A Year Less a Day

by James Hawkins

  “What a gorgeous day,” says the grey-haired man with the poodle, now minus his umbrella, and his accent causes Ruth to stop and ask, “Are you English?”

  “Many moons ago, lass,” he replies with a smile, and he hands her some bread. “Here. I’ll keep the gulls busy if you look after the ducks.”

  “Thanks,” she laughs, then finds herself saying, “I’m going to England soon,” as she aims for the mallards and the other mergansers.

  “Give my regards to the old place,” says the man, and Ruth promises that she will.

  So, you are going then, she says to herself once the bread has gone and she’s left the elderly man to his birds. But the answer is still elusive as she worries about the cost.

  Have you forgotten?

  What?

  The lottery ticket.

  And what will Mike think of that now? she laughs sardonically to herself. It’s not like I haven’t had plenty of chances to tell him.

  Say that you’ve only just found out.

  Lie? Is that what you’re suggesting? You want me to lie to Mike?

  It won’t hurt. He’ll never know.

  OK, work with me on this, she tells herself as she pulls the crumpled lottery ticket from her purse and stares thoughtfully out over the ocean to the distant islands. A recently arrested daughter of a hooker is now a liar as well.

  So why not just toss it in the sea if you feel that way?

  But I owe so much, she reflects, and tries telling herself that she could ask Trina to collect the lottery prize for her.

  And you don’t think that would make you look guilty?

  Who would know? Only Trina—and the kid in the convenience store who told me I’d won. But he won’t remember me from Eve.

  And you think Trina could keep it a secret? Forget it. She’d be in Donut Delight filling-in the crossword with “JACKPOT” in seconds. In any case, the lottery corporation and the press will make a big deal of someone winning so much. How would she explain to Rick and the children, not to mention her family and friends, that she didn’t actually win anything. They’ll all be browsing car lots, real estate agents, and fashion magazines, and if she tells them the truth, someone will blab.

  Kylie’s cellphone breaks into Ruth’s deliberations. It’s Phillips.

  “Mike?” she queries in surprise.

  “Trina gave me the number,” he explains, before asking, “Where are you? I’ll pick you up. I need you to sign some papers.”

  The speed of the following events has Ruth in such a whirl that she can’t get her mind to stay still long enough to explain to Phillips that she is terrified of flying to England and, minutes later, she finds herself signing a hastily prepared application—to amend her bail conditions and enable her to leave the country—in front of a Supreme Court judge in his chambers.

  “Approved,” says the robed god, affixing the official stamp while peering over the rims of his glasses with smiling eyes. And, as he adds his signature without even reading the application request, Ruth realizes that a certain detective sergeant has already greased the right wheels.

  “Next stop, the passport office,” says Phillips, bundling Ruth back into his car with an eye on his watch. “We should just make it.”

  “But when are we going?” Ruth asks fearfully and is rocked back in her seat as Phillips replies, “Tonight, of course. Our suitcases are in the trunk and the tickets are at the airport ready for pickup.”

  “Tonight ...” she echoes.

  Ruth’s mind is still trying to catch up to her legs an hour later as she and Mike Phillips walk toward the British Airways check-in desk at Vancouver International. The hurriedly issued emergency passport in her hand is the only hard evidence that she is not dreaming, and she grips it so fiercely that it is damp and creased.

  Another surprise awaits Ruth at the check-in desk, where Trina Button is causing a minor disturbance. Trina, herself a last-minute passenger on the overnight flight to London, is railroading the well-groomed clerk into seating Ruth and Phillips alongside her in first class.

  “Are there a couple of vacant seats in first class? That’s all I’m asking. Is that a difficult question, young man?”

  “No madam, it’s not. There are seats, but I’m sorry, I am not authorized to upgrade passengers from economy.”

  “OK,” says Trina lightly, seemingly quitting, then she whips out her tape recorder and shoves it in front of his face, demanding, “What’s your name, please?”

  “W ... W ... Why do want that?” he stammers nervously, while looking around to catch the eye of a security guard.

  “Just so that we know who to sue if she dies.”

  “Dies?”

  Trina slowly drops the tape recorder and leans forward, whispering truthfully, “Ms. Jackson has severe heart problems. That’s why I’m travelling with her. But if she’s in economy and I can’t get to her in time ...”

  “Oh dear. Should she be travelling then?”

  Trina pulls the young man closer and makes a play of checking that she’s not being overheard as she says, “She may look as fit as a fiddle, but her heart has no more than a day or so, unless she gets the right treatment. England is the only place in the world that it’s available right now.”

  “Gosh,” gulps the young man as he consults the first class plan and earmarks two fully reclining seats. “Just bring them to me and promise that you won’t tell anyone else, will you?” he says.

  “How on earth did you manage that?” asks Phillips in awe a few minutes later, once he and Ruth have been upgraded and processed.

  “I just showed him my tape recorder, Sergeant,” shrugs Trina with an innocent grin, “and he absolutely insisted.”

  “Sounds like extortion to me,” laughs Phillips, but Ruth is still dumbfounded over her friend’s presence.

  “Are you sure you told me you were going to visit friends in London?” she asks vaguely, and Trina takes her arm and guides her toward the washroom in the first class lounge, saying, “You’ve got a lot on your mind at the moment, Ruth. You probably forgot. But what a coincidence, eh?”

  The opulence of the washroom, with its onyx basins, gold fittings, and starched linen hand towels, has Ruth ready to bolt. “Wow,” she breathes, “Are we allowed in here?”

  “Of course we are,” says Trina, adding, “Don’t be fooled, Ruth. Most of the crap that goes down these toilets stinks a lot worse than ours, if you get my drift.”

  “This is how I would imagine a bathroom in heaven,” says Ruth, as she washes her hands and luxuriates in the softness and scent of the ten-dollar soap, then she turns worriedly to Trina. “Did you really tell me that you were going to England?”

  “All right,” confesses Trina. “I lied. The truth is that I’m terrified that if you discover that it is Jordan, you’ll make the biggest, most stupid mistake of your life. He’s no good Ruth—he never was.”

  “He married me when everyone told him not to,” replies Ruth as if it were something for which Jordan should have been decorated.

  “Maybe he married you because everyone told him not to. Have you ever considered that? As painful as it may be, have you ever thought that the main reason he married you might have been to piss off his mother?”

  “She always hated me,” admits Ruth.

  “What she hated most is the fact that her dearly beloved son chose a brown-skinned girl when he could have picked a nice white one.”

  “Is it that obvious?” Ruth asks as she closely examines her face in the mirror.

  “No. I just thought you had a great tan when I first knew you.”

  “But he stayed with me, even after we lost the baby,” Ruth asserts, still trying to defend him, and Trina looks up to peer questioningly into her eyes through the looking glass. “Was he really with you, Ruth? Where was his mind?”

  Ruth knows what Trina is getting at, and can’t hold her friend’s gaze as she recalls the numerous times she’d complained about Jordan spending his nights glued to the inflated
boobs of a bimbo in a porno magazine, or slumped in front of a sex site on the Internet with his hand in his pants.

  “He said he loved me,” she says lamely, and catches Trina’s incredulous look as she adds, “I just assumed all men were like that.”

  “You should sit by the window,” Trina tells Ruth as the stewardess leads them to their seats on the 747, but Ruth is unsure.

  “I don’t think I can look,” she says nervously, and Phillips gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. “You’ll be fine.”

  Ruth’s fear falls away as quickly as the earth, and she is mesmerized by the city’s golden lights as Vancouver drops behind them and they soar like an eagle in an updraft, rising high over the majestic escarpment of the Rocky Mountains, and heading northeast toward Hudson’s Bay and the Arctic ocean.

  “It’s fabulous,” muses Ruth, encompassing the experience—the service, the food, and, above all, her new found sense of freedom. “It’s not scary at all, is it?” she says, once she has acclimatized, and Trina trots out another gem. “It’s just like marriage, Ruth—exciting as heck when it takes off, but afterwards all you do is sleep, watch television, and go to the john. And, if you’re lucky, you don’t crash.”

  “Thank you for that comforting thought,” says Phillips sourly as the stewardess turns his seat into a bed.

  “Right. Set your watches ahead,” instructs Trina, as she prepares to snuggle down in her recliner. “It’s already six in the morning in England.”

  The new sun is still below the horizon at their destination, but the time is fast approaching when there will be sufficient twilight for David Bliss to do an early morning reconnoitre at Thraxton Manor to mollify Daphne, and to pave the way for the arrival of the Canadian contingent.

  “I’m sure he’s up to monkey business,” Daphne had asserted the previous evening after Superintendent Donaldson had left. “Maybe you should try taking another look at the place. If anyone can figure out what he’s up to, it’s you, David.”

  “I’ll see if I can sneak in while he’s still asleep,” he had told her as he had set his alarm for an early awakening, though he had no idea what he was expecting to find.

  “Do be careful, David,” Daphne tells him as she pours him a second cup of tea while he waits for the first rays of dawn. “He seemed a nasty piece of work to me.”

  “I’m not planning on meeting him this time,” says Bliss as he adds milk. “I just want to get the lay of the land.”

  A tethered goat in an adjacent field bleats a warning at Bliss’s arrival, and a couple of deer, together with a hare and half-dozen rabbits, scamper away from the hedgerow where they have been feasting on the fresh shoots. Bliss parks the car some way from the manor’s gates and uses his binoculars to spy on the estate through the lightly-leafed hedges as he walks the quiet road along the perimeter. Then, as dawn breaks and a brightly-plumed cock pheasant screeches in alarm at his approach, the sun’s slanted rays glint on the shiny steel of new fence posts, and he spies workmen emerging from a number of caravans set up on the site. “So much for Donaldson’s idea of sending in a mole with the work crews,” he says to himself as he watches the men preparing their equipment.

  The manor’s giant main gates are still closed, and Bliss is heading for the side gate when an approaching vehicle causes him to veer off and carry on along the road. The vehicle, a tractor-trailer carting a forty-foot shipping container, waits at the entranceway until a powerful whirring sound hums through the still morning air and, as the huge gates slowly open, the truck sweeps through into the estate and heads for the out-buildings behind the stables. Bliss is momentarily tempted to try to slip through the gateway in the vehicle’s wake, but he’s deterred by the eagle-eye of a surveillance camera on the top of one of the entrance pillars, and the beam of a powerful floodlight from the other.

  Returning to his car with no clearer picture of how Ruth will be able to get a view of the suspect, Bliss is preparing to pull away when the truck reappears—minus its load—heads out the gateway, and makes for the main road.

  I wonder if the driver knows anything? Bliss wonders, and fifteen minutes later he finds out as he buddies up to the man over bacon, eggs, and fried bread in a greasy truck-stop café.

  “What a’ ya hauling then, mate?” asks Bliss conversationally as he starts into his breakfast alongside the man.

  “Plywood from Canada. What about you?”

  “Bloody ’ell, ,mate, that’s a long way to drive,” jokes Bliss as he ignores the question.

  The driver laughs, “Nah. I only take it from the docks to the old manor.”

  “Thraxton Manor?” prods Bliss with a mouthful of egg.

  “D’ya know the place?”

  “Yeah. What the bloody ’ell do they do with it there, then?”

  “Buggered if I know. I ain’t paid to ask questions. I just drops it off.”

  “Do they get a lot?”

  “I brings one up from Southampton most nights. Then sometimes I take an empty back with me.”

  “Huh,” snorts Bliss. “Seems a funny place for a warehouse.”

  “No. They’ve got machines and such for cuttin’ it up,” he says, then gives Bliss a critical stare. “So what d’ye do then?”

  “Bit o’ this. Bit o’ that,” Bliss replies as he quickly tidies his plate and leaves, calling, “Thanks, mate. See ya,” over his shoulder.

  Superintendent Donaldson is just reversing into his spot as Bliss pulls into the police station parking lot a short while later.

  “I thought you’d like to know that my Canadian guy is arriving this morning to take a peek at ‘Matey’ up at the manor, sir,” says Bliss as he greets the senior officer.

  “Christ. That was quick,” replies Donaldson.

  “They’re eight hours behind us. Makes all the difference,” says Bliss before telling the superintendent about the plywood shipments. “It seems fair enough,” continues Bliss. “He’s a Canadian, whatever his name is, and he’s importing Canadian plywood.”

  “Great. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what the woman says about him. But you’re in luck this morning. I’m trying out a new place for breakfast. It’s just opened on Monk Street.”

  “I’ve already had a bite ...” doesn’t get Bliss very far as Donaldson catches his arm. “Come on, Dave. You’ve been here three months and I’ve only managed to get you for one breakfast. What kind of host does that make me, eh?”

  “So when are you leaving?” Donaldson wants to know, once he’s ignored Bliss’s plea of “I couldn’t possibly ...” and ordered two He-Man specials at the counter of the Gay Friars restaurant.

  “Later today, probably,” answers Bliss. “Mike Phillips should arrive with the woman at lunchtime and, once she’s had a chance to ID the bloke at the manor, I said I’d take them back to London and show them the sights.”

  “How’s Daphne feel about you leaving?”

  “Not happy, but I’ve got to get back to work before I’m accused of swinging the leg.”

  “I’ll excuse the pun,” laughs Donaldson, softy tapping Bliss’s injured thigh as he carries on. “I think she’s going to miss having you around.”

  “She’s funny,” laughs Bliss fondly. “Ever since last night, when she heard the Canadians were coming, she’s been rummaging through the attic for a Paul Anka LP and a Maple Leaf flag that she got signed by Pierre Trudeau at the Beatles concert in Montreal. And she’s planning today’s reception as if she’s expecting a royal visitor.

  “I’ll have to use Canadian salmon and Canadian cheddar in the sandwiches, David,” she had said as she’d made her shopping list. “And I suppose I should make a dessert using maple syrup.”

  “Maybe they’d prefer something typically British for a change,” Bliss had gently suggested, but it had merely drawn a flippant rebuke.

  “I could do tripe and onions, jellied eels, or haggis,” she had said with a straight face. “Though I noticed that the butcher had some chitterlings in his window yesterday�
�that’s boiled pigs’ intestines, David. Which do you think they might like?”

  “I think they’ll like the salmon and cheese,” he had laughed, and left her in charge of the remaining arrangements.

  By the time that Bliss eats his way out of the Gay Friar, the British Airways flight from Vancouver has taxied to a halt at Heathrow, and Ruth’s eyes are everywhere as she walks through the terminal attempting to see through the chimera. The ground feels solid enough; the strange accents of the immigration and customs officers sound genuinely English; the posters and billboards advertising alien products are all well conceived, yet she knows that this isn’t happening—although she would be the first to admit that whoever concocted the illusion has done a stellar job.

  “How are you feeling, Ruth?” asks Phillips, noticing her perplexity, and she wants to ask, How did they do this? but realizes that it’s a stupid question.

  “I still can’t believe it,” she says. “I’d ask you to pinch me, but this dream is so real that I’d probably feel it.”

  “You’re not dreaming,” says Trina. “Look, there’s a ‘bobby’ over there.”

  “Don’t ...” yells Phillips a fraction too late to stop Trina rushing up to the helmeted policeman as she pulls out her camera.

  “Sorry, officer,” says Phillips as he grabs Trina’s arm and starts to drag her away.

  “I don’t mind, sir,” says the constable. “I’m used to it.”

  “Great,” says Trina, breaking free, and she quickly pushes Ruth into place so that she can get a group shot.

  “I used to go out with a copper,” Trina tells Ruth and Phillips as they walk away.

  “Where?” asks Ruth.

  “In London,” Trina answers matter-of-factly. “I was a student here in my crazy days. I lived in a shoe-box overlooking Piccadilly Circus.”

  “I didn’t know that,” declares Ruth.

  “I even lived in Moscow for awhile. Though I’ve forgotten most of my Russian,” she adds, then she spots the sign for the railway station and heads them in that direction.