Drowned Lives

6

This was all too much. People split up every day, didn’t they? Even in my grandparents’ time, it can’t have been so unusual. But Samuel was making a big thing of it. I saw no reason why I should sit and listen to him condemn a grandmother I’d never known for something that must have happened decades ago.

His tendency to over-dramatise was starting to get on my nerves, as well as his cryptic evasiveness. He could have told me the facts straightaway, but he was trying to force me to ask questions, as if he thought he could capture my interest that way. I didn’t want to play his games.

And underneath it all, I thought I detected the bitterness of a man who’d been deceived in love himself. Presumably even Samuel Longden had been young once.

‘What about your own wife?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I married rather late in life. My wife, Alison, died ten years ago, in a car crash on the A38. She was travelling with my secretary, Karen Mills, when their vehicle hit an articulated lorry that had crossed the central reservation.’

Samuel smiled sadly at his tragic memory. I felt as though I ought to apologise for being so ignorant, for forcing him to explain it all and live through the pain again.

‘My parents didn’t tell me any of this,’ I said.

‘So I gather. I can’t really say it surprises me. None of your family came to Alison’s funeral. No Buckley had spoken to me for over forty years by then.’

‘You haven’t told me what caused the rift between you and my grandfather. Was it something very petty?’

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked sharply.

‘It often is, isn’t it? You know, a row over some trivial issue that escalates and gets out of hand, until neither side can see reason. It often seems to happen between close friends and within families. It’s almost as if people are just waiting to seize on something as an excuse for a row.’

‘Christopher,’ he said, with a shake of his head, ‘you talk as though you have a vast experience of family life.’

‘Ah, I see what you’re saying. You think I know nothing about families, right? How could I? But it’s my job to inquire into other people’s lives. And what I see depresses me immensely. The family is a vastly over-rated institution, in my view. Some of the situations that people create for themselves are beyond belief — and all in the name of family. Well, I’m glad to say that I haven’t experienced it personally.’

‘Was your relationship with your own parents good?’

‘Well... I think so.’

I looked away towards the city, where the cathedral spires towered over the medieval street pattern. They were inarguably solid and enduring, a symbol of the stability and permanence I’d once longed for.

‘I’d like to think it was too,’ said Samuel, though I could tell he didn’t believe me.

I realised he wanted more than anything to talk about my family. He wanted to know about them, to hear my memories, to find out what they’d been doing all those years since he’d last seen them. I realised, with a sinking of the heart, that most of all he wanted to hear they’d spoken of him sometimes, that they hadn’t just wiped him from their minds. And I knew I couldn’t give him what he wanted.

What he told me next confirmed my worst fears. It carried the sound of an obsession.

‘I suppose it might have been because I was cut off from them, but I developed an enthusiasm for researching your ancestors,’ he said. ‘There have been many Buckleys in the Lichfield area over the years. Most of them were tradesmen and business people in a small way. But they’ve suffered fluctuations in their fortunes. Rather erratic fluctuations.’

‘Like all families, I suppose. There are bad times and good times.’

‘Perhaps. But I don’t think so, not in this case. I don’t think the Buckleys were ever quite like other families.’

I looked at him, but his face was impassive. I realised there was no point in questioning him — it only seemed to send him off on a tangent. I would have to wait patiently for him to tell me more.

The food came, and we were silent while we ate. Samuel picked carefully at his salmon, slicing the pink flesh with slow, deliberate strokes of his knife. He had an air of single-minded absorption now that was slightly unnerving. For a while, I was the one who’d ceased to exist.

Then Samuel sat back and reached for his drink.

‘You may be interested to hear that your great-great-grandfather was once what they called a “number one” in Victorian times,’ he said.

The words meant nothing to me at first. Number one what? Did he mean that my ancestor was a leading figure in the area? A number one? The phrase had a familiar ring, though. I’d read it somewhere, and only recently. Samuel watched me while I put two and two together, and the phrase clicked into place.

‘You mean on the inland waterways? He worked on the canals. Am I right? A number one was a man who owned his own boat rather than working for the big carrying companies like Fellows, or Morton and Clayton.’

‘That’s right. They were the true canal folk, the ones they called the “water gypsies”. They resisted the spread of the large companies for a long time. As a young man, Josiah Buckley operated a pair of narrowboats, the motor Willow and its butty, Hazel. The Ogley and Huddlesford was his home “cut”, but he worked all over the Birmingham Canal Navigations.’

‘Coal carrying, I suppose?’

‘Mostly. He and his wife Hannah raised five children on board those two boats.’

‘Amazing.’

‘Most children stayed to help their parents. But some were sent onto the bank to live with relatives, to get a proper education.’

‘My great-grandfather?’

‘Yes, your great-grandfather. His name was Alfred, and he was the youngest child. His father had expanded the business, until he owned a small fleet of boats serving the collieries in the Cannock area. But then Josiah died. The oldest son, Thomas, tried to keep the boats going for a while, but small carriers like the Buckleys were doomed. After they sold out to a bigger company, Thomas was out of a job by 1905. He would only have been thirty then. There was work, of course, but he had no skills other than as a boatman. He could never expect to be more than a labourer, and that was a humiliation for a former number one. But his brother Alfred became a respectable mercer, a trader in textiles, and Thomas went to live with him for a while.’

‘How did Josiah Buckley die? Was he killed fighting in one of those endless Victorian conflicts? The Crimea, the Boer War?’

‘It might have been better if he had,’ said Samuel. ‘But canal work was an important trade and he escaped being called up.’

‘What, then? I suppose there must have been many illnesses the boat people were prone to.’

‘And dangers, Christopher. Canals and boats were always hazardous. In fact, Josiah ended up drowned in the cut. No one knows how it happened. There was a suggestion at the inquest that he was drunk, which was nonsense. Josiah Buckley was an abstemious man, a teetotaller, and he must have known better than anyone that you had to be careful on the bankside as well as on deck. But, like many canal people, he was quite unable to swim.’

Samuel paused, but only to take a ragged breath. ‘He went missing one night, you see. Hannah would have been sick with worry. She had the children to look after as well. But there was nothing they could do. Next morning, Josiah’s body was pulled out of the water from behind a lock gate. They said his head had been battered against the wall by the pressure of water when the sluices were opened. His face was quite unrecognisable.’

Suddenly feeling a bit queasy, I reached out and finished my beer in one gulp.

‘It was reported that shortly before his death Josiah had been involved in a fight with another boatman,’ said Samuel. ‘He’d made himself unpopular with rival carriers by winning a lucrative contract for transporting coal to the power stations. But it seems he was just more efficient and better organised than the others. Probably more honest, too. There were some who didn’t like that.’

I wiped my hands on a napkin, trying to see what possible relevance all this could have to me nearly a hundred years later.

‘How far back have you traced the Buckley family?’ I asked.

‘They tell me it’s possible to trace some families back to the sixteenth century, with a bit of luck,’ said Samuel. ‘But I confess I’ve never tried. I got as far as the late eighteenth century. Then I stopped.’

There was something very final about the way he spoke the last phrase. I felt a growing certainty that at last he’d reached the crux of what he’d come to talk about, the thing all this had been leading up to, ever since we’d set eyes on each other across Fosseway Lock.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I stopped, Christopher?’

‘Somehow, I feel sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘Indeed.’

He took a sip of his Guinness with a hand that trembled noticeably. I could see the brown liver spots covering his skin like a spattering of dried blood, and I had a sharp sense of his advanced age and frailty. His energy was draining from him, and he looked what he was — a tired old man. Part of me wanted to tell him that we should leave it for today, that we could meet again and continue our conversation, like two people who intended to carry on a close relationship indefinitely. But my mind shied away from the intimacy that suggested. Besides, my curiosity made me want to urge him on, to get to the end of the story. I couldn’t be left hanging.

The same thought seemed to have occurred to Samuel. He took a great breath and clasped his fingers together, as if to draw the remnants of strength from his body.

‘I stopped because I came across something that was far more interesting than unearthing some seventeenth-century peasants. More interesting even than discovering which side they were on when Cromwell brought the Civil War to Lichfield. I discovered a great injustice. And those who were responsible have escaped retribution. Until now.’

He paused, and looked at me with a triumphant gleam in his tired eyes.

Well, that pretty much settled it. The old man was plainly mad. Why else would anyone be obsessed with seeking retribution for some injury he imagined had been done centuries ago? What was the point?

‘I need to explain to you how things must be put right,’ he said. ‘But first you have to learn what was done wrong. It’s ironic, of course. But unavoidable.’

‘Do you realise how infuriating it is when you talk in riddles?’ I snapped, my patience at an end.

He looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry. It will all become clear, I promise.’

He finished his drink in silence. I waited for things to become clear, but they remained as murky as the dregs in the bottom of my glass.

‘My grandmother, Mary,’ I said at last.

‘Ah, Mary,’ he said. ‘She had the most striking eyes. The way she looked at you—’

‘Yes, yes. But what did she do that was so wrong?’

‘She betrayed your grandfather, Christopher. She betrayed him with another man, despite the fact that he was desperately in love with her. She left him in the cruellest way possible.’

The way he talked about her was surprising. The word ‘grandmother’ had created an automatic picture in my mind, and Samuel’s version of her didn’t fit with my image of an imposing old lady. I suppose things like this went on, though, even in the 1940s.

‘But there was a worse betrayal than that,’ said Samuel.

‘Worse?’

‘Oh yes. Much, much worse.’

I stared at him doubtfully, conflicting reactions stirring up turmoil in my mind. But I couldn’t look at the old man for long. I had to turn away to avoid the sight of his tears.

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

He brushed at his eyes with a handkerchief. ‘No, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you now. I thought I had the strength, but it’s too much.’

‘All right.’

As we left the pub I glanced again at the triple spires of the cathedral. Yes, it had been built to last. But I’d neglected to tell him that the Parliamentarians had bombarded it during the Civil War, destroying the roof and the central spire. Cromwell’s troops had smashed the stained glass windows, turned the lead into musket balls, and stabled their horses in the chapel before looting the place and leaving it a ruin. Sometimes, a grand appearance hid a much more sordid story.

Samuel took my arm as we walked towards the taxi rank in Bore Street. His hand felt thin and bony as it grasped my elbow. I was starting to feel sorry for him, and that wouldn’t do. He’d demonstrated sufficiently that he was someone I didn’t want involved in my life. I shied away instinctively from public displays of emotion and instability. My mind was busy working out ways of keeping him at a distance without offending him too much.

‘I still don’t understand what you want me to do,’ I said. The old man turned those weak blue eyes on me, but I hurried on before he could speak. ‘But, look — I have to tell you here and now that I don’t have the time to get embroiled in complicated history projects. My time is fully committed.’

Samuel looked at me sadly as I explained about the dot-com start-up, and its financial implications.

‘It’s going to take all my time and effort to make it a success,’ I said. ‘And that means all my time.’

He nodded as if he understood. ‘Of course you think that now, Christopher. But when you understand everything, you’ll feel quite differently.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said firmly.

‘I know you will.’

Samuel rapped his stick on the pavement for emphasis as he dropped my arm. But there was no power in the gesture, no real anger. As I watched him go, I felt confident I’d made my position clear. I had no intention of getting involved, and he knew it. I had my own concerns, and my own life to lead.

But fate was about to take hold of my boring life and give it a vigorous shake.

When Samuel Longden walked away towards the taxi rank, he looked like an old man who’d exhausted himself, who’d walked too far and talked too much. And no more than that.

He certainly didn’t look like a man who was about to die.