‘Like a bolt out of the blue.’
‘And other journalistic clichés, no doubt.’
‘I wondered how you happened to meet him.’
‘Actually, I’d seen him hanging around the lock site a few times. We get the occasional spectator, you know. Asking their damn fool questions usually. You know — “who let all the water out?”, that sort of thing. It’s no problem really — we like people to know what we’re doing. But this old chap wasn’t that sort. He was different.’
The loo party returned and fussed about taking orders for another round of drinks. I let one of them persuade me to have another half of Marston’s. That would be my limit, at least while I was driving, and until I could get to my local back home.
‘How do you mean, different?’ I said.
‘Well...’ Andrew frowned as he thought about it. But his concentration slipped as he watched the women at the bar, and I had to drag him back to the conversation.
‘The old man, Andrew.’
‘Yeah. Well, he never said anything for a while. In fact, he didn’t move around much, just stood there propped on his stick in that old overcoat. No matter how cold it was, he would stand there, staring. He didn’t look well to me. Physically, I mean. A bit frail. Almost as if he wasn’t all there, too. But he’s an old friend of the family, isn’t he, Chris? You must know him.’
He looked puzzled at my insistence, and I could see he was starting to get bored with the subject.
‘But how did you get talking to him, Andrew? If he wasn’t asking questions?’
‘Oh.’ He waved a hand vaguely at the rest of the group. ‘One day a couple of the girls got in conversation with him. He was interested in the history of the canal. But way back, you know — right back to when it was built. They were out of their depth. And so was I, to be honest. Then somebody mentioned your name. “Chris Buckley might know stuff like that. You should talk to him,” they said.’
I tried to picture the moment. Had the old man looked surprised to hear my name mentioned? Or had it been what he was expecting?
‘I can tell you, he got so excited, I thought he was going to have a seizure on the spot,’ said Andrew. ‘And then today he came back again, and there you were. Cue the great reunion. Fate, eh, Chris?’
‘Yes.’
But was it really fate? Or something more deliberate, with little left to chance? You might say I have a cynical and suspicious nature. But I had the feeling I was the object of some clever manoeuvring by a person who knew exactly what he was doing. And the manipulation had started even before we’d met.
I drained my beer and told Andrew I had to be going.
‘Sure you won’t have another? We’ll be here for a while yet. The girls are just getting into the swing.’
‘No, I’m driving.’
‘Oh, so I see.’ Andrew peered out of the window and sneered at my old Escort parked near his bright red Jaguar XJS. ‘I suppose you have to save your energy for pedalling.’
I didn’t humour him with an answer, but my ears grew warm at the giggles from around the table. They were all well on their way to getting drunk, and I was far from it. The world seems a harsh and lonely place when you’re the only one sober.
‘This old family friend of yours, Chris,’ said Andrew as I stood up to leave. Suddenly he looked more clear-headed, and his eyes were assessing me. ‘Do you think he might have a bit of money, then?’
I shrugged. I didn’t know what to say. His question had struck straight to the heart of what I’d been thinking all afternoon, but hadn’t yet admitted to myself. Suddenly I’d found an elderly friend of the family in a frail condition. A man who was almost like an uncle, and who was, by his own admission, not poor. ‘There’s only you left,’ he’d said. Only me left for what? That was the question. It’s a sad fact that poverty can make you see the chance of money in everything.
‘Well, like I say,’ grinned Andrew, seeing my expression, ‘it could be fate.’
5
I woke up on Monday with a thick head after staying until closing time at the Stowe Arms. I’d become involved in a game of darts with some of the regulars, and recalled having lost money on a bet when my darts had bounced all over a board I could barely see by that time. Sure enough, my wallet was empty, and my pockets were cleaned out of change. I knew my current account was already overdrawn, which meant I would very soon be raiding the dwindling savings account.
After a few cups of coffee, I set about putting together an article on the advancing restoration of the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal, which I intended to try on one of the waterways magazines — Waterways World perhaps, or Canal and Riverboat. With a picture or two, it might earn me a few quid. It was peanuts, but everything counted.
With that thought in mind, I unloaded the film from my camera and set off to clear my head with a walk into the city centre to drop the film off at Boots for twenty-four-hour processing. Rachel was cleaning her front windows, and she called a cheerful ‘good morning’. I surprised her by not heading for my car, but walking away with a perfunctory wave. With the first blast of cold air, my thoughts were starting to stir again in a rational manner, and I couldn’t do with being interrupted by one of Rachel’s interrogations.
I was unsure exactly how to play the situation at the moment, but I knew that I didn’t want Samuel to come to the house in Stowe Pool Lane. Not just yet.
I suppose it was a defensive reaction — I was reluctant to let him penetrate any further into my solitary life and upset my routine. It was a means of keeping him at arm’s length. Instead, I’d arranged to meet him on Tuesday outside the bookshop in the Cathedral Close. He’d expressed a wish to see the cathedral properly for the first time in many years. I had no objection. On a Tuesday, it should be quiet enough. But I’d have to be careful not to let him tire himself so much that he was driven to an embarrassing outburst of the kind that had ended our last meeting. That had almost made me decide not to see him again.
So when Tuesday morning came, I walked up Gaia Lane towards The Close. The day was bright and clear again, and birds were clustered on the water — ducks and geese, gulls and swans, and a handful of smaller birds. Coots or moorhens, I was never sure which.
A few people ambled around Minster Pool on the perimeter path, some walking their dogs, others in pairs, deep in conversation, all huddled up in their coats against the cold or the intrusion of the outside world. Work was still taking place high on the south side of the cathedral, where scaffolding seemed to have been in place for months.
The old man was waiting outside the bookshop, gazing up at the three great sandstone spires they call ‘the Ladies of the Vale’ and the vast Gothic facade of the west front, which never fails to awe me. The carvings that cover the stonework are rows and rows of kings and saints, sculpted by medieval craftsmen who laboured for years to create their masterpiece. A vast well of love and devotion had been poured into that structure of wood and stone.
Samuel was still in his black overcoat and carrying his ivory-handled stick. But there was fresh life in his face, as if he’d spent the intervening hours sleeping and recharging his energy.
‘How old is the cathedral?’ he asked. ‘I can never remember things like that.’
‘There’s been a cathedral here for thirteen centuries,’ I said. ‘This one was started about 1195.’
‘More facts from your journalist’s bag of tricks.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Ah, but you’re not a journalist any more, are you, Christopher? My information is a little vague.’