Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

We walked slowly and self-consciously along the gravel path, Sarah a few steps ahead, cradling the bouquets in her arms. She went straight to the grave and placed the flowers beneath the headstone. Sophie and I stood behind her and watched as she knelt beside it. Dew still clung to the grass in the shadow cast by the nearest yew. Its moisture was darkening the hem of her full-skirted dress, turning rose pink to blood red. There was meaning everywhere, if you cared to look. As I looked now, at the inscription on the headstone.

LOUISE JANE PAXTON

11 NOVEMBER 1945-17 JULY 1990

FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST

The phrase was from a poem by Thomas. Only Sarah could have chosen it. Only she could have known what the choice meant. Though in that moment I seemed to as well.

We stayed a few minutes, no more. Then Sophie and I started diplomatically back towards the gate, while Sarah lingered by the grave. They meant to walk back to the house, so I’d soon be on my solitary way. There was much I wanted to ask Sophie, but there was too little time and no obvious pretext for extending it. Besides, my curiosity about her dead friend would have seemed odd, suspiciously inappropriate. A few mumbled trifles were all that should have been expected of me.

“A peaceful spot,” I ventured, as we reached the gate and looked back at Sarah.

“Yes. I’m glad to have come back. You’ve not been here before?”

“No.”

“You didn’t come to the funeral, of course. But I thought perhaps afterwards…” She glanced round at me, her eyes narrowing beneath the brim of her hat. I sensed suspicion on some score I couldn’t fathom. I sensed there was a question she longed to ask me. But something held her back. “Sarah told me you manage a cricket-bat factory in Petersfield. Is that right?”

“Yes.” The point seemed deliberately banal, provoking me to respond in kind. “What about your husband, Mrs. Marsden? What line is he-”

“Agricultural machinery. But you don’t want to hear about that. Very boring.”

“No more so than the cricket-bat business, I’m sure.”

“Believe me, it is.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Have you heard from Henley Bantock, by the way?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oscar Bantock’s nephew. He’s writing his uncle’s biography. Has written it, I suppose. It’s due out next spring. He came to see me a few months ago. I have two Bantocks on my drawing-room wall and he wanted to photograph them for the book. Wished I hadn’t agreed in the end. Appalling little creep.”

I smiled. “He is rather, isn’t he?”

“Oh, so you have met him?”

“Once, yes. But not about the book. There’s nothing I could have told him anyway.”

“No?”

“Of course not.” Her questions were becoming more and more baffling. I could have believed she was trying to provoke me into disclosing something, but for the fact that there was nothing to disclose. “I never knew Oscar Bantock.”

“No. But you knew his foremost patroness, didn’t you?”

I frowned. My bemusement must by now have been apparent to her. Along with my growing irritation. “You mean Louise Paxton?”

“Who else?”

“You’ve lost me. I met Lady Paxton for a few minutes on the day she died. That’s all. We didn’t discuss Oscar Bantock’s painting career.”

“Then what made you contact the revolting Henley? It’s you who’ve lost me .”

We stared at each other, incomprehension battling with incredulity. I sensed it would be foolish-perhaps dangerous-to try to explain how I’d met Henley. But why I couldn’t have said. Sophie Marsden seemed not just to know something I didn’t, but to know it about me . I couldn’t decide which might be worse. To find out what it was. Or never to.

“Are you two all right?” asked Sarah, surprising both of us, even though her approach along the gravel path can hardly have been stealthy.

“Fine,” replied Sophie. “Just chatting.”

“Yes,” I said. “But as a matter of fact-” I glanced ostentatiously at my watch. “I think I ought to be starting back now. I’ve… er… a long drive ahead of me.”

“Of course,” said Sarah, smiling warmly. “It’s wonderful you were able to share the day with us, Robin. Rowena really appreciated it, I know.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I responded, leading them out through the gate and moving round to the driver’s door of my car. “Well, I…”

“Goodbye,” said Sarah, stepping forward to kiss me. “Lovely to see you.”

“You too,” I murmured. Then I turned to shake Sophie’s hand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Marsden,” I said, hoping my grin wouldn’t look too stiff.

“Please call me Sophie,” she replied, fixing my eyes with hers as she added: “After all, I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

Timariot & Small’s financial circumstances didn’t improve as 1992 faded towards 1993. There were, to be honest, no grounds for expecting them to. Jennifer spent nearly as much time in Melbourne as Petersfield, but the more she learned about Dyson’s management of Viburna Sportswear, the worse the outlook seemed to grow. While Adrian ’s attempts to negotiate an exemption for us from Bushranger’s agreement with Danziger’s came predictably to nothing. The road back to profit and self-respect was going to be long and hard.

But we had no obvious choice other than to tread it. For my part, I took some comfort from being the least blameworthy member of the board and concentrated on running the Frenchman’s Road operation as efficiently as possible. The workforce knew about the Viburna disaster, of course. How couldn’t they? It led to some cynicism about the calibre of the directors, but no more than I’d have expected. Less, in some ways, than was justified. Don Banks had been making cricket bats of consistently high quality for as long as I could remember. It had taken him fifteen years just to learn how. His standards were as demanding as ever. And he was no moaner. A stern reticent deferential man was Don. But I saw the look on his face as Adrian and I stood talking in the workshop one day. And I knew what the look meant. We’d let him and his fellow craftsmen down. We’d failed to live up to their standards.

I think it was people like Don who made me determined to see it through. I could have scuttled back to Brussels and index-linked security any time I liked. I often thought of doing so, I can’t deny. The Maastricht Treaty was bulldozing its way through the parliaments of Europe and lots of juicy new posts were sure to follow in its wake. One of them might have my name on it. Nobody could blame me for grabbing a ripe plum from the laden bough. Except Don Banks and the rest, of course. Except all their predecessors and successors for whom Timariot & Small had meant and might yet mean something more satisfying than an adequate living. Except, in the final analysis, me.

So I stuck to the task, over-compensating for the board’s strategic deficiencies by working excessive hours and paring back my life until it comprised little more than the short-term worries and long-term problems of the family firm. Hugh’s example should have deterred me from becoming a workaholic. But during an evening of home truths and brotherly bonding in the Old Drum, Simon assured me that was just what I was turning into. And he was right, however reluctant I might be to admit it. I had few friends and no leisure pursuits besides country walking. Since the break with Ann, I’d deliberately avoided intimacy with another human being. Not just sexual intimacy, but any kind of lowering of the psychological defences. I found the limitations of my existence strangely comforting in an ascetic sort of way. More and more, I was coming to see how safe-how undemanding-the solitary life really was. And I was beginning to think I’d probably settle for it.