Second Night

by Gabriel J Klein

  When Caz looked around the door two minutes later the room was empty. He collected the printouts in the hall and called out, ‘I’ll see you up there, Al!’

  There was no answer. But the light was on at the top of the stairs to the study.

  Something must have come up with the old man, he thought.

  He had cleared his first plate and started on the second when Alan finally sat down to supper. Sara was away in London for her first working stopover with Charles Fordham-Marshall at the house in Kensington. The big chair at the end of the table was empty. Sir Jonas had declined Daisy’s invitation to join them.

  Jemima came last to the kitchen and took the empty place opposite Caz.

  ‘Sorry I’m so late,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve been very quiet all afternoon,’ observed Daisy.

  Jemima beamed happily. ‘I found loads of pictures of Lady Christina.’

  ‘Where?’

  John and Alan stopped eating. Caz looked up. Jemima reddened under the combined stare coming at her from all sides of the table.

  ‘They were in the cupboard in the dressing room,’ she said hurriedly. ‘There’s a whole book of her wearing the dresses she had made in Paris. I’m sure loads of them are still upstairs in the attics. Do you think Sir Jonas will let me bring them back down to her room? It would be wonderful to be able to match them up to the book.’

  Daisy’s eyes were beady bright behind her spectacles. ‘I dare say he will. Did you find anything else?’

  ‘No.’ Jemima helped herself to vegetables desperate to change the subject. ‘Can we ride tomorrow afternoon, Caz?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Can I take Rúna?’

  ‘If you want.’ He reached for more potatoes. ‘There’re about six messages on the answer machine in the tack room, some eventer woman going on about wanting the colt. She must have got the number from the agency.’

  Daisy’s head came up. ‘The cheek of it! They’re not supposed to give that number to anyone!’

  Caz shrugged. ‘Well, she’s got it and it’s up to Jem to fob her off tomorrow morning before the old man gets wind of it.’

  ‘Too right, I will!’ said Jemima fiercely. ‘I’ll sort her out first thing!’

  CHAPTER 52

  The week of being blissfully spoiled by Daisy and Sir Jonas was soon over. Jemima moved herself and the cats back to the lodge, trying not to do it with a bad grace before Maddie and Jasper returned mid-afternoon. Caz joined her soon after.

  Jasper came in first, dumping a pile of bags in the middle of the kitchen floor. Without a word he grabbed Sara, dragged her into the pantry and shut the door.

  ‘He’s back,’ said Jemima forlornly.

  ‘Looks like it,’ agreed Caz.

  Maddie appeared, similarly laden. ‘How wonderful to be home,’ she said cheerfully.

  Jasper and Sara emerged from the pantry dishevelled and rather red.

  ‘Hello, boys and girls,’ he said grandly. ‘Where’s the champers?’

  ‘We don’t drink champagne in the middle of the afternoon,’ said Jemima.

  ‘Which implies a serious deficiency in the spirit of celebration on your part, Fats.’

  ‘What is there to celebrate?’

  ‘Shall we tell them, Jas?’ asked Maddie.

  Jasper sniffed. ‘They don’t deserve it.’

  ‘Deserve what?’ asked Caz.

  Jemima clapped her hands. ‘I know! Grandpa left us some money! That’s it, isn’t it? He left us a load of cash in a secret account that no one knew about until he was dead.’

  Jasper was impressed. ‘Not bad, Fats.’

  Sara nudged him hard in the ribs with her elbow, bending him temporarily sideways.

  ‘What was that for?’ he spluttered.

  ‘You know very well. Apologise!’

  Jemima stuck out her chin, grinning. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Jasper rolled his eyes. ‘Sorry, Fats, for calling you Fats and hopefully I will remember not to say Fats again, or at least not within a whisper of a dragon woman with razor-sharp arm angles should the mere mention of the word Fats slip unguarded from my lips, Fats.’ He sighed. ‘There, hopefully I’ve got it out of my system once and for all.’

  Sara was sceptical. ‘The word or the apology?’

  ‘Both. I’ll try not to be nostalgic for the word and I’ll do my best not to regret the apology.’

  Sara nudged him again, less forcefully.

  ‘Enough!’ he growled. ‘Don’t abuse me!’

  ‘Then don’t abuse your sister!’

  ‘What else is she any good for?’

  ‘A lot more than you can ever begin to imagine!’ retorted Jemima. ‘So are we rich, Ma?’

  Maddie shook her head and laughed. ‘Not rich.’

  ‘But there’s enough to put a little twinkle in your eye,’ said Jasper.

  ‘How big is a little twinkle?’

  ‘Enough to take me and Stat to Oz for New Year with our share,’ he said smugly.

  Sara’s eyes widened.

  ‘And how much is that?’ asked Caz.

  ‘Would five thousand quid do?’

  Caz gaped. ‘Each?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Wow! I can have a new laptop!’ cheered Jemima. ‘And a decent phone! And a camera!’ She threw her arms around her mother’s neck. ‘Please, please, Ma, let us have the rest of this week off school as well. I’ve missed you so much, I’m traumatised and I need at least a couple more days to get over it. I can easily catch up.’

  ‘That’s a complete load of crap and the worst excuse I’ve ever heard,’ commented Jasper. ‘We’d all have to go around with bags on our heads until Friday afternoon in case someone reported us, and I’m not doing that.’

  ‘Grandpa was my dad’s last living relative,’ she said primly, looking at him under her lashes.

  ‘Who you hated!’

  She laughed. ‘That’s why I’m traumatised!’

  ‘You should have been back to school last week,’ Maddie reminded her, trying to look stern and failing entirely.

  Caz grinned. ‘It’s an allowable family crisis, Ma. They can’t argue with that, and Al could do with a couple more pairs of hands up in the coppices for a few days.’

  ‘That’s a very good point, bro,’ said Jasper.

  ‘But will you bother to catch up with your schoolwork, Caz?’ asked Maddie.

  ‘I’m doing okay.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we put the money in the university fund, Jas?’ queried Sara.

  He thumped the table, shouting, ‘Woman, we are slaves to the university fund! For once, let’s give the slaves a break. I say Oz. What say you?’

  Sara giggled. ‘Oz it is!’

  ‘We’ll play the old boss’s winter fest gig and then we’ll head straight for the plane and three weeks of glory on the booze, the beach and the barbie.’

  Caz looked at his mother. ‘How did you get the money? Grandpa hardly ever worked. I know they had the house and the boat but I thought he was always broke?’

  ‘There was still some left from when the house was sold, but we spent all of it covering his outstanding debts. Some of them went back years. That’s why we were away for so long, quite apart from waiting for the cremation.’

  Jasper grinned triumphantly. ‘And then, boys and girls, we discovered an account Grandma Em had opened years ago that he had obviously forgotten.’

  ‘Or never knew about,’ said Maddie. ‘His grandmother, Abigail Wylde, was the one with the money and she must have laid some aside and given it to Grandma Em.’

  ‘Were we rich once?’ asked Jemima.

  ‘No, not rich, but not completely poor either. I don’t think we were ever workhouse material, not then at any rate.’ Maddie opened a smart leather handbag and handed Caz and Jemima each a cheque. ‘And not now either.’

  Jemima screamed with delight. ‘Yes! I’m going to look at it and feel rich for a few days before I put it in the bank.’

  ‘What a
bout you, Ma?’ asked Caz. ‘Have you got the same share?’

  ‘Identical,’ she assured him. She pointed to the bags. ‘Actually I’ve already started spending mine. I decided it was time to brighten myself up a bit.’

  ‘Can we see?’ begged Sara.

  ‘Oh please, lets!’ echoed Jemima.

  ‘Help me get the bags upstairs and you can tell me what you think.’

  CHAPTER 53

  Jasper opened a new briefcase and put his laptop on the table saying, ‘I’ve been whiling away boring evenings with an update on the band site. Take a look at that!’

  A central window flashed action shots against a wallpaper of selected pictures from the Hallowe’en gig. One of Tristan’s latest compositions blared out of the speakers. Caz recognised the white face snarling at the top left hand corner of the screen.

  ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘The music’s good too.’

  Jasper touched the keyboard. The white face filled the centre screen.

  ‘You look like a total spook, bro,’ he said smugly, ‘but it all adds to the flavour.’

  Nothing like a real one though, thought Caz. ‘Can I have a look at that software?’

  Jasper tossed a package across the table. ‘Be my guest. Have it for a late birthday pressie.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Do I detect fresh, or stewed coffee in the making?’

  Caz nodded. ‘Fresh for once.’ He filled two mugs. ‘Was Ma okay about having to do all that stuff in Plymouth?’

  ‘She was pretty good,’ answered Jasper. ‘Finding the money was the bonus. There’s nothing like a timely bit of retail therapy to raise the company profile.’ He lifted his head, listening for the muted voices in the rooms above. ‘Do you think they’ve got the door shut up there?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t want the women hearing this.’ He hunched over the table, gesturing to Caz to come closer to listen. ‘A weird thing happened when we were getting ready to tip Grandpa’s old dust into the drink. I haven’t told Ma, I didn’t want to spook her out.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Have you ever wondered why our family’s always been buried at sea? I mean, it saves on graves, but haven’t you ever thought it’s a bit weird?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Well, it appears that at some point an unknown benefactor forked out a small fortune to have one of our forebears tossed into the deep. The same benefactor made a sizeable donation to Rame church a couple of years later to make sure something similar could be done for the old chap’s widow, who turned out to be our rich Great-Grandma Abigail.’

  Caz was intrigued. ‘How did you that find out?’

  ‘We were down at the boat and just about ready to push off when this old fella came hobbling along the quay. Ma was up front with the skipper and I was looking after the urn. I’d got the bod shop to sort out his cinders double quick and wrap him up in a box with a lid that I could lever off at the appropriate moment, like we did with Dad. Well, this old fella comes up alongside and says, “You make sure you drop him well out past the Head, boy. Old Frank was trouble enough living, we don’t need him making a nuisance of himself now he’s powdered.”’

  ‘What was that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Apparently the fishing boys don’t like doing that sort of thing any more. That’s why we had to do it early, to nip in and out with the tide. They’re convinced that whoever it was of us who went over the side in the first place haunts the bit where he was dropped. They call him the Watchman.’

  Caz felt all the hairs prickling on the back of his neck. ‘How far back was that?’

  ‘It can’t have been so long ago because the old fella reckoned he had it from his dad. Not more than the last hundred years, I would say.’

  ‘Did he give you any names?’

  ‘No. He couldn’t remember ever hearing any particular name. It can’t have been Caleb and his missus. They were blown to bits.’

  ‘Perhaps it was his dad then, Abigail’s husband?’

  ‘And who was he? There’s no photo, no papers, nothing, and we’d just dumped the only person who could have told us in the drink. The problem is there’s no official record either. We’d already tried finding out about those two women in the graveyard and drawn a blank. I spent a whole day wandering around offices getting the last stuff sorted. Every time I asked about anybody called Wylde I drew the same blank. Everything I was interested in had been lost in the bombing in the war. It’s like the family just dropped off the edge of the planet.’

  ‘We’re still here.’

  ‘Yes, but between us and our mysterious ancestor, we weren’t, if you know what I mean. There are no bodies, no graves, not even a name. Putting Dad in the sea seemed normal at the time, but when someone says something like the old chap trotted out, it brings you up a bit short, doesn’t it?’ He was clearly very uneasy.

  Caz poured more coffee. ‘It’s just a load of superstitious old crap,’ he said, more coolly than he felt. ‘It’s just village talk and nothing to do with us. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  Jasper sat upright, putting his fingers to his brow to smooth out the imagined network of worry lines. He moulded the corners of his mouth into a grin. ‘Well said, bro! The more prosaic viewpoint was just what was needed to get back on track.’ He stretched, breathed out loudly and stood up. His voice had resumed its customary confidence. ‘You are a man of few words but all of them are pertinent and I thank you for that. We’re meeting the boys down the wood yard tonight to sort out the new rehearsal room. Do you want to give us a hand? Drinkies on me down the pub for afters. What do you say?’

  ‘No, I’m working with Al, but you have a good one, okay?’

  ‘That goes without saying.’ He tapped his watch. ‘Twenty-five days!’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Until I will be lifting my first public pint.’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘But do you know something? I’ll never understand why Tris didn’t forswear the booze until his leader was legal?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘He had no business to be born before me. He knows about Achilles and his mate Patroclus, he knows about Alexander and Hephaestion, but he just can’t relate to it.’

  ‘They were all gay, weren’t they?’

  Jasper slapped his forehead in despair. ‘Try and see beyond the limitations of the flesh, bro! It’s the quality of leadership that counts!’ He spread his arms wide. ‘The unique aspiration to greatness! And Tris just doesn’t see it. At least Loz is loyal. Alas, that he failed in his suit with our sister but he’s probably better off.’ He patted his belly. ‘All this talk of the tipple has got me feeling peckish. Where’s my woman? Why isn’t she here to wait on me?’

  He strode to the foot of the stairs, roaring, ‘Stat! Stat!’

  A distant voice answered. ‘Up here!’

  ‘Come down!’ he shouted.

  ‘You come up!’

  He groaned and ran up the stairs.

  Caz folded the cheque and put it in his back pocket. There was still enough time to bring in the horses and bed them down before the hunger pangs began to grip.

  He always enjoyed the walk to the yard from the lodge. The gravel surface of the drive had recently been renewed and the rhododendron hedges trimmed back, enough to retain their shape but not so much as to remove all the flower buds that would open in a dazzling display of white and red, and purple and pink in the spring. The red-tiled roofs of the old house stood out against the muted grey sky and the misted silhouettes of the more distant hills.

  There was no sound of passing traffic and no visible television mast or overhead electricity cables. There was nothing to suggest that time had not twisted upon itself, where he might step across the threshold into the house as it was a hundred years past, or a hundred years into the unknown future when he might not be remembered and could pass unseen.

  Sir Jonas had an interesting concept of time. They had been talking abo
ut it one evening in the library after supper.

  ‘What happens to time when we’re outside this world?’ he had asked the old man. ‘Is it time like we see it, or is it something completely different? Can there be more than one type of time?’

  ‘I think that the concept of time is something we ourselves have imposed upon our understanding in an effort to rationalise the many worlds and dimensions we intuitively know exist,’ Sir Jonas replied. ‘Perhaps time, as we recognise it, doesn’t exist at all?’

  ‘But that would mean that everything happens spontaneously in the same moment.’

  ‘Perhaps it does. Perhaps all time truly is now and we limit it with our ignorance, as we limit so many other things.’

  ‘So how do you relate that to something as obvious as our human lifetime? We are born, we grow old and we die. That takes time and we can see it happening right under our eyes.’

  The old man had smiled mysteriously. ‘And then we are reborn in another dimension. Perhaps we should consider the concept of time as a series of circles, like your magnificent mail shirt, for example. Endless tiny circles of past, present and future intermeshed and equally accessible in the immediate moment, each interdependent on the other for its existence and not one divorced from the whole.’

  Caz had to admit that it was a fascinating idea. He was intensely aware that his existence in this small and exclusive corner of the planet depended on a continuing level of high-maintenance prosperity that was sourced directly as a result of the actions and choices of people who were apparently long gone. But what if they weren’t?

  The extent of their wealth could have made the casual dispensing of a small fortune irrelevant when a body had to be buried at sea with no questions asked. It still could, for what he had come to understand of it. His great-grandparents’ unknown benefactor had had enough cash to bribe the church not to make any trouble – and who else? Were all the records really lost in the war? Or was someone paid to destroy them? Who was the Watchman?

  Is that what I saw on the ferry? he wondered. It all turned around one nagging and apparently unanswerable question. If it’s anything to do with the Guardians, how do I find out?