Borrowed Time

by David Mark

  Adam looks up, eyes heavy, breath controlled. ‘Just show me where it happened, then we’ll go.’

  They climb from the vehicle without another word. Alison leads them down a gravel path and into the neat walled gardens at the rear of the converted stately home. She starts lighting a cigarette while the one in her mouth smoulders, forgotten.

  ‘There,’ says Alison. She doesn’t seem to know how to stand; how to arrange her face. Just waves at the stone barrier, jewellery clanking, and scowls at the foulness of the world. ‘Over that wall.’

  Adam stands on the damp grass, with his hands in his pockets so as to stop himself reaching out for Grace, who is leaning against a tree trunk, under a weeping willow.

  ‘She came outside for some air,’ says Alison. ‘She’d been enjoying the party but we think she wanted to cool off. We don’t really know what happened next.’ She pauses, caught up in guilt and regret. She shakes it away. ‘The doctors said she was struck with some kind of blunt instrument, probably a mallet. It wasn’t metal. Then he carried her here, through the woods.’

  Adam looks at the drystone wall, its lichen covered rocks stacked up like mouldy cakes. He pictures a girl in a party dress being hoisted across its rough surface, followed by a man who can still leer and snarl, despite being faceless, a shadow, a coil of smoke in black jeans and a gas mask.

  ‘The van was parked down there, in a little layby. He got her in, and did it. She was gone for at least a few hours so we know he took his time. I think they found her here. Naked. Shivering. Wouldn’t speak. They must have thought she was dead.’

  Adam walks to the wall and peers over. It’s just a road. No white markings or cats’ eyes. No street lights. A field beyond a low wall at the far side of the road. Trees on this. He lets himself imagine a van parked up on the muddy crescent moon of tarmac, but again, the image is cartoonish and abstract. Rocking, lights flashing, as if its occupants are riding a rodeo bull.

  As Adam peers over the wall he feels a sudden warmth at his waist as Grace slides her arm around him. ‘You OK?’ she whispers.

  ‘Peachy,’ he says, then feels bad about it, and pushes himself against her. ‘Thanks for being here,’ he adds and cocks his head, a dog who’s heard a noise.

  ‘I belong where you are,’ she says.

  ‘It’s bollocks,’ says Adam to Alison, who approaches from out of the woods, the wet grass turning her fawn boots a dark, chocolatey brown.

  ‘What is?’ she asks, as she draws close enough to him to smell the whisky and antacid and empty belly of his breath.

  ‘He had a van here, did he? Dozzle? Parked up and waiting? That doesn’t make much sense – at a party, where people knew him …’

  Alison feels coldness in her belly. She knows this trip isn’t for her, that she must be the strong one, here, now. But if she had come here alone, she would be shaking and crying and picturing the things that she knows must be infesting Adam’s mind, as he stands, cold and motionless, at her side. He is asking the questions she would ask, picking at the threads which she would tug. Saying what she would say, were she not Daddy’s girl.

  ‘That’s what they said,’ she says, quiet, eyes closed. ‘They reckon he’d had his eye on her and planned ahead.’

  ‘It’s bollocks,’ says Adam, and Alison knows she has always agreed.

  They walk back over the grass, Grace a few steps behind, feeling like an infidel, an interloper, until Adam remembers she is there and pauses for her to catch up. He seems to be thinking, hard. It is as though his thoughts are written in Braille on the inside of his skull and he is using his brain to feel them out. It hurts, this much thinking. It hurts, this much pain.

  Alison wonders what is appropriate. She thinks about reaching out for him and holding him close. Taking his mind off it all with questions about his own family, his own life. She wants to tell him that this is hard on her, too. That she was Pamela’s best friend. She who saw the transformation.

  ‘I don’t know what to do next,’ says Adam, trudging over the wet grass, ducking under the bare trees. He turns to face her, stopping short. ‘I don’t know if I’m happy or sad or what to fucking say …’

  Alison glances at her watch, then plays with the big costume pendant at her throat. She doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know whether to bark, bite, or roll over and let her tummy be tickled.

  Adam, watching these minute gestures, this distracted fiddling, looks at the wrinkles at Alison’s neck, at the loose skin, the puckered flesh, and somehow, despite it all, the horror of this place, its vile history, feels a pang of want, a whiff of desire.

  He shakes it away, revolted by himself. Sees the rotten seed inside his chest, and wants to gouge it out.

  Looks at her, and realizes she is staring at him in just the same way.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dysart Avenue, Drayton, Portsmouth

  2.08 p.m.

  He’s still a handsome man, thinks Pat, cutting the cake into eighths. He looks his age, but there’s a cheekiness to him, like that newsreader, who gives you bad news with a twinkle in his eyes that suggests he may not be wearing trousers beneath his desk.

  She’s known him forty years, seen him shrink five inches in height and go up a waist size, but Mally Santinello still makes Pat Nunn giggle. Still a catch for somebody, she thinks, and can’t help but contrast it with the way her own partner has aged.

  Matured like wine, not cheese, she thinks, and wishes she had the courage to say it.

  Santinello’s lounging in the kitchen, leaning back against the sink, best china cup in his hand. The saucer, complete with an untouched biscuit, stands on the drainer. He’s framed by the kitchen window: a canvas of wet grey skies and shaking leaves.

  ‘Leave it, Pat,’ he says, soothingly. ‘Don’t waste it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she says, plating up a slice. ‘We don’t get much of a chance to entertain.’

  Santinello takes the plate and puts it down next to the saucer. He takes a bite, nods, then takes a slurp of tea to wash it down. Pat watches, as though waiting for the man from Del Monte to give his opinion, and unfolds a grin as he mutters approval. She retreats to the far work surface and busies herself wiping up crumbs and picking microscopic flecks of nothing off the carpet. She wishes she were better dressed. He’d warned her he might pop around today, but she has had a busy night with Billy and it had gone out of her mind. She has only given her grey curls a quick once-over with a hair brush and she’s dressed in a thin jumper with matching cardigan and a sensible pair of dark blue trousers. She worries she looks like an old lady. Certainly she looks tired, with the darkness beneath her eyes seemingly drawn there in charcoal. Her pinafore is rolled up and shoved in the drawer full of used carrier bags, where she hastily shoved it when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Are we going into the front room?’ asks Santinello, who looks rosy-cheeked and healthy in his fawn trousers and expensive sweater, his hair gelled back so it still looks dark and full. ‘Or shall I pop straight in and say hello?’

  ‘I think he may be a bit tired for visitors right now, Malcolm,’ she says, apologetically. ‘Wasn’t the easiest night.’

  ‘No better?’ he asks, sympathetically.

  ‘Ups and downs,’ says Pat, and it’s important to her that she never once thinks of herself as moaning. She wants to be a good wife. She thinks she always has been, by and large. Snapped at him a few too many times, perhaps, and she was never too keen on trying new things, like holidays abroad or fancy meals out, but she’s always kept a nice home and made sure he had his tea on the table and no dust on the TV screen, and she never once blamed him for his little problem, which was more of a blessing than anything, all things considered, after the stories she’d heard from the other mums about what their men did when their blood was up …

  Santinello puts a hand upon hers as they stand at the sink, gazing at the garden. ‘You’re doing a great job,’ he says. ‘Our age, we should be relaxing on a beach somewhere, not plodding on in bloody
Portsmouth.’

  Pat looks at him, and for a moment, wonders if he meant just the two of them. She likes the feelings she gets when Mally stops by. She’s always looked forward to his calls. His wife, God rest her soul, was a glamorous thing with curly blonde hair and a thick London accent whom Pat always felt outdone by when the four of them sat at the top table at the company parties. She’d never felt able to talk to her, not really, and though she’d shed a tear or two at the funeral, it was always Mally whom she felt most able to open up to. If asked, she would say he has a way of listening that makes people feel compelled to go into every detail of their story. That he is genuinely interested. He’s a good man. She’s always cited him as proof that you don’t have to be a nasty piece of work to succeed. She remembers telling Adam, perhaps more times than she should have, to look to Mr Santinello for a role model.

  ‘Started out with nothing,’ she’d say, as he sat at the kitchen table trying to get through his homework without having to think or write anything down. ‘Near as dammit, any road. Built up the firm to what it is now. And do you see him splashing his money around? Showing off? He’s a good man. Done a lot for this family. Done us all more good turns than I can count and he won’t even accept a thank you …’

  Pat bends down and is ashamed by the creak in her knees. She opens the cupboard and removes a dustpan, then straightens up. ‘No rest for the wicked,’ she says and unlocks the back door.

  As she steps outside, she feels the cold gust of wind and rain upon her face and at the same moment a soft warmth envelops her wrist. She turns, suddenly, and sees Mr Santinello, smiling into her eyes, his palm upon her bare forearm, and holding out the other for the dustpan. ‘I can do that,’ he says. ‘You just stop for a second.’

  With only a moment’s resistance, Pat hands him the dustpan, and the vague feeling of relief that enters her drags with it other dormant emotions, and she experiences a sudden rush of uncontrollable feeling; a mix of sadness and self-pity, anger and exhaustion. She totters for a moment on her feet, her mind awash with images of Billy, last night, lashing out on his bed, pissing himself, shitting in his pyjamas; sitting there on the bed in slippered feet and nothing else, tugging at himself, glaring like she was a stranger.

  Santinello catches her and with a surprising strength, moves her effortlessly into the cheap plastic chair on the wet patio. He kneels down before her, and Pat notices, despite the pounding in her head and the spots before her eyes, that his knees don’t crack.

  ‘Look at the state of me,’ she says, pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbing at her eyes. ‘I’m just a mess …’

  Santinello shushes her, still crouching down, his hands upon her knees, his eyes on hers. ‘You’re a little trouper, Pat,’ he says, softly. ‘You’re doing us all proud.’

  Pat allows herself to whine a little more, so that she will hear more of these encouraging words, and is rewarded with a symphony of compliments.

  ‘Nobody should be going through this, Pat,’ he says. ‘It’s hard enough for me as his friend. You must be having a nightmare of it. That man in there isn’t the Billy Nunn I know. That’s somebody who just looks a bit like him. Billy’s gone, but his ghost comes back once in a while to remind us of who he was. And that’s what we have to cling on to. The memory of who he was …’

  Pat nods along, as if in time with music. She knows what he is saying to be true. She knows she is a widow to a man who has not yet died. She hates herself for it, but there are times when she wishes he would just slip away. Die. That she could be left to grieve for the strong, upright, steel-backed man she has shared her life with, instead of tending the sickly old cripple who barely remembers her name and is growing angrier as his body becomes weaker.

  ‘… you remember the way he used to joke. Would wind the lads up like nobody’s business. That big guy. The one we used on the jobs up north. Wouldn’t do what your Billy was telling him and thought he knew it all. Ted, or something. So your dad welded his toolbox shut and then glued it onto the bonnet of Ted’s car, like it was a mascot for a Jaguar or something. He was so much fun. And strong, too. Wouldn’t take any nonsense. That’s why he was top dog. Soon as I met him I knew he could run the show for me. More than a foreman, he was. Could price up a job in seconds and never skim a penny off for himself. And even after the accident, he ran the office like he ran a worksite. Real easy going, but you didn’t cross him. Never took any sick leave. I couldn’t ask for a better friend or a better worker. That’s the Billy we should all remember …’

  Pat hears the words wash over her, and each blink, wet with tears, becomes longer than the last, until she feels herself starting to give over to sleep.

  ‘… and the family you raised together are a credit to you. He was a bloody good dad, and you can see in Adam’s eyes how much he means to him. How much you both do …’

  Pat shivers, and she finds herself unable to clamp her mouth shut before it blurts out disloyal words about the man asleep on clean sheets in the spare room, wrestling with demons, oxygen mask by his pillows, his wretchedly thin face turned to the flickering portable TV screen in the corner of the room.

  ‘His mind’s ruined everything,’ she sniffs. ‘He doesn’t know who he is any more and when he does come back, it’s to say something horrible. He’s pulled the rug out from under Adam’s feet and I’m left to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘Now, now,’ he coos, and his face gives a sudden lurch as he fancies for a second he can smell something rotten. He shakes it away. ‘Everybody’s making allowances. Last time I saw him he didn’t even know who I was. Time before that we were laughing about some of the lasses who used to work in the Portakabin at the site office on that job in Slough. Ones who were so daft you couldn’t even wind them up. He comes and he goes.’

  ‘But to tell him that. To tell Adam where he came from …’

  ‘I know, I know,’ says Santinello, grimacing as he imagines how such a truth must feel.

  ‘Adam’s face,’ she says, recoiling from the memory. ‘To be told like that. We should have told him long ago …’

  ‘You did what you thought was best. You’re his mum. Billy’s his dad. Adam knows that. When I saw him he seemed like a proper chip off the old block. A good man. And that daughter of his is a beautiful thing. He’s done you proud and you’ve done the same for him.’

  ‘They told us it was up to us,’ she continues, as if in a witness box, mitigating furiously. ‘Whether we tell him or not. Billy didn’t want him knowing and I agreed. He was a baby when he came. Nobody else could say they were his parents. The lady from the agency said we were so lucky to be chosen after such a short time on the register, but we were perfect for each other. Good people. Proper jobs. Billy’s burn was a problem but he was on the mend and you’d given him the office job. We wanted children so much and by the time he got to an age where he would have understood, there didn’t seem any benefit in telling him. He didn’t look different. He was just like us. Like him, more than anything. It didn’t matter. Even when it came to filling out the medical forms and stuff, they’d told us just to do our best. It was different back then. They just let you get on with it. He was my boy and he was a good boy at that. It didn’t matter where he had been before. For him to find out like that. For Billy to just blurt it out and say we weren’t his real parents …’

  ‘That wasn’t Billy talking, Pat. That was just this person he’s become …’

  ‘But I should have made it better! I should have lied and told him Billy was making it up. Or given him a hug and said it didn’t matter. But I just got cross and told him to drop it, and there’s just this great big thing between us now, this wall of things that have been said that can’t be taken back!’

  Pat dissolves in on herself, and Mr Santinello pats her back. He likes Pat. Always has. She’s a bit highly strung and she does like to get herself worked up, but he knows she’s going through difficult times. She and Billy don’t deserve to grow old in this way. He knows he has b
een fortunate. He’s in good health and he’s got enough cash in the bank never to have to remind himself of his mortality by queuing at the post office for his pension. He has a nice home, and he’s never bored. He misses his son, who severed ties when his wife died, but he’s not short of companionship. He can keep himself warm at night whenever he chooses. He feels bad that Pat and Billy have been reduced to this. He, a stranger to himself, jerking and fouling himself towards death. Her, exhausted and sickly, whining and lonely. He holds Pat until he feels her get hold of herself, and gives another sniff. The smell that troubled him has vanished. He can detect nothing but fresh air and the promise of more rain.

  He feels a profound thump of relief.

  At his age, the stench of death is a terrifying thing.

  TWENTY-NINE

  2.29 p.m.

  Irons stands at the foot of Billy Nunn’s bed. The light of the TV screen casts bizarre colours upon his face and illuminates the pale sheets, so it seems to writhe with creatures and bawdy images.

  The room smells of medicine and ointment, TCP and excrement. Perfume adds a sickly hue to the textured scents that colour the air.

  Moving silently, Irons steps closer to Billy’s face. He bends down and examines the man. The lights make it hard to discern anything familiar, and he sees nothing about the old, sickly man that requires further investigation. Quickly, his eyes are drawn to a patch of hairless, scarred tissue that is visible through the unfastened buttons of his striped pyjama top. Irons cocks his head and examines the wound. It appears old. It smells faintly of the same cream that Irons used to plaster his own face with.

  This is who raised him, he thinks. This is the man they gave Pamela’s boy to.

  He returns to the door, satisfied the conversation in the garden will yield nothing more. He sifts through the new information that dances like a paper chase in his mind, looking for something meaningful. An indicator of what to do next. He can only find proof of a nice family. Ordinary. Down to earth and no more miserable than anybody else. Doing their best for a lad who they gave a home, unaware they were letting something at once beautiful and poisonous into their lives.