Precious Time (16 page)

That was why he had resorted to pleading with the Costello woman. He had seen in her someone capable and strong, someone he could trust to help him sort out Mermaid House. He knew it had to be done, and if somebody could just get the job started for him, he felt confident he would see it through.

Nothing had been done since well before Val’s death, and all of her things were still lying about the place - clothes, jewellery, perfume, books, stuff he didn’t need, but felt he couldn’t discard. It seemed sacrilegious to dismantle her life like that.

It had been the same when Anastasia had died. It had been years before he had emptied her wardrobes and dressing-table. But then it had been different: he hadn’t wanted to part with Anastasia’s belongings. Having them around had kept her alive somehow. For a long time after her death, and before going to bed at night, he would open a cupboard and run his hands through her dresses, holding the smooth fabrics against his face, breathing in her sweet, sensual fragrance. One night, when he had thought the children were asleep, Damson had crept up on him and asked what he was doing. She had stood in the doorway, her head tilted to one side, looking at him as though he were quite mad. ‘You should throw everything away,’ she had said matter-of-factly, ‘or burn it. Caspar and I could make a bonfire for you.’

He could scarcely believe what he was hearing: seven years old and she was offering to burn the few tangible keepsakes they had of her mother. The cruelty of her words had horrified him. ‘Why are you being so disgustingly insensitive, Damson?’ he had asked.

She hadn’t answered, just stared at him until he closed the wardrobe door.

He had told the twins that no amount of tears would bring their mother back, and he could not recall seeing either Caspar or Damson cry for her. Not even at the funeral, when they had stood beside him beneath the hot summer sun, perfectly composed, their dry-eyed gaze on their mother’s coffin as they held hands, united by something that had excluded him.

He crossed the dusty wooden floor to the narrow staircase that led back to a short, unlit passageway, then on to the library, where a secret door opened to the right of the fireplace. It was this that he had shown Ned that morning. The little lad’s eyes had grown as large as hub-caps when Gabriel had shown him the hidden handle that made the lower half of the bookcase swing open. ‘Where does it go?’ Ned had asked, peering cautiously into the darkness.

‘It goes up to the tower you can see from the front of the house.’

‘Will you take me to see it, please? I’ll be very good.’

‘If you promise to take care where you put your feet,’ Gabriel had told him, as he dipped his head and led the way. ‘It’s as black as pitch, so stay close to me.’

‘Are there any spiders?’

‘Lots.’

‘Big ones?’

‘Enormous, and wearing hobnail boots and carrying sawn-off shotguns. So mind you don’t look them in the eye or they’ll have you for breakfast.’

He had enjoyed seeing the look on the lad’s face as he tried to figure out how much to believe, and it had made him spin even more yarns of mysterious intrigue, of ghosts who lived in the tower, shook their chains and slammed doors at dead of night. All nonsense, of course, but it was what children lapped up.

When he had looked through the kitchen window first thing that morning and had seen Ned’s face staring back at him from the campervan, he had acted on a rare impulse and gone outside to see if the boy wanted to go round the house. He knew now that it had been a mistake to encourage him to go against his mother’s rule that he wasn’t to leave the van without her permission - but it had seemed harmless at the time. She had been sound asleep and it had seemed better to let her enjoy a lie-in while her son had a bit of fun.

Which he had. He’d been thrilled by the secret passageway and had loved the tower, asking politely to be held up high so that he could look out at the view.

It had been ages since Gabriel had been to the tower and it had looked worse than he had remembered it. The last time he’d ventured up there had been to let out a bird that had got in through a broken window - droppings were still stuck to the floor and walls.

As children, Caspar and Damson had regularly holed up in the tower. Jonah had never been allowed in. Even when Val had

intervened, they had refused him entry. ‘He’s a stupid baby,’ they had yelled through the door, ‘and we’re not having him in here with us. He’ll spoil what we’re doing.’

Back in the library, and shutting the secret door behind him, Gabriel sighed. So many memories contained in one house. Some good. Some not so good. And some plain awful.

Perhaps if he could get rid of some of the rubbish from the house he might cleanse it of the memories he would rather forget. Selective memory via a damn good spring-clean, that’s what he needed.

When he’d been widowed for the second time he had imagined he would more than cope with all this domestic malarkey. Nothing to it, he had thought, so long as he could boil himself an egg and remember to fill the washing-machine once a week. But he hadn’t bargained on things going wrong, or fiddly, time-consuming jobs piling up until they had the better of him.

He cursed under his breath that the Costello woman hadn’t

accepted his offer. Now she and her son were gone.

Well, good riddance! Coming here and cadging off him for free! Pah!

Clara had hoped to prove Mr Liberty wrong, but so far her search had revealed that Deaconsbridge was a launderette-free zone, just as he had said. It hadn’t been a complete waste of time, though: she now had the lie of the land and knew that there was a modest supermarket a short distance from the market square where they could stock up on supplies.

‘Ho hum,’ she said to Ned, as they circled the market square one last time, the rain coming down harder still and the long wiper blades swishing across the windscreen, ‘I guess this is one of those rare occasions when I’ll have to admit defeat. Perhaps the next campsite we stay at will have a machine we can use. Shall we get the shopping done now?’

‘Then can we go to the Mermaid cafe for lunch?’

‘Good thinking, and while we’re there, we’ll make our plans. We’ll look at the map and see if we can find a campsite we like the sound of. Oh, and something else we need to do before we leave. We must buy a large notebook and some postcards.’

Taking the next left, Clara told Ned about her idea that they should keep a diary. He liked the sound of this. ‘Ooh, can we buy some new crayons, please?’

She smiled. What was it with children and crayons? It didn’t matter how many packets you bought them, they could never have enough new ones. From the moment Ned had been old enough to grasp a crayon between his fingers, he had turned into a stationery fiend. At home, he was for ever setting out his stash of felt-tip pens, rubbers, paper-clips and pads of paper. Her mother claimed that Clara had been the same as a child, except her collection had boasted several hundred pencil-sharpeners. Apparently she had always been striving for the ultimate sharp point. ‘I think the budget will stretch to that,’ she said.

‘I’m going to draw Mr Liberty and his castle.’

‘Steady on, Ned, this is a diary we’re writing, not a horror story.’

‘And next I’ll draw the secret passageway and the tower he showed me,’ Ned said enthusiastically. ‘He told me it was full of spiders, but I didn’t see any. He also said they wore boots and had guns, but I knew he was joking. Spiders aren’t big enough to carry guns, are they, Mummy?’

‘They might need to, living with a man like Mr Liberty. Right, here we are. And thank the Lord, it’s free parking if we’re only here for an hour. Life just gets better and better, Ned.’

The supermarket was a small independent one that Clara had never heard of. Built of local stone and tinted glass, it was conspicuous among the old buildings that surrounded it.

They dashed through the rain from the van to the front of the store, grabbed a trolley and made a start. But with Ned at the helm it was only a matter of time before they crashed into someone or something. He gave the job his entire concentration, and their first target was a freezer offering two packs of chicken Kiev for the price of one and placed inconveniently in the middle of an aisle. Next they scored a direct hit on a large wire basket of Walker’s crisps. And finally, coming into the home straight, through wines and spirits, they rammed a trolley being pushed by a long-faced man in an expensive suit. Miraculously they arrived at the checkout relatively unscathed and with everything they’d gone in for, except the notebook and crayons.

There were only two checkouts in use, so they joined the one with the smallest queue. To Clara’s embarrassment, the long-faced man pulled in behind them. She noticed that his trolley contained a dozen bottles of champagne that was on special offer. For a Champagne Charlie, he looked wildly out of place. ‘Come on,’ he muttered irritably after a few minutes. He tapped an expensively shod foot impatiently. ‘What’s the hold-up?’

The question was directed at nobody in particular, and Clara had no intention of answering it. Instead, she finished loading their shopping on to the conveyor belt, and looked at the woman in front of her. She was in her mid-to late seventies, Clara reckoned, and was wearing the type of felt hat Clara’s grandmother used to wear. She looked upset and was glancing from the checkout girl to the purse in her trembling hands. She said something that Clara didn’t catch. In response an over-plucked eyebrow hitched itself skyward. ‘You what?’

Whatever the older woman had said, it wasn’t getting her

anywhere, and the girl - a sullen piece of work dressed in a pink and white overall - drummed her sparkly false nails on the till and rolled her eyes at Clara as if to say, ‘Got a right one here.’

‘Will you please get a move on?’ the suit demanded from behind Clara. ‘Unlike most people round here in Hicksville, I don’t have all day to waste.’

Queue rage, thought Clara, with disgust. She left Ned scaling the side of their trolley and went to see if she could help. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked the checkout girl.

‘Search me. The daft old bat’s not making any sense.’

Clara turned to the older woman. ‘Can I help?’

A pale anxious face, brimming with confusion and distress, looked at Clara. Trembling hands showed her the snap-fastened purse: it was empty. Oh, Lord, thought Clara, now what?

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is ridiculous. Will somebody do something?’

Clara turned and smiled sweetly at the suit. ‘For a start, you could try piping down, mate. No, better still, take your bargain-price bubbly and go and join the other queue.’

He stared at her furiously. ‘And you should try keeping your brat under control. He’s stepped on my foot three times since I’ve been standing here.’

She did the adult thing, poked her tongue out at him, then turned back to the woman and her empty purse. ‘How much is it?’ she asked the girl on the till.

‘How much is what?’

‘This customer’s bill,’ she said, slowly and with sarcastic emphasis.

‘Please, do stop me if I’m going too fast for you.’

‘It’s three pounds seventeen.’ The girl pouted.

‘Goodness, a king’s ransom.’ Digging into her bag, Clara offered her credit card. ‘Right, stick it on this and put my shopping through as fast as your helpful little fingers can manage it. Okay?’

‘Stuck-up bitch,’ the girl muttered, as Clara turned to explain the situation to the woman. She was looking even more confused and distressed.

‘There’s no need to worry,’ Clara said. ‘It’s been taken care of. I’ve paid it for you.’ But her words seemed to add to the poor woman’s anxiety and she started speaking so fast that Clara couldn’t understand what she was saying. ‘Here,’ she said slowly. ‘This is your bag of shopping. Will you be all right now?’

But the head shook again, and a hand squeezed Clara’s arm. After an agonising pause, she said, ‘You … with me.’

‘You want me to come with you?’

A smile of relief and a nod confirmed that she had understood correctly.

‘But where to?’

Another chaotic burst of words brought forth no

further illumination.

‘Do

you want me to take you home?’

Clara didn’t understand the answer, but after she had bagged up her shopping, paid for it, and insisted that she, not Ned, push the trolley, the three left the store. It was slow going as their newly acquired friend had something wrong with one of her legs and took each step, with the aid of a stick, as if she was picking her way through a minefield. They had run out of time in the car park, so Clara explained to the woman that they would have to drive to wherever it was that she lived. Getting directions was going to prove interesting, though. Then she had the idea of asking the woman to write down her address.

But when she gave the woman a piece of paper and a pen, it became evident that her hands lacked the dexterity to hold anything firmly. Nevertheless, after she had made a huge effort, Clara read the word ‘stroke’. Ah, so that was it. She asked the woman where she wanted to go. It took a long time, but ‘Second Best’ and ‘Son’

appeared.

Following the woman’s hand signals, they drove back into the market square, past the bookshop and the Deaconsbridge Arms, then took a side road called Millstone Row and there, on the corner, they saw a double-fronted shop called Second Best. There was just room to park in front of it, and through the windows Clara could see an Aladdin’s cave of bric-a-brac and second-hand furniture. Seeing that her passenger was struggling to release her seat-belt, Clara did it for her, then called through to Ned, ‘Okay, you can get out now.’

They entered the shop, their arrival heralded by a tinkling bell. It was jam-packed with corner cupboards, wardrobes and three-piece suites. There were coffee tables, bookcases, lampstands, mirrors, ornaments, and any number of chairs - dining chairs, kitchen chairs, garden chairs, even a rocking chair, which drew Ned like a magnet and bar stools. Despite the quantity of furniture and knick-knacks crammed into the confined space, there was a surprising degree of order to the shop and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was playing on a radio.