The Thief of Time (43 page)

‘Open it,' said Dominique, her voice low and concentrated, and I did as she requested. It was a normal cigar box which he must have bought in the town or, more likely, stolen from a guestroom when he first began his savings. I opened it and we were greeted with a roll of banknotes and some coin. The musty smell of money filled my senses immediately and I laughed, amazed to see so much cash suddenly before me. I pulled out the enormous notes, which were held together by a clip, and marvelled at their size and thick texture. I had rarely held a note myself; my own small savings consisted of a bag of coins which had given me just as much enjoyment as I counted them in my room back at the Ambertons'. Flicking through this hoard, I could tell that there was just as much as Jack had said, potentially more.

‘Look at it,' I said in awe. ‘It's amazing.'

‘It's our future,' she replied, standing up and this time helping me to my feet. I put the notes back inside the box and closed it as I stood up, fastening the clip lest some God-delivered breeze whisked it from my hands and across the treetops of Cageley, scattering its contents down upon the houses below. I was ready now to go through the window and get out of Cageley for ever, already seeing the good life as it stood like a mirage before me, complete with its fine clothes and food, a decent home, a job, more money. And love. Above all, love.

We turned towards the window and I could not help but look back over my shoulder once. There are moments in life, simple still-framed scenes, that one can recall and, for me, this was one of them. Even after two hundred and fifty-six years on this earth, whenever I think of my youth, my childhood, the picture of my teenage self stopping before the window on the roof of Cageley House, and throwing one last look over my shoulder before I left, springs into my consciousness and my heart sinks with the conviction of my actions and the desolation which they caused me for so many years. For it was at that moment, between two blinks of my eyes, that I saw them across the courtyard down below: the stables. They were not directly in the path of the moonlight but I could make them out with no difficulty. I knew them so well by then, every inch of their flooring, every piece of wood in their walls, every horse contained within. I could hear them when I listened closely, one or two of the mares making whinnying sounds in their sleep. I saw the outside wall and the corner by the water pump where Jack and I always sat to drink a bottle of beer at the end of the day, the spot where the sun shone down best. I remembered the feeling of near hysterical delight it gave me to collapse there after nine or ten hours of work, knowing that the evening stretched before me like a long, lazy picture of possibility. I recalled how we would often sit there for hours, just talking, despite the fact that we had spent the entire day wishing we were elsewhere. I remembered jokes and laughter and insults and friendly mockery. And I knew that if I lived to be a hundred years old, I couldn't live with what I was about to do.

There was nowhere else for us to go and no one else to talk to. We were friends. I closed my eyes and thought of it. I did not know what it is to be hurt by those I thought to be my friends although I have felt it often enough since, and there I was, getting ready to do that very thing. All that money. He had worked for it. He had suffered, taken abuse, shovelled shit, brushed down horses ten thousand times; he had
worked
for it. And I was there to rob him. It was impossible.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, looking at Dominique and shaking my head sadly, ‘I can't do it.'

She cocked her head to one side. ‘Can't do what?' she asked.

‘This,' I replied. ‘This thing that we're doing. This
stealing.
I can't do it. I just can't.'

‘Matthieu,' she said in a calm voice, coming towards me slowly, speaking to me now as if I was a naughty child who had to be talked out of doing something dangerous. ‘You're just nervous, that's all. So am I. We need that money. If we're going to -'

‘No,
Jack
needs the money,' I said. ‘It's his money. He needs it. I can get him out of jail with it. He could disappear off to -'

‘And what about us?' she cried and I could see her eyes flickering towards the box, causing me to strengthen my grip on it. ‘What about our plans?'

‘Don't you see? We can do them anyway. All we have to do is get back on the road, get -'

‘Listen to me, Matthieu,' she said firmly and I took a step backwards for fear that she would make a grab for me. ‘I'm not getting back on any road, you understand me? I'm taking this money and -'

‘No,' I shouted. ‘You're not. We're not. I'm taking it to Jack. I can get him out with it!'

She sighed and put a hand to her forehead for a moment before closing her eyes as she slipped away into concentrated thought. I swallowed nervously and my eyes flickered from side to side. It was her move. I waited for her to say something. When she took her hand away, rather than the look of fury which I had anticipated, she was smiling. Her lips flickered slightly and she came closer towards me, never once taking her eyes off my face.

‘Matthieu,' she repeated in a quiet voice, ‘you have to look at what's best for us. For you and me. For us to be together.' I cocked my head slightly to the left, trying to decipher what she meant. Her face came closer to mine and her eyes closed as our lips met gently, her tongue pressing softly against my closed lips which parted a little on instinct. I felt her hand against my back, a finger trailing down until she brought her hand around my waist, her palm massaging me lightly where she knew me to be at my most vulnerable. A sigh caught in my throat and my body shivered in anticipation as I prepared to put my hand behind her head, to kiss her deeper and stronger, but before I could her mouth slipped away from mine and she continued to kiss me at my neck. ‘We can do this,' she whispered. ‘We can be together.'

I struggled. I wanted her. And then I said no.

‘We have to save Jack,' I whispered, and she pulled away from me furiously, her lips crooked with madness, her eyes filled with rage. I looked away for a moment, unwilling to see her greed personified before me. I gripped the cigar box full of money and I knew that we were both concentrating on it now.

And she pounced.

And – a reflex action – I jumped out of the way.

And then she was no longer there.

I blinked and shook my head in surprise. I had grown accustomed to the dark and I knew that she was gone but I stood there nervously for a moment, still clutching the box for all I was worth, unsure what to do now for the best. Slowly my stomach churned and after a few minutes my knees buckled; I fell and vomited on the roof When there was nothing left to escape my system, my head slowly turned to view the results of my actions, and I could see her there, Dominique, thirty feet below, impaled upon a spike, dangling like a rag doll in the calm, cold night.

Before heading towards the jail house, I took Dominique down from where her body lay and placed her gently on the ground. Her eyes were open and a thin trickle of blood hung from the side of her mouth to her chin. I wiped it away and smoothed down her hair. I didn't cry; curiously, I felt very little at that moment other than a desire to get away. The self-recriminations and insomniac nights of reliving that scene over and over would come later – I have had two and a half centuries to recall it since then – for now, I was in shock and determined to get away from that house as quickly as possible.

I brought her into the kitchen, however, and from there back up the stairs to her own bedroom, which was musty and damp. I opened a window as I lay her on the bed and when I stepped away, my shirt was stained with slashes of red and my hands were wet and bloody. I jumped in fright, more afraid of the presence of her blood than I was of the dead body, and I felt strangely oblivious to her now, as if the corpse before me was not Dominique at all, merely a representation of her, a false image, and her true personality was deep within me and far from dead.

On this occasion, I did not look back as I left the room. I stopped by Jack's bedroom and took off my bloodstained shirt, putting on one of his instead. Outside I washed my hands under the pump and watched as the redness poured into the drain, her last essence slipping away from me effortlessly. I went to the stables then and untied two horses, the two fastest and strongest steeds in Sir Alfred's possession, and led them quietly to the end of the driveway, where I mounted one and held the reins of the other as we headed towards the outskirts of the village where the jail stood. I tied them up outside and drifted inside as if I was in a dream. A guard – a different one from the one I had seen earlier -was asleep at his desk but he jumped when I coughed and gripped the desk before him nervously.

‘What do you want?' he asked, before his eyes lit on the cigar box in my hands. Jack had obviously filled him in on the plans earlier for he looked pleased to see it and glanced around the empty room nervously. ‘You his friend?' he asked, nodding in the direction of the cell.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Can I see him?'

He shrugged so I walked to the end of the corridor and around the corner, where Jack was pacing in his cell. He grinned when he saw me but his smile quickly froze as he saw the expression on my face. ‘Jesus,' he said. ‘What happened to you? You look like you've seen a ghost.' He paused. ‘That's my shirt, isn't it?'

I held up the cigar box so that he could see it, ignoring his question completely. ‘Here it is,' I said. ‘I got it.'

The guard appeared at my shoulder and Jack looked at him. ‘So?' he said. ‘Do we have a deal then?'

‘Aye, forty pounds and I'll let you go,' he replied, rooting through his keys for the right one. ‘That Nat Pepys deserves a good kicking anyway, if you ask me,' he muttered, justifying his actions to two people who had done worse. When he was released, Jack handed over the money and the guard steeled himself for the blow which would knock him out. ‘Just try and do it quickly,' he said, turning back towards his desk and Jack, at that moment, lifted a chair and brought it crashing down about the back of his head. He fell to the floor, knocked out, and although the injury was less severe than the one I had seen tonight – the guard would, after all, live – I felt sick again and thought I might faint.

‘Come on,' said Jack, leading me outside and looking around to make sure that no one was coming. ‘You brought the horses?'

‘Yes,' I said, pointing in their direction but not moving.

‘What's the matter?' he asked me, confused by my attitude. I paused, unsure whether I should tell him or not.

‘Will you tell me something?' I asked him. ‘The truth now, whatever it is.' He looked at me blankly and opened his mouth to inquire further but changed his mind and simply nodded. ‘You and Dominique,' I said. ‘Did anything ever happen between you?'

This time there was a long hesitation. ‘What did she tell you?' he asked eventually and I interrupted loudly.

‘Just tell me!' I yelled. ‘Did anything ever happen between you? Did you .. . make advances towards her?'

‘Me?' he asked laughing. ‘No,' he said, shaking his head firmly. ‘No, I didn't. And if she told you I did, she's a liar.'

‘She did tell me that,' I replied.

‘It was the other way around,' he said. ‘She came to my room one night. She made the advances, as you put it, towards me. I swear to you.'

I felt a stab of pain through my heart and nodded. ‘But you did nothing,' I said quietly.

‘Of course not.'

‘For me? Because of our friendship?'

He exhaled loudly. ‘Maybe a little because of that,' he said. ‘But to be honest with you, Mattie, I never really liked her. I didn't like how she treated you. I told you that. She was a bad lot.'

I shrugged. ‘I loved her though,' I said. ‘Funny, isn't it?'

He frowned now and looked upwards. It was starting to get brighter and it was past time that we should be on our way. ‘Where is she anyway?' he asked and I hesitated, unsure whether I should tell him the truth, whether I dared explain what had happened that night.

‘She's not coming,' I said. ‘She's staying here.'

He nodded slowly, somewhat surprised, but thought better of pursuing the topic. ‘And Tomas?' he asked. I said nothing. There was a long silence. ‘AH right,' he said, mounting one of the horses. ‘Let's go then.'

I put my foot in the stirrup of the second horse, jumped on her back and followed Jack Holby as he led the way out of town. I didn't look back once and, although I would like to describe the journey which brought us back to the south coast and on board a boat destined for Europe and our freedom, I cannot recall a single moment of it. My childhood had ended. And although I had many years of life yet to live – more than I could have ever possibly imagined – I became an adult the moment my horse set foot outside the gates which, a year before, had first brought me into Cageley.

And for the first time in my life, I felt completely alone.

It was Tara who suggested meeting in the same Italian restaurant in Soho where we had discussed her job prospects and the possibility of her leaving the station earlier in the year. I wasn't sure how I felt about this meeting and was slightly nervous as I sat waiting for her to arrive. We hadn't seen each other in over six months and I had rarely watched her on television in that time either.

Yet when I had phoned Tara, after much pushing from Caroline and her fellow conspirators at the station, she had quickly agreed to meet me. We chatted for about ten minutes before arranging a time and place to meet.

When she arrived, she took me quite by surprise. The last time I had seen her, she had been the very picture of the modern career woman. She had worn a designer suit – nothing off the rack for Tara (or ‘Tart' as James had called her) – and her blonde bob had sat perfectly about her head as if her stylist had been sitting outside the restaurant, ready to give her one final touch-up before she made her appearance on the catwalk. But now, six months down the line, I barely recognised her. The suit had given way to an expensive pair of white jeans and a simple blouse, open at the neck. She had allowed her hair to grow a little and it hung above the neck, in a simple arrangement, brunette now with some gentle blonde highlights. She carried a Filofax, which was
de rigueur
I expected, and her face bore little sign of make-up. She looked fantastic; she looked her age.

‘Tara,' I said, my breath quite taken away by the new grown-up look. ‘I'd hardly have recognised you. You look fantastic'

She paused and stared at me in surprise for a moment before breaking into a wide smile. ‘Thank you,' she said, laughing now and, I thought, blushing slightly. ‘That's nice of you to say. You don't look so bad yourself for a middle-aged man.'

I laughed – how many middle-aged five-hundred-year-olds did she know? – and shook my head to stop myself from looking at her. After the formalities were over and we had ordered a relatively light lunch, we sat back in our seats and an uncertain silence descended over us. Of course it was I who had invited Tara to lunch, and as such it was I who was expected to initiate the conversation.

‘So how's life at the Beeb? Much better than with us, I expect.'

She shrugged. ‘It's fine,' she said without much enthusiasm. ‘It's different to how I expected it would be.'

‘How so?'

‘Well, they throw a lot of money at you but don't seem that keen on you doing any work half the time. It seems a strange way to go about doing business.'

‘It's called keeping control of all the talent,' I explained. ‘They're willing to pay an awful lot of people to be under contract to them, not so much to actually work for them, but to prevent them from working for someone else. It's an old practice. I've seen it done before.'

‘Don't get me wrong,' she said quickly, eager not to appear unhappy with her new arrangement. ‘I've a lot on. I have to go to Rio de Janeiro in a few weeks for a holiday show. I'm on
Question Time
later this week. And Gary Lineker and I are going to be redesigning each other's living rooms for an interior design special next month. We've only got two days to do it in so that should be ...' She struggled to find an appropriate word, couldn't and so gave up. I looked down at the food which had just arrived and began to eat, not wishing to look at her in case her face bore an expression of utter misery.

‘Well, it's good that it's going so well and you're keeping busy,' I said eventually. ‘Although we miss you, of course.'

‘Sure you do,' she replied. ‘You couldn't get rid of me fast enough.'

‘Now that's not true,' I protested. ‘There was an awful lot going on at the time and it seemed to me that if you were getting a decent offer from the BBC then it was in your best interest to take them up on it. I was only thinking of your future.'

Tara laughed. She didn't believe that any more than I did. ‘Oh, well,' she said. ‘It hardly matters now, to be honest with you. I think I was a bit of a bitch about the whole thing anyway. There was more to getting out of the station than just job offers, as I'm sure you realise.'

I looked at her in surprise, but she was looking over my shoulder towards another table where a celebrity couple had just arrived. She nodded an acknowledgement towards them before returning to her pizza. ‘Oh, how's Tommy?' she asked after a moment, looking across at me as if she had meant to ask this question immediately after she had arrived.

‘Not so good,' I said.

‘I was so sorry to read about what happened.'

‘It was on the cards,' I told her. ‘He was heading for it for a long time. History isn't on his side.'

‘But he's out of the coma anyway?'

I nodded. ‘Oh, yes. He's back home as well, which is a good thing. But he's very down. And there's no word as yet as to whether he's still going to have a job when he does get fully better again.'

‘That's a tough break. I know his producer though, and she's a total bitch. Real moral high ground hypocrite. She doesn't mind showing every type of human behaviour or perversion on her TV show but, if a single person behaves like a human being in real life, she thinks it's the end of the world. Total nightmare of a woman. Not that I'm one to talk.'

‘Oh, come on,' I said, smiling at her, uncertain whether she was looking for sympathy or simply playing me off against my better nature. ‘You're not so bad,' I added mischievously.

‘I was once,' she said. ‘I was just like her.' She paused and bit her lip briefly, contemplating whether she had the courage to go through with a planned speech. Eventually, stuttering slightly, she continued. ‘Look, Matthieu. There's something I need to tell you. It's something I've been meaning to call you about for quite a while now but every time I try to I can't quite work up the courage. Since you called me and since we're here, I expect I should eat humble pie and just get on with it.'

I looked at her and put my fork down. ‘Go on,' I said.

‘It's about what happened,' she explained. ‘Between us, I mean. When I ... became interested in your nephew.'

‘That's a long time ago, Tara,' I said irritably, not wishing to drag the whole business up again.

‘I know it is, I know it is,' she replied. ‘But I have to get this off my chest anyway.' She took a deep breath and stared me straight in the eye. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I'm sorry for what I did. I was wrong. I was unfair to you and I was unfair to Tommy. I don't know what I could have been thinking of – I acted like a schoolgirl with a crush – but it's like you say, it
was
a long time ago now and I ... I think I've changed anyway. So I just wanted to apologise, that's all. Your friendship always meant a lot to me and I've missed it. I behaved badly and I'm sorry about it. You were the first person -'

I reached across and placed a hand on top of hers. ‘Tara, it's all right,' I said. ‘It's all in the past. We're none of us perfect. You have no idea the mistakes that I've made in relationships over the years.'

She smiled and I started to laugh and shake my head. It surprised me just how much I appreciated hearing her say these things. We started to eat again and a pleasant feeling of happiness descended on the table. We were friends again and that was a good thing. More importantly, she seemed different from the Tara that I had fallen out of love with and closer to the Tara that I had fallen
in
love with in the first place.

‘Give him my best anyway,' she said after a moment before trying to catch the words back. ‘Unless you think that's the wrong thing to do. Maybe you shouldn't say anything about me. He's probably not my number one fan. Not after .. . Well, I didn't exactly help matters, now did I?' The ‘Tara Says:' column that had caused him a certain amount of trouble at the time hadn't come up in the conversation. I changed the subject.

‘Forget about it,' I said. ‘Anyway. I didn't bring you here to talk about Tommy or any of that old business. This is actually supposed to be a business meeting, you know.'

‘Really?' she said, although I didn't believe for a moment that she had seen it as anything but. ‘AH right then. How are things in my old haunt?'

‘Busy,' I said. ‘Extremely busy.'

‘Did you get someone to replace James?' she asked and I shook my head.

‘No. I've been doing the job ever since he died. And P.W. disappeared off to the Caribbean or some place and delivered his dervish of a daughter to me instead to take care of his shares and she's about the worst thing that's ever happened to me, which is really saying something.'

‘How come?' asked Tara, and I found that I didn't mind discussing these things with her. Six months, even twelve months, before I would have been worried that anything I said would either be in a newspaper column or all around the office by dinner time but now, even though we had only been together for about half an hour, I trusted her again. I felt that I could get these problems off my chest and reveal how they made me feel. And I recognised that I didn't have anybody in my life that I could do that with. I told her about Caroline and how she was gradually trying to involve herself deeper and deeper in the business, even though I didn't believe she was particularly good at her job, and how she was still bucking for James Hocknell's old job.

‘Well, she's not going to get it, is she?' asked Tara, washing down the last of her meal with a long drink from her mineral water. I shook my head.

‘Oh, no,' I said. ‘But then neither am I. I've spent about six months doing it now and I've had enough. I need a break. I'm not a young man.'

‘You want to return to your idle man of leisure days,' she said with a smile and I nodded quickly.

‘I
do,'
I said, unashamed to admit it. ‘I really
do.
I mean I want to maintain my involvement but not at this level. Not where I'm responsible for everything that goes on. I want the old days back.'

‘Who doesn't?' she said quietly, and I stored that phrase away as I suspected it was a hint on her part as much as anything. ‘So what are you going to do then?' she asked. ‘Recruit from another station? I suppose I could give you the names of a few people who -'

‘No, no,' I said. ‘That's all right. I have a vague idea in my mind of what I might do but I have no idea whether it makes any sense or not. I have to think it through. Anyway, tell me about you. Honestly now. Are you happy with your job?'

‘About as happy as you are with yours,' she said honestly. She sighed. ‘I'm not exactly
stretched,
Matthieu. I'm bored with the shows I'm doing and the rest of the time it's all research and administrative things, which I have about as much interest in as you do. I want to be back in front of the camera. I want to present a solid news show, that's all I want to do. I want to put one together, design a fresh format, put together a professional team and work to make it successful. A good news show. That's all I want.'

I nodded and looked down at the table. I felt my whole body skipping with delight; this had gone so much better than I could ever have anticipated. ‘Tara,' I said, ‘I think it's time we both put our cards on the table, don't you?'

I waited until Tommy had settled in at home again before calling over to visit him. Andrea opened the door and looked relieved to see me, even though we had hardly hit it off on our one previous meeting in the hospital. She was heavily pregnant by now and her cheeks looked a little puffy, but she seemed in good health, if a little tired.

‘How's the patient?' I asked, stepping into the hallway and taking off my coat. ‘I thought I'd give him a couple of days before visiting him.'

‘I wish
I
could,' she said, leading the way through to the living room where Tommy was staring at the television. ‘But now that you're here it gives me a chance to go out for a while. I'll see you later, Tommy, all right?' Her manner was rude and irritable, as if she had had just about enough of baby-sitting my nephew.

He grunted and she disappeared out of the room, leaving the two of us alone. He was lying down on the couch in front of the television wearing a T-shirt, a pair of sweat pants and thick, woollen socks. His hair was unwashed and looked a little greasy; his face was still pale and he barely glanced in my direction, turning the volume on the television up instead. Children's programming. Cartoons.

‘You know how you can always tell a cartoon person from a real one?' he asked me from his prostrate position.

‘Go on,' I said. ‘How?'

‘Their fingers,' he said quietly. ‘Cartoon people always have four fingers. That's how you can tell. Why do you suppose that is?'

I thought about it. ‘Well, yes,' I said. ‘That and the fact that the cartoon people are generally
animated.
What's up with you, Tommy? Sit up and act like a grown-up, will you? I'm going to make some coffee. Do you want one?'

‘Tea,' he muttered. I forgot; despite Tommy's addiction to various narcotic or addictive substances, the one drug to which he seemed indifferent was caffeine.

After bringing the drinks in, I walked across the living room and switched the television set off.

‘Hey,' complained Tommy. ‘I was watching that.'

‘And now you're not,' I said, reaching across and putting the mug of tea in front of him. He frowned and covered his eyes with his hands as he lay there, waiting for me to say something. I sighed. ‘So,' I said eventually, ‘how are you? Feeling any better?'

‘Oh, yeah,' he said sarcastically. ‘I feel like a million dollars. Let me see, I overdosed, I nearly died, I'm on all these weird medications to wean me off drugs that make my stomach sick all the time and give me near constant diarrhoea, I've got no money, my girlfriend's about to leave me and I'm going to be a father in about a month's time. Oh, and I've been fired from my job. With all these things going for me, how could I feel anything less than deliriously happy? But you're a peach to ask.'