Blood Relatives (16 page)

‘Your book?’

‘The Burley cottage,’ Gordon enthused, ‘has wrought-iron finials.’

‘Has what?’

‘Finials! Finials!’

He drew me a finial on a piece of notebook paper. I toyed wi’ t’ fringes of t’ tablecloth, trying to pay heed. Post-punk growlers Magazine had been playing the FK Club the night before, and even now, sitting amongst all these posh grannies, the guitar riff of ‘Shot by Both Sides’ wor assaulting my head. I’d stood down by t’ stage, motionless and still fired up about t’ whole Tad episode. Howard Devoto wor spitting out his words for me and me alone. By t’ end of t’ night I wor proper khalied. Jugs the bouncer chucked me down t’ club steps, and I’d lain there on t’ pavement, curled up in a ball, calling Jugs a cunt.

‘Rick?’

‘Oh, sorry Gordon. So that’s what a finial looks like.’ I looked about us and chuckled. ‘Look at me, Gordon. Look at you and then look at me. And look at them.’

‘The bustling blue-rinse ladies of Harrogate! They’ll think we’re uncle and nephew. Of course, in my time that was what one always said – uncle and nephew. Especially if an older man was living with a younger one.’

Gordon often referred to ‘his time’, as if he’d been dumped in t’ present by aliens.

‘Have you ever lived wi’ anyone, Gordon? Anyone special?’

He clasped his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘There was someone once. Brendan. I had a thriving radio repair business. Brendan helped out. Everyone brought their radios to us. I could take a radio apart, have it all laid out on the table – filleted, I used to say, because everything was laid out flat, the valves, the wires, the whole caboodle – and put it back together again in no time at all. And it would work.’

‘But were you in love?’

‘Of course we were.’

‘So what happened?’

‘It was a bad time, back then. All these high-profile cases in the papers of men being arrested for loving other men – like the chap from Bletchley Park who worked on cracking the Ultra code.’

‘The what code?’

‘The Ult … Oh, never mind. There was a Nazi machine that transmitted in code, and the man who first cracked it, whose name eludes me just now, bloody hero of course, turned the whole course of the war. Well anyway, he was homosexual, and after the war he was arrested and charged with “gross indecency”. He committed suicide.’

Hearing the word ‘homosexual’, one of t’ old dears at the next table stiffened and peered at us sternly. If Gordon noticed, he didn’t show it. I didn’t give a rat’s backside what the posh old biddies thought or heard.

‘Turing! Alan Turing. I knew it would come to me.’

‘Can’t say I’ve heard of him, Gordon.’

‘Hmm. Well, he made the mistake of falling in love.’ He paused, tapping out another ciggie from t’ packet, then added wistfully, ‘There was someone else, much later, but …’

‘Thing is,’ I interrupted, ‘I’m in love.’

‘Ah. At your age I would have called it an infatuation.’

‘Eh?’

‘That would certainly account for your somewhat distracted demeanour. One moment all sunshine and light, and the next snapping like a crocodile on heat.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t worry! Embrace it!’

Embrace what, I wor thinking. Playing listlessly wi’ t’ cake fork, I said, ‘So did it end badly wi’ Brendan?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Gordon murmured. ‘Ah, the tea.’

A teapot wor planted between us, then t’ rum truffles, nestling in their pleated cases like chocolate golf balls. I leant my chair onto its back legs. The biddies at the next table had gone quiet.

‘I’ll be Mother,’ Gordon said, and poured the tea through t’ strainer into t’ china cups. He should have let it stew a little longer.

‘Do you think you’ll ever fall in love again?’ I asked.

Gordon stubbed out his ciggie and stabbed the truffle wi’ his cake fork.

‘Oh, one never loses the capacity for love,’ he said, pausing to raise the fork to his mouth, ‘only the opportunity.’

He coughed, took a large slurp of tea.

‘So? Spill the beans. About t’other one. After Brendan.’

Gordon’s face darkened. ‘Not many beans to spill, my boy. He was married, we saw each other off and on for about … about ten years. We used to go to the races. York, Wetherby, the St Leger at Doncaster – we even went to Aintree. Mind you, if you want to bet, make sure you have enough to lose. These days, I don’t.’

‘So what happened?’

Gordon set down his fork. ‘He died. Not all that long ago, as it happens.’ He eyeballed me levelly.

‘Sorry to hear that, Gordon. Truly I am.’

‘You know, Rick, I really shouldn’t smoke so much.’

On t’ weekend it wor made known that HE had struck again. In Huddersfield. It wor a bit of a shock to realise that it wor t’ same night, and about t’ same time, that I’d been searching for t’ Gemini. The latest victim, Helen Rytka, had been reported missing by her twin sister Rita. They’d both been on t’ game together, working team-handed, only t’ arrangement had gone awry somehow. It had taken the twin three days to pluck up the courage to open her gob. I wor thinking what she must have gone through in them three days, waiting, not knowing, fearing t’ worst. Somehow, it being her twin sister made it all t’ worse.

A few days later Rita appeared on Yorkshire TV in an appeal for information. She stared out at us, a round-eyed, olive-skinned, frizzy-haired teenager, and said she and her sister had ‘a psyche between our minds. If she had a problem I knew. I could feel it.’

In t’ Marquis of Granby a Catch the Ripper collection box wor going round. I added fifty pence. The
Yorkshire Post
announced a ten-grand reward for information leading to t’ conviction and arrest. The depot wor buzzing wi’ news of it. Craner said, ‘If anyone here is the Ripper, would they please come and tell me privately – I could do wi’ a fucking holiday.’

One of t’ drivers had been reported for being seen repeatedly in Manningham. He wor questioned; turned out his girlfriend lived in t’ area. No one questioned me. If they did, I’d keep shtumm or make up a lie.

The next Gay Lib meeting wor all about two things: the
Gay News
editor Denis Lemon’s appeal against his conviction for blasphemy, and the safety of womenfolk in t’ light of all t’ Ripper murders.

Someone blathered on for a friggin’ age about t’ cops spending hundreds of man hours staking out public lavs to snag a couple of old fumblers when ‘their resources would surely be better employed trying to catch this maniac and protecting the public’. Someone else wanted a show of hands on how many men had been stopped by t’ cops and questioned in connection wi’ t’ Ripper. Five hands went up.

After t’ meeting I made my excuses and went up the road to t’ Fenton to see t’ damage done. There worn’t much evidence of t’ fight. The broken glasses and stools had been replaced. One of t’ large mirrors behind t’ bar had a crack in it. The broken windows had been repaired. The stool Dora always sat on wor back in its position, an indent in t’ plastic seat. The atmosphere wor muted, as if a TV had been turned down to a background murmur.

I asked the barmaid after Dora. She shook her head. I sat mesen on Dora’s stool.

‘Give me a gin and tonic. A double.’

Next morn at the Corona depot Eric and I wor loading the wagon when two friggin’ coppers showed up in Craner’s office. Craner shut the door, but we could see what wor going on through t’ glass. The coppers wor stood either side of Craner, like two gateposts. I wor sweating and my skin wor starting to crawl. I wor thinking that maybe I’d been spotted in Huddersfield, or on t’ train. Or Tad’s licence plate had been clocked. I kept telling mesen that the chances wor about nil. I didn’t want it coming out where I’d been or where I’d spent the night. I worn’t sure I could even remember t’ way to t’ farm. And I certainly didn’t want Craner knowing owt about it.

Craner wor tapping his finger on t’ page of a round-book. The coppers, I could tell, wor asking him some questions, or having a few quiet words. Craner took off his specs and then put them back on again. Then he took a small book from his jacket pocket and handed it to one of t’ coppers. It had gold-edged paper, like a pocket diary or a phonebook. The one copper thumbed through it while t’other one moseyed about, opening cabinet drawers. There wor more words, and Craner wor looking edgy. After a while they shook Craner’s hand and left.

The newspaper billboards wor all about t’ discovery of Yvonne Pearson’s body under an upturned sofa on waste ground in Bradford, just behind Drummond’s Mill. She’d been missing for several week, and wor certainly murdered before Helen Rytka. It wor said that cos she hadn’t been discovered HE had gone back to t’ scene and moved the body into view.

It wor made known in t’ press that Yvonne had an address book of clients wi’ ‘special tastes’. The police wor working their way through it. There wor one who liked to be burned wi’ lighted ciggies. Someone at Gay Lib said James Dean had liked the same done to him.

For some reason this brought Craner to mind, and the coppers I’d seen flitting through t’ pages in his little black book. I couldn’t help looking at Craner and wondering.

Eric said he wouldn’t be surprised if t’ Ripper turned out to be a Corona van driver. We wor still confabbing on this and the meaning of t’ cops’ visit when we reached Mrs Husk’s.

‘After all,’ Eric said, ‘it has to be someone who knows his way about. Knows the streets, knows the red-light areas. Van driver, lorry driver or taxi driver. Mark my words.’

I wor still mulling on this when I rapped on Mrs Husk’s door.

‘It’s open, luv.’

Mrs Husk wor listening to t’ radio. She had both her hands on t’ back of t’ chair to support hersen. The radio sat on t’ table in front of her. Her lower leg wor still bandaged up, and her ankles had swollen like they wor oozing over her feet.

The radio wor a brand-new portable wi’ crimson casing, a soft handle and a light-grey dial. I’d never clapped eyes on it before. Where had it come from? Who’d paid for it?

Mrs Husk hushed me wi’ a raised finger before I could speak. She wor listening to
The Jimmy Young Show
. I recognised his smarmy, jokey delivery. His unfailing friggin’ happiness.

I nodded approvingly at the radio. Lord Snooty arched his back and repositioned himsen in front of t’ gas fire. Someone on t’ radio wor being interviewed. Jimmy Young wor speaking in a slightly lowered tone, to show that this wor serious. If that wor possible wi’ a man who sounded like he wor peddling balloons. That someone being interviewed wor Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield. I’d seen him on t’ telly: a white-haired, haunted-looking man. They wor talking about t’ Yorkshire Ripper.

Oldfield wor urging any listener – meaning Jimmy Young’s millions of women listeners – to search their consciences and report anyone (husband, brother, father or son) who’d been behaving oddly.

Mrs Husk harrumphed. ‘That’ll be most menfolk then,’ she said as I set the bottle down on t’ table.

On t’ pretext of another trip out, I persuaded Gordon to drive us over to Huddersfield. Once we were there we had a swift lunchtime half in t’ Greyhound, a gay pub more commonly known as the Whippet Inn. Being lunchtime, the Whippet wor almost empty, and the frumpy old barmaid set her knitting aside to serve us. I told Gordon my real intention: to search for Tad’s family farm up on t’ moors above t’ town.

‘Still infatuated, then?’

‘I just want to see if I can find it. Can’t do no harm, can it?’

Gordon agreed that it would do no harm, as the views up on t’ tops would be marvellous on such a beautifully clear day. But first of all, he said, he wanted to drive through Holmfirth to take in t’ cottage there.

We downed a couple more pints and some cheese and piccalilli sarnies before heading over to Holmfirth. Gordon wor miffed to find that the cottage wor locked up, but he took a couple of snaps of t’ outside wi’ his chunky old camera and and then we headed out onto t’ moor tops.

As the Humber climbed, I said to Gordon that I didn’t recall passing through Holmfirth that night wi’ Tad, but maybe I’d just missed it somehow. Gordon said that from t’ tops we’d be able to see for miles. In t’ daylight it all looked different. I didn’t care about t’ view, since it didn’t help me recollect none. The road twisted and turned. We passed by a formation of limestone rocks that looked like they might topple any moment but had most likely stood there for thousands of years.

At the top we stopped so I could take a piss into t’ roadside gully. Gordon got out and leant against t’ Humber, scowling at the moors. The wind blew Gordon’s hair and my piss stream sideways.

I said, ‘I could swear we came this way. It just feels right. We crossed a cattle-grid, and then sometime after that Tad took a right.’

Gordon huffed.

‘You said that about that last turnoff, and look where that got us. Up a dead end and me having to back her ladyship out of rather a tight corner.’

I scanned the horizon. Dark patches of moorland rose then fell away to t’ left, down toward t’ valley. The buffeting wind filled our lugs as it scudded the clouds across t’ sky and carried the bleating of late-spring lambs upwards from t’ lowland fields. Gordon wor cupping his hands, trying to light his ciggie. I could sense his growing impatience.

I said, ‘I know we came up that road back there, I remember t’ turnoff. It must be further up.’

‘Well, come on, then. We haven’t got all day.’

We got back into t’ Humber and headed further along t’ narrow, winding road.

‘There! Must be! See! That farmhouse roof in t’ dip, wi’ t’ trees. Has to be it!’

Gordon chewed on his ciggie end. He pulled the Humber smoothly onto a single-track farm road wi’ a line of grass down t’ middle. On reaching the farmyard, we came to a stop. There wor a gate. I couldn’t recall a gate.

‘Well?’

‘Dunno. Yes. Maybe … maybe. Yes. Yes!’

Hearing us, dogs starting yapping. The shippen to t’ right, the toolshed behind that, and off to t’ left the old farmhouse wi’ t’ sagging roof and the break of sheltering trees. Maybe t’ gate had been open and I hadn’t noticed? But it all looked sadder and scuzzier than I remembered.

‘I think this is it – yes, it is, it is! I swear!’