The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  She sighed and sat back in her chair. ‘Tell me this, Matthieu,’ she said, ‘do you want to go on working here?’

  ‘Oh, God no,’ I said honestly. ‘I want things to go back to the way they were. I want to be able to come in once a week, sure that I’ve left someone in charge who can handle any situation that presents itself. I want a little peace and quiet. I’m an old man, you know.’

  She laughed. ‘You are not,’ she said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Trust me. I don’t look my age.’

  ‘All I want is a chance, that’s all I ask. You can always fire me. You can put it in my contract that I can be fired at any time for any reason and I can’t sue you. What do you say? I can’t say fairer than that.’

  I pushed my chair back a little and looked out of the window. On the pavement below I could see a small child waiting with his mother for the traffic to stop so that they might cross the road. They weren’t holding hands and I watched as he suddenly made a break for it, only to be whisked back by his mother before he was run over, whereupon she gave him a sharp slap on the back of his legs. Then he burst out crying although I couldn’t hear him from this distance. I could just see his little eyes scrunched up tightly and his mouth twisted into some sort of wide open contortion. Hideously ugly. I looked away. ‘I tell you what,’ I said, turning back to her, and thinking, ‘What the hell?’. ‘It really looks like I’m going to be doing James’s job for the foreseeable future. So how about you come to work here as my assistant. I’ll teach you what I know about the place, for what it’s worth, and after a few months we can re-evaluate the situation. See whether it’s the kind of thing you really want to do or not. Maybe you’ll prove me wrong. Maybe you’ll be excellent at it. Or maybe your father will come home and we’ll all be right back where we started.’

  ‘I think that’s unlikely somehow,’ she said. ‘But that sounds fair enough, I suppose. At least I’m willing to accept that arrangement for now. One last question.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When do I start?’

  It was splashed across the front pages of all the tabloids, and even hit a broadsheet or two. A colour photograph, slightly off-kilter, of Tommy and Barbra clinched in a passionate embrace, eyes closed, lips locked together, blissfully unaware of the paparazzo snapping away in the distance. The location was a dark corner of a famous people’s nightclub; Tommy looked rather smart in his now apparently trademark black shirt and jacket, while Barbra was definitely not looking her age in a simple white blouse and culottes. He had one hand in her shoulder-length blonde hair as they kissed; their bodies could hardly have been closer together without risk of consummation and the whole picture represented the word ‘lust’. The papers could hardly contain their excitement.

  ‘I don’t know how it happened exactly,’ Tommy explained to me as we sat drinking cappuccinos in a top-floor cafe off Kensington High Street, hidden slightly behind a fern in order to escape from prying eyes. ‘It was just one of those things. We met, we got talking, one thing led to another, we kissed. I know it seems odd but it felt perfectly natural at the time.’

  ‘Honestly,’ I said, amused by the boyish look of smug self-satisfaction he was giving me, ‘she’s old enough to be your mother.’

  ‘Maybe, but surely the most important thing is that she’s not.’

  I laughed. ‘Do famous people only make love to other famous people?’ I asked him, intrigued now by the world which he inhabited. ‘Explain it to me. Is that why famous people want to be famous?’

  ‘Not always,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Look at Andrea. She’s not famous.’

  ‘She’s not famous yet, Tommy. Give her a couple of months and come back to me on it.’ Andrea was Tommy’s current girlfriend, who had already announced that she was two months pregnant with his child. They had met at a television awards ceremony, where Andrea was working as a junior sound recordist with the television station responsible for its broadcasting. According to him – well, according to her originally – she didn’t know who he was when they met, never having seen an episode of his television show. Apparently, she doesn’t even own a TV, which I find unusual for someone who actually works in the medium.

  ‘It’s true,’ Tommy told me. ‘There isn’t a single TV in her apartment. It’s wall to wall books, that’s all. She’s not like those other girls. She’s not interested in who I am.’

  I wasn’t convinced. Even if she really didn’t have a TV, it was impossible to conceive of an existence in this country over the last few years where, somehow or other, the name of Tommy DuMarque did not creep into your consciousness. His many ventures into different areas of the entertainment world – television, music, theatre, Hello! magazine – have made him such a ubiquitous presence in the cultural melee that it seemed ridiculous that a normal person with eyes and ears could travel from day to day without having made his acquaintance, metaphorically speaking, at some point or another. And yet this girl, this Andrea, this now pregnant twenty-four-year-old sound recordist, was claiming that very thing.

  ‘She’s all right really,’ said Tommy, defending her to me with his usual lack of superlatives. ‘She’s a nice girl. I trust her.’

  ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘Christ, no.’

  ‘But you’re still together?’

  ‘Of course we are. We’re having a baby, remember?’

  ‘I remember.’ What he didn’t realise was that, to me, hearing of his impregnating someone was like watching someone sign his own death warrant. I picked up the newspaper again and waved it at him. ‘So what about this then?’ I asked. ‘How do you explain this? To Andrea, if to no one else.’

  ‘I don’t have to explain it to her,’ he said with a shrug, twirling his cappuccino around inside his cup carelessly. ‘We’re not married, you know. Things happen. We’re young. What are you gonna do?’

  ‘I’m not going to do anything, Tommy. I just want to try to understand why you’re allowing yourself to get more and more deeply involved with some girl who you don’t really care about, while you go around smooching with ageing movie stars whenever you get a chance. It seems to me that, if this Andrea really cared about you, she’d take exception to your behaviour.’

  ‘Stop calling her “this Andrea”. It’s just Andrea.’

  ‘Who has become pregnant with your baby. A rich and famous television personality. I wonder what particular qualities she first saw in you,’ I added sarcastically.

  Tommy looked irritated and paused before answering, in a slightly higher tone of voice. ‘Who are you calling rich anyway?’ he asked me. T haven’t got two fucking pennies to rub together, surely you know that better than anyone. She’s not after me for my money, you know.’

  ‘Tommy, you’re in a unique position. You may not currently be wealthy but you have the ability to make as much money as you want whenever you want. You are one of the elite. You are a star. People who never have and never will meet you look up to you, dream about you, have sexual fantasies in which you are involved. People will pay to see you. You belong to the extraordinary social group of the professional celebrity. Can’t you see that? You could make £100,000 tomorrow simply by allowing someone to take photographs of your gracious drawing room.’

  ‘I don’t have a gracious drawing room.’

  ‘Well, then, go out and get one, for heaven’s sake. Look one up in the Argos catalogue. Have one delivered and invite a photographer over to take a few shots of it. But if you want to make some money, then take advantage of your celebrity while it still exists.’ I felt as if I had got off the point rather, as I had started with the photograph, moved on to Andrea, and was now giving out free financial advice. I relaxed in my chair and looked around. The place was mostly empty for it was the middle of the afternoon, too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Of those people who were present, I could make out a junior minister talking animatedly with his mistress at one table – the last time I had seen him was in a privately circulated photograp
h where he was playing the back end of a pantomime horse. Unfortunately the front end had forgotten to wear any clothes; there was talk of a scandal but no one was yet willing to publish. At another table there was a middle-aged couple eating cream cakes and drinking tea, looking right past each other in silence, as if they had already said every single thing that they had to say to each other in this lifetime and it was just a question of muddling through from now on. At another there was a teenage boy with his spotty girlfriend, both of whom were being loud. The boy’s T-shirt said, ‘My name’s Warren Rimbleton and I won eight million quid on the lottery in March. And you didn’t!’ He was so covered in awful gold jewellery that I suspected this statement was one of fact. I looked away quickly as their lips met and they began to kiss in a rather strange, inexperienced manner, chewing on each others’ mouths like toffee. As I glanced back at my nephew, he was scratching his arm and his shirt was lifted slightly above his wrist. The marks caught my eye and I looked at him quickly.

  ‘What are those?’ I asked him.

  ‘What?’ he replied, immediately rebuttoning his shirt.

  ‘Those marks,’ I said. ‘Those marks on your arm. What are they?’

  He shrugged and went slightly red, cringing on his seat. ‘They’re ... they’re nothing. I’m sorting it out, all right?’ he added, apropos of nothing.

  I shook my head in amazement. ‘You were there, remember?’ I said to him, leaning forward to whisper. ‘You saw what happened to James Hocknell, right? You saw how he just suddenly -’

  ‘He was some old fart shooting up to impress a teenage hooker who he picked up off the street. He didn’t have a fucking clue what he was doing.’

  ‘Yes, and he died because of it.’

  ‘I’m not going to die, Uncle Matt.’

  ‘I bet he thought the same thing.’

  ‘Look, I don’t do it that often anyway. I’m in a pressurised business. I need to blow off steam sometimes, that’s all. I’m twenty-two years old and I know exactly how much of this stuff I can do without risking it all, OK? Trust me.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m just worried about you, Tommy,’ I said, a rare moment of conciliation between us. T don’t want to see anything bad happen to you, that’s all. Can you understand that?’

  ‘Yeah, I can. And I appreciate it.’

  ‘This baby ... it means the worst.’

  ‘It’s just a baby, Uncle -’

  ‘I’ve seen it all before. Too many times. Stop taking drugs, please. Can you do that? Don’t live up to your ancestry. Pull yourself together, boy!’

  Tommy stood up and threw some money on the table unnecessarily, as if to prove a point. ‘This is on me,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got to go. I have to be back on set in about twenty minutes. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that,’ I said, watching the heads turn as he walked out, the sudden moments of recognition, the way they looked back at him when he was already gone, their lives a little brighter for having seen him, ready to tell their friends of the encounter later in the evening. And he was oblivious to how important he was to complete strangers, let alone to me.

  Chapter 13

  Working with Dominique

  I often tried to discover the derivation of the town name Cageley, but without much success. It remains, however, one of the most appropriately named places that I have ever come across, for I have rarely seen any town or city in 256 years which seemed so caged in, so soul-entrapping, as this small place was. Driving into Cageley, the first thing one saw was the set of large iron gates which had been constructed at its boundary, and through which all traffic passed. It was an unusual and strangely redundant sight, for both gates were simply placed solidly into the ground on either side of the road, and even if they were closed -which they never were – one could simply walk around them in order to gain access to what lay beyond.

  It was primarily a self-sufficient town, with no more than five or six hundred inhabitants, each of whom appeared to contribute something to the common good. There were several all-purpose stores, a blacksmith, and a market in the centre of the town where the farmers’ young children would generally position themselves from one end of the day to the next, selling their produce to each other’s families. There was also a church, a schoolroom and a town hall, which saw annual productions from the local amateur dramatic group as well as the odd concert or solo performance.

  Mr and Mrs Amberton brought us to their home on our first night in Cageley and we were all so tired that we went immediately to bed. They owned a relatively large house for two people living on their own and, to my disappointment, there was room enough for Tomas and me to share one room, and for Dominique to take the other. The next day, Mrs Amberton offered to show us around the town to help us make up our minds whether we wanted to stay there for the time being or continue on to London. As soon as I started walking around and seeing what I took to be an idyllic home setting before me, filled with families and relative prosperity and general satisfaction, I was keen to stay put and I could tell from Dominique’s face that she was also being won over by the prospect of a stability that neither of us had ever known before.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked her as we walked side by side along the street, Mrs Amberton moving a little ahead of us with my younger brother. ‘It seems so different to Dover.’

  ‘It does,’ she agreed. ‘There’d be no chance you could continue your previous life here. Everyone appears to know everyone else and we’d be strung up if you stole from them.’

  ‘There are other ways to make a living. There have to be jobs here, don’t you think?’

  She didn’t answer, but I could tell that she liked what she saw. Eventually we agreed that we would stay on for the time being, dependent on our abilities to find jobs, and that we would begin our search for those immediately. Both Mr and Mrs Amberton were delighted – I felt a little like some naif being recruited into a cult – and said that we could stay with them for now and pay them a portion of our wages once we were secure. Although I found them both a little repugnant in their behaviour and manners – for even then I was beginning to believe that there was going to be more to my life than I was currently experiencing – we had no choice but to agree. Their offer was, after all, extremely generous and there was no telling when we would begin to achieve an income of our own. On those first couple of evenings, the five of us would sit around the Ambertons’ fireplace, Tomas snoozing, Dominique brooding, I listening, Mrs Amberton talking and Mr Amberton alternating between coughing and spitting in the fire and taking long, noisy swallows of whiskey, while our hosts told us more about themselves and how they had become husband and wife in the first place. I began to feel that the three of us were becoming their surrogate children – I could see from the way they looked at us, particularly at Tomas, how fond they were growing of each of us – and found to my astonishment that I enjoyed that feeling. I had never known a sturdy, happy family unit before and that all too brief time that we spent in Cageley probably represents the closest I have ever come to knowing one in all my extended life.

  ‘Mrs Amberton’s father didn’t want me to marry her,’ Mr Amberton told us one evening. ‘He had ideas, you see, about himself that weren’t always fulfilled.’

  ‘He were a good man, though, my father,’ interjected his wife.

  ‘He may have been a good man, my dear, but he had very high opinions for a man who spent the majority of his life milking cows and was only fortunate to come into a little money when he reached his middle age, on account of a legacy that an old aunt from Cornwall left to him, you see.’

  ‘My great-aunt Mildred,’ said Mrs Amberton. ‘She lived alone all her life and never changed her clothes. She wore a black dress with bright red shoes and always wore gloves when she had company. They say she was a little disturbed in the head, something to do with an early grief, but I always thought she just enjoyed being the centre of attention, for what it’s worth.’

&
nbsp; ‘How and ever, she left her money to Mrs’s father,’ he continued. ‘And from then on you would have sworn he were one of the landed gentry. “How exactly,” he asked me the night that I came to ask him for Mrs Amberton’s hand, “how exactly do you intend to keep my daughter in the style to which she has become accustomed, and you just starting out in life?” Well, of course I told him my plans and that I were going into the construction business in London – lot of money to be made in that back then, you know – and he just sort of sniffed the air as if I’d just let off a nasty smell, which I hadn’t, and said that he didn’t think it were a suitable match and maybe I should either look elsewhere or reapply when my prospects were a little higher.’

  ‘As if I was some sort of job that he was interviewing for!’ cried Mrs Amberton, looking angry at what was probably an age-old grievance.

  ‘Well, in the end we just upped and went. Got ourselves married and went down to London and for a while her father wouldn’t speak to either of us but then he just seemed to forget all about it and when we would come to visit he acted as if he couldn’t remember there ever being a disagreement between us in the first place and even mentioned on one occasion the ham that he had eaten at our wedding dinner. Said it gave him stomach ache.’

  ‘He went a little ... at the end,’ said Mrs Amberton in a whisper, making circular motions with her finger around her head as she left out the crucial word. ‘Believed himself to be everything from George II to Michelangelo. I always worry the same thing will happen to me one of these fine days.’

  ‘Don’t even joke about it, my dear,’ said Mr Amberton. ‘That’s a terrible thought, it really is. I’d be obliged to leave you if that’s what happened.’