1980

3 Dead in Wakefield Xmas Shoot-out -

To the sub-heading:

Hero Cops Foil Pub Robbery.

Then I lean over to the grey metal filing cabinet marked Yorkshire and again I take out a file – one from the back:

Whitehead, Jack -

To an old newspaper dated:

Monday 27 January 1975 -

To the Front Page and the headline:

Man Kills Wife in Exorcism -

To the sub-heading:

Local Priest Arrested.

Finally I open up a thick blank notebook.

Inside, I write one word in big black felt tip pen:

Exegesis -

Then I switch on the cassette and I begin:

And when we die

And float away

Into the night

The Milky Way

You’ll hear me call

As we ascend

I’ll say your name

Then once again

Thank you for being a friend.

I push open the bedroom door.

Joan is in bed, pretending to be asleep.

I go over to her and I kiss her forehead.

She opens her eyes: ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘The shed,’ I say.

‘All this time? It’s almost dawn.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s almost dawn.’

She closes her eyes again.

I undress and put on my pyjamas.

I switch off the light and get in beside her.

‘I love you,’ she says, snuggling up to me, closer -

‘Me too,’ I say, holding her in the cold bed and staring up at the ceiling, the smell of her hair, listening to the cars on the road and the rise and fall of her breathing.

They were here again, back -

People on the TV singing hymns with no face -

People on the TV singing hymns with no face, no features -

And at my feet, they had her down on the floor at my feet, her hands behind her back, stripped and beaten, three of them raping her, sodomising her, taking their turns with a bottle and a chair, cutting her hair, pissing and shitting on her, making her suck them, making her suck me, ugly gulls circling overhead, screaming -

Helen Marshall sucking me, Helen Marshall screaming:

‘Sti rip sll iwl lik Hunter!’

Awake, sweating and afraid, staring up at the ceiling, no cars on the roads -

Afraid again -

No more sleep, no more sleep, no more sleep -

Out of the grey morning, Joan reaching for me: ‘What’s wrong, love? What is it?’

Heart racing, beating, breaking -

I can feel come in my pyjamas again. ‘Nothing,’ I say, thinking -

Nothing -

Part 2. Nothing short of a total war

wearing tights and two pairs of panties one pair of panties removed my right leg out left leg in again the news from nowhere this from bradford Saturday the fourth of june nineteen seventy seven linda dark in a green jacket and a long black velvet dress in the shadow of the sikh temple on bowling back lane fresh from the mecca now tiffanys then the bali hai discotheque drunk and dancing he leads me into mystery where sighs cries and shrieks of lamentation echo throughout the starless summer air angry cadences shrill outcries the raucous groans and chants of a football crowd joined with the sounds of their hands him raising a whirling storm that turns itself forever through the starless summer air the day fading and the darkening air releasing all the creatures of the earth from their daily tasks drunk and dancing my plan was to walk until e saw a taxi rather than wait at the rank with the rest of them and as e was walking up pulled a white or yellow ford cortina mark two with a black satan look roof which stopped on the wakefield road the door opens and he leans across and offers me a lift and in e get the man is thirty five years old and maybe just six feet and of a large build with light brown shoulder length hair thick eyebrows puffy cheeks a big nose and big hands here this is the way but e am drunk from dancing and e keep nodding off and we are bumping up and down across some wasteland and e know what he wants but e am too drunk from dancing to care and e hate my husband who is a spoilsport does not like my drinking and dancing not that he has ever bothered to watch me dance and e ask the driver if he fancies me and he says he does so e tell him to drive to wasteland over yonder behind where pakis go nodding off bumping up and down across some wasteland e know what she wants and she says stop here because e have to have a pee and she gets out and is squatting down in the dark the sound of her urine on the wasteland under the starless endless black summer air of this here hell e hit her with the hammer and e rip her black velvet dress to the waist and e stab her repeatedly in the chest in the stomach and in the back but then e see lights going on in gypsy caravan an alsatian dog barking and e think she is dead so e drive away at high speed bumping up and down across wasteland and it is morning and e am not drinking or dancing e am cold freezing cold and crying people coming and looking at me lying on the wasteland my girdle pants and tights pulled down a blow to the back of the head stabbed four times in my chest in my stomach and in my back one a slashing stab wound that stretches from my breasts to below my belly button the surgeons they give me one of them life saving operations and e do not die e cannot die so e live with a hole in my head and scars across my belly where the sighs cries and shrieks of lamentation echo throughout the starless endless black night of this here hell wherein there is no hope of death alone in this starless endless night alone and banished from the disco mountain to never hear the songs that made me dance where he showed me the way where he won again no hope of death alone in this starless night alone among the junk and the rubbish where the dogs the ponies the cats the little gypsy children play with the old fridges and cookers the bicycles and prams and was it not here that one of them gypsy kids they hid in an old fridge and nobody found her and did she not die alone in that old fridge nobody looking for her among the broken sinks and meters the bits and pieces from the old council houses that have all been boarded up while them gypsy folk live in their caravans with their horses their dogs and drink in the farmyard