Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

‘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.’

We manoeuvred Godfrey into the front seat of the Escort, and I managed to figure out how to fold the wheelchair so that it could fit into the boot, with the old man giving instructions over his shoulder.

‘The handles fold back if you pull those little rods — that’s right. Now lift the foot rests back and fold the seat up. Wonderful.’

The drive took us away from the Mersey estuary, with a short run down the M53 until we came off near Chester. The hills of North Wales were visible in the distance, with an unidentifiable peak still capped in snow glinting in a trickle of sunlight.