1983

‘Excuse me!’

Through the letterbox, you can see a pair of dirty white socks pacing about inside.

You knock on the door again. You shout: ‘I know you’re in there.’

‘What do you want?’

You stand up. You say to the door: ‘I just want a word.’

‘What about?’

‘Your sister and her daughter.’

The latch turns. The door branded Pervert opens.

‘What about them?’ says Johnny Kelly -

The Man who had Everything;

‘What about them?’ he says again -

The Man who had Everything -

In a tight pair of jeans and a sweater with no shirt, his hair long and unwashed, his face fat and unshaven;

‘They’re dead,’ he says.

‘I know,’ you say. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘Fuck off,’ he hisses.

‘No.’

Johnny Kelly steps forward. He pokes you in the chest. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

‘My name is John Piggott,’ you reply. ‘I’m a solicitor.’

‘I’ve got no fucking money,’ he says. ‘If that’s what you’re after.’

‘No,’ you say. ‘That’s not what I’m after.’

‘So what are you after?’

‘The truth.’

He swallows. He closes his eyes. He opens them. He looks past you at the grey and black sky. He hears the glass smash and the child’s screams, the brakes and the voices. He sees the dead and the shit -

‘About what?’ he says.

‘The truth about your Paula and her Jeanette. About Susan Ridyard and Clare Kemplay. About Michael Myshkin and Jimmy Ashworth. About -’

The dead and the shit -

The tears old and new -

The windows and the doors branded Pervert -

‘About Hazel Atkins,’ you say.

‘What makes you think I know anything?’

‘It was just a hunch,’ you shrug.

‘You fucking psychic, are you?’ he says, closing the door.

You put your right foot forward between the door and the frame. You stop him.

‘Fuck off!’ he shouts. ‘I don’t know anything.’

You push the door back in his face. You say: ‘Is that right? Well, you know all those names, don’t you?’

And Johnny Kelly -

The Man who had Everything -

Johnny Kelly looks down at his dirty white socks. He nods. He whispers words you cannot hear -

‘You what?’ you say.

‘They’re dead,’ he says again, looking up -

The tears old and new -

The tears in both your eyes -

‘All of them,’ he says. ‘Dead.’

‘Not quite,’ you say.

He looks down again at his dirty white socks.

‘You going to let me in?’ you say.

Johnny Kelly turns. He walks back into his flat, the door open.

You follow him down a narrow hall into the living room.

Kelly sits down in an old and scarred vinyl armchair, racing papers and a plate of uneaten and dried-up baked beans at his feet -

An empty bottle of HP stood on its head -

He has his face in his hands.

You sit on the matching settee, a colour TV showing The World at War.

Above the unlit gas-fire and its plastic-surround, a Polynesian girl is smiling in various shades of orange and brown, a tear in her hair and one corner missing, the walls running with damp.

You sit and you think of faces running with tears -

Think of the missing -

Of Hazel.

Next door a dog is barking and barking and barking.

Johnny Kelly looks up. He says: ‘It never goes away.’

You nod.

‘So what do you want to know?’

‘Everything,’ you whisper.

You drive from Leeds back into Wakefield. You do not put the radio on. You repeat as you drive:

Everybody knows; everybody knows; everybody knows -

Everybody knows and -

It is about four o’clock in the afternoon with the sun never shining and the hard, relentless, endless fucking drizzle of a dull, dark, soundless fucking Sunday running down the windscreen of the car.

You check the rearview mirror. Then the wing.

You park up on the pavement of a quiet dim lane in front of tall wet walls:

Trinity View, Wood Lane, Sandal -

The posh part of Wakefield; the garage owners and the builders, the self-made men with their self-made piles, their double drives and deductible lives, the ones who never pay their bills and always dodge their taxes -

Self-satisfied and shielded, gilded against the coming war -

Against John Piggott.

You walk up the long drive towards Trinity View, past the neat lawn with its tainted, plastic ornaments and stagnant, plagued pond.

There are no cars in the drive. There are no lights on inside -

Only the hateful gloom of bad history -

The hateful, hateful gloom of bad, bad history, hanging in the trees, the branches -

Their shadows long.

You ring the doorbell. You listen to the dreadful, lonely chimes echo through the inside of the house.

‘Yes? Who is it?’ calls out a woman from behind the door.

‘My name is John Piggott.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘About what?’

‘About Johnny Kelly.’

‘Go away.’

‘About your late husband.’

‘Go away.’

You have your face and lips to the door: ‘About Jeanette.’

Silence -

Hanging in the trees -

‘About Clare.’