Precious Time (7 page)

He was friendly without being overly familiar, which Bessie liked.

She always used to say that if you had to undress for a doctor, the least he could do was look the other way, and Dr Singh was wonderfully courteous and proper with her.

Archie went over to say hello. ‘Touting for business, Dr Singh?’

‘Ah, Mr Merryman, how good to see you. Are you here with your mother?’

‘Yes. She’s with the speech therapist. It’s slow going.’

‘Patience, Mr Merryman, she’ll get there in the end. Remember what I told you, there’s life after a stroke so long as everyone involved pitches in. You just have to keep the faith.’

‘I know. Some days she’s quite clear, but others I can’t make head nor tail of what she’s saying. So what brings you here?’

‘An errand of mercy. And here he comes right now.’

A tall, spectacularly grizzled man came towards them. A white dressing covered one of his eyes but not the scowl that darkened the rest of his face. ‘Bloody hours I’ve been stuck here, and it’s all your fault, you interfering little man!’

Not missing a step, Dr Singh was the epitome of politeness: ‘Do you know Mr Liberty, Mr Merryman?’

‘Er … no.’ Archie held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Liberty,’ he said affably. But when the other man made no attempt to shake it, he said, ‘Well, then, I ought to be getting back. Bessie will be wondering where I am.’ He turned to go.

Behind him, he heard, ‘A bloody waste of time. Nothing that eye drops wouldn’t have sorted. Just as I told you!’

‘So aren’t you the lucky one, Mr Liberty!’

After calling in at the shop and checking that Samson had everything under control, Archie took Bessie for a cream tea at the Mermaid cafe. A treat to round off the day for her.

‘We should do this more often,’ he said, when Shirley had served them with her customary good humour. She was a good sort, was Shirley; nothing seemed to bring her down, not even the break up of her marriage several years ago. He passed his mother a cup of tea then set to work on the scones. He cut one in half, spread a dollop of strawberry jam on it then topped it off with a layer of cream, but when he gave it to her, his heart fell. From her pained expression he could see that he had assumed too much. He had treated her as an incapable invalid and robbed her of her dignity. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, appalled at his lack of thought. ‘Would you rather do it yourself?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m well,’ she said softly. ‘Not ill, Archie.’

‘Of course you are,’ he agreed. ‘You’re absolutely fine. Now, tell me what the speech therapist said to you. Did she give you any gossip about that cobbly cow with too much lipstick?’

She brought her eyebrows together as she always had when she rebuked him as a child. ‘Serious,’ she said, pointing a finger at him.

‘No fish pies. Tell me the truth about Stella.’

‘What about?’

‘Why?’

He knew what she was asking, but he didn’t want to go down that route. Not yet.

When he had read the letter Stella had left him, he had shoved it into his pocket and gone out to the kitchen to make a start on their supper. Minutes later Bessie had appeared in the doorway and gone along with his need to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Helping her into bed that night he had made up a story that seemed to satisfy her.

But now, four days on, she wanted to know what was going on.

‘Why?’ she repeated.

‘Stella’s left me, love,’ he said. ‘She’s not coming back. I lied when I said she’d gone to her sister in Nottingham for a few days.’

For once Archie was glad that his mother’s speech was so limited.

They sat in a long, awkward silence, their eyes cast down as they concentrated on their scones. Then he heard her say, ‘Is it me? Left you because of me?

He looked up and saw that his mother’s eyes had filled with tears.

One of her hands had started to tremble and crumbs were scattered around her plate. His heart went out to her. ‘No, love. She didn’t leave because of you. It was me. I should have been a better husband.’ , , u

He had to turn away. He knew exactly what she was thinking: that she had become a burden to him, and that she had wrecked his marriage. She was wrong.

When the phone rang Jonah was standing on the top rung of the stepladder. He knew straight away who it was. Caspar was the only person he knew who could make the telephone ring with menace, and could be relied upon to do it at the worst possible moment.

He put the brush between his teeth, picked up the pot of paint, and made his descent. By the time he had found the phone under the dust-sheet by the side of his bed, and had switched off the Haydn piano sonata, he could easily picture his brother’s tight-lipped face at the other end of the line. Just for the sheer hell of it he let it ring three more times before he put the receiver to his ear.

‘Liberty Escort Agency, how may I help you?’

‘Yeah, very funny, Jonah. Now, if you could act like the adult you’re supposed to be and quit fooling around like one of those idiots you teach, perhaps you’d tell me how you got on. What did the old man say?’

‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Not a word.’

There was a pause.

‘Oh, I know what happened, you didn’t see him, did you? You lost your bottle just as I thought you would. You always were a coward.’

Caspar’s voice was hard.

‘You could always talk to him yourself,’ Jonah said mildly. ‘It is your idea.’

‘Look, we’ve been through this before. These days, you’re the only one who can get anything sensible out of him. He’ll listen to you.’

Exasperated, Jonah pushed a hand through his hair. Too late he realised there had been a smear of Windsor Blue emulsion on his palm. He turned to look at himself in the mirror above the chest of drawers and saw that his wavy dark hair - the bane of his life as a boy - now had a blue streak running through it. Better than yellow, he thought, with a rueful smile.

‘Jonah? Are you still there?’

‘Sadly, yes. And I don’t know why you think I’m any different from you and Damson.’

A loud snort told Jonah that if he didn’t divert his brother, he would be subjected to the familiar lecture on what it was to be the hard-done-by Caspar Nobody-loves-me Liberty. ‘Actually, I did go and see him this morning, but he wasn’t there.’

‘So what was wrong with trying again when you’d finished work?’

‘This might come as a surprise to you, but when I’m not carrying out your dirty work, I do have a life of my own.’

‘But you fetch and carry so well, brother dear. Who else can I rely on in this splintered family of ours?’

‘It’s not a family you need, Caspar,’ Jonah said, ‘it’s a battalion of henchmen. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m in the middle of decorating, so I’d appreciate it if you would let me get on.’

‘Good God, why do you insist on living like a peasant? Get a genuine peasant in to do it for you.’

‘Caspar, was there anything else?’

‘Yes. Speak to Dad as soon as you can. Every day you botch this up, is another day of … well, never mind that, just do it.’

Back on the stepladder, Jonah resumed painting his bedroom ceiling. If ever a child had been born to upset the sibling apple cart, it had been him: Caspar and Damson had never let him forget that his birth had precipitated their mother’s death. As children they had been cunning and wilful, had taken pleasure in setting him up as the fall-guy and enjoying the spectacle of him being punished. If anything went missing, you could bet your bottom dollar it would be found in his bedroom, hidden at the bottom of the wardrobe. If anything got broken, you could guarantee that he would be

positioned right by the smashed window-pane or the shattered vase.

Their devious schemes worked every time. They would pretend they had decided to let him be a part of their coterie and, like the fool he was, so desperate to be accepted, he would go along with whatever dare or initiation ceremony they felt inclined to put him through. He fell for it time and time again, hook, line and sinker. He was the perfect stooge, trailing behind in their contemptuous wake, needing their approval, wanting to be just like them: the mysterious, all-powerful twins who were at the centre of their own universe where, stupidly, he also wanted to be.

That was before he became scared of them.

Once, when they had said he could join in with their latest game, they had put a blindfold around his head and shoved him into cold water. He was only six and they said all he had to do was swim to the other side of the river. It had rained constantly for the last week and the river was higher than usual; as the force of the water rushed pell-mell down the hillside, the strengthening swell had swept him away. He could still remember their laughter as they ran along the bank beside him, and it wasn’t until he banged his head on a rock and began to scream that they hauled him out. They shook him hard, pulled his hair and slapped his face to make sure he didn’t pass out, then marched him back up to the house. ‘We found him down by the river,’ Caspar told Val, ‘causing trouble again. It was lucky for him we happened to be passing, otherwise he might have died.’

Caspar was the most convincing liar Jonah had ever come across, then or since.

By the age of nine he had wised up and kept his distance from his brother and sister, shutting himself away in his room. But whenever they got the opportunity they played their games with him. They would sneak into his room late at night when he was asleep and steal whatever was precious to him - stamps, comics, books, pocket money. Gradually, though, he learned to outwit or second-guess them. He discovered that he was smarter than they were, and by the age of eleven he was spending more time in their father’s library than anywhere else. He discovered that trying to gain Gabriel’s approval and respect was infinitely more worthwhile than being accepted by Caspar and Damson.

Until then his father had been little more than an occasional visitor in his life, for ever away on business, immersed in his own affairs, an autocratic figure. But when Jonah showed an interest in the books Gabriel had collected over the years, the two almost connected.

Jealousy caused the twins to step up their bullying campaign but they soon found themselves in more trouble than they could have imagined. Late one night Gabriel discovered them in his library, defacing two of his most highly prized first editions. Their plan had backfired. They were grounded for a month, their allowance was stopped, their combined birthday party cancelled, and they were put to work by Val to clean out the attic. It was then that Val began to question the previous crimes Jonah was supposed to have committed.

They never discussed any of these things as a family, that would have been far too open and communicative, much better to sweep it under the mat and pretend it never happened.

On one occasion, aged thirteen, Jonah had behaved completely out of character. It only happened once, but it was such a shocking act of violence, that, even now, the memory made him flinch. He had been away at school, and the bully of his year had picked on him once too often: he had stolen a fountain pen Val had given Jonah for Christmas. Incensed, Jonah flung himself at the boy, pushed him to the floor and beat him mercilessly. With no teacher in the classroom, everyone else had left their desks and grouped around to watch the mild-mannered swot bashing the living daylights out of the boy who, in Jonah’s mind, had become Caspar and Damson rolled into one.

But while he was hailed by his peers as a hero, the headmaster was less inclined to .praise him: Jonas was caned and made to write a five page essay, answering the question ‘Which offers man the greater chance of survival: pacifism or violence?’ Ironically, his essay was so good that he was awarded a prize for it at the end of term.

If Jonah had a less than generous opinion of his brother and sister, the regard they held each other in could not have been higher. In Caspar’s view Damson could do no wrong, but as far as Jonah could see she had spent most of her adult life switching from one good cause to another with intermittent bouts of self-absorption. Of the three, she was the only one to have married. She was also the only one to have divorced twice, and lucratively so. She was currently going through what she called her ‘centred space’ phase and was living, in peace and harmony, in a commune in Northumberland, which she had described as a self-help therapy centre in a handcrafted Christmas card to Jonah last year.

This latest search for her inner self was just another in a long line of explorations from which she would doubtless emerge to plunge back into the hedonistic lifestyle she enjoyed: men, partying, shopping, and whatever else made her think she was happy.

Jonah didn’t think she had ever been truly happy.

On the stroke of midnight, Jonah called it a day. It was handy living next door to a church: there was no danger of losing track of the time when the bells rang out every hour and slipped in a quick chime on the half-hour too.

He had moved into Church Cottage last August when he had come back to the area as head of history at Deaconsbridge High. Before then he had been living over yonder border - as die-hard Deaconites called it - in neighbouring Cheshire. He had been ready for a change and had followed his instinct when he had seen the post advertised. It had seemed the right thing to do, given that his father was now on his own with little sign of Caspar or Damson offering any help around the house.

And it was the house that was at the bottom of Caspar’s insistence that Jonah speak to Gabriel. Caspar could dress it up any way he liked, but Jonah knew his brother too well. Caspar didn’t give a damn about their father’s welfare: all he was concerned about was getting his hands on the capital that would be released if Mermaid House was sold. Jonah had no idea what Caspar did with the money he earned - he owned one of the most prestigious car dealerships in south Manchester and had to be ripping people off for a decent amount - but however much it was, it clearly wasn’t enough. Jonah had dared to query this the other day when Caspar had hinted that money from the sale would come in handy. He had been told in no uncertain terms to keep his nose out of things he didn’t understand.