Precious Time (35 page)

Armed with a map and several guide books, Gabriel in the front with Clara, and Ned in the back with Mermy, they embarked on a day’s worth of sightseeing.

But first they had to make a stop in town.

‘Just let me pop into the bank,’ Clara said, switching off the engine and grabbing her bag. ‘I need some cash.’ She also wanted to offload Gabriel’s cheque. Inside the bank, and because it was only open for the morning on a Saturday, she joined a long queue that snaked its way round the small building. Minutes later someone else joined the queue behind her. It was Archie.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Didn’t think you bothered with banks. I thought you were strictly a cash-only man.’

‘Ah well, my mattress gets uncomfortable if I put too much underneath it. It plays havoc with my back. Has the Commandant let you out for an hour or two?’

‘I’ve finished work now. Ned and I are officially on holiday again.

We’re taking Mr Liberty to see the Mermaid Cavern.’

‘Does that mean you’ll be leaving us soon?’

‘Monday morning.’

He looked disappointed. ‘That’s a shame. The place won’t be the same without you.’

‘I expect you’ll manage pretty well.’

Someone at the front of the queue moved away and they inched forward.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I wanted to thank you for passing all that work in my direction. I really appreciate it. Oh, and you might like to know, I took your advice. I’ve got myself organised with a solicitor.

The ball is definitely rolling, as they say.’

Another person at the head of the queue moved off, and they shuffled forward again.

‘I hope it works out for you, Archie. I’m sure it will. Eventually.’

He shrugged. ‘You’re probably right. Anyway, cheer me up by promising you’ll come and say goodbye before you and Ned

disappear. Leave town without doing that, and the sheriff and I will have to send a posse after you.’

‘It’s a promise.’

The Mermaid Cavern was only a few miles from the centre of Deaconsbridge. The road climbed out of the town, and in no time the landscape became markedly different: it was softer, greener, more curvaceous. This was limestone country, where the White Peak reigned and the harsher, darker terrain of the High Peak receded into the northern distance.

According to the guidebooks, the Mermaid Cavern was often

overlooked in favour of the bigger and more commercialised show caves in nearby Castleton. None the less, they agreed that it was of geological and historical interest and worth a visit.

But the million-dollar question was: did the mermaid rock

formation really look like a mermaid?

Parking Winnie between another campervan, which had a Dutch numberplate, and a people-carrier containing two panting, slobbering Labradors, Clara asked Gabriel if he knew the answer.

‘It’s so long since I saw it, I can’t remember,’ he said.

‘How long ago? Time for her to have grown taller?’

‘It was 1963, if you must know.’

‘Oh, well before I was born, then.’ She leaned through to Ned.

‘Okay, Buster, you can unbuckle yourself now. We’re all set.’

‘I came here with Anastasia. We went for a picnic afterwards, but it rained. It came down so hard, so suddenly, we had to shelter under a tree. She joked we would get struck by lightning and that we would both die and go to heaven. I told her I was already in heaven.’

Moved by the unexpected tenderness in his voice, and the vivid picture his words had just painted, Clara turned slowly to look at him. ‘And you’ve never been back?’

He gave her an odd look. ‘What? To heaven?’

‘No.’ She smiled. ‘Here.’

‘Wouldn’t have been the same.’

Signposts directed them to a path that ran alongside a row of pretty cottages where yellow daffodils, purple crocuses, and tiny blue scillas brightened small neat gardens. Twists of smoke plumed from chimneys and the crisp morning air was filled with the old-fashioned smell of burning coal.

The entrance to the cave was reached by a series of steps carved into the rock. In places they were slippery from the rain that had fallen overnight. Clara held Ned’s hand and was tempted to take Gabriel’s, too, but thought better of it: he would have his pride, after all. And pride seemed to have influenced his appearance that day. If she wasn’t mistaken, he had spruced himself up, even wearing a tie beneath his V-necked pullover, which didn’t have any holes in it.

They paid for their entrance tickets at the wooden booth and were shepherded through to a dimly lit tunnel where they joined a group about to embark on the tour of what had once been an old lead mine.

Fifteen minutes later Clara was glad she had bundled Ned up in his warmest clothes. It was bone-numbingly cold with no escape from the icy damp that had already seeped through the thick soles of her shoes to gnaw at her toes. The tips of her ears and nose were tingling too, and the occasional splash of water from the low roof on her exposed skin made her shiver. As she listened to the guide and watched the direction of his torch, which he used to indicate points of interest - the flowstones, the stalactites and stalagmites - she thought of the harsh conditions in which those early miners had worked.

The guide led them further into the series of caves, warning them to be careful and to hold on to the rail as they took the steep descent down towards the pool.

‘Are we going to see the mermaid now?’ whispered Ned, squeezing her hand.

‘Any minute.’

When they reached the bottom, a boat was waiting for them. They were helped into it and when all was secure, they moved smoothly through the water. It didn’t seem very impressive at first: the ceiling of the cave was still quite low, and though a few lights were fixed into the rock-face there wasn’t much to see.

But then they turned a corner and there was an aah! from everyone in the boat. Even Gabriel, that stalwart of indifference, looked impressed. The vaulted roof of the cave soared above their heads, and shimmering lights gave it a serene, cathedral-like quality. People reached for their cameras, including Clara. After they had taken their pictures, the guide took them on further.

They came to a large rock that jutted out into the pool, steered round it and there before them, raised out of the water and subtly illuminated with softly glowing lamps, was the mermaid. To Clara’s surprise and delight, no leap of imagination or suspension of belief was needed to make out what she was. There was her tail, the forked end skimming the surface of the pool, and her curvy body reclined gracefully against another rock.

For the benefit of those who enjoyed a good yarn, the guide told them how she came to be here. The story went that she had been a real live mermaid who had got lost at sea and had somehow found her way to the cavern - that she was so far inland was glossed over.

She had liked it so much that she had made it her home, and after wishing that she could stay here for ever, she had been turned to stone to make wishes come true for others. As tales went, it was farfetched and fanciful, but it satisfied Ned, and as Clara drew him

closer to her, she hoped he would never lose the sense of wonder she could see in his eyes. Everything was such a pleasure for him. New, exciting, full of mystery. Heaven forbid that life should ever become a chore for him.

Just as she was thinking this, the guide pointed the beam of light from his torch at the small raised pool behind the mermaid. ‘If you want her to grant you a wish,’ he said, ‘you have to throw a coin into her pool.’

Judging from the number of coins already tossed into the crystal clear water, there had been plenty of people here before them who had gone along with the lark. Clara reached for her bag. ‘Go on, Ned,’ she whispered, ‘make a wish.’

He took the ten-pence piece from her. ‘But what about you, Mummy? Don’t you want a go? And, Mr Liberty, you have to make a wish too.’

Gabriel pulled a face. ‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd in all my life. A lot of stuff and nonsense.’ But then he smiled - reminding Clara of the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood - and produced a pound coin from his pocket. ‘Shall we make it a good one, Ned, eh? Come on, Miss Costello, get your money out. After your visit to the bank this morning I know you can afford it.’

They waited for the rest of the group to throw their pennies and make their wishes, and then, at last, it was their turn. ‘Don’t say it out loud,’ Ned informed Clara, ‘it won’t come true if you do.’ Four years old and how well versed he was in these matters. ‘And you mustn’t tell anyone what you wished for,’ he said afterwards, as the guide steered the boat away and they waved goodbye to the

mermaid. ‘Telling people what you wished for brings you bad luck, and we don’t want that, do we, Mummy?’

‘No, Ned. We certainly don’t.’

Clara’s wish had been the same as it always was whenever

irrational reliance on omens and charms was called for: she wanted Ned to be happy. But on this occasion she had tagged on an extra request: that the months ahead would be as enjoyable as the last two weeks had been.

She glanced at Gabriel’s face in the subdued light. There was no knowing what he had wished for.

On Monday morning, as Clara unhooked Winnie from Mermaid

House’s electrical supply, Ned was anything but happy. He wanted to stay longer. The weekend had passed all too quickly, with most of it spent sightseeing. They had visited Peveril Castle, the plague village at Eyam, Buxton, and even another cave - the Blue John Cavern in Castleton. But now they were preparing to leave.

‘There’s still more to see,’ Ned said, showing her the evidence to support his argument. He was pointing to a picture in one of their guide books that showed a place in Matlock Bath where they had cable-cars to get you up and down the wooded hillside. ‘Couldn’t we go there today? Oh, please.’

She stopped what she was doing, sat down, and pulled him on to her lap, knowing that if she wasn’t careful, she’d have a tearful rebellion on her hands. She flicked through the pages of the book to the next section. ‘And look,’ she said, ‘even more to see.’

He stared at the picture of a traditional steamer crossing Lake Windermere, then at the one showing the Beatrix Potter museum.

Clara hoped that the sight of Peter Rabbit in his blue jacket nibbling a carrot would tempt Ned to get back on the road.

Originally the plan had been to use the Peak District as a stepping stone for Yorkshire, before carrying on towards Berwick-upon Tweed and Scotland, where they would then work their way round the coast, to the top, then drop down the west coast and keep on going till they hit Devon and Cornwall for the summer. But in bed last night Clara had decided to change the route. The Lake District, which was full of all things cute and wonderful, would give her a better chance of luring Ned away from Deaconsbridge.

She wasn’t ready for what Ned said next.

‘Couldn’t we take Mr Liberty with us to see Peter Rabbit? He’d like that, wouldn’t he?’

She put an arm round him. ‘I’m not sure he’s a Beatrix Potter kind of man, Ned. Besides, he has his friends and family here to think of.’

Ned shrugged away her arm and gazed at her intently. ‘He doesn’t have any friends. He told me. He said most of them are dead.’

‘I’m sure that was just another of his exaggerations. He’s not that old.’

‘He is! He’s going to be eighty on his next birthday.’

‘I’m sorry, Ned, but the answer’s still no. Winnie is only big enough for the two of us. Imagine having a great big man like Mr Liberty sharing it with us.’ It was such an awesome prospect Clara felt her face twitch with the threat of laughter. Keeping her expression under control, she added, ‘And I bet he snores as loud as a giant.’

For the first time since getting out of bed that morning, Ned smiled. ‘He’d be just like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. When he snored it was so loud all the buttons fell off Jack’s coat.’

Clara giggled. That colourful little detail had been her father’s. He was always contributing his own lines to the stories he read to Ned.

‘Pepping it up,’ was what he called it. She hugged Ned close. ‘Well, we wouldn’t want our buttons falling off whenever Mr Liberty had a nap. It would be too embarrassing for words.’

With the situation more or less under control, and Ned rounding up his cuddly toy collection, Clara carried on tidying the van. She was almost through with checking for potential rattles in the lockers and cupboards when there was a loud thump at the door. ‘Time you were going, isn’t it?’

It was Gabriel.

‘Always a mistake to outstay your welcome,’ he growled, filling the doorway and blocking out the light. ‘Remember that, Ned. When it’s time to go, you go. No hanging around.’

Clara felt a wave of gratitude towards him for being his usual blunt self, for not making things worse for Ned by giving him a show of treacly affection. ‘And a good morning to you, Mr Liberty.’

He stepped inside, looked at his watch. ‘It’s afternoon, as near as damn it.’

‘Mr Liberty, guess where we’re going?’ Ned chimed in. ‘We’re going to see Peter Rabbit and some big lakes and mountains. Do you want to see?’ He held up the guide book that he and Clara had been reading earlier. ‘Mummy says we’ll go on a really old boat that has steam coming out of it. And there’s a museum where we can see pencils being made. And when we’ve done—’

‘Sounds much too exhausting to me,’ Gabriel interrupted, scarcely glancing at what Ned was showing him.

‘I think we’re about done now,’ Clara said, shutting the last cupboard with a clunk. She took the book from Ned and stowed it in the rack with the rest of the maps and guides. ‘If you’d like to say goodbye to Mr Liberty you can climb into your seat and strap yourself in.’

But all at once Ned didn’t seem able to move from where he was standing. He put his hands behind his back and screwed a shoe into the floor. His eyes lowered to the level of Gabriel’s knees, but not before Clara saw them fill. Then a little voice mumbled ‘Goodbye,’

and his lower lip wobbled and she knew they were in real trouble.