Drowned lives, p.12
Drowned Lives, page 12
And, of course, there was that photograph. I’d dug it out again, to reassure myself that it existed. George and Samuel, June 1925. If I’d ever seen it before, I couldn’t remember it. But then, I’d never taken much interest, and my father hadn’t been one to reminisce about his family.
It was only my mother who ever brought out the old photos, on the occasions when in-laws were gathered and small huddles of grey heads had formed round the table to smile at the boyish faces of the Buckley men. I could have had no reason for assuming that the Samuel pictured with my grandfather was anything other than a childhood friend. How could I have guessed it was his brother?
I pictured Samuel Longden as I’d last seen him, walking painfully into the dusk on the corner of Conduit Street, pausing perhaps to lean on his stick. In my mind, his face was etched with pain and betrayal. In Castle Dyke, he didn’t hear the car that descended so fast from the ramp of the car park. Perhaps it didn’t have its lights on as it entered the street, and the driver failed to see Samuel in the dark, until it was far too late. I could see the impact of metal on a fragile body, the jerking of limbs, like a dummy tossed into the air. And then followed the sounds, the sickening thump of impacted flesh, the breaking of bones.
By the time Samuel hit the ground he would already be dying or dead, no more than a sack of clothing dropped on the pavement. I thought I heard a tinkle of glass from a shattered headlamp and the revving of an engine that covered a final cry from a dying man’s throat. I smelled the blood from his cracked skull. I could almost feel the agony of his pulverised body. ‘Multiple internal injuries’. An easy phrase to say. Not so easy to understand what it meant.
And then there were the actual memories. That deep, racking cough from someone nearby, the car I’d glimpsed accelerating away, and the street falling quiet. Only Samuel would have remained, still and lifeless, his body broken, his stick smashed in the gutter.
But the picture in my mind wasn’t complete. There were crucial details missing, specific features I couldn’t fill in. Who else had been in that street? What colour was the car, and what make? And whose face had been behind the windscreen?
I called again at the Fosseway restoration site. There was no Waterway Recovery Group work party this weekend, just the usual collection of volunteers, the dedicated few who came out month after month to wield their shovels and trowels.
In the last two weeks a new culvert had been installed to take a brook under the canal below Fosseway Lock. Sections of the old cast iron culvert, full of silt, had been removed, and most of the spoil had been taken to backfill behind the abutment. Several of the massive coping stones from the lock walls had been recovered too. They weighed up to four tonnes each, and it took a crane and a lorry to put them back into position. But there was much more brickwork to be restored.
Today, I could see that a JCB had exposed the footings of the bridge and the water channel. But disaster had struck when lumps of masonry got stuck in one side of the trailer, causing a wheel to sink into the soft ground and the trailer to keel over. A cluster of restoration workers were gathered round trying to free it from the quagmire.
One of the ways the Trust had been raising money was through a scheme for supporters to sponsor the steel pilings that strengthened the bank. The piles were stamped with the names of sponsors. I ran my eye over a few while I waited. They said ‘Emma and Sam’, ‘Panzer Cat’, ‘Tony’s Pile’ and ‘The Woollibotts’. A working party had been using a borrowed piling hammer, and claimed to have driven seventy-five piles in a single weekend.
Andrew Hadfield was among the workers, with a hard hat pushed high on his head. I finally managed to attract his attention from behind the safety fence and beckoned him over.
‘Andrew, I’ve got something I’d like you to have a look at.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s in my car. Can you spare a minute?’
‘This sounds interesting.’
We sat in the Escort, and I took the box off the back seat and placed it in his lap. Since my visit to the solicitor’s office on Friday, I’d spent what seemed like hours staring at that box and wondering whether I should smash it open. I’d even brought a hammer and chisel from the garage with the intention of starting the job. But I’d laid the tools down again. I couldn’t bring myself to damage the perfect grain in the wood, or to destroy something that had lasted intact for so long. It would have felt like sacrilege.
‘Mmm.’ Andrew lifted the box, turned it over, stroked his hand against the grain of the wood and stared at the three keyholes. ‘I suppose if you just turn the one key … no, I didn’t think it would.’
‘We tried that,’ I said.
‘We?’ he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
‘A … friend of mine has looked at it too.’
‘No, you’d need all three keys,’ said Andrew. ‘That’s the whole point. That’s why it was made like this.’
‘What do you mean? What is it?’
‘A canal proprietors’ box. It’s the sort of thing they used for keeping valuable items in, like deeds or share certificates, or the company seal.’
‘Would that be valuable?’
‘Of course. The wax seal was what made a document legally binding. Possession of the seal meant financial power. So the seal and its stamp were kept in a box like this, with three locks, which meant three proprietors had to be present to open it. They would each have their own individual key, you see.’
‘It sounds as though they didn’t trust each other very much.’
‘Trust each other? The canal companies were rife with jealousy and rivalry, not to mention the opportunity for dishonesty and misappropriation of funds. You must know the history of some of these companies. The Ogley and Huddlesford had its fair share of disputes and scandals, but it was no worse than many others.’
Andrew hefted the box and shook it gently. ‘No impressor in there, though. In fact, it seems to be empty.’
‘That’s what I thought, too.’
‘An interesting curio,’ said Andrew, handing the box back. ‘If it still had its contents, it would be a real treasure.’
‘And the keys, I suppose.’
‘Well, to have all three keys with it would be a real achievement. Bearing in mind they’d be in the possession of three separate people. This box was deliberately made difficult to open.’
He looked at me as I returned the box carefully to the back seat. ‘Are you going to try to find the other keys, Chris?’
‘How would I do that?’
He laughed. ‘I have no idea.’
I didn’t tell Andrew there was another key in my pocket, and I’d already checked that it fitted the box. I’d decided there were some things I should keep to myself. I could harbour a secret too. I had a good teacher in that art. But, as for a third key, I couldn’t begin to imagine where I would look. I could sense that it might become an obsession, if I let it.
‘I wonder where he got the box?’ I said thoughtfully.
‘Who?’
‘Samuel Longden.’
‘Is that where it came from? Well, well. He was a curious old man in lots of ways.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘No more than anyone else. But there’s been a lot of talk about him since he died. It seems everyone knew his name on the Birmingham Navigations and the Trent and Mersey, not to mention further afield. Boaters like to gossip when they’re tied up together. You should see them rattling away to each other at a rally. Did you know the boaters called Samuel “The Captain”?’
‘No.’
‘Well, the old Captain was a bit of a character apparently. Eccentric, even. That sort of person always attracts a bit of talk.’
‘Had you met him before?’
‘Not until he started turning up to watch the work parties. They say he’d been off the water for a few years. Couldn’t cope with a boat on his own any more, I suppose, at his age. They call it “having moss on the fender”.’
‘Did you ever come across his daughter?’
‘No. Never met her.’
‘Not many people seem to have.’
Andrew regarded me quizzically. ‘Did Samuel Longden take his project seriously, then? The book business?’
‘It looks as though he did,’ I said.
‘And you? Are you taking it seriously, Chris?’
But I didn’t know the answer to that one.
17
Back at the house, I placed the box file and the blue folder on the table to look at them properly. It seemed I was going to have to read Samuel’s manuscript for clues about what he wanted me to do.
But this was also the point of no return. Once I opened the folder, I knew I’d be committed. If I wanted to forget all about it, I could still put my coat on, walk out of the door and go down to the pub instead.
Then the phone rang. Saved by the bell, I thought stupidly. But it was Dan Hyde. After the ritual enquiries after my health, he came to the reason he’d phoned.
He rattled on about cash-flow and budget forecasts and credit control, another hold-up that would delay the launch of winningbid.uk.com. It was all stuff I didn’t understand, and I’m sure he knew it. My name was on the loan agreement, though – and on the lease for the offices.
‘So is it something I should be worried about right now?’ I said.
There was a moment’s silence, then Dan said, ‘You’ll need to start worrying about it very soon.’
I put the phone down and took a deep breath. Then I turned back to the bundle of manuscript pages. They lay on the table taunting me, hinting at mysteries and murmuring of a hidden past, just as Samuel Longden himself had done. A curious old man, Andrew Hadfield had called him. That seemed to sum up Samuel pretty well.
But had Samuel’s mind been up to the task of compiling a rational history on any subject, let alone his own ancestors? There was only one way to find out.
The pages of the manuscript were stapled together in chapters. I separated the first chapter of The Three Keys from the rest and carried it through to the sitting room. I settled down in an armchair with Boswell on my lap, and I began to read.
Samuel Longden began his account in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the height of ‘canal mania’. It was a time of speculation, with a surge of wealthy individuals investing in businesses for the potential profit, and inland waterways were a boom industry.
In South Staffordshire, the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal was built principally for the transport of coal, linking local mines to the Coventry Canal at Huddlesford and to the Wyrley and Essington at Ogley Junction. The first proprietors were notable men from the Lichfield area, corporation members or county officials, often connected by mutual business interests, or by marriages between their children.
There were several pages in the manuscript about the leading proprietors, who seemed to me to have been a set of dubious and idiosyncratic characters. Anthony Nall, the first chairman of the canal company, owned a substantial amount of property in Lichfield as well as several coal mines, but his term as chairman was marked by acrimonious disputes with other proprietors and employees. His main ally was his brother Joshua, a merchant who became Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the county and later Chief Magistrate. He had a farm at Leomansley, where he was said to have lived for many years practising his flamboyant signature.
There was James Allwood, a doctor; Edward Wilkinson, an apothecary; Robert Sykes, landlord of the Angel Inn, the venue for corporation banquets and canal company meetings; and Adam Henshall, who despite serving as a magistrate himself was continually being told to remove the detritus of his grocery business – hogsheads and cakes from outside his warehouse in St John Street, and dung and stone from Market Street.
According to Samuel, an important figure was John Frith, a solicitor who’d been steward to successive dukes and was Clerk of the Peace. He had a flourishing law practice in offices near the Market Square. But Frith was elderly and not physically active, so his junior partner Daniel Metcalf took on the role of chief administrator and legal advisor for the canal company. Metcalf was only twenty-six, but was said to be very ambitious.
Other influential proprietors were the Parker family, merchants and exporters. When financial services became more organised, two Parker brothers, Isaac and Seth, developed into Lichfield’s earliest bankers, and Seth was appointed company treasurer.
But it was the Reverend Thomas Ella who became the central character in the story. He was a prominent Lichfield personality, headmaster of a local school, considered ‘a real gentleman and scholar’, well known for his generosity and public spiritedness. He took snuff, gambled at cards and enjoyed brandy and wine. He dressed well, wearing black stockings of superfine cotton, silver buckles on his shoes, and silk handkerchiefs.
Ella was a Cambridge graduate and had wide interests. He was secretary of a circulating library and distributed periodicals like The Universal Magazine to gentlemen of the neighbourhood. In his later years he founded several charitable institutions. He was happily married, but there had been a tragedy in his family with the death of his newborn son, who lived only three weeks. Ella baptised him at a private service, but the child died ten days later.
Much of the early work in getting the canal scheme under way was done by Ella, described by Samuel as a ‘visionary’ whose efforts were tireless in persuading friends and acquaintances to put up the money. Out of their own pockets these men paid for ‘Land for Wharfs and the making the same and also all Collateral Cuts, Basons, Reservoirs, Engines and all other Works and Conveniences.’
The proposed Ogley and Huddlesford Canal was to be seven miles long, with thirty locks. A 1794 Act of Parliament empowered the company to raise £25,000 from the sale of two hundred shares, and a further £20,000 if necessary – money that would be paid back out of charges for tonnage rates.
Then began the actual work. The design of the project fell to the famous engineer William Jessop, who accepted the role of Chief Engineer, though working simultaneously on several other canals. The survey of the route was carried out by one of Jessop’s assistants, who must have impressed the proprietors with his skill, because he was subsequently appointed Resident Engineer.
Samuel quoted a recorded reference for a resident engineer as ‘A person capable of conducting the business of a Canal through, viz, that he is a good Engineer, can carry an Accurate Level, and has a perfect knowledge of Cutting, Banking, etc, and also that he is a compleat Mason.’ But he added that it failed to mention three important qualifications for the job – diplomacy, for dealing with irate or greedy landowners, the authority to handle uncooperative contractors, and an indefatigable taste for travelling.
Once the chief engineer had drawn up his specifications, he left for the next project, and the job of supervising the actual building of the waterway fell to the resident engineer. He worked on one job at a time, which usually lasted many years. By the time most of them finished their first major job, canal mania would be over.
As a result, the resident engineer became neither rich nor famous. He expected to get the blame if things went wrong, but very little credit when the canal was complete.
Samuel described the resident engineer chosen by the Lichfield proprietors as a young man, only thirty-two years old. Like Samuel, he lived in Whittington, where he’d seen the Coventry Canal being constructed as a child. This may have been his very first experience of the problems of theft and dishonesty, which bedevilled some canal projects.
The new resident engineer was a single man when he was appointed, but shortly afterwards he met his future wife, Sarah, a local woman, and they married in 1796. He was able to settle down near Lichfield and start a family.
Four years later, the proprietors of the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal were shocked to receive serious allegations of fraud against their resident engineer. Before they could act, he’d vanished under suspicion of corruption and embezzlement, leaving behind his wife and a young son.
And Samuel’s chapter ended with the most vital information of all. That resident engineer’s name was William Buckley.
18
Late on Monday morning I headed towards Frog Lane to make my statement at the police station. I had to wait for a while in the reception area, kicking my heels until they found someone with time to see me. There were a few other people sitting around on plastic chairs, but they looked more like long-suffering relatives than hardened criminals.
Eventually, I was taken into a tiny room with a view down a corridor along which the occasional police officer walked. A uniformed constable came through clutching a file. His face was pink, and he looked about sixteen. By the time I’d gone through my story again and he’d written it down word for word, the whole tale sounded pathetic, and I was sweating with embarrassment. I desperately wanted to make something up that sounded more convincing and wouldn’t portray me as a cowardly fool. But there was nothing I could do that would make this youth regard me with approval, no words I could say that would restore my self-respect.
By the time I emerged from the police station, I felt as though I’d been subjected to the third degree with bright lights and hosepipes. But there had been nobody torturing me except myself. I’d seen my humiliation written out in black and white, and I’d signed my name to it for posterity.
It was the first time I’d been in the Frog Lane area since Samuel Longden’s death. Part of me wanted to turn away from the scene as a place it was best not to see. But instead I made my way to the corner of Castle Dyke, intent on punishing myself further, seeking the traces of blood stains or fragments of broken glass in the gutter. There were none, of course – the evidence had been cleaned up and tidied away. If only the city council employed someone who could wipe away the shame that was staining my mind and running in the gutters of my thoughts.
