Evil Relations (36 page)

The three of us are in good spirits for once, thanks to Dad’s news. Even Maureen looks brighter and goes to the trouble of doing her hair and make-up. We scrub up and I go out for a crate of beer, and chips and mushy peas. Maureen has set the table like a silver service waitress by the time I get back and Dad is already in the kitchen, gearing up to do the cruel deed.

He’s in there for what seems like hours. Maureen keeps rushing in to hand him beer, keeping her eyes away from what’s happening on the cooker. Finally, red-faced and more than slightly tipsy, Dad emerges carrying his banquet. To be honest, his presentation isn’t up to much, but what can you do with giant lobster, chips and mushy peas?

I’m shocked at the change of colour in the crustaceans. We sit round the table in uncomfortable silence, staring at our plates. I look at Maureen. She looks at me and then we both look at Dad and all three of us know that our knives and forks aren’t up to the task of opening up the tough pink lads before us.

Dad leaves the room and returns with his work hammer. He removes the lobsters from our plates and disappears into the kitchen again. After five minutes of thunder he enters the room with one plate full of shell-encrusted, obliterated remains . . . and we decide to settle for chips and mushy peas without a gritty side order.

Like I said, you don’t get many lobsters on the menu in Hattersley.

* * *

It was around this time that David’s birth mother, Joyce Hull, attempted to be reconciled with the son she had given up for adoption.

David states quietly, ‘There are decisions you make when you’re young that you regret when you’re older. At the time you’re convinced you’re doing the right thing, but later . . .’ He pauses and inclines his head towards the hallway, where the photograph of himself and Joyce hangs on the adjoining wall. ‘When I was 19, I had the chance to meet Joyce. Just once. I turned it down and now, obviously, I regret it bitterly. Time is rolling on and I just wish . . .’ He shakes his head.

David’s dad returned home from town one afternoon with the news that he’d encountered Joyce in a pub. They spent a couple of hours talking and when Jack said goodbye it was on the understanding that they would meet up later – and that he would do his best to persuade David to come along. Jack booked a table in a city restaurant and arrived at Underwood Court hoping David would want to meet his birth mother. But his son’s reaction was one of fury, as David recalls: ‘I couldn’t believe it when Dad turned up and said he’d been with
her
. He was very emotional about it and had got himself . . . not tanked up, but definitely not sober. The emotion and the drink were causing sentimental things to happen in his head and he got very tearful as he tried to convince me to go back into town with him.’

David pauses again before continuing: ‘Dad was so hopeful I’d agree that he’d even booked a table. That didn’t sit well with me, having decisions made on my behalf. The next ten minutes weren’t pleasant. We didn’t come to blows, but it was nasty. A definite negative, you might say. But there was no way I was going to be introduced to the woman who had abandoned me. Dad got very upset – he really wanted it to happen. I remember shouting at him, “Dad, what the hell do you expect me to do? Walk in and say, ‘Hello, Mum’? I’ve only ever had one mum, and you, old man, are far below her. As for this other woman . . . no. It’s not going to happen.” And it didn’t.’

At this point, David’s wife Mary interjects: ‘I think perhaps if Joyce had contacted Dave when the trial was going on – that might have been slightly different. But she didn’t, even though she must have been aware that it was her son who was giving evidence in such a terrible case. Any mother worth her salt would have reached out to her child there and then – not left it to a chance encounter in a bar with the father.’

Jack returned to town alone. He and Joyce met up and had their meal together, and he returned home late that night ‘a little more drunk, a little more tearful’, as David describes it. But after that evening, there were no further meetings between the two. ‘That was it,’ David admits. ‘My one chance was gone. But I think it would have completely freaked me out to meet Joyce then, anyway. It’s only a shame from today’s perspective. But so much else was beginning to spiral out of control then . . . meeting Joyce wouldn’t have helped. If anything, it might have made the situation worse. And I could not have coped with that – physically or mentally.’

He shakes his head again. ‘I was losing control, and I didn’t know it . . .’

* * *

Underwood Court, third floor, flat 18. Fucking shit hole.

On my landing there are three other flats, but the residents are virtual strangers to me. Sometimes I stand in the corridor, behind the door to the communal hallway, listening to the lift shunting between the floors, and to the bottles crashing through the refuse chute into the bins far below. When I’m certain there’s no one lurking about, I snap the lead on Bob’s collar and together we go out, quiet so as not to alert the ever-vigilant Mr Page.

Tonight is different. Tonight I have a mood upon me so dark that I need night-vision goggles to negotiate my way through it. Instead of sneaking out of the flat I slam the door as hard as I can, thinking:
Wake up, you fuckers, I’m off for a walk. Fuck you, Mr Page – here comes Bob the dog, right past your fucking door.
I’m carrying a new stick because the police never got round to handing back my old one. Fuck them, too.

My head is throbbing from the row I’ve just had with Maureen. She’s disappeared and all I can do is walk the dog. I’m chuntering away to myself as I thump down the first flight of stairs
: bastards, they’re all fucking bastards, Brady bastard, Hindley bastard – two Hindley bastards – fuck them all.
I need fresh air. I know I’ve said some cruel things to Maureen again, but I need to say them to help clear the pain from my head. I wish I could get drunk, but I’ve got no money, and instead the last words I screamed at Maureen roll around my head like dice in a cup:
Myra’s a cunt, your mother’s a cunt and you’re a fucking cunt. Maureen fucking Hindley, these are your people, you’re all fucking rotten.

I’m almost at the bottom of the steps when I hear a shuffle and small cough from under the stairwell. Maureen has been gone for a couple of hours and I’m shocked to find her huddled up in the corner against the wall, using her coat like a blanket to hide beneath.

‘Fucking hell,’ I mutter, racing down to her. ‘Come on, girl, get up out of there, what the hell are you playing at . . .?’

She turns her face further into the corner.

‘Please come out, Mo,’ I speak softly, hoping to convince her my anger has gone.

She looks at me. Her eyes are full of tears; the heavy black mascara has been washed away and lumps of it are stuck to her pale skin. I reach into the opening below the stairs and take the coat from her, then grasp her hand and pull her gently out.

The front of her blouse is a mass of vomit, thick and stinking. I look at the floor and see an empty bottle of Lucozade and several aspirin containers on their sides, also empty.

Maureen starts to cry at the shock on my face. ‘I’m so sorry, Dave, so sorry . . . is everything all right, is everything all right . . .?’

It’s the same voice I remember from the taxi drive home from the hospital after Angela died, and the same words:
I’m sorry, so sorry, is everything all right?

‘Yes, girl,’ I try to reassure her, ‘everything is all right. Now come on, out of there.’

We stumble upstairs with a baffled collie at our heels. In the flat I lead Maureen through to the bathroom, then dive into the kitchen to mix a jug of salt and water. Paul is asleep. Dad wants to know what’s going on, but I tell him to fucking leave it, this isn’t his business. He doesn’t say another word while I pour out glasses of salt water and take them through to the bathroom, pouring the fluid down Maureen’s throat until she vomits. When she can do nothing but retch, I wash her with a cold cloth and put her to bed.

Dad stands in the living room doorway, genuinely concerned, but I’m in no mood for it. I empty the rent tin and head over to the pub. Everyone knows who I am, but for once I’m greeted with silence instead of aggression; something must show in my face. The barman serves me nervously. I ask him:
how much is a bottle of whisky to take out?
The price he gives me is four times what I’d pay in an off-licence, but I push the notes across the bar to him and tramp home.

Back in the flat I check on Maureen. She’s in a deep sleep, so I stack up the stereo and turn the volume as high as it will go. Fuck the lot of them. Dad picks up Paul and takes him into the kitchen, shutting the door. Fuck you too, I think.

I drink straight from the bottle, letting the music pound around me. I just want to be somewhere else; I need everything to disappear. The loud music melts the pain.
Be-Bop-A-Fucking-Lula, Three Steps to Heaven, Chantilly Lace, One Night with You and take me back to the Summertime Blues, play me your do-wop and bop-she-bop music and ask me do I wanna dance, please tell Laura I love her but don’t you ever step on my Blue Suede Shoes.

When the adrenalin has drained from my veins, I stagger to my feet. Dad and Paul have been in bed for hours. The pain hasn’t gone, for all that; it’s come back ten times stronger. Tears pour out of me and I’m so filled with anger and hatred that I punch the wall, again and again, always missing it, hitting nothing and putting myself on my arse. I hear Maureen’s pleading voice in my head and answer her silently:
of course everything is all right, why wouldn’t it be all right, everything is fucking wonderful. Why are you hurting yourself, Maureen, why are you sorry? It’s me who’s hurting you, hurting us, but I can’t get it out of my head . . . the Hindley thing, the Hindley thing, the Hindley thing. It isn’t you, it isn’t me, it’s them. We’re together but falling apart and I can’t stop it, I can’t fucking stop it.

The whisky races through my skull, leaving me breathless. I open the balcony doors and tumble outside, gripping the barrier and shouting to the whole of Hattersley to go fuck itself. I curse the sky and scream at God to make the barrier break, demanding He come down to fight me if He’s there, cursing Him for the pain, the unbelievable fucking pain.

Dad’s hands are on my shoulders, pulling me back indoors. He asks me in a quiet voice to please go to bed, and although I reply with a shouted ‘Fuck off!’ I do as he tells me. In the pitch black of the room, my head spins to the sound of an invisible needle running in the groove of an old record no one wants to hear any more.

Our second son, David, is born on 18 April 1967 but as a family we’re falling apart, merely existing from one day to the next in the rat run of Underwood Court. The hatred that envelops us never lets up; Maureen always returns from her trip to the shops needing to rush straight into the bathroom to wipe the spit from her clothes and hair, trembling from the hurled abuse. I’m trapped in the past, losing myself more and more in thoughts of the six months we had with Angela, unwilling to set foot outside because there isn’t any point to it. We are despised and ostracised and nobody knows or cares that we’re losing that last, microscopic speck of control.

I am ill, sick in mind and body – exhaustion dogs my every waking hour, but at night I’m too terrified to sleep, knowing my mind is waiting to take me back to Wardle Brook Avenue. I don’t know I’m ill because no one tells me I am. I don’t understand what depression is, either; I only know that I’m mightily pissed off all the time. I go to bed angry and wake up angrier still. Nothing changes from morning to night. After getting laid off at the factory, I’ve spent my days sprawled on the settee, arm around Paul, cuddling him close to my chest, surrounded by empty teacups and overflowing ashtrays. If Paul is asleep, then I amuse myself with a stray cat that adopted me on one of my midnight treks.

Maureen sits motionless and birdlike on the edge of a chair, her eyes fixed on the telly but blank to the flickering screen. David snoozes snugly in his pram outside on the balcony, breathing in what passes for fresh air in this overspill hellhole.

I never talk to Maureen about the filth in my head and she never speaks to me about the agonising emptiness in hers. I think obsessively about ‘doing the right thing’ and how angry I am at Mum and the Duchess for instilling that crap in me. I’ve done so much fighting in the last 12 months that my nose is permanently broken and crooked, and my knuckles are forced back into my hand. I look like I’ve spent a lifetime in the ring.

The evenings are no different. Maureen watches telly in vacant silence while I listen to Dylan and the Beatles on the new stereo I bought with my
News of the World
money. We exchange no more than a handful of words all night; she makes more tea without clearing away the cups and I don’t move from wherever I’ve positioned myself for the evening. When Dad comes home from the fish factory, I ask him if he’s managed to find me a job, even if only as a casual on the nightshift, but all I ever get is a dismal shake of the head.

On 22 December 1968, Maureen gives birth to our third and last child together – another perfect son, John. But nothing improves, and most nights I drink myself into a morose stupor, thinking about the trial and its legacy to us.

* * *

In 1968, the Smiths left Underwood Court for a house on Hattersley’s Slater Way. The move ushered in a new and unexpected change in David and Maureen’s lives: they got to know a few of the estate’s black residents, and regularly partied at the shebeens in Moss Side. The casual racism David had spouted during his drunken nights with Ian Brady was a thing of the past; now he wanted nothing more than to be black himself, finding an acceptance and freedom among their community that was impossible anywhere else.

‘It must sound strange,’ David admits, ‘given that a couple of years earlier I was reading
Mein Kampf
with Brady. But it seemed perfectly natural at the time, that shift in attitude and thought. The black people I began mixing with tolerated me – in fact, they welcomed me into their circle. They didn’t hate me, or punch me or kick me. They took me at face value – I suppose because they had so much shit to face themselves from the whites. In the passages where I’ve written down my memories of that time I use the word “nigger”, which nowadays is deeply offensive, but that was how the black people I hung around with referred to
themselves
at the time. Of course a lot of whites used the word too, but I
hated
being white then – I wanted to be one of them. There weren’t many black families living in Hattersley then – they lived mainly in Moss Side. When I say Moss Side, I mean the
real
Moss Side – rows and rows of tall Victorian houses and wasteland. We’d find the shebeens by listening to the cellar music floating up from the grids in the road. There were usually a couple of blokes on the door, and white people generally weren’t allowed in, but the black people I knew would say firmly, “He’s with us,” and they’d jerk their heads to indicate it was all right.’ He grins, ‘I was the token white guy in the corner.’