Precious Time (11 page)

stonework was almost black in places and looked to be in need of a good restorative clean. One wall was almost covered in ivy, which helped to soften the grim effect of so much discoloured stone, but otherwise the house was as saturnine and forbidding as its owner.

But how different it must have been when it was originally built, Clara thought, as she hooked Mr Liberty’s coat over her shoulder and picked up the gun. She and Ned walked towards what she hoped was a regularly used door - a deduction based on the pile of rubbish bags grouped around a collection of dustbins. A nose-wrinkling pong of rotting detritus floated out to them. ‘Home, not-so-Sweet Home,’

she muttered, under her breath, as she stood on the doorstep looking for a bell. Not finding one, she rapped loudly with her knuckles.

‘No doubt he’s preparing the hot oil and flaming arrows,’ she said to Ned.

‘Shall I call him?’ he said, pushing open the letterbox.

‘That’s probably not a good idea,’ Clara said.

But it was too late. Ned was already peering through the gap.

‘Ooh,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s really untidy. There’s things everywhere.

Oh, I can see Mr Liberty. Hello, Mr Liberty, it’s us, you forgot your gun and we’ve brought it for you.’

‘No need to make such a song and dance about it, young man.’

Bending down, Clara could see that Ned was nose to nose with the formidable one-eyed owner of the house.

‘We’ve brought your coat too,’ Ned carried on, as though it was the most reasonable thing in the world to be holding a conversation through a letterbox. ‘Your house is nice. It’s just like a castle. Can I come in and see it, please? I’ll be very good. I’ll take my shoes off like I have to at Nanna and Granda’s so I won’t spoil your carpets. And I promise I won’t run about and knock things over.’

It was time to intervene. ‘It’s okay, Mr Liberty,’ Clara said. ‘We’re not here to bother you. I’ll put your gun and coat here on the step and leave you in peace. Thanks for your help earlier this afternoon.

Ned and I really appreciated what you did.’ Taking her son’s hand, she lowered her voice. ‘Come on, Ned, we mustn’t make a nuisance of ourselves. Besides, it’s getting late and we have to find a campsite.’

She turned to go.

The door opened suddenly. ‘You’re too early.’

‘Too early for what?’ asked Clara.

‘There’s only one campsite in this area and it doesn’t open for another two weeks.’

She sighed. ‘Oh, that’s brilliant. Just what I needed to hear. Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

‘Oh, so it’s my fault you didn’t do sufficient background research before you came here, is it? How typical of a woman to blame her inadequacies on the nearest man to hand.’

She sighed again. But now it was edged with a spark of annoyance.

‘Mr Liberty, do you realise just how rude you are? Because if not, let me tell you here and now that I have seldom come across a more cantankerous and mean-spirited man.’

He smiled. Well, she thought it was a smile. It was more a case of his lips stretching into what she assumed was an unaccustomed position, resulting in the baring of two rows of large, uneven teeth.

‘And I have seldom come across a woman with as much

ungracious impudence as you, Miss Costello,’ he snarled, ‘so I know that if I were to suggest you use one of my fields for the night, it would be a pointless gesture. You would only throw it back in my face.’

Astonished, Clara hesitated. It was getting late, the light had almost gone and she was tired. Embarking on a lengthy search for somewhere to hitch up for the night didn’t appeal. Also, the incident that afternoon had left her more rattled than she cared to admit. Just thinking about it again, caused her heart to beat faster. It seemed eminently sensible to be within shouting distance of help. Even if it came in the person of this misogynist old-timer with a serious attitude problem.

‘Perhaps we could come to some other arrangement,’ she said, choosing her words with care. ‘Rather than spoil one of your fields by driving across it, how about we stay right where we are in the courtyard?’

He considered this. ‘Just the one night?’ he reiterated.

‘Just the one night,’ she confirmed. ‘In fact, we’ll be gone first thing in the morning. It will be as though we’d never been here.’

He switched his gaze to Ned. ‘And you, young man, you promise you’ll behave? I don’t want any trouble from you. No crying. No running about the place. And definitely no shouting through my letterbox. I like things nice and quiet round here. If I hear so much as a snore out of you tonight, there’ll be trouble. Got that?’

Ned gave a solemn nod. And then one of his most engaging smiles.

‘Would you like to have tea with us, Mr Liberty? We’re having pancakes. Oh, Mummy, please say Mr Liberty can have tea with us.’

Clara pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. Oh, well done, Ned, she thought. A cosy evening with Mr Misery. Perfect.

‘You’re more than welcome, Mr Liberty,’ she lied, ‘but it will be very simple. Nothing fancy, I’m afraid.’

Mr Liberty’s enthusiasm for the idea seemed as great as her own.

He said, and dismissively so, ‘Pancakes? I can’t stand them. I’ve got a nice bit of rump steak and a glass of claret I’m looking forward to.’

He turned back towards the house, but before he disappeared, he tossed them one last piece of invective. ‘And remember, no noise or trouble.’

Gabriel went to bed early that night. He often did. Sleep was a welcome antidote to boredom. And, thank God, it was something he was still good at. The rest of his body might be betraying him - his hands, his bladder, his heart and the occasional limb given over to an attack of tremors - but sleep was a nut he could still crack.

He stepped over the mess of plaster and curtains that he hadn’t done anything about since he’d pulled the track off the wall two nights ago, and got into bed. The sheets felt cold and damp. He didn’t turn out the light straight away, but sat for a while to contemplate his day, a habit of Anastasia’s that had rubbed off on him. ‘Every day is a challenge,’ she would say, ‘but the real challenge is reflecting on the bad aspects of that day and learning from them.’

It was another of her idealistic foibles that had contrasted with his more pragmatic approach to life: anything he didn’t like about his day he wrote off. ‘I haven’t got the time to dwell on what’s past,’ he had said once.

Smiling her knowing smile, Anastasia had stretched out beside him in bed and stroked his cheek. ‘Gabriel Liberty, I promise you that one day, when you’re old and grey, you will find you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with and then you’ll

understand.’

‘We’re never going to be old,’ he had responded fiercely. ‘I would rather be dead than ancient and decrepit.’

He hadn’t been much older than the age his children were now when he had said this, but as he shifted his pillows against the mahogany bed-head, Gabriel could remember uttering those words as though it were yesterday. Anastasia had shushed him with a finger against his lips. ‘Yesterday, today, tomorrow, young or old, what does any of it matter so long as we’re together and making the most of what we have?’ Then she had kissed him. One of those long, lingering kisses that had promised him the world. With his eyes shut he could still feel the warmth of her moist mouth against his.

He snapped his eyes open. This was absurd. What did he think he was doing? He reached for the book by the side of the bed - a heavy tome of political memoirs guaranteed to see off such sentimental nonsense. But it remained closed as his train of thought was distracted again. Not by the distant past, but by the events of today.

He wondered how his guests were getting on.

Thinking of the pancakes they must have enjoyed, he thought of his own supper - a lukewarm tin of Heinz tomato soup. He had lied about the rump steak and claret just as he frequently lied to Jonah about what he ate. Often he didn’t eat what Jonah fetched from the shops for him. The fresh fruit, the vegetables, the chicken breasts - it was too much trouble. Cooking for one was bad enough, but eating alone was worse.

So why hadn’t he accepted the invitation to join that well mannered little boy and his mother for supper? Especially as their appearance down by the river had provided him with the highlight of an otherwise tedious day.

Since Val’s illness, and her death, he had got out of the habit of being sociable, not that he had ever been gregarious. Val had been the driving force when it came to showing one’s face at local functions; he had gone along with it to keep the peace. He had preferred to devote himself to work. But even that had palled as the years went on. And then came the day when, finally, he had had to resign himself to the truth that none of his children was interested in taking over the business he had inherited from his own father. It had been a bitter day indeed when he sold up and retired. He had never forgiven Caspar and Jonah for letting him down - in his heart, Damson had never really been in the running. They could not have found a more hurtful way to snub him. Everything he had worked for and hoped to pass on to them, they had, by their actions, despised and rejected. A solid engineering company with a name that was known and respected around the world wasn’t good enough for them, was it? Oh, dear me, no.

And what had they chosen to do instead?

Not much.

After dropping out of university, Caspar, whose colossal self regard far exceeded his willingness to get his hands dirty with real work, had thrown himself into a series of get-rich-quick scams that had all turned into financial disasters. During the eighties he had fancied himself one of Thatcher’s boys, but his entrepreneurial skills were never going to sustain that ideal. He was an idle beggar who thought the world owed him a favour. His worst commercial disaster had been selling time-shares in Spain. When the bottom dropped out of the hacienda market the banks foreclosed, investors lost their money and one of Caspar’s partners was sent to prison for fraud. But what else would you expect from the Costa del Crime?

No two ways about it, Caspar was a dreadful businessman and an even worse judge of character. Now he peddled overpriced cars for a living.

As for Jonah, the brightest of the bunch, he was wasting what talents he had been given by teaching in a third-rate school and earning buttons.

It went without saying, of course, that Damson had never held down a proper job. She had been too preoccupied with enjoying herself.

So Gabriel had entered the twilight zone of retirement. It hadn’t suited him, isolated from the only world he had been interested in industrial engineering: pipes, gaskets and valves - he had soon

realised he had few friends. The people he had mixed with had been business associates in the steel-producing heartlands of Sheffield, and other than his love of books, he had nothing else to occupy him.

Without meaning to, he had allowed the days to run through his fingers like sand. Anastasia would never have let him do this: for her, every day had counted. Val had tried to persuade him that they should explore the world together, but because he had travelled so extensively on business, he had ignored the brochures she left lying about the house and withdrew to his library.

Then she had died, and it was easier to retreat further still: to batten down the hatches and let the world go hang.

He knew the house was a mess and that he should do something about it. But where to start? It had got so out of hand that the task now seemed insurmountable.

He knew, too, that at times he was offhand and acerbic, but he didn’t have the patience to be polite. He had always been direct and to the point - that was how one survived in business. Fannying around with false pleasantries would have got him nowhere. If a spade was a shovel, what the dickens was wrong in declaring it so?

When had mealy-mouthed insincerity become the alternative to good old-fashioned honesty?

That was what he had liked about the Costello woman. She had said exactly what she thought. She had had the guts to call him a miserable old bugger. Good for her. That was what he approved of and could respect. He hated it when his children took whatever he dished out to them. It made him want to shake them and shout, ‘Why can’t you be more like me? Where’s your bloody backbone?’

She was smart too. He could tell that by her waspish, quick-witted manner. Take the way she had sized up the situation down in the courtyard. He had offered her the use of a field, but she had wanted somewhere better and hadn’t been afraid to ask for it. She was a determined woman who was used to ploughing her own furrow.

Though he doubted that she would have been able to talk her way out of that ugly situation with those two nasty pieces of work. Lucky for her that he frequently went down to the copse; lucky, too, that he had been seized with the urge to take a few pot-shots at the crows.

He had hated those birds ever since, as a boy, he had seen one pluck out the eyes of a newborn lamb. Armed with his gun he had been intent on an afternoon’s sport when he spotted the campervan parked on his land. He had quickened his pace, preparing to give the trespasser a piece of his mind, when the car had appeared. It had been satisfying to see the expression on the two yobbos’ faces change as they’d looked down the business end of a double-barrelled shotgun. And even better seeing them run off. Rotten cowards, picking on a young mother and her child.

Perhaps he had gone too far when he’d shouted at her, but anger had fuelled his words. Anger that this was the kind of world in which he lived, where young women and children weren’t safe to set foot in the countryside for fear of being robbed or subjected to God knew what else. He thought of that poor mite wetting himself and wished now that he’d scared those bully-boys even more.

He hated the idea that the disease-ridden scum of the big towns and cities was now infiltrating what had always been a place of sanctuary to him. Anastasia had loved to walk alone in the hills, and so had the children. Jonah in particular had relished the solitude of the moors, disappearing for hours at a time.