Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

I looked at Sarah in search of clarification. She shrugged and said: “He’s resigned from Metropolitan Mutual. As of last Friday. Now he’s just sitting in that little house at Bathurst Wharf waiting for them to come for him.”

“But… you said it could be months before…”

“It will be. But he doesn’t seem to care. It’s like he’s ceased functioning. For any purpose other than seeing his confession through to the end.”

“If it goes that far,” put in Sir Keith.

“Isn’t it bound to?” I said. “As soon as the police have verified his account-”

“But will they verify it?” he snapped. “That’s the question.”

“They won’t have any choice, surely?”

“You’re assuming he’s telling the truth.”

“Well, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.” He stopped and cast a strangely suspicious glance at Bella and Sarah. “Unlike everyone else, I’m keeping an open mind on the subject.”

“Daddy thinks Paul may have made it all up,” said Sarah, her tone not quite concealing her exasperation. “As some sort of self-imposed punishment for failing to prevent Rowena’s suicide.”

“Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?” he responded, as much to me as to Sarah. “None of us knows what’s been going on in his head these past few months. He’s taken to going to church, you know.”

“That settles it, then,” Bella remarked through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “He can’t be telling the truth.”

Sir Keith rounded on her and opened his mouth to speak. I thought for a moment his patience with her had finally snapped. And I couldn’t help feeling pleased if it had. But he swallowed the rebuke before it was uttered, slumped back against the mantelpiece and frowned sulkily. “He isn’t telling the truth,” he growled. “Not about Louise, anyway. She was my wife, for God’s sake. I ought to know.”

“ Yes,” Bella’s fleeting glare announced. “ You ought to. But it seems you don’t .” Sir Keith didn’t catch her look. He wasn’t meant to. Not yet.

I felt sorry for him then, ground between the millstones of his first wife’s fickle memory and his second wife’s failing sympathy. Perhaps he felt he had no alternative but to go down fighting for his edited version of the past. Perhaps he’d rehearsed it so many times he really believed it. But if so, he was the only one who did. “Isn’t the truth really only a matter of our point of view?” I ventured. “I mean, what we believe is the truth. Until it’s shown not to be.”

“Until it’s proved not to be, you mean,” muttered Sir Keith.

“Well, yes. But the police will do their damnedest to disprove Paul’s story. If they fail, we have to accept it.”

“ If they fail,” he said stubbornly.

“They won’t,” said Sarah from behind me. “You know they won’t, Daddy. It’s ridiculous to suppose he could have invented such a story. That weekend in Cambridge after the exhibition when he pestered me and Mummy. That day he came to Sapperton and took me out to lunch at the Daneway. I know he did those things because I witnessed them. I just didn’t see the pattern they were part of. When he visited Mummy in Holland Park. When he met her in Covent Garden. When he lay in wait for her at the Garden House Hotel. How could he make those events up? He couldn’t have been sure we wouldn’t be able to rule them out, could he? To say ‘No, actually, we know for a fact she was elsewhere the day you claim to have seen her in London.’ The chances of him getting away with such a deception would be astronomical.”

“She’d have told me,” he insisted hoarsely. “That morning in Cambridge… She just went for a walk before breakfast, for God’s sake.”

“But how could he have known she went for a walk unless he was there?”

“I don’t know, God damn it. Luck. Guesswork. Something like that.”

“He must have been phenomenally lucky,” Bella said slowly and coolly, “to guess that you had a… disagreement… with Louise the day before you left Biarritz.”

“I didn’t. Not as such. Not a row on the scale he describes. He’s distorted everything. He says I called Bantock a-what was it?-a ‘bloody dauber.’ Well, I never used the phrase. Not then. Not later. I never said it.”

Silence loomed between us. Bella drew on her cigarette. Sarah shrugged her shoulders. Sir Keith pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at the side of his mouth. He must have known we wouldn’t believe him. There was something of the cornered fox in his crouched stance, something of the last resort in his pointless denial. He should have said there’d been no row at all, no walk-out, no discarded ring, no dismissive note. But he couldn’t. So he offered instead a futile quibble about a single phrase. And an imploring gaze in my direction.

“Surely you share my misgivings to some extent, Robin?”

“Not really. It seemed clear to me Paul was telling the truth. Whether his memory of every single detail is absolutely correct can’t alter that. Besides, as Sarah said, he simply couldn’t have made it all up.”

“I see. So you’re not even willing to suspend judgement until the police complete their investigation?”

“My judgement’s only an opinion. What good would it do for me to pretend I didn’t have one? The police aren’t going to be swayed by what I think anyway.”

“No. Nor by what anybody else thinks either, I dare say.” He pulled himself upright and stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Well,” he said, “perhaps you’ll excuse me. I need a breath of air.” Then he made for the door, head bowed, without even so much as glancing at Bella.

“Daddy!” Sarah called after him, filial pity flashing in her eyes. “Can’t we just-” But he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down. The door closed behind him with a click that was more eloquent than any slam would have been. Then we heard the front door open and close. And a few seconds later the sound of the Daimler starting and crunching away down the drive.

“Don’t worry,” said Bella. “He’ll be back soon enough.” It was as if she was presenting a dispassionate assessment of human behaviour with no particular interest in its accuracy. I felt sure she was right. But I didn’t envy Sir Keith the welcome he’d get from his wife when he returned. She’d given him unstinting support in crises that were none of his making. But this crisis was different. And so was Bella’s response. I wish I’d had the courage to ask her there and then: “ When are you going to ditch him, Bella? Before Paul’s trial? Or after? ” But I’d already done enough looking forward to be heartily sick of the view. And, besides, Bella gave a kind of answer to my unspoken question in what she said next. “Tell me, Sarah. As a lawyer, how long do you reckon it will take for this business to be settled?”

“Longer than any of us would like,” Sarah replied. “A police investigation. An appeal. A trial. It could take a year or more.”

Bella’s eyes briefly closed, as if to ward off a spasm of pain. Then she said: “And for it to be forgotten?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’ll ever be forgotten.” Sarah looked at both of us in turn before adding: “Do you?”

The mind is master of its own defences. There’s always one more drawbridge to raise, one more portcullis to lower. There was nothing I could do to block or blunt the consequences of Paul Bryant’s confession. And so, without admitting what I was doing even to myself, I began to prepare my retreat from them. The Paxtons would have to face their future without me. I’d tried before to detach myself from them and failed. This time I had to make the break. I’d told Bella I meant to take the money and run. And now I had an even more compelling reason than when I’d said it to do precisely that.