Beyond his time, p.1
Beyond his Time, page 1
Beyond his Time
By Adrian Cousins
Contents
Also by Adrian Cousins
Chapter 1 The Shining
Chapter 2 Blinded By The Light
Chapter 3 Downtown
Chapter 4 Wish You Were Here
Chapter 5 Thrilla in Manila
Chapter 6 Sputnik
Chapter 7 Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em
Chapter 8 The Music of the Night
Chapter 9 Bad Manners
Chapter 10 Groundhog Day
Chapter 11 Who’s on First?
Chapter 12 A Sound of Thunder
Chapter 13 The Siegfried Line
Chapter 14 Public Eye
Chapter 15 Vanishing Point
Chapter 16 Bloody Friday
Chapter 17 The Calcutta Cup
Chapter 18 Beyond his Time
Can you help?
Author’s note
Books by Adrian Cousins
Copyright © 2023 Adrian Cousins
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the author’s express written permission except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, schools, places, locales, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
www.adriancousins.co.uk
..
Also by Adrian Cousins
The Jason Apsley Series
Jason Apsley’s Second Chance
Head of his Time
Force of Time
Calling Time
Beyond his Time
Deana Demon or Diva Series
It’s Payback Time
Death Becomes Them
Dead Goode
Standalone Novels
Eye of Time
Amazon Author Page
1
The Shining
After wedging his car in the first available parking bay, Chris hopped out and flung the door closed. Whilst hot-footing across the car park, Chris repeatedly stabbed the lock button on his key fob as he waved it over his shoulder before bounding up the stone steps and into the foyer of the House of Death.
Well, okay, not actually called the House of Death, but rather Waverly House. A care home for the elderly, most of whom would die under its Victorian roof. Although considered by those in the know to be Fairfield’s most prestigious residential care home, that didn’t negate the residents’ inevitable, imminent demise. Bodies strapped to a gurney whilst being trundled out through the front entrance occurred with an almost clockwork regularity – you could set your watch by it. Hence the reason Chris afforded the care home that rather Hitchcock-esque name.
As he barrelled through the entrance, Chris pondered the actual body count. He suspected it would far exceed one of Agatha Christie’s many imposing country houses, which Waverly House would provide a perfect setting for one of her cozy murder mysteries.
The call he’d received earlier from the manager suggested his elderly father would likely be the next body strapped to one of those gurneys. Despite their joint efforts to persuade their father to live with either of them, Chris and his sister had failed. Instead, their eighty-two-year-old father, Jason Apsley, had chosen the House of Death as his preferred option to see out the remainder of his life.
“Hi, Janice,” Chris panted. After a short scoot across the car park, his lack of regular exercise resulted in needing to take deep gulps of breath to calm his heart rate. Now in his mid-forties and with a plethora of unused gym membership cards to his name, his athleticism was a far cry from the days of being the school’s football and cricket captain. Nevertheless, Megan, his wife of over twenty years, said he was cuddly and there was nothing wrong with love handles.
“Hello, Mr Apsley. I’d heard Miss Shrives had given you a bell. I’m so sorry.”
Chris offered a solemn nod in reply to the receptionist before flipping open the cover of the visitors’ signing-in book. A weekly event he’d performed for the best part of nearly a year since his father moved here when his dementia reached a level that resulted in being unable to take care of himself. Pouring fabric conditioner into his coffee after washing his bed sheets with a dollop of semi-skimmed had been the final straw. A simple mistake to make, perhaps? However, the said fabric conditioner manufacturer had conjured up the catchy name Hints of Rainforest. To those of us fortunate enough to still be in command of all our faculties, the green liquid looked and smelt nothing remotely like milk.
Janice, the unusually taciturn receptionist, offered a well-practised and, presumably, now perfected benevolent smile. “I do hope it’s a false alarm. I’m so sorry,” she repeated.
Chris suspected, due to the vast majority of the residents living in ‘God’s waiting room’, Janice would revert to her sympathetic mode on occasions such as this. So, when faced with a relative of a resident who’d placed one foot from that metaphorical waiting room through to the other side, the well-trained receptionist knew to swap out her usual gossiping demeanour for something more befitting the situation. Despite her hopes, Janice knew, as did Chris and his sister, Jason Apsley was already some distance into that journey.
Janice glanced up from her computer screen, peering at him over the top of her glasses. Chris grabbed the well-chewed pen secured to the desk by way of a length of string pinned down by a hearty amount of gaffer tape. Usually, at this point in proceedings, Janice would launch into recounting the week’s events thus far. This would include details about which resident had suffered a fall; bitching about another visiting relative’s attire or lack of when describing the granddaughter of the woman in the next room to his father; how many residents had lost their false teeth or pissed themselves in the dayroom, or a combination of both, before rounding it all off with a moan about Miss Shrives, the manager, and specifically what a cow she was. However, today, Janice appeared to have put her inappropriate gossiping on hold, presumably recognising the pathos of the situation.
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated for the third time.
“Thanks, Janice. I got here as quickly as I could. My sister, Beth, is chasing her way back from Cornwall.”
“Oh, holiday? I wondered why I hadn’t seen her this week.”
“Yes, just a week away. I feel a wee bit guilty because I’m the one who encouraged her to go on holiday. As I said to Beth, we can’t put our lives on hold on the off chance that Dad might take a turn for the worse,” Chris replied after illegibly scribbling his name, date, and time.
Janice offered an agreeing nod and a slight shrug of her shoulders. Whether she agreed with what he’d said or not, Chris suspected it was just another expression she employed from her repertoire of sympathetic mannerisms when faced with this situation. She’d probably read one of the plethora of self-help books, this one specifically about how to appear genuine in a delicate situation when you don’t actually give a toss. Although a long title, Chris was damn sure the paperback version existed somewhere on Amazon.
“I think the doctor’s still with your father. I’ll buzz you through.”
Chris slid the book back across the desk as Janice pressed the door release buzzer to let him through from the reception area.
“Take care, Mr Apsley,” she whispered.
Chris bounded towards his father’s bedroom, the squawks emanating from his trainer’s soles reverberating off the highly polished floor before echoing from the stark, hospital-styled corridor walls. Although not unpleasant, the waft of floor cleaner and disinfectant harboured an undeniable smell of impending death.
As Chris scooted around the corner, he suspected Janice would now be contacting the next in line on the waiting list to give them the good news that a room was about to become free. Although she and the staff were very caring, an empty room didn’t pay their wages. Also, although said doctor was with his father, no pills or potions were available to cure dementia.
Chris slowed his pace as he approached when he noticed the door to his father’s room stood ajar. Despite the almost deathly silence of the late afternoon, due to most residents taking up a spot in the day lounge whilst presumably trying to locate their lost dentures before their evening meal, Chris hovered by the door but couldn’t detect the sound of any conversation. Then, fearing he was too late and his father had already left the ‘waiting room’, Chris tentatively stepped through to find who he presumed to be the doctor standing beside his father’s bed. After a few seconds, taking in the scene, Chris cleared his throat.
“Oh, hello. Mr Apsley, I presume?” the doctor asked, as he spun around, portraying the same facial expression Janice had just offered. Either they’d both perfected it over the years or grabbed it on a two-for-one offer just for this moment.
The doctor’s question was a reasonable assumption because the good doctor was presumably aware Chris had been summoned, probably at his suggestion. Following the doctor’s rather formal greeting, Chris resisted the temptation to suggest he was Doctor Livingstone in reply. Anyway, apart from his sister, the likelihood of anyone else visiting his dying father was low.
Chris nodded a response, although focussed on his father as he lay in bed, eyes closed, mouth open, his skin appearing to have taken on a pale and pasty hue.
“Is …” Chris cleared his throat again, this time not to announce his arrival but to conjure up some saliva that seeme
“Oh, no. He’s just resting. Stay with him, though. I’ve done all that I can.” The doctor, a man Chris suspected to be ten years his senior, snatched up his bag of tricks from the bedside table before gently cupping Chris’s elbow. “It’s good that you’re here. I’m afraid it won’t be long now,” delivered in that gracious tone, which Chris suspected the doctor regularly employed when on call-outs to the House of Death. Chris mused that if they paid doctors on the basis of piecework, the House of Death would be a nice little earner.
After offering a courteous nod, the bespectacled medic shimmied sideways and disappeared into that uninviting corridor.
Jason Apsley eased open an eye. “Has he gone?” he whispered.
“The doctor?”
Jason blinked, offering the tiniest of nods.
“Yeah,” Chris nodded as he perched on the bed and took his father’s hand. “Dad, it’s me, Chris.”
Jason blinked again but said nothing. Chris feared, as was an all too regular occurrence, his father had forgotten who he was.
“I know who you are, son. I’m not senile, even though I’m senile,” he whispered, followed by a wheezy chuckle.
Chris offered a smile that he’d borrowed from Janice.
“Beth?”
“On her way. She’s gone to Cornwall, remember?”
“What’s in Cornwall?” Jason frowned and knitted his brows.
“Holiday … she and Phil took Oliver with one of his school friends. She told you on Friday when she visited.”
Jason nodded. “Son, I’m not going to be around much longer.”
Rather than utter some old bollocks – a word his father had always favoured – like, ‘Oh no, don’t say that’, Chris just nodded. Although Jason wasn’t their biological father, he and Beth had enjoyed a close and honest relationship with their adopted parents. So, trotting out that ‘everything was going to be alright’ comment when it obviously wasn’t didn’t seem right. As his dying father had suggested, Chris knew time was a tad on the short side.
“Dad, what did the doctor say?”
“Not much. Apart from, did I want to see a priest?”
“Oh, really?”
Jason grinned. “I told him I don’t believe in all that bollocks.”
“I’ve no doubt you did,” Chris snorted. Although he’d received that call from Miss Shrives, advising him that his father may not last the day, Chris allowed a moment of positivity to nudge in when noting that, unusually, his father appeared fully compos mentis. Perhaps that was his mind clearing as he prepared to leave the ‘waiting room’ – who knew? Certainly not the doctor.
“What time will Beth be here, d’you think?”
Chris checked his watch, not that he needed to, just that involuntary reaction to his father’s question. He puffed out his cheeks and shrugged. “It’ll be late. Not until this evening, I reckon. They have the M4 and M25 to negotiate, and you know what those two bloody roads are like. I tell you, last week I was stuck near Heathrow for that long, my mobile died and Megan thought I’d eloped with the woman from HR.”
“Oh … what’s she like?”
“Who?”
“The woman from HR.”
“Oh … we don’t actually have an HR department, as such,” Chris chuckled. “It’s just what I jokingly tell Megan I’ll do if she insists on taking her mother with us on holiday. Never again, not after that Shirley-Valentine-type incident with the Greek waiter last summer.”
“Ah … yes, I can imagine,” wheezed Jason, appearing to stifle a laugh, presumably to avoid launching into a coughing fit. “Your grandmother, my mother-in-law, Frances, you remember her?”
“Course. Granny Fran.”
“Yes, well, she would have run off with me if she’d had the chance. I think your mother knew as much, too.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. Although Granny Fran had passed some years ago, Chris could remember she was like no other granny. Frances Lawrence epitomised the term cougar. That said, his father’s mind was probably misremembering. Not wanting to sully the memory of his grandmother and keen to avoid slipping down that particular rabbit hole, Chris thought he’d change the subject.
“I’m sure Beth and Phil will do their level best to get here as soon as. Traffic jams and the inevitable contraflows aside, Beth will be demanding Phil sticks his foot to the floor.”
Jason nodded. “Son, I need to talk to you about some … some things. I can’t wait for Beth.”
“Okay … but—”
“Don’t tell me that I’ll be okay until she gets here—”
“Dad—”
Jason raised his free hand, effectively halting what he presumed would be Chris’s protests. “Son, just hear me out, okay?”
Chris took a deep breath, surprising himself at how shaky it appeared. These had been a super tough couple of years for his family. Just over a year had elapsed since their mother had passed after being diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and, soon after, their father was diagnosed with stage four dementia. No one had noticed his father’s mental health decline, just putting his struggles with simple tasks down to being unable to come to terms with the loss of his wife. However, as much as he didn’t want to believe it, he knew his father would not be around much longer. Maybe Beth would make it back in time, and perhaps she wouldn’t – again, who knew?
“I need to tell you something.”
Chris raised an expectant eyebrow.
“Son, I’ve wrangled over this decision for years. Up until this point, I’ve always concluded that it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. But … knowing my time is nearly up, and not really sure where I’ll end up …” he momentarily paused, letting that odd statement hang in the air before continuing. “So, I think I should tell you. I’m aware this decision could be a huge mistake, but a man’s future may well depend on what I’m about to say.”
“Blimey, Dad. That all sounds a bit scary. What d’you mean, where you’ll end up? Heaven doesn’t exist, according to you.”
“Ah, well, there could be somewhere else, and I don’t mean down there with that red-faced chap sporting a set of horns.”
“Dad, you’re not making any sense.”
Jason knew what he was about to say was far more ridiculous than the idea of the existence of the Devil or God. Unlike anyone in the land of the living who couldn’t prove they’d seen those mythical beings, he, the previously dead Jason Apsley, was living proof of what he’d finally decided to disclose to his children.
Jason attempted to shift his withering frame on to his side, despite the considerable effort and discomfort this manoeuvre demanded. The good doctor had advised him that along with his failing mind, the rest of his organs also appeared to have decided to give up the ghost. Whilst accepting his son’s help, as he struggled to perform what should be a straightforward task, Jason offered himself a wry smile for referring to the book of Genesis – the very publication he didn’t believe in.
“Dad … I’m a bit lost. What are you talking about?”
“Please, Chris. Just hear me out.”
“Okay … you’re comfortable like that? On your side?”
Jason nodded, recovering his breath after his exertions.
“Right, come on then. Please don’t tell me you’re going to confess to a murder or an affair,” Chris chuckled in an attempt to lighten the mood.
Jason coughed and glanced away. He’d never cheated on his wife. As for the other suggestion – no, he’d take that to his grave.
“Dad, you didn’t? Haven’t?” blurted Chris, a smidge concerned that no denial appeared forthcoming.
