Precious Time (8 page)

‘Money is hardly your area of expertise, Jonah, so butt out! Just convince the old fool that he needs to move into something smaller and we’ll all be better off.’

Much of what Caspar had said was true. Jonah wasn’t a financial pundit and their father had reached an age when he might be better off living in a property a tenth of the size of Mermaid House. He had been thinking the same thing ever since Val had died, but had never found the right time, or the courage, to broach it with Gabriel, not when he knew how insincere and grasping it might sound to their father. It was annoying, though, that Caspar’s thoughts had coincided with his, albeit for different reasons.

What his brother didn’t know was that Jonah intended - if his father would listen to him - to make it clear that if Mermaid House was to be sold, Gabriel should not siphon off a penny of what it brought to his children to avoid inheritance tax, which, naturally, was the main thrust of Caspar’s argument for selling up now.

Caspar would capitalise on a third-world disaster if he thought he could get away with it. And there were many things Caspar had got away with over the years. Just as he had stolen from Jonah as a child, he had continued through adulthood to help himself to anything else to which he took a fancy. So far Jonah had lost two girlfriends and a fiancee to his brother.

Admittedly the loss of the girlfriends had taken place during his teens, but Emily had been another matter altogether and he wasn’t sure that he could ever forgive Caspar for what he had done.

Downstairs in the kitchen, while he washed the paintbrush under the tap and squirted a dose of Fairy Liquid on to the bristles, Jonah wondered if a family as bitterly divided as his could ever be reconciled.

With Ned’s help, and with the aid of a simple device that turned the white plastic barrel into a mini garden roller, Clara was pushing their fresh supply of water across the dewy grass of the Happy Dell campsite towards Winnie. It was one of the many things about camper-vanning that Clara enjoyed: the multitude of unexpectedly clever gadgets that made life a little easier.

This was their fourth day on the road, and already Clara and Ned considered themselves old hands at it. They were perfectly at one with the intricacies of their cassette toilet, could turn a dinette seat into a double bed with the speed and professionalism of a Formula One pit stop, could knock up mouth-watering meals on the two burner stove at the flick of a hand and, perhaps more importantly, they could do it all without once feeling as though they were living on top of each other. It was extraordinary how quickly they had adapted to living life in miniature. It reminded Clara of when she’d been a little girl and had played constantly with the doll’s house her father had made for her. She had been fascinated with the scaled down world he had created, and it was the same for her now with Winnie. Everything was so incredibly well designed, and appealed to her logical way of thinking and her need for order. As a child she had been ridiculously organised: her mud-pies were always neatly prepared, her bedroom was tidier than any other room in the house, her schoolwork immaculately presented - and always handed in on time - her social life thought out with every consideration given to when, how, where and with whom. And woe betide anyone who

interfered with this carefully ordered infrastructure. At the age of ten, she had spent hours drawing cut-away sections of houses, each room in minute detail, and people joked that one day she would become an architect, or maybe an interior designer. When she expanded her repertoire to sketch the roads the houses occupied, then mapped out whole villages and communities of harmonious synchrony, they suggested town planning. Her brother accused her of being a control freak.

But if Winnie appealed to Clara’s desire for pigeonholed regularity, it was a joy to see how Ned, too, loved their new home,

especially his bed over the cab. He would lie up there with Mermy and his battalion of cuddly toys, pretending to read to them from his favourite storybooks, and Clara was relieved that, so far, he had shown no sign of missing anything he had left behind. But, as Louise would have been quick to point out, it was early days yet.

Much as Ned loved the bed to which he had to climb up, there was a disadvantage in the arrangement, which had come to light on their first night. At three in the morning he had woken needing the toilet.

It was the kerfuffle of him sitting up, bumping his head and letting out a cry that had woken Clara. It took her a few seconds to gather her wits, switch on the reading light and climb up to him. Parting the curtains, she had helped him down and carried him to the loo. He was so drowsy that she had had him tucked in again and fast asleep before she was back in her own bed.

But he had always been a good sleeper, even as a baby. At two days old he had slipped straight into a comfortable, convenient routine of feeds and napping that had rendered her parents nostalgically envious. ‘Why weren’t you and Michael like this as babies?’ her mother had said, bending over the Moses basket and itching to smother her first grandchild with love as he slept on, his tiny hands balled into fists the size of walnuts, his lips quivering like butterfly wings. ‘You both had me up at all hours, never gave me a minute’s peace. Ooh, look, he’s opened his eyes. Do you think I could … ?’

Clara and her father had exchanged a smile. ‘Go on, Mum, while I make us a cup of tea; he’s all yours.’

‘And you can stop right there, young lady,’ her father had said. “I will make the tea. And if I catch you moving just one inch from that chair, there’ll be trouble.’

‘Better do as he says, Clara, you know what a tyrant he can be.’

For years it had been a family joke that her father was a tyrant: the truth was, he was the biggest softie going. And he had been particularly kind and loving with his grandson. Once Ned was walking and talking, her father had come into his own, reading to him, teaching him to do simple jigsaws and taking him to the park.

‘Come on, my little pumpernickel,’ he would say, helping Ned into his hat and coat, then strapping him into the pushchair. ‘Time for some man-to-man business down at the park. Let’s go and feed the ducks.’

Clara knew that Ned’s lack of a father tapped into her parents’

old-fashioned instinct for a nuclear family, but she was happy to let her own father fill the void created by the man who could never be in Ned’s life. He did it so well, never overstepping the mark, just quietly providing that indefinable extra for which Clara would always be grateful.

In the last few days she had noticed a change in Ned: he was fast becoming what her mother would describe as ‘quite the little man’.

He was for ever insisting that he help her with everything he could.

He particularly liked doing the washing-up. He would stand at the small sink on the step that was supposed to be used for getting in and out of the campervan, up to his elbows in sudsy water. The job took a lot longer than if she did it herself, but it was such a pleasure to see him so involved that she didn’t have the heart, or inclination, to stop him. And what did it matter how long anything took to do? They were in no hurry now.

Since leaving home on Sunday they had slowly made their way north. Their first night had been spent at a campsite in Stratfordupon-Avon, where the following day they had immersed themselves

in all things Shakespearean and, more to Ned’s liking, had visited a museum devoted to teddy bears. They had seen the original Sooty, and Clara had reminisced about her first pantomime, when she had sat in the front row and been soaked by Sooty and Sweep with water pistols.

From Stratford they had moved on to the West Midlands, taking in Cadbury World and the Museum of Science and Industry in Birmingham. Ned had been as pleased as punch when their guide picked him out from the crowd to press the button to start the steam engine. He was happier still when they left an hour later with a model of it, and he had spent the evening back at Winnie explaining enthusiastically to Clara how it worked.

Until now, they had decided together where to go each day while curled up in bed and flicking through touring books and maps. But their next port of call was to be a surprise for Ned, which Clara hoped he would enjoy.

When they had packed everything neatly away, and had paid the man in the campsite office, they were ready to go.

‘Chocks ahoy,’ said Ned, as he did each morning when they set off.

She smiled. She had given up telling him it was ‘chocks away’.

‘Chocks ahoy’ sounded just fine to her. The people on the next pitch waved goodbye. They were an interesting couple in their mid-fifties who called themselves ‘full-timers’. They lived all year round in their campervan, which they had personalised by painting Ron’s name on the driver’s door and Eileen’s on the passenger’s. Over a glass of wine late last night, when Ned was asleep, they had given Clara their list of the top ten campsites in Britain. They were out of the way, not always listed in the touring guides: it was to one of these that Clara was heading today. Ron and Eileen had also shared with her how they had become ‘full-timers’: after giving up secure jobs, they had spent the last two years fruit picking in the summer and early autumn, then hooking up with fellow full-timers and travelling south to Spain and Tunisia for the winter.

Now, as she tooted Winnie’s horn at them, Clara wondered what Louise and the rest of her friends would make of Ron and Eileen.

With the map spread open on his lap, his elbows resting on the armrests at either side of him, and his finger planted firmly on the streak of blue that was the motorway they were following, Ned looked every inch the seasoned navigator. That the map was upside down was neither here nor there. By Clara’s reckoning they had about thirty miles of motorway driving left before they would strike out cross-country.

‘Shall we stop at the next service station to stretch our legs?’ she asked. Ron and Eileen had said that if there were free facilities to be had it was their duty to take full advantage of them rather than waste their own resources.

Ned looked up from the map. ‘When Nanna says that, Granda

says his legs don’t need stretching. He says he’s tall enough already.’

Clara smiled. ‘It’s called a euphemism.’

He tried the word out for himself. ‘Eu-fer-miz-um. What does that mean?’

‘Well, it’s when we use a word or phrase to disguise what we’re really saying, to make it sound more polite. I was really asking you if you wanted to stop and go to the toilet.’

He thought about this. ‘Like when Nanna asks me if I want to spend a penny?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Eu-fer-miz-um,’ he said again.

Ned’s vocabulary was quite advanced for his age, and Clara put this down to his having spent more time with adults than children.

Neither her parents nor her friends had ever talked down to him: they had always treated him as a mini-adult and he had responded accordingly, absorbing information at a phenomenal rate. With so much adult company around him, she had dreaded him turning into a precocious brat, but thankfully there seemed little likelihood of that.

After they had euphemistically stretched their legs and spent their pennies, they joined the motorway once more, and, with the map the right way round, Ned looked at it hard and asked where they were going.

She gave him a sideways smile. ‘You’re not catching me out that easily. I told you, it’s a surprise. Wait and see.’

‘But will I like it? Surprises aren’t always nice.’

‘I’ll make you a promise. If you don’t like it we’ll move on somewhere else.’

An hour later, and with the M6 behind them, Clara took the B5470 out of Macclesfield and found herself driving through rolling hills of lush green farmland crisscrossed with a threadwork of drystone walls. It came as such a surprise that she slowed down to take a better look. It was beautiful, just as Ron and Eileen had said it would be. ‘If we could get the work up there, that’s where we’d spend our summers,’ Ron had said. ‘Believe me, you’ll love it. It’s terrific walking country.’

But it wasn’t hill walking that had drawn Clara to this part of the Peak District, it was what, according to the guide books, had also drawn Victorian day-trippers from the neighbouring industrial towns and villages: the chance to see a mermaid. Not a live one, but an underground cavern that claimed to have a rock formation that looked just like the real thing and granted wishes for those prepared to dip their fingers into the clear still water of its pool. Given Ned’s love of Mermy - who was currently in his hand - and his desire to meet a real one, this was probably as near as she could get to fulfilling a dream for him.

They drove on, the road becoming steeper, the houses fewer and the scenery even more stunning as it stretched before them beneath a picture-postcard blue sky with puffy white clouds. Suddenly, making her jump, Ned pointed Mermy at the window to his left and cried, ‘Mummy, look at all the sheep on the green mountains.’

‘Those are what people round here call hills, Ned.’

‘Even that big one over there?’

Clara smiled. ‘A mere Brussels sprout. Perhaps later on our trip we’ll go up to Scotland and see some real mountains.’

‘I like it here. Is this my surprise?’

‘Not quite. Now, I’m going to have to concentrate on the road. I’m looking for a sign that says Deaconsbridge. Shout if you see anything with a big D on it.’

The road climbed higher and higher, until eventually they reached the summit of a hill. Dropping into a lower gear, Clara took the descent steadily, with extra care on the tight bends.

Their first sighting of Deaconsbridge revealed a small town nestling in the shallow dip of a valley. From a distance it looked a soft shade of industrial grey with rows of terraced houses tucked into the slope of the hillsides, their uniformity broken by a scattering of old mills and stately chimneys. A church with an elegant spire stood self-consciously to one side of the town, surrounded by a cemetery, whose gravestones seemed to flow out into the expanse of moorland behind. As final resting places went, Clara thought it was pretty spectacular.