Days Without Number

by Robert Goddard

  Basil caught his eye and gave a despairing grimace, sowing the suspicion in Nick’s mind that Basil for one had anticipated this turn of events in every grisly detail. Including Anna’s loss of temper, which was gathering momentum at that moment.

  ‘Your hopes, Dad. Yes, we’ve heard a lot about them and how far short of them we’ve fallen. Do you ever wonder why we’ve disappointed you? Do you ever consider that it could have something to do with your own narrow-minded, mean spirited approach to life?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘Have you any idea how hard it’s been for Andrew recently, scraping by at Carwether?’

  ‘Farming was his choice, not mine.’

  ‘So what? I’m not asking you to give him careers advice. I’m asking you to sympathize with him. To understand. But you can’t, can you? Or won’t. You refuse to understand any of us.’

  ‘I understand you only too well.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, that works both ways. Don’t think I haven’t rumbled you.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, my girl, I—’

  The back door slammed so hard that the china in the cabinet next to the fireplace tinkled like a wind-chime. Then Irene came back into the room. ‘He’s gone,’ she said with a sigh. ‘There was no talking him out of it.’

  ‘There was no talking him out of any of the many follies he’s embarked on in his time,’ said Michael, quite neutrally, almost analytically. ‘It’s not in his nature to take advice.’

  ‘Any more than it’s in yours,’ snapped Anna.

  ‘On the contrary. I heed the advice of those qualified to give it. I always have. It’s how I made my way in the world. It’s how I made a success of my life. Whereas ’ He smiled at them. ‘Well, we demonstrate our own cases.’

  ‘This is hopeless,’ said Irene, her expression underlining the point. She looked like someone who had carefully and lengthily planned a course of action, only to see her plan disintegrate as soon as she embarked upon it. Which was, of course, exactly what had happened. ‘I think I’d like to go home. Nick?’

  He shrugged. ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Withdraw and regroup,’ said Michael. ‘Yes. Quite the best tactic, in the circumstances. Retreat to a place of safety and prepare an alternative approach. It won’t work, of course.’ His smile broadened into a beam of contentment at what he clearly regarded as their rout. ‘But don’t let me stop you trying.’

  ‘Why did we think it would be any different?’ Irene asked rhetorically an hour later, in the back bar of the Old Ferry Inn. There were no customers to hear her words, evening opening time still being some way off. Her audience comprised Nick, Anna and Basil. They had left Trennor more or less simultaneously and proceeded in convoy to Saltash. Now they sat around the fire, staring glumly at each other and wondering where any of them went from here. ‘I mean, how could we be so na ve as to believe he’d see reason when he’s never seen it in my experience so much as once in his life? How could we?’

  ‘It is difficult not to think of one’s father as one would wish him to be rather than as he truly is,’ Basil mused.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ said Anna, sounding surprised by the realization. ‘I love him, of course. But I don’t actually like him. I mean, not at all.’

  ‘I think I’ll phone Andrew,’ said Irene, jumping up. ‘See how he is.’

  She went to the wall-mounted phone behind the bar to make the call. They watched her dial and stand with the receiver in her hand, listening to the ringing tone on the line. A minute slowly passed. Then she put the phone down.

  ‘I wish he’d get an answering machine,’ she murmured.

  Perhaps he was already out searching for big cats with his nightscope and video camera, Nick thought. He would find them easier to catch than their father, that was for sure. ‘We should take Dad’s advice,’ he said softly.

  ‘What!’ Anna gaped at him.

  ‘Reasoning with him won’t work. He’s made his mind up and there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—we can do to change it. It’s as simple as that. Forget Tantris’s offer. Forget Gorton Lodge. And tell Elspeth Hartley it’s no go. Anything else is a waste of effort.’

  ‘That’s pure defeatism,’ Irene protested.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like.’

  ‘We could change our minds,’ said Basil. ‘Urge Dad to reject the offer.’

  Anna made a face. ‘You mean on the basis that he’d accept it just to be contrary?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’

  Basil grinned at her. ‘In the circumstances, what else can one do?’

  After Anna and Basil had left and Irene had opened up for the evening, Nick went for a walk round the town. Saltash on a Sunday night in January was about as lively as a graveyard. He was surrounded by thousands of people of whom he saw barely a dozen. Not that he was in search of company. He could have had that by remaining at the Old Ferry. Solitude was what he most needed after the d b cle that the day had been. He had had his fill of talking. And of thinking.

  But thoughts nevertheless swirled in his head. Why was his father so implacably opposed to the Doom Window project? Had he deliberately antagonized them in order to avoid answering that question? And what had he been getting at when he asked why the Bawden letter had been overlooked for so long? His behaviour made no obvious sense. He had always been obstinate, but that afternoon he had gone beyond obstinacy, fomenting an exchange of insults that would sour relations with several of his children for months to come. Andrew and Anna would probably refuse to speak to him for the foreseeable future, and Irene would certainly keep her distance. He must have known

  That was it, of course. He had known. Nick could not help smiling at the old man’s audacity. A family rift was just what he needed to nix the Tantris deal without having to explain his opposition to it, which he knew he would not be able to do. He had found himself in an impossible position. And then he had found a way out of it. With a little help from his children.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nick’s departure next morning went unmarked by much in the way of a send-off. Irene was depressed and distracted by the events of the previous afternoon. She had still not spoken to Andrew and could hardly imagine when she might bring herself to speak to their father. She would bounce back, of course—Nick knew her well enough to be sure of that—but it would take a few days at least. Accordingly, he did not ask what she would tell Elspeth Hartley. She would think of something—in due course.

  The morning was grey and mizzly, the Hamoaze draped in a veil of murk, orange-clad workers swarming over the damp girders of the Tamar Bridge. Nick followed the nose-to- tail commuter traffic over to the Devon shore, paid his toll, then put his foot down as soon as he hit the dual carriageway. It was time to leave. And in so many ways, he was glad of it.

  Two and a half hours later he pulled into Delamere Services on the M4 to grab a coffee and stretch his legs. Before getting out of the car he checked his mobile, which he had switched off for the drive. There was a message waiting for him—from Irene: ‘Something terrible’s happened, Nick. Call me as soon as you can.’

  He pushed the car door open and puzzled over her words as he breathed the chill air and listened to the rush of vehicles on the motorway. Then he phoned the Old Ferry, already anticipating, even before Irene answered, what ‘something terrible’ might mean. He thought of Andrew and the state of mind in which he had left Trennor. He thought and he wondered. Then the phone was picked up.

  ‘Old Ferry Inn.’

  ‘Irene? It’s me.’

  ‘Nick. Thank God. Where are you?’

  ‘Never mind. What’s happened?’

  ‘Are you at the wheel?’

  ‘No. I’m parked. What—’

  ‘Dad’s dead.’

  ‘Sorry?’ He had heard, of course. But he could not trust himself to have heard correctly.

  ‘Dad’s dead.’ Irene sobbed, then swallowed hard. ‘Pru fou
nd him this morning at Trennor.’

  ‘I can’t What ’

  ‘I know. It’s hard to come to terms with. He was so very much alive yesterday. All his wits about him—too much about him, for our liking.’ She sniffed. ‘Sorry. It’s a shock, I know. Sorry to have to inflict it on you.’

  ‘What happened? Was it his heart?’

  ‘No. A fall of some kind. Down the cellar steps, apparently. The policeman said he seemed to have hit his head, probably on the handrail.’

  Nick closed his eyes. There had been many times in his life when he had silently wished his father dead. He could admit that to himself, though he never would to anyone else. Those times were behind him now, buried by the overdue realization that the mistakes he had made were not his father’s fault, even though he had displayed such outspoken intolerance of them that it was tempting to lay them at his door. Michael Paleologus had been no-one’s idea of a perfect parent, treating his family much as he had his students, with a kind of baffled disbelief at their capacity to misunderstand how and what to think. The older he had become, the more Nick had grudgingly admired his refusal to compromise. He had died as he had lived—believing he knew best.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. A fall, you say?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘He was unsteady on his feet. You were right.’

  ‘I know. But ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think we upset him yesterday, badgering him about selling up? Do you think that might have led to this?’

  Nick recalled the expression on the old man’s face as he had laid into them the previous afternoon. He had not been angry. He had not even been hurt. He had merely been as self-righteous as ever—and as he would probably want to be remembered. ‘No, Irene. I don’t think so for a moment.’

  Michael Paleologus’s innate sense of timing had not deserted him in death. Nick had been absolutely certain he was returning that day to the known quantity of the life he led away and apart from his family. Instead, five hours after driving out of Plymouth, he was driving back into it. His father had posthumously decreed that he was not to escape so lightly.

  His destination was not the Old Ferry, nor yet Trennor, but 254 Citadel Road. Irene had phoned him when he was halfway back along the M5 to say that she had contacted Andrew, who was coming into Plymouth to assist with the ‘arrangements’, by which Nick took it she meant consulting an undertaker. It was more convenient for them all to meet afterwards at Anna’s flat.

  They made a sorrowful gathering in the cramped basement lounge. Basil doled out tea, coffee and biscuits as soon as Nick arrived and Irene gave him a tearful hug.

  ‘The police wanted a formal identification,’ she said. ‘Andrew and I went.’

  ‘Sod of a place, that mortuary,’ put in Andrew, shaking his head. ‘Dad lying there, looking as if he might sit up any minute and tell us not to be so stupid.’

  ‘He’ll be transferred to the chapel of rest tomorrow,’ Irene went on. ‘After the postmortem.’

  ‘Post-mortem? I thought you said he’d hit his head.’

  ‘So it seems. But they need to check, I suppose. There’ll have to be an inquest.’

  ‘Did you see the wound?’

  ‘No. It was at the back of his head, they said. We didn’t ask to see it.’

  ‘Nor would you have,’ murmured Andrew. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘Have you talked about a date for the funeral?’

  ‘It’ll probably be next Monday,’ Irene replied. ‘You can stay down until then, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We’ve made an appointment to see Baskcomb tomorrow.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We’ll need to think about hymns as well. And flowers. And announcements. And—’ She broke off, sighing and sat down, pressing a hand to her forehead. ‘I thought he’d live for years, I really did. Years and years.’

  ‘You won’t have to do all the sorting out, Irene,’ said Anna, putting her arm round her sister. ‘It’ll be a team effort.’

  ‘How’s Pru?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Pretty upset when I saw her,’ Anna replied. ‘Not exactly coherent. The police had fazed her with all their questions. They won’t let us into Trennor, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just routine,’ answered Irene. ‘It won’t be for long.’

  Nick frowned down at his sister, puzzling over exactly what was being left unsaid. ‘Routine?’

  ‘In case it was not an accident.’ Basil’s voice sliced softly through the silence left trailing by Nick’s query. They are paid to think of such things.’

  The ramifications of Basil’s tartly accurate observation coursed through Nick’s thoughts, much as they no doubt did through his brothers’ and sisters’. But they were not discussed, nor even referred to, until later in the evening. Andrew had asked if anyone wanted to join him for a drink at the Yard Arm before he headed back to Carwether. Sensing there were going to be no other takers, Nick volunteered.

  It was a quiet night at the pub. They settled themselves at a table set in its own discreet corner and toasted their father’s memory in Courage Best Bitter.

  ‘A real shock, eh, Nick? Who’d have thought it, after that vintage performance he put on yesterday?’

  ‘Perhaps it took too much out of him.’

  ‘Less than it took out of me, I’ll bet. I’d have made sure we parted on better terms if I’d ’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you know.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘It’ll take some getting used to. Him not being around, I mean.’

  ‘It certainly will.’

  ‘Some getting used to, yeah.’ Andrew took a deep swallow of beer. ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘When I got Irene’s message, that something terrible had happened, I thought for a moment ’ Nick hesitated.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘That it was you.’

  ‘Me!’

  ‘Well, after the way you stormed out of Trennor ’

  ‘You thought I might have gone home and strung myself up from a beam in the barn?’

  ‘Not exactly. I just—’

  ‘I was pretty upset, Nick, I don’t mind admitting. But what’s new? Dad’s needled me for years.’ Andrew looked away, apparently lost momentarily in recollection of such times.

  ‘What’s new is that he won’t be needling you any more.’

  ‘No. He won’t.’ Andrew chuckled wryly. ‘And you know what? I’ll miss it.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Andrew looked back at his brother. ‘Be hard to explain that to anyone, though, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘Which is why we ought to keep quiet about yesterday’s bust-up, in the unlikely event that the police start sniffing around. Mention a family row—or Tantris’s money—and that lot could begin to wonder whether, well ’ He lowered his voice, unnecessarily, since there was no-one within earshot. ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’

  ‘Nobody’s going to wonder that, Andrew.’ Even as he said it, Nick felt uncertain on the point. To an outsider, apprised of the circumstances, it could seem a possibility. ‘Oh God. You don’t think they might, do you?’

  ‘Not if we don’t give them any reason to. Look, obviously we’ll accept Tantris’s offer, but there’s bound to be a delay. Dad’s will will have to be probated and the rest of it. Then there’s the inquest. We don’t need to rush into anything.’

  ‘From what you’re saying, we can’t.’

  ‘Exactly. Tantris isn’t going to go away. We just have to bide our time.’ Andrew stared thoughtfully into his beer. ‘Dad was right. He’d have hated being in an old folk’s home, however well appointed. It was a quick exit and maybe a merciful one. We could look back on this one day and think it was, well, the best way for it to be.’ He glanced up at Nick. ‘Don’t you reckon?’

  Andrew had parked his car in one of the streets that led up from Citadel Road towards the Hoe.
Nick walked to it with him after they left the Yard Arm. A cold wind was getting up, clearing the drizzle and revealing a window of stars in the inky cloudbank out over the Sound.

  ‘I’m hoping Tom will come down for the funeral,’ said Andrew as they neared the Land Rover.

  ‘He’s bound to, surely.’

  ‘Only if I succeed in contacting him. All I’ve reached so far is his answer phone. I could ask Kate if she’s got a mobile number for him, but I’d rather not.’

  ‘Won’t you tell her about Dad? They used to get on well together.’

  ‘Suppose I’ll have to. Christ, you don’t think she’ll want to attend, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can’t stop her, I suppose. As long as she doesn’t bring that smug bastard Mawson with her. Wives and children and ex-wives’ new husbands. You’re well out of all that, Nick, take my word for it.’

  ‘Glad to.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll bet.’ They came abreast of the car. Andrew unlocked the door, climbed in, wound down the window and started up, the engine spluttering in the cold air and sending up a plume of exhaust. ‘See you soon, then. I’ll—’ Something caught his eye. He gestured through the windscreen at a piece of paper wedged under the wiper. ‘Bloody fly posters. Shift that, would you, Nick?’

  Nick slid the offending item out from beneath the wiper blade. Before he had a chance to examine it, however, Andrew had clunked the Land Rover into gear and pulled away, shouting a goodnight as he went. Nick gave a halfhearted wave and watched him turn out of sight at the end of the street.

  Only then did he walk into the pool of amber light beneath the nearest streetlamp and look at what he held in his hand: a sealed blank white envelope, dampened by the drizzle. He tore it open, pulled out the contents, and found himself looking at a condolences card. There was an artist’s impression of a candle, beside the Gothically scripted words In Sympathy. He opened the card, where more words were printed. Thinking of you at this sad time. But there was no signature. No name. No message. The condolences were strictly anonymous.