by David Smith
Ian leans back in Dad’s chair, taps the tailing ash from his cigarette onto the hearth and casually crosses his legs. ‘It’s a free country, Mr Smith, it’s a free country.’ He blows a chain of perfect smoke rings into the air. In the background, Hitler’s screams seem to implode within the speaker, spilling out into every corner of the room.
Dad stands and sways, his hands on the table as if to support himself, but I know he’s inching closer to get a good run at Ian. ‘Fucking free country!’ he bellows. ‘Fucking free country! What do you know about it, you fucking shit-stirring, German-loving bastard! You know fuck all about anything!’
A smile spreads across Ian’s face. He goes for the jugular. ‘Don’t forget Dresden . . . You call your laddies heroes, Mr Smith, but what about the massacre of innocents at Dresden? Answer me that.’
From her position on the floor, legs tucked sideways beneath her, Myra slyly glances at her boyfriend, cranking up Dad’s mood. ‘Come on, Ian, leave it, love. Can’t you see the man’s drunk? He doesn’t know what he’s saying, does he?’
I see the volcano erupt in Dad’s eyes and leap up out of my chair to grab him as he flies at Ian. I hate this. I know only too well what it takes to control Dad, especially when he’s got the drink on him; he has to be injured to put a stop to it all. I stand my ground with some difficulty, shoving him to a standstill with my hands planted flat against his chest.
‘Get the fuck out of my house!’ he screams at Ian, and Myra. I feel the spray of his temper splatter on my face. Locking eyes with him, I tell him through gritted teeth to get himself off to bed, that this thing isn’t between me and him but if I have to stop him, I will, even though it’s the last thing I want. He sweats with anger and pushes against my hands, but when I shove back and ask him to please just sod off to bed, he relents.
Glowering across my shoulder at Ian, he mutters, ‘Just get that bastard out of my chair.’ Relief trickles through me as he suddenly turns, slamming and banging his way into the kitchen and upstairs.
I sink into my own chair, letting out my breath slowly. Ian hasn’t moved an inch; he sits cross-legged, smiling calmly and nipping the end of his cigarette. I realise Hitler has stopped ranting and let my head droop. But then comes the clatter of heavy boots on the stairs and Dad storms back in. I rise in apprehension, but he’s only there to grab his parcel from the table. At the kitchen door, he twists round awkwardly, his eyes burning: ‘I told you to get him out of my fucking chair.’ Then he swivels his gaze round to Myra, who’s laughing quietly. ‘Fucking bitch,’ Dad spits.
Maureen lowers her head, upset and embarrassed. I wait to see what’s going to happen, but Dad isn’t in the mood for a fight any more and exits loudly. Ian calls cheerfully after his retreating back, ‘Goodnight, Mr Smith. Sleep well, now.’
Silence falls on us for a while. Ian and Myra exchange triumphant glances, then Ian lights up another cigarette and launches into a diatribe, addressing no one in particular: ‘So-called fucking Tommy war heroes can’t handle the facts . . . it’s all propaganda, that’s what it is, fucking propaganda . . . the truth has been suppressed for too fucking long, this is reality, the whole planet is in the grip of stinking Jews, that’s what’s behind everything . . . fucking Kennedy clan are nothing but a tribe of cunts . . .’
Eventually the drink overwhelms him. In a sullen hush, he rests back in the chair with his eyes closed, cigarette spent. Myra begins gathering their belongings to leave. She folds Ian’s coat neatly and drapes it over one arm, waiting until he’s hauled himself out of the chair. I get to my feet. Ian throws an arm around my shoulder, squeezing me tightly before brushing a clenched fist playfully across my chin: ‘Good party, eh?’
I sink into the chair again, leaving Maureen to see them out. I’m angry with Ian, Dad and myself, too – what a waste of time and effort everything is. I slug back the last of the whisky, clenching my empty fist. A clammy head-sweat swamps me. The heat of the roaring fire, the whisky, the jugged wine, and boiled ribs and cabbage knot my innards before springing open like a burst valve.
I dive through the kitchen and hit the fresh air of the backyard, bumping and scraping against the wall to the outhouse. Brutally ramming two fingers down my throat, I bring up a waterfall of hot, evil-smelling liquid. Gasping, I stand in the yard for a while and everything helicopters in front of my face. I stumble indoors, seeing double as I follow a trail of yellow chips up the stairs, using my hands as an extra pair of feet. I stand outside Dad’s bedroom door and listen to him snoring for England, then stumble into the other room.
On the bed I share with Maureen, I sit gazing at Angela’s cot, ashamed of how the evening disintegrated. Hearing her snuffles, I feel a semblance of normality return and undress with quivering fingers. The Image lies on the floor in an untidy jumble as I fall back onto the mattress, thinking dizzily ‘Where the fuck is Dresden anyway?’ before slipping into blessed unconsciousness.
I rise late the next day, feeling dog-rough, poisoned and rotten. I’m half-dressed as I clamber down the stairs, thinking I can’t be arsed with the Image today. Maureen silently hands me the pot of tea, nodding towards the living room. I take the pot from her, clutching my cigarettes, and join Dad in our chairs by the fire. We sit quietly for a few minutes, and I eye the sad figure as he begins sorting out what’s left of his pay packet.
‘Bad night at the cards, was it?’ I ask softly, hoping to break the tension.
Dad takes a deep breath. ‘Got fuck all to do with cards. It was a bad night all round.’
I read his mood less by his words and more by his calm, empty speech. He’s not angry, but I know it’s wiser to leave him alone and return to the kitchen. While I’m talking to Maureen, the front door opens, then slams shut.
I spend the weekend sobering up, happy to stroll with Maureen through Sunnybrow Park pushing the pram, throwing sticks for the dogs and talking about nothing in particular. Dad has hit the Hyde Road Hotel and is drinking heavily again, but it’s his way of sorting things out in his head. At night I lie in bed listening to him fumbling his way up the stairs and trying to be as quiet as he can. In the morning, his chair is empty.
On Monday, everything is back to normal.
* * *
‘Have You Seen 10 Year Old Lesley? Big Search for Lost Girl’, asked the Gorton & Openshaw Reporter on New Year’s Day, 1965. The article highlighted the vanishing of Lesley Ann Downey, who had not been seen since visiting Silcock’s Wonder Fair near her home in Ancoats on Boxing Day evening. Mention was also made of Pauline Reade, John Kilbride and Keith Bennett. Lesley’s mother and stepfather appealed for information, stressing how much her three brothers were missing their shy sister, and her best friend appeared on the Granada kids’ television programme The Headliners to discuss in a halting voice how Lesley had suddenly left their small group to run back alone to the alluring lights of the fair. Six thousand posters bearing Lesley’s image were printed, five thousand flyers distributed and more than six thousand people interviewed, but despite alleged sightings of the little girl in Blackpool, Belgium and any number of places in between, Lesley remained missing.
Ten months later, however, Maureen Smith would tell a hushed courtroom of an incident that occurred in February that year, when she and her sister were retiring for the night after an evening’s socialising: ‘Mrs Downey [had] offer[ed] a reward of £100 to anybody who could give any information as to where her daughter, Lesley, was. I said to Myra: “Her mother must think a lot of the child.”’
Prompted by the barrister as to her sister’s response, Maureen said quietly, ‘She laughed.’
Chapter 7
‘Have You Seen 10 Year Old Lesley?’
– Gorton and Openshaw Reporter, 1 January 1965
From David Smith’s memoir:
Saddleworth Moor. What is it about this place and the dark?
We’ve been up here before, the four of us, during the daytime, and it held no more interest for me then. There are few trees and no bird
song. It’s always cold – the wind cuts through everything – and difficult to walk any distance. I trudge about in my Cuban-heeled cowboy boots, feeling the ground give as we follow wherever Ian decides we should go. He strides 20, 30, 40 yards in front of Myra, Maureen and me. He walks with a sense of purpose, smiling, hands in pockets, as he negotiates the land without a care. I glance at him, wondering if you need to be a bloody Scotsman to enjoy this kind of bleak, barren landscape. But Myra loves it here, too; it’s their place. And, as far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to it.
In daylight, Ian follows the many deep-sided streams and we traipse behind until he finds a spot he likes. We drink the wine and whisky we’ve brought with us, and the wind blows our cigarettes out. Occasionally we have a radio with us, but not often. There are rocks nearby, along the roadside, great lumps of black stone. If we come here at night, that’s where we go, clambering over those rocks in the solid darkness to a flatter spot. He wears his stock-clerk shoes; she’s in her heels. We look down across the vast, dusky valley to the reservoir far below, a pale sliver of water. We wrap ourselves in blankets, cold at first, then whisky-warm.
I live for this place, he tells me. It owns my soul.
At times, he’s a mad man, walking off very quickly, hands in pockets again, alone, searching. When we catch up with him, he’s breathless and smiling: a junkie who has taken his fix. His expression alters if he catches sight of someone else on the moor – hikers send him into a rage. But that only happens during the day. By night, no one comes here but us.
One afternoon in April 1965 we head to the moor and don’t return home until nine. We drink ourselves close to oblivion and play cards carelessly, moods slipping. Ian suggests going back to the moor. We crawl into Myra’s car and speed away from the lamp-lit streets to roads that are blacker than the wagons shunting past my window.
It’s very late now. We squeeze out of the car near the rocks, where the moon glimmers on the reservoir far below. We’re very drunk, especially Ian and me, stumbling about in the dark. Myra is carrying the blanket. I can’t see my hand in front of my face, but Ian strides off in a direction he knows well. His voice is thick with drink and whisky sloshes in the bottle pushed inside his coat pocket. We lurch from one bog hole to the next and my socks grow wet, Cuban heels sinking into the long grass. Every time one of us loses our footing, Ian swears, a habit he slips into when drunk. Often he stops, glancing across at the reservoir as if to get his bearings. Finally, he finds the place.
It all looks the same to me, but Ian is happy. We wait for the girls to catch up with us. He’s friendly, affectionate even, as we stand looking across at the gleaming water. His arm is around my shoulder, hand gently squeezing, soothing.
Myra unfolds the blanket and we sit down. I’m comfortable apart from my wet shoes and socks; all of us are warmly dressed. The girls share a flask of tea and talk about their mother and Angela and things of the past. I neck the whisky with Ian, listening to the drone of the girls’ voices, enjoying the sensation of the alcohol warming my insides, burning my throat and spreading to my head. Ian is on a roll, spouting again about the peace that this place brings him and cursing the maggots down in the city. I realise he still has his arm around my shoulder and I’m thinking: this must be true friendship.
The night just got darker and I didn’t see it.
* * *
Before that particular visit to the moor, in early 1965 David and his old friend Sammy Jepson almost came to blows when Sammy started a rumour that he and Maureen had slept together. Meeting him by chance soon afterwards, David landed a punch before Sammy ran off; he called at his friend’s flat in Longsight to settle the score once and for all, but Sammy managed to duck away from him and raced off down the street. At the same time, David’s old adversary Tony Latham was putting about a similar story about himself and Maureen. David had no doubt that both Sammy and Tony were lying over their involvement with his wife, but he was infuriated nonetheless.
Almost every weekend, Ian and Myra would drive over to see David and Maureen, bringing a generous supply of alcohol to drink late into the night. The girls usually fell asleep just as Ian was getting into his stride, expounding on his philosophies and talking about his time in Borstal. He was interested in David’s past misdemeanours, prompting him one evening with the words, ‘I believe you’ve got a record.’ Often in the early hours of the morning the two of them would go outside to urinate behind the lock-up garages opposite; Ian brought along David’s starter pistol (‘All lads had starter pistols back then,’ David recalls) to shatter the night air with a single shot.
Occasionally, David and Maureen stayed overnight in Hattersley. The neat, half-timbered house at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue had ‘all mod cons’ and was surrounded by a white picket fence with a front and rear garden. The road through the estate ran in front, sloping ten feet as it passed the house behind a brick wall. Directly opposite was the New Inn pub on Mottram Road, which Myra would sometimes nip across to for cigarettes. On the horizon and clearly visible from the upstairs rooms of number 16 were the dark contours of the moor.
While David and Maureen were waiting to hear about their own move from Gorton, on 25 April 1965 the life they had built together was obliterated by the sudden death of their daughter, Angela Dawn.
* * *
From David Smith’s memoir:
Something is about to happen; something unstoppable.
I’m getting ready for work. Maureen is in the kitchen, making my pack-up, and I spend the last ten minutes of my morning at home sitting on the settee with little Angela tucked beside me. Then all at once those minutes are gone – there’s no time left, Dad and me have a bus to catch. On the upper deck he reads his Daily Mirror and we talk about nothing. I work all morning without much thought and wait for tea break. Half the day is done and I’ll soon be home.
Then I get called to the office. I’m told to go to Ancoats Hospital; Maureen is there, but nothing to worry about, she’s not hurt, just get yourself off. I slope out of the factory and stroll to the hospital, puzzled but unconcerned, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon. At the enquiry desk, I ask for Maureen.
Somewhere there’s a clock ticking, but it’s about to stop.
A nurse approaches me quickly, guiding me by the elbow into an empty room. She tells me she’ll only be a moment. A moment. How long is a moment when it lasts for ever?
I stand, glancing about at the room, which seems to be for examinations of some sort. There is a couch with a roll of white paper at one end, and not much else, just a few leaflets in a rack on the wall and a trolley of medical odds and ends. I think I can still hear the clock ticking.
The door opens and the same nurse comes in with a doctor.
I’m asked my name and address and told to sit down. I refuse, not seeing the need to rest my legs. The nurse is holding a great wad of tissues for some reason. The doctor speaks quick and soft: your daughter is dead. I’m very, very sorry.
Angela Dawn Smith, aged six months. Gone.
The clock stops.
I think someone makes me sit down, but I don’t remember moving, and my hands are full of tissues but I’m not crying. We’ll fetch your wife, they say and go out, closing the door quietly, leaving me alone.
My world detonates.
I smash the room to bits, destroying every last thing within it. Nobody comes in to stop me, even though they can hear it all. I’m spent and more broken than I’ve ever been. I can’t feel anything but a pain so acute that it makes me vomit.
Maureen appears, hysterical, a mess. Someone calls a taxi for us and not a word is said about what I’ve done to the room. In the cab, Maureen splutters through her tears: morning feed, bath, changed nappies, afternoon nap in the cot, she didn’t wake up, I went in and I couldn’t wake her, she didn’t wake up, Dave, she didn’t wake up, she didn’t wake up.
At home, I don’t speak for hours. Maureen won’t leave my side: I move, she moves, I stand up, she stands up. It’s stra
nge, what you do together in grief.
I remember my beautiful little girl, my baby on the settee, round-eyed and laughing. Ten minutes, hours ago. Poor Maureen has had the full horror to face and I wasn’t there. I feel a rage so deep it makes my head burst. I gather all of Angela’s clothes, iron them and pack them away into a suitcase. No one must touch anything of hers. When Maureen’s Auntie Ann turns up out of genuine kindness, offering to sort out my baby’s belongings, I shout at her to leave. Then I take the suitcase to a railway embankment and throw it over the fence with all the might I can muster.
John Lennon says only women bleed. He’s so fucking wrong.
They bring Angela home one night in the smallest of white boxes. We’re at Mum’s house, 39 Aked Street, unable to face living at Wiles Street once I’ve got rid of the suitcase.
I take Angela from the undertaker’s men at the door; she’s ours and we don’t need anyone else’s help. I carry her to the parlour, my special place, where Dad has prepared a table. For such a little box it’s very heavy . . . or perhaps I have lost all feeling in my limbs.
Maureen and I spend the longest and loneliest night of our lives in the parlour with Angela in her coffin. The next day Maureen is a girl no longer. The difference can be seen in her eyes: they’ve become dull and empty, and the light will never quite come back into them. Her normally husky voice is nothing more than a whisper. We both recognise that our first attempt at growing up and sharing love with each other and with a child of our own has been razed to the ground.
We don’t recover.
Relations and in-laws arrive to say goodbye to Angela. I find myself heading for the front door. Opening it, I stop and glance back. Maureen is standing at the end of the hall. She nods at me without a word and I step outside.
Hours later I’m flat on my face outside the house in the dark, pissed up like I’ve never been before. The lights are on behind the tightly drawn curtains. I press my skin to the cold concrete and listen to the voice of madness in my head: well, Be-Bop-A-Fucking-Lula, this is the day the fucking music died, no more street jiving, no more giving a shit about the hair and the clothes, no more Jimmy fucking Savile, screw being a Catholic, who gives a fuck about Dylan and Lennon anyway?
