Precious Time (32 page)

had been found sleeping in a bus shelter: ‘Perhaps, Mrs Liberty, it’s time for us all to review the situation.’ In response to this, Gabriel declared that Jonah was attention-seeking, that he just had to face facts - certain things in life were damned unpleasant but one simply had to square one’s shoulders and accept one’s lot. No further comment.

No further comment! Honestly, I could have hit him with a

frying-pan!!

But instead of confronting Gabriel as I know I should have done, I phoned the housemaster and demanded to know what

they were doing to Jonah to cause him so much unhappiness.

‘What kind of a school are you running, that you allow children in your care to sleep rough in bus shelters?’

‘I understand your concern, Mrs Liberty, but let me assure you, we do the best we can. But if a pupil isn’t prepared to cooperate, then frankly, it’s an uphill struggle and there’s not a lot we can do.’

Cooperate!

Uphill struggle!

Where was the love and support these children needed? And, yes, I noticed that not once in the conversation did the

thoroughly irksome little man refer to Jonah as a child. He was nothing but a lump to be added to the sausage-meat that would be squeezed through the machine and pushed out the other side as a supposedly mature and responsible member of society.

‘He’s not happy,’ I told Gabriel, when the fourth phone call came. This blatant truth was reinforced by the headmaster (we were obviously above the level of mere housemaster now), when he summoned us to school to discuss the matter. Gabriel tried to wriggle out of the appointment, but I was having none of it.

‘You will do this one small thing, Gabriel Liberty, or you will live to regret it.’ It was the sternest I had ever been with him.

So there we were, in the bone-chilling inner sanctum of the headmaster’s study, to discuss Jonah’s fate. Gabriel was still of the opinion that Jonah needed to take the rough with the

smooth, but I stuck my neck out (I knew I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t) and said, ‘I have seen and heard nothing here this afternoon to convince me that this is the right environment for a sensitive boy like Jonah.’ Once Gabriel had got his furious throat rattling under control, the headmaster said, ‘I’m inclined to agree with you, Mrs Liberty. And let me tell you, rarely do I agree with parents on the issue of what they think is best for their offspring. Not enough objectivity in my opinion. But, in Jonah’s case, I wholeheartedly agree that he would benefit from a

different school.’

Yes, I thought, as we drove home with Jonah looking ashen

faced in the back of the car, you’re washing your hands of a problem child who challenges the whole ethos of your horrible school.

Gabriel can’t stomach the notion that he is the father of a problem child. ‘There’s no shame involved,’ I told him, as he gripped the steering-wheel with steam practically coming out of his ears. His face was grim and he made no response, but I saw his eyes flicker to the rear-view mirror to look at his son in disgust.

Poor Jonah, eight years old and the weight and guilt of the world squarely on his young inadequate shoulders.

The sound of creaking from Ned’s bed above the cab had Clara snapping the diary shut and sliding it under her mattress. She waited for him to make his way down the short ladder before slipping into bed with her to claim his all-important first hug of the day.

Just in time she remembered what day it was. When he appeared at her side, she said, ‘Ooh, Ned, what’s that on your nose?’

His hand flew to his face. ‘What?’ he said, alarmed.

‘April Fool!’ She laughed. Pulling him into bed with her, she planted a huge kiss on his cheek then blew the fruitiest of raspberries into his warm neck. As he squealed, giggled and wriggled, the strength of her love for him rose up within her and she held him tightly, vowing never to make him unhappy as Jonah Liberty had been. And God forbid that you should ever end up with a sadistic sibling like Caspar or Damson, she thought.

A better person might be prepared to make allowances for people like the Libertys because they had never truly come to terms with the death of Anastasia, who had been such a central figure in their lives, but Clara thought that nothing in the world would ever make her feel sympathetic towards Caspar and his freaky-sounding twin sister.

Still cuddling Ned, she despaired of Machiavellian men like Caspar. Vain men who revelled in their own perceived perfection.

Not so much running on testosterone as functioning on super strength narcissism. She had loathed him in the supermarket, and the second viewing on Saturday night had confirmed her initial reaction.

She hoped that he held the same opinion of her and that while she was still around he wouldn’t be in any hurry to grace Mermaid House with his presence again.

Archie was relieved to be getting through the morning’s workload faster than he’d thought they might.’ When they had turned up at the cottage in Castleton the woman who had done most of the gabbing in the shop on Saturday took one look at Samson and his battleship sized body and said, ‘You will be careful, won’t you? We’ve only just had the decorators in.’

‘We’ll be like silk rubbing against velvet, love,’ Archie had reassured her. The look she gave him said she didn’t appreciate being called ‘love’. No chance of a brew, then, he had thought, as he and Samson carried a three-seater sofa over the threshold, taking care not to scrape the twee Victorian-style wallpaper and mahogany-stained dado rail.

Now they had finished and went to settle up with Mrs HoityToity.

Like the good tradesmen they were, they humoured her by

waiting in the hall while she wrote out the cheque in the kitchen, then beat a hasty retreat back to the shop, picking up sandwiches from the bakery in town for a late lunch.

Comrade Norm had been holding the fort, along with Bessie who had been doing sterling work on some boxes of crockery. Dressed in an old nylon overall, which she used to wear when she was doing the housework, she seemed happy in the little kitchen with a stack of washed plates, cups and saucers on the draining-board. With slow, deliberate movements, she was drying the china carefully before arranging it on a set of cheap veneer shelves in the front of the shop.

Archie pretended not to notice the broken sugar bowl in the bin, half hidden beneath an old newspaper.

Lunch dealt with, he took the van and drove home to check the post. These days, it never came before he left for work, but when he saw what was on the mat in the hall, he wished he hadn’t bothered. It was another pompously worded letter from Stella’s solicitor wanting to know which firm of solicitors he had instructed to take care of the divorce. It was ironic that today of all days - April Fool’s Day - he should receive such a communication. It was the anniversary of the day on which he had proposed to Stella and it had been a longstanding joke between them that she had been a fool to accept.

‘Running jump’ and ‘go stick it’ were the words that were ready to leap from Archie’s tongue after he had read through the letter. But he swallowed them, knowing that he should have taken on a solicitor by now. He hadn’t consciously shied away from the task, it just hadn’t figured too highly on his list of jobs to do. One way or another, he never had a minute to himself now. Still staring at the piece of stiff grey paper in his hand, he considered whether it was worth approaching Stella directly: that way they might save a lot of hassle and expense by cutting out the middlemen. But perhaps he was being naive: in this greedy day and age, the winner took all. Except there could never be an outright winner in divorce. All there could ever be were two disappointed, wounded victims, who had to live with the sad knowledge that they had let each other down.

He sighed and went outside to the van. No time for such maudlin meanderings, he chided himself, not when a pretty young woman was waiting for him at Mermaid House.

It had rained for most of the weekend but today a weak sun was trying to find a crack in the thick blanket of grey cloud. It was still unseasonably cold and Archie was glad of the heater in the van.

Mermaid House was the most extraordinary place he had seen in a long while. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ he said, when he first caught sight of it on the brow of a rise in the landscape. ‘What a god forsaken place to live.’ He carried on along the bone-shaking drive in awed amazement, the empty van rattling noisily as it splashed through muddy puddles. He pulled in beside Clara Costello’s campervan, and wondered how many times his modest end of terrace could fit into this vast old place. He got out and crossed the shiny wet cobbles of the courtyard but came to a stop when he drew level with the skip.

He couldn’t resist having a quick shufti - after all, one man’s rubbish was another’s livelihood. His surreptitious foray was brought to an abrupt end by a door being flung open and a none-too-friendly voice saying, ‘Who the hell are you and what d’you think you’re doing snooping through my belongings?’

Clara had warned Archie what to expect. ‘Herr Liberty runs a boot-camp up here on the quiet,’ she had told him on the phone, ‘but take no notice of his commandant persona. He’s a real sweetie when you get to know him.’

Archie stepped forward. ‘Archie Merryman’s the name. Miss

Costello phoned me on Saturday about some odds and ends you wanted to get rid of.’

He was given a disdainful eyeball-frisking, followed by, ‘Uh, so you’re that rag-and-bone man she got in touch with, are you? I suppose you’d better come in. But be sure to wipe your feet.’

Archie did as instructed, then followed him to a large kitchen. He was allowed no further, though, and after he had been ordered to stay where he was, the cussed old man went over to an open doorway. ‘Miss Costello,’ he bellowed, ‘your disreputable rag-and bone man’s here.’

A door opened and footsteps sounded.

‘Mr Liberty, there is no need to shout. And how many times do I have to tell you, Mr Merryman runs a second-hand shop and he’s the least disreputable man I know.’ Her voice and footsteps grew louder until finally she came into the kitchen. She was dressed in dirty jeans, a grubby T-shirt, and a cobweb decorated her dark hair; she looked younger than Archie had remembered her. The bright eyes and smile were the same, though. ‘Hello, Archie,’ she said, ‘the Commandant treating you as rudely as I said he would?’

‘Not so badly. How’s that lad of yours? Did he find his mermaid?’

‘Oh, yes. It was here just as he said it would be. How’s your mother, everything okay with—’

‘Great Scott! How much longer have I got to put with this

incessant tea-party chatter? I thought there was some business to be transacted.’

Clara winked at Archie and tutted. ‘You leave the business to me, Mr Liberty. But talking of tea parties, bung the kettle on, would you?

I’m sure Mr Merryman would appreciate a cup of your finest PG

Tips.’

Mr Liberty’s nostrils flared and Archie speculated as to who was the real commandant here. He fell in step beside Clara as she led him the length of the house, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking on the polished wooden floor. ‘I’m afraid none of it is of any great worth,’ she said, ‘but I’ve tried to organise everything into two piles: stuff you might be able to sell and stuff that’s a little more dubious.’

She pushed open a heavy door and showed him into an enormous drawing room that had to be about thirty feet by twenty. Stella would have loved all this, Archie thought suddenly: the grandness of the room, the high ceiling, the massive stone fireplace and the beautiful mullion windows. For years she had been on at him to move. ‘We need more space,’ she would say, leafing through the local paper and admiring houses way out of their reach. He couldn’t understand why she tormented herself looking at them. ‘But why do we need more space?’ he had argued back. ‘There’s only the two of us, and this is plenty.’ In return, she had given him one of her standard you-don’t-understand looks. Well, she’d been right on the button there. He didn’t understand her need to stretch their finances just so that she could indulge in a bigger version of playing house.

But this place might just about have satisfied her. It would have given her all the room she could have ever wanted. There was sufficient space here to swing a Tyrannosaurus Rex, never mind a cat.

The furniture wasn’t up to much though, he reckoned. Most of it was shabby and not much better than the pieces he sold in his shop.

The room was home to a hotchpotch of paraphernalia: an elephant’s foot that had been turned into a stand for a tatty old Swiss-cheese plant, a bamboo table with a cracked glass top, a leather hand-tooled pouffe with a gaping hole and stuffing oozing out of it, a Chinese silk wall-hanging, a set of African drums, a lacquered chest, and a cabinet chock full of bits of jade, ivory and carved wooden animals.

Souvenirs brought home by a man who had travelled, thought Archie, a little enviously.

He began to look at the room more critically, seeing the cracks in the high ceilings, and the gaping holes in the plasterwork above the moulded skirting-boards. Why, it was nothing but a demanding bugbear - and would cost a fortune to heat and keep clean. Other than Stella, who in their right mind would want to take this on?

He felt his mood turning bitter and he thought again of the solicitor’s letter he had to deal with when he got home that evening.

For the first time since she had left him he felt angry. Until now he had resigned himself to what had happened: he had failed his wife, so what else could he expect? But now he felt the unfairness of Stella’s actions, the sting of the implied criticism and blame, the cruel, underhand way in which she had carried on her affair. Then there , had been the Continuous sniping at him for supposedly holding her back. ‘I could have done so much better for myself if I hadn’t married you,’ she had told him once. She had apologised later for that, but once said, words can never be retracted. He had always thought of himself as a considerate man, who took people at face value, who didn’t judge and condemn, because at the end of the day no one is perfect. And that was why he had never confronted Stella about her affair. He had wanted to give her space to resolve whatever she was going through. But now he saw how weak he had been, and that Stella had taken advantage of him and turned him into a fool.