Blood Relatives (24 page)

I flipped back a week. Boring. Fast forward.
Thursday
.

Ah, more like it. Sis and Marcus had been having sex in t’ rehearsal room. He’d had an extra key cut. He’d done her a tape of his favourite shite bands like Gryphon and Gentle Giant and Spooky Tooth and Budgie. I looked at the cassette lying on t’ floor. ‘Music from Marcus: For Mandy’.

I closed the diary and unfolded the scrap of paper wi’ Tad’s address on it, stroking my thumb across it thoughtfully. Then I flopped back on sis’s bed and undid my fly.

Mother’s new job wor at Clark’s hauliers, over Shipley way. It wor just three days a week, doing paperwork and answering the phone. Mitch would have never allowed it. Mitch always believed that a married woman’s place wor firmly wedded to t’ kitchen sink. But then, this wor t’ same Mitch who’d told me that no woman would become Prime Minister in his lifetime. What wor it I’d seen in a feminist pamphlet at a Gay Lib meeting? ‘It starts when you sink in his arms and ends with your arms in his sink.’

By t’ end of her first week you couldn’t shut Mother up. She retold every last friggin’ detail over and over: who said what, where, when and why. Who drank tea, who preferred coffee, how many friggin’ sugars – the whole nine ruddy yards. I couldn’t say how many sugars Craner had in his friggin’ tea, only that he fair heaped it in. But it wor good to see her smiling again, although sometimes I’d catch a sadness in her eyes. Maybe Mand saw it too, cos one day she asked her, ‘Do you think Mavis would miss Don if he died?’

‘You get used to folk,’ Mother said.

In July the DVLA finally transferred the car over to Mother’s name, and she sold it to a car dealer who screwed her over on t’ price – her being a middle-aged widow who didn’t drive. I wor riled at her for not discussing it wi’ me, but she said she’d just wanted shot of it.

After she’d paid off what we owed on t’ telly, Mother said she wanted to eat out at a restaurant. A proper restaurant, where you sit at a table and get served. And so we did. The three of us. A small Italian place just up from Bradford railway station, wi’ frescos of Sicily and wine bottles in wicker baskets hanging off the stucco walls.

We wor t’ only people there. It felt like we’d invaded a stranger’s front room. Mandy plumped for t’ spaghetti Bolognese, and Mother and I both chose the lasagna. Two glasses of Lambrusco and a Coke. The waiter, a podgy Italian wi’ big lugs and bristly eyebrows, put a small basket of white bread nestling in a napkin and a saucer of olive oil on t’ red-and-white check tablecloth. The food arrived double quick, in stoneware pots that wor too hot to touch. The waiter then retreated behind a corner bar area that wor decorated wi’ shells. He divided his attention between watching us eat and ogling a small black-and-white telly on t’ wall behind his head.

I heard the TV news come on, the theme tune cutting through t’ sixties Italian pop that wor spilling out of t’ speakers above our heads. The headline bulletin wor all about HIM. HE’d sent a tape to t’ police (if it wor him), that wor about to be played on t’ news. When it started playing the waiter grimaced apologetically at us, ’til Mother asked him to turn up the volume. We stopped eating and turned in our chairs to watch. The waiter moved to one side so we could all see.

The camera zoomed in on Superintendent George Oldfield’s face. Maybe it wor t’ distorted small screen, but he looked friggin’ haggard. A man hanging on t’ edge of hope. He pressed the on switch of t’ tape recorder. Camera bulbs flashed.

I’m Jack. I see you are having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you, George, but Lord you are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started. I reckon your boys are letting you down, George. They can’t be much good, can they? The only time they came near to catching me was a few months back in Chapeltown, when I was disturbed. Even then it was a uniformed copper, not a detective. I warned you in March that I’d strike again. Sorry it wasn’t Bradford. I’m not quite …

‘Is that HIM?’ Mandy hissed at me across t’ table.

‘Shush, will you!’

… September, October or even sooner …

The waiter turned the TV down again. We heard the opening chords of Andrew Gold’s ‘Thank You for Being a Friend’ being played at the end of HIS tape before it cut out. Mand continued to sing after it, ’til she clocked from our faces that somehow it worn’t right. Mother straightened her shoulders and set her fork down on her plate.

‘A Geordie then,’ she said crisply. ‘Does anyone want dessert?’

15 July 1979. The
Yorks Evening Post
published a special crime report. There wor a big black square containing a question mark, wi’ t’ words ‘Face of the Ripper?’, along wi’ a whole set of friggin’ questions for t’ readers. Mother read ’em aloud to us.

‘Question 5: Do you have a husband, father, brother, son, fiancé, boyfriend or neighbour with access to a car whose whereabouts on the murder nights are not known or cannot be established?’

She held the paper up, staring at the black square as if she wor waiting for HIS image to emerge out of t’ blackness. Then she laid the paper aside and picked up her monthly competition magazine. ‘Oooh,’ she said. ‘Win a holiday cottage in Wales.’

‘If someone don’t burn it down first,’ I said.

Over t’ summer the police interviewed 150,000 people. Sometimes they interviewed the same ones more than the once. They turned up at our house again one warm August evening. I wor out the front wi’ a bucket and a soft cloth, cleaning the windows.

‘Mitchell Thorpe?’ one of t’ constables asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m Richard Thorpe.’

‘Do you know where we can find Mitchell Thorpe?’

‘Aye,’ I said.

I set the bucket down, showed them into t’ living room and pointed to t’ urn that sat on t’ nest of tables next to t’ telly.

‘He’s right there.’

Simon Alexander
: Expressed his intention to visit the scenes of the Ripper murders ‘to pick up the vibrations’. These vibrations would lead him to the Ripper’s door.

Alfred Cartwright
: A clairvoyant and medical herbalist for forty-two years, offered the police a description of the killer.

Stanley King
: A Yorkshire clairvoyant, saw the Ripper in a dream living in a small village in the Pennines. His vision was so strong he felt compelled to give the police a description of the place.

The
Sunday People
announced that the famous clairvoyant
Doris Stokes
had ‘seen’ the face of the Ripper. According to Mrs Stokes the Ripper ‘is about five foot eight inches tall and in his mid twenties to thirties with dark hair and a scar below his left eye which twitches when he gets agitated’. She added that his name was Johnnie, or possibly Ronnie.

Mrs Tracey
, another clairvoyant, derived her inspiration from studying the Ripper’s handwriting on the letters received by the police. Her view was that the killer was a gentle person with a ‘deep psychological mother rejection’.

On 26 July 1979, Manchester astrologer
Reginald de Marius
predicted that ‘the Ripper will strike tomorrow’. He added, ‘I’ve deduced that the Ripper was born on 15 September 1946.’

Mrs Nella Jones
, clairvoyant consultant, was brought in by the police to apply her expertise to the Ripper case. She claimed that she had become ‘locked into the mind of the Ripper’ whilst sitting in her Kentish home with a South London policewoman.

Mrs Husk
swirled the dregs in her teacup, emptied it and studied the contents. She gasped. ‘My, my,’ she said, looking down at Lord Snooty, who raised his heavy head momentarily from his resting place beside her chair. ‘It’s a rum world. It is that.’

The late-August sun beat down on us through t’ Corona van windscreen. The concertina doors wor pinned open to t’ elements, so a welcome breeze wafted through t’ cab as we hurtled along.

We wor on a different round today, delivering to posher houses out in Roundhay. Each house wor detached or a big semi, often set back from t’ road wi’ a driveway and a double garage.

Sometimes I didn’t know which door to deliver to, although t’ rule of thumb wor t’ back door, if there wor a back door. Posh folk bought less and took longer to do it. It seemed to me that it wor more important to them to be offered and say no than actually buy owt.

One hot afternoon when I wor delivering some orange squashes and tonic waters I surprised Billy Bremner on t’ back lawn of his bungalow. He wor stretched out in his shorts on a sun lounger. There wor an ashtray beside him on t’ grass. Billy Bremner wor a footie hero at Leeds Utd. I mumbled ‘Hello,’ and he looked at me nonplussed and then his wife came out from t’ kitchen, deeply tanned and wearing a white bikini that barely covered her decency. I told Eric and he said that from now on only he wor allowed to deliver to t’ Bremners, the sight of Mrs Bremner in a bikini being wasted on me. He never did see her in that bikini.

One day Eric asked me out of t’ blue if I’d ever seen the Matterhorn Man again, and I said I hadn’t. Him reminding me of t’ Matterhorn Man made my cheeks turn tomato, cos he wor a straight man asking a gay man about personal stuff. I couldn’t help but wonder sometimes where Jim had ended up, how he lived his life now. Being gay wor illegal in Scotland, so I supposed life up there couldn’t be easy. I could still remember the scent of him, the skip of his Scots brogue, lying in his bed and listening to Pink Floyd’s
Meddle
. I never bought that album, cos I never wanted to hear it anywhere else but in Jim’s bedroom.

Prog rock had gone t’ way of all dinosaurs. I found mesen sitting wi’ Terry, Fizzy and Camp David in t’ back yard at Radclyffe Hall, listening to Talking Heads’
Fear of Music
and necking Red Stripe. Unable to get a US visa, Fazel, I wor told, had gone to Amsterdam. Fizzy said he wor living in a big squat wi’ loads of other folk. I wor to hear nowt more about Fazel after that ’til, in t’ savage winter of 1981, in t’ same week that HE wor finally caught, I heard that his badly beaten body had been found face-down on a frozen Amsterdam canal.

02/09/1979

Our Corona van wor working its way through a housing estate in Hunslet when a police van sped by. On t’ side of t’ van wor a poster that read ‘The Next One Might be Innocent’.

‘A bit fuckin’ late!’ I yelled.

Wi’ t’ new footie season underway the Geordie tape wor being played at footie stadiums all over t’ North and out of speakers lashed to t’ backs of cars. There wor a humungous TV campaign, and people wor encouraged to ring the hotline and listen to t’ tape. At Elland Road the footie crowds jeered and drowned out the tape, chanting ‘Ripper 12, Police 0!’

When Garthy rolled up at work sporting a badge saying ‘Leeds United – More Feared than the Yorkshire Ripper’, Craner lost it. He yelled at Garthy that if he didn’t take that badge off at once he’d be out on his ear. Craner wor snorting like a dragon on heat. He pulled everyone he cound find into his office.

‘No badges of any kind! Any kind at all! Understood, Mr Thorpe?’

All eyes turned to me. Afterward, I went into t’ bog and took off the small pink triangle badge I’d pinned to my Corona coat lapel. They should have employed Craner to catch the Ripper. He would have had it sorted by now. Nowt escaped Craner’s beady eye.

The story went that Barbara Leach had been in t’ Mannville Arms ’til nigh on 1 a.m., having an after-hours lock-in bevy wi’ her friends cos she’d helped the pub manager clear up. She left her friends and chose to walk home. HE must have chanced upon her. Her body wor found in a back yard, half-hidden under a piece of carpet.

There wor a new guy in charge of t’ Ripper investigation – Chief Constable Ronald Gregory. Poor old Assistant Super Oldfield, it wor announced, wor somewhat sickly and had been put out to grass. Gregory launched a media blitz, wi’ billboards going up everywhere that said ‘The Ripper Would Like You to Ignore This …’. A four-page newspaper about HIM wor shoved through our letterboxes, the Geordie tape wor played in pubs, works canteens, schools, working men’s clubs, on t’ BBC and all local radio stations. We wor blitzed wi’ t’ Ripper ’til we wor buried by him.

I got stopped twice by coppers that month. The first time wor on my way home from an FK Club gig. A panda car pulled up alongside me and two coppers got out. They asked me where I’d been and where I wor heading. They wanted proof of my address, but I didn’t have none on me. They asked me if I went wi’ prozzies. I said not, and then pointed out that I wor only fourteen when Wilma McCann wor topped, and anyways I didn’t drive and HE had a car. Coppers don’t like you getting clever wi’ them, as it shows them up for t’ numbskulls they are, so they frisked me. Sus law. Search Under Suspicion. They said they’d seen me behaving suspiciously.

‘In what way?’

The one copper glared at me like he wor set to punch my lights out. ‘We ask the questions, sonny. You just answer them.’

They looked disappointed not to find any hash on me. I wor plain relieved they didn’t plant none. If I’d been black they probably would have. Black guys wor always getting stopped even though t’ Ripper wor plainly a white man. The panda car CB radio garbled summat and they said they had to go and that I wor a lucky young man to get away wi’ it. It being?

The second time I’d just left the Gay Lib disco at the Guildford Hotel on t’ Headrow together wi’ this bloke who said between dancefloor snogs that he wor a rugby coach. This time it wor two coppers out on t’ beat. The rugby coach wor frighted out his wits at being questioned. His chin wor wobbling and he could barely speak. I said we’d just left a straight club I knew of in t’ shopping precinct. The cops seemed satisfied wi’ that and let us go. As soon as we turned the corner t’ rugby bloke pelted off like a witless hare.

Women wor warned to stay indoors after dusk.

Hospitals, unis and factories organised door-to-door transport for their women employees.

Bingo-session attendances plummeted.

In t’ run-up to Christmas, the streets wor all but deserted.

It had been ten month since Mitch had drowned. Sometimes it would replay in my head like flashbulbs going off, stick-dog-reach-fall-look-ice-running, wi’ me always on t’ outside looking in, hovering above or alongside. These nightmares wor always soundless, Mitch’s ‘No–o–o–’ as the stick somersaulted through t’ air an agonised, mute howl. At least I didn’t wake up on cold wet sheets no more.

If Mother had blamed Mitch’s drowning on me I might have understood – after all, I reckon every other bugger did. Instead, she painted Mitch as a friggin’ saint ’til I lost my rag and yelled at her to shut the fuck up about Mitch for once, and launched an ornament at the wall behind her head. How wor I supposed to know the friggin’ thing had belonged to Mitch’s mother? It wor only a honeypot shaped like a beehive.

Mandy wor another story. She never said owt outright, just scowled or snubbed her nose up at me. Dipping into her diary, I read that she blamed me. This riled me up. She had no right to go blaming me at all. I might have chucked the stick, but it wor t’ dog that went scarpering after it, and it wor Mitch who went out on t’ ice, worn’t it? What could I have done?

When she worn’t holed up in her room, playing her records, she spent all her time out of t’ house. She’d discovered goth music, and wor hanging out nights wi’ her new mates at the Phono in t’ Merrion Centre, and in various pubs and cafs. She wor piling on t’ pounds. Her small red lips looked like a bullseye in t’ middle of her chubby cheeks. Her baggy black clothes hid her flabby body. She’d had her ears pierced three more times, and had dyed her hair an inky dead black wi’ a single purple streak on one side. Mother didn’t know these new mates, and wor fretting all t’ time about Mand being out and about somewhere HE might be lurking. Like he’d be preying on goths mooching about late nights in a friggin’ Leeds shopping centre. Anyway, sis didn’t seem to care.

Mother’s way of dealing wi’ it wor to let sis have her way and then sit up late, fretting, ’til she rolled in, usually khalied and reeking of old smoke. Sometimes there’d be a row, wi’ full-on screaming and shouting, then sis would clomp up the stairs and slam her bedroom door. Sometimes, on nights when she didn’t come home at all, I’d come down for brekkie and find Mother asleep, her head resting on t’ kitchen table.

The late nights and sis’s new look had cost her the job at Schofield’s, so now she wor working two days a week in a small goth fashion stall in Leeds market that never opened before 11 a.m.

‘We are letting you go,’ her manageress at Schofield’s had said, ‘because you are letting yourself go.’

So t’ last Christmas of t’ decade wor to be a muted affair. Mother made it known that she wor spending Christmas Day wi’ Don and Mavis, and that Mand and I wor welcome to join, but she’d understand, she said, stressing ‘
understand
’, if we’d made other plans. She wor feeling a bit sorry for Don, cos he’d been fired from Clark’s last month. He’d been accused by Willie Clark of fiddling the books on his loads. He worn’t t’ only one – Clark’s had got shot of all their drivers bar one. Don protested blue in t’ face to anyone who’d listen that it wor just admin errors, but he had form in that department, so we all knew it wor a load of baloney. Mother had seen t’ evidence lying about in Clark’s offices.

‘Only one driver,’ Mother said, ‘worn’t given his marching orders. He’s Clark’s shining light. Never no trouble, keeps his cab and lorry spotless, and never complains,’ she blathered on. ‘He’s even had his picture taken and put up in t’ office foyer for all to see. Peter, his name is. Peter Sutcliffe. Lovely chap.’

So Christmas morn wor a day like any other – no Christmas-tree lights or tinsel. They stayed packed away in a Jubilee biscuit tin in t’ garage. But we did have more cards than usual that year. I hung them on string lines draped over t’ fireplace.

Mand opted to spend her Christmas wi’ her goth friends. God knows how a bunch of wrist-slitting, pill-munching goths celebrated Christmas. Droning doom-laden carols and charring a turkey on an upended cross? So Christmas Day I found mesen alone in t’ house. I took a walk, just to be out doing summat. Just to be walking. I headed the couple of mile toward Radclyffe Hall cos it wor somewhere to aim for. If no one wor home, as wor likely, then I’d walk back and spend the evening watching telly.

I found Christmas in full flow. All t’ waifs and strays – all t’ gay men who couldn’t or wouldn’t go home for whatever reason – had gathered there. There must have been about a dozen in all, some who I knew, others I’d never seen before. Camp David and Fizzy had been, as Camp David put it, ‘stoving over a hot slave all day’, and there wor two large roast chickens wi’ all t’ trimmings. It had been assumed, Camp David said, that I’d be spending Christmas wi’ my family.

Terry gave me a paper hat and set an extra place at the corner of t’ extended dining table. Even he wor a smidgen less glum than usual. I wor squeezed in next to Ali, who said he had nowt better to do, as his folk didn’t celebrate Christmas. We wor all bunched up like at a school dinner, Ali’s leg pressed hard against mine. I didn’t complain. Turned out that Ali wor living half the time rent-free in Fazel’s old room. Camp David’s arms, I clocked, wor smoother than any plucked chicken.

By late afternoon, stuffed and wrecked by drink, I flopped on t’ sofa between two men, drinking whisky. Only Ali wor sober, cos he didn’t drink. For a moment I wondered how Mother wor coping wi’ Mavis and Don, or what Mandy and her morose mates were getting up to. Whatever, it couldn’t be as good as this. We wor all one big gay family, and this wor t’ happiest Christmas of my friggin’ short life so far.

Mother and I wor watching t’ news when t’ telephone rang. Mother stubbed her ciggie into t’ ashtray on t’ chair armrest and went to answer it. Through t’ open lounge door I could see and hear all. Mavis wor having one of her legendary meltdowns. Only this one wor nuclear.

‘Mavis, I’m sure … Of course it’s terrible, Mavis … Don? Don? Mavis, no, come now, whatever he might have done … I mean … now Mavis, please.’

She wor holding the receiver a little away from her ear, as if Mavis’s hysterical sobbing might leave a damp patch on her. Likely as not Mavis had stopped taking her Valium. That wor t’ usual cause.

‘Mavis, he can’t be. Are you sure?’ Pause. ‘Well, that don’t mean …’ Interrupted pause. ‘And what did the police say?’ Longer pause. The word ‘police’ lobbed into t’ conversation made me feel like my ears had just popped.

Mavis wor obsessed wi’ Don’s whereabouts. She wanted him under her thumb, but out of sight. Don had built a life entirely outside t’ home – the pub, the working men’s club, the fishing trips (not that I ever heard of him catching owt), the rugby matches (supporting, not playing), the grafting. And now he wor out of a job, thanks to his dodgy dealings.

‘Oh, Mavis … surely, I’m sure that … Don isn’t … he was?’

When he wor arrested for fencing stolen goods, Mavis hersen had fly-tipped the friggin’ evidence onto waste ground in t’ middle of t’ night. The next night, after t’ charges had been dropped, she went back for it, but it had all gone. The story goes that Don went ape and wor pulling her by t’ hair and she kicked him on t’ shins so hard he wor hobbling for days after and telling everyone he’d fallen off a ladder.

‘Oh God, Mavis. No, I’m here, luv, I’m still here … Yes, course I will, I’ll be over in a jiffy.’

A jiffy! Still, it wor an age before Mother reset the receiver on its cradle. Her face wor as pale as milk.

‘They’ve taken Don in for questioning. They think he might be t’ Ripper.’

She gathered up her keys, ciggies and handbag, pulled on her anorak. ‘You get yersen summat to eat, hear me? I’ll be back later.’ And wi’ that, the front door slammed and she wor gone.

A few minutes later Mand came downstairs, sauntered into t’ kitchen and opened the fridge door. She prodded the cheese, peered at the haslet under clingfilm. ‘Where wor Mum off to?’ she said, head still half in t’ fridge. The fridge light gave her face a fierce and sickly glow.

‘Mavis.’

‘Does that mean we’re having cheese on toast again?’

‘Don’s been arrested.’

‘Oh,’ said Mand, closing the fridge empty-handed. ‘Maybe she’ll get them new wardrobes after all.’

‘Cos of Don being the Ripper?’

Mand’s mouth changed shape. ‘You don’t think …?’

‘Nah, course not. I mean, look at him. He hasn’t seen his own todger in decades.’

Mandy sniggered. She took an apple from t’ fruit basket, examined the sticker on it, then put it back. ‘I’ve told Mum not to buy Cape apples.’ She pulled a pack of ciggies from her pocket and lit up. ‘She shouldn’t be out there on her own. It’s not safe. You should have gone wi’ her.’

‘Mum don’t like you smoking.’

‘She knows. Just pretends she don’t. This house is full of people pretending.’ Sis exhaled like a seasoned smoker, the smoke drifting beneath t’ kitchen striplight. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Is it? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You don’t know what I mean? I hate that you won’t admit it to me, your own sister. I don’t care who you go wi’, Rick, but you must think I’m daft, and I’m not.’

‘I’ve never thought you wor daft.’

Sis pursed her lips. Goth pout.

‘Then don’t treat me like I am.’

I had the shakes and my legs felt like they wouldn’t hold me, so I plonked mesen down on a kitchen chair. I wor fumed up at sis, and worried that she’d open her gob to Mother.

‘How did you know? I mean, it’s not as if I go round wi’ “I’m a pouf” tattooed on my forehead, is it?’

‘Friend of mine saw you going into a gay pub. Then there’s that little badge you wear, the pink triangle one. Mum might not know what it means, but I do.’

‘You won’t say owt, will you? Especially to Mum.’

‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.’

‘You say one word and I’ll half flay you, I will.’

Sis gave out a short, cold smile and said she wor going to take a bath.

‘Do you hear me?’ I shouted up the stairs after her. ‘Not one friggin’ word!’

After sis went to bed I stayed up, fretting about her knowing and whether I should say owt to Mother. I turned on t’ telly and nodded off in front of some late-night rubbish film wi’ Glenda Jackson in it. It wor nigh on midnight when t’ phone jolted me awake. I almost fell against t’ hallway table as I snatched up the receiver. It wor Mother, asking me to meet her off t’ night bus and walk her back to t’ house. It wor only half a block from t’ bus stop to our door.