The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You want me to work for you?’

  I grimaced. ‘In a manner of speaking. I’d still be the shareholder. The major shareholder now, in fact. I want you to manage the place. Day to day operations. Complete, operational hands-on management. James Hocknell’s old job. The one I’m doing now. What do you say?’

  He looked astonished, as well he might, for I was making him an exceptional offer. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked and I nodded. He burst out laughing. ‘Do you really think I can do it?’ he added in a quieter voice.

  I wasn’t sure, to be honest, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I trusted him. And I believed he meant it when he said that he knew the industry. ‘Yes, I think you can,’ I said. ‘There’s just one other thing that I should mention.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Lee Hocknell.’

  ‘Ah.’ Tommy nodded and looked a little bit abashed. The mention of Lee brought back memories of his overdose to him; to me it meant something a little more serious.

  ‘I had a chat with him the other day,’ I told him. ‘He’s not pursuing that other business any more, thank God. Your little brush with mortality bothered him a little I think. But I’ve offered him a staff writer’s job here. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Why?’ he asked in surprise. ‘Don’t you want rid of him?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘His father was a good friend. I owe it to him. I told him, however, in no uncertain terms, that if he ever again mentioned the circumstances of his father’s death, I’d ... well, I told him that I’d have him killed.’

  ‘You told him what7.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, I didn’t mean it, obviously. But he wasn’t to know that. Anyway, he knows that we didn’t do anything to his father so he’s happy enough. Just a little scared. I suspect he’ll use this place as a stepping stone to something else. Probably best if he does too. Just give him the evil eye whenever you see him around the building. He’s just a boy. He frightens easily.’ Tommy laughed and shook his head in bewilderment. ‘So come on,’ I said. ‘About the job. What do you say?’

  He looked at the ground and shook his head, smiling. ‘You’re a very unusual man, Uncle Matt,’ he said after a moment. I laughed.

  ‘I have my moments. Well? Yes or no? Or do you need time to think about it?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and for a moment I was amazed, and disappointed. ‘I don’t need any time to think about it. My answer is yes.’

  The second meeting. I dropped in to Caroline’s office around lunch time and she was standing in the middle of the floor, looking around her in confusion as if she had lost something, but couldn’t quite remember what it was.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked her and she spun around, a hand to her chest in surprise.

  ‘I didn’t see you there, sorry. No, I’m fine. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, that’s all.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Why, are you going now?’

  ‘I certainly am,’ she said gleefully. ‘A full week off as well.’

  ‘Well for some,’ I replied, pointing to the chairs. ‘Let’s sit down for a few minutes, shall we?’ She stared at me for a moment, as if fearing the worst, and chose the side of her desk to relax against. ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ I asked in an attempt at conversation. ‘Visiting your father?’

  ‘God, no,’ she said with a scowl. ‘You’re not going to believe this but he’s marrying some child in Bermuda. I mean I’m practically old enough to be her mother. She’s obviously just after his money. I mean it’s hardly his body, is it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said, feeling there was nothing to be gained by telling her that this was not in fact news to me. ‘Perhaps it’s love,’ I added, just to irritate her. Bad of me, I know, but there you are.

  ‘I’m going to my mother’s in fact,’ she said. ‘She’ll probably drive me crazy after about fifteen minutes but if I don’t go it’s just her and the cats and she’s likely to shove her head in the oven instead of the turkey.’

  ‘Why would she want to stick her head in a turkey?’ I asked, and Caroline gave me a withering glance. I coughed and continued. ‘Right. Well, look, there was something I wanted to talk to you about before you went.’ I had questioned the sense of holding these two meetings on Christmas Eve, but I figured that one would have a positive outcome and the other probably wouldn’t. And even this could go well, I thought, although it seemed unlikely. What was important was that I wanted to have the whole business settled by Christmas. ‘You have spoken to your father then,’ I continued.

  ‘Yes, of course. Last week. Why?’

  ‘Ah. Not since then, no?’

  She looked at me suspiciously and came down from the desk, settling into a chair instead. ‘No, why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, firstly I wanted to talk to you about the job,’ I said. ‘James’s old job.’

  ‘You always call it James’s old job, Matthieu, despite the fact that you’ve been doing it for the best part of six months. Why is that?’

  ‘Has it really been that long?’ I asked. ‘Good Lord. It’s no wonder I’m feeling tired.’

  A smug smile crossed her face. ‘You’ve made a decision then,’ she said and I nodded.

  ‘I’m making a few changes. Firstly, you’ll be pleased to know that all is well with Tara Morrison. She’ll be back from the first of January and will spend a couple of months researching the best type of news programme we can put on. We’re hoping for perhaps a March first premier.’

  ‘Excellent,’ she said, nodding. ‘That’s a good decision,’ she added firmly as if I was reporting to my superior officer.

  ‘I’ve also made my decision about James’s old job and I have to admit that you were right on one thing. You don’t have to work your way through every step of an industry ladder in order to reach the top of it. You just have to understand the way that the ladder is put together.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, grinning enthusiastically as if I had just offered her the job, ‘I’d like to think that I’ve proved that with the way I -’

  I held up a hand to silence her. ‘For that reason I have decided that I should go with someone who has shown a great deal of enthusiasm, a real track record in the business and, moreover, an understanding of the television medium. Someone who understands what the public want and will give it to them. Someone I trust absolutely.’

  A long silence. ‘Yes?’ she whispered.

  ‘The new managing director is going to be Tommy DuMarque,’ I finally said. She blinked and, after a moment, burst into laughter.

  ‘Tommy DuMarque!’ she roared, as if this was the most ridiculous idea ever. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. The soap star?’

  ‘Not any more. He’s got testicular cancer.’ Her eyes and mouth opened wide like a fish and I quickly qualified that. ‘His character has, I mean. He’s being written out of the show. You know about this whole drug business that’s been -’

  ‘I know he’s your nephew is what I know,’ she shouted. ‘You’re giving the top job here to your nephew, a self-confessed drug addict who sleeps with his sister-in-law and has never even stepped outside of London in nine years? What kind of qualities are those? What kind of experience?’

  I stared at her in amazement. ‘I think you’re mixing up the -’

  She didn’t care. ‘What on earth are his qualifications, Matthieu? Can you tell me that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘I can. I just did. He’s passionate, he’s capable, he’s knowledgeable. He’s also turned over a new leaf. And I think he can do the job. That’s qualification enough.’

  ‘And you think it’ll stay turned, this new leaf of his. For God’s sake, he’ll probably just roll it and smoke it!’

  I thought about saying something but didn’t. She shook her head as if I had gone crazy.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she said eventually. ‘But you’ll just have to tell him that it’s not on.’

/>   ‘I can’t do that, Caroline.’

  ‘Well, then, you’re going to have to find a way, all right? You and Alan might have a majority shareholding between you but I still control thirty per cent and I will not have that man as managing director.’

  I sighed. ‘Caroline, those shares were your father’s to control, not yours. They’re not there just to give you a good job.’

  ‘Nor are they there to employ dubious members of your family. You can get on the phone to Tommy right now and cancel whatever ridiculous offer you made to him or I’ll do it myself

  ‘You’re not a shareholder,’ I insisted.

  ‘My father is! And while he’s in -’

  ‘Your father isn’t,’ I said, over her shouting, and she stopped immediately.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked. ‘Of course he is. He owns thirty per -’

  ‘Your father has sold his shares,’ I informed her. ‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, he should have told you himself. He sold them, Caroline. You don’t control them any more.’

  She shook her head again and I could see tears spring into her eyes.

  ‘You’re lying,’ she said, although she knew that was not the case.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Who did he sell them to then?’

  ‘To me,’ I said. ‘Obviously. So you see I do have control over these matters. I’m sorry if you’re upset but I don’t want to lose you from here. Honestly, Caroline, I don’t. Tommy will, in time, make whatever changes he sees fit but I promise you, on my honour, that as long as I have controlling interest in this television station there will be a job here for you.’

  She nodded and looked at the ground, having nothing more to say. I took this as my cue to leave and stood up and walked to the door.

  ‘The thing is’, I said as I went, ‘I’ve never had any children. And I’ve never really owned my own business before, oddly enough. Putting Tommy in charge ... well, it turns it into a family business. And I like that idea. He’s about to become a father himself. I’m sure you can understand.’

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to say so I returned to my office. A few minutes later I heard her own door shut and her high heels disappearing towards the elevators, and I sighed with relief. It was done. I was free. It was over.

  I could go home now.

  Chapter 26

  An Ending

  Eventually, all the stories and all the people blend into one.

  My memory is good and my mind is alert but there have been times when I have struggled with names within this memoir and I must admit that there are one or two people along the way – some of the mothers of the Thomases for example – to whom I have either been forced to give pseudonyms or to ignore altogether. There are too many people to remember and 256 years is a long time.

  Almost everyone is dead now anyway. Jack Holby and I escaped England without being captured and travelled to the continent, where we separated after a few short months. Jack travelled on to Scandinavia and I never heard from him again. I am pleased that I didn’t betray him and have always had a curiously indeterminate feeling towards Dominique’s death; sometimes one can realise that a person is unworthy of love and love them anyway; one can form an unexplain-able attachment that cannot be broken even when the object of one’s affection breaks the confidences with which you entrusted them. Sometimes the one you love is blind to your feelings and for all your conversation you cannot find the words to explain it.

  Tomas, the younger brother whom I had left behind to live with Mr and Mrs Amberton, grew up and came to find me in my new home in Munich, where he began a brief career as a bank robber and was bludgeoned to death by a teller on his twenty-third birthday. Perhaps I should have taken him with me originally as planned.

  I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but at least I got it right in the end. Because Tommy is alive. He started work the day after Christmas and has already come to me with a dozen good ideas for the future. I’m officially retired. He’ll do fine.

  My plans for the day were simple. The city was alive with preparations for the new year celebrations and the last thing I wanted to do was to make myself part of that insane conference of drunkards, prophets, terrorists and plebeians who felt a sudden urge to mark a moment in time with other members of their species. I could imagine the scene only too well, for I had been there before.

  I’ve seen the century turn twice already and now another is upon me. I never grow tired of living. People today find it hard to believe what things could be like a hundred years from now, as if their level of advancement is as good as it gets. But when I was born you travelled on horses and in carts; now we travel to the moon. We wrote with pens, on paper, we sent letters in order to communicate; not any more. We have found a way to escape the very thing which our existence guaranteed us – life on this planet.

  And so I went for a walk. I put on a coat and a scarf, for the winter had set in and I could feel the cold suddenly, and took a walking stick from a fine prop in my hallway, a wedding present from Bismarck’s secretary on the occasion of my eighth marriage (to her, as it happens), and stepped out on to the streets of London. I walked for several hours until I grew tired. I felt an urge to wander the streets and set off through Charing Cross Road, across to Oxford Circus, up to Regent’s Park and London Zoo which I hadn’t visited in years. I turned for Kentish Town and had a sandwich and a beer in a pub which was decorated for the festivities. At three tables in a row were an old couple, concentrating on their food and happy in each other’s silent company, a middle-aged husband and wife drumming their table irritably, looking stressed and exhausted already, and a teenage couple, both wearing what I took to be new clothes and new haircuts, laughing, joking, touching, feeling, kissing. During one such kiss, the boy’s hand strayed gently to her breast and she slapped it away laughing, and he stuck his tongue out at her with a wide smile, balancing his thumb on the tip of his nose and waving his fingers dramatically before they both dissolved into giggles, and I laughed too.

  I strolled through Camden Town, down towards St Pancras and around by Russell Square and Bloomsbury, where a small park opposite an enormous red-brick hotel had been covered over with a tarpaulin in preparation for the night-time celebrations. Eventually out on to the Tottenham Court Road, towards Whitehall and into St James’s Park where the crowds were gathering already, my signal to return home and soon. To the front of the Queen Victoria Memorial, where I stood and stared at the palace for a few moments, briefly recalling my three visits, a dreadful romance, and the characters I had seen occupy the building which faced the millennium with a nervous swallow. And then back home, to Piccadilly, where I closed the twentieth century behind me, those two simple words which seemed to imply progress and revolution and hope and ambition more than any others, and prepared to see in its successor.

  The phone rang in the evening around six p.m. I picked it up warily, ready to refuse any last minute invitations. However, it was Tommy on the line, calling from the same hospital where he had lain in a coma a few months earlier.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said, smiling widely when he told me the news. ‘And how’s Andrea? Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s tired. But she’ll be fine. It wasn’t a difficult labour. Well, not for me anyway

  I laughed. ‘That’s wonderful news,’ I said. ‘I’m very happy for you both.’

  ‘Thanks, Uncle Matt,’ he said. ‘And listen, I want to thank you again for what you’ve done for me. This is a new start. I feel like my life is going to begin today. I’m off the show, I’m getting healthy again. I’ve got a family, a great job.’ He paused and I didn’t know what to say; he was truly grateful and it made me feel wonderful to have succeeded for once. ‘Just ... thanks,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘Don’t mention it,’ I told him. ‘What are uncles for? Now, tell me, what are you going to call him? You know we haven’t had a plain old “Tom” in about eighty years. How about t
hat? Or maybe “Thomas”. Or is that too formal for a baby?’

  Tommy laughed. ‘I don’t think we’ll be using either,’ he said and I blinked in surprise.

  ‘But it’s tradition,’ I said. ‘All your forefathers have always called their -’

  ‘We’re thinking of Eve,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Eve?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s a girl, Uncle Matt. Sorry to disappoint you, but we’ve had a baby girl. I’m afraid I’ve broken the cycle. You think you can deal with a niece for once?’

  I laughed out loud and shook my head. ‘Well, I’ll be ...’ I said, truly amazed by the news. ‘A girl. I don’t know what to say.’

  I hung up the phone and stood there for a few moments, lost in thought, finally running out of words. I’d never anticipated a baby girl before but somehow it seemed right. I was happy for him. And for her. It was a new start, a fresh line. Maybe there would be no more Tommys from now on. Eventually I shook myself out of my reverie and began to walk slowly back towards the living room. I stopped at the bathroom and stepped inside for a moment, switching on the light above the sink by the small string that controlled it. Turning on the tap, I bent forward and allowed the cold water to run through my fingers for a moment. It made me shiver but then, pausing for a moment with a towel in my hands, I caught sight of my face in the mirror. There was no doubt about it. I was in tremendous shape for a man my age. But, as I looked closer, I noticed some small lines beneath my eyes where no lines had been a few weeks earlier. And my hair, always an attractive shade of grey, looked as if it was beginning to turn white. And below my left ear a mark was spreading which looked dangerously like a liver spot. I stared at my reflection in surprise and held my breath.

  I pulled the cord sharply and the light went out.