The Thief of Time Read Free Page A

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