Precious Time (27 page)

He cleared his throat and mentally conceded the point to her. She was good, very good. But now they’d got to the tricky part. This was when he had to apologise. ‘Ahem … It’s a peace-offering.’

She turned slowly and he held out a tightly wrapped bunch of red tulips, their petals still closed. She didn’t say anything. Feeling a desperate compulsion to fill the awkward silence with words, he heard himself rambling out of embarrassment: ‘You rather rudely asked me the other day when was the last time I had bought anyone flowers— well, I saw these when I was in Deaconsbridge this afternoon and they reminded me of you.’

She made no move to take the tulips from him, but lowered her gaze to them. He could see the curious doubt in her eyes. ‘Reminded you of me, eh?’ she said. ‘Care to explain?’

He cleared his throat again. ‘I’ve always thought of tulips as an efficient-looking flower. Upright and businesslike. They give the impression of not wanting to waste their time frolicking about the flower-beds. In short, they strike me as purposeful. Like … like you.’

Her gaze met his. It was softer than it had been. ‘Hush now, Mr Liberty, go easy on the schmooze or you’ll have me blushing to the tips of my ears. But you mentioned they were an apology. For what exactly?’

‘You wouldn’t be trying to extract blood from a stone, would you?’

‘But of course. That goes without saying. So, come on, let’s hear it.

And no mumbling. I like apologies to be loud and clear. Then I can be sure they’re genuine.’

Corralling what was left of his shaky resolve, he pulled at his nose, scratched his chin, and tried to recall the exact words he had prepared for this moment while driving back from town. He pictured himself as a newsreader, lifting the words from an auto-cue, but trying to add some meaning to them. ‘I just want to say that I’ve been left with a nasty taste in my mouth after that incident with your son.

I had no business prying into your affairs and I wanted you to know just how sorry I am.’ His mission completed, he clumsily thrust the flowers at her and turned to flee.

He was nearly at the door when she said, ‘That was really quite good, Mr Liberty. Full marks for content but running off before taking a final bow loses you valuable points when it comes to artistic expression.’

He didn’t risk looking at her, kept his face to the door. ‘Please don’t make fun of me. Not when I’m—’

‘Trying to be nice?’ she finished for him. ‘Now, why don’t you come back here and let me thank you properly? That’s if you have the nerve.’

It was a challenge he couldn’t refuse. He’d never been short of nerve. Who did she think she was to accuse him of such a thing? But when he stood in front of her again and she raised herself on her toes and softly kissed his cheek, he wondered if he hadn’t met his match.

‘We’ll make a decent human being of you yet, Mr Liberty.’ She smiled.

Caught so thoroughly off guard, he couldn’t stop himself from lifting a hand to his cheek and touching, with his fingertips, the spot where he could still feel the light pressure of where her lips had been.

Then he discovered he hadn’t shaved that day. Had he even washed?

Burning with self-loathing, he edged away from her.

Still smiling at him, she said, ‘I hope you’re not going to withdraw your offer of supper.’

With a supreme effort of will, and managing to sound his normal self, he said, ‘You should know well enough by now that I’m a man of my word. But don’t expect anything other than plain fare. I’ve got some boil-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce knocking about in the freezer. Jonah keeps buying it for me and I keep forgetting to eat it. Is that good enough for her ladyship and her son?’

‘Quite good enough. Talking of Ned, where is he?’

Glad of the diversion, he led her out of the dining room and along the hall. ‘I took the liberty - no pun intended - of buying him a little something while I was in Deaconsbridge.’

In the kitchen, Ned was kneeling on a chair, his head bent over the table. When they came in he looked up. ‘Mummy, Mr Liberty

bought me a scrapbook and some postcards. I’ve been drawing a picture of his house. Do you like it?’

Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel watched the boy’s mother anxiously. Had he overstepped the mark? Would she think he was interfering? But he had only done it because the boy had told him during their walk before lunch that she had forgotten to buy them for him. ‘We’re going to keep a diary of our holiday,’ Ned had said, releasing himself from Gabriel’s grasp and running on ahead like a giddy spring lamb.

‘Don’t go too far without me,’ he had called after the lad, his voice catching on the wind. ‘Your mother said you had to stay close to me.

And if I have to go home and tell her I’ve lost you, she’ll have my guts for garters.’

The boy had slowed down until Gabriel caught up with him.

‘What are guts and garters?’ he had asked.

Prodding at his small belly, he said, ‘Guts are inside there, your squelchy innards. And garters are elastic bands that people used to wear years ago to hold up their socks.’

Considering this, the boy had unzipped his anorak and felt his stomach through his clothes. ‘But how would Mummy get your guts out?’

‘Depending how angry she was, and bearing in mind I’d just told her I’d lost you, she might take a large knife to me and cut my stomach open.’ He drew a line from his own chest down to his trouser belt. ‘Then she’d take a stick and coil my innards around it.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, she might hang them up on the washing-line and let them dry before cutting them into the required lengths for the garters.’

‘Would she sew you up afterwards?’

‘Probably with the biggest, rustiest and bluntest needle she could lay her hands on.’

They continued their walk, the child’s small warm hand now locked in his. Gabriel was taking Ned to the copse where he hoped to show him a badger’s sett. As they took the downward slope of the field, their muddy shoes skidding on the wet grass, and a nippy wind hustling them from behind, Ned said, ‘I don’t believe you, Mr Liberty.’

‘Hmm … what don’t you believe?’

‘About Mummy and your squelchy bits.’

‘You think I’d tell you lies?’

‘You were joking, weren’t you? Are you frightened of my

mummy?’

‘Good Lord! Frightened of a slip of girl like your mother? Now it’s you who’s joking.’

But standing in the kitchen, as Gabriel awaited her verdict on his purchases, which had now been added to the bonanza of coloured pencils and glue that covered the table, he had to admit that part of him was scared of her - of stepping on her toes and offending her.

He watched her move in beside the lad. She stroked the top of his head absently and studied his drawing. ‘Ned, it’s brilliant. How clever of you to draw the tower so well.’ She placed the tulips on the table and bent down to his level for a closer inspection. ‘But, my goodness, who is that handsome man?’

The boy beamed. ‘Mr Liberty.’

Curious, Gabriel drew near to see how he had been depicted.

Expecting to see a scowling old man with wild hair, he saw instead an enormous matchstick man who dwarfed the tower of his house which bore an uncanny resemblance to the leaning one in Pisa. His massive head was wearing a ridiculously large pair of ears, and stretched between them was a crescent-shaped smile. ‘You’ve forgotten my nose,’ he said.

The boy reached for a coloured pencil and gave the matchstick man a pastel pink swirl that obliterated one of his eyes.

‘Perfect,’ his mother praised him. ‘And thank you, Mr Liberty.

You couldn’t have given Ned a better present. It was very kind and thoughtful of you.’

Twirling the pencil in his hand, then trying to balance it on his top lip, the boy said, ‘Mr Liberty said he’d help me with some of the writing tomorrow.’

‘But only if you’re good,’ Gabriel said, moving away from the table and crossing the kitchen to the freezer compartment above the fridge. When he had finished rummaging through the bags of frozen peas and sweetcorn, and had found the stockpiled cod in parsley sauce, he realised that Miss Costello was standing behind him.

‘What’s that smirk on your face for?’ he asked.

‘You wouldn’t be going soft on me, would you?’

‘Of course not. I’m feathering my own bed. By keeping the boy out of mischief I’m ensuring that you get more work done. I don’t want you having an excuse for slacking.’

‘And while I’m not slacking, I’ll defrost that for you tomorrow …

and in case you’re wondering, I’m referring to the freezer, not your frosty exterior.’

To round things off, Clara decided that they would eat their supper in the room she had spent all day cleaning. It had proved a lot less trouble to sort out than the kitchen. The dining room had been left to its own devices and it was more a matter of treating neglect to a large dose of tender loving care.

She had started by throwing open the windows and letting in some much-needed fresh air, then vacuuming the parquet floor, the rugs and the curtains. Using a full-height ladder she had found in an outhouse, and putting the vacuum cleaner on to its lowest setting, so as not to shred the brittle fabric damaged by years of exposure to sunlight, she had carefully removed the thick blankets of dust. Balls of fluff the size of walnuts were rounded up from under the mahogany table, chair legs and the corners of the room, and thick legged spiders found themselves given short shrift and an abrupt change of address.

Next she had dusted the faded wood panelling that went from floor to ceiling, and the framed antique maps of Derbyshire that hung on it. Then she cleared out the contents of the sideboard and the matching pair of glass-fronted cabinets that stood at either side of the fireplace. She immediately wished she hadn’t. There was so much of it. Quite apart from the hundreds of crystal wine glasses, brandy balloons and whisky tumblers, all of which needed careful washing, there was a mind-blowing quantity of elegant but tarnished silverware: teapots, coffee-pots, cream jugs, coasters, sugar tongs, snuff boxes, candlesticks, candle snuffers and tea strainers. And every item had a brother or sister. It occurred to Clara, as she spread out the sheets of newspaper and set to with the silver polish, that everything in the house, except its owner, was multiplied by a factor of at least three. It had been the same in the kitchen yesterday: if she found one Kenwood mixer, she unearthed a whole family of them. It made her wonder who had collected a hoard. Surely not Mr Liberty. His wives probably. Perhaps out of pure devilment he had considered leaving the mess for his children to deal with when he departed, just to teach them one last lesson.

Now, as Clara set the table for supper, with cutlery, mats, glasses, her lovely red tulips and a candelabrum at one end, she thought of the youngest member of the Liberty family she had met last night. He had seemed pleasant enough, which paradoxically had made her dislike him on principle. His slightly hesitant manner had irritated her, had made her want to say, ‘How dare you live on the doorstep and do so little to help? Anyone can fetch the weekly shop. How about scrubbing the floor or cleaning the toilet?’

Mr Liberty seemed greatly amused by the splendour of the setting for their simple boil-in-the-bag supper. He had wanted to eat in the kitchen, but Clara had insisted on showing off her efforts, barring anyone entry until she had everything just right.

‘Ta-daa!’ she chorused, when at last she allowed him and Ned to come in.

She watched his face as he stood for a moment, taking in the scene, a large tray of steaming food in his hands. Even to her critical eyes the room looked and smelt magnificent. Darkness was pressing in from outside, so she had drawn the heavy brocade curtains and lit the room with candles, their flickering flames bouncing soft light off the furniture and panelled walls. There was a warm, burnished look of opulence to the room and copious amounts of fresh air and lavender polish had seen off the musty, depressing smell of neglect.

Ned’s eyes were wide and luminous. ‘It’s like Christmas,’ he said.

‘Only bigger.’

Mr Liberty set down the tray on the table and made a low bow.

‘Another day, another miracle for you, Miss Costello. I applaud you once again. A small point, though. Where did all the candles come from? I had no idea I had so many.’

‘I found them on a shelf in the laundry room. Some of them are so old they’re probably medieval church relics.’

‘Well, just so long as we don’t go up in flames. Will we be warm enough in here, do you think?’ He cast his eyes over to the empty grate in the fireplace, where she had placed a pottery jug of daffodils picked from the garden.

‘I wanted to light a fire but thought I wouldn’t risk it. As well as antique candles you’re probably the proud owner of a ton of antique soot. I’ll get hold of a chimney sweep. But for now, I’m starving.’

Despite the blandness of the meal, it was their most convivial so far - the second bottle of Chablis they were roaring through might have had something to do with that. Ned, who was sitting on two cushions and a telephone directory to get him up to the right height, and who was surprisingly perky for one whose bedtime should have been more than an hour ago, was telling her Mr Liberty’s gory tale of guts and garters when Clara heard a sound and interrupted. ‘What was that?’ She cocked her head towards the door.

‘What was what?’ asked Mr Liberty.

She allowed him to top up her glass. ‘I must be spending too much time with you, I’m going mad and hearing things.’

He crashed his glass against hers. ‘Here’s to you. May you always speak your mind!’

‘Just you try and stop me.’

‘I suspect I’d need a Panzer tank to stop you doing something you’d put your mind to.’

They were both mid-laugh when Clara noticed the door open

slowly at the far end of the room. She froze. Mr Liberty turned to see what she was looking at. A smartly dressed man had come in. Clara would have recognised him anywhere. It was the long-faced rude man from the supermarket with the trolley of bargain-priced champagne.

‘Hello, Father,’ he said, in a pompously creepy voice. ‘Do hope I’m not interrupting anything.’