Drowned Lives

30

Sunday couldn’t come round fast enough as far as I was concerned. By Friday I was already eaten away with impatience, and I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything. And, unaccountably, I began to feel uncomfortable being alone for the first time I could remember.

I went into the office that morning, my last day as a council employee, and attended my meeting with HR. The news was exactly what I’d expected. Without too much sympathy, I was told that the days when the department could afford to employ three information officers were over. The time had come to bite the bullet and accept cutbacks.

The tone of the delivery was such that I was made to feel I ought to have known all these things already, which indeed I did. I had to admire the system that had left me in no doubt of my fate long before it came to the point of someone telling me. It saved embarrassing scenes.

Since I’d worked for the council for less than two years, the pay-off I’d get was negligible — certainly not enough to keep me alive for more than a few months. Unemployment was staring me in the face, and destitution was lurking at its shoulder.

The HR manager even had the nerve to ask if I needed any help to cope with my redundancy. Did she mean counselling? The word seemed to be on the tip of her tongue.

‘Your colleagues say you haven’t been yourself for some time,’ she said. ‘I believe there was a family bereavement?’

‘Both my mother and father died within three months of each other.’

‘Awful. That sort of trauma can have a lasting impact. Emotionally and—’

‘Psychologically?’

She winced at the word. ‘I wish we’d known sooner that you were struggling.’

‘I haven’t been struggling,’ I said quickly, trying to sound confident, though my voice let me down with that sudden crack on the last word.

‘But it’s not too late,’ she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘We can still offer you help.’

I’d stood up then. I recognised when it was time to go.

My colleagues in the office practically ignored me, leaving me plenty of time to clear out the rest of the accumulated rubbish in my desk. At lunchtime, one of the IT team wandered in and tentatively invited me out for a drink at the local pub. But I declined politely. It wasn’t his fault. It was just that I associated him with Dan Hyde, who’d worked closely with him until he had left the council. And Dan wasn’t my favourite person at the moment.

At some point, we had to arrange a visit to see the bank manager about our loan and negotiate easier repayments over a longer period. The aim, as far as I was concerned, would be to try to delay things long enough for me to claim Samuel Longden’s bequest. The other creditors would have to be stalled for a while.

Rachel had already been away for two days by then. She was staying with her family in Hendon, and looking forward to some visits to London theatres and musicals. Miss Saigon had been mentioned, and the highlight would be a matinee of Cats. Rachel had been excited about the prospect for weeks.

Without her, it was too quiet at Maybank. It was strange having no one watching me drive off in the mornings, and no Riverdance numbers thumping through the walls. There was nobody walking in through my back door at the most inconvenient moments, or keeping a check on my visitors while pretending to sweep the leaves from the path. No one to be concerned about my welfare.

I knew Rachel had a small group of girlfriends she went out with. It would be ridiculous to feel jealous, and wonder how much she was enjoying herself. I was perfectly fine here on my own, with the cat.

So I turned to my pile of CDs. I had Suede and Pulp on top of the stack, but I felt the need to go back a few years before Britpop. Ah yes, there were Bowie and U2, redolent of a different period in my life. Achtung Baby had the right tone to it. I turned up the volume to listen to The Edge’s guitar and Bono singing about the end of world until he got to ‘Love is Blindness’, when it no longer felt so satisfying.

In Lichfield, a thin sprinkling of snow overnight had made everything look clean and new. But underneath was the same old winter mud, the same dirt-stained pavements. A town crier walked round the market square wearing a three-cornered hat and ringing his handbell, advertising an indoor market. Big Issue sellers stood on the corner of Baker’s Lane complimenting passing businessmen on their suits to charm them into buying a copy of their paper.

I was already committed to completing the project bequeathed to me by my Great-Uncle Samuel. To contemplate anything else would have been too painful, even without Caroline Longden’s efforts to twist the knife and Simon Monks’s attempts at intimidation. But since the funeral, there was one part of the picture I hadn’t quite got clear in my mind. Before I could come to terms with Samuel’s death, I had to be sure how and why he’d died.

Finally, Sunday arrived and I set off early to collect Laura from the George. She looked a bit askance at the Escort, and I was uncomfortably aware of the contrast with her Mercedes. But I could hardly have asked her to drive me to Cheshire. She was already doing me a big favour, and I was treading on eggshells trying to keep her interested.

The drive was nearly eighty miles, up the M6 and round the bypass at Nantwich to get onto the A51. As we crossed the Cheshire Plain, I found I was telling Laura all about myself. She had an undoubted skill at subtle questioning, winkling out everything she wanted to know without seeming intrusive, then listening with a flattering absorption, as if what I had to say was the most interesting thing she’d ever heard. Even as I talked, I congratulated myself on my coup in getting her on my side. She would be a great asset.

‘So the business venture has gone down with a heap of debts, and now I’m on the dole,’ I said. ‘That’s my story. I’m a bit of a disaster all round, really.’

It didn’t sound very impressive, but Laura wasn’t daunted.

‘And your parents have died?’ she said.

‘Yes, in the last year. My father just three months ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to be.’

‘Did you get on with them?’

‘Does anybody get on with their parents?’

‘Only if they don’t have to live with them.’

‘That’s true. I found them almost tolerable while I was living in Stafford.’

‘Was it your father or your mother you didn’t get on with?’

‘I don’t know really.’

‘It’s usually one or the other.’

I watched the Cheshire villages spinning by. They had curious English names in this part of the world, and I saw signs for Tilstone Fearnall, Bunbury, and Aston juxta Mondrum. Laura looked at me thoughtfully, but didn’t press me. I didn’t mind talking to her about myself. I’d do it as much as she liked. But my parents weren’t a subject I was comfortable with.

‘What about you, then?’ I said as we skirted the Delamere Forest. ‘What’s Laura Jenner’s story?’

‘I’m out of a job too.’

‘Oh yes — the researcher’s job. What happened?’

‘It was just one of those things. A few projects were cancelled, and they didn’t need me any more. It happens like that in television. In a few months’ time, they’ll probably be begging me to come back.’

‘Are you local?’

‘My family is from Cannock originally. I can remember walking the dogs on the Chase when I was little. But we moved away to a place outside Stourbridge. Dad runs a financial services business in Birmingham. He’s done pretty well for himself, I suppose.’

She said it in the casual way that people do when they’ve come to take money for granted. I remembered the green Mercedes, and wondered whether she’d actually managed to buy that out of her researcher’s salary, or if it was a present from Daddy.

‘But for a few years I’ve been living in London, of course.’

‘What made you come back to Staffordshire? Nostalgia?’

She laughed. ‘Partly. But I’m not looking for my roots like you are, Chris.’

‘I’m not looking for my roots either,’ I said, offended at the very idea. It made me sound like some American tourist bolstering his uncertain identity by trying to prove he was related to Mary, Queen of Scots.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Not really. Well, not like you mean anyway.’

I noticed Laura had deflected my enquiry.

‘But you didn’t answer my question.’ I said.

For the first time since I’d met her, she looked uneasy. A lot of people don’t like talking about themselves, particularly if they’ve had problems in their lives or they don’t have any pride in what they’ve achieved. There were very few people I would have opened up to myself, for the same reasons.

‘What do you want to know?’ she said, passing the ball back into my court.

‘What brought you back to Staffordshire?’ I searched for the right words to use. ‘A relationship?’

She tilted her head to look at me, as if she didn’t recognise the word. ‘Do you mean a man?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘No, there’s no one here.’

‘But someone in London maybe?’

‘Of course, I’ve had my... relationships.’

‘Children?’

Silence. I glanced at her, taking my eyes off the road for a second. Her expression had changed, a dark cloud passing across her face. I wondered if I’d touched a nerve. She wasn’t quite so cool and composed as she tried to appear. Was this why she didn’t like talking about herself?

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, concentrating on the road again.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘No children. No husband, either. Plenty of relationships, good and bad. That’s life, isn’t it?’

‘So they tell me.’

She paused. ‘To be honest, Chris, I’ve never really known what I’ve wanted to do with my life. No job I’ve ever done has felt satisfying. Do you ever get the feeling that you’re just drifting through life, bumping against one thing or another by pure chance, then spinning away downstream again? It’s hard to know where I’ll end up.’

‘That’s not necessarily a bad thing,’ I said. I was thinking of my father, who’d worked for the same company all his life. A bit of spinning downstream might have made him a better person.

‘Oh, but it could be,’ said Laura.

When we got near Ellesmere, we passed under the M53 and over the Grand Union Canal into a residential area near Wolverham. The Old Vicarage nursing home was what it said, a converted vicarage set in a street of Victorian detached houses. A new two-storey extension had been added some time in the last ten years or so.

A care assistant called Chloe showed us into a clean, neat room with white furniture and a large window that let plenty of light in. The room looked so bright and fresh that the appearance of Godfrey Wheeldon himself came as a shock. He’d wasted away until there was almost nothing solid underneath his layers of clothing. The skin had sagged on his cheekbones, and his eyes were sunken, though they glistened with life and curiosity. His hands and wrists were skeletally thin, and they moved constantly with a restless, nervous energy. Perhaps his body had concentrated all its energy in his face and hands — for his lower half was quite useless, and he was confined to an electric wheelchair that he spun across the room with twitchy jabs of his fingers on the controls.

‘Samuel Longden, Samuel Longden,’ he said after we’d introduced ourselves. ‘Wonderful. I’m very glad you came.’

‘You know he died, don’t you?’ I said, anxious to make sure of our footing from the start.

‘Oh yes. His daughter phoned and told the people who run this place. They decided to break it to me gently. Silly beggars. Do they think death comes as a shock to somebody my age? I would have liked to have gone to Samuel’s funeral, but it wasn’t possible. I’m a bit trapped, as you can see, and it’s a long way to Lichfield. Still... I’m sure it was a good send-off.’

‘Samuel would have been pleased. They took him by boat on the canal.’

‘Ah. Wonderful, wonderful.’

‘How well did you know Samuel?’ asked Laura.

‘Oh, that’s the funny thing. I suppose you’d say I hardly knew him at all. But Samuel was the only new friend I’d made for many, many years. Certainly since I’ve been in here. You’d be surprised how important that made him to my life. In fact, I don’t expect you to understand it at all.’

‘So it meant a lot to you that he visited. Did he come often?’

‘Just three times, dear. Sad, isn’t it? But the fact is that those three visits were the highlights of the past ten years for me. He was the last visitor I had, until you.’

‘We’d like to ask what Samuel told you,’ I said. ‘I can explain why it’s important, if you like.’

‘I don’t mind talking to you,’ said Godfrey. ‘I’ll tell you anything. But only if you take me somewhere out of this place.’

‘But is that all right?’ I eyed his skeletal frame and the useless legs. ‘I mean—’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t die on you or anything like that. I’m allowed out, on account of my good behaviour. It’s just that I don’t have anywhere to go, or anyone to go with, which is not the same thing at all. Worse, of course. That’s really being trapped. Is it a deal?’

‘Okay.’ I envisaged a quiet stroll somewhere nearby, and remembered the towpath we’d crossed a few yards from the nursing home. ‘Do you want to go along the canal?’

‘The canal? Are you joking?’ snapped Godfrey irritably, spinning his chair. ‘What would I want to do that for? I want to go to the zoo.’

‘Where?’

‘Chester. I want to go to Chester. They’ve got a good zoo there.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of it.’

‘I’d like to see the animals.’

‘Fine.’

With a flick of his finger he accelerated towards the door of his room, and we stepped back hastily out of his way. Godfrey swung the door back and shouted along the landing.

‘Chloe! Chloe! I need a folding wheelchair. I’m going out.’