The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  ‘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 no
dded. ‘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.

  Chapter 25

  November-December 1999

  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 star
ed 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?’