by Mark Morris
So far so scenic, but where does the ghost story come in?
Well, I’m getting to that.
We all knew about the Branch Line. We’d grown up with a rumour that sometime in the past, a young bride from Manchester was on her way north to spend her honeymoon in Blackpool when tragedy struck. She was still in her wedding garb when her new husband advised her that this was a marriage of convenience and that his heart lay with another. The bride was so dismayed she threw herself from the train and was instantly killed. No one knew at which point along the Branch Line this was supposed to have happened, but if you check some of our old local newspapers you’ll see it was a genuine event dating to 12 April 1894. Julie-Anne Merridale was her name, and she did indeed take her own life by jumping from a train on her wedding day.
All of this is hard fact. Less factual was the story soon circulating that her ghost now haunted that stretch of line, a story which refused to die and in fact spread like wildfire once the Branch Line was abandoned. By the time I was at school, everyone in our town knew about it. Indeed, it had grown more terrifying with each telling. There were rumours that several people who’d attempted to walk the derelict line from its south end to its north had simply disappeared, never to be seen again.
“Well done for adding some background creepiness,” you’re doubtless thinking. “But every town has a story like this: a genuine tragedy mythologised for the amusement of juveniles. What we really want to know is why you and Brian O’Rourke went up to the Branch Line together on the afternoon of 25 July 1973, and how it was that only you returned.”
Well, to get close to understanding this, you need to know what Brian and my relationship was. In 1973, we were at St. Aloysius’s High School, a Catholic comprehensive in the heart of our town. We were in our third year, which made us thirteen years old. Most people are already aware of this, of course: that we were schoolboys together. But they make a mistake when they refer to us as schoolmates.
You see, Brian O’Rourke didn’t have any mates.
I’d been at primary school with him before middle school, so I’d known him from the beginning. At first glance, everything about him seemed normal. He was average height, lean, inoffensive to look at, and his school uniform was never less than immaculate. But he had pale, angular features, which gave him an odd gaunt appearance, while his mouse-brown hair was severely shorn, which, in the early 1970s, with everyone else having long hair, made him an object of ridicule. Of course, although this invited mockery, the actual dislike originated elsewhere.
The first person who ever punched me in the face was Brian O’Rourke. We were in the infants, no more than five years old, and a dispute over a crayon box led him to snatch it off me and throw a right hook. While it wasn’t a hard blow, it surprised and upset me; at that age no one else had laid a hand on me but my parents. Hitting people, or threatening to hit them, became Brian O’Rourke’s stock-in-trade during those early days, though he never gained the reputation for being a bully because it didn’t last. Within a relatively short time, most of the other boys, including me, were at least as tall as he was, and many of them brawnier. But when he was no longer able to enforce his will through brutality, he replaced it with slyness. This was a child who would happily tell tales to the teacher if getting you in trouble suited his purpose, or who’d spread lies about you, accusing you of saying things you hadn’t, to try and break up friendships he was jealous of.
However, even this low-level vindictiveness faded as primary school progressed. Because Brian had begun to realise that childish games like these were gaining him nothing and costing him a lot, and that at some point soon he’d actually need friends – because the spectre of middle school was approaching and then he’d have a whole new world of hostility to deal with.
The reason for this was simple. Our primary school wasn’t the only one that sent pupils to St. Aloysius’s. There were several, and at two of these other schools Brian O’Rourke’s mother and father were teachers. And even by the standards of the time, they were tyrants. Mr. O’Rourke had his own cane, and he gave people ‘the whack’ for just about everything. Mrs. O’Rourke was in the habit of hitting wayward pupils across the face with a Bible, usually after quoting some snippet of wisdom from it, which would be meaningless to a youngster so terrorised he could barely think straight. At St. Aloysius’s Brian was going to have to answer for this to a procession of children who were older and bigger than he was.
I know what you’re thinking. Nothing I’m telling you is allaying your suspicion that I was responsible for Brian’s disappearance that July afternoon. Perhaps you’re wondering if my own grudges against him had gone deeper than anyone knew?
I can understand why you might think that, but you’d be wrong.
By 1973, our third year at St. Aloysius’s, the dynamics had changed again. Brian had been chastised throughout his first two years and was mostly now ignored. Perhaps in this regard people were still punishing him. There is no sadder figure than a solitary kid standing by the schoolyard wall when all the others are running around enjoying themselves. But he’d even adapted to this status in time, becoming studious and developing hobbies – and to an extent this brought him back into acceptability.
We were all now doing what we called our ‘options’, which meant we’d finally started our O-Level courses, and as part of this, there were after-school sessions for those who were struggling, with some of the more advanced pupils volunteering to stay behind and assist. Brian was one of these, and he helped me with my Maths. I wouldn’t say this made us friends, but as we’d never actually been enemies – I hadn’t joined in the feeding frenzy when we’d first arrived at St. Aloysius’s – it didn’t do our relationship any harm. At the same time, one of those hobbies I mentioned was hill-walking and hiking, and Brian got involved in the school Rambling Club, of which I was also a member. I was surprised by this because our trips to North Wales and the Lake District were pretty strenuous, and whereas I’d become a decent rugby player during my time at middle school, Brian had been useless at sport from the start and was still pretty inept when it came to anything physical. But it seemed to be something he was determined to try, mainly I suspect because he was tired of life without company. And as it turned out, his first attempt to get chatting with a bunch of us while we were on such a trip paid immediate dividends.
It was the end of the summer term, the last weekend before our holidays, and about thirty of us had traipsed along Striding Edge and were now descending into Glenridding. I was with the three lads I was closest to in the Rambling Club: Mark Phelps, Andrew Fletcher and John Doogan. We’d all been at primary school together and were still close buddies. Probably for that same reason, the rest of them were just about tolerating Brian O’Rourke, who was hanging about on our periphery.
Our conversation ranged over all the usual subjects, from football to films to rock music… to sex, or rather to men’s magazines, or ‘mucky books’ as we called them, which were the only experience of sex that we’d had. We’d first become aware of these in recent years, and though we only had limited access to them, they’d fast turned into objects of fascination. At this moment Phelpsy was waxing lyrical about a dog-eared magazine he’d discovered under his older brother’s bed.
Needless to say, the rest of us were engrossed, our tongues hanging out.
I know it sounds pathetic, but you need to understand how much a contradiction in terms our experience of life in the early 1970s was. We were teenagers, fizzing with hormones, but most of us had been raised in Catholic households so prudish that the mere appearance of a bare bottom on evening TV would see us shouted at and sent from the room as if it was somehow our fault. Yet the world had changed dramatically even during my short lifetime. In 1960 Playboy’s centrefolds were so coy they wouldn’t even shed their bikinis, but only thirteen years later, the average men’s mag could have doubled for a gynaecology manual. And yet the likes of us
still only caught glimpses of this: half a minute of Benny Hill before our mums switched it off; a fleeting glance past some bloke’s shoulder on the bus as he drooled over Page 3; the billboards outside the cinema whenever a Carry On film was playing, showing Barbara Windsor’s cleavage and Liz Fraser’s stockings…
We knew it was out there – it tortured us with its proximity – yet we still couldn’t reach it.
“I saw a massive pile of mucky books recently,” Brian chimed in.
We glanced around at him, a switch of attention so abrupt that he looked surprised and flustered.
He shrugged awkwardly. “I found them in a bin in the backs near our house. They were in this plastic bag. There were loads of ’em. I’ve never seen as many.”
As our silence persisted his confidence grew, as he realised that for the first time in his life he had an interested audience.
“I think they’re imports,” he said. “Because they’re hardcore.”
We didn’t know what ‘import’ or ‘hardcore’ actually meant, but we had some vague idea that they probably meant really mucky.
Inevitably he was asked where the magazines were now and when could the rest of us see them, and though he didn’t exactly become evasive, I got the feeling this hadn’t been part of his plan.
“I’ve… erm, hidden them,” he replied. “And I’m not saying where because I don’t want them to go walkies. But when I get back from my holidays, I’ll give you all a call and you can come round.”
It was a bit surreal, the thought we’d all be sitting at home, impatiently waiting for Brian O’Rourke to ring us and give us permission to visit him, but if nothing else, he’d known how to sell a mucky book to us.
It turned out he was going on holiday with his parents almost straightaway, and as the following fortnight dragged on and the rest of us got involved in other summer activities, interest faded. I also remembered his evasiveness about where his stash was hidden, and started to suspect he’d been spinning us a line so that he could get in with the crowd.
Either way, I was surprised when on the morning of 25 July, the phone rang in our house and my mother called up to me that it was Brian O’Rourke. I lifted the receiver with mixed feelings. On one hand, I hadn’t expected this to happen and felt a resurgence of excitement, but on the other, I hoped it wouldn’t become a regular thing – Brian O’Rourke ringing me at home.
“If you’re interested, I’m going up to the Branch Line this morning,” he said.
I was bewildered. “What’re you going up there for?”
“You wanted to look at those mucky books, didn’t you?”
“You hid them all the way up there?”
“Well, yeah.” He sounded surprised. Despite his reputation for being a liar, he never seemed prepared for the possibility that people might doubt him. “They’re… like I say, they’re really nasty. I can’t risk being caught.”
Something about this whole business seemed improbable. But he’d told us he’d let us know when he was available, and the Branch Line was only a couple of miles from where I lived. On top of that, all I’d really planned for that day was to loaf about the house.
“I’ve rung the others,” he added.
That decided it. If nothing else, larking around on the Branch Line would be different.
We arranged to meet at 11 a.m. and headed up to the Alexandra Pit separately because we lived in different parts of town. These days it’s common for youngsters to wear backpacks, but it was unusual then. Nevertheless, when I arrived, getting off the bus opposite the old Alexandra Pub, taking a path between two rows of houses and climbing over a gate onto the cindery wasteland beyond, I found Brian waiting there with a pack on his back.
“I assumed you wouldn’t have thought to bring any lunch,” he said, “so I’ve made some sandwiches for us both, and brought a bottle of pop we can share.”
I was gobsmacked. It was thoughtful of him, I suppose, but it was nannyish too. Plus, that was the kind of preparation you made for hiking trips in the Lakes or Wales, not for checking out a derelict railway line on your home patch.
I made this point, but he shook his head. “You know what the Branch Line’s like. We’ll have to be ready for anything. We’ll be up here quite some time, I expect.”
Personally, I didn’t expect that. The Branch Line was about three miles long; as an energetic thirteen-year-old, I could have covered that distance in an hour. But I now noticed that, while I was wearing a Wrangler jacket, T-shirt, jeans and trainers, he was in the Rambling Club’s unofficial uniform of plaid shirt, zipped-up cagoule, corduroy trousers and mountain boots. He clearly intended to drag this thing out. To make it an epic adventure.
“When are the others getting here?” I asked.
“They’re not,” he replied in the sort of uninterested voice that suggested it wasn’t worth mentioning again. “Just said they weren’t bothered.”
It was this kind of thing that always saw Brian O’Rourke come unstuck. Despite the many harsh lessons he’d learned about his lowly place in our world, he still couldn’t help but talk one-to-one as if you were the follower and he was the leader.
“So, what you told me on the phone was a downright lie?” I said.
“No.” He tried to stay calm, as if it still didn’t matter, but his cheeks had tinged red. “I said I rang them. I didn’t say they were coming.”
I shook my head with disbelief. Mr. Slippery was at it again.
He tried to turn placatory as we trudged towards the railway cutting. “At least, this way we’ll have the mags all to ourselves.”
I was too vexed to reply. There was still time to dump him, of course. All I had to do was tell him to shove it and head back. It wouldn’t have cost me anything apart from the bus fare. But one of the reasons I hadn’t joined in the persecution of Brian O’Rourke when we’d first arrived at St. Aloysius’s was that I’d felt sorry for the guy. He’d been ostracised so much during his childhood that it was hard not to feel something. Yes, he’d brought it on himself, but he’d been raised in a household where his sole role-model was a dominant alpha male, and yet his own cack-handed efforts to achieve that status had left him all but blacklisted.
Even by 1973 no one liked him, and he was painfully aware of it. That had to hurt.
We descended a slope of compact clinker dotted with tufts of scrub-thorn, and at the bottom, perhaps thirty feet down, stepped onto the track bed. Initially, the soil here was so barren that the railway lines were fully exposed, the rails broken and dislodged but dwindling away along the flat-floored cutting in a straight line ahead of us. I must admit that, up to this point, I hadn’t even considered the Branch Line’s eerie reputation. But several hundred yards along it, thick groundcover appeared, and soon the only sound was the swishing of foliage as we kicked our way through. A short time after that, trees and thickets crowded to the tops of either embankment, which indicated we were past the colliery spoil-land and the housing estates adjoining it (and therefore the nearest next bunch of people). It briefly occurred to me that this wasn’t perhaps the best idea. Okay, there was going to be a reward for us here, but already it felt as if we were very alone.
We pressed on, the sun beating down. The Branch Line wasn’t an obviously scary place, but a couple of times I glanced around as if expecting to see a face peering down from the greenery at the top, or looked behind me… expecting what? I’m not sure.
“What reasons did the others give?” I said, trying to distract myself.
Brian had fallen quiet, still aware of my disapproval. Now he shrugged. “Just said they couldn’t be arsed.”
“Pull the other one.” I glared directly ahead. “Phelpsy would crawl through broken glass to see some tits and fannies. Fletch was up for it too, and Doogie.”
His face flushed again as he chewed over what to say.
“The thing is,” he fin
ally said, “I didn’t get in touch with them.”
“I guessed as much. Why not?”
“I don’t trust that lot. These books are… well, they’re illegal in this country, which makes ’em valuable. They’d have nicked ’em the moment I turned my back.”
That had half a ring of truth to it. As I’ve mentioned, mucky books were a currency back then. And if this guy really was sitting on a stockpile, and they really were as good as he said, the likes of Phelpsy wouldn’t be able to resist helping himself.
But I was still angered by his deception. “The problem is, Brian… what if we meet some gang of dickheads, and there’s only two of us?”
“Oh, come on!” he scoffed. “If we do meet some dickheads, what use would Phelpsy, Fletch and Doogie have been?”
He had a point there too. None of them had a rep for being fighters. But I was still unsettled by the revelation he hadn’t even asked them. Again, it seemed a bit non-laddish, if such a word exists, that he’d rather knock around with me on my own than with the whole crowd. I didn’t get a chance to articulate this concern though, because Brian now spoke again, his tone subtly different.
“You know what I think? I think what you’re really scared of is that stupid ghost story.”
“No, I’m not,” I responded quickly.
“Course you are!” he sneered, which I seriously didn’t like. That this guy could mock me, when I’d been just about the only person who hadn’t beaten the crap out of him over the last few years! The only trouble was that he wasn’t completely wrong.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed about it,” he continued, placating again. “The stories are pretty scary. Did you know… about ten years ago, some hippies came up here looking to pitch a camp.” His face wrinkled with disgust, no doubt echoing his parents’ views about hippies. “There were three blokes and this bird. They wanted somewhere to shag her. That’s what they do, hippies. They set camps up, smoke some dope and then gangbang the birds till their tits go red.”
