Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

Half an hour later, Sophie rang. I heard her voice purring from the answering machine. But I didn’t pick up the receiver. And I didn’t return her call. She’d made a fool of me once. And that was enough. I didn’t mean to give her the slightest chance of doing so again.

Two days after the funeral, Bella paid me a visit. She and Sir Keith were returning to Biarritz the very next day, so this was in the nature of a goodbye. But not just for that reason.

“It’ll take Keith a long time to recover from the loss he’s suffered, Robin. If he ever does. And it’ll take him a long time to forgive those he holds responsible for that loss.”

“Like me, you mean.”

“Yes. Like you.”

“You never were one to mince your words.”

“Would you want me to?”

“No. I wouldn’t. Sarah told you about Howard Marsden, I suppose?”

“She told me.”

“Mentioned it to Keith, have you?”

“No.”

“So, it’s time to sweep things under the carpet, is it? Time to batten down the hatches?”

“Time to go, Robin. That’s all.”

“Without even a farewell drink?”

And at that she had the decency to smile.

We went out to the Red Lion at Chalton, where she’d taken me in July 1990 to pump me for information about the Kington killings. The three years that had passed since seemed more like ten when I looked at her across our table in the pub garden and saw her eyes drift to the field behind me. A blue drift of linseed, then as now. She too was remembering.

“You said I’d be making a mistake by going back into the company,” I remarked.

“And I was right. Wasn’t I?”

“As it’s turned out, I suppose you were. But you’ve been able to make sure you were right, haven’t you?”

“It’s Adrian’s idea to accept the Bushranger offer. Not mine.”

“But without your support, he can’t force it through, can he?”

“Technically, no. But I haven’t the slightest intention of changing my mind. So don’t waste your breath by-”

“I’m not about to. I’ve learnt my lesson. You see before you a man who isn’t going to swim against the tide any longer. I’ve made a pact with the future. And you should be flattered, Bella, you really should. Because it’s your example I’ll be following.”

“In what sense?”

“I’m going to take the money and run.”

For a moment, I thought she meant to throw her lager in my face. But after staring at me for a few seconds, she merely shook her head and laughed. When all was said and done, she and I understood each other.

Two weeks passed. And the third anniversary of Louise’s death approached. Since it fell on a Saturday, there was nothing to stop me driving up to Kington, as I’d long been tempted to, and walking out once more across Hergest Ridge. It was a day very like its well-remembered counterpart. Yet it could never be the same. And I didn’t want it to be. What I wanted was the stony soil beneath my feet and the gorse-cleansed air in my face to assert the normality of the place. To convince me no magic or mystery was waiting for me there. Nor any perfect stranger. Only turf and sky and sheep. And nature’s placid disregard for mankind’s illusions.

I made my way down into Kington and called at the Swan for a drink, as I had three years before. This time, however, I struck up a conversation with one of the locals, who didn’t seem to mind discussing the murders one little bit. Neither of the victims having been genuine Kingtonians, their memories evidently merited no special protection from outsiders. “More about that to come out, you wait and see. Much more. From what I’ve heard, that Nick Seymour on the telly got it all wrong. Forgery weren’t Oscar Bantock’s game. Oh no. Satanism. That’s what it was. Devil worship. His nephew rents Whistler’s Cot out to holidaymakers, you know. But I wouldn’t spend a night under that roof. Not after everything old Oscar got up to. Not me. No way. ’Course, there’s a lot of it about round here. Black magic, I mean. It’s the Dyke as gets ’ em going. Covens. Sacrifices. Black masses. Midnight orgies. You wouldn’t believe the half of it.” And on that last point at least he was absolutely right.

I left the Swan and drove straight out of the town. I’d thought I might take a look at Whistler’s Cot, but, when it came to the point, I no longer needed to. An encounter with some exuberant family on a bargain break delighted to report they hadn’t seen any ghosts would have constituted one dose of reality too many. I’d gone to Kington to close a chapter in my life. And I left confident of having done so.

I could have stopped in Sapperton on the way back to Petersfield and visited Rowena’s grave as well as her mother’s. It would only have been a few miles off my route if I’d gone through Gloucester. As in normal circumstances I would have done. But these weren’t normal circumstances. So I headed south, through Monmouth and the Forest of Dean, joining the motorway at Chepstow. Crossing the Severn Bridge, I knew better than to glance to my left. Just in case I should see a lone figure standing on Sedbury Cliffs at the end-or the beginning-of a journey. Instead, I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead. And didn’t lift my foot from the accelerator.

Most of last summer appears now wholly inconsistent with everything that preceded it and was to follow. At the time, though, my life seemed set on a definite course which, if not ideal, was at least acceptable. Wrangling over small print delayed finalization of the Bushranger deal, but after Adrian and Jennifer had flown to Sydney twice and Harvey McGraw had dragged himself away from a hospitality tent at the Oval Test Match long enough to swagger round the factory with a retinue of financial advisers, the remaining difficulties were ironed out and a definitive set of terms put together. Adrian let it be known that we’d take a formal and final vote on the offer at a board meeting scheduled for the twenty-third of September.

Since there wasn’t any doubt about the outcome, I laid my own plans. I spent a few days in Brussels early in September, treating various former colleagues to lunch. The consensus among them was that the Director-General could be induced to have me back on virtual parity with the post I’d left in 1990. The official line would be that I’d reluctantly done my bit for the family firm following my brother’s death, but it was now back on its feet and I was therefore eager to return to the fold. As admissions of defeat went, mine seemed likely to be virtually painless.

And so no doubt it would have been. But for the intervention of events I could never have foreseen. From a quarter I thought I’d heard the last of. Even though the world hadn’t. Sarah’s predictions were already being borne out in one form or another. The victims of the Kington killings clearly weren’t going to be allowed to rest in peace. An interview here. An article there. A slow dripfeed of curiosity and scepticism to keep the subject stubbornly alive. But not in my heart. I’d buried it. Beneath a dead weight of abandoned uncertainty. Yielded ground. Surrendered memory. The past sloughed off. Surely now I was beyond its reach. Safe and secure.

But no. I wasn’t. Not at all. That wet Friday evening, the tenth of September, it stretched out its hand to tap me on the shoulder. I turned to meet it. And in that instant it reclaimed me.

“Paul?”

He was standing behind me, close enough to seem threatening. Yet in his rain-beaded face there was no hint of violence. Only sorrow and anguish. Previously he’d always been smartly turned out. Now his suit was drenched and crumpled. His shirt gaping at the neck, his tie askew. And there was at least two days’ growth of stubble on his chin. His features were familiar yet not completely recognizable, as if he were some less favoured elder brother of the man Rowena had married, stern and prematurely aged, stooped beneath an unendurable burden.