Borrowed Time

by Robert Goddard

  “This guy Bryant . . .” he began, his smile fading into a thoughtful frown.

  “What about him?”

  Several silent seconds passed as Naylor looked up at me. Then he said: “Nothing. It don’t matter.”

  “Very well. I—”

  “Best be on your way, eh?” The smile returned as he raised the cigarette to his lips.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Naylor,” I said through gritted teeth. I waited for him to respond, but all I got was a cool stare through a veil of smoke. Then I turned and walked slowly towards the exit, catching the eye of one of the prison officers as I passed their desk.

  “Leaving so soon, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  But it didn’t seem soon to me. Steeling myself not to glance back at Naylor as I waited for the door to be unlocked, it seemed, in fact, all too late.

  Sitting in the passenger lounge on the car ferry back to Portsmouth an hour later, I confronted and took the decisions I could no longer delay. Whatever Bella might say, this was the end. She’d be outraged as soon as she heard I’d changed my statement, so I might as well cut my losses and tell her I wouldn’t be doing her bidding from now on. She’d probably retaliate by giving her vote to Adrian, unless I could persuade her I really had done all she could expect of me. And even then . . . But it couldn’t be helped. I’d plead my case as forcefully as I was able. In the end, though, it wasn’t up to me. My visit to Naylor had made me almost glad of that. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be involved any more, whatever the cost.

  Determined to act on my decision at once, I telephoned Bella that evening. She seemed irritated I’d made contact and insisted on calling me back later, “when it’ll be easier to talk.” This turned out to be near midnight, one of her most alert and active hours. On other occasions, she might have found me sluggish and slow-thinking. But on this occasion I was ready for her.

  “I have to see you straightaway, Bella. There’s been a development.”

  “What sort of development?”

  “I can’t discuss it over the phone. We have to meet.”

  “Well, I can’t come to England at the moment.”

  “Then I’ll come to you.”

  “No. Things are fraught enough here without you turning up out of the blue. Keith’s in no mood to entertain unexpected guests.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  “Let me think,” she snapped. A few moments passed. Then she said: “We could meet in Bordeaux.”

  “All right. But how does that—”

  “Get a flight out on Tuesday. I’ll drive up the same day. A shopping trip with an overnight stay won’t sound suspicious to Keith. I’ve done it before. I’ll stay at the Burdigala, as usual. You’d better stay somewhere else. Meet me in the hotel bar at six o’clock.”

  “OK. I’ll be there.”

  “And, Robin—”

  “Yes?”

  “This had better be worth it.”

  My absences from the office had become so conspicuous and commented on that I gave no warning of the next one. Monday elapsed with merciful swiftness, Adrian proving as reticent about his trip to Sydney as I was forced to be about my tour of East Anglian willow plantations. The board meeting was ten days away, its imminence spreading apprehensiveness and suspicion among the entire staff, let alone my siblings. Our futures are always in the balance, of course. But usually we manage to ignore the fact. At Timariot & Small, during the last week of October, that simply wasn’t possible. As for the consternation my phone call to Liz from Gatwick on Tuesday morning was likely to cause, I’d ceased by then to give a damn.

  The Hotel Burdigala was a stylish grand luxe establishment close to the fashionable stores and restaurants in the centre of Bordeaux. Bella always insisted on the best, which the soulless low-rise joint I’d booked into out at the airport certainly wasn’t. But her standards had slipped in one respect at least. This time, she didn’t keep me waiting. Or guessing long about her response when I told her what I meant to do—and why.

  “So, you’re giving up on me, Robin.”

  “I don’t have any choice.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I don’t accept we’ve exhausted all the possibilities yet.”

  “I’ve exhausted them. And myself in the process. Naylor was set up. Deservedly so, you could say. But that’s supposed to be the acid test of justice, isn’t it? Doing right by the innocent, even when you can’t stand the sight of them.”

  “And Paul?”

  “Is facing up to what he did. I suggest you find the decency to do the same.”

  She might have bristled at that. Instead, she treated me to a soulful stare. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Robin. This business is tearing Keith apart. And our marriage with it.”

  “I’m sorry, Bella. That’s not my problem. You have my sympathy, but . . .”

  “Not your help?”

  “I’ve done all I can.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “Meaning you’ll break your promise and vote with Adrian?”

  “I didn’t say so.” She lit a cigarette, her hand shaking faintly as she did so. Was she really upset? I wondered. Or just seeking another route round my defences? “Won’t you reconsider? I genuinely believe Paul’s made all this up. There has to be some way of—”

  “For God’s sake!” I’d spoken loudly enough to turn heads elsewhere in the bar. Now I leant forward across the table and softened my tone. “I’ve spoken to everyone who knew him three years ago. I’ve been everywhere he went. And some places he never went. I’ve tried everything. And ended up where I knew I would all along. I don’t want him to have done it. I wish he hadn’t done it. But he did. And you have to accept it.”

  She raised her left hand to her face and covered her mouth, her thumb pressing against one cheekbone, her forefinger against the other. Her engagement ring glittered in the lamplight. Smoke climbed in a gentle plume from the cigarette in her right hand. And in her eyes there was such brilliantly simulated agony that I could almost have believed it was what she truly felt. But when she took her hand away, her mouth was set in a firm determined line. “I have to think of myself now, Robin. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “I’ve always understood that.”

  “I have to prepare for an independent future.”

  “You’ll ditch Keith, then?”

  “It’s not a question of ditching. It’s a matter of necessity.” She saw me raise my eyebrows in doubt, but carried on unabashed. “And it’s not the only one. I shan’t vote with Adrian. I’ll vote with you. But we’ll lose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Adrian’s made me an offer, you see. One that’s too good to refuse. Especially now.”

  “What offer?”

  “He’s willing to buy five thousand of my shares. At a substantial premium over the Bushranger price.”

  I almost smiled in spite of myself. And so, I think, did Bella. Five thousand shares would exactly invert the voting ratio, giving Adrian a 52 1/2 per cent majority in favour of acceptance. Bella would vote on the losing side, but end up even better off than if the offer had gone through unopposed. She’d make a fool of me and Adrian. And then she’d walk away with the money she needed to rid herself of a husband who was about to become an embarrassment to her. Farewell, Timariot & Small. Adieu L’Hivernance. They’d been pleasant enough while they lasted. But Bella had decided it was time to leave. And time for them to go.

  We walked out into the mild Bordelaise dusk. Bella looked and sounded genuinely sorry for me as she stood beside me in front of the hotel. But her sorrow came cheaper than her vote. Much cheaper. “I booked a table for two at Le Chapon Fin,” she said. “It’s an excellent restaurant.”

  “You’ll have to dine alone. I know I shall prefer to.” It wasn’t meant as bitterly as it may have been taken. But I hadn’t the energy to pull my punches, even the unintentional ones.

  “As you please,” said Bella. “I suppose it’s an arrangement I m
ay have to get used to.”

  “Not for long, if I know anything about it.”

  She frowned slightly, as if struggling to construct an explanation of her motives. I thought I understood them well enough already. And the task was an unfamiliar one for her. With a toss of the head, she abandoned it. “What will you do, Robin?” she asked with amiable curiosity. “Go back to Brussels?”

  “Which you said I should never have left? I don’t think so. There’s such a thing as too much security.”

  “What, then?”

  “I’ll resign from the company, of course. Before Harvey McGraw gets a chance to fire me. Then, well, I don’t know. I’m a free agent. I’ll have three hundred thousand pounds burning a hole in my pocket thanks to you and Adrian. I think I may do some travelling. See the world. Get away from it all. Get a very long way away—before friend Naylor comes out of prison.”

  “And Paul goes in?”

  “That too, of course.” I raised a hand as a taxi pulled into the hotel lay-by. The driver nodded and drew up beside me. “That too.”

  “Good luck,” said Bella.

  “I’d wish you the same,” I responded, “but the words might stick in my throat. Besides, you’ve never needed luck to get what you want, have you? I don’t suppose that’s about to change.”

  “But it is,” she said, so softly I only half-heard the words as I climbed into the taxi. “Believe me, it is.”

  I flew home to England the following morning and was back in the office before the end of the day, dodging Simon’s ever more frantic questions and acting dumb for Adrian’s benefit. He’d made it known in my absence that McGraw had refused to budge on the offer price. This didn’t surprise me, but it worried Simon and Jennifer considerably, since Adrian had said nothing to them about his alternative method of winning the board over. Accordingly, I said nothing either, preferring to let matters take their course. A letter from Bella reached me before the end of the week, appointing me her proxy for the meeting. But it was the key to an empty cage, as Adrian’s smug cat-who’s-dined-on-a-canary expression confirmed. The game was up. But both of us meant to play it to the end.

  I contacted Inspector Joyce around the same time and made an appointment to see him in Worcester the day before the board meeting for the purposes of making a new and revised statement about my encounter with Louise Paxton on 17 July 1990. Our telephone conversation, like my exchanges with Adrian, embraced a fair amount of shadow-boxing, since we were both aware how big a climb-down this represented. In an attempt to preserve some self-respect, I put it to him that Naylor’s wife might be the person who’d tipped off Vince Cassidy. And something in his tight-lipped demurral told me Naylor had guessed right. They’d known all along.

  I turned to Sarah, as so often before, for sympathy and advice. She was naturally curious about the sour and sudden end my enquiries on Bella’s behalf had come to and suggested we meet at Sapperton, where she had to go on Sunday to do some “clearing out” at The Old Parsonage.

  It was the last day of October, mild, dank and breathlessly still. I stopped at the cemetery on my way into the village and visited Rowena’s grave for the first time. It stood beside her mother’s, with fresh flowers in both urns, matching headstones and echoing inscriptions. I remembered Louise’s well enough: First Known When Lost. But now the words seemed dense with bitter unintended irony. Which only heightened the poignancy of the phrase of Thomas’s Sarah had found to commemorate her sister.

  ROWENA CLAUDETTE BRYANT,

  NÉE PAXTON

  23 MAY 1971–17 JUNE 1993

  THE SUN USED TO SHINE

  In my mind, I was on Hergest Ridge again, turning slowly, like a teetotum about to fall. Take all, half or nothing. The chances were always as slender, the mathematics of unpredictability as unyielding. I walked back to the gate, my shoes crunching in the gravel, an illusion of some fainter step behind me garlanding itself around the surrounding silence. The wrought-iron railings of the gate met my hand as the balustrade of the bridge must have met Rowena’s. For an instant, I could see the abyss and sense its appeal, its strange gaping allure. To jump. And leave it all behind. But I couldn’t. There was only the ground beneath my feet. Only the close grey sky above my head. Only the future to face.

  And Sarah, of course. She was the one among us who seemed the most resilient as well as the most perceptive. She didn’t ignore reality or buckle under it. She defied it to do its worst, then retaliated by leading a normal well-balanced life. Not for her Rowena’s despair or Sir Keith’s refusal to recognize the truth or even Bella’s eagerness to subvert it. I knew I could rely on Sarah to do what had to be done. I knew I could look to her for answers as well as questions.

  The “clearing out” she’d mentioned on the phone turned out to be rather more than that. She was removing all the family’s personal possessions prior to the arrival of tenants on a six-month lease. As she explained, Sir Keith had only kept the place as a weekend retreat for her and Rowena, then for Rowena and Paul. They had no use for it now. It was time to close another chapter.

  We went down to the Daneway Inn for lunch and sat outside, scarfed and sweatered against the chill. I described my trips to Cambridge, Albany and Bordeaux. I left nothing out, reckoning Sarah if anyone deserved to hear it all. After the reappraisal she’d been forced to make of her mother’s character, the extent of her stepmother’s selfishness was no big deal. Besides, Bella’s desertion of her father was something Sarah had already anticipated.

  “The sooner she goes the better. Perhaps then Daddy will be able to come to terms with what’s happened.”

  “You think he will?”

  “Eventually. There’s still quite a lot of time for all of us to prepare ourselves.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “I’m trying to. So’s Paul, I suppose.”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  “No. I have nothing to say to him. But I met Martin Hill the other day. He’d been round to see Paul.”

  “Did he say how he seemed?”

  “Yes. Martin was expecting some histrionics, I think. But instead he got what you got. This immense chilling calm. Paul’s reading the Bible, apparently. I don’t mean he’s dipping into it. I mean he’s reading it from cover to cover, memorizing whole chunks. Can you believe it? He sits in that house, with Rowena’s possessions—Rowena’s memories—thick about him, reading the Bible. All day every day as far as I know.”

  I shook my head, admitting my unwillingness as well as my inability to guess the state of his mind. I’d start feeling sorry for him, I knew, if I tried to imagine his plight. And I didn’t want to feel anything for him, even contempt. I didn’t want to share Naylor’s innocence or Paul’s guilt. I didn’t want to rail against an injustice or rejoice at its correction. All I craved now was what I could only have had if I’d read the newspaper articles and watched the television reports back in July 1990—and said absolutely nothing. Uninvolvement. Indifference. The stranger’s sanctuary. Which for better or worse I’d turned my back on.

  “I came across something this morning that might interest you,” Sarah said suddenly, reaching into her handbag and taking out a pocket diary, which she laid on the table in front of me. The red leather cover had the year embossed on it in gold. 1990. “It’s Mummy’s. Returned by the police at some stage, I suppose. Daddy must have hung on to it, then forgotten he had it.”

  I reached out and picked the diary up, turning it over in my hand. I wanted to open it at once, to rifle its secrets. But I needed Sarah’s permission to camouflage my desire. “May I?” I said.

  “Of course. There’s not much. Mummy was no diarist. Just the usual. Hair appointments. Telephone numbers. Flight times. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Dinner dates. Deadlines. What you’d expect. The normal everyday fixtures of life.”

  Already I was flicking through the pages, seeing her handwriting for the first time, sensing her fingers close to mine as she penned the entries. Sarah was righ
t. There was nothing unusual. But even mundanity can be portentous. Wednesday March 7: Oscar’s Private View. Allinson Gallery, Cambridge, 6.30. I turned on. Friday March 16: Collect pictures from Allinson p.m. My gaze flicked to the next day. Saturday March 17: Take pictures to Kington. There it was, then. Confirmation of Sophie’s claim. According to her, that was the day Louise had met her “perfect stranger” on Hergest Ridge. “The weather was unusually warm for March. She wanted a breath of fresh air. You were there for the same reason, I suppose.” But it wasn’t me. It never had been.

  “Look at the entry for April the fifth, though,” said Sarah. “That’s not quite so normal.”

  Thursday April 5: Atascadero, 3.30. I frowned. “What does it mean?”

  “It was just a hunch, but when I checked with directory enquiries and phoned the place, it turned out to be right. Atascadero is a café in Covent Garden. The one where Mummy met Paul to give him his marching orders.”

  “So this corroborates his confession.”

  “Yes. I suppose I shall have to bring it to the attention of the police. But there’s something else. Something much more significant to my mind, though I doubt they’ll agree.”

  “What?”

  “Turn to the week of her death.”

  I leafed through to the week containing 17 July. There was only one entry. An Air France flight number and departure time for the morning of Monday 16 July. Nothing else. But why should there be? By 18 July, she was dead. “What of it?” I said.

  “Turn on.”

  I did so. But there were only blank weeks, their days and dates printed on empty uncreased pages. No trips. No appointments. No aides-mémoires. Nothing.

  “Don’t you see? There should be something. I don’t know. A dental check-up. A hotel booking. Some trivial commitment. But there isn’t a single one. It’s as if—”