Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

He gazed at me for what seemed like an eternity, glanced once more at his watch, then stood up.

I thought he was getting rid of me, but instead he said: ‘Come and meet one more relative.’

‘What?’

‘Follow me.’

So I followed Leo Parker as he led me towards the annexe at the back of his property. As we entered, I noticed the handrails on the walls, the ramps instead of steps. Which relative of his was I about to meet?

Parker knocked on a door. ‘It’s Leo,’ he called.

He didn’t wait for an answer, but walked into a sitting room that struck a jarringly old-fashioned note out of keeping with the rest of the house. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. The curtains were drawn, as if the occupant couldn’t cope with too much daylight.

‘Here she is,’ said Leo.

Then he raised his voice. ‘Christopher Buckley has come to see you.’

I saw an old lady sitting upright in an armchair. She turned her head slowly towards me. A second later, I was transfixed by her unnervingly piercing stare. But there was no recognition in her eyes, only a blankness that suggested a total lack of comprehension.

Leo Parker ushered me forward with a hand on my shoulder.

‘This is Mary,’ he said. ‘This is your grandmother.’

The old woman looked from me to Leo Parker when he spoke. But I could still see no spark of recognition in her eyes. She had no idea who either of us was.

I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Mary might still be alive? It had been Rachel who pointed out that she’d be about the same age as Samuel. And here she was, alive and, well... not exactly kicking.

I could sense Leo’s eyes on me, watching for my reaction. I cursed him silently for putting me in this situation without any warning. But then I realised it was entirely my own fault. I recalled his first visit to my house. It was his stepmother he’d been most concerned about, not his father. He didn’t want to cause any further distress, he said. And he’d dismissed my remark that it was all in the past and couldn’t mean anything to us now. That’s where you’re wrong, I’m afraid . I could hear Leo speaking to me in that tone, as if I was stupid. And it was true — I had been very stupid.

Mary hadn’t spoken at all, and I realised she wasn’t going to. Despite the superficial directness of her stare, I could see there was no expression behind it, no emotion or thought. No understanding. I’d found the woman at the centre of the Buckleys’ story, yet she wasn’t really here at all. Those piercing eyes were gazing beyond us to something that had happened long, long ago.

‘She has good days and bad days,’ said Leo.

‘And this is a bad day, I gather.’

He shook his head. ‘Not the worst. At least she’s calm.’

‘Does she understand what we’re saying?’

‘Who can tell? She doesn’t let on if she does. The only way she ever communicates is through screaming and lashing out. It’s frustration, of course. So there’s probably some level of understanding, but she’s unable to express it.’

I was feeling very uncomfortable standing in this room that was so obviously hers. I knew I’d intruded into her world without permission. She met my eyes as I studied her face, looking for a family resemblance. Did she have my father’s mouth, the fleshy pout that I’d known so well? But no. Despite everything, I could see that she’d been a handsome woman. She still bore herself with a poise and dignity belied by her vacant gaze.

‘Hello, grandmother,’ I said slowly, as if the words were every bit as unfamiliar to me as the person herself.

I waited in vain for a response. I was craving the smallest acknowledgement from this old woman more than anything else I’d ever wanted in my life. But it didn’t come.

What was going on inside her head? Did Mary sometimes remember the three men in her life — her first husband George Buckley, who she’d betrayed while he was away fighting in the war, or his brother Samuel who tempted her into a fling, that impulsive flight to Ireland with the young Arthur in tow? Or was her real love her second husband, Matthew Parker? Had her dalliance with the Buckley brothers been a mistake, the impulsive actions of a passionate young woman?

Or was there something more to Mary Parker? Perhaps a deliberate cruelty that was unfathomable to me, but which might be the source of the old woman’s anguish on her really bad days. Mistakes could come back to haunt your conscience in the most painful ways, especially when it was far too late to put things right. Samuel had told me her actions were unforgivable.

Perhaps my grandmother had never forgiven herself. Yet I couldn’t ask her.

I wondered why Samuel hadn’t mentioned she was still alive. Didn’t he know himself? Or had it been one of his deceptions, a vital piece of information that he’d decided to keep to himself, a tidbit he hoped I would discover for myself. I felt as though I was following a path he’d ordained for me. Visiting Leo Parker today hadn’t been my choice, or fate, or coincidence, but something Samuel Longden had anticipated. For a man obsessed with the past, he’d seen the future very clearly.

Leo touched my arm. ‘We’d better leave her now, Chris. She gets tired very easily.’

‘Who looks after her?’

‘She has a nurse who comes in every day, and full-time carers. She’s very well looked after.’

I let him lead me out of the room and back into the open. It was only when I breathed in the fresh air that I realised the room had been thick with some kind of scent, an old-fashioned aroma redolent of lilac and jasmine. Stepping through that door had been like physically passing from the present into the past. The sense of relief at being back in my own time was overwhelming.

‘You can come and see Mary again, if you want to,’ said Leo. ‘But let me know. As I said, there are bad days.’

A few minutes later I was driving home up the A5 and through Lichfield in a daze, trying to digest the story that Parker had told me. The rain had become heavier, veiling the roads and traffic in a stream of water that ran across the Escort’s windscreen. And there was another, more painful, blurring in front of my eyes that the windscreen wipers could never touch.

Perhaps I was right about the diseased Buckley family tree, after all. It certainly looked unlucky. An ancestor disgraced and possibly murdered, another drowned in suspicious circumstances. A son ruined, two brothers forced permanently apart by betrayal and jealousy. One driven to suicide, the other to a renunciation of his Buckley blood. My father, emotionally scarred by his childhood upheavals. And myself, an ineffectual end product of one of those embittered branches.

My Great-Uncle Samuel, it seemed, had been unhinged by his fixation with the past. The man they called the Captain had been all at sea by the end of his life. His brain had silted up and his keel was holed. From the grave he was doing his best to send me the same way, to undermine the mental certainties of the very last of the Buckleys.

I could understand the guilt that Samuel had been devoured by when my grandfather had killed himself. The bigger the breach with someone, the harder it is to cope when they die. And Samuel had been partly responsible for driving his brother to his death, it couldn’t be denied. George’s experiences in the war may have begun the rot, but the great betrayal by the two people he’d trusted most in the world must have kicked the skids out from under a damaged psyche, pushed his reason beyond the limits where normal life became impossible.

Who knew what he had been thinking when he took the money from his clients’ accounts to cover his accounting errors? Had he seriously believed he’d never be caught? Or had he just not cared? Did he, in fact, hope that he’d be found out, bringing an end to a situation that he was powerless to control? With clinical depression, the mind loses all sense of proportion, and small problems can seem immense beyond all coping. George had reached a stage where nothing gave him enough reason to carry on living in the face of betrayal, despair and ruin.