Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

Laura and I shared the cost of Godfrey’s admission to the zoo, and we wheeled him past enclosures of South American monkeys, orangutans and gorillas, and an area full of tunnels in the ground occupied by little prairie dogs. The air was sour with the scent of animal dung, and loud with the excited screams of children.

‘I brought my grandsons here once,’ said Godfrey, ‘before I went into the Old Vicarage. The boys would have been about eight and ten at the time.’

‘How old are they now?’ asked Laura. But he didn’t answer. ‘What are their names?’ It was probably the way she’d heard people talk to the elderly about their grandchildren, but with Godfrey it didn’t seem to work. ‘They’ll be grown up by now, I suppose.’

‘I suppose so,’ he said, but there was something in his tone that suggested he’d withdrawn from the conversation.

‘Don’t they come and see you?’ asked Laura.

Godfrey pointed. ‘I want to see the big cats. I think they’re over that side.’

Since it was the weekend, the zoo was full of visitors. Most of them were families — young couples with two or three children running around them, or older people struggling to keep up with their charges. Sometimes it was difficult to tell who was the most excited at the sight of a grinning chimp — the child or the grandparent. They were united in an ability to give themselves up to wonderment in a way the parents seemed to have lost.

‘Yes, Samuel came to see me three times,’ said Godfrey.

‘Had you known him for a long time?’

‘About a year.’

‘That’s not very long. I imagined you must have known him from years back. Weren’t you connected with his business?’

‘Me? Not likely. I worked as a tanker driver at the oil refinery up the road.’

‘Runcorn? So how did you meet Great-Uncle Samuel?’

‘He wrote to me, out of the blue. He said he was working on a family history project, and he’d traced my name.’

‘But surely you aren’t related to him?’

Godfrey started laughing and wheezing. ‘Look at your face! Did you think you’d found another long-lost relative? Sorry to disappoint. Or perhaps it isn’t a disappointment. Who’d want an old wreck like me in the family?’

I looked at Laura in perplexity as we passed the giraffe house with its towering doors like space shuttle hangars.

‘You must have some link to one of the ancestors he was writing about,’ she said, touching Godfrey gently on his emaciated arm.

‘Almost right, dear. Well done,’ he said, patting her hand. ‘Only it was more that he thought one of my ancestors was linked to one of his.’

With his hand still on Laura’s, he turned his face up to look at me. There was a twinkle in his eyes, as if he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in a long time.

‘Would you like me to explain?’

‘That’s what we’ve come for,’ I said impatiently.

‘Now, now — allow me to have my fun. I’ll tell you all about it. Look, there are the big cats, over there. Tigers. I like tigers.’

We pushed him towards the big cat enclosures and got as close as we could to the bars. We watched for a while as a male Bengal tiger paced up and down, his muscles rolling smoothly in his shoulders under his golden skin.

We parked Godfrey’s wheelchair opposite the cage, where there was a bench for Laura and me to sit on. The old man seemed to slip into a reverie for a few moments as he watched the tiger. He was oblivious to the families passing in front of him, and had forgotten the two of us at his side.

‘Samuel Longden,’ he said eventually. He looked around vaguely, as if unsure where he was. ‘Was it Samuel?’

I wondered if we’d made a mistake. Perhaps Godfrey Wheeldon’s mind was too far gone for him to be any use. Though he had seemed lucid at the Old Vicarage, he was growing more vague by the minute. I had little experience with very old people, but I knew their rationality could fluctuate dramatically.

‘Do you remember why Samuel first came to see you, Godfrey?’

His eyes focused on me again. ‘Of course I remember. Do you think I’m ga-ga?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Some of the old biddies back at that place are completely senile, you know. Totally over the bridge. But I’m not like them.’

‘You had a link to one of his ancestors,’ said Laura quietly.

‘No, one of my ancestors was linked to one of his. You’re not listening properly. It all started with some letters.’

‘Samuel wrote to you?’

‘No, no. These were old letters. From some ancestor of Samuel’s to my great-great-great grandfather or something.’

‘Reuben Wheeldon,’ I said.

Godfrey clapped his hands in delight. ‘You know!’

‘Reuben Wheeldon was a friend of William Buckley, the resident engineer on the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal at the end of the 18th century.’

‘That’s right. William was an ancestor of Samuel’s, as I said.’

‘And of mine.’

‘Well, I managed to figure that out,’ said Godfrey scornfully. ‘Being as how your name’s Buckley too. I did tell you—’

‘You’re not ga-ga. Sorry, Godfrey.’

‘Samuel had tracked down this Reuben’s family, and eventually he came up with my name. He traced me here. I don’t know how he did it, but there are ways, aren’t there?’ He looked to us for confirmation, and I nodded. ‘He wanted to show me the letters.’

Godfrey began to cough. I was reminded of the car park attendant’s account of a man with a hacking cough he’d heard on the parking levels just before Samuel was killed, the same cough I’d heard myself that night in Castle Dyke. It was an appallingly small thing to go on. It might have been a heavy smoker like the attendant’s father, or a sufferer from a chronic condition like bronchitis or asthma. But it might just as easily have been a person with a bad cold, which had now passed off. The one bit of evidence I had could have been wiped out by a good night’s sleep and a Lemsip.

The tiger had continued to pace throughout our conversation. Where at first glance he’d seemed a powerful, noble animal, the more I looked at him, the more he diminished into a tired creature whose eyes contained a kind of hopeless longing.

‘He doesn’t like being caged either, does he?’ said Godfrey.

The old man became tired of talking and made no objection when we suggested taking him back to the Old Vicarage. But before we left the zoo, I got Laura and Godfrey together in front of the chimpanzee enclosure and took their photograph, promising to send Godfrey a copy when I’d had it printed. But it was Laura I really wanted a token of.

We went up to Godfrey’s room with him when we returned. I was about to write the visit off as a waste of time, but Godfrey had a couple of surprises for me. First, he pointed upwards with a bony finger.

‘Lift down that old suitcase from the top of the wardrobe,’ he said. ‘They keep on at me to throw it out, but it has all my little mementos in it. You have to keep something to remind you, or your brain goes completely. Some of the folks here have forgotten everything they ever knew. They sit propped in front of the telly all day. In their minds, they live in Coronation Street or in the audience of Blind Date . Pitiful.’

The suitcase was brown and battered, and when we sprang the catches, the lid flipped open in a twisted shape, as if it had been heavily trodden on.

‘There’s all sorts of stuff in there,’ said Godfrey eagerly. ‘I’ve got a whole collection of cigarette cards. One set was famous cricketers from the 1920s. Samuel was very interested in those.’

‘We haven’t got a lot of time,’ said Laura kindly.

He sighed. ‘Yes, I know. We old folk can be a bore. You’re interested in the letters, aren’t you?’