The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  The epiphany was this: I would do something I should have done a long time ago – I would save one of the Thomases. Specifically, I would save Tommy.

  Chapter 7

  Travelling with Dominique

  We left Dover – Dominique, Tomas and I – on a mid-afternoon in September, when the city’s colours remained in a state of gloom from morning ‘til night and it seemed, some days, that the sky forgot to brighten up at all. I was much recovered from my recent beating and, in the weeks since it had robbed me of a portion of my dignity, I had grown even more daring in my escapades, as if I already knew that survival itself would turn out to be my forte. I escaped my sickbed on a Monday morning and after that it was a full week before we were ready to move on; considering we had little or no belongings to call our own, I cannot quite recall or understand the reason for our delay. Still, it did not make me unhappy for I took that time to bid farewell to the friends that I had made on the streets, the empty boys like myself who stole for food or to pass the time, the homeless children whose larceny provided them with the only regular job in the city, and the urchins who looked through me when I spoke to them and didn’t understand the concept of leaving the only world they had ever known. I visited three of my favourite prostitutes on three consecutive nights and felt sad as I paid my goodbyes to them, for they had been my only source of comfort throughout my despairing longing for Dominique. As they nurtured my adolescent longings for an hour at a time, and a few shillings a turn, I would picture her face on the pillow beneath my own, and call out her name, closing my eyes and dreaming that she was there. At times, I wasn’t sure that our single night of lovemaking had even taken place or whether it was simply a hallucination that my illness had conjured up for me, but looking at her made me disavow this idea, for it was clear that there was a spark between us, however dull on her part, but one that had once been lit none the less.

  Tomas seemed unconcerned about the move, as long as we were with him. By now, he was almost seven and he was a bright, energetic child, always wanting to be set loose on his own to explore the streets, but eager none the less to report back to us – his surrogate parents – on his actions whenever he would return. I was not so keen on allowing him to be left to his own devices in Dover but Dominique seemed less concerned. My brush with violence had made me more aware of the dangers on the streets and I was afraid for my brother, who I knew could too easily become involved with the same types as I myself had. I would have defended them to anyone, had the question concerned my own safety, but when it came to Tomas I didn’t trust them an inch.

  ‘He’s six years old,’ Dominique told me. ‘There’s boys out there younger than him earning money to feed their own families. What harm can he come to, Matthieu?’

  ‘There’s plenty of harm out there,’ I protested. ‘Look at the trouble I got into and I’m ten years older than him and able to look after myself. Do you want that happening to -’

  ‘You went looking for it. You try so many dangerous moves that it was only a matter of time before your thieving caught up with you. Tomas isn’t like that. He doesn’t steal. He just wants to explore, that’s all.’

  ‘Explore what?’ I asked, confused by her explanations. ‘What exactly is there out there to explore? The streets are just full of dirt, that’s all. The gutters are filled with rats. There’s nothing for him to find out there except people who will hurt him.’

  She shrugged but continued to permit him to disappear for hours on end on his own. My concerns were genuine but I had a tendency to bow to her decisions, despite the fact that he was my brother and not hers. For she was older than me, and seemed more worldly, and held me completely in her thrall. Her dominance was complete but also maternal and sweet, her control over my life absolute and something not just desired by her, but by me also. At times, when we were alone together, she would allow me to sit close to her, laying my head upon her shoulder before the small fire, my face gradually sinking deeper and deeper towards her breasts until she would sit suddenly erect and claim that it was time for bed – for our separate beds. Although the chances of our union seemed more than remote, the night never came when I did not imagine that it could finally happen again.

  We decided to travel to London where we believed our fortunes would lie. It was a long walk – almost eighty miles – from Dover to the capital but it was not unknown at that time for people to travel large distances by foot. The passage of time has made what was once not only possible but also commonplace now seem beyond all human endurance. Although it was late in the year, the weather was not inclement and there were always places to set up small camps for an evening. We had saved a little money – or rather Dominique had, through a careful hoarding of small change and a little laundry work she had been doing by day – and knew that in an emergency we could rent a small room for the night in an inn or farmhouse along the way. However, we knew that we had to be sparing for we would also need money for food, although I still planned to do a lot of stealing as we travelled, and hoped even to have a little left over to see us make a good start in London upon our arrival.

  Leaving our small room that Monday morning delivered a curiously melancholy sensation to me. Although I had lived in the same house in Paris for fifteen years, I had never felt any great attachment to it and had never once looked back upon it or thought about it with any degree of homesickness from the day I had left. And yet, after only one year, there was a tear in my eye as I pulled the door shut for the last time in our Dover hovel, glancing at the two small beds, the shabby table, the chairs by the fire with the broken legs, our home. I turned to look at Dominique, to give her one last smile in this place, but she was already walking away, reaching down to slap some dust off the back of Tomas’s pants, never turning around, never looking back. I shrugged and pulled the door behind me, leaving the room within in darkness, awaiting its next unfortunate occupants.

  I was concerned about my boots. They were a dark black pair with fine lacings, a size too big, which I had stolen a few nights earlier from a young gentleman who had foolishly left them outside his room in The Traveller’s Retreat, a small hostel near the harbour. I was in the habit of entering that place by its back door late at night and foraging around the hallways when the occupants had all gone to bed. It was not unusual to find a shirt or a pair of trousers outside the doors in the low, cramped corridors, left there by some gentlemen who thought they were still back in London or Paris and who expected to find their clothing neatly ironed and waiting for them in the morning. The things they left there were almost always impossible to sell but they made good clothes for my small family and cost me nothing, not even the smallest pang of conscience.

  The boots were worn down a little at the soles, however, and I didn’t much like the idea of walking to London in my bare feet. Already I could feel the gravel below my left foot pressing in as I moved along, and knew from experience that they had no more than a mile of comfort left in them before I would begin to develop blisters or cuts. Dominique had a similar pair but wore a fine pair of stockings between the leather and her skin that I had taken from a washing line three miles south the day before my beating, and I had found a brand new pair for Tomas only the previous day. He appeared almost as uncomfortable as I was as he broke them in and whined so often that they were cutting his feet that eventually Dominique took a hanky from her pocket and stuffed it around his toes to prevent any more friction. I would have preferred it if she’d wrapped it around his mouth, but nevertheless it kept him quiet, briefly.

  I estimated that we would make it to London in about five days if we were left alone to walk; less if we managed to find some form of transport along the way, which I doubted as the chances were limited for a young man and woman, together with a small child, growing dirtier and more malodorous as the days progressed. But even a week was reasonable to us all and, as Dominique pointed out, seemed a small price to pay to escape Dover and the relentless life of drudgery that inevitably lay in store for us t
here. A week, she insisted, would see us to rights.

  We were fortunate that first day, however, to catch the attention of a young farmer who was travelling in a cart from Dover to Canterbury, and who spotted us along the side of the road, attending to my feet. We had only travelled about six miles but it was at this point that I had begun to give up all hope for the boots and considered walking in bare feet and taking my chances. I was sitting on a milestone, examining my toes which had grown red with pain, as Dominique squatted in the grass behind me and Tomas lay on the ground to my right, one hand over his eyes, sighing with dramatic exhaustion when I heard the cart approaching.

  ‘You may as well stop that, you know,’ I told Tomas. ‘We have to continue until we get there and no amount of whingeing or complaining is going to change that, all right?’

  ‘But it’s so far!’ he cried, almost in tears. ‘How soon will we be there?’

  ‘It might be a week yet,’ I muttered stupidly, exaggerating the time even though I knew it would set him off even worse, but I was hot and in pain and nervous about how I was going to make it much further myself. The last thing I needed was this child complaining when Dominique was sure to drive us on relentlessly towards London. I sympathised with him only too well for I was only seventeen and no better than a child myself. There were times – like then – when I too wanted to lie down on the ground and stamp my feet and throw a tantrum and let someone else take control of things for a change but I couldn’t, for only one of us could play that role successfully. ‘So just you get your mind accustomed to it, Tomas, and you’ll be the better for it,’ I added gloomily.

  ‘A week,’ he cried, adding almost immediately, ‘how long is that?’ ‘A week is -’ I began to tell him just how long it could be when I heard the sound of the cart coming towards us on the road. A few had passed us by already and I had attempted to flag them down with no success. Generally the occupant would either lash out at me with his whip or simply curse at me to get off the roads, as if we were creating some sort of terrible obstacle. If those trap-drivers could only see Piccadilly at five O’clock on an evening today they would know how well they had it and wouldn’t have been so quick to give way to their tempers. I glanced at the cart as it approached and was pleased to see that it had only one occupant but still didn’t hold out too much hope as I thrust my hand in the air and called out to the young man who came towards me.

  ‘Halloa! Sir!’ I cried. ‘Do you have room for us in your cart?’ I stood back as he approached, expecting the whip to appear or for him simply to try to run me over at any moment and was surprised to see him pull up on the reins and shout to his horse to stand easy.

  ‘Looking for a lift, are ye?’ he asked, coming to a halt beside me as Tomas looked up in desperate hope and Dominique emerged from the grass adjusting her skirts, staring at our benefactor suspiciously.

  ‘There’s three of us, if that’s not too many,’ I said, putting on my most polite voice as I watched him glance briefly from one of us to the other, hoping that deference on my part would give way to compassion on his. ‘But we don’t have much to carry. Just one bag, that’s all,’ I added, lifting my small hold-all from the grass. ‘We can’t pay you, unfortunately, but we would be much obliged.’

  ‘Well, you may as well step on then,’ he said with a smile. ‘Can’t leave ye out here on a hot afternoon like this now, can I?’ His voice was rich with a country strain that I didn’t recognise, his words inflected with merriment and humour. ‘Just three of ye, ye say? Why, that ‘un’s only a mite.’ He nodded towards Tomas, who was scrambling vigorously into the cart, as if he feared the young man might change his mind at any moment and leave us behind. ‘More like two and a half

  ‘My brother,’ I explained, stepping up beside him as Dominique got into the back quietly with Tomas. ‘Six years old.’ I sat back and for a moment, before we even set off, wished we could simply stay in this horse and trap for ever, there on that road, the future a drama yet to begin, the simple past not played out as yet. It was the final reassurance that we were leaving Dover for ever for in a moment our chauffeur would crack his whip, let out a cry to the horse and we would jerk into movement. It was a quiet moment of gratitude and apprehension for me and I have never quite forgotten it. To my surprise I felt a lump in my throat as we started to move with generous speed along the road.

  ‘That’s a queer accent you’ve got there,’ said the farmer after a few moments. ‘Where is it you said you’re from?’

  ‘We’re coming from Dover but we hail originally from France. Paris, in fact. Do you know it?’

  ‘I know of it,’ he said with a smile and I couldn’t help but smile back at him. He was young – no more than about twenty-five – but had the face of a teenage boy. His cheeks were bright and clean as if they had never known the cut of a razor and his blond hair flopped merrily over his forehead. He was dressed with little expense, although it was clear from the cart and the condition of his horse that he was not poor. T never been much out of the country,’ he added. ‘Come up to Dover to see some supplies on to merchant vessels regular like. Maybe I seen you there and didn’t know it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  ‘That your missus?’ he whispered quietly, his head flicking back towards Dominique as he winked at me. ‘You’re a lucky thing to have a woman like her, ain’t you? She’d keep ye busy through the night.’

  ‘I’m his sister,’ said Dominique coldly, her head coming between us as she leaned forward to hear our conversation. ‘That’s all. How far are you going anyway?’ I looked back at her in surprise. To claim to be my sister was one thing. To appear unfriendly and sullen was another and could easily get us thrown off this wagon and back on to the road in a heartbeat, something my feet did not desire for a moment.

  ‘I’m only going as far as Canterbury for the night,’ said the young man. ‘I can take you there but I’ll be stopping to sleep when I reaches it and I turns off the road towards Bramling after that. If you want to continue to London then you’re best getting out there and seeing what luck you can find along the road after that. There’s an old barn I know there where I tends to sleep. It’ll be dark by then and you’re best off staying there with me and moving on in the morning. Or walk on in the dark but I don’t know the roads from there so you’d need to be on your guard.’

  Dominique nodded as if she was giving her approval to these plans and lay back in the cart. Furlong – he introduced himself to me a moment later – said nothing more for a time and appeared content to slow down the horse a little and stare ahead. He took some chewing tobacco from his pocket and bit off a chunk. He went to put it back in his pocket before hesitating and offering me some, which I accepted a little nervously. It was a delicacy I had never tasted before but did not want to appear so rude as to decline. I bit down on the chewy mound and took off a lump equal in size to the one he had taken himself. It tasted foul – like a mouthful of burnt, spiced fruit, only more bitter on the tongue – and I wondered how he could chew it with such relish, not to mention noise. As I rolled it around my mouth it released a liquid of poisonous taste whose odour seemed to take a hold of the passageways up to my nostrils and constrict them suddenly. I felt a tightening in my throat and for a moment I could not breathe. I gasped and could hear the catch, knowing my voice was, for now at least, vanished.

  ‘Not often I get company on these roads,’ Furlong was saying. ‘My father sends me once a month to do this trip. We’re suppliers, you see. We run a farm but we sends some of our dairy food to the continent. It doesn’t earn us much, if you want to know the truth, but it helps my father’s claims to being an international man of business. That’s how he styles himself in our village, you see.’ I nodded and gave a slight cough, spitting the foul mucus into my hand and letting it drop over the side of the cart as we drove on. I looked back and saw Dominique watching me, an eyebrow raised in amusement. My face was purple from the experience and I swallowed several times to rid myself of the tobacco
’s taste and wished for a pitcher of cold water with which to wash it away. ‘There’s often people along this road, of course,’ he said. ‘But I don’t likes taking single men. You don’t know where you’ll end up with some of them. Rob you blind, they would. Slit your throat for a few pounds. That’s why I carries this.’ He reached to the side of the cart and extracted a long knife, perhaps twelve inches in length, with a serrated edge. He touched it with the tip of a finger and I winced, expecting blood to appear in a sudden spurt. ‘That’s sharp, that is,’ he said. T makes sure to sharpen it on a leather before I leave each month. For self-protection, you understand.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, unsure what answer he was looking for here.

  ‘But when I saw you there, you and your missus and your little boy, I-’

  ‘My sister and brother,’ I corrected him, continuing the deception.

  ‘I thought I’d stop and lend a hand,’ he continued, ignoring me. ‘Seemed like a good idea anyway. Helps make the time go a little quicker.’

  ‘We’re very grateful,’ I said, feeling a sudden rush of warmth for this young man and his lonely monthly trips from Bramling to Dover and back. ‘My boots were beginning to hurt me and Tomas was beginning to whine.’

  ‘Not much I can do about the boots,’ he said, peering ahead at the deserted road as the light grew a little more dim. ‘But, as for the child, I should expect a sound thrashing at the starts of any complaining would put an end to that sort of thing.’

  I looked across at him, expecting to see him smiling at his joke, but it was no joke and I was pleased that my half-brother had fallen asleep almost immediately after getting into the cart, for if he had not I could only have guessed what his behaviour might have been or what it might have resulted in for all of us.