Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

“Don’t reproach yourself, Robin. Maybe you could have been more forthcoming. But I didn’t want you to be, did I? I as good as asked you not to be.” We looked at each other and seemed to acknowledge, without the need of words, the waste and folly we’d both been lured into. Paul had lived a lie for three years. And to greater or lesser extents, we’d lived it with him. “It would have been justified-it would have been right-if Naylor had been guilty. But he wasn’t.”

“What can we do?”

“Nothing. We must let the law run its course. It could be six months or more before an appeal’s heard. Until then, Paul can’t be charged with anything. He can’t even be held in custody.”

“You’re not suggesting he might make a run for it?”

“No. I can’t believe he would have confessed in the first place if he didn’t intend to go through with it. But he’s got a long gruelling wait ahead of him. And then there’s Naylor to consider.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if the police can’t pick any holes in Paul’s confession, the prosecution will have to accept that Naylor’s innocent. Which means they’ll offer no evidence at the appeal. If they declare that as their intention, Naylor may be released on parole before the appeal’s heard. If I were his solicitor, it’s what I’d be pressing for.”

“So?”

“Think about it. Naylor set free. And Paul not yet arrested. It sounds like a dangerous situation to me.”

“Surely Naylor wouldn’t be so stupid as to take revenge on him.”

“I hope not. Though why I should…” Whatever she’d been about to say, she evidently thought better of it. She looked away and shook her head. “We don’t know Shaun Naylor at all, do we? We don’t know a single thing about him. He’s a total stranger to us. Yet there’s no part of our lives he hasn’t touched. Or ruined.”

“But he didn’t murder your mother. Paul Bryant did that.”

“Yes. And when I think of how charming he always seemed… How smart and respectable… Worming his way into our lives. Flattering us into such a high opinion of him. I was glad-I was grateful -when Rowena said she wanted to marry him. Can you imagine? I was actually pleased for her. And all the time…”

“I think he really did love her.”

“Good. Then I hope he misses her as much as I do. I hope the damage he’s done hurts him as deeply as it hurt her. And I hope it goes on hurting him. For the rest of his life.”

She pressed her fingers to her forehead and sighed. I wanted to put my arm around her then and offer her what comfort I could. But I sensed she wouldn’t welcome it. Nor did I expect her to take up the suggestion I was about to make. But still it needed to be made. “Sarah, if you’d like me to… break the news… to your father…”

“No. You’ve done enough already.” She meant it appreciatively, I think. Yet still, despite everything, there was a hint of accusation in the remark. And an echo of the temptation I’d briefly felt myself. “Couldn’t you have persuaded him to keep his mouth shut?” she seemed to want to say. “For all our sakes.” But it was a pointless game to play. Like an exile’s nostalgia for his homeland, its lure was also its torment. There could be no going back. “I’ll phone Daddy myself,” she said in dismal finality. “As soon as you’ve gone.”

It was strange, I reflected as I drove back to Petersfield, how time alters the way we feel. If Paul Bryant had turned himself in to the police before Naylor’s arrest in July 1990, his prompt surrender wouldn’t have deflected our wrath. We’d have wanted him punished to the limit of the law. Waiting three years while an innocent man languished in prison should have magnified his offence. Yet instead it had somehow mitigated it. There was a tendency, which Sarah and I had both displayed, to blame Paul’s victims for the delusion he’d let us labour under. It was absurd and contemptible, of course. As if Louise had invited her murder. Or Naylor his wrongful conviction. And yet it squirmed there, at the back of the mind, seducing us in moments of weakness with the promise that our responsibility for a monstrous miscarriage of justice could be passed off onto others.

But it wasn’t the worst evasion we could be reduced to. There was something more desperate still. The thought that could never be spoken but was bound to be shared. It would have been better if Paul had owned up straightaway. Obviously. Self-evidently. But since he hadn’t, since every solution to the problem he’d handed us was now second best, mightn’t it have been preferable-or at least less awful-if he’d never confessed at all?

It reminded me of an apocryphal tale I’d once heard, based on the famous massacre of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. The people of Sparta took such pride in their soldiers’ self-sacrifice- “Go tell the Lacedaemonians that we die here, obedient to their wishes” -that when one of them who’d survived the massacre by an honourable fluke returned to his wife and children, he was turned away and cast out as a stranger. His failure to have died was an embarrassment to them. Just as Louise Paxton’s and Shaun Naylor’s failure to have played the parts allotted to them was an embarrassment to us. But, unlike the Spartans, we couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. Paul Bryant wasn’t going to let us.

Three days passed without news of any kind. My determination to let the Paxtons confront their difficulties without interference from me was sorely tested, but it held. Even though the silence from Bella in particular assumed an ominous significance in my mind. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Sarah phoned me at the office.

“I’m at The Hurdles, Robin. With Daddy and Bella. Can you join us?”

“Er… yes. I suppose so. I take it… they both…”

“They know everything. Daddy spoke to Paul this morning. He wants… Well, I’d be grateful, too… if you could talk to Daddy. It might help him understand.”

“All right. I’ll be there in an hour.”

It was Sarah who opened the door to me, which I thought odd until I followed her into the lounge and found Sir Keith pacing up and down by the fireplace while Bella sat stiffly in an armchair, smoking a cigarette. She didn’t even get up to greet me and I recognized her mood at once. This was one bolt from the blue too many for her tolerance. She was opting out of the whole ghastly affair. Leaving her husband to repair the damage she no doubt held him responsible for. I couldn’t blame her, really. Scandal had nowhere featured in her understanding of their marriage settlement. But now here it was. A codicil that didn’t need her consent. And therefore wouldn’t be honoured with her attention.

I hadn’t seen Sir Keith since Rowena’s death. It was immediately obvious that the tragedy had aged him. His hair hadn’t been as white before, or his shoulders as rounded. His complexion was as ruddy as ever, but there was an unmistakable haggardness to his features. He looked like a man driving himself-or being driven-too hard. But not by the cares of a career. I’d dreaded meeting him because I’d thought he was bound to blame me for his daughter’s suicide. Yet suddenly that was no longer an issue between us. It had been overtaken by events. As we all had.

“I’m sorry to have dragged you up here, Robin,” he said, shaking my hand distractedly. “This is a god-awful business.”

“There’s no need to apologize. If there’s anything-”

“Sarah tells me it was you Paul first came to.”

“Yes. It was.”

“I saw him this morning. In Bristol.”

“How did he seem?”

“In a trance, if you really want to know. Like a man in a bloody trance.”