The Three Graves of Samuel Braden

By Michael Mail

Samuel Braden is being made to face mortality in the most acute way – he is dying of cancer.

And death is coming to haunt him in the form of an agonising regret; a regret centred around three marriages and the three estranged children that each marriage produced.

He manages to convince each of his children to visit with him, and to each he makes a startling request, that they promise to ensure that he is buried in his resting place of choice. It is startling because to each child he gives a different location.

In his last days, Sam is delivering a message that he had taken too long to deliver.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newton
• Release date: Aug 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781783017829

Book preview

Epilogue

1

Samuel Aloysius Mulcahy Braden thought he had gone to Spain to live. Instead, he was dying.

That proposition had been put to him in various ways, and in two different languages. The first time was at Our Lady of the Resurrection Hospital in Malaga delivered in rapid officious Spanish by a doctor who appeared more interested in picking at his beard. The translation that echoed from the nurse by his side was almost as incomprehensible, except for the gravity it conveyed.

Greater clarity came on Sam’s next trip back to Britain, and his third to the top floor of the Royal Liverpool Hospital - its cancer unit. The language this time was Liverpudlian English and all too familiar.

Sam initially regarded the fact that the cancer was inoperable was par for the course. He had carried the vague belief that the illness was not one that sufferers went through and out the other side, until he came to appreciate that many did in fact survive and he had been doubly unfortunate, developing a form of the condition that offered the no hope that was his original position. No hope was not precisely what the Royal was proposing. Qualifications to soothe his soul included such statements as there is so much of the body’s mechanisms that we still don’t understand, treatments are improving all the time and other variations on a theme.

It was only when Sam read up on the subject, using his mastery of the internet to pull up article upon article from across the globe, that he learnt that secondary cancer of the liver (it had rolled out from his colon) was the most vicious of the breed, the very king of cancers. Sam found himself almost amused by the idea. Getting the very best was a value he had wholeheartedly embraced throughout his adult life. Sam had purchased his first Porsche long before he had the means to, and only then did he get round to passing his driving test. He had pushed his finances even more dramatically to reside in leafy Barnford, even though generations of Bradens had been content to live out their lives in Liverpool 13.

It also explained why he had bought the luxurious mountainside villa in Spain that was to become his permanent home. Permanent and presumably last – unless there were mechanisms of the body we still don’t understand or treatments improving all the time.

At moments, Sam could convince himself to be philosophical. After all, the contemplation of death had been a very private and cherished pastime for as long as he could remember. He had made it into his seventies living a life comfortably fuller than most. He had built up a successful sports business, Spirit, which had sold for a substantial fortune. Being a millionaire in the days when that still stood for something meant he could afford himself every luxury, and he did, his last toy being a yacht stretching to a 100 feet from which he posed in Puerto Banus harbour. Moreover, Sam had enjoyed marriage so much he had ventured into it three times, and had three children as a result.

It was thoughts of family, his three ex-families, that brought the pillars of stoicism tumbling down. Sam never considered these marriages failures. It was not a word he would choose to apply to any aspect of his life. They were simply phases to be enjoyed, endured and then move on. But now he was thinking about his body failing him, and the experience was making him open to the idea that this was not his only one. It made him think of his family.

What was the opposite of stoicism? The words that flooded his mind were ones like - nervous, agitated, frantic, disturbed, upset. These were new emotions for Sam, although in truth they were always somewhere inside of him, part of that boy from Tuebrook Liverpool 13 he had buried under glamorous homes and fast cars. Well, the boy was back. After all those years of flight, Sam was running into himself again.

At first he considered these episodes panic attacks, brought on by the perfectly understandable reason that he had been informed that death, his own, was imminent. No one would begrudge him that. But he knew that something more profound was afoot and it centred on the realisation that he was alone.

Having experienced three marriages, being on his own had always been a form of bliss for Sam. He embraced the freedoms and irresponsibilities of the single life with the special relish of someone who knew intimately its alternative. Yet his illness had brought to the fore that other feature of his lifestyle that Sam never acknowledged – loneliness.

Sam had spent a lifetime avoiding the shadows of his past. His vision had been set relentlessly forward, forever onwards and upwards. That was why he had moved himself to Spain and new adventure. It was the shedding of old skin. And now loneliness was clawing at him, unsettling his days and haunting his nights, the loneliness of dying alone.

2

There were three children who carried the Braden surname, at least that branch of the Braden family rooted in Liverpool 13.

The fact that the surname had maintained its imprimatur on each of Sam’s three offspring was an achievement in itself.

The eldest, Caroline, had known her father as part of the same household for little more than the first three years of her life. The mother of William had attempted to have him formally adopted by her subsequent husband, a move Sam successfully thwarted. His third child, Dana, daughter of Sam’s third wife, had reduced her name to one – something that sounded like an oriental fruit drink - on becoming a Buddhist. However, she reverted to Braden when she resumed meat-eating, and retained the surname through and out of her own marriage. And children had begotten grandchildren. Dana had twins called Shining Star and Moon Blessing.

The fact that Sam wasn’t in touch with any of his children revealed more about his relationship with them than anything else. Why wasn’t he? Sam would invite you to pose them the question, getting his claim to victimhood in first. This would usually be followed by a diatribe against all three of his ex-wives delivered in such a way as to make it hard to distinguish one from another, as if they had all rolled into one formidable creature dedicated to his ruin.

The most recent audience to this was his Spanish housekeeper and all round aide-de-camp Carmen when she had raised the perfectly reasonable question - having waited some months to discover that Sam had actually produced offspring - why he didn’t display any pictures of his family. Nice man like you! she added, reminding Sam of that amazing capacity of people to presume to know others.

The absence was all the more conspicuous given the abundance in general of photographs around Sam’s house, providing a powerful narrative with one enduring theme – himself. There was Sam gushing as he handed a free pair of trainers to a clearly bemused customer – his company’s millionth sold; Sam offering grave advice to Margaret Thatcher at a Conservative party fundraiser; a black tie version of the man receiving an outstanding achievement award for his charity work; and Sam the sportsman fishing for giant blue marlin off the Florida Keys.

Of course, Sam had had his fair share, more than his fair share, of ‘significant others’ in his life prior to latest amour, the glamorous Sylvie, and the photographic evidence would exist somewhere in the house. However, what was the point of putting these on show - the emotional baggage of one’s past - in one’s living room of all places. It was surely a form of morbidity, Sam felt. He once came across the legend the past is for wimps, and that appealed, a lot.

Don’t imagine that Sam didn’t regularly think about his children, nor that he didn’t contemplate seeing them. However, for a man who prided himself on being fearless, this was always accompanied by a certain dread. He sensed much more would come of it than he could possibly cope with.

It helped that his days were organised around the feeding of an acute workaholism. His company, Spirit, was the baby he weaned, his network of business associates nearest and dearest. That stage in life referred to as ‘retirement’ appeared of the blue, purely because he was made what in technical commercial parlance was termed ‘an offer he couldn’t refuse’ and, having achieved his every ambition in one business, at sixty-four he wasn’t about to begin again with another.

For a man who relished never having enough time, the effects of this redundancy were dramatic in ways Sam never imagined. He did attempt to maintain the momentum of his former life, the appointment book being filled with golf, clay pigeon shooting and horse racing in spaces that were once dedicated to Board meetings, press interviews and store visits. Gym workouts lasted hours at a stretch, his personal trainer becoming his greatest intimate. But there wasn’t the same pace to it all because nothing fundamentally mattered, certainly not in the same way.

He did maintain his charitable interests, the most significant being his trusteeship of Scope working with cerebral palsy, hosting the occasional fundraiser. He also continued to dabble in business, tending to his portfolio of investments, nurturing his circle of contacts with whom he would perennially discuss ‘the next big deal’. The nearest he came to real work was the odd directorship, but it could never offer the same excitement, the same intensity. Sam was a helmsman, not an adviser, not an onlooker. He kept bumping into himself every morning, wondering what he would do with this old man in the mirror.

Then the illness arrived. Sam could still recall the precise moment he decided the pain in his side was more serious than any gym strain. It wasn’t easing, and there were other signs, like strange new experiences in the workings of what were neatly termed ‘bodily functions’. He instructed Carmen to run him a steaming hot bath. Temperatures in their part of Spain were hitting the 90s and she thought he was mad.

There was a memorable closing message from one of those airport throwaway How to be a Great Leader books, something warning of the perils of retirement. Sam did consider whether he had brought the suffering upon himself, letting drop unknown defences that had guarded his borders for as long as he soldiered in the trenches of business. Sam now had all the time in the world, and the world was being taken from him.

William was the only child with whom he had any form of contact. Being his sole male heir so to speak, Sam assumed he felt a certain primacy. It was a presumption Sam had done his utmost to undermine and being in touch now largely consisted of an annual Christmas card and phone calls which over the years had dwindled to the very occasional variety. In their routine, William would initiate the call and Sam would telephone him back to save him the charges.

William wasn’t doing particularly well. Sam knew that from what William would tell him, and from what he would not. Every time they spoke he seemed to be embarking on a new job, which he would describe in hugely enthusiastic terms, as if his whole life was about to turn a corner, yet he was always vague about what had been happening to him on the road he was on.

Sam couldn’t help but feel disappointed. There was a time when he had toyed with the idea of taking William into the business, but that was before Sam had been dramatically summoned by his mother to sort out William’s involvement with what she termed in her poshest Cheshire tones a vile crowd of drunks. From the moment Sam arrived William was behaving wildly and what ensued could best be summarised by how it ended, with William attacking Sam with his fists. There was no contact for years after. The first Sam heard from William again was when a snowman shaped envelope dropped through his letterbox one December.

Sam maintained a certain suspicion that there were motives behind William’s communications. Not that he ever asked Sam outright for money. It was more in the way William would allude to his problems, as if in sharing them, they might also share in the solution.

It hadn’t helped that William’s mother, the very beautiful turned deeply ugly Alison, had peeled and boiled Sam in the divorce’s financial settlement. Raising William had been his mother’s responsibility, and Sam had provided more than ample means.

What Sam appreciated most from his limited contact with William was the hope this inspired in respect of Caroline. She was his first, the child of his twenties, the one who most resembled him physically and, he was convinced, the one most imbued with his spirit.

That was how Sam accounted for the fact that she refused to have anything to do with him. It was how he himself would have behaved if their circumstances were reversed and, in a strange way, he admired her for it. Goodness knows what language her mother Marie would have come out with to describe him over the years. The straightforward explanation of what had brought their marriage to an end was a brainless act. It was not having the affair; Sam never for a moment thought that. His wife was pregnant and his wife had changed. Sam was in the Far East, even more remote in those days, taking full advantage of the hospitality offered by his Thai suppliers. It was the stupidity of telling Marie, as if she wouldn’t care, as if he was admitting to raiding the biscuit tin. Sam could look back on his life and still marvel at his arrogance, like he was invincible.

Fortunately, Marie’s second marriage had been a success and Caroline had received the type of upbringing Sam himself had been unable to provide. But he was no longer welcome, and that was Caroline’s decision. He remembered sending her a Labrador puppy, complete with huge red bow, for her fourteenth birthday and she had sent it right back. This was particularly painful because the transport of a live animal was no small operation and Sam had personally supervised every detail. Returning it was even more challenging and he found himself having personally to house and feed the creature, to each other’s bemusement, for what became several weeks.

At least Caroline’s anger pointed to a degree of connectedness. What could Sam say about his youngest Dana? He didn’t know her, had never met her. Dana was a mistake, in the same way as her mother, Barbara, was a mistake.

Sam had come across Barbara waitressing between jobs - she was a dancer by profession – at a café bar close to his offices. Sam went into the establishment because he had noticed Barbara going into it and the size of his tip, bigger than the cost of the pasta dish she had served him, certainly caught her attention. It was at a time in his life, his forties, when sex had assumed an inordinate importance. Pasta led swiftly to a long weekend in St Lucia, which proved one leisurely party interspersed with several highly competitive rounds of golf. (Sam was awestruck to discover that Barbara had a handicap of 12, and an amateur ranking. His own game appeared to improve dramatically although that might simply have been the impact of an inordinate amount of drugs on his judgement.) Over one late breakfast and early lunch, they discussed the pros and cons of various forms of wedding ceremony, which grew increasingly less theoretical, and by dessert they had resolved to see through their own version – that day. The hotel manager stood in as best man, and the ugliest receptionist Barbara’s maid of honour. They were all in swimsuits for the occasion, with the aisle culminating in the swimming pool shallows. It was wonderfully insane.

The marriage, such as it was, was in trouble from the moment they returned to England. Sam never lived with Barbara and he was already on to his next relationship by the time she announced the pregnancy. Neither Barbara nor Sam would consider an abortion, which meant he had only one escape route - to contest the paternity.

Sam threatened to have the baby DNA tested and Barbara instantly agreed. He certainly didn’t want another court case on his hands after his experience with the last. By the time the baby emerged into the world they had reached an understanding; Sam would make regular payments, monthly by direct debit, and Barbara would raise the child with his surname, but without revealing his identity. She would also provide an annual update, in writing, on the child’s progress – Sam liked to keep an eye on his investments. He was notified of Dana’s birth by Barbara’s accountant, along with bank details.

Sam did have a game plan of sorts. He hoped Barbara would quickly re-marry and Dana would grow up in the comforting delusion that step-dad was her real father. Barbara never married again.

So over the years, Sam became reconciled to adding Dana to his brood count. It was no more problematic than his non-existent relationship with his other two children, neither of whom, by the way, was aware of Dana’s existence. No one was. Sam paid his dues and Barbara kept her side of the arrangement.

Caroline, William, Dana - Sam was now thinking about them a lot, about all those missing family photographs along the sideboard.

3

Some people die from the outside in; others from the inside out.

One of Sam’s Directors at Spirit had terrible psoriasis. His doctor’s words were along the lines of him being fortunate in having an illness that manifested itself externally, rather than festering inside.

Sam’s condition was the reverse. On the outside, he looked the very picture of maturing yet rude health. Sam prided himself on still retaining a full head of hair, greying but not yet grey, and his pronounced mouth and nose tended to distract attention from the creases amassing along his forehead and around the eyes. His height at six foot one ensured he could still command a certain presence, and he sported the cultivated tan of the true retiree.

Exercise had always been important to Sam. It was the very business he was in, the product he sold, and every salesman right up to the salesman-in-chief had to embody that. His villa’s basement gym was the first room to be finished, complete with a range of glistening equipment, and he quickly acquired a personal trainer, who included several Arab princes among his clients. Sam was the only sponsor of Scope’s annual 10km Fun Run who also took part, a regular boast to his business peers, and the coverage that this customarily received had made him all the more determined to treat this as an annual commitment.

His illness had struck at a time when Sam was working out every day. He looked fit and trim, while inside he was crumbling. Sam would feel that at odd moments in the day; an unfamiliar nausea around certain foods, a stab of pain diving into the swimming pool. ‘Remember me’, his nemesis would whisper whenever he might be in danger of falling into the bliss of forgetfulness - remember me.

Sam did think about informing people, like his ex-pat gang of Derek, Morris and Gareth with whom he would regularly huddle to trade share tips and follow the horse-racing, but how do you introduce such a subject – slipping death into the conversation between the three-fifteen at Chepstow and four o’ clock at Sandown? And what could they reply? I’m very sorry for you, followed by a pained, pitying face with more than a flicker of – ‘there, but for the grace of god’.

When he paid a visit to what was universally called the ‘British shop’ in Marbella village to buy his pink papered Financial Times and favourite chocolate digestives, the owners Maggie and Vincent would greet him in their familiar effusive way and no one was any the wiser. Sam decided that was how he wanted it. He was reminded of a newspaper profile that once described him as the ‘consummate networker. Samuel Braden knows everyone, but no one knows him’.

However, he did tell two close former colleagues at Spirit. They were far removed from his Spanish world, and he wanted them to understand why his interest in Stockport’s turnover or projected sales in the latest Nike trainer, once the dearest of his passions, might be waning. Weeks later, a rowing machine arrived from the company as a ‘get well’ present, as if he might yet row away from his troubles.

He also revealed his situation to special friend Sylvie. She was in France on one of her regular commutes to her family, and he felt that they had been together long enough to owe that to her. Even over the telephone, he could sense the depth of her upset.

Sam could have undergone all manner of treatments. That was the advice at the Royal Liverpool, that he return to England for chemotherapy and radiotherapy and no doubt a shelf-full of therapies. He did wrestle with that one for a while. The Royal had featured in his past, in almost a mythic way, and the grey and wet of the city was far more in tune with someone in his state of being. Marbella wasn’t an easy world to inhabit being ill. There was so much beauty.

However, Sam had asked the Oncologist to be direct with him, to weigh up his chances if he underwent treatment, and it was the honest and bleak answer that convinced Sam to remain rooted to his Spanish patio. He wasn’t going to end his life in Liverpool, as if everything he had achieved was wiped away and he was that Tuebrook kid again. He would die rich and tanned and ready, with morning swims, chocolate digestives and the one-thirty at Doncaster.

Sam was never