Drowned Lives

5

I woke up on Monday with a thick head after staying until closing time at the Stowe Arms. I’d become involved in a game of darts with some of the regulars, and recalled having lost money on a bet when my darts had bounced all over a board I could barely see by that time. Sure enough, my wallet was empty, and my pockets were cleaned out of change. I knew my current account was already overdrawn, which meant I would very soon be raiding the dwindling savings account.

After a few cups of coffee, I set about putting together an article on the advancing restoration of the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal, which I intended to try on one of the waterways magazines — Waterways World perhaps, or Canal and Riverboat. With a picture or two, it might earn me a few quid. It was peanuts, but everything counted.

With that thought in mind, I unloaded the film from my camera and set off to clear my head with a walk into the city centre to drop the film off at Boots for twenty-four-hour processing. Rachel was cleaning her front windows, and she called a cheerful ‘good morning’. I surprised her by not heading for my car, but walking away with a perfunctory wave. With the first blast of cold air, my thoughts were starting to stir again in a rational manner, and I couldn’t do with being interrupted by one of Rachel’s interrogations.

I was unsure exactly how to play the situation at the moment, but I knew that I didn’t want Samuel to come to the house in Stowe Pool Lane. Not just yet.

I suppose it was a defensive reaction — I was reluctant to let him penetrate any further into my solitary life and upset my routine. It was a means of keeping him at arm’s length. Instead, I’d arranged to meet him on Tuesday outside the bookshop in the Cathedral Close. He’d expressed a wish to see the cathedral properly for the first time in many years. I had no objection. On a Tuesday, it should be quiet enough. But I’d have to be careful not to let him tire himself so much that he was driven to an embarrassing outburst of the kind that had ended our last meeting. That had almost made me decide not to see him again.

So when Tuesday morning came, I walked up Gaia Lane towards The Close. The day was bright and clear again, and birds were clustered on the water — ducks and geese, gulls and swans, and a handful of smaller birds. Coots or moorhens, I was never sure which.

A few people ambled around Minster Pool on the perimeter path, some walking their dogs, others in pairs, deep in conversation, all huddled up in their coats against the cold or the intrusion of the outside world. Work was still taking place high on the south side of the cathedral, where scaffolding seemed to have been in place for months.

The old man was waiting outside the bookshop, gazing up at the three great sandstone spires they call ‘the Ladies of the Vale’ and the vast Gothic facade of the west front, which never fails to awe me. The carvings that cover the stonework are rows and rows of kings and saints, sculpted by medieval craftsmen who laboured for years to create their masterpiece. A vast well of love and devotion had been poured into that structure of wood and stone.

Samuel was still in his black overcoat and carrying his ivory-handled stick. But there was fresh life in his face, as if he’d spent the intervening hours sleeping and recharging his energy.

‘How old is the cathedral?’ he asked. ‘I can never remember things like that.’

‘There’s been a cathedral here for thirteen centuries,’ I said. ‘This one was started about 1195.’

‘More facts from your journalist’s bag of tricks.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Ah, but you’re not a journalist any more, are you, Christopher? My information is a little vague.’

‘In a way. I leave my job at the county council in three weeks’ time. I’m trying to earn some money as a freelance while I get a new project off the ground.’

He nodded as he stared up at the soaring spires. ‘It took them a long time to build, I suppose.’

‘A hundred and fifty years, I think.’

‘A very long time. Generations. It must have taken an awful lot of commitment and patience. But they built it to last, didn’t they? Did you check up on me, Christopher?’ he asked. ‘I assumed you would. Are you satisfied now?’

I flushed instantly. ‘I’m satisfied there is such a person as Samuel Longden.’

‘I see.’

I knew I must have hurt him. I was throwing his approach back in his face. I had no idea how hard it might have been for him to make himself known after so many years of rejection and isolation. I couldn’t meet his eye. It seemed such a cruel thing to do to an old man who’d only sought out his friend’s grandchild in his last years.

‘It’s just a precaution,’ I said. ‘You know a lot about me, but I know nothing about you at all. I didn’t even know you existed until two days ago.’

‘I do understand. But I think I can put your mind at rest on all counts.’

‘Do you want to go inside and have some tea?’

‘Do you mind if we walk for a while?’

‘Not at all, if you’re sure you want to.’

‘Perhaps a slow perambulation around The Close?’

I soon discovered what a perambulation was. Our progress was slow, and Samuel wanted to pause often, to admire the cathedral from a different angle, or to study the buildings around The Close — the Bishop’s Palace, the Cathedral School, the Deanery. At other times, he seemed simply to want to rest, or gather his thoughts, as he began to tell his story.

He was eighty-three years old, born during the Great War, in which his father had fought and died, like so many others. When he left school, Samuel had gone to work for Seward’s, a small independent brewery at Sandfields on the Birmingham Road, which has long since disappeared. The Lichfield area was known for its brewing industry in those days, as its water supply was ideal for ale making.

Samuel proved a bright and capable boy, and he’d caught the eye of old Benjamin Seward, the brewery owner, who’d encouraged him to learn every aspect of the business. The Second World War had intervened, but on his return Samuel had become a manager and gained influence in the company, which expanded its chain of pubs and became very successful. Seward made him a partner, and when the old man died, he left Samuel in sole charge.

Many independents had been bought out by the larger brewery chains by then, but Samuel had decided to hang on. The Sandfields brewery and its small string of traditional pubs became more and more valuable, until in the late 1960s he finally sold to a national company based in Burton on Trent. Now the Lichfield water was pumped to Burton for the breweries. But the sale had left Samuel extremely well-off.

‘We used to move goods by canal at one time,’ he said. ‘Seward’s was built backing onto the Ogley and Huddlesford. Barley and hops came in by boat, and barrels of beer went out the same way. We switched to road transport, of course, because it was more efficient. That was my decision, in the late 1940s. I suppose we helped to hasten the end of the canal trade.’

‘What have you been doing since you sold out?’ I asked. ‘It’s a long time to be retired.’

He smiled. ‘I’ve never been a man to sit and stagnate. I’ve had several other projects. And I suppose I’ve been fortunate, in that I’ve been able to spend time with my family.’

‘Ah, you’re married?’

‘I was.’

I could see the pound signs retreating from me rapidly at this news. Of course, there was no reason why I should have imagined Samuel to be as alone as I was. No reason, except the gut recognition of a man losing the ability to communicate with the outside world.

‘And I suppose you have children,’ I said. ‘Grandchildren perhaps?’

He ignored me as if I hadn’t spoken. It seemed his mind was running along a different track entirely, which allowed no room for irrelevant small talk.

‘Christopher,’ he said, ‘there’s something I find very difficult to talk about. I hope you’ll understand and forgive this in an old man. It’s something you need to know, but it’s very hard for me to find the right way to tell you.’

‘To do with your family?’

He was peering at a figure of King Charles II in a stone alcove. It was Charles who ordered the restoration of Lichfield Cathedral in the seventeenth century, but time had eroded his face into a grotesque mask, unrecognisable as human.

‘To do with your grandfather,’ said Samuel.

Now it was my turn to stop. ‘George Buckley? Like I said, he died long before I was born.’

‘George was a good man, a clever man. Much cleverer than I ever was. We attended the same school, but he was older than me and a hero in my eyes. He went away to university while I was still at school. Then he married his wife, Mary, in 1938.’

‘My grandmother? I never knew her either.’

Samuel nodded, as if absorbed by his own recollections. ‘Yes, 1938,’ he said. ‘And your father was born just over a year later, at the start of the war. When George enlisted to fight the Nazis, he was a happily married man with a young son. When he returned, his life had been shattered.’

What did that mean? I had no idea what my grandfather had died of.

‘Shattered?’ I said. ‘By a war injury?’

‘No. His life was destroyed by what Mary did.’

I was so astonished I didn’t know what to say. When Samuel set off again, walking slowly towards the western end of The Close and Bird Street, my feet seemed frozen to the ground for a few moments before I could catch up with him.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said again, though I was starting to sound like an echo of myself. ‘Mary? You mean my grandmother? What did she do? I know nothing about any of this.’

‘I realise that. There are a great many other things you need to know too.’ Samuel looked at me sadly. ‘But you’re right. To understand, you have to know the story from the beginning. There has to be a start somewhere. But not there — not with Mary. That wasn’t the start of it at all.’

Some of the medieval buildings around The Close were distorted out of shape and bulging dangerously with age. They looked as warped and out of proportion as my life felt just then. Was it me, or had the world suddenly ceased to make any sense?

By the time we got to Bird Street, Samuel was starting to flag. I’d been watching him for signs of abnormal behaviour, but so far he’d seemed only harmlessly vague and rambling. To keep him like that, I tried persuading the old man to stop for a coffee.

‘Let me buy you lunch,’ he said.

I looked at his old coat and his creased trousers. ‘There’s no need. I’ll pay.’

‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘I may be many things, but I am not a poor man. Choose a place somewhere and I’ll treat you to lunch. I can afford it, I promise you.’

‘Well, okay.’

Samuel looked at the pedestrianised street and waved his stick at the ‘For Let’ signs over some of the shops.

‘I don’t get into the city too often,’ he said. ‘But Bird Street used to be a busy shopping area. Now it’s mainly pubs and restaurants.’

‘Since the Three Spires precinct opened, it’s on the wrong side of town.’

We settled on the White Hart, because Samuel thought the dishes chalked on the board outside looked plain and English, unlike some of the others. There was a dining area separate from the bar, but the place was busy and we had to wait a few minutes for a table. I bought a pint of Marston’s bitter for myself and a bottle of Guinness for Samuel.

He wandered off to find the toilets while I was at the bar, and I was reminded that he was an old man in his eighties.

When he returned, he fumbled a pair of spectacles from a case deep in a pocket of his overcoat to read the menu. He waved away my tentative concern about prices with an impatient grunt and told me to have whatever I wanted. There seemed to be a constant gnawing in my stomach these days which was never satisfied. My body told me it was the pangs of hunger. So I chose a sirloin steak, hoping I wasn’t taking advantage of the old man. For himself, he ordered salmon, which reassured me.

Over a few sips of Guinness, Samuel stared at a portrait of Lichfield’s most famous son, Dr Samuel Johnson. Every corner of the city seemed to hold some personal meaning for the old man that I couldn’t fathom. Johnson inspired him to one of those baffling non sequiturs I was already coming to expect.

‘Did you know that, as a young man, Dr Johnson refused a request by his father to look after his book stall at Uttoxeter market?’ he said. ‘The guilt stayed with him for the rest of his life. The story is that Johnson stood bare-headed in the rain for several hours in the marketplace when he was quite an old man in his seventies. It was a penance, you see. It was the only way he could atone for his guilt. It’s one of the scenes depicted on his plinth.’

‘I’ve heard the story. You can’t live in Lichfield without having Dr Johnson thrust at you from all directions.’

I wondered if I should mention my own favourite Johnson quote, which goes: ‘I remember when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk, and were not the worse thought of.’ It’s a slogan on the wall of the arts centre — except that whoever wrote it couldn’t spell ‘remember’.

‘But what has that got to do with my grandparents?’ I said.

He heaved a deep sigh with many years of practice in it. ‘Mary left your grandfather a long time ago. They only had six years of marriage, and for much of that time your grandfather was away in the war. He hardly knew her as a wife at all. Not that Mary was a worthy wife to him.’

It made me uncomfortable to hear the way he talked about her. It didn’t make any sense, since I’d never known her, whereas Samuel obviously had. Why should I feel defensive about her?

I’d met my grandparents on my mother’s side, the Claytons, but never my paternal grandparents. I was racking my mind to try to remember whether I’d been told that Granddad and Grandma Buckley had both died, or whether Mary just hadn’t been mentioned. As a child, I might have made the assumption that if one of them was dead, the other must be too. Why else would they have been so absent from my life?

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Because,’ said Samuel, ‘no woman should have done what Mary did.’