Endless Time

by Frances Burke

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I made a spectacle of myself in the theatre. The friend never asked me out again.’

  Billie had paled. ‘That is a terrible story. How you must have suffered. Perhaps I was at fault when I agreed… Child, do you recall anything about your parents?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Just that they died in a car smash, while I was thrown clear. My memory was the only part of me damaged.’

  Billie said in an odd voice, ‘It is time you knew the facts.’ She got up and went to take a cigarette from her bag, then threw it down again. Keeping her eyes averted she began to pace up and down before the couch, clearly having some difficulty in choosing her words. Then in a harsh voice she gave Karen ‘the facts’.

  Fact one was the lie fed to a five-year-old child out of her mind with horror after seeing her parents burned to death in a trailer fire. They had been on vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia when, on the last day before turning for home in Orange County, a gas bottle exploded with devastating effect. The car crash was a fiction, invented to fill the gap in Karen’s memory. It was hoped that this deliberate detachment would help her recovery. Surely it was better for her not to remember? Did Karen not agree?

  Without waiting for a reply, Billie continued in that strange bleak monotone, divesting the story of all emotional color. She told how Karen had been placed in the care of the state, a children’s home, her memories overlaid by a lie. No one had suspected the nightmares to come. It was not anyone’s fault. They had all done their best.

  Karen was surprised at the apologetic tone underlying the narrative. In all the time she had known Billie, she’d never bothered to explain her actions to anyone. She did what she did because it was her will, and nobody else’s concern.

  But Karen was not interested in allocating blame. She felt no vindictiveness towards the men and women who had decided her fate when she was too young to have any say. What hurt was Billie’s indifference. She wondered, not for the first time, what Billie was really like at the core. There were so many layers to her, so many promising avenues of personality which, when opened up, proved to be blind alleys.

  Karen, the child, had waited and dreamed for years of a fairy-godmother aunt appearing from nowhere to carry her off in loving arms. She’d put herself to sleep at night with that picture in her mind, sure that one day she’d be restored to the kind of life she’d known with her parents.

  Naturally, hope faded in time, and as she grew up she put aside fantasy. It was synonymous with fraud, and she wanted none of it. Reality was working hard for the fostering families she lived with, treated kindly sometimes, often indifferently, but always with an eye to her usefulness. She had never again felt part of a family unit.

  ‘Did you ever really care about me, Billie?’

  Billie shrugged. ‘I came back for you, ten years later. Does that mean nothing?’

  All the same, there was something in the tone of voice that might have been regret.

  With a sigh, Karen gave it up. There was no burrowing beneath Billie’s perfect seamless façade. ‘I was a handful by then,’ she remarked. ‘I wanted to go my own road. What a pity Humphrey had to cross it. ‘

  ‘It was a mistake to marry him. You discovered it soon enough.’ Billie picked up the framed snapshot standing on the table. ‘What of your bebe? You did not answer me last night.’

  Karen got up and took the photograph from her, smiling at the sweet, scarcely formed features ringed in curls. It was her only picture of Adele, and already it was out of date. Her throat closed with familiar pain. She put the picture back in its place, saying briefly, ‘I will see her this afternoon. We both need some coffee. Stay there, Billie.’

  When she returned with a laden tray, she seemed to have recovered her poise. She saw that Billie, too, had repaired her makeup and appeared to be her old self, outwardly at least.

  ‘Revival time. Dig in, Billie.’

  ‘Must you use such expressions, cherie?’

  Karen managed a grin. ‘You’re recovering, Billie dear.’

  The two of them sat and demolished toast and coffee without further discussion. It was a period of truce, time for regrouping and balancing their new knowledge of one another. Eventually Billie set down her cup and made the first move.

  ‘We shall not go over the past again, agreed? But there is one thing. This fear of fire, it has come back again. Last night – ’

  ‘I was already off balance, and therefore vulnerable. Then the accident took me by surprise. It was a compilation of events, that’s all.’ Karen’s voice held a shrug.

  But Billie would not be put off. ‘The miniature. That is what upset you. It was a mistake.’

  ‘It’s just a trigger, Billie. Something else could have done it as easily, I expect.’

  Billie shook her head. ‘No. He means something to you. You have said so. When will you go to the shop? Today?’

  ‘I may as well. It will be good to have something to occupy me after I’ve taken Adele back.’ Karen smiled painfully. ‘Do you know, I forgot the critics! I should be out feverishly searching the papers for words that will damn me or bring me to public notice. How could I have forgotten?’

  ‘Pah! Critics! What do they know? I will come with you to speak to this dealer.’

  ‘No. You must go back to your business. You can’t be spared. I’ll do this on my own.’ This was her own quest, and she wanted to follow it alone. It wasn’t as if Billie really cared. To her the miniature was a curiosity, no more.

  Billie picked up her handbag. ‘Eh bien. I shall take the two-thirty flight and be at my desk early. But mind that you tell me the outcome. I will not be kept in the dark about my own gift.’ She pecked Karen’s cheek and, brushing off an offer to call her a cab, departed in her usual brisk style.

  Karen stood at the window watching the birdlike figure on the sidewalk, finding herself a cab without any trouble, and sailing away out of her life again as smoothly as she had always done. Billie did everything gracefully, including her betrayals.

  The miniature was warm in Karen’s hand. She brought it up to eye level so that the light struck those amazing gray-green eyes.

  ‘I forgive you, Billie,’ she whispered. ‘I have a feeling that this gift of yours is going to make up for everything you’ve ever done, and then some.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The house had an unwelcoming face. Its narrow windows looked down with an air of hauteur designed to keep out hoi polloi, which no doubt had been the aim of the Victorian merchant who had built it to the prevailing High Gothic trend. Its ugly brown bricks were immaculately tuck-pointed, its brass doorknob rubbed thin with polishing. The garden, overshadowed by grim yews, was weedless and uninspiring.

  Karen wondered how she could have stood it, even for two months. The place should have told her something about Humphrey when she first saw it.

  It had always been his home, willed to him by his widowed mother, who, having taken one look at his prospective bride, promptly succumbed to her ailing heart. Karen couldn’t blame her. A nineteen-year-old frowning rebel from the wrong side of the tracks, from the wrong side of the Atlantic, in fact. An awkward girl who did not know how to dress or entertain, and couldn’t have cared less. The idea was an absurdity.

  Three weeks of marriage showed her how much worse than absurd it was. Humphrey the strong, devoted older man who would be her father, mother, child and lover all in one, had never existed. His presentation to the world, like that of his respectable household, was a sham. She’d married a despotic satyr who would have chained her in a cell if he’d thought he could get away with it.

  She left him. Too proud to ask Billie for help, she took a job in a hamburger outlet and stayed afloat, just. He found her when an interfering landlady had her forcibly removed to hospital, halfway through labor. Adele was two hours old when the battle for her began. It had continued ever since.

  Karen mounted the sweep of stone steps and banged the doorknocker defia
ntly.

  In the self-consciously leather and wainscot study she faced him, hating his air of superiority. Don’t give me your white-pointer shark smile, she thought. Just let’s get it over with and let me out of this mausoleum.

  ‘You’re looking well, Karen.’

  ‘So are you. How is the stock broking world?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better. Can I offer you a drink?’ He half-turned towards an elaborately fitted wet bar in one corner of the room. He was a big man, broad and tall. His heavy features were not unhandsome, except for a pair of pale blue eyes lined in reddish-blond lashes. His hair and moustache were the same color, although his temples had distinguished silver streaks that Karen suspected him of deliberately adding. The most predominant feature of all, however, were those teeth, pointed and sloping back a little.

  A drink, with him! Karen shook her head. ‘No thanks. I’d like to take Adele now, please. We only have this afternoon.’

  The predatory smile widened. He really did look like a monster of the sea. She shivered and held his look, firmly.

  ‘As to that, I’m sorry, but she won’t be able to go out today. She’s been ill, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know anything of the sort.’ Karen exploded. ‘My baby is sick and you don’t have the decency to let me know! Where is she? I must see her?’

  ‘She’s not here.’ His words cut her off in her flight to the staircase. Slowly she turned and came back into the room. She knew the blood had drained from her face, and she felt a bit faint; but nothing would make her show weakness in front of this man.

  ‘Where, then?’

  He waved vaguely. ‘In the country, getting some fresh air. She’s quite all right now. Just a case of infantile German measles.’

  Karen thought she might choke on the anger that gripped her, filling her throat like gravel. She swallowed and waited a moment.

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Why couldn’t you give me a call before I came? I suppose you wanted the pleasure of telling me in person. The same old sadistic Humphrey.’

  His satisfaction surrounded him like a haze. She could almost see it. The bastard! German measles could have complications; and besides, she would have wanted to nurse Adele herself and comfort her when she was hot and sore and needed cuddling. She needed to see her child.

  Her voice came out ragged, despite her effort at control. ‘When can I see her? It’s been nearly a month. As if you didn’t know.’

  He shrugged. ‘I can scarcely be blamed when a sudden crisis in the Amsterdam market called me away. You know I don’t like to leave Adele and her nurse alone in this big house. Naturally they went to my sister. There was no time to inform you.’

  Her eyes burned, hot with unshed tears. ‘You did it deliberately. You keep flouting the court order – ’

  ‘And getting away with it,’ he admitted. ‘I can go on doing it, too, until you’re driven half out of your mind. I shall enjoy doing it.’ He strolled over to the cabinet and poured himself a large scotch, standing with his back to her and sipping with every evidence of enjoyment.

  She didn’t know what she might have said, if the sound of stumbling footsteps on the stairs hadn’t come just then. She whirled around. A childish voice called to her, ‘Mama!’

  As she reached the door, Humphrey’s hands clamped on her shoulders, restraining her. She fought him madly. ‘Let me go! She’s here. Adele, darling. It’s Mama.’

  She saw the beloved face above the curved rail of the stair, brown eyes alight with pleasure, the little lips curved in a joyful smile. Her hair had grown, she noted, and it was darker. Her baby was changing, and she wasn’t there to see it happening.

  Adele put out her arms, but she was held back by a woman in nurse’s uniform, a starched-up affair whose prim manner was no substitute for a mother’s love, thought Karen, herself pinned hopelessly by Humphrey’s great red-haired hands.

  ‘Mama!’ Adele’s voice wavered.

  Humphrey overrode it easily. ‘Take her upstairs at once, Miss Turner. We must keep to doctor’s orders.’

  Karen watched as her baby was removed, still calling for her. Tears coursed down her cheeks, and her body shook in Humphrey’s grasp.

  ‘Come, Karen .There’s no need for such histrionics.’

  She knew a moment of absolute berserker rage. If she’d been free, with a weapon handy, she’d have used it. Then the moment passed, and she slumped, holding onto the doorjamb for support as his hands dropped away. She couldn’t beat him without help. The only avenue was a legal one.

  She turned and faced him. ‘You won’t win, Humphrey. The hearing coming up will be very different from the first one, when I was sick and run down and you used every dirty trick to make me sound like an unfit mother for Adele. I’m wiser and stronger, and I have good friends and advisers… and money. Enough to fight you on even terms and win.’

  He met her challenge contemptuously. ‘You’ll never win, a little scrubber like you! You’re not fit to run a pie stall, let alone a decent home and family. No wonder I threw you out.’ His face showed nothing but distaste, and she realized that he actually meant it. He’d convinced himself she’d been found lacking and discarded by him, not the other way about.

  ‘I can’t talk to you. We’ll meet in the courtroom.’ She left the study and walked with dignity across the hall and down the front steps. She didn’t look back. Not until she’d rounded the corner at the end of the street did she let herself fall against the nearest wall and release the pent-up Niagara of tears.

  *

  Peering through the dusty shop window she wondered whether Billie had made some mistake. Surely such a jumble store could never stock valuables like her miniature. Or was the effect deliberate? Did the proprietor cultivate a look of carelessly mixed junk and objects d’art to lure the novices, the folk who thought they could still find a bargain under the unsuspecting nose of the expert?

  She straightened up, wincing at a reminder from her cut feet that she had walked a long way from the bus stop to this rather mean little street. Bricks and tar gave off a dank chill, and she could smell the river nearby. Such an unlikely milieu for her sophisticated aunt. What had brought her there?

  Pondering this question, she opened the door and went in.

  Straight out of Dickens, she thought, standing in the dust and dimness, afraid to brush against precarious piles of books, china and assorted bric-a-brac. Toby Jug, she added silently, seeing the squat figure rise from behind a desk piled with papers to peer at her through the gloom.

  ‘Mr. Josephs?’

  He nodded. His half-spectacles slid down the bulb of his nose and he pushed them up to peer at her. Karen wondered why he didn’t help himself by putting in a few high-powered globes. There were surely enough lamps lying about.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wonder if you could help me. A lady recently purchased a miniature from this shop and I’d like to know where it came from.’ She produced the tissue-wrapped parcel and began to undo it. ‘What can you tell me about this, Mr. Josephs?’

  The painted face glowed even in that murky light. Karen stared into the so familiar eyes and wondered again at their mesmeric power. She looked up to see the shopkeeper jerk back, his spectacles shooting down his nose to rest on two fat and hairy cheeks.

  ‘I do not deal in miniatures. Goot-day to you.’

  His guttural East European accent struck unpleasantly on her already strained nerves. ‘That’s not what I was told. You didn’t even look closely at it.’ She thrust the miniature at him, but he ignored it, and scuttled around the desk to her side. He moved amazingly quickly when he wanted to, and she was surprised to discover that someone so short and fat could project quite an aura of menace

  ‘The shop is closed for the day, young lady. I suggest you try to peddle your little toy somewhere else.’

  Karen stood her ground. ‘I’m not selling anything, and you won’t get rid of me until you give me the information I came for. This is the right address. It
’s written here on this card. Here. See?’

  He glanced at the card. He could hardly help it as it, too, was thrust in his face. With a thumb he pushed back his spectacles and took the piece of pasteboard from her.

  ‘Mlle. Wilhelmina Carnot. She gave this to you?’

  ‘She’s my aunt. The miniature was a birthday gift from her.’

  ‘She told you that it came from my shop?’ He sounded so incredulous that for one moment Karen’s certainty wavered.

  ‘She didn’t want to tell me,’ she said slowly, remembering Billie’s original reluctance. ‘But then it became obvious that there was a connection…’ She stopped.

  ‘What connection? I do not like this. Your aunt had no business giving you this item. It had been agreed that she would never let the goods out of her possession until she had left the country.’

  Silence fell. Karen all at once realized what a pregnant pause was. The answers came tumbling into place. ‘Hey! You’re not saying Billie smuggled hot items for you, Mr. Josephs? I don’t believe it.’ She added hastily, ‘Not that it matters to me. Look, I have a very particular reason for wanting to know who the man is, the sitter for this portrait. If I promise not to reveal where I got it, not even to tell anyone I have it, if I can get away with that – couldn’t you please tell me who owned the miniature last?’

  Had her pleading tone made a difference? She couldn’t tell. The man’s expression, such as it was, hadn’t altered, but the little eyes above his spectacles had a distinctly unfriendly look. She waited, making no attempt to hide her anxiety. If the miniature had been stolen, why on earth should he risk telling her the name of the real owner? What possible inducement could she offer?

  A broad smile split his face, turning him into a Mr. Pickwick. His whole body shook with mirth.