Robert Goddard — Borrowed Time

by Unknown

  I made my way back to College Green and headed vaguely towards Queen Square, where I’d parked the car. But it was obvious some strong coffee would be needed before I drove anywhere. The warehouses running down the western side of a narrow reach of the harbour just below the Royal Hotel had been converted into a complex of shops, restaurants and art galleries. A couple of espressos in a café there cleared my head. I emerged ready to face the journey back to Petersfield.

  Only to stop in my tracks when I glanced across the reach to see Rowena walking slowly along the other side. She was wearing a long loose flower-patterned dress. Her hair hung unbraided to her waist, a splash of palest gold in the sunlight, waving slightly with each step she took, as a field of wheat might when stirred by a breeze. She was heading south, bound presumably for home. I knew from Sarah that she and Paul lived in one of the smart dockside town houses that had sprung up in the area since its commercial decay. Convenient for Metropolitan Mutual and the university. But she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get back there. She was dragging her feet, fiddling with the strap of her shoulder-bag as she walked, alternately gazing up at the sky and staring down at the cobbles. She looked neither to right nor left, but, even if she’d glanced in my direction, she’d probably not have seen me in the shadows of the colonnade that ran the length of the warehouse block. The reach was narrow, of course. If I’d stepped forward and shouted to her, she would have heard. But something deterred me. Something in her bearing and my shame. Something that told me chance meetings were best avoided.

  Nevertheless, I found myself walking in the same direction as her. And at the same pace. Keeping track for as long as our routes ran parallel. Hers down past the Unicorn Hotel to the Arnolfini building at the corner of the quay. Mine to where the colonnade ended and a permanently moored ship got up as a floating pub blocked my view of her. Hurriedly, I went aboard, ordered a drink I didn’t want and took it to the starboard window. But Rowena had stopped at the quayside opposite me, almost as if she’d known I’d need a few moments to catch up. She couldn’t see me, I was certain. Not with the sun in her eyes as it was. She seemed to be looking for something, squinting out across the water. She took a step closer to the edge and for a second I was alarmed. But there was no need. She tossed her head, setting her hair bouncing across her back, then turned and walked away towards the swing-bridge across the harbour.

  She’d soon be out of sight. Distance would claim her as one of its own. I watched her cross the bridge, then turn to the left, heading further away from me than ever along the wharves on the far side of the harbour. A pale speck amidst the visual chaos of masts and rooftops, speeding cars and sprawling crowds, glaring sky and sparkling water. A few seconds, as my eyes strained to follow her. A farewell flash of sunlight on her hair. Then she was gone. I waited to be certain. But there was no longer any trace of her. Not so much as a blur.

  I left my drink and walked off the ship. There, opposite me, on the quay, she’d stood only a few minutes before. I could have hailed her. I could have urged her to wait while I hurried round to join her. And if she’d still been standing there, I believe I would have done. But belief can so often be self-deception. I’d had the chance. And I’d turned it down. Now there was nothing to do but to walk away.

  I heard nothing from Sarah between my return to Petersfield and the Benefit of the Doubt broadcast. She’d had ample time by then to play and replay the video until every word of mine Seymour had used was imprinted on her memory. But her only response was silence. Perhaps, I thought, that was to be my punishment. My exclusion, so far as she could engineer it, from Rowena’s life as well as hers. My forfeit of the confidence they’d once invested in me.

  I recorded the transmission myself, but I didn’t watch it. I’d seen it too many times already. The awareness that I couldn’t force Seymour to admit he’d deliberately distorted what I’d said any more than I could force Sarah to acknowledge he’d done so dragged my exasperation down into exhaustion. Until a show of indifference was the only riposte I felt capable of.

  Adrian had got hold of a couple of tickets for the opening day of the Lord’s Test and had offered them to Simon and me, claiming he was too busy to go himself. Simon and I both realized it was more in the nature of a bribe, with the company’s response to Bushranger’s bid still formally unsettled. But that didn’t stop us accepting. In my case, it was just what I needed: a day’s refuge from any possibility of an irate call from Bella or Paul or Sir Keith about my interview on Benefit of the Doubt the night before. Simon gave me his opinion of it, of course. “I said you should never have got mixed up with that in the first place, Rob. You should have listened to your big brother.” All of which was thoroughly predictable. As well as being uncomfortably close to the truth. But as soon as the champagne started to flow, he gave up lecturing me and a moratorium on the subject of Bushranger meant we had an enjoyably light-hearted day. Even if Australia’s dominance of England did seem to point a dismal moral for Timariot & Small.

  I got back to Greenhayes late that night, overslept and reached the office nearer ten o’clock than nine the following morning, my hangover made no more bearable by the knowledge that Simon’s was probably worse. A pile of messages had accumulated in my absence and I was sifting aimlessly through them with one hand while trying to prise a Disprin out of its foil wrapper with the other when my secretary put her head round the door to announce she had Nick Seymour on the telephone.

  “That’s the Nick Seymour,” she said, apparently impressed.

  “What does he want?” I barked ill-temperedly.

  “He wouldn’t say. It couldn’t be anything to do with what’s in the paper, could it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen a paper.”

  “Oh. You don’t know, then.”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Sorry,” she said, bridling. “It’s just—”

  “Put the Nick Seymour through, Liz. Without wasting any more time, eh?” I waved to her dismissively and she took the hint. A few seconds later, the telephone rang.

  “Mr. Timariot?” It was Seymour all right, a grain of apprehensiveness scarcely denting his self-assurance.

  “Rung to apologize, have you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know very well.”

  “Listen, I haven’t got time to play games. I’m simply trying to make sure we take a consistent line on this. In both our interests.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on. The Paxton girl. Or Bryant. Whatever the right name is. The tabloids are trying to blame me for what’s happened.”

  “What has happened?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I did, would I?”

  “I thought you must do.”

  “Just tell me.”

  The tone of my voice silenced him for a moment. Then he said: “Lady Paxton’s younger daughter committed suicide yesterday afternoon.”

  “What?”

  “Threw herself off Clifton Suspension Bridge, apparently.”

  “Rowena’s dead?”

  “Yes. And the newspapers are trying to say she only did it because she’d seen my programme on Wednesday.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “So you see it’s vital we stick together. The papers may not contact you. But, if they do, you’d be well advised to—”

  I cut him off before he could say any more and slowly replaced the handset. Beneath me, amidst the confetti of Liz’s neatly typed messages from the day before, was one that was shorter than most. Mrs. Bryant rang on a matter of urgency. She will call back. And there, in my mind’s eye, was the sunlight flashing on her hair as she turned from the quayside.

  I jumped from my chair and ran into the outer office, clutching the scrap of paper in my hand. Liz looked up in surprise. “What’s wrong?”

  “This message.” I slapped it down in front of her. “When did you take it?”

&nbs
p; “Mrs. Bryant,” she mused. “Oh, I remember. Said she was in a call-box. Sounded anxious.”

  “When?”

  “Er . . . during the lunch hour. Yes. Just before two. Or just after.”

  “Let me see your paper.” Her Daily Mail was poking out of the desk drawer beside her.

  “You don’t mean . . . Rowena was the Mrs. Bryant who phoned you yesterday?” Horror began to dawn on her. “I never—”

  “Give me the paper!” She handed it over and there was the headline, staring at me from the front page. DAUGHTER TAKES LIFE THREE YEARS AFTER MOTHER’S MURDER. The daughter of one of the victims of a double murder three years ago yesterday took her own life in a fatal dive from Clifton Suspension Bridge, the notorious Bristol suicide spot. My eyes scanned the paragraphs in search of the information I both wanted and dreaded. Rowena Bryant, a twenty-two-year-old married student at Bristol University, is said to have become depressed over recent weeks. It is thought her suicide was prompted by seeing a video recording of Wednesday night’s Benefit of the Doubt programme, in which controversial presenter Nick Seymour aired doubts about the guilt of the man convicted of the rape and murder of her mother, Lady Paxton, in July 1990. Shaun Naylor, 31, is serving a— But where was the time—the precise time? When did it happen? Onlookers were amazed to see Mrs. Bryant walk calmly to the middle of the bridge shortly after two o’clock yesterday afternoon, climb onto the railings and— Shortly after two o’clock. So it was even worse than I’d feared.

  “Are you OK, Robin?” asked Liz.

  She got no answer. I closed the newspaper, dropped it onto her desk and picked up the message she’d taken just before two o’clock the previous afternoon. Or maybe just after. Mrs. Bryant rang on a matter of urgency. She will call back. “Is this really all she said?” I demanded.

  “Yes. She was only on for a minute or two. Said it was urgent and personal. When I explained you were out, she sounded disappointed. I suggested she call back. She said she would. Then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “She rang off.”

  She rang off. And walked the short distance from the call-box to the bridge. She must have used the kiosk on the Clifton side. I could remember passing it with her that day in November 1991 when I’d gone up to Bristol at Sarah’s urging to help Rowena forget the mystery of their mother’s death. We’d talked of her suicide attempt a few days before; of how good it was to be alive; and of the strange appeal death could still seem to hold. For a moment, for an hour at most, she’d said, death had seemed more attractive than life. And now it had again. But an overdose was neither certain nor instant. Whereas a leap from the bridge—

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” murmured Liz. “She said she’d call back. I’m sure of it.”

  “Don’t worry. It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t to know.”

  She looked up at me gratefully. “I don’t suppose anybody was, were they?”

  I wanted to agree, to affirm wholeheartedly that this was a bolt from the blue nobody could have predicted or prevented. But something stopped me. Rowena’s own words—her irrational sense of guilt for the fate that had overtaken her mother—stood between me and the denial of responsibility I’d otherwise have been glad to utter. “It would be possible to rerun the events of the seventeenth of July a hundred times and produce a hundred different results. A lot of times—maybe a majority of times—Mummy wouldn’t die. Wouldn’t even be in danger. Just because of some tiny scarcely noticeable variation. Like what she said to me. Or to you. And what we said in reply.” I’d persuaded her then to agree that, even if this was so, nobody could foresee or be blamed for the fatal variation. But perhaps I hadn’t really believed that any more than her. Perhaps we’d both known better, but hadn’t dared to say so. For fear of what it meant.

  “Can we really change anything, do you think?” Yes, Louise. I could have saved you. And I could have saved your daughter. If I’d refused Seymour his interview. If I’d been more careful about what I said. If I’d given him no scope to finesse the result. If I’d gone to Rowena straightaway. If I’d called to her across the harbour. If I’d been in the office to take her call. If I’d told her the truth all along. If I’d simply trusted her as she wanted me to. If I’d only made one right choice instead of a dozen wrong ones. Then—and only then—it might have been so very different. But it wasn’t going to be. Any more than Rowena was going to call back. Not now. Not ever.

  C H A P T E R

  ELEVEN

  I’m not sure now how I got through the rest of that day. For most of it, I was shut away in my office, struggling to articulate a response to Rowena’s death. I knew contact with Sarah at this stage would be counter-productive. She’d be bound to blame me for what had happened. Although I longed to ask her how Rowena had come to see the video, to do so was to all intents and purposes impossible. Paul was a virtual stranger to me. To approach him in the midst of his grief was inconceivable. Bella was a possible go-between and I did risk a call to her in Biarritz, only to be told she and Sir Keith had already left for England. So I was left in limbo, unable to act because every action I considered led me nowhere.

  One decision I did take was to play along with Seymour, though for my own reasons. I instructed Liz to tell any journalists who rang that I was out. She heard from several. But they weren’t going to hear from me. An interview had started all this and I knew public recriminations would only prolong it. If Sarah wasn’t prepared to believe the explanation I’d given her face to face, seeing a garbled version of it in the tabloid press wouldn’t make any difference. I let Seymour imagine what he liked, though. I was out to him as well. And meant to go on being.

  I went home as early as was consistent with a pretence of putting in a day’s work, but didn’t stay there longer than it took to change my clothes. I dreaded the telephone ringing with Sir Keith or some muck-raking newspaperman on the line, yet knew I’d have to answer in case it was Sarah offering me an olive-branch. To walk myself into a state of exhaustion round the lanes and hangers was preferable to an agony of suspense at Greenhayes, so out I went. I finished up at the White Horse, an old haunt of Thomas’s on the Froxfield plateau, where I was mercifully unknown and could drink steadily away until the demons were dulled, though scarcely banished.

  It was nearly midnight when I got back to Greenhayes. But the telephone rang before I’d so much as locked the door behind me. And I was too drunk to hesitate before picking it up.

  “Robin?”

  “Oh, Bella . . . It’s you.”

  “I’ve been trying to contact you all evening.”

  “Sorry. I was . . . out.”

  “I assume you’ve heard about Rowena.”

  “Oh yes. I’ve heard.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “What else do you want me to say?”

  “I should have thought we were owed an explanation from you at the very least.”

  “I’d be happy to give one. If you thought it would be listened to.”

  “I’ll listen, Robin.”

  “But will Keith? Will Paul? Will Sarah?”

  “Probably not, no. Can you blame them? They think you and this Marsden bitch are partly responsible—if not chiefly responsible—for what Rowena did.”

  “And no doubt you agree with them.”

  “What I think isn’t very important at the moment. Now listen to me. Keith’s spending the weekend with Sarah and Paul. But I’m coming down to Hindhead tomorrow. I’d like to see you. Come to The Hurdles at . . . say . . . four o’clock?”

  “All right. If you think it’ll serve any—”

  “Just be there, Robin.” And she hung up before I had a chance to prevaricate any further. Not that I would have done. I had as many questions for her as she had for me.

  I reached The Hurdles halfway through a blazing hot summer’s afternoon. The lawn was loud with grass-hoppers. The plop-plop of a tennis game could be heard from beyond the neighbour’s fence. And a distant growl fro
m the deep blue sky as a light plane towed a glider up into the thermals. Death seemed as remote as winter. But death was what had brought me there.

  Bella greeted me with a complaint about the heat. “I’d forgotten how humid it can be in England,” she said. “God, what a time for this to happen.”

  “Could there be a good time?”

  “You know what I mean. Do you want a drink?”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a beer in the fridge. About all there is in the fridge. Bring it onto the terrace.”

  I fetched a can and a glass and followed her out to the rear of the house, where she’d arranged a couple of directors’ chairs beneath the pergola. She already had a drink, something cool and lemon-coloured, with a straw in it. A sheaf of ripped-open letters beside her chair testified to the length of her absence. And she didn’t look happy to be back. She was smoking, which wasn’t a good sign. Nor were the sunglasses she hid her eyes behind. I might have betrayed her husband and stepdaughter. But I’d inconvenienced her. A heinous offence indeed.

  “Sarah told me you’d claimed to be a victim of selective editing.”

  “It’s true. I was.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve seen the tape, Robin. What did you think you were doing?”

  “Trying to tell it how it really was.”

  “And was that worth driving Rowena to suicide for?”

  “No. Of course not. I had no idea—”

  “You knew about the first attempt. How can you claim to have had no idea?”

  “Ah. Sarah’s mentioned that, has she?”

  “Yes. And I wish she’d done so at the time. Then Keith and I might have been able to— Oh, never mind.” She rose and walked up and down, puffing at her cigarette. “It’s not all your fault. I’ll say that much. Sarah was a fool to keep us in the dark. And she should have realized what might happen if Rowena found out about the programme.”

  “How did she find out?”

  “A stroke of bad luck. With her exams finished and term all but over, she wasn’t going into the university last week, so Paul thought she probably wouldn’t meet anybody who’d seen the programme. But another maths student she knew quite well had seen it. She called round for coffee on Thursday morning and asked Rowena about it. But Rowena didn’t know it had even been made, let alone broadcast. She was shocked. Outraged, I suppose, that it had been kept from her. I knew that was a mistake all along. I should never have let Keith . . . Anyway, about half an hour after her visitor left, Rowena was spotted by another resident going into Sarah’s flat in Caledonia Place. She still had a key from when they shared it. She must have guessed her sister had recorded the programme while she was out with her and Paul the night before. But Sarah hadn’t needed to record it, had she? Because you’d given her a tape of it, neatly labelled, which Rowena found and watched on Sarah’s TV. It was still in the video recorder when Sarah got back. Can you imagine the effect it must have had? Sophie Marsden implying her mother was some sort of nymphomaniac.”