The Thief of Time

  James, P.W. and Alan looked at each other blankly and only James started to smile. ‘All right then, Mattie,’ he said – a diminutive that always sends a shiver down me in recollection of an old friend, two hundred years dead – ‘what do you suggest?’

  ‘I suggest I take Ms Morrison out to lunch with me today and find out exactly what it is that she’s after. Then I shall attempt to give it to her. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘I know what I’d like to give her, gents,’ said James with a laugh.

  Ms. Morrison – ‘Tara Says:’ – and I had lunch together in a small Italian restaurant in Soho. It’s a pleasant, family run place, and one to which I often take business acquaintances if I’m trying to get something out of them. I know the owner and she always takes time to come out and talk to me when I dine there.

  ‘How are you and yours?’ she asked, true to form as we were seated in a quiet booth away from the door. ‘Keeping well, are they?’

  ‘We’re all perfectly well, thank you, Gloria,’ I said, despite the fact that me and mine consists solely of Tommy and I. ‘And you?’ The pleasantries continued for a few minutes. Tara took the opportunity to visit the ladies’ room and came back looking refreshed, lipstick subtly applied, a scent of perfume mingling with the crostini. She walked between the tables as if the centre aisle was a catwalk in Milan, the waiting staff store buyers, our fellow diners photographers. Her hair, a professional blonde bob, simple and easy to control, is one of her most recognisable features, and her beauty stems much from the fact that her face is perfectly symmetrical, each feature reproduced perfectly through recognition of a central line. One can only stare at her and marvel. She’d be perfect if one could only find a flaw.

  ‘So, Matthieu,’ she said, taking a sip of wine gingerly, careful not to leave a lipstick trace along the rim of her glass, ‘are we going to make small talk for a while or get straight down to business?’

  I laughed. ‘I simply wanted to enjoy a pleasant lunch with you, Tara,’ I said, feigning offence. ‘I gather we may not be seeing you around the office quite so much in the future and I want to enjoy your company in the daytime while I still can. You might have told me you were fielding offers, you know,’ I added, a hurt tone – entirely natural – creeping into my voice.

  ‘I had to keep it quiet,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you, but I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Anyway, it’s not as if I went out there looking for work. The Beeb came to me, I swear it. They’ve made me a very generous offer and I do have my future to consider.’

  ‘I know exactly the size of the offer they’ve made you and, in all fairness, it’s not that much more generous than what you have already. You really should hold out for more from them. They will pay it, you know.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh, I know so, believe me. They could up their offer by a good ... ten per cent, I imagine, without so much as breaking a sweat. Maybe more. You’re a valuable commodity. I hear you could be offered Live & Kicking.’

  ‘But you won’t be able to go that far,’ she said, ignoring the dig. T know what the budgets are like, remember.’

  ‘I have no intentions of even attempting to go that high,’ I said, twirling a little pasta around on my fork. ‘I don’t intend getting into an auction for you, my dear. You’re not cattle. Anyway, you’re under contract to me as it is. And there’s not an awful lot you can do about that, is there?’

  ‘For another eight weeks, Matthieu, that’s all. You know that and so do they.’

  ‘So in eight weeks’ time, we’ll negotiate. Until then, let’s not talk of dismissals or resignations or reassignments or anything so distasteful. And, for heaven’s sake, let’s keep the press out of it this time, can we?’

  Tara looked at me and put her cutlery down. ‘You’re just going to let me go’, she stated matter-of-factly, ‘after all we’ve been through together.’

  ‘I’m not letting you do anything, Ms Morrison,’ I protested. ‘I’m inviting you to see your contract through and at the end of that time, if you wish to leave us for a better offer, then you must follow what you believe to be the correct course of action for you and your career. Some would call me a generous employer, you know.’

  ‘Must you talk like that all the time,’ she muttered, staring at the table in disgust.

  ‘Talk like what?’ I protested.

  ‘Like a fucking lawyer. Like someone who’s afraid that I’m recording every word you say so that I can use it in a lawsuit six months down the line. Can’t you speak to me in a normal tone of voice? I thought we meant something to each other.’

  I sighed and looked out of the window, unsure whether I wanted to be dragged down this well worn road once again. ‘Tara,’ I said eventually, leaning forward and taking her tiny hand within my own, ‘for all I know you may very well be recording this conversation. It’s not as if you have a very good track record of honesty with me, now is it?’

  I suppose at this point I should point out a few things about my relationship with Ms Tara Morrison. Approximately a year before, we attended an awards ceremony together – well, not so much together as part of a group representing our station. Tara was accompanied by her then boyfriend, an underwear model for Tommy Hilfiger, while I had booked a professional escort – nothing sexual, purely accompaniment -for the evening as I was between relationships at the time and really had no desire to begin a new one with anyone. Considering that I hit puberty over 240 years ago, it can’t come as too much of a surprise to learn that I grow weary of the endless round of dating, breaking up, dating, marrying, dating, divorcing, dating, widowing, etc. Every few decades I need a little time alone.

  On the night in question Tara had a disagreement with her model friend – something about him actually being a homosexual, I believe, which was bound to throw a spanner into the works – and she accepted my offer of a lift home. After driving my escort back to her own house, we stopped off for a drink at my club and talked well into the night, mostly about her ambitions, which were plenteous, and her commitment to journalism and our television station, which she called ‘the future of broadcasting in Britain’, something even I didn’t believe. She cited a number of responsible role models and I admired her grasp of the history of her profession, her awareness of how the professional and the sleaze raker can co-exist in one industry, and how it can be difficult at times to differentiate between the two. I remember a particularly interesting dialogue we had on the subject of the public interest. Afterwards we returned to my apartment, where we said goodnight to each other and slept in the same bed without so much as kissing, an unusual but appealing arrangement at the time.

  The next morning, I cooked breakfast and invited her back for dinner, which in the end we skipped in favour of a return to bed, where rather a lot more happened than had taken place the previous night. After that we continued our relationship for some months in an extremely discreet fashion – I told no one and to the best of my knowledge neither did she. I was fond of her, I trusted her and I made a mistake.

  She was intrigued by the fact that Tommy DuMarque was my nephew. (I didn’t tell her that it was actually his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather who was my nephew; such information seemed surplus to requirements). She’d been watching his programme for years and had apparently had a crush on him since he’d first turned up on television in his teenage years. When I first revealed the relationship between us, she went quite red, as if I had caught her doing something she shouldnt, and almost choked on some cantaloupe. She begged me to introduce her to him and I did, one fairly pleasant evening the previous summer, when she practically tore his trousers off in front of me. He wasn’t at all interested – he was in a volatile relationship with his screen grandmother at the time and she was apparently a jealous lover – and I think he found her a little silly, although to be fair to her she had had a little too much to drink that night and alcohol does bring out the schoolgirl in her. She called him the ne
xt day and invited him out for a drink; he declined. So she faxed him and invited him to dinner; he passed. Then she sent him an e-mail with her address and the promise that if he came around ‘NOW’, he would find the front door open and her lying naked on a Persian rug before an open fire, and that a bottle of champagne was chilling in an ice box even as she typed. This time he laughed and phoned me up to tell me what my girlfriend was up to. I was disappointed but not surprised and took his place on the date, arriving at her apartment to find her in exactly the position she had described. She looked surprised to see me but recovered well and tried to pretend that she had thought I might call around and wanted to surprise me. I told her that she was lying, that I didn’t mind particularly, but that it was all over between us now and it would be best if we returned to a strictly professional relationship.

  The following Sunday, she wrote an article in a prominent Sunday newspaper – ‘Tara Says: Just Say No!’ – claiming to have recently been involved in a relationship with a famous soap star (unnamed, but the description made it obvious to whom she was referring). She alleged that their sexual activities had bordered on the illegal and that she had enjoyed acting out all of this young man’s fantasies and forcing him to act out hers. She chose to end their affair, she said, only when he tried to drag her into his world of alcohol, heroin and cocaine abuse. ‘I saw the look in his eyes as he offered me the silver spoon and Bunsen burner of disgrace’, she wrote hysterically, ‘and knew that I could never be the woman he wanted me to be. A woman who was as much of a mess as he was. A woman who would do anything for that next fix, sell myself on the streets perhaps, rob old ladies, push drugs on to babies, a worthless nothing. I took one look at him and shook my head. “Tara says: Youre dumped,” I told him.’

  Tommy – the innocent party in all of this, although everything she imagines about his private life is no doubt true – was summoned into the offices of his executive producer on the Monday morning after publication where he was informed that had Ms Morrison actually named him he would have been fired immediately. As she hadn’t, and as they couldn’t prove that it was him she was referring to, he was to consider himself on an official warning. He had a responsibility to his fans he was told, the young girls who dreamed of marrying him, the teenage boys who were following his battle with testicular cancer with dread. They acknowledged that he was far and away the most popular character on the show, but said they would have no qualms about involving him in a car crash, or having him shot, or giving him AIDS if he stepped out of line again.

  ‘You mean my character, of course,’ said Tommy. ‘You’d do those things to my character.’

  ‘Yes, whatever,’ they muttered.

  The incident had preceded a particularly bad couple of months in Tommy’s life, where the tabloids were hounding him at night to see what he was digesting, inhaling, swallowing, smoking or injecting, whom he was kissing, touching, fondling, molesting or screwing, and exacerbating the problems which he had already developed through the lifestyle they had forced upon him in order to help their circulation. Although I expected nothing more from one of the Thomases, I was less than happy with Ms Morrison for her part in his troubles and made my feelings clear to her at a stormy meeting a few days later. I’m not one to lose my temper, but by God it got the better of me that day. Since then, we had kept a distance from each other and, far from being concerned about her departure for pastures new, I was pleased by the idea. With us, she was a big fish in a small pond. We had made her a star. A small-time, small-screen star, granted, but a star none the less. She would find life a lot more difficult with Auntie.

  And so, at home that night, eating my pate, listening to my Wagner, drinking my wine, I wanted nothing more than to relax and put the events of that day out of my mind. It would be a full seven days before I had to return to the station and until that time they were under the strictest of instructions not to contact me, except in the most dire of emergencies. It was with some surprise then that I heard my buzzer ring and, as I went to the front door, I said a silent prayer that it was just an electrical fault on the wire and that no one would be out there.

  My nephew stood outside, a hand running through his dark hair as he waited for me to answer.

  ‘Tommy,’ I said in surprise. ‘It’s very late. I was -’

  ‘I have to talk to you, Uncle Matt,’ he said, pushing me out of the way and coming inside. I closed the door with a sigh as he led the way back to the living room, instinctively heading for the room where I kept the alcohol. ‘You said you were going to give me the money,’ he shouted, his voice breaking with nervousness and for a moment I believed he was going to cry. ‘You promised me the -’

  ‘Tommy, will you please sit down and relax. I forgot. I’m sorry. I was supposed to post it to you, wasn’t I? It went right out of my mind.’

  ‘You are going to give it to me, aren’t you?’ he begged, grabbing my shoulders and it was all I could do to prevent myself from pushing him back on to the sofa in frustration. ‘Because if you don’t give it to me, Uncle Matt, they’re going to -’

  ‘I’ll write you a cheque right now,’ I said quickly, pulling away from him and going behind my desk in the corner. ‘Honestly, it was a simple mistake, Tommy. There’s hardly any need to come around here in the middle of the night disturbing my peace, is there? How much did we say anyway? A thousand, was it?’

  ‘Two thousand,’ he said quickly and I could see by the firelight how much he was perspiring. ‘We said two thousand, Uncle Matt. You promised me two -’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ll write you three. Is that better? Three thousand pounds, all right?’

  He nodded and buried his face in his hands quickly, leaving it there for a moment before looking back up with a smile on his face. ‘I’m ... I’m sorry about this,’ he said.

  ‘It’s quite all right.’

  ‘I hate to ask but ... There’s just so many bills right now.’

  ‘I’m sure there are. Electricity, gas, council tax.’

  ‘Council tax, yeah,’ said Tommy, nodding, as if that was as good an excuse as any.

  I ripped out the cheque and handed it to him. He examined it closely before putting it in his wallet. ‘Relax,’ I said, sitting down opposite him and pouring him a glass of wine which he took eagerly. ‘I’ve signed it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he muttered. ‘I should go though. I’m expected.’

  ‘Stay a few minutes,’ I said, not wishing to know who expected him, or for what. ‘Tell me, how much of that money is already spent?’

  ‘Spent?’

  ‘How much do you owe to people, and I don’t mean British Telecom or the gas board. How much has to be divided out when the banks open tomorrow?’

  He hesitated. ‘All of it,’ he said. ‘But that’s it then. I’m through with the stuff.’

  I leaned forward. ‘What is it exactly that you do, Tommy?’ I asked, truly intrigued.

  ‘You know what I do, Uncle Matt. I’m an actor.’

  ‘No, no. I mean what is it that you do when you’re not on set? What kind of trouble have you got yourself involved in?’

  He laughed and shook his head violently and I could tell that he wanted to leave, now that he had his money. ‘No trouble,’ he said. ‘I’ve just made a few bad investments, that’s all. This will clear them and then I’ll be home free. I’ll pay you back, I promise.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I said in a matter of fact voice. ‘But it doesn’t matter, I’m not concerned about a few thousand pounds. I’m just afraid for you, that’s all.’

  ‘You are not.’

  ‘I am,’ I protested. ‘Remember, I was there when your father met his end. And his father too.’ I stopped at that generation.

  ‘Look, Uncle Matt, you couldn’t save their lives and you’re not going to save mine, all right? Just let me alone to get on with my life. I’ll sort myself out.’

  ‘I’m not in the saving business, Tommy. I’m not a priest, I’m an investor in a satell
ite broadcasting station. I just hate seeing somebody die young, that’s all. I find the whole concept ridiculous.’

  He stood up and pounded around the room, looking at me from time to time and opening his mouth to speak every so often without actually saying a word. ‘I’m not – going – to die,’ he enunciated carefully, his two index fingers held close together as he pointed them towards the ceiling. ‘You hear me? I’m not – going -to die.’

  ‘Oh, of course you are,’ I said, dismissing what he had said with a wave of my hand. ‘You’ve obviously got bad men after you. It’s only a matter of time. I’ve seen it all before.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘That’s enough!’ I shouted. ‘I abhor bad language and won’t have it in my apartment. Remember that the next time you come looking for money.’

  Tommy shook his head and made for the door. ‘Look,’ he said quietly, his voice speeding up in his anxiety for us to part on good terms. He didn’t know when he might need me again. ‘I appreciate this. I really do. Maybe I’ll be able to help you out some day. We’ll get together next week, OK? We’ll do lunch. Somewhere quiet where every fucker in the place isn’t staring at me and wondering whether I really have testicular cancer or not, all right? Sorry. Everyone. I promise. Thanks, OK?’

  I shrugged and watched him leave before returning to my armchair with a sigh, this time with a large brandy nestling between my hands for comfort. And that was when my moment of epiphany hit. I’m 256 years old and I’ve sat back and watched nine of the Thomases die and done nothing at all to prevent any of these tragedies. I’ve helped them out when they’ve needed assistance but accepted their fate as predestined. Something which I cannot help alter in any way. So I have lived all this time. And one by one they’ve died. And most of them have been nice enough people, troubled yes, but worthy of help. Worthy of my help. Worthy of a life. And here was another one in trouble. Another Thomas ready to meet his end and I’d still be here afterwards, waiting for the next one to be born. Watching out for his time. When he gets into trouble, meets the girl, gets her pregnant and gets himself killed. I thought: this cant go on.