Precious Time (28 page)

‘As a matter of fact you are interrupting. What is this? Suddenly everyone’s treating my home as if it was Liberty Hall.’

Caspar forced a smile. ‘Never underestimate those old jokes, Dad.’

He stepped further into the candlelit room, his leather-soled shoes sounding loud in the sudden hush. ‘Liberty Hall indeed.’ His words were directed at his father, but he was more interested in Gabriel’s dining companions, in particular the woman: the scheming Miss Costello. Though she was scruffily dressed in khaki trousers (he’d got that right!) and a loose-fitting T-shirt stained with something he didn’t care to think about too deeply, and had the kind of childish, unattractive haircut he never approved of on a grown woman, she didn’t match up to the pierced, tattooed, New Age scrounger he’d pictured.

But appearances could be deceiving.

It was odd, though: the more he looked at her and the child, the more he felt he had come across them before. But where?

He could see that she was appraising him, and that his presence was not to her liking. Which confirmed his hunch: she was working a number on the old man but now knew that she had been confronted with a spanner in the works. Well, get ready, little lady, you’re going to be out of here before you get your feet any further under the table.

‘Caspar, are you going to stand there all night gawping at us?’ his father barked. ‘Or are you going to share with us what’s brought you here? Or perhaps you were just passing through and thought you’d check up on your dear old pater. Make sure he hadn’t snuffed it in his bed.’

‘Passing through’ was exactly the cover Caspar had decided to use and he slipped seamlessly into his prepared speech, pulling out a chair beside his father and imposing himself on the cosy scene of candles, flowers and best silver. ‘As it happens I am just passing through,’ he said. ‘I’ve been to see baby bro Jonah. I had no idea how concerned he is about you.’

Gabriel snorted. ‘Hah! That’ll be the day, when any of you worry about me.’

Caspar laughed expansively. ‘Come on, Dad, there’s no need to take that line. You know jolly well that we all care about you. But where are your manners? Aren’t you going to introduce me to your dinner guests?’ He leaned across the table, hand outstretched.

‘Caspar Liberty, your humble servant and eldest custodian of my father’s welfare. And you are?’

He had intended his words as a warning shot, but when his hand was ignored and Gabriel said, ‘Is there any need to introduce you?’

he felt the full force of one of his father’s warning shots.

‘Sorry, Dad, you’ve lost me. You know I’m no good at cryptic clues. That’s much more your scene, what with all the crosswords you do. Any chance of a glass of that wine?’

‘Cut it out, Caspar. I know exactly why you’re here. And it won’t do.’ Gabriel slapped one of his knobbly hands on the table. The cutlery rattled and the small boy with staring dark eyes jumped and leaned in towards his mother.

‘Steady on, Dad, you’re frightening your guests. An unforgivable breach of etiquette in anyone’s book. In some quarters poisoning one’s guests is an acceptable mishap, but to scare them to death—’

‘Caspar, while I’m familiar with the fact that you listen to nothing but the echo of your own voice, my guests are not so well informed, so will you do them a great kindness and shut up?’

‘I think it’s time we were going, Mr Liberty.’

The scheming minx was on her feet now and staring pointedly at him. But as she manhandled the child out of his seat and hooked his short legs around her waist, Caspar saw how small she was. Not the glowering Amazon she had appeared while seated. Quite insignificant, really.

‘There’s no need for you to leave, Miss Costello,’ his father said.

‘In fact, I would rather you stayed.’ The voice was imperious, as Caspar remembered it from his childhood - ‘You’ll stay right where you are, young man. You’ll leave this room on my say-so, and not before.’

‘No can do, Mr Liberty. Ned’s tired and I need to get him to bed.

Same time tomorrow morning?’

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‘As you wish, Miss Costello. Goodnight.’

What was all this? ‘As you wish, Miss Costello’ and ‘No can do, Mr Liberty’} What kind of game did they think they were playing?

The door closed silently behind her, signalling that Caspar could get down to business. He pushed back his chair and turned to face his father. But Gabriel was ahead of him and gained the advantage by creaking to his feet. ‘I hope you’re satisfied, Caspar,’ he glowered down at him, ‘because for the first time in a long while I was enjoying myself, but as usual, you had to spoil everything. Nothing changes with you, does it?’

Caspar’s jaw dropped. Good God, it was worse than he’d thought.

The old fool had got it bad. He didn’t know whether to laugh or jump out of his seat in horror. He played it cool, preferring to extract as much embarrassing detail from his father as possible. ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Dad. What exactly did I interrupt here this evening?’ He cast his eyes meaningfully over the remnants of the candlelit dinner.

Standing by the fireplace, one clenched fist jammed into his side, the other on the mantel his father stared at him. Then his withered features acquired a firmness that was both vital and tenaciously implacable. Inexplicably, he began to laugh. A nasty sneering laugh that started as a low rumble until it grew into a full-blown body shaker before climaxing in a fit of wheezy coughing. Sweet Moses!

Any more attacks like that and the man would kill himself! Caspar stood up. ‘You all right, Dad?’

Gasping for breath, Gabriel swiped Caspar out of the way as if he were a fly. He moved back to the table and took a swig from his wine glass, then another. Just as he was confident that he had his breathing under control, he almost started to laugh again. The situation was hilarious.

Bloody hilarious!

Caspar, poor stupid, greedy Caspar, thought his father had finally lost his marbles and fallen for the charms of a pretty girl! Ha, ha ha!

Well, let the arrogant buffoon think what he wanted.

‘Are you going to tell me what you were laughing at, Dad?’

Using all his guile, Gabriel kept his face poker straight and joined Caspar by the fireplace. He put a fatherly arm around his son’s shoulder. ‘Caspar, I know this may come as a shock to you. To be honest, it’s been a seismic shock to me. The thing is, I’m fairly well smitten with the lovely Miss Costello. But you must have grasped that. You’ve seen what a beautiful woman she is. She’s stunning, isn’t she? Intelligent. Poised. And utterly charming. Quite a catch for an old thing like me.’

To his delight he felt his son stiffen and it was all he could do to stop himself grinning. He sighed the sigh of a man hopelessly in love and continued to turn the screw. ‘And for some reason that is quite beyond my comprehension, she seems besotted with me. So, what I’m trying to say is, and I know she’s much too young for an old duffer like me, but how do you feel about a new stepmother? Your approval matters to me, you know.’

There was little to be gained from telling Caspar to calm down Jonah had tried that already only to provoke a louder and more

incoherent outburst - so he poured his brother a glass of wine.

Caspar took the glass and tossed back half of its contents in one gulp. To Jonah’s relief, it brought him to a standstill, and he repeated, more calmly, what he had said on his arrival at Church Cottage. ‘This proves beyond all doubt, that the old man is definitely losing it.’

‘You still haven’t said—’

But Caspar was off again. ‘I warned you something like this could happen. But would you listen to me? Oh, no, you had to carry on as you always do with your head buried in the sand. Maybe now you’ll take more notice of what I say.’

‘I might listen if you started talking sense,’ Jonah replied, keeping his voice level. ‘What’s happened to cause such a rush of blood to your normally temperate head?’

‘Oh, please, save the witty sarcasm for your brain-dead pupils.

Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’

‘Every syllable, but I still haven’t a clue as to what you’re raving on about.’

Caspar’s face hardened. ‘Look, Jonah, our father is on the verge of marrying for the third time. Do you have any idea where that will leave us? Out in the cold, that’s where.’

‘Who is he thinking of marrying?’

‘The gold-digging Miss Mop.’

‘But that can’t be right.’ Jonah was stunned.

Caspar regarded him pityingly. ‘Of course it’s not! But I’m pleased to see that I’m finally getting through to you. We’ve got to put a stop to this nonsense … Any more of this lighter fuel going?’

Jonah poured the remains of the bottle into Caspar’s empty glass.

Reaching for the corkscrew, he opened a second, wondering if the joke he had played on his brother had been trumped by a bigger one from their father. He simply could not equate the assured woman he had met yesterday with one who would be interested in marrying a man like Gabriel Liberty. Or was it possible that Caspar was right, that the efficient Miss Costello was nothing but a scheming gold digger? He recalled how jealous he had felt in the kitchen at Mermaid House that she had an empathy with Gabriel that few other people had ever had, least of all the members of his family.

But despite this, he couldn’t go along with Caspar’s theory. There had been nothing in her manner to suggest that she was up to anything so devious as fooling an elderly man into marrying her for financial gain. But then why was she at Mermaid House?

He leaned against the Rayburn. ‘Right, Caspar, tell me exactly what Dad said to you. Try to remember his exact words. Don’t exaggerate.’

Caspar rolled his eyes. ‘Stop treating me like a fool, Jonah. I may have flunked university, which Dad has never let me forget, but credit me with sufficient intelligence to read the signs. And it was you who alerted me to what was going on in the first place. If you hadn’t told me on the phone last night—’

‘Just tell me what he said.’

‘My, how snappy you are these days. He asked me how I felt about having a new stepmother. And I think that even you can grasp the significance of that. He also said that he was smitten by the lovely Miss Costello and that she was equally besotted with him. And he put his arm round my shoulders.’ He shuddered and took a long sip of his wine. ‘I can’t remember the last time he touched me.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Plenty, most of which makes me cringe to think of it. Once he got started it was impossible to shut him up. He even asked me for my advice as to where they should honeymoon, and if I thought it might be worth his while to see the quack about some Viagra! He’s certifiable if you ask me.’ He put down his glass, tugged at the white cuffs of his shirt that poked out from his jacket sleeves, then straightened his cufflinks. ‘Do you suppose that’s a line we could pursue? Put a stop to the marriage by proving he’s not in his right senses?’

Having listened to Caspar, Jonah was doubly suspicious that his brother had been duped. Never in a million years could he see their father seeking advice about Viagra. That put the tin lid on it as far as Jonah was concerned. The more he thought about it the more convinced he was that, just as their father had enjoyed pulling a fast one on Dr Singh with Miss Costello’s help, so he had with Caspar.

But why couldn’t Caspar see that? ‘Did the object of Dad’s affections have anything to say on the matter?’

‘No. This all happened after she’d left us alone. They were in the middle of a romantic candlelit dinner when I arrived.’

‘And her son?’

‘Oh, he was there too.’

‘So, a romantic dinner a trois, then?’

Caspar looked at him hard. ‘She could hardly have left him sitting on the doorstep with a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps.’

Side-stepping, Jonah said, ‘I think our best policy is to stay quiet and see how things progress.’

‘Oh, that’s bloody typical of you, isn’t it? Some tart is planning a move on our inheritance and you want to pretend nothing’s going on. Don’t you care that if Miss Costello becomes the third Mrs Liberty, we can kiss goodbye to Mermaid House?’

‘You speak as though you have a right to it,’ Jonah said.

Caspar’s expression grew tight, and his nostrils flared just like their father’s. ‘That’s because I do. A share of Mermaid House is my birthright. I hardly need point out to you that it’s what our mother would have wanted for each of us.’

There was absolutely nothing Jonah could say to this last, dangerously weighted comment, so he kept quiet and waited for his brother to leave.

The next morning Jonah’s curiosity had got the better of him, and after calling in at Kwik-Fit to have a new exhaust pipe fitted, he drove out on to Hollow Edge Moor.

Thick banks of clouds were being dragged across the sky and a blustery wind buffeted the car; rain was imminent. Only a few hardy walkers dressed in full-length cagoules with knapsacks were braving the elements up on the ridge, their distant figures leaning into the wind. Black-legged lambs sheltered with their mothers in the lee of a drystone wall, and the recent warm spring weather was now a distant memory. But the dismal nature of the day didn’t bother Jonah: he found it invigorating.

As the brooding outline of Mermaid House came into view he felt a stab of doubt. What did he hope to achieve by seeing his father again? ‘Two visits in one week, Jonah?’ Gabriel would sneer.

‘Suddenly I’m the most popular man in the Peak District.’

He supposed that, deep down, he hoped he was right that his father had played a prank on Caspar and might want to let him in on it.

‘Sibling rivalry makes fools of us all,’ he muttered, as he drove through the archway and parked alongside Miss Costello’s camper van, noting the appearance of a large yellow skip.

He switched off the engine and felt nothing but contempt for himself. Why hadn’t he just told Caspar last night that he thought their father was having a laugh at his expense?

Because they were all so used to fighting one another.