Robert Goddard — Borrowed Time

by Unknown

  I could have stopped in Sapperton on the way back to Petersfield and visited Rowena’s grave as well as her mother’s. It would only have been a few miles off my route if I’d gone through Gloucester. As in normal circumstances I would have done. But these weren’t normal circumstances. So I headed south, through Monmouth and the Forest of Dean, joining the motorway at Chepstow. Crossing the Severn Bridge, I knew better than to glance to my left. Just in case I should see a lone figure standing on Sedbury Cliffs at the end—or the beginning—of a journey. Instead, I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead. And didn’t lift my foot from the accelerator.

  Most of last summer appears now wholly inconsistent with everything that preceded it and was to follow. At the time, though, my life seemed set on a definite course which, if not ideal, was at least acceptable. Wrangling over small print delayed finalization of the Bushranger deal, but after Adrian and Jennifer had flown to Sydney twice and Harvey McGraw had dragged himself away from a hospitality tent at the Oval Test Match long enough to swagger round the factory with a retinue of financial advisers, the remaining difficulties were ironed out and a definitive set of terms put together. Adrian let it be known that we’d take a formal and final vote on the offer at a board meeting scheduled for the twenty-third of September.

  Since there wasn’t any doubt about the outcome, I laid my own plans. I spent a few days in Brussels early in September, treating various former colleagues to lunch. The consensus among them was that the Director-General could be induced to have me back on virtual parity with the post I’d left in 1990. The official line would be that I’d reluctantly done my bit for the family firm following my brother’s death, but it was now back on its feet and I was therefore eager to return to the fold. As admissions of defeat went, mine seemed likely to be virtually painless.

  And so no doubt it would have been. But for the intervention of events I could never have foreseen. From a quarter I thought I’d heard the last of. Even though the world hadn’t. Sarah’s predictions were already being borne out in one form or another. The victims of the Kington killings clearly weren’t going to be allowed to rest in peace. An interview here. An article there. A slow dripfeed of curiosity and scepticism to keep the subject stubbornly alive. But not in my heart. I’d buried it. Beneath a dead weight of abandoned uncertainty. Yielded ground. Surrendered memory. The past sloughed off. Surely now I was beyond its reach. Safe and secure.

  But no. I wasn’t. Not at all. That wet Friday evening, the tenth of September, it stretched out its hand to tap me on the shoulder. I turned to meet it. And in that instant it reclaimed me.

  “Paul?”

  He was standing behind me, close enough to seem threatening. Yet in his rain-beaded face there was no hint of violence. Only sorrow and anguish. Previously he’d always been smartly turned out. Now his suit was drenched and crumpled. His shirt gaping at the neck, his tie askew. And there was at least two days’ growth of stubble on his chin. His features were familiar yet not completely recognizable, as if he were some less favoured elder brother of the man Rowena had married, stern and prematurely aged, stooped beneath an unendurable burden.

  “This is a surprise, I must say.”

  We were in the factory yard, only a few yards from the spot where he’d waylaid me in June. The rain and low cloud were hastening the dusk, but it wasn’t yet dark, as it had been then. And Paul’s mood was utterly different. He moved and spoke slowly, as if his brain distrusted his commands and subjected each of them to scrutiny before putting it into effect.

  “How are you?”

  “As I am,” he mumbled.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Listen to me. That’s all. Somebody has to.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “Can we go somewhere?”

  “Er . . . Yes. Of course. Where would you—”

  “Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”

  “There’s a pub down the road. We could—”

  “No. Somewhere we can be alone.”

  “All right. But—”

  “Just drive me somewhere. Out of town. In the open. Where I can breathe.”

  In view of what had happened the last time we met, I should have felt nervous about being alone with him. But his manner somehow overcame all such concerns. He seemed so weary, so utterly drained, that it wasn’t possible to be afraid of him. Quite the reverse. I pitied him, sensing the grief and despair that had dragged him down to this shabby shuffling mockery of the confident young man I’d first encountered in Biarritz. I wanted to help him. And I knew I could trust him.

  We drove out through Steep, past Greenhayes and up the zig-zag road to the top of Stoner Hill. Before we reached the summit, I pulled into one of the lay-bys beneath the trees, where the wooded depths of Lutcombe yawned beneath us through the branches. Night had all but fallen now. Only the dregs of daylight hovered above the hangers. Raindrops fell in random percussion on the roof of the car. Headlamps glared and slid across the windscreen as vehicles passed us. I watched Paul wind down his window, put out his hand to wet his palm, then rub the moisture across his face.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been all right in a long time. Years, I suppose.”

  “Surely not years. When Rowena was alive—”

  “It started before she died. Don’t you understand?” He broke off, then resumed in a calmer vein. “No. Of course you don’t. That’s why I came here. To make you understand. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I should have hurt myself, not you. But at least it solves the problem of who to tell. It means you deserve to hear it first.”

  “To hear what?”

  “The truth I’ve been dodging and evading all these years.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I killed her, you see.”

  “Nobody killed her, Paul. We can debate where the blame rests. But ultimately it was her decision.”

  “I don’t mean Rowena.” I sensed rather than saw him looking at me across the gloom of the car. “I mean Louise.”

  “Sorry?” I was instantly sure I’d misheard him. Or failed to comprehend some metaphor. Whatever he meant, it couldn’t be literally that.

  “I murdered Louise Paxton. And Oscar Bantock too. At Whistler’s Cot. On the seventeenth of July, nineteen ninety.” An approaching pair of headlamps lit up his face in pale relief. He was staring straight at me. With a solemnity that somehow forced me to believe him. Even though I didn’t want to. Even though I hardly dared to. “I’m the man who should be serving the life sentence passed on Shaun Naylor. I’m the real murderer.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh yes. I’m serious. The lies are over now. I’m done with them. With Rowena dead, there’s nothing worth lying for. So I may as well tell the truth. And face the consequences.”

  “You really mean this?”

  “Yes. I mean it. Shaun Naylor didn’t murder Louise. Or old Oscar. I did.”

  “But . . . you can’t have.”

  “How I wish you were right. But I did. Worse still, I let an innocent man go to prison in my place. I told myself he didn’t matter. Some low-life petty criminal society was well rid of. My conscience was up to that. But Rowena was different. I married her because I thought, if I could take care of her, if I could make sure nothing bad ever happened to her again, that would somehow compensate for depriving her of her mother. But I didn’t take care of her, did I? I just made it worse. So much worse she couldn’t face the future shackled to me. And was prepared to go to any lengths to escape it. You said I didn’t kill her and, technically, I didn’t. But in every other sense I did. I should be grateful, really. It proves there is something my conscience can’t bear. I’ve wrestled with it these past few months. I’ve lain awake night after night trying to find some other way out. But there isn’t one. I’m certain I’ll have no peace until I’ve confessed to the crimes I’ve committed. And paid the penalty. It’s as simple as that.”

  I couldn’t f
ind any words to express my reaction to what he’d said. Everything I’d assumed—everything I’d deduced—about Louise Paxton’s death had been overturned in a matter of minutes. A man claiming to have killed her was sitting next to me on an isolated hillside as a wet September night closed about us. If I believed him, I should have been afraid for my own safety. And I did believe him. Not because of the note of sincerity in his voice. Rather because of the unmistakable impression of relief conveyed in his manner and bearing. And that’s also why I wasn’t afraid of him. He sat beside me, hunched and defeated, a man whose store of lies and evasions was long since exhausted. All he seemed to want to do now was speak freely about himself. He was no longer a threat to anyone.

  “The police won’t believe me at first, of course. They won’t want to. I’ll be an embarrassment to them. But they’ll come round in the end. When I’ve told them the whole story, they’ll realize it’s true. But before I go to them, I’d like you to hear it. All of it. So you can tell Sarah and her father before they read about it in the newspapers or see it on television. I haven’t the courage to face them myself. I thought I might have, but I’ve woken up every morning this week meaning to go to Sarah and then failing to. It can’t go on. That’s why I’ve turned to you. Not quite a friend. Not quite a stranger. Perhaps that makes you the perfect confessor. If you’re willing to listen, that is.” He paused. I saw his head droop in the shadows. Then he pulled himself upright and sighed. “Are you?” he asked huskily.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I’ll listen.”

  And so, as the rain spat at the windscreen and the dark damp smell of the night crept in around us, Paul Bryant began his story. I listened to him in silence. And long before he’d finished, I realized nothing would ever be the same. Now his confession had been heard.

  C H A P T E R

  THIRTEEN

  My parents met in the bank where they both worked. Dull decent ordinary people. Never been abroad. Never committed adultery. Never sworn in public. Never dreamt of being more than they were. My sisters and I were all conceived in the same bed in the same room in the same semi-detached house in Surbiton. Made in our parents’ unaspiring image. So they must have thought, anyway. If they ever did think about such things. And I suppose they were right about my sisters. A few holidays in Majorca and one divorce between them doesn’t change an awful lot, does it?

  “I always wanted more, though. More travel. More culture. More company. More variety. And it turned out I had the brains to get what I wanted. Winning a place at Cambridge didn’t just round off a good education and enhance my employment prospects. It got me out of the stifling tedium of my suburban adolescence. Cambridge had more than its fair share of poseurs and idiots, of course. But it gave me something I’d never had before. The conviction that life contained limitless possibilities. The belief not only that I could have whatever I desired if I put my mind to it, but that I deserved to have it. Elitism. Egotism. Supreme self-confidence. They came in the water. And I drank of them deeply.

  “Too deeply, I suppose. I mean, it was all a charade. Of course it was. I know that now. A game of froth and gaud in which the key to winning was to take yourself deadly seriously while pretending to treat everything as a joke. I played the game. But I mistook it for the real thing. So the shallowness of the other players baffled and enraged me. They didn’t seem to understand that arguing an academic point and appreciating a fine painting in the Fitzwilliam were the same thing: a celebration of individual superiority. I soon came to believe that I felt more, sensed more, understood more, grasped the essence of being and doing and thinking more, than the whole trivial pack of them put together.

  “It started from that. My dissatisfaction with the people I got drunk with or went to bed with. It turned into contempt for their lack of maturity. I longed to escape their puking and prattling. I longed for older wiser friends to debate the virtues and vices of the world with. But they weren’t to be found in Cambridge. I felt like a hungry man offered a shopful of candyfloss. Like a philosopher put to work as a baby-minder.

  “Then, during the Lent term of my second year, I met Sarah. We went out a few times. It didn’t come to much. Not even sex. But I happened to be the man she had in tow when she went along to the private view her mother had arranged to launch Oscar Bantock’s exhibition. I nearly didn’t go. She actually had to come and get me when I didn’t show up at her room. Things were cooling off between us pretty rapidly by then. Besides, I hated Expressionism. I also had a fixed mental picture of the artist and his patroness. A raddled old bohemian running to fat and some horse-faced socialite offering cheap wine in exchange for cheap compliments. That’s what I expected. And in Oscar Bantock it’s more or less what I got. But Louise? She was a different story altogether.

  “The gallery was a small but exclusive place. Crowded that night, of course. A grinning mob of so-called aesthetes expelling enough hot air to steam up the windows completely. We pushed our way in. Sarah made straight for her mother. To ensure her presence was noted, I suppose. That’s when I first saw Louise. It was like an electric shock. I mean, it was instantaneous. She was so beautiful. She was so . . . mind-blowingly lovely. I just gaped at her. I remember thinking. ‘Why aren’t these people looking at her? Can’t they see? Don’t they realize?’ You met her once yourself, so maybe you understand. She was incredible. She was the woman I’d been longing to meet. And in that instant, before Sarah had even introduced us, I knew I’d have to have her. To possess her, body and soul. It was as simple as that. Over the top, of course. Absurdly unrealistic. Totally mad. But I never questioned the instinct for a moment. It was so strong I felt certain it had to be right.

  “I only spoke to her for a few minutes. We didn’t discuss anything profound or meaningful. But that didn’t matter. The tone of her voice. The movement of her hair when she laughed. The haunting coolness in her eyes. It was as if they were branded on me. I’d have done anything for her. Gone anywhere to be with her. I was in her power. Except she didn’t know it. Which left my infatuation to feed on itself. Outright rejection at the start might have nipped it in the bud. But she was too polite—too sensitive—for that. I managed to muscle in on a lunch she had with Sarah the next day. I contrived to be hanging around Sarah’s staircase when Louise called on her to say goodbye the day after. I was the archetypal bad penny. Louise probably thought I was trailing after her daughter. That must be why she suggested I visit them in Sapperton during the Easter vacation. But Sarah was having none of it. After her mother had gone, she made it obvious she didn’t want to see me there.

  “I went home at the end of term assuming I’d soon forget about Louise. But the sterility of life in Surbiton only reinforced the yearning to be near her. I knew they had a town house in Holland Park. So I went up there one day and called round. To my surprise, Louise answered the door. She was alone. Sarah was out with friends. Rowena was at school. Sir Keith was at his surgery. I claimed to be in the area by chance. She invited me in. Offered me coffee. Said she didn’t know how long Sarah would be. I said it didn’t matter. And that was true. The longer the better, as far as I was concerned. Just to be with Louise, just to look at her across the room and listen to her speaking, just to feel her attention resting on me when I was speaking . . . It seemed like a glimpse of paradise. And having her to myself, however briefly, seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t afford to let slip. When she went into the kitchen to fix me another coffee, I followed her. And that’s where I told her. In the time it took the kettle to boil.

  “I’d already imagined how she was going to react to my declaration of undying love. A hesitant admission that she felt the same way. Then a passionate surrender. She’d let me kiss her. Maybe even let me take her upstairs and make love to her. Or arrange to meet me next day at some classy hotel, where we’d spend the whole of the afternoon and evening in bed. Later, we’d start planning our future together. Discuss where we were going to run away to. All self-deluding nonsense, of course. All so much fol
ly and arrogance. But I was so taken in by the fantasy I’d created that it’s actually what I expected to happen.

  “Needless to say, it didn’t. The first thing she said when I’d finished was, ‘Oh dear.’ She seemed more embarrassed than angry. Almost sorry for me. She tried to let me down lightly. She took me back into the lounge and gently explained the impossibility of what I’d suggested. She was a happily married middle-aged woman with a daughter my own age. There could be no question of her betraying her husband. With me or anyone else. Strangely enough, she didn’t seem particularly shocked. Perhaps other men had poured out their hearts to her in similar circumstances. Perhaps she was used to being the object of hopeless adoration. ‘This is just a phase you’re going through,’ she said. ‘A phase you’ll soon grow out of.’ She spoke of it so lightly, so dismissively. As if I was some silly little boy with a crush on her. I could have hated her if I hadn’t loved her. And in a sense I suppose that’s when I started to. Hate as well as love, I mean.

  “But love’s the wrong word anyway, isn’t it? It was an obsession amounting to mania. I loaded everything of meaning and significance in my life onto her. I made winning her a test of the very purpose of my existence. A test I was bound to fail. Because she wasn’t interested. Not a bit. She wasn’t even worried by me. Not then, anyway, though later . . . She didn’t take me seriously, you see. That was the worst of it. I could have her pity. Even her scorn, if I persisted. But never what I wanted. Never, come to that, her respect, now I’d shown my hand.