Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

I thought of all that I’d gone through over the past few weeks. From Samuel’s death to my own near-incineration on board Kestrel . It would be an immense relief to have it in my power to put an end to it all now. But could I? Was I able to turn my back on the history of my family, on Samuel himself, who seemed to be crying out for revenge? But the voices crying to me were personal, and I didn’t know how to put these thoughts into words that Rachel would understand.

‘There’s Samuel’s fifty thousand pounds,’ I blurted out, though it was really the last thing I was thinking.

‘For God’s sake, Chris,’ she said angrily. Then she subsided. ‘I’m sorry. I keep forgetting that the money’s important to you. I suppose you could talk to Samuel’s solicitor and see if there’s any possibility of interpreting the conditions of his will in such a way that the book doesn’t have to be published.’

‘I could try, I suppose.’

‘It’s worth it, isn’t it? Well, I think it is. I’d be very glad, Chris, if you could bring yourself to do it. It would be the right thing.’

‘I’ve never quite been able to figure out what the right thing is,’ I said.

She lowered her voice, almost to an intimate whisper. ‘Sometimes we have to follow our instincts.’

My hand was getting warm where Rachel held it. She was wearing a different scent today, something expensive that was teasing my senses into life.

‘Of course we can’t change the past, but we can change what happens next,’ she said seriously.

‘It’s too late.’

‘You sound so bitter.’

‘No, not bitter — realistic.’

She turned my face towards her, and her fingers burned on my cheek as she gazed fixedly into my eyes. ‘Please, Chris, please — go and talk to Caroline.’

It was ridiculous. The more I pieced together the fate of William Buckley, the deeper became the mystery around my great-uncle’s death. It was as if the two events were inextricably linked across two hundred years, tied together with an irremovable knot. They were opposite ends of a line looped over a pulley — if you pulled hard on one end to draw it towards you, the other end moved just as rapidly away. Somehow there had to be a means of grasping both ends at once and seeing what it was that I held in my hands. But was it feasible that a feud could survive for so long, to burst back to life nearly two hundred years later?

I’d thought the Buckley family tree to be diseased. But over the years, it had been slowly strangled by a parasitic growth that had grown alongside, attaching itself to the tree’s roots, winding itself through its boughs, snapping off its branches, and smothering its shoots. This parasite had drained it of life with a suffocating embrace, like two lovers locked in a suicide pact. Here and there a bough had withstood the insidious, creeping menace. But not for long.

That night, my head was filled with images of William Buckley, and the people who surrounded him, people who were no more than names to me. Seth Parker and the dishonest Francis, who’d ended up in an Australian penal colony. Sarah Buckley and the infant Edward, less than two years old when his father had vanished. What had Edward felt about William when he’d grown up?

Then there were all the others — the Nall brothers, Daniel Metcalf, Adam Henshall and the Reverend Thomas Ella. And Reuben Wheeldon, William’s friend in Cheshire, who had come as a surprise to old Godfrey, ancestor or not. A memory of Godfrey Wheeldon came to mind and made me smile.

But there was one sentence of William Buckley’s that seemed to echo in my mind still. It was a sentence whose resonances touched something deep inside me. It was no mere platitude — it seemed to have a painfully personal meaning for him. Outwardly he is all politeness, yet at every turn he seeks to thwart me . Who had it referred to? It was the question that filled my mind as I drifted off to sleep.

I didn’t know that a hundred miles to the north, in Cheshire, the staff of the Old Vicarage nursing home were talking about Godfrey Wheeldon’s latest visitor.

I felt ridiculous having to obtain Caroline Longden’s phone number from Mrs Wentworth, but it was too late to put off doing anything purely because of pride or embarrassment. It was long past the time for prolonging family divisions and propping up the walls that had been built between us. It was time to be putting things right.

I was surprised to recognise the phone number as a local one. For some reason, I’d assumed that Caroline lived away from the area, and that this was the reason she was so seldom seen at Ash Lodge. But now it occurred to me there must be some other reason for her to stay away. No doubt she wanted to get on with her own life, even though that involved Simon Monks.

I managed to get hold of her on the third attempt. As expected, she was cool, and reluctant even to discuss a meeting. But eventually I persuaded her I might have some genuine information about her father’s death and the fire that destroyed Kestrel , and she agreed to meet me. She gave me her address, which turned out to be in Alrewas, an attractive village only a few miles north of the city and very close to Fradley Junction, where our first conversation had taken place.

‘Oh, and Caroline — you will be alone, will you?’

For all I knew, she might be living with Monks. Or she might feel she was safer with him alongside her when we met.

She’d obviously already considered the point. ‘If you really have information, I’ll have to discuss it with Simon. You realise that, don’t you?’

‘Yes, fine. It’s just that—’

‘Yes, I know.’ She sounded faintly amused. I didn’t like the idea of Caroline laughing about me with Monks, but I restrained a sarcastic jibe. ‘All right, I’ll be alone,’ she said.

Caroline lived in the end cottage of an attractive row of late-eighteenth-century properties, with a tiny front garden that was starting to produce spring flowers, crocuses competing with the snowdrops. Inside, the rooms were furnished very simply, almost sparsely, with an eye for the exact position of a bentwood chair or a rag rug.

While Caroline served coffee in a little sitting room with white-washed walls and a cast iron fireplace, I noticed a music stand and a cello case in one corner, and remembered that this was the girl who’d been so musically talented.

Caroline was smartly but casually dressed in a cashmere sweater and jeans, with her hair tied back in a yellow ribbon. Her manner seemed to say she wasn’t going to make too much effort for me, and that coffee was all I would get. There weren’t even any chocolate biscuits.

She sat in silence while I told her about the Parkers, though her eyebrows rose when I described a two-hundred-year-old feud as being at the heart of our problems. She sat sipping her coffee with one foot tucked underneath her, until I told her about Frank and repeated his story. Then she put her cup down and her coffee grew cold.

‘You’ve met this Leo Parker then?’ she asked at last, the first question she’d put since I arrived.

I told her about his visit to Stowe Pool Lane.

‘He was concerned about his family’s reputation,’ said Caroline cautiously. ‘His father and stepmother. And his stepmother was—?’

‘Mary. My grandmother. George’s first wife.’

‘I see. The old story. It was all before my time.’

‘But you must know what happened between George and Mary?’

‘No. Mum told me some things, but not about George and Mary. She was more interested in an affair that Dad had when he was younger.’

‘Really?’

‘It was some sort of romantic liaison that their families didn’t approve of. I don’t know the details, but apparently they ran off together. To Ireland, I think. They lived together for a few years, but they never married. I think Dad must have been very much in love with this woman — it was a tragedy in his life that he never got over. So Mum told me. It seemed to add to his attraction, as far as she was concerned. But Dad never talked about it. Not to me, anyway.’