Borrowed Time

by David Mark

  ‘She held me,’ says Adam, quietly. ‘Back then, I mean. Two days old. She said I had lots of hair and she thought my nose looked like a little mushroom. Irons held me too. I could fit in the palm of his hand. 6lb 1oz. Smaller than Tilly.’ He pauses. ‘I don’t think she ever did.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Pamela. It was a bad birth. She wasn’t well. And the nurse thought it wouldn’t do her any good to let me latch on. Out of sight, out of mind.’

  ‘Oh, Adam …’

  ‘She thinks it was done for the right reasons. She was still a girl. Pamela. Just turned fifteen. And her injuries. What he’d done to her. Nobody even thought the pregnancy would come to full term. He hired a live-in nurse. Tried his best by her, or so Alison says. It wasn’t enough. She stayed alive long enough to have me. And then she did what she felt she had to.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Adam.’

  He stares into his mug. Thinks of the picture she had shown him. A single snap. Two girls, grinning for the camera, patterned dresses and big hair. He’d seen himself in her, just as Alison had. In the almond shape of the face, the line of the jaw. They had the same hands. Big palms and slim fingers.

  ‘What kind of man …?’ he begins, and his face creases. He makes a blade with his fingers and stabs it at his chest. ‘What’s in here? In my blood? Fuck, Grace, I’m rotten all the way through …’

  ‘No, Adam, you can’t think that way,’ she says, gently, as she puts her hand on his. She means what she says. He is Adam. Wherever he came from, whoever his parents were, he is Tilly’s father, and a good man.

  ‘It changes everything,’ hisses Adam, and places his mug down so he can use a hand to massage his brow. He has repeated this action so many times, the skin is becoming raw.

  ‘You’re you. You’re your own person. A wonderful person. A great father. A good man. The rest is just circumstance …’

  They sit in the dark, listening to each other breathe, to the sound of their lips on the coffee mugs, the mugs on the table, their chair legs on the floor.

  ‘There’s no doubt?’ asks Grace, and there is a well of hope echoing in her voice.

  ‘None,’ says Adam. Then, again: ‘None.’

  ‘Can you tell me? Can you?’

  ‘I have to get it out of me or it’ll choke me, Grace,’ says Adam, and he wishes he could cough up the apricot stone which is wedged in his throat. His head is spinning, as the alcohol seeks out his vulnerability, washes over it, picks it clean, leaves it bare, its nerve endings exposed. ‘They found her in the early hours of the morning. Her face was hanging off. She was just a puddle of blood. You could see the bone around the orbit of her eye …’

  ‘She told you this?’

  ‘I made her. I needed to hear it all. She was barely conscious. Pamela, I mean. Some of the party guests drove her to hospital, and that’s where they found out she’d been raped.’

  ‘But she was naked? I mean …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean, the doctors told them the full details. Everything that had been done to her.’ Adam stops, grimacing.

  ‘What did the police do?’

  Adam glares at the floor. ‘Mr Jardine didn’t want the police called. She said he already knew who had done it, and that it would be dealt with.’

  ‘Jesus …’

  ‘Pamela didn’t speak about it for weeks. She was too messed up. They had to stitch her face back together, she lost the sight in one eye. Looked like she’d been mauled by a dog. When she came to, she could barely even speak. Just managed to tell Alison it had happened in a van. That there was music, and that he’d worn a gas mask. From the war. She couldn’t tell them all the things he had done to her, but they know from the medical reports.’

  ‘God, that’s horrible …’

  ‘Then they tell her she’s pregnant.’

  Adam makes a sound that Grace thinks is the start of tears, but which becomes a hollow laugh.

  ‘That’s me,’ he says. ‘The icing on the fucking cake.’

  ‘But she kept you,’ says Grace. ‘She didn’t have an abortion …’

  ‘No, no. Wasn’t on the cards apparently, although everybody around her wanted her to get rid of it. Asked her how on earth she could stand to look at a baby brought into the world like that.’

  ‘Oh, Adam,’ says Grace, filling up with tears, shivering inside her dressing gown. She cannot imagine how this feels for him.

  ‘So how did you end up with your mum and dad?’ she asks, gently.

  Adam stands up from the table, walks to the cupboard by the sink and pulls out a bottle of white rum. He sits back at the table and puts a large measure into the cold, half-empty coffee cup, then drinks it down. He feels the acid burn his stomach, the pain inside him, and thinks, for a moment, he can hear a demon inside him shriek in indignation. He takes another drink and then stares directly at Grace.

  ‘She said it was a standard adoption. There was talk of raising me themselves but they wanted to give me the best start they could. Without me knowing what I was.’

  ‘Adam, you’re still you. You’re a good man …’

  ‘Yeah, course,’ mutters Adam.

  ‘But there’s no paperwork, is there?’ asks Grace, cautiously. ‘I mean, you’re taking a lot of this at face value …’

  Adam waves a hand. ‘The things he did to her,’ he says, and screws up his face. ‘To a child.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Adam.’

  He licks his dry lips. Takes another drink. ‘Pamela said it was a man. A man with graying hair and tattoos. A gas mask. A man with rough hands and dirt under his nails.’

  He stops. Drops his eyes to the floor as if his head is too heavy to hold up.

  ‘What about Larry?’ asks Grace, softly. ‘Did they know him? Had he been nosying around?’

  Adam swallows, his jaw aching. ‘She didn’t know the name until after the body had been identified. Didn’t know my name until you rang her snooker club and left a message. It’s been hard for her. Knocked her for six.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s tough,’ says Grace.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Adam, only half there. ‘Soft too, though. You could see she wanted to cry but wouldn’t let the tears fall. And she was fighting with herself – like she wanted to hug me but wouldn’t give in to it. She tried to give me money too.’

  Grace pulls a face. ‘Guilty conscience?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Don’t say that. She was okay, you know. She was kind. Wanted to see pictures of Tilly. Zara. You.’ He manages a smile. ‘Said you sounded like a trouble-maker, but she meant it in a nice way. Reckons you must care about me a lot.’

  Grace rolls her eyes. ‘She offered you money? How much money?’

  ‘She never said a figure. I just told her I didn’t want anything. She didn’t push it.’

  Grace sucks her lower lip. ‘So how did you leave it? I mean, what next? Are you staying in touch? Is there any family you could contact? Pamela’s parents, maybe?’

  ‘All dead,’ says Adam, shaking his head. ‘Her dad was pals with Mr Jardine. That’s how Pamela and Alison became friends. Moved in the same circles in Canning Town. Pamela’s dad, I think his name was Archie – he died when Pamela was ten or eleven. Stabbed. A fight in a pub. Mr Jardine took care of his widow, or what was left of her. Paid her bills, kept her comfortable. It didn’t stop her losing her mind. Drank herself batty. Threw herself in front of a train. Mr Jardine took Pamela in. He was doing well by then. Big house. Alison at private school. Business was booming. Pamela must have thought she’d landed on her feet.’

  Grace looks unsure. ‘With two dead parents? Living in a gangster’s mansion? I don’t know.’

  ‘Alison said that Irons had a soft spot for her,’ continues Adam, to himself. ‘He’d been hurt. The injuries I told you about – they made it hard to look at him. Alison says Pamela used to go over to the cottage where he was convalescing – where he still lives. She’d talk with him. Read to him. She did drawings for him. First person who was
ever kind to him, according to Alison. After what happened, after I was born, he couldn’t deal with it. He went after the man who did it. After my … after my father …’

  Grace watches as Adam dissolves in on himself. She reaches out to hold him and he flinches at her touch.

  ‘I’m fucking rotten,’ he whispers, as she wraps her arms around him and pulls him close.

  ‘Adam, you’re a good man …’

  ‘Rotten all the way through.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  11.11 p.m.

  Irons lolls in the armchair in front of the dead fire, staring at the patterns on the wall. He has been sitting here for more than two hours. The drink in his right hand remains untouched. A cigarette has burned to dust in the ashtray on his lap.

  Alison was gentle as she swung the club that floored him. Took the trouble to hold his hand and sit him down as she confirmed what he had known as he wrapped his fingers around Adam’s and felt the familiar skin.

  He’s Pamela’s boy. He’s Dozzle’s blood. He’s the product of an angel and a demon and he’s all grown up.

  Irons had held himself together. Just growled, as she left, the only piece of advice that seemed important.

  Don’t tell your dad – it will finish him.

  Irons has never been one to analyse or question. He is instinctive and direct. He knows, without thinking, the best way to dispatch a problem. Can claim a life without arousing suspicion, or ever biting his lip or scratching his head over the safest way to get the job done.

  Now he examines his thoughts like a prospector panning for gold. Sifts through the possibles, the various outcomes, the best and worst scenarios.

  He thinks about his long association with the family. The blood he has spilled and the scars it cost him. He thinks of Pamela and what was done to her. His own part in it.

  A name scuttles across his mind as his thoughts form and evaporate, twist and entwine. He thinks about Larry Paris, trussed up and smashed to bits and dunked at Dead Man’s Vale. Adam hadn’t done it, of that Irons was sure. But he’d paid him to look into his background. And something he found had made his death preferable to life for somebody. Irons drifts back through the years. Thinks of men long since turned to dust. Considers those left alive. The footballer, Ace. The councillor who pulled the strings Mr Jardine wanted to be pulled. Freeman of the city, now. There had been others, too. At the manor house. Strangers. People he didn’t recognize and who flinched when they saw his face.

  He chews at his cheek until he tastes blood. Hears his own wheezing breath as the cells in his lungs devour his living flesh and pull him closer to the grave in tiny, infinitesimal increments.

  Adam, he thinks.

  The boy was well named by the family that took him. Pamela would have liked it.

  Irons glares again at the picture on the chimney breast. She did this. Carved this ugly, leering memory into the wall, hacking at the brickwork with her paintbrush until this leering, bug-eyed monster came to life. She painted it for him, so he would know whom to kill. It had never struck him as a good likeness of Tommy Dozzle, but Mr Jardine had promised him. Said that he needed to be left alone until they had completed their business. Told him that they would have their vengeance eventually, but that now was not the time. In all of their long years of friendship, this was the only command that Irons was unable to carry out. He took Tommy Dozzle to pieces. It cost him eighteen years.

  Irons closes his eyes. He tells himself that he has only ever had one job. To look out for the Jardine family. To do what needs to be done. To sew the city up like a duck’s arse and make sure nobody ever tried to unpick the stitches.

  He knows what he must do. As much for the family as himself.

  He needs to find out about the boy. Climb inside his life and judge him. His worth. See what the man sired by a monster had become, and decide, in Pamela’s name, if he be allowed to live.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Victoria Park, Portsmouth

  November 1st, 2.44 p.m.

  Adam throws a branch, thick as an arm, at the crackle-glazed mirror of ice which covers the duck pond. It smashes the surface into irregular triangles, and as Tilly squeals with excitement, coffee-brown water splashes upwards. More mud begins to ooze through the cracks. The disturbance throws up some of the treasures from the pond’s murky depths. A hypodermic needle, a used condom and an empty crisp packet, manufactured by a company long since in administration, rise to the surface, before sinking back down.

  Tilly is wide-mouthed and amazed, her jaw hanging open beneath cheeks and nose pink with cold. She is wearing a bobble hat, scarf, padded coat, mittens and wellington boots, but is still feeling the chill.

  The sun is shining brightly from a blue sky. The puddles in the pitted concrete paths are as frozen as the pond, and Tilly has slipped over several times, while running around the pond, chasing the ducks. None of the spills have been enough to cry about, but she is getting tired, and her nose is running, and will soon be in the mood for tears.

  Adam returns to the plastic table and chairs by the café and sits down next to Selena.

  ‘Best be getting back soon,’ mutters Adam, watching Tilly chase a pigeon. ‘She’s cold. How are you? You look as cold as a penguin’s toenails.’

  Selena is huddled down inside her sensible coat, her face a charcoal drawing on white paper. ‘I’m fine,’ she mumbles. ‘I’d run around, but my knees have locked.’

  ‘You’ll talk about this winter, one day,’ says Adam. ‘You’ll tell your grandkids they don’t know they’re born, and that the winters when you were little would have killed them off.’

  ‘Old people do that, don’t they?’ grins Selena, teeth chattering. ‘When I meet your parents, will they tell me loads of stuff about the old days?’

  Adam drops his gaze. He keeps trying to lighten his mood but even the most innocuous comment feels weighted with symbolism. He knows that Zara wants him to introduce her to his mum and dad. He knows, too, that she would have supported him these past weeks if he had let her know what he has been going through. But to do so would be to show himself vulnerable; to let her see what he really is, and it already hurts him like a burn when she opens the latest bill for the restaurant and he can do nothing to help save telling her to put it on the pile. He wants to fix everything for her, though whether it is for love of her or a need to measure up to some inexplicable ideal, he truly would not be able to say. He feels like his mind is stuffed to overflowing with things to worry about. It’s been weeks since Bosworth hauled him in for questioning and he hasn’t heard a solitary word about whether he’s likely to face another grilling. He’s had a couple of calls from Angus, asking whether he got anywhere with the note that Larry had left beneath his computer, but so much has happened that Adam hasn’t felt able to open up about any of it. His world feels like it’s been knocked off its axis. He cannot make himself do the things he knows to be best for him. He should break off contact with Alison. Forget the Jardines. Commit to Zara, or have the good grace to walk away. He should buy his mum a box of chocolates and tell her he’s sorry he went looking for some other mother when she’s only ever done her best by him. He should sit by his dad’s bed and read him a cowboy story. He doesn’t do any of the things he should. Just keeps sinking deeper, and trying to work out whether the bad seed within him has already flowered.

  ‘You okay? You look all far away …’

  ‘Lot on my mind,’ he says, quietly. ‘It’s not easy, y’know. Being a grown up. Doing the right thing.’

  ‘You do it really well,’ says Selena, loyally. ‘Mum isn’t easy to be with. I love her, but she’s hard work.’

  ‘She’s got a lot to deal with,’ says Adam, and means it. He lets her picture flash in his mind and feels a sudden swelling of emotion, as if he has blown on an ember. He thinks of how he has been these past days; the distance between them; the restraint she has shown in turning a blind eye to his clandestine phone calls, his busy thumbs on the keypad of his laptop, his p
hone. He wants to pick up the children, take Zara by the hand, and lead them somewhere pretty and warm. Wants to make them see how much they mean to him. Wants to show them he can be a better man. He just can’t afford it.

  This is me, now, he thinks, as his spirits sink. This is me forever.

  There are only two customers in The Basil Pot, and Zara, instinctively, is working out how much food they will need to order to make opening this morning worthwhile. When she considers the cost of employing the chef, and a waitress, she realizes that they will both need to order a three-course dinner and two bottles of wine for her to even start making a profit. He, a full-faced, bearded, mature student, orders eggs with hollandaise sauce on a toasted bagel. She, plain and homely, treats herself to blueberry pancakes with crème fraiche. A pot of coffee and a jug of tap water. Just over £11 for the lot.

  Be a millionaire, she thinks, and somehow the thought is a prayer. Leave me a grand as a tip.

  Zara wishes she were over the road, dressed in thick jeans and Ugg boots, ski jacket and bobble hat, snuggling up with Adam and watching their children play in the park. She wonders if she will make as much money today as the little brick-built café by the pond, selling its teas and its Kit-Kats.

  The phone rings, and as she answers it, she finds the pause before she hears the voice, too long. Too uncomfortable. The second of anticipation, of not knowing if it will be a booking for a table of ten, or Sol asking for his money back, is interminable.