1983

But it is gone -

Gone.

I fall to my knees in the mud.

I raise up my eyes and heart, blind and raw up towards the vast grey sky and I let the coarse black rain wash away the blood -

From my eyes and heart, his heart and mine -

I let the rain wash away the blood, wash it into the earth -

This scorched and heathen earth -

These scorched and heathen hearts.

Thursday 19 December 1974 -

Midnight -

I am late:

Blenheim Road, St John’s, Wakefield -

Hearts cut, lost -

I am late;

28 Blenheim Road, St John’s, Wakefield -

Heart cut -

I am late;

I park. I get out. I lock the car door. I walk up the drive. I go inside. Up the stairs to Flat 5 -

Heart -

Late;

I knock on the door -

The air stained -

Silent.

I try the door -

It opens.

I step inside -

Listening:

No low sobs, no muffled sobs -

No weeping here tonight;

Only silence.

Stood before the bedroom door, I whisper: ‘Mandy?’

I close my eyes. I open them. I see stars -

Stars and angels -

My angel -

I try the door: ‘Mandy?’

The door swings open.

There are loud animal sobs -

Contorted, screaming and howling -

The weeping is mine.

She is naked but for her blood -

Her hair all gone -

She is hanging from the light.

Beneath her shadows -

Dead hearts.

The cat piss and petunia, desperate on an old sofa -

Her head upon my chest, I am stroking her beautiful, bloody scalp.

Behind the heavy stained curtains, the branches of the tree tap upon the window -

Sobbing and weeping;

Soaked in blood and wanting in -

‘I love you.’

Sobbing -

‘We’ll go.’

Weeping -

‘Far away.’

Her face in the candlelight white and dead -

The branches of the tree tapping upon the glass;

Sobbing and weeping -

We are kissing -

Asking to be let in -

Kissing and then fucking.

The windows look inwards, the walls listen to your heart -

Where one thousand voices cry.

Inside -

Inside your scorched heart.

There is a house -

A house with no doors.

The earth scorched -

Heathen and always winter.

The rooms murder -

Here is where we live.

I wake in the dark, beneath her shadows -

‘We have her in the tree -’

Tapping against the pane.

She’s lying on her side, naked -

Branches tapping against the pane.

I’m lying on my back in my underpants and socks -

The branches tapping against the pane.

Lying on my back in my underpants and socks, terrible laments and their dreadful elegies inside my head -

Listening to the branches tapping against the pane.

I’m lying on my back in my underpants and socks, terrible laments and their dreadful elegies inside my head, listening to the branches tapping along against the pane -

I look at my watch -

‘Have her in the branches.’

It’s stopped.

I reach for my glasses but they are gone and I get out of the bed without moving her and I go through into the kitchen and I put on the light and fill the kettle and light the gas and find the teapot in the cupboard and two cups and saucers and I rinse out the cups and then dry them and then take the milk out of the fridge and the bottle smells bad but I put two teabags in the teapot anyway and take the kettle off the ring and pour the water on to the teabags and let it stand, staring out of the small window, the kitchen reflected back in the glass, an undead man undressed but for his white underpants, an undead man undressed in a dead woman’s flat at six o’clock in the morning -

Friday 20 December 1974:

‘Under the spreading chestnut tree -’

I put the teapot and cups and saucers on the tray and take it into the big room and I set the tray down on the low table and pour the tea and switch on the radio:

‘A Fitzwilliam man yesterday appeared before Wakefield Magistrates and was charged with the murder of Clare Kemplay, the Morley schoolgirl whose body was found on Saturday by the Calder in Wakefield. The man was also charged with a number of driving offences and was further remanded in custody for questioning in