The Thief of Time (2 page)

I have often heard it stated that one never forgets one's first love; the novelty of the emotions alone should be enough to ensure a long-lasting memory in all but the hardest of hearts. But, while this should not be too unusual for the average man who takes maybe a dozen lovers in a lifetime, along with a wife or two, it is a little more difficult for someone who has lived as long as I have. I dare say that I have forgotten the names and identities of hundreds of women with whom I have enjoyed liaisons – on a good day, I can actually recall only about fourteen or fifteen of my wives – but Dominique Sauvet is fixed in my memory like a landmark of when I left my childhood behind to begin a new life.

The boat from Calais to Dover was crowded and dirty and it was difficult to escape the stale, miserable stench of urine, perspiration and dead fish. Nevertheless, I was exuberant from having seen my stepfather executed a few days earlier. From the safety of a small crowd, I had willed him to look in my direction as he placed his head upon the block and he did, for a brief moment, and while our eyes met I feared that in his terror he did not recognise me. Although it chilled me, I was glad he was going to die. Throughout the centuries, though, I have not forgotten the image of the axe falling upon his neck, the sudden slice and the groan of the people, intermingled with a cheer and the sound of a young man vomiting. I remember once, when I was aged around 115, hearing Charles Dickens read from a novel of his which contained a guillotine scene and being forced to stand up and walk out, so disconcerting was the memory of that day a century earlier, so chilling the recollection of my stepfather smiling at me before his life ended, although the guillotine itself would not be introduced until the Revolution began, some thirty-odd years later. I recall the novelist pinning me with a chilly glance as I left, thinking perhaps that I objected to his work or found it dull, something which was impossible.

I chose England as our new home because it was an island, unconnected to France in any way, and I liked the idea of being in a place which was independent and entire unto itself. It was not a long journey and I spent much of it tending to the five-year-old Tomas, who was ill and kept attempting to throw up what was no longer in his stomach over the side of ship. I brought my brother to the railings and sat him down with the wind blowing in his face, hoping that the fresh air might help him somewhat and it was then that I noticed Dominique Sauvet, who was standing only a few feet away from us, her thick dark hair blowing backwards and picking up the light as she stared back towards France, towards the memories of her own troubles.

She caught me staring and stared back briefly before turning away. A moment later, she looked at me again and I blushed and fell in love and picked up Tomas, who instantly started to scream again in pain.

‘Be quiet!' I urged him. ‘Hush!' I did not want it to appear that I was incapable of looking after the child, yet I was also loath to allow him to wander around aimlessly, crying and screaming and urinating at will, like some of the other children on the boat.

‘I have some fresh water,' said Dominique, approaching us and touching me on the shoulder lightly, her thin pale fingers glancing off that part of my skin which was revealed by the long tear in my cheap shirt, making my whole body burst into a flame of excitement. ‘Perhaps that would calm him down a little?'

‘Thank you, but he'll be fine,' I answered nervously, afraid to talk with this vision of beauty, simultaneously cursing my own ineptitude. I was just a boy and unable to pretend otherwise.

‘Really, I don't need it,' she continued. ‘It won't be long before we arrive anyway.' She sat down and I turned around slowly, watching as her hand slid down the front of her dress and then emerged with a small, thin bottle of clear water. ‘I have kept it hidden,' she explained. ‘I was afraid someone might try to steal it.'

I smiled and accepted the proffered bottle, watching her now as I unscrewed the cap and handed it to Tomas, who drank a little of it gratefully. Peace was restored to him and I sighed in relief.

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘You are very kind.'

‘I made sure to carry some provisions with me when we left Calais,' she said, ‘just in case. Where are your parents anyway? Shouldn't they be taking charge of the boy?'

‘They lie six feet underground in a Parisian graveyard,' I told her. ‘One murdered by her husband, one murdered by thieves.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘Then you are like me. Travelling alone.'

‘I have my brother.'

‘Of course. What's your name anyway?'

I extended a hand towards her and felt mature, like an adult, as I did so, as if the very act of shaking hands asserted my independence. ‘Matthieu,' I replied. ‘Matthieu Zéla. And this belching creature is my brother, Tomas.'

‘Dominique Sauvet,' she said, ignoring my hand and giving us both a light peck on the cheek which stirred me even more. ‘Pleased to meet you,' she added.

Our relationship began at that moment and developed later that night in a tiny room in a Dover hostel where we three took refuge. Dominique was four years older than me at nineteen and naturally had a little more experience in romantic matters than I had. We lay in the bed together, holding each other for warmth, and tense with our desires. Eventually, her hand slid down beneath the thin, moth-eaten sheet that barely covered us and roamed around my chest and below, until we kissed and allowed ourselves to become consumed with our passion.

When we woke the next morning, I was filled with fear for what had happened. I looked at her body beside me, the sheets covering her enough to hide her modesty but none the less causing me to feel a rush of desire once again, and was afraid that she would wake up and regret our behaviour of the night before. Indeed, when her eyes eventually opened, there was an awkwardness at first as she covered herself even further with the single sheet – thus revealing more of my own body to her which caused me no end of embarrassment – until finally she relented and pulled me to her once again with a sigh.

We spent that day walking around Dover with Tomas in tow, looking to the world no doubt as if we were husband and wife and Tomas our son. I was filled with joy, sure that this was as perfect a life as I could ever possibly have. I wanted the day to carry on for ever and yet I also wanted it to pass by quickly, that we might return to our bedroom as soon as possible.

But that night I had a shock. Dominique told me to sleep on the floor with Tomas and, when I protested, she said that if I did not then she would give me the bed and sleep on the floor herself, at which point I relented. I wanted to ask her what was wrong, why she was suddenly rejecting me like this, but could not find the words. I thought she would think me stupid, infantile, a baby, if I demanded more from her than she wanted to give, and was determined not to have her despise me. Already I was thinking that I wanted to take care of her, to be with her for ever, but I have no doubt now that she was thinking that I was only fifteen years of age and that, if she was to have any real future in the world, it was unlikely that it would be with me. She was holding out for something better.

A mistake, as it turned out.

I live in a pleasant, south-facing apartment in Piccadilly, London. It is the basement flat of a four-storey house. The upper part of the property is lived in by a former minister in Mrs Thatcher's cabinet whose attempts to secure a place in the Lords were given short shrift by her successor Mr Major – whom he despised for an incident at the Treasury some years before – and who has since wound up in the less prestigious but far more financially rewarding world of satellite broadcasting. As a major shareholder in the corporation which employs my upstairs neighbour, I take an interest in his career and was partly responsible for his being granted a thrice weekly political chat-show, which has recently been performing badly in the ratings, owing to the general perception of him as a has-been. Although I find the public's belief that anyone from the previous decade is a has-been completely absurd – surely my own longevity is testament to that – I suspect that the man's career is coming to an end and I regret it, for he is a pleasant enough man with a taste for fine things, in which respect we are quite similar. He has been kind enough to invite me into his home on a number of occasions and I once dined off a rather fine piece of mid-nineteenth-century Hungarian dishware which I could have sworn I saw being made in Tatabanya while I was honeymooning with, if I remember correctly, Jane Dealey (1830-1866, m. 1863). Lovely girl. Fine features. Awful end. I could afford to live in the same luxury as my broadcasting friend but really can't be bothered. Right now, simplicity suits me. I've lived rough and I've lived well. I've slept on streets and collapsed drunk in palaces, a felonious vagrant or vomiting fool. I'll most likely do both again. I took the apartment in 1992 and have been here ever since. I've made it quite the home. There is a small vestibule as you enter the front door, leading into a tiny hallway which opens out into the living room – sunken by a step – with a beautiful set of bay windows. Here, I keep my books, my recordings, my piano and my pipes. Scattered around the rest of the apartment is a bedroom, a bathroom and a small guest room which is only ever used by my many times removed nephew Tommy, who calls around to see me from time to time, whenever he needs cash.

Financially, I have been fortunate in life. I cant quite put my finger on how I made my money but there's an awful lot of it there. Most of it has grown without my realising it. To make the leap from the Dover boat to my position today there are certainly many jobs and positions which I have taken but I think I have been lucky in that I always kept my money as money, never stocks, never shares, never insurance policies or pensions. (Life insurance is a waste of money as far as I am concerned.) I had a friend – Denton Irving – who lost a bundle in the Wall Street crash in the early part of this century. One of those chaps who threw himself from his office window out of a sense of failure. Foolish chap; personalising something which the whole country went through. It was hardly his fault. Even as he jumped he could surely see half of New York's Old Money standing in their hotel windows, contemplating their own ends. Actually, he even failed at that. He misjudged the distance and ended up with a broken leg, a smashed arm and a couple of fractured ribs in the middle of the Avenue of the Americas, screaming in agony for about ten seconds before a tram came around the corner at speed and finished him off. He got what he wanted, I suppose.

I have always spent money too, believing that there's precious little point in having the stuff if you don't use it to make yourself comfortable. I have no offspring so there's no one to leave it to in the unlikely event of my death – except for the current Tommy, of course -and, even if there were, I rather feel a person should make his or her own way without any outside help.

I never criticise the times either. I know a couple of young chaps of about seventy or eighty who complain about the world that they're living in and the changes which constantly take place in it. I speak to them every so often in my club and I find their disdain for Today a little ridiculous. They refuse to have so-called modern contraptions in their homes, feigning a lack of comprehension whenever a telephone rings or someone asks them for their fax number. Nonsensical. The telephone predates them, for heaven's sake. I say take whatever the age offers you. That's what living is all about. Personally, I think the late twentieth century has been perfectly all right. A little dull at times, perhaps, although I did become momentarily obsessed with the American space programme during the 1960s, but it'll do for now; I've known worse. You should have tried things a century earlier. End of the nineteenth. I have about two memories of a twenty-year period back then, things were so dull. And one of those is simply of a bad back complaint that kept me in bed for six months.

In mid-January, Tommy phoned me and invited me to dinner for the fourth time in three weeks. I hadn't laid eyes on him since before Christmas and had so far managed to put him off. But I knew that any further delay would induce him to come around late at night, and whenever he did that he would end up staying over – something I discouraged. Overnight guests are fine the night before, when there's a drink to be taken and a conversation to be had, but in the morning there's always an awkwardness when you are wishing they would just go home and let you get on with your routine. He's not my favourite of the Thomases, certainly not a patch on his great-great-great-grandfather, but he's not the worst either. There's a certain charming arrogance to the lad, a mixture of self-confidence,
naivete
and recklessness which attracts me. At twenty-two, he's a twenty-first-century boy if ever I saw one. If he can simply make it that far.

We met in a West End restaurant which was a little busier than I had hoped. The problem with being seen in public with Tommy is that it's impossible to spend any private time with him whatsoever. From the minute he walks into a room until the minute he walks out, everyone is staring and whispering and casting furtive glances at him. His celebrity both intimidates and hypnotises people in equal parts and I have the dubious thrill of being caught up in it all. Last Tuesday night was no different. He arrived late and almost collapsed through the door, smiling as he came towards me in a dark Versace suit with a dark shirt and dark tie to match, looking like something from a funeral parlour or an Italian-American Mafia film. His hair was cut jagged just above the shoulder and he sported a two-day stubble. He fell into the seat, grinning at me and licking his lips, oblivious to the silence that had fallen on the restaurant. Thrice weekly appearances in the living rooms of the nation, not to mention the omnibus repeats at the weekend, have made my nephew into something of a celebrity. And the consistency of that celebrity has made him immune to its accompanying irritations.

Tommy, like so many of the Thomases before him, is a handsome boy and as he matures (physically) he only becomes more attractive to people. He has been in his television programme for eight years now, ever since he was fourteen, and has moved from being a teenage sensation, to a magazine cover boy, to a twenty-two-year-old national treasure. He has enjoyed two number one singles (although his album failed to make the top ten) and even spent six months in a production of
Aladdin
in the West End where there was widespread screaming whenever he appeared in his waistcoat, pantaloons and precious little else. He is fond of recounting how he was voted ‘most shaggable boy' four years running in some teen magazine, a title that chills me but delights him. He knows the television business inside out. He's not really an actor, he's a star.

His screen persona is that of a good hearted angel, not too blessed in the brains department, to whom nothing good ever happens. Since his first appearance in the programme in the early nineties, his character has appeared to find no reason whatsoever to leave a one mile radius of London. I'm not even sure he knows that any other world exists. He has grown up there, gone to school there, and now works there. He has had several girlfriends, two wives, enjoyed an affair with his sister and an unconsummated romance with another boy – quite controversial at the time – was briefly being considered by an important football club before leukaemia laid him low, had a great love for the ballet which he was obliged to keep secret, flirted with drink, drugs and athletics, and has done God only knows how many other things in his illustrious career. Any other boy would be dead by now with all the exertions that have come his way. Tommy – or ‘Sam Cutler' as the nation better knows him – lives on and always comes back for more. He has, for want of a better word, pluck. Apparently this endears him to grandmothers, mothers and daughters alike, not to mention quite a few young men who copy his mannerisms and catchphrases with gay abandon.

‘You look ill,' I told him as we ate, glancing briefly at his pale, blotchy skin and the red rings hovering beneath his eyes. ‘And can we
please
just eat in peace?' I begged a hovering waitress who was holding a notebook and pen expectantly as she stared at her hero with barely disguised lust.

‘It's the make-up, Uncle Matt,' said Tommy. ‘You have no idea what it does to my skin. I used it at first because you need a little for the cameras, but then it affected my skin so badly that I needed even more to look any way normal. Now I look like Zsa Zsa Gabor on screen and Andy Warhol off.'

‘Your nose is inflamed,' I observed. ‘You take too many drugs. You'll burn a hole in it one of these days. Just a suggestion, but perhaps you should try injecting rather than inhaling?'

‘I don't do drugs,' he shrugged, his voice perfectly even, as if he felt it was simply the socially correct thing to do –
denying
it, I mean – while being completely aware that neither of us believed him for a moment.

‘It's not that I'm
opposed
to it, you understand,' I said, dabbing at my lips with a napkin. I was hardly in a position to lecture him. After all, I was an opium fiend at the turn of the century and I survived it. Lord, what I went through with that though. ‘It's just that the drugs that you take will kill you. Unless you take them right, that is.'

‘Unless I what?' He looked at me, baffled, grasping a hand around the base of his wine glass and rotating it slowly.

‘The problem with today's young people', I said, ‘isn't that they do things which are bad for them, as so much of the media likes to think. It's that they don't do these things right. You're all so intent on getting off your heads on drugs that you don't think about the fact that you could overdose and, to put it plainly, die. You drink until your liver explodes. You smoke until your lungs collapse beneath the rot. You create diseases which threaten to wipe you out. Have fun, by all means. Be debauched, it's your duty. But be wise about it. All things in excess, but just know how to cope with them, that's all I ask.'

‘I don't do drugs, Uncle Matt,' he repeated, his voice firm but unconvincing.

‘Then why do you want to borrow money from me?'

‘Who says I do?'

‘Why else would you be here?'

‘The pleasure of your company?'

I laughed. It was a nice thought, if nothing else. I enjoyed the way he stuck to convention. ‘You're so famous,' I observed, mystified by the very idea. ‘And yet you're paid so little. I don't understand that. Why is it exactly? Explain it to me.'

‘It's a catch-22,' said Tommy. ‘There's a standard rate for what I do, and it's not very high. I can't leave because I'm typecast now and would never get another job – unless I went into production or something, which is exactly what I should do because I know this industry from the top down. I've seen every kind of scam pulled and every kind of deal ruined. That's what I want to look towards when I get older. Eight years playing some gormless
fuck
on some stupid TV show doesn't exactly lead to a Martin Scorsese movie, you know. For Christ's sake, I'm lucky if I get offered the chance to press the button on the National Lottery more than once a year. You know I was supposed to do that a couple of months ago but they bumped me?'

‘Yes, you mentioned.'

‘And for Madonna of all people.
Madonna!
For Christ's sake, how am I supposed to compete with that? And I work for the fucking BBC, she doesn't. You'd think they'd show a little bit of loyalty. But the lifestyle I lead to perpetuate my success demands a certain level of solvency. I can't win. I'm like a hamster on a wheel. I'd take on some advertising, do a little modelling perhaps, but it's in my contract that I'm not allowed to promote any products while still working on the show. Otherwise I swear I'd be a capitalist
whore
right now. I'd advertise everything from aftershave to tampons if I could.'

I shrugged. It made sense, I suppose. ‘I can let you have a couple of thousand,' I said. ‘But I'd rather pay off some of your bills for you than just give you cash outright. You don't have men after you by any chance, do you?'

‘Men. Women. Anything with a pulse follows me down the street,' he said with a cocky smile. ‘I got my teeth bleached last week, by the way,' he added as a
non sequitur,
pulling back his lips to show me a melon slice of snow-white teeth. ‘They look good, don't they?'

‘Men,' I repeated. ‘Don't play stupid with me. Save it for your show.'

‘What kind of men? What do you mean?'

‘You know exactly what I mean, Tommy. Loan sharks. Dealers. Men of dubious character.' I leaned forward and stared him in the eye. ‘Do you owe people money?' I demanded. ‘Is that what you're worried about? I've seen men laid low by such people. Ancestors of yours, for example.'

He sat back and his tongue skirted around the inside of his mouth slowly. I could see it pushing his left cheek out slightly as he watched me. ‘I could do with a couple of grand,' he said. ‘If you've got it to spare. ‘I'm sorting myself out, you know.'