Slow Poison - Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Nursery tunes announced the news. Ninety-nine times as high as the moon.

“Next on the World Service, the news, read by John Wing.”

“British football violence flared up once more tonight, this time in Amsterdam, capital city of The Netherlands. Reports are coming in of one casualty, with twelve others seriously injured. More about this later from our correspondent Martin Cleaver.”

Trim removed the earplug and placed it under his pillow. He reached over to the bedside table and felt for the diary.

August 11, 1939. The green apples, the yellow apples, the soft warm apples from the winter loft, the cloying, dark bouquet of cloven elder wood courting the charcoal cinder evenings of sparks and remembrances, hoarded, savoured treasures of foreign coffee, rare and exotic, wrapped in rough duster cloths and buried deep among the twine and rusty corkscrew debris, under ruins of innocent summers, nevermore the granted habit, nevermore the unalterable template, the rutted tow-path

The scuffles in the Warmoesstraat had escalated into a full-scale riot. All the off-duty officers had been summoned, and from all units, from all corners of the district the extra men and women gravitated to the heart of the trouble.

Becky would recall little of the questioning, the paperwork, and the identification. No, she would remember the identification. She would remember dried blood matting the dense black hair on his chest, would remember the gaping wound, his torn nipple. She would remember this all the days of her life.

“Freddy, oh Freddy, what have they done to you?”

But the other events fused together into a grey area she would never again be able to untangle. The ride back to the hotel was a grainy blur through the car window. Now she was alone. She looked around their hotel room and it seemed somehow larger than she remembered. She had entered the room with Fred a few days before, tired from the journey, the bus ride from the Hook.

“We’ll fly the next time. I’m not going through a journey like that again!”

“We’re here now.”

Fred closed the door and locked it, and then he pulled Becky to him.

“Fred!” she protested, “I’m too tired.”

“I’m not...feel!” He gently took her hand.

“You’re never too tired.”

“Come on, just kiss me. We don’t have to do anything else.”

“I’ve heard that one before, Fred Farthing!” She laughed.

But he caught her in his big arms and took his kiss, holding her close to him. She gave herself up to the moment and they fell onto the springy bed, tugging at one another’s clothes. Unbuttoned and unclasped, but still fully dressed, he teased her with his big fingers, making her gasp and cry out. She climaxed as soon as he entered, his thrusting bringing her to a second and third orgasm, until he too came in a rush of sweet release.

“Oh, Becky! That was so good!”

“Shhh.”

“You came too?”

How could he not know?

“Oh, yes!” she sighed.

They parted and lay breathing hard, close together in the bright hotel room.

“Oh Freddy, it was wonderful. I love you!”

“I love you too.

Ten minutes had passed since they had entered the room, ten minutes up to the point of his climax. Now they lay in their dishevelled clothes, staring at the ceiling as moment after moment slipped luxuriously by them. Becky looked around the room. So neat and clean. The smell of lilac drifted from the bathroom. Barrel organ music drifted up from the street. ‘All My Loving.’

Now the room felt solemn and sterile. Cold and a little damp. Her breath clouds proved it. The room was on the top floor at the back of the hotel and though she turned the radiator full on, no heat to speak of had bubbled through. She threw herself across the bed. The soft, giving bed.

“Oh Fred!”

The sheets had not been changed. Not yet. She could smell him there. Could smell his skin in the wrinkles he had left on the crumpled sheets, where they had made love. Lying on the floor beside the bed were his discarded vest and Y-fonts. She gathered them up and crushed them to her face, breathing in the musky scent of him, stifling her sobs in the animal smell. She drew long breaths. This smell, his smell, this was reality. The cold torn corpse she had left behind was already empty, but his smell brought him back to her, back into the bed, for one last time.

“Oh Fred...Fred.”

She came as soon as he entered her.

 Trim could not sleep. Each hour, on the hour, he listened to the shifting emphasis that was the World Service News. He looked across at the collection of useless things he had assembled. Someone’s lighter, a wallet or two, one of them bulging with colourful Dutch currency, and a crumpled visitor’s passport with a photograph of a stupid shaven head glowering out from the kiosk photograph. Barker. He reached for the diary and flipped to a random page.

February 9, 1940. Amsterdam. We could have stayed, should have stayed, could have stayed in the summer cottage. To leave sought effort. The house, delicately searched and smoothed for those who might follow. Peels and crusts scattered to useful ends, the summer scavengers nourished in their laziness, their hunting instincts staunched. Surfaces scrubbed clean and dead and fresh, and under the kitchen sink in the mysterious dark, with its spirits and acids and tangles of steel, its damp gurglings; the gas tap. The lifeblood of the twilight hours, life giver to the well water, sending the heat bells rising. The escape, furtive, the rebels at first, then the sheep, the masses, escaping the heat, escaping the blue matte death-hiss, until their bubbling hysteria awakens our senses and brings us running.

We distil the altered water through filters of porous cones, dripping slowly to form our heart racing essences, our reviving fluids, our poison. (Torture now, to think of coffee) ‘Did you turn the gas off?’ ‘Yes, Papa.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes Papa, don’t worry.’ We walked around the silent sleeping cottage staring in at ourselves, unable to leave. Making sure no errant candles smouldered there, no stray cake fork lay unseen to await the verdigris short days would form, no trace of our footfalls on the hard terracotta to map our avoidances, our laughter, our wonder.

Before long, he was unconscious, with the diary open before his sightless eyes. The nursery tune punctuated the hours until morning, subliminal airwaves burrowing deep into his subconscious mind.

“Mister O’Rourke. You must try to co-operate with me.”

Nothing.

“I am on your side. You must co-operate, otherwise we will get nowhere.”

Koning, the lawyer allocated to Den, was having a hard time trying to prise some sense out of the belligerent boy. He had seen The Six in rotation, the short distance between the cells giving him little time to recoup his energy.

“If you do not co-operate, they will charge you anyway.”

Nothing.

“They can hold you for two days, but that can be extended many times. Do you realise this?”

Den spat on the floor in reply.

Koning believed in free legal aid for the underdog, the under privileged, but he could not really understand the sullen lack of cooperation of this strange English boy.

“I cannot begin to help you if you do not tell me what happened tonight.”

Den stared ahead, refusing to meet Koning’s eyes. Koning began to lose patience.

“Okay, then you can just go fuck yourself!” he whispered. “I give up!”

Den was almost sober. His head felt as though it were splitting open. He was alone and terribly frightened. Koning had finally broken through.

“Listen. I didn’t ask for you.”

Koning looked at Den with surprise.

“What are they gonna do? I didn’t do nothin’, see. I didn’t fuckin’ kill the old geezer. I didn’t do it. It must have been one of me mates!”

Koning covered his relief with a cigarette. He took another from the pack and offered it to Den.

“Cheers, mate!”

Koning had read the mounting report sheets, had a good idea that Den or maybe one of the others was guilty of the crime. But defend him he would. Murder could be changed to manslaughter. The others might go down for threatening behaviour. But a man had died. Motive? There had been no motive, just a stupid drunken stabbing. But in the ensuing rioting more than thirty police officers had been hospitalised, and more than sixty fans had been arrested. There was little chance that Koning could expect a sympathetic hearing, but defend them he would. At least the boy was talking.

“I didn’t have the fuckin’ knife on me.”

“Oh!”

“I fuckin’ swear I didn’t”

“You believe that one of your friends might have done it?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno. The fuckin’ knife wasn’t there, then it was.”

“But it was your knife?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t fuckin’ do it!”

“You were all very drunk. Are you sure that you were aware of all of your actions?”

“Look, I told you, I didn’t fuckin’ do it!”

“Okay.”

“Listen, can I have another of they fags?”

Koning hesitated for a second, remembered the word, and then offered Den another cigarette.

“It has been a difficult night. We’ll try to make some sense of your story. It will not be easy, but I am still waiting for the pathologists report. I don’t know what that will show us. If it was one of your friends, we may be able to establish that. I don’t know.”

Den turned over the blurred memories. God, he had been drunk. Legless. Could hardly see to walk. He might have done it. No, he hadn’t done it. Kev? No, too chicken. Mart? Ritchie? Mart and Ritchie had cut some Pakistani kid once. They had all used blades to rip open the seats of the ABC during some film. Den couldn’t remember. It might have been them. It might have been him. He didn’t know.

“What would we get if we was sent down. Would it be for fuckin’ murder like? Or what?”

“That would be difficult to say. I don’t know at this point. This has been a bad business. There has been much damage done tonight.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Your friends, the other supporters, they have created much damage.”

“Fuckin’ A!”

“Many have been injured. This is not good.”

“Listen. The knife. I know it weren’t me. Okay?” Den was suddenly very certain.

Koning was rapidly assembling detail, arranging fact and hearsay in order, playing Cluedo. The only real hope for The Six was to spread the blame. He began to make the first of his notes, heading the page with the time and date.

“Okay. I believe you think you are telling the truth.”

“Yeah. I am.”

“Now I think you should sleep. I know I need to. I will be in touch with you in the morning.”

He offered Den his hand, but Den looked blank. He had never shaken hands with anyone in his life before. Koning signalled to the duty officer to open the door.

“You off then?”

“I see you later.”

“Got another of they fags?”

“Sure”

Koning handed Den the packet and stepped through the open door.

Trim couldn’t sleep. The radio droned on. He felt for the diary.

August 17, 1939. And we skipped, papa and the little one, lifting our voices high into the first blue, red earth flying in filmic flickers underfoot. ‘We’re off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.’ And for slivers of time, we were. Breathless at the bus halt we clung hard, exhilarated, minutes early. Behind us, metal milk churns rolled like chided cattle toward rough roadside pallets, rich creamy globules slopping noisily before the clogs of the farm boys. I squatted to ruffle the curious kitten that joined us, black and innocent.

“Here is the news read by Pamela Crichton.”

“Good evening. Amsterdam is reported to be quiet after the rioting tonight by British soccer hooligans. Sixty people are believed to have been arrested and more than forty are in hospital. There are reports of at least one casualty. Our correspondent Martin Cleaver takes over the story.”

“In an unprecedented outburst of soccer hooliganism tonight, apparently sparked off by the brutal slaying of a British tourist, more than seven hundred supporters rampaged through Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District. Damage is estimated at over half a million pounds.”

Trim removed the earplug and reached for a cigarette. Two crumpled packets lay on the bedside table, along with a cigarette case engraved with the initials H.v.E. The packets, one filter tipped, menthol, Belinda, the other an untipped Gauloise. He reached for the case. Virginia Slims. The rubbish that some people smoked. He rummaged among the lighters and found one that worked. He inhaled deeply and wished he could sleep, but he was afraid he would sleep too deeply, then oversleep. He must not miss the early flight. Lenny would be waiting.

Glyn couldn’t sleep. Janet was curled up next to him in a foetal arc with her back to him. His skin felt cold and clammy and he lay on his back, staring up at the overhead fan. His thoughts were a tangle of past, present and future.

“Jesus Christ, Fred! Fuckin hell!”

Glyn had lived at the end of Laburnum Walk, a one-sided, privet hedged, no through road that made up the Southern edge of the playing fields. The posh part of town. Fred lived on the Park Estate, at the far end of Midland Road, in a house built just as the council ran out of money, lapsing into jerry-building techniques to stretch the funds. A multitude of sins lay hidden for a winter or two under the roughcast concrete walls. Glyn’s home overflowed with the chirruping of children at play, of sun pouring into his south-facing window. Fred’s home was filled with the sound of trains roaring by his dirty bedroom window, night and day. The house vibrated with the sound. Dust thrived in the Farthing household, shifting slightly with each new express, settling down to wait for the next one.

“I knows someone what eats hedgehogs!” Fred and Glyn are five years old.

“Hedgehogs? Getaway!”

“I do! Thur were these Gippos down by Snake Island. They had a gurt bonfire goin’ and I went down and had a look and they showed I these hedgehogs all rolled up in mud, like, and they stuck ‘em in the fire and cooked ‘em like spuds. I had some an’ all!” he added proudly.

“You didn’t!”

“Did!”

“Honest? What was it like?”

“Like bacon it were. They had snails and all!”

“Euuch! You didn’t eat snails and all?”

“Yeah! All squelchy they was. And worms!”

He had not eaten worms, but his stature was so great in Fred’s eyes that he was not about to lose any of the glory of the moment.

“EUUCH! That be HORRIBLE!”

At ten, between Junior and Secondary, Glyn developed asthma and it was decided that he should spend the summer with his maternal grandmother who lived on the Pembrokeshire coast. It was hoped that the sea breezes would help in his recovery. Glyn promised he would write to Fred, but Fred shrugged his shoulders. Reading was not something that Fred did. Glyn might as well have moved to the moon, so alien was Barafundle Bay. An anonymous place. Somewhere. On the coast.

“We can still write. I’ll give ya some stamps!”

“Go on then.”

But writing was something that Fred did not do. Stamps might come in useful though.

“I gotta go then. See ya at the new school”

Fred shuffled off toward the summer.

“Bugger off, then!” Fred had mumbled, secretly heartbroken.

At ten, Fred and Glyn had sworn eternal allegiance to one another. Little penknife slices across the thumb tips, blood throbbing with the pressure of their pact, the pact sealed with mingled blood. But when Glyn returned from the coast, breathing freely and as brown as a berry, the little cuts had healed. Glyn entered Marling School and Fred joined the Technical School. Although separated by no more than a narrow lane, the two new schools took the boys into conflicting concepts of growing, and they grew apart, their summer forever behind them. Without his sidekick to act as a buffer, Fred’s bullying became more intense, more vicious, drawing out a sadistic streak that had lain dormant. With this new twist came the first erotic tinglings of sex. Unexpected hardness relieved in the warm shared bed, rubbing himself raw night after night while Lenny slept his feigned sleep. Lenny was seven to Fred’s ten. The babby. In size, they almost equalled one another. At home, they fought incessantly, bellowing above the roar of the trains, from morning to night. 

Hell commenced at Fred’s eleven. With Sid and Gladys out at work all day, out in the pubs all night, the scruffy, two-bedroom house, was theirs alone. Fred and Lenny had the run of it. The house, the garden and the shed. They ruled together. There was no more Glyn. A summer stretched before them. It was then that the torture began. It began with Linda Smolyachenko. She lived three doors down from the brothers. Linda was six, and pretty, singing hymns at the top of her voice all along the hot grey pavement.

“Angels from the realms of glory.”

The Farthing boys sat in the gutter scrubbing for cigarette ends. Each butt was dusted off and stuffed into the pockets of their khaki shorts. When they had enough Fred peeled off the paper and rolled the tobacco into a length of Jeyes lavatory paper. He twisted it at both ends. The resulting roll-up resembled a bloated skinless sausage.

“Oi, Lin! Wanna have a drag?”

Linda stopped her singing and looked at the two boys squatting on their haunches by the side of the road, holding the roll-up aloft to tempt her.

“I might.” She replied hesitantly.

“Come on down our shed then.”

She hesitated, but not for long. She followed them into the stifling creosote air of the shed. The shed was filled with a jumble of rusting garden tools and other debris. Seed boxes, a lawn mower, spades, dibbers, paint tins and string.

“Let’s play a game. Let’s play you’re French and we’re Jerries, an’ we got you prisner an’ we tie you up an’ make you tell us all the secrits an’ that.” Fred was breathless.

“I’ll be the Nasty, our Fred.”

“We can both be Nazis!”

“Wot do I have to do, then?” Linda asked them.

“First, you pretend we just caught you, then we have to tie you up and ask questions, and you have to try not to tell us what you knows.”

“Wos I supposed to know, then?”

“Secrits! We has to get you to tell us, and then we kills you.”

“Wot about the fag?”

“When you talks, you gets a drag.”

“I wanna drag now.”

“No, when you talks, see.”

Lenny began to wind string around her ankles and the grassy wheels of the lawnmower.

“You have to say summat in French.”

“I dunno no French”

“Fings like ‘Bonswah Mishure’. Fings like that.”

Lenny tied Linda’s hands behind her, securing the string around the lawn mower handle.

“Her has to be blindfolded and all.”

Lenny wrapped an old duster around her eyes.

“I don’t like this no more. Let I go.”

“Can she see?”

“No. I be scared!” she whined at them. “Let I go!”

“Eat this first, then you can go.”

Fred pushed a small lump of dried mud between her teeth. She spat it out, sending muddy dribbles down the front of her summer frock.

“Ugh! Wot was that? Let I go!”

“It’s fried hedgehog what the Gippos give us!”

Linda retched and bubbled out more mud and spittle. Her stomach heaved. The dribbles ran down the front of her frock, taking small veins of the red dye that made up the polka dots on her cheap cotton Peacock dress. Fred lifted down an old red oilcan from the shelf and forced the spout between her teeth.

“Are you gonna talk?”

“Wot have I gotta say?” she whimpered. “Wot do I have to say?”

“ZO! YOU FRENCH PEEG! YOU VILL NOT SPEAK!”

Fred squeezed the first drops of oil into her mouth, bringing vomit up from her stomach.

‘STOPPIT! LEMME GO! I”LL TELL ME MUM ON YOU! LEMME GO!”

Fred took a box of matches from his pocket and looked at the joke printed on the back.  Number 347. He read it out in faltering words.

“I know a boy who can imitate birds. Does he whistle? No he eats worms!”

That was enough to bring the rest of Linda’s breakfast flowing all down the front of her dress and all over her shoes.

Fred lit the obscene cigarette and puffed gingerly at the acrid second hand tobacco.

“Let’s have a drag, our Fred!”

Lenny grabbed the fat roll up from Fred puffing greedily on the wet end. He blew smoke into Linda’s face. She said nothing. She hung limply on the mower, her duster holding back the real world.

“This is horrible, this fag.”

“We’ll get some real uns from Mawhood’s.”

Fred turned his back on them and pulled at his shorts, sweating profusely and cursing. As he came he turned and spattered Linda’s vomit stained dress. Lenny gazed at him with open mouth. When Fred was finished, he removed the duster from Linda’s eyes, wiping the front of her frock with it.

“You better not say nuffin, or we’ll get you again. Worse!” Fred rasped at her.

Lenny untied her in silence and pushed her out through the shed door. She tumbled out of the garden and into her own house along the gully that linked the bottom of their gardens. She would not forget the day her mother smacked her for washing off all the lovely spots out of her pretty frock into indelible streaks Linda was made to wear the dress in shame for the whole of the summer holidays. She told no one. Ever. But Lenny did. And Fred did.

Glyn woke suddenly, drenched in sweat, his heart racing. He glanced at his watch. Six twenty-seven. Too late to sleep any more, too early to rise. The morning would remain dark for a few more hours, and then they would be forced to face the day ahead.

Hell was about to begin again.

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