overrule him. ‘It’s about time Sonny Jim did something worthwhile round here.’

The doctor called later that afternoon. But it wasn’t the much maligned Dr Singh, it was a locum, a diminutive young man with the beginnings of a moustache on his top lip and a pair of nervous blue eyes. He checked her over, diagnosed flu, wrote out a prescription, and advised her to drink plenty of fluids.

‘As if we hadn’t thought of that,’ Gabriel growled, when he’d shown the doctor out and Clara told him what he had said.

‘Sorry to be such a nuisance,’ she said. ‘Sorry, too, that I’m not making a speedy recovery.’

He sat on the end of the bed with Ned. ‘Can’t be helped. Just glad that you’re here with me and not stuck on a campsite in the middle of nowhere. Do you feel like eating anything yet? All you’ve had since yesterday is a bowl of tomato soup.’

She shook her head, then wished she hadn’t. She closed her eyes, waited for her brain to stop spinning inside her skull, and at once felt herself drifting on a tide of sleep. In the distance she heard Gabriel say, ‘Make haste, young Ned, we need to get your mother’s

prescription made up before the shops close for the day.’

Rallying herself, she said, or thought she said, ‘Make sure you strap yourself in, Ned.’

The room went quiet and sleep claimed her fully. She sank into a dream that held her in an endless loop of knocking nails into the hull of a boat to stop the sea flooding in. Again and again she frantically banged the hammer against the nails.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She roused herself out of the dream, only to slip straight into another. She was dreaming of Jonah. He was dressed in a pair of jeans with a loose-fitting pale blue shirt, his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and he was carrying a large vase of flowers. ‘Put them in the cupboard with the rest,’ she told him, ‘but don’t try eating them.

They’ll make you shrink.’ He raised an eyebrow, tilted his head to one side, and gazed at her quizzically. She giggled, thinking how gorgeously fresh-faced and kissable he looked. ‘Well, Master Liberty, I’ll wager you’ve broken a few hearts in your time, you being such a romantic cutie.’ That was the nice thing about dreams, you could think and say what you liked with delicious impunity. He came closer, still tilting his head, and still, it had to be said, looking adorable.