Precious Time (31 page)

Eventually it was decided, between Caspar and Pamson, that we would organise a surprise party the following Saturday for Jonah, and that it would coincide with the day/their father was returning from his three-week trip to Helsinki. I should have smelt a rat when Caspar and Damson insisted I didn’t mention what we were doing to Gabriel, but I was so caught up in my own pride and vanity that I was finally forging a link with the twins that I didn’t see the warning signs. Oh, if only I had! The pair of them made the invitations - pieces of paper with a cake drawn on (rather crudely in my opinion, given their age), and I wrote out the envelopes with the addresses of Jonah’s little friends from his nursery school. These were duly posted - or so I thought + by Caspar and Damson, who even today after all the commotion, swore blind they had walked to the end of the drive and handed them over to the postman, but I just know that if I were: to tackle Mr Potts, he would confirm that no such thing occurred.

Meantime, I had forged ahead with the shopping and baking, and last night while the children slept, I worked like a mad thing in the Banqueting Hall, blowing up balloons, setting out the trestle tables, decorating them with colourful paper tablecloths, paper plates and cups. I put a tape-recorder on a table in front of the fireplace so that we could have games of musical chairs and pass the parcel, and before going to bed I iced the cake I’d made that morning, giving it the finishing touch of ‘Happy Birthday Jonah’ and placing four blue candles, one at each corner.

Then this morning, and on Caspar and Damson’s instructions, I wished Jonah a happy birthday but kept quiet about the present we had for him - the twins had claimed that it wouldn’t be fair to their father for Jonah to open it without him being there to share the moment. Again, I should have thought something was wrong when Jonah didn’t pursue the matter. He just looked at the card I had given him, turned it over and ran his fingers over the embossed picture of a little boy flying along at top speed on a bicycle. So intent was his scrutiny, it was as though he had never seen anything like it before.

Why, oh why, didn’t I put two and two together? Why didn’t I question the fact that in the run-up to his birthday he never once referred to it? In my defence I shall have to put it down to my ignorance of children and their mores. Jonah’s quietness is also a factor. I’ve never come across anyone with more natural reticence.

Rarely does he speak unless spoken to directly, and even then his words are so reluctantly given one can hardly make them out.

‘Speak up!’ Gabriel yells at him. ‘Stop muttering!’ But that only makes it worse, as I often tell him. Jonah needs someone in his life with a gentler manner than his father has. Someone with the patience to tease out the words, to give him the confidence he so badly lacks. I can’t imagine what kind of nannies these children have had in the past. The twins are practically out of control, little better than savages. In contrast, Jonah has the anxious look of somebody who’s lost a shilling and found sixpence.

Just after breakfast, Gabriel phoned to say that his flight was going to be delayed, but he hoped to be home by three, which unbeknown to him, meant he would miss the first hour of the party. But I wasn’t deterred. At least he would be there for when it came to blowing out the candles on the cake and singing Happy Birthday to Jonah. By now I was almost as excited as a small child myself, imagining the delight on Gabriel’s face when he walked into the middle of his youngest son’s party. But by half past three, my excitement left me. Not one child had shown up. Poor Jonah, there he was, standing in the Banqueting Hall wearing a party hat with a long feather poking out from the top that Damson had made him wear, tearful bewilderment all over his face.

‘Looks like no one’s going to turn up,’ Caspar said, helping himself to a cocktail sausage and flicking the stick on to the floor.

Jonah went over to the tables, stared hard at the plates of crisps, sandwiches and jugs of juice. There was such a look on his face. I couldn’t fathom it for the life of me. And then we heard the sound of a car. It was Gabriel. The twins rushed to meet him, but Jonah came and stood next to me. If I had known better, I would have realised he was frightened. The next thing to happen was that Gabriel came marching in, knocking a bunch of balloons out of the way that was hanging above the door. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he roared. ‘Whose idea was this?’ Jonah stepped behind me - dear God, he was actually hiding from his own father! I could feel his small body shaking against my legs.

It breaks my heart to say what happened next, but Gabriel

continued to shout, oblivious to the harm he was doing to Jonah, and probably has been doing these last four years. In the end I took hold of Jonah who looked as if he was going to be sick with fright and carried him across the courtyard and inside the main part of the house. Gabriel followed, the twins at either side of him, and told me I had had no right to do what I had. ‘But why?’ I demanded - I was close to tears myself now. And then it all came tumbling out. Jonah’s birthday was never celebrated because that was the day his mother - Gabriel’s first wife - had died. ‘So - so why didn’t anybody tell me?’ I stammered, my stomach sinking right down to my toes, my head feeling light with shock. ‘It’s not something I care to mention,’ Gabriel snapped back at me. ‘And what about Jonah?’ I pressed - the poor lad was still burying himself in my skirt. ‘Doesn’t he deserve better than this?’ I got no answer, and after Gabriel had stormed off, the twins trailing in his wake, I was left to explain to Jonah that there had been a terrible mix-up. Oh, my saints! What an understatement! Just as Jonah must have thought he was at last having his very own birthday party, it was snatched away from him. And he never said a word. Just stood there holding back the tears, his chin up, his eyes blinking rapidly. I bent down and hugged him. ‘Don’t worry, darling, you’ll have your party if it’s the last thing I do.’

Silently cursing Caspar and Damson’s deviousness - my

goodness, how that sly pair took me for a fool and manipulated me for their own pleasure! - I knew that from then on I would have my work cut out bringing this family together.

There was a gap of several weeks before Val took up her pen again. It seemed she had won herself, and Jonah, a small but important victory. From the little she had read of the diaries, Clara decided that based on the randomness of the entries, and their heated, exasperated content, Val only wrote when she needed to get something off her chest. It made Clara wonder if the poor woman had had any friends to whom she could turn. And if she hadn’t, how awful it must have been for her to be so isolated at Mermaid House where there was so much to contend with.

Never did I think I would have to assume the role of mediating diplomat to the extent I have. An agreement has been reached.

Jonah is to be allowed to celebrate his birthday, but on the condition that it’s done a week after the official date. According to Gabriel, this will give the memory of his first wife the degree of respect it deserves.

I know very little about the woman I have replaced, other than what her portrait in the library tells me - that she was beautiful and serene, with an edge of fun-loving determination beneath her gentle surface. To my shame, I am now desperate to listen to the snatches of gossip that come my way during my shopping trips into Deaconsbridge, as well as the snippets of information the cleaning lady lets slip. Until now I had forced myself not to dig too deeply into Gabriel’s previous marriage, accepting his silence quite readily and acknowledging that the past was best left to deal with itself. But regrettably my shield of common sense has dropped and I’m eager for the smallest of details.

Also to my shame, I’m beginning to wonder if I didn’t agree to this marriage a little too hastily. Would it have been so very bad to remain alone and unmarried? Hindsight tells me I should have got to know Gabriel better before I accepted his proposal, but I suppose we both saw the convenient opportunities each could offer the other. But how will I ever manage Caspar and Damson?

Of course I understand that they’re both hurting from losing their mother at so young and tender an age but, really, at some point in their lives they are going to have to knuckle down and move on. But there I go again, being too hard on them. I must

remember that when all is said and done, they are only children.

Clara’s eyelids were drooping, so she turned out the light reluctantly, but instead of falling asleep, her thoughts turned to Jonah and lunch that day, when they had been sitting at the table in the kitchen. She had watched him talking to his father as he served him a portion of tuna and pasta salad, and had realised that what she had previously condemned as his irritating casual manner was an act.

The relaxed body language was there to cover his uneasiness: the reserve between father and son could not have been greater. And reflecting on his inability to do more than the weekly shop for his father, Clara wondered if this was the only way he felt able to help a man he was scared of. Admittedly, twenty-four hours ago she would have trounced him as a wimp for not standing up to his father, but now she was seeing things differently. She saw not a grown man but a small boy hiding behind the skirts of a woman he scarcely knew while his father ranted at his audacity in wanting to celebrate the day he was born.

And what of Gabriel Liberty? What heartbreak had he buried beneath that gruff exterior? What bitterness did he still harbour over his children’s refusal to carry on the family business?

The next morning Clara woke early, made herself a cup of tea careful not let the kettle whistle and disturb Ned - then slipped back into bed to carry on where she had left off last night. The diary had moved on to 1973.

Tuesday 29 August.

Goodness! Gabriel left this morning on another of his big trips - it’s Oslo this time, inspecting a pipeline he’s supplied something or other for - and I feel like I’m living in a madhouse! Last week Caspar and Damson told the vicar I’d converted the household to Catholicism, which of course I haven’t, I merely suggested that something a little more uplifting than the low-church service at St Edmund’s would suit me better, to which Gabriel had snorted and called me a papist candle-worshipper … oh dear, I seem to be losing the thread here. What I was trying to say was that on top of that Caspar and Damson have now developed a morbid

fascination with death and have been carrying out mock funerals with anything dead they’ve found on the hills and moors. Added to which, they now dress up like something out of a Gothic romance. I’ve no idea where or how they’ve got hold of the outfits, but they spend their days drifting about the house in black velvet cloaks. Damson spends her evenings winding her long hair up with bits of rag - a pillow case is missing from her bed I notice - so that in the morning she has what she thinks is an authentic hairstyle. Most suitable for 1973, I’m sure! She wears an old cotton nightdress under her cloak and seems to be modelling herself on Cathy in Wuthering Heights. Caspar,

complete with riding boots and a floppy white shirt - drooping cuffs, limp collar - is a latterday Lord Byron. Oh, yes, he even has an absurd hat! Yesterday they spent all day out on the moors. When I asked them what they had been up to, they had looked at me as though I had no right to ask such a question.

With a vagueness that made me want to take a rolled-up

newspaper to them, Caspar had waved a book of poetry under my nose and said, ‘If you must know, we were reading poetry.’

While I applaud anyone for extending their knowledge, I can’t help but think I’d prefer them to be more like other teenagers.

Normal teenagers. What I wouldn’t do to be worried about

trivial matters like Damson defacing her bedroom walls with posters of pop stars and sighing from dawn till dusk with the ache of an unrequited crush on some boy or other, and Caspar pestering for a motorbike. I mean, that’s what teenagers are about, aren’t they? I wonder if it isn’t just a little unhealthy the way Caspar and Damson cling to each other. I hardly dare bring myself to write this, but every time I look at them with their arms linked, their eyes fixed on each other, I come over with the most awful feeling. Surely I’m wrong? Oh, please let me be wrong. Please let their bizarre behaviour - this exclusive need to be apart from others, to scorn the rest of the world for its ignorance - be an adolescent phase. Nothing more worrying.

Nothing untoward.

Saturday 18 November.

Just as I thought life was beginning to settle down, the building bricks of normality, which I have been so carefully arranging, have come tumbling down on me yet again. For the fourth time in as many weeks, Jonah has run away from school. But at least now Gabriel will have to do something; he will have to get his stubborn head out of the sand and do something!

Knowing that Jonah has been so unhappy makes me feel

negligent and useless. For some time now I had thought perhaps we had turned the corner with him. He was beginning to come out of his shell, talking more. Well, talking more to me - the moment his brother and sister showed their faces (or his father) he clammed up. Reports from school also confirmed that he was making good progress, claiming that he was ‘participating’ more actively. He had even joined in with a few clubs and was

spending less time on his own. It had all sounded so encouraging, as if, at long last he was through the worst of it. But then the phone call came from school to say that he had tried to run away, but we were not to worry. He had been found by a keen eyed teacher who had come across him hitching a lift as she drove to school. ‘All under control, Mrs Liberty,’ the housemaster said. ‘Most of the little devils try it at some time or

other.’ His tone was oily and patronising, though he probably thought he was reassuring me.

The third time it happened I suggested to Gabriel that we

ought to review the situation, which was a phrase Jonah’s housemaster had used on the phone when he called to say that Jonah