Tyme's End (5 page)

He looks up expectantly, as if he's waiting for the end of my sentence.

I screw my face up. ‘Vile. Me. I was vile. I didn't mean to be, I just –'

‘Thank God you think so,' he says, leaning forward. ‘I thought you were being vile too. But I thought maybe it was just me, and I was overreacting. That's a weight off my mind.' He has to be joking, but he doesn't sound like he is.

‘Wait. You thought I was vile but you were still going to apologise?'

‘Um. Yes. God, how English.' He shakes his head, mocking himself.

‘I thought you were American.'

‘No.' He raises his eyebrows. ‘No. I went to the US when – ten years ago. When my grandfather died. This is the first time I've been back.'

‘Oh.'

More silence.

He says, ‘I didn't
watch
you crying or anything.'

‘What did you do? Close your eyes?'

He catches my eye and smiles, making a funny movement with his head that could be a nod or a shake. Then he says, ‘I'm sorry. If I – if whatever upset you had anything to do with me. If I got you into trouble with your parents.'

‘They're
not my
–' It's automatic. I stop, but he's watching me like he's listening. I lace my hands round my knees and say, more quietly, ‘They're not my parents.'

‘I thought maybe . . .' He trails off too, as if he's scared of saying something wrong. ‘You don't look much like them. I did wonder.'

I laugh, but not because it's funny, exactly. ‘You mean I look Middle Eastern and they look English?'

‘N—' He bites his lip. ‘Um, yeah. Essentially. Yes.'

‘No shit, Sherlock.' I roll my eyes at the look on his face.

‘I didn't mean –'

I shrug, and he doesn't finish his sentence. Then I look out of the window at the sunlight on the trees, and hear my voice as if it's coming from a long way away. ‘I'm adopted. It's sort of complicated, because Mum – the one you met – is my real father's cousin. Was, I mean. He had a heart attack. My mother was an Israeli Arab. I was born in Tel Aviv. But after my father died she moved to England to be with his family, and she . . . Mum helped out with me when I was small. And then she – my real mother went a bit . . . funny. I mean, I don't blame her, with me to bring up.' It's a joke, and I grin fiercely at him, but he bites his lip and meets my gaze without smiling. Something about his expression makes me want to cry again. I clear my throat. ‘I don't think she spoke English all that well, and she didn't like it here much, and . . . Anyway, there was an accident. She walked out in front of a car, on a really fast, busy road.' I hunch my shoulders, like I've frozen in the middle of a shrug. ‘So Mum and Dad took me in. It wasn't that they wanted to adopt kids, it was just that I needed someone to look after me, and they didn't want me to go into care.'

‘They must have loved you already.'

I glance at him for signs of irony, but he's looking out of the window as if he's thinking about something else.

‘Either that or they felt guilty.'

‘I don't think the one necessarily excludes the other,' he says, tilting his head as if he's trying to get a better view of the sky.

I open my mouth to snap at him. But he isn't trying to make me feel better, the way everyone else does. He's not saying stupid, comforting things that neither of us believes. It's as if his attention is on something else, so he can say casual, careless things that might actually be true.

It's because he doesn't seem to feel sorry for me that I can say, ‘The driver of the car said she looked him straight in the eye, and – just walked out in front of him. He was going really fast, and . . . He said he thought she was crazy.'

He looks at me then.

‘I'm not supposed to know that. I heard Mum and Dad talking about it, when I was small. They didn't know I was listening.' I swallow. ‘Do you think – if someone wanted to kill themselves, do you think they might . . . ?'

‘Accidents do happen,' he says slowly. ‘They drive on the right, don't they, in Israel?'

A pause.

‘Yes,' he says. ‘I suppose someone might do that. It's possible.'

‘I'm not saying she meant to – I just –' Suddenly my throat fills up with a hard slippery lump, like wax. I swallow but it won't go away, and I know that if I carry on talking I'll start to cry. I've never asked anyone that before. There's never been anyone I could ask, who'd give me an honest answer and not care too much if I got upset.

His hand makes a short movement, as if he's about to touch me, but he doesn't. ‘Is that what you think happened?'

‘No. No, it isn't. But I don't
know
. If I knew, one way or the other . . . I hate it that I don't know and I'll never know.'

‘Yes,' he says. ‘That does pretty much suck.'

He sounds so matter-of-fact that I laugh.

‘On the other hand, you do have two parents who love you. Presumably.'

‘They're not my real parents.'

‘Yes, you said. But they love you. That's something.'

I say, ‘It's not enough.'

He flicks a glance at me. ‘Yeah. I know how you feel.' He digs for his cigarettes, and an odd smile plays round his mouth. ‘You poor little orphan.'

I stare at him. I think how stupid I was to think that he was actually being nice. I say icily ‘How could you possibly
know how I feel
?'

‘I feel – I felt – the same. I never knew my parents either. My mum got cancer when I was two, and my dad –'

He stops and lights another cigarette. It's only when he's put his lighter back in his pocket that he meets my gaze. There's a pause, as if we both need time to take in what he said. Then he smiles, a bit too quickly, and flicks the ash off his cigarette, even though he's only just lit it.

Suddenly I'm scared to say anything in case I make a mess of it. Suddenly I have an urge to go and sit next to him. But I stay where I am, just watching him.

He stares down at the rectangle of sunlight from the window. He reaches out and runs his middle finger along the edge of it. The ribbon of cigarette smoke streams up through the light, blue-grey, almost opaque.

‘I met my father a couple of times. The last time was when I was about thirteen. He didn't die – he chose to leave. I don't know if that's better or worse. But I had my grandfather. And he was – he loved me a lot. Well, as far as I know.' He laughs softly. He digs at the floor with his fingernail, as if he's trying to scratch the sunlight away.

‘But – you didn't think it was enough?'

‘What?'

‘You said, just now. That you felt the same way as me, about – I mean, when you met your dad – what was it like?'

‘I –' He looks up. His voice cuts out, like a car stalling. For a second it's like he's looking straight through me, that he can see someone else where I'm sitting. It's a weird, horrible sensation. Then his face changes – snaps shut, like a padlock – and he gets to his feet. ‘How did we get on to this? Look, I – I'm sorry you're adopted. Poor you. It must be terrible. Now get your stuff.'

‘I only –'

‘Come on. You can't stay here.'

‘I wasn't being nosy, you started talking about –'

‘Right. Well, now I've stopped.' He goes out into the corridor. There's a rucksack leaning against the wall, and he swings it on to his shoulder. ‘I don't even know why I told you that.'

‘Because you were trying to make me feel better?' I kneel up on the groundsheet, putting a hand on the windowsill to steady myself. The strange, intimate silence that filled the room a minute ago has dissolved so quickly I can't remember what it felt like.

‘Probably because I know I'll never see you again. Did you have anything else apart from your book? If so, you'd better get it. You're not coming back here.'

I reach for my book and hold it against my chest, hugging it. I say, ‘You can't stop me coming back. You're leaving.'

‘Do your parents know you spend so much time here?'

I squeeze the book tighter and tighter. I say, ‘You can't. You won't. Don't you
dare
tell them –'

He shrugs stiffly. ‘You shouldn't be here. I don't know if it's structurally sound any more. If the roof came down you could be very seriously –'

‘That's bollocks.'

‘Did you bring anything else, or is that everything?'

I glare at him. He doesn't seem to care. He stares straight back at me, with that closed, unsympathetic look on his face.

I stand up, go to the space by the fireplace, and take out my tin of biscuits and bottle of whisky and Coke and my torch. His forehead creases when he sees the torch, as if it worries him, and I open my mouth, ready to say, ‘Yes, fine, I know, I
really
shouldn't be here alone in the dark.' But he doesn't say anything, so I just pick everything up in my arms and say, ‘OK.'

He steps aside so that I have to walk in front of him, down the stairs and out into the sudden heat and sunlight.

.

If it wasn't for the weather, we could've gone back in time, to yesterday. Oliver stands in the long grass and jerks his head towards the cracked bit of wall. ‘Go on.'

‘Are you going to tell my parents that I come here?'

‘Not if you promise to stay away.'

I don't say anything. We just look at each other.

‘Goodbye, then,' he says. He drops his rucksack on the ground and crouches to adjust the straps, frowning.

‘Are you really going back to America?'

‘Yep.'

‘What about – never mind.' I turn to leave, and then turn back. ‘So you're still going to sell it? Tyme's End?'

‘I'll get the solicitors to sort it out. I only came back because – I needed to see it. I wanted to find out if –' He stops.

‘I thought you hated it. I thought you wanted to raze it to the ground.'

‘I do,' he says, and rubs his forehead with one hand. ‘I do.'

I glance over my shoulder. There are tiny dark green rags of ivy fluttering in the attic window, and I can hear birdsong. Oliver follows my gaze and takes a long, deep breath. Under the tobacco I can still smell the clean washing-powder scent of his clothes.

I hear myself say, ‘Give Tyme's End to me.'

‘What?'

‘If you don't want Tyme's End, give it to me.'

The words sit in the air as if someone else said them.
Give it to me
. I want to laugh, but at the same time I'm filled with a kind of irrational certainty. It's as if Tyme's End itself is telling me something.

Give Tyme's End to me.

And for a brief, clear moment, I know – absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt – that he will.

.

.

IV

.

.

Oliver looks at me, and his eyes widen. He stands up slowly and starts to laugh.

‘I'm serious,' I say.

He's still laughing, but there's a funny constricted note in his voice. ‘I can't, Bibi. I'd love to but I can't.'

‘Why not? You don't need the money, or you wouldn't have left it ten years and let it end up like this. Please –' I sound like a five-year-old begging for sweets. ‘It's the only place I feel at home. Please. I love it. You don't want it.
Please
.'

For an odd, weightless moment I wait for him to agree. He puts his hands in his pockets and turns to look at Tyme's End. It's as if he can see someone there.

Then, without moving his eyes, he says, ‘What do you know about H. J. Martin?'

At first I think it's a rhetorical question, until he turns to look at me. His expression doesn't give anything away.

‘What?' There's a pause. ‘About H. J. Martin? Not a lot,' I say. He waits, as if he's expecting me to say something else. I rub one foot against the side of my other leg, trying to scrape the grass seeds off my jeans. When I look up he's still waiting. I clear my throat, feeling stupid. ‘He lived here. Um. He fought in the Second World War. In North Africa. He –' Oliver winces and glances away, and I stop. ‘What?'

‘
First
World War,' he says. ‘The
First
World War. He fought in Egypt and the Middle East.'

‘Egypt is North Africa.'

‘All right. Go on.' His face is neutral, impassive, as if he's deliberately not letting me see what he's thinking.

‘He got killed on a motorbike on the road – the B2168. There's a stone marking the place. Er . . . there's a museum about him in Falconhurst.'

Oliver nods. ‘Is that the extent of your knowledge?'

‘He's buried in the churchyard. He wrote a book called
The Owl of the Desert
, which is a really bad title for a book.'

‘It's a quotation.'

‘So is “to be or not to be”, but that doesn't make it a good title.'

He hunches his shoulders and laughs, although there's a kind of scratchy note in his voice. Then he says, ‘And that's all you know.' It's not quite a question, so I don't answer him, and he takes a long breath and hisses out through his teeth. ‘Bibi, Tyme's End isn't – I know this sounds weird, but – Tyme's End isn't just a house. It's
his
house – it was his house.'

‘I thought it was your house.'

‘Legally, yes. That's not exactly what I mean.' He pulls at his lower lip with his finger and thumb, looking back at the house over his shoulder. His eyes are narrowed, as if he's looking at something a long way away, trying to focus on it. ‘I –' He breaks off, with a short gulp that's almost a laugh. ‘Never mind.'

‘No,' I say. ‘What
do
you mean?'

‘Nothing.' He picks up his rucksack and reaches roughly for my arm. ‘Nothing. No, you can't have Tyme's End. Now, go away.'

‘Are you – you're not saying it's
haunted
?'

And I giggle. I can't help myself. It's not that it's funny. It's just that he must be at least twenty-five, and the sun's blazing down, and he's biting his lip and looking nervously over his shoulder for ghosts.

His grip on my arm tightens until it's painful, and he swings me round so that we're face to face. This time I think he knows he's hurting me.

‘You're right,' he says. ‘Of course I'm not saying that. What happened in the past stays in the past. Don't you agree?'

‘I –' It's hard to speak because my throat's tightened up. I'm not scared of him, but – ‘I don't understand.'

‘No.' He lets go of me all at once. ‘Why would you? You're just a kid. An ignorant, bad-mannered kid. You don't know about the past, and you don't care. It's all so simple, isn't it? What happens to
you
matters, and what happened to other people a long time ago doesn't, and you don't even realise that they're sometimes the same thing.'

I stare at him. His eyes are narrowed against the sun and his irises are so dark I can't tell where they end and his pupils begin. He's looking at me as if he hates me. I say, ‘I'm not ignorant.'

He makes a tiny, dismissive gesture with one hand.

‘OK.' I turn round and walk away, towards the saplings and the brambles and the cracked bit of wall. The tears are threatening to come back, but I squash them down. The biscuit tin digs into my wrists. I must look ridiculous, with my biscuits and torch and big sloshing bottle of Coke. I concentrate on not dropping anything, because I don't want to think about what Oliver just called me. I don't know why I care – it's not like he's a friend of mine – but I do. I'm
not
ignorant. I'm not bad-mannered, except when people are rude to me first. And I'm not, I'm
not
a kid.

I squeeze the tin too tightly. The lid makes a kind of clanking sound and pops up at one corner. The torch starts to roll off and I try to grab it. And then everything drops into the grass, biscuits scattering everywhere, torch hitting the ground with a worrying thud, a book bouncing off my shoe, the bottle landing flat on its side and gulping gently to itself. A bookmark has lodged itself in a clump of grass. I look down at the broken debris of crumbs and laugh, painfully, until I'm scared Oliver will think I'm crying.

He says, ‘Is that Coke, in the bottle?'

‘Mainly.' And I'm furious, so miserable I can hardly speak, because I went to all the trouble of filching it and I never even drank it. And it's all his fault. And Tyme's End will be sold, and –

I sniff determinedly, and swallow hard, but it doesn't help.

‘Oh, shit.' He breathes in through his teeth. ‘OK. This time it
was
me that made you cry, right?'

‘I'm fine. Leave me alone.'

‘Sure you are.' A pause. ‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Not all of it, anyway. It's just – you say you love Tyme's End, but you wouldn't if you – it's not – it's . . . Oh, hell, I don't know. How can you live here, in Falconhurst, and not even know what war H. J. Martin fought in?'

‘That stuff's for tourists,' I manage to say. I'm on my knees, trying to gather everything up, but I keep dropping things. ‘I'm not a tourist.'

‘No, but –' He stops. Then he's opposite me, picking up my books. He passes them to me, and then reaches for the Coke bottle. ‘Mainly Coke, you said?'

‘Yes. With whisky. It's for emergencies.'

‘Ah.'

He doesn't say anything else. I don't say anything else. We both stare down at the whisky and Coke, watching the bubble rock from side to side like a spirit level. Then, as if we're synchronised, we look at each other at exactly the same moment, and I know we're both thinking the same thing. He presses his lips together like he's trying not to smile. I'm taking deep breaths, trying not to cry, except that now I'm trying not to laugh either.

Then, in a sticky, snotty sort of voice, I say, ‘Actually, I think this might qualify. As an emergency.'

.

‘I can't believe I'm doing this,' Oliver says, taking the bottle from me, drinking, and passing it back. We're sitting in the shade, our backs against the wall, side by side with our feet in what used to be a flower bed. The noise from the High Street is muffled by the trees, but we can still hear kids shouting to each other and the occasional whine of a siren going past. ‘How old are you, anyway? Seventeen? Eighteen?'

‘Sixteen, actually.'

‘Oh, bloody hell.' I glance at him, and he shakes his head and gestures to the bottle. ‘You're not even old enough to buy that for yourself. If I gave it to you it'd be illegal.'

‘Big deal.' I take a mouthful, and another. It's warm and it's gone flat, but the whisky is going straight to my head, and I'm glad. I feel exhausted.

‘Yeah, OK,' he says, and waits, his palm outstretched, for me to give it back.

‘So how old are you?'

‘Twenty-seven. Old enough to know better.'

I smile, tilting my head back until it rests against the wall. There's silence, except for the kids shouting outside the gates and Oliver swallowing. We're not touching, but I can feel the heat of his shoulder where it's only a few centimetres away from mine. I want to slide sideways until I'm leaning on him, but I concentrate on staying upright.

I say, ‘If you hate the place, why do you keep coming back to it?'

He runs his thumb round the top of the bottle, not quite wiping it. At first I don't think he's going to answer me, but he says, ‘I told you, this is the first time I've been back since – this is only the second time I've been here.'

‘No, I mean, last night you came and just stood and looked through the gates. And yesterday, and today . . . If you hate the place, why are you here at all?'

A pause. He takes three gulps of whisky and Coke in quick succession. Then he passes the bottle back to me. I hold it between my hands, lacing my fingers together like I'm praying.

‘Because – something bad happened to me here,' he says. ‘I don't like the house, but – I have to be here. When I'm not, it feels – it's worse. I can't leave it alone. Does that make any sense? I don't
know
why I'm here.'

‘Is that why you want to sell it?'

‘I want to get rid of it. I don't ever want to think about it again. I want to – delete it. Completely. Even when I went to America, I used to dream about it. Nightmares, I mean. I can't –' He stops and grits his teeth, looking sideways at the bottle in my hands. ‘God, listen to me, I'm already half-cut. Forget it. I don't want to talk about it. I want it never to have happened.'

I raise the bottle to my lips and take another sip, tasting the harsh sweetness of the whisky and Coke and something else that could be Oliver's spit. I swill the liquid round in my mouth until my gums start to tingle from the alcohol. Then I swallow. ‘What did happen?'

He glances at me, then turns his head to look at the house. I can tell from the shape of his cheek that he's smiling, or grimacing, but I can't see his eyes. ‘You don't mind asking straight questions, do you?'

‘Should I?'

He doesn't answer.

I slosh the last of the whisky and Coke around in the bottom of the bottle and wonder how we managed to drink it so quickly. I hold it sideways for Oliver, but he doesn't take it. I wait for a few seconds, then drink it myself. I put the empty bottle neatly against the wall and fight the impulse to burp.

Suddenly Oliver leaps to his feet. ‘You're right,' he says. ‘What the hell am I doing? This is stupid. I need to get over it.'

That wasn't what I said, but I don't say so. I look up at him and then stagger to my feet. The world slides ninety degrees to the right, wobbles, then steadies itself. The sunlight is hot on my face.

‘Come on,' he says, and starts to walk away.

‘Where are we going?'

‘Mystery tour.' He looks over his shoulder, grins, and breaks into a jog. He's left his bag, but I don't tell him that. I follow him. The grass swishes around my legs and the seed heads hit my hands, stinging, like little insects.

He waits for me at the wall, and when I don't manage to get over first time he links his hands and makes a foothold for me, without saying anything, as if it's just good manners. I still have a bit of a struggle getting over and when I start to giggle he does too. Once I'm over I forget to move out of the way, and he has to jump to avoid me. He says, ‘Oh, God, you're sixteen and I've got you drunk.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' I say. ‘
I
got me drunk. You had very little to do with it.'

‘Right.' He's laughing at me, but I don't mind.

‘Anyway, I'm not as think as you drunk I am.' I sway theatrically and grab at his arm.

‘Bibi –' he says. Then he catches my eye. ‘Very funny.'

‘I thought so,' I say, and I don't let go of his arm.

I don't know where he's taking me, but we walk together down the High Street in the sun, weaving our way between the tourists in wide curves.

‘Do you think you could not hold my arm like that? I feel like you're arresting me.' He peels my fingers away from his elbow.

‘Oh. Sorry.'

He looks down at me, and for a second I think he's going to say something else. Then he links his arm through mine. I don't know if he's being nice or taking the piss, but somehow I don't care.