39
THE ATTACK OF THE ‘AVID LETTER WRITER.’ I pulled the pillow out from my behind my head and slammed my head into it. God, it brought everything back so vividly. It still haunts me. It was an awful, awful experience. I was shaking so much. My adrenalin was pumping like crazy. Then and now, just to have those images in my mind again. To sense the tension in the air, to feel I was losing control-it was unravelling before me. Who was that person? The eyes still haunt me, the darkness of the eyes and the hatred inside of them. I felt that. It was so unexpected. Her control of the situation surprised me. I sat myself up and repositioned my pillow and reflected. I can see her now in my mind’s eye. She was the conductor, the ringmaster. I saw the words on the paper in black and white but what is not on here is the feeling, the coldness of the night, the kicking and shoving-the physicality of it all. It was not here. Where was the audience? We had our audience. Where are the young lads on the swing who called out to her? They were four. I saw them and I heard them call out. But now they are gone.
I re-read it over and over. The more I read each line, each page, the more I felt this is not right. I laughed. It was a nervous, short guttural laugh. I saw George Harrison in there. Where did he come from? Who is Paula? I don’t know any Paula. I said eight people. I never counted eight people. Why did I put a number to it? Spontaneous. Wait. Thinking about it there’s probably a lot more than eight. I could have said sixteen. She has a lot of enemies-I know that now.
Then something occurred to me about the idea of using a tape recorder. She’s got the idea from Barbara! Jesus, Barb must have blabbed to her about her sexual harassment case. Attorney Armand Riccio had her wear a wire to get the scoop on Billy Peek. Wow. I’m now in that category. Did she really see me as a sex abuser? God. This really hurts.
I leapt from the bed in a flash of inspiration. My hard drive. She had emailed me while she was at Cilla’s. She wasn’t in my care then-she was free. But she still was sucking up to me with those emails.
I rushed to boot up my computer. I needed to see. My hands trembled with adrenalin. Come on; come on load, load, load! History, history…where’s my mail history?
Subject: Thanks. Date:01.01.03 5:50:41 PM GMT Standard Time. From: Becky15@Hentai.com.To: LOBloom41@Hentai.com
Hello. Hows you? Well I love to smile and everyone knows me as smiling all the time. I,m glad you came into my life although I have been a pain in the bum………….. I really care for you I know I did not show this but I do. All the best for the future love you always.XxBecksxx
Eureka! I’ve got her in a lie. That little gem gives me hope to start my fight back. I shuffled excitedly through the pile of papers my solicitor had given me. Scanning line after line in anticipation my joy was short lived. I melted from exuberance to dejection. It's a dark and dirty world. My accuser had been despoiled by my creepy pawing, groping, cajoling. Lasciviously fulfilling my perversions. She had been all but deflowered by my repellent sliminess. A discarded plaything. I was betrayed. I snorted angrily, forgetting my pain for a moment. I drew in a sharp breath, ready to scream out my rage at the treacherous creature.
40
A warm summer drew to a close and Charlotte and me settled in nicely at our brand new plush home. I knew Barb was never going to play ball with helping me with the mortgage on Eccles Drive so I found a nice Japanese family who worked at the local television factory to move in. I couldn’t sell the old place. No, smart as a pin Barb had her lawyers slap a lien on it preventing me from selling.
Then one hazy afternoon while we were loafing in the garden Charlotte with earphones sunbathing does something marvellous and stupendously helpful. She figures out the Tractabull anomaly. Eureka! She heard something to save the day. I jumped up in my skimpiness and danced like a madman round the lawn
It was all to do with the part of the incident when Rebecca’s boyfriend alleged he came running out of the bushes to speak to her. I had not picked that fact up on his witness statement. He claimed he was hiding the whole time and came out to see if she was all right when I left the scene briefly and spoke with her. His voice never appears on the tape. The icing on the cake is we then find that ‘get off me’ not on the tape. The police had concocted that little bit of added dialogue to make it sound like I had grabbed hold of the complainant. I kissed her at least a thousand times that week.
Of course, I immediately note down all my concerns in a detailed letter and sent it off to the police. Surely they must do something now! But I guess it doesn’t go over too well when you point out a police investigation has been either incompetent or maliciously corrupt. Anyway I got a response. That nice Inspector Troy Boylan told me in person: no phone chats or tape recordings. He drove round one afternoon as I was cutting the lawn. He wound down the window of his police car and beckoned me across. He looked the place over and spoke quietly.
“Nice little retreat you got here. I got a copy of your latest letter-very full of yourself still. You don’t know when to quit, do you?”
His fingers tapped at the wing mirror of what appeared to be an unmarked police car in an irritatingly self-conscious fashion.
“ You sure do fancy yourself, Leo. But I mustn’t judge- I guess its one thing having your head up your arse and another molesting young girls-not that you’d be the first, of course. Hope you’re sleeping well at night.” He smiled and I stood dumbfounded. He chuckled then rolled up his window, still beaming with a sickly smile he drove away slowly.
41
I like to read the newspapers and drink a coffee and relax especially after I’ve been to the gym. I preferred John’s Gym on the corner of Quayside Way and Nelson Road half way into the old industrial estate. The economy here has never been the same since European Parliament quotas hamstrung the fishing industry. John’s place was one of those old style sweat and rusty barbell emporiums that boasted three treadmills, a couple of geriatric steppers and enough heavy iron to keep Arnold pumping for hours. That worried me not as I was well into the Spartan life style with a zing and a zest for abs toning and love handle crunching. In a good week I’d be working out three or four days while the lady of the house was at work earning the pennies for our daily bread.
Meanwhile on the home front I endeavoured to take my domestic role seriously. I’d be back home before mid afternoon to ensure I had time to prepare and cook an evening meal for my dear heart. I was her ‘hunky househusband’. Not a title I thought should long befit a man of my broader talents but for the meantime it sufficed insofar as the term ‘gigolo’ had become too pejorative and undignified.
I liked me daytime routine. I enjoyed the freedom. This life was all about show. Let people see what you want them to see. I thought it beneficial to my image that I would leave the house in the morning after clearing the breakfast things. Thus by design at around ten or so I would be in the car and off. With such a schedule my upwardly mobile neighbours in their German or Scandinavian cars might naturally assume I had a life of some significance. I still liked to dress the part as I always had. Be it plain dark suit jacket and dark trousers or a smart casual look of denim complimented with a suede short coat I always accessorized with the obligatory black bag or briefcase. Little details are important. From my formative teaching days I learned that a man appears more productive if he’s seen carrying something in his hands-be it a slip of paper, some books or a stout bag. Props and costume set the scene. And off I went. For some unfathomable reason the developers posted signs with a ten mile an hour speed limit right through to the main roundabout. As I steered the Mercedes into the street I noted Mrs Glum two doors down, a frumpy older woman with a misshapen big head and elephantine legs washing the family’s second car (a five year old VW) applying all the alacrity of a comatose tortoise. She shot me a scowl but I just smiled back at her comedy features. As I serenely advanced past the neatly manicured plots I took in the sights. A very elderly- almost decrepit couple were edging nervously out contiguous garages at the side road in their sparkling Japanese super mini. On the opposite kerbside two stocky young deliverymen were humping one of those over-sized American refrigerators that were now the norme prévue. The rather pretty lady of the house was doing a feeble impersonation of guiding the goods towards the front porch. More fun inside later, I guess. On the grass expanse opposite, a sentry line of saplings abjectly failed to give any shade to the Scottish terrier emptying its bowels while its mistress guarded the dirty deed as lookout. Such was the extent of the morning’s happenings in this sleepy English cameo of provincial suburbia.
Those newspapers: I read them often alone in dilatorily fashion at my new bolthole at Gilgamesh’s fine establishment. Occasionally, I would indulge in some highbrow discourse on culture and the arts with my waiter friend. He was especially pleased to tell me of his journey to study the fine works of India's Khajaraho Temple. His little chats are pure escapism from my troubles. I finally plucked up the courage to ask if her were Iranian or Iraqi or perhaps of some other nation? Nation? He railed. Nationalities and nationhood are a western concept. He chose to speak of tribal affiliations and not the phoney abstractions imposed by the infidel industrialisers. Their anti-spiritualistic and prosaic ways had no truck with this.
"…I profess myself a devotee of Mazda, a follower of Zarathustra." Shares in far eastern automobile stocks? I was no the wiser but left it at that.
I rifle through the daily reading matter that the erudite proprietor of this fine establishment provides so courteously for his faithful customers.
“ Ah I see you enjoy the world news, my friend”
I noticed another headline about the troubles in Iraq.
“Iraq? Oh, that map game whimsy of Churchill and Roosevelt….all Persia to me.” Came the soft rebuking words of my dark-skinned host.
I returned a concerned shake of the head to match his own. I noticed he had a change in his dress sense lately. He was sporting a thin bootlace tie held together with some curious pin. I commented on it.
“Oh, you like? The pin was a gift from a dealer friend of mine. We did a trade on some fine antique books I had just got in. You see I know have more western dress style?”
“Yes very western- just the thing. “
It was always a pleasure to wile away an hour or so taking a cup or two in that fine emporium-my seaward little bolthole. They have most excellent coffee and titbits. Sure does help me hold onto my sanity.
My Persian cousin takes his cue and parks his large rotund form perilously in the flimsy klismos chair beside me. I note the lustrous blackness of his full moustache framing his ever-present broad smile. His attention is caught by the headline of the ‘world news’ page I had been perusing for the last few moments.
“So I see it’s bleak for the vanilla crop….my poor African brothers….subsistence farming is no life for a proud man. My hands feel better kept clean. Though not always easy.”
It seemed August was turning out less favourable for peoples across all of Africa and the Middle East. Economists say that Uganda's youthful growth spurt has ended and the difficult adolescent growth stage lies ahead. He disdained of speaking of modern nations states as such, for he had his own unique vernacular and archaic idioms. His concepts were always somewhat esoteric, clannish and unfathomable but deliciously poetic and captivating, nonetheless.
Whenever he spoke to me of the arts, of matters of politics, religion or geography he would wax lyrically like some fine old Homeric bard. He lamented the loss of the oral tradition for it weakened the role of family and tribe in passing on customs and values. He would mourn the destruction of the tablets of Hermes, so disfigured by mistranslation. He despised the soulless and anti-cultural methodologies of consumerism and individuation. But although he professed to be a Muslim he opposed the dead-letter statements of the Bible for which Islam held such reverence. He seemed more liberal but not quite He was an enigma of a man I just could not fathom. But Gilgamesh looked me straight in the eyes and smiled with those pearly teeth and patting me on the shoulder with his heavy lump of a hand he poured me another cup of steaming brew. Enjoy. North Haven to him was a port like many other ports; its soul was the sea and it welcomes all travellers. Here he was content to sojourn upon the comings and goings about him and relish his hiatus in East Albion.
He was certainly a mighty traveller. I looked at him more carefully, his well shaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense were now glazed. He told me his great ambition was to explore every country and every culture, to savour human diversity and to bear witness to the greatness of that diversity.
For he questioned the march of progress if we merely deforest our heritage, or poison the roots of the legacies of our antecedents. His brow furrowed now like knotted wood gnarled and sunblasted.
“Who knows anything of the Samothracian mysteries? Who will remember that the generic name of the Kabiri was the "Holy Fires," which created on seven localities of the island of Electria (or Samothrace) the "Kabir born of the Holy Lemnos"?”
I had no answer at the conclusion of his impassioned monologue. Every man should have such ardour and such dreams.
So what of my vanilla? My passion. Always and forever to be my favourite scent…ah, the subtlety of it…so sad it’s nearly all synthetics now…the best Madagascan types superseded. Cold, clinical factories-no souls-no heart. There was much to lament in the world apart from the microcosms of our own nostalgic reminiscences. He was never deliberately attempting to proselytise. But he finally elucidated on where he kept his macrocosm. For Mister Gil it resided with one universal and transcendental God and Asha being ascendant over druj. The one uncreated Creator and to whom all worship is ultimately directed. By my own stark contrast I was still wrestling with the worship of the Variance Herb Cell.
I showed deference to his extensive ken of all things exotic and asked him what he thought of that superb scent I raved over. I promptly won his alliance on it.
“ So you like a soft vanilla smell, too? It’s a gentle yet lustful smell I must say-I had a friend who wears it all the time.”
I smiled wistfully and thought of the little gifts I had showered on my errant princess in those halcyon days gone by. Gil picks up that strand and weaves from it a tapestry of gold and regales me with pearls of economic wisdom. He silkily textures any conversation with a fine warp and weft of otherwise disparate threads.
“Oh, it pains me to think of my cousins of the land. I pity the vanilla farmers –rife with corruption, folly. Too much squabbling, you see, my friend, in the north it is bad. Wiser ones move into Gulu at night to find a place to sleep safe from fighting. “
He shakes his head piteously and thanks fortune to be here away from that strife borne of a Middle East cancer- worse year on year. I speculated upon what sombre depths his words held but seeing the heaviness of my heart he lifts his spell.
“ We should all just savour the coffee-it is the best drink, eat, my friend. Enjoy. Good coffee and a little vanilla makes many an old man smile.”
He tops me up thoughtfully then gives me a knowing wink of his wrinkled old eye.
“My friend, you have inspired in me an idea. I shall prepare an exotic sweet for you and other favoured customers for your delectation. Tomorrow I shall prepare for you a fine Pongal-an Indian dish of sweet basmati rice and mung bean with that special touch of vanilla. Oh, it shall be so sweet to the palette!”
Food for the stomach, the heart and the soul: that was what it was all about. Let us have that taste for the exotic, unfamiliar dish. Give us more not less choice. He urged me to read up on the Egyptians and about how they compiled their own Genesis and first Cosmogonic traditions then Ezra and others rewrote these from the Chaldeo-Akkadian account. Had I ever seen any examples of Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform? Did I know of the debate scholars had over the name Adam, Admi, or Adami? No. I did not. But I should read of it sometime.
I scratched my head to surrender to my ignorance. I was a teacher. I should know that it is incumbent on us to raise our levels of understanding. Not to lower the bar to the lower common denominator. It was insidious, I agreed. Time to give to learning is time well spent. Never regret that. Despise all ignorance. Do not measure your expense of time on idle reading in what you lose in paper currency. Put aside the toils of labour and live for knowledge.
Understanding and savouring things around us should be an inclusive process and not promulgated by mere rationalisation and simplification. There is always more than one way and so it is in the creation of seven Adams or roots of men, born of Mother Earth, physically, and of the divine fire of the progenitors, spiritually or astrally. The Assyriologists, ignorant of the esoteric teachings, could hardly be expected to pay any greater attention to the mysterious and ever-recurring number seven on the Babylonian cylinders than finding the same in Genesis and the Bible.
He pointed to those clay tablets he displayed on the wall. Twelve Sumerian legends. He urged me to read of them and then Gilgamesh brought up his stout form kicking back his frail klismos chair aside of me. He rolled his fingers around the black brush above his lips and darted his tongue about its hairs.
He promised me he would create for my palette another of his new dishes that would be replete with coconut and cashew. Come tomorrow. It will be a fine accompaniment your next coffee call. I couldn’t wait, I told him. I love all things daring, exotic and new. He scuttled off to busy himself in his kitchen. I necked the last lukewarm brown dregs from the bottom of my cup, brushed off a few crumbs from my tailored jacket, kicked back my own flimsy perch. Strode purposefully to the beaded doorway, neatly folded and racked my newspaper. Into the bright light and throbbing street I walked to the convenience store across the way and bought my sweet a box of chocolates.
42
As late summer started its inevitable wane before the onset of winter I faithfully kept up my morning routine. Each day I stopped by on my Mesopotamian friend and more often than not savour that Pongal washed down with full-flavoured cup of coffee. He had been right –the new dish had become triumphant house speciality.
I would open up to my benign buddy a little more each time I called in. I had many days and weeks and months with no other productive outlet for my time and few other friends to confide in now. He would most often catch me at the point where I had thumbed out the pages of the sports section and was flicking and filleting paper deleteriously.
More often than not our chats revolved around my own unfulfilled dream to travel, to add to my meagre collection of art and antiques and garner a tad more of other cultures. We swapped stories. He regaled me of his times- present and long past. He spoke again of his home where he could count a dozen mosques across town. He would often retell the same scene. Each time he would add or subtract some little detail. In my mind’s eye I had it all. The picture was there indelible and serene. There was strategically placed in a high minaret, from which the muezzin calls with the lungs of an opera singer, the melodic sounds carrying far across the rooftops.
Then I would close my eyes as he spoke softly and wistfully of how, from a high vantage point in a crumbling citadel you can look out upon a desolate plateau of rolling steppe and snowy peak, buffeted by a storm that darkens the sky. Then in the silence listen to the call to prayer. The old chai houses were always replete with Turkmen carpets and thick slabs of tree-trunks as table legs. I imagined this den in deepest winter; the streets coated under a foot of snow, the wood burner working overtime to keep the steaming brew flowing. Pure escapism. Pole paid he and off I went. If I could keep my dreams and replay them like this then I shall surely keep my sanity in some shape or form. I had an appointment to keep. I steeled myself for the pain. I headed to the Beauty Rooms for my monthly depilatory: back, sack and crack.
But opposed to days were the nights. And like many other nights then, I lay uneasily beside Charlotte. A nagging disquiet still filled my veins. From my persisting sullenness she intuitively fathomed the truth.
She looked at me quizzically, “ Leo, something happened between you and Lita….sometime-back when I don’t know-I just sense it-you’re just not admitting it... You know….frankly……the only reason I let that Rebecca nonsense go was because you let me listen to the tape…it reassured me a lot…. I needed to know what you thought of her.”
Patterns of half-truths and suspicions formed a jumbled tapestry in her mind and she fiddled and fretted and struggled to unravel the knots. So I gave her some simple direction.
“Hun, I’m just so grateful to you….. you were my saviour…I needed someone to truly believe in me…..you met the little tart… you saw what she was like….a psycho-nymphet. Please don’t back out on us….stick with me, babe. Trust me. I will keep on proving to you. That tape is going to be their Achilles’ heel. These lise about me are all going to be exposed. Even the police fabrications….more lies upon lies…in their faked transcript. “
She gives a weak smile in compensation and I kiss her forehead tenderly as guarantee of my devotion. Then I think to egg my pudding with some fiscal flavour.
“You know, hun, I am inclined to believe that once I’m out of the woods on the criminal charges we could be onto a lucrative claim for damages. …some compensation for all their maliciousness” She lets go of the weak smile.
“Well…perhaps. But Leo…why would the police insist you’re such an obsessed sexual pervert when the tape disproves it-that’s just so odd.”
“Babe-it’s not so odd when you think what’s behind the whole thing…. Mad Molly’s at the back of it-she’s poisoned everyone against me…she’s been doing this for years…running me down to kids…you name it....I promise you-it’s something she’s said or done….”
“Ha! Well some truth there, Leo…. You can be very arrogant to her and other people sometimes. Like you’re talking down to them with your high-handed big words…you try do it to me but I won’t have it…..I think you’ve also put that Inspector Boylan’s back up big time!”
“He’s an Acting Inspector- he’s got the job temporarily, darliing. He’s definitely pulling Goldbolt’s strings and I’m sure my ex is tugging him, too. Godbolt is a one-eyed, single-minded freak who can only see what she wants to see-she’s a simpleton- can you believe I had to tell her how to spell ‘harassment’…. one ‘r’ “ and she’s meant to be a professional!”
43
FEBRUARY 2004 TRIAL LOOMS. Another haunting, restless night and a winter wind whipping up. There were scratching, tapping noises from the loft above. The spies had secreted their bugs. Come to tap me. My skin crawled. I froze too scared to twist my head towards the sound, afraid that my slightest movement would give her presence away. Is this reason? Or was that rain? Roof tiles ripped and taunted by the wind and voices outside in the storm. The wind caught them invaders of the attic, senseless and meaningless. She sleeps like a baby. No fears, no torment.
Disoriented sleep-starved wretch I felt. Sleeping pills no use-they make me nauseous-worse than sleeplessness. To the spare room where these last few stressful weeks I seclude myself in empty wakefulness. That will fool them. No sleep-induced ghostly confessions. On my tod-alone-away from the eavesdroppers! Stop! Get a grip, man! Be rational. Reason it out. My sore, poor temporal lobe, no language to process, deactivated! The sickly yellow of the streetlights screams its discordant shrill. The parietal lobe activated! Beat that Randy Gardner. 264 hours winkless. No forty for you. Too many lightbulbs! The trickle of rain on glass it descends and capitulates to the inevitable. Six days and seven nights awake and the ancients grant you immortality. Gilgamesh and his myths. That’s what he told me as he noted my owl-ringed sunken eyes as I drank cups of his black brew. Who needs immortality if it feels as turgid as this? Let me rest, godamm you! Need to sleep on ‘body time’ not electric prompts. Go hang the cyclic increase and decrease my circadian rhythms. Up with the anabolisms! Oh, how I hate the nights!
Please, please help my alpha waves disappear. Oh, but then it comes. The dreaded REM attacks then sabotages my restorative. Those images of the flashbacks, flailing hands, a struggle, beating rapid heart and kicked. Swirling round and round the spin takes me down. No adaptive function. Get up, get you fool! Work and prepare. Write. Pen to paper it shall be-maybe in a kind faux -theological narrative?
I dragged myself semi-consious like a zombie to the study. At the desk I sifted the piles of letters pulling apart the box files. The endless papers, the statements, the dross, the printouts from online trying to make some sense.
In my hand the last letter sent two weeks ago. A pre-trial letter to the Crown Prosecution Service laying out the flaws in their case dismissed perfunctorily by an arrogant prosecutor. Pointless analysis-no one reads it. The methodology of my defence would, you think, illicit something more of a response than, “ thank you for your letter but these are matters better addressed by your own solicitors.’ Hard-nosed, mindless bastards! It seems the executive arm of the law is as inert and ineffectual as dried dog’s turd.
The wind retreats and the rattles of the roof tiles abate. A tentative daylight breaks and another dawn slides in from the east. A caffeine dose rinses through my brain.
Shuffling like a geriatric in my baggy pyjamas and dressing gown I scavenge the fridge to splash some milk over a consolatory bowl of cornflakes.
I swirled the dish mash around and around and toyed with the mush and remembered Angela’s three-point guide to a healthy mind. First: don’t sweat the small stuff. Then tell yourself it’s all small stuff. (Didn’t she read that on the back of a cereal box?). Second: pharmacologicals will wastewarp the mind with prolonged use (as per Alice of pill popping looking glass fame) so I must, absolutely must find a natural narcotic to ease the pain (let’s choose jogging says conscious mind). Third: Don’t get mad-get even, dummy! I still had that gnawing tug in the pit of my guts. The visceral contortions too often result when the intestines are twisted from over-exertion of the brain in the vexed question of ‘how can they have done this to me?’ To avert the necessity of decapitating every nefarious and negligent dolt whose supposed inertia is a genuine excuse for disembowelling the innocents, I thought it wisest to seek a positive cathartic alternative prescribed via the wisdom of a practitioner of greener methodologies.
44
Angela Green was nothing if not exuberant in all that she did. I knew she had a penchant for physical fitness but I never imagined she had long been a distance runner. In fact on three consecutive years she had completed the London Marathon. Now that the bitterest chills of winter days had passed she held me to my promise and so this was my day to join her on a gentle jog instead of our usual one-hour session. I was immediately struck by the flamboyance of her lime green spandex outfit with accessorizing pink headband that spoke so incongruously beside my shabby grey old military sweats. Her get up made me quell an autonomic scoff but gradually our shuffle past the scenery soon took my mind away from my conspicuous self-consciousness.
“You need to start ever so gently for the first few minutes....keep to my pace and I’ll lead us through the meadow footpaths then along the disused rail track.”
Along a winding ‘C’ road now wending past russet hedges dappled with snowdrops marking the final days of winter we made our plip-plop-plip-plop way. Side by side we panted it all out in rhythmic staccatos as our expedition set out for the environs beyond Calypso Cottage.
Hereabouts ancient carts once rolled on narrow tracks and our forefathers plied their trade between port and city. These long hedgerows support the greatest diversity of plants and animals. I saw them afresh now close up as I lived and breathed chill country air. Steep drainage banks and ditches, a few trees and verges as punctuations as our constant running companion: of blackthorn and hazel. We turned into the shadows of a picnic ground where the morning had dumped its litter of light on an empty table. A car full of tourists passed slowly, two women sitting fore, agape at our car-free and carefree peregrinations. Palefaces. Through an open gap a dormouse scampered into a field looking every inch like a low-lying water meadow after recent heavy rains.
I told her I used to do a lot of jogging as an undergraduate.
“ Great for the brain cells, Leo…spring cleans the mind… Kasporov was a great fan of it….chess masters need stamina, clear thinking and vitality, too!”
Too much caffeine and rich living, Leo! Exercise, eat well, drink lots of water and a good night’s rest will follow, she said. She hard sold me a lifestyle towards steps for releasing endorphins, the body's natural painkillers, and producing a better general sense of well-being.
Three and half miles and forty-five minutes in total and it was the most memorable and satisfying session I ever spent. I determined to make this my new routine and I persevered undimmed through the remnants of that inclement wintertime. My self-consciousness and fear of hoots and catcalls from baiters persuaded me to run alone and mostly at night. I resigned myself to keeping to routes about the lighted streets of the town as the darker days precluded running in blackened country lanes with the fear of those ubiquitous farmers’ slurry traps underfoot.
I further resigned myself to fewer meetings with Angela as money was now too short. Charlotte had run down most of her savings and I still hadn’t resolved what I was going to do about a job.
Angela understood. She agreed that maybe once or twice a month was adequate for sanity’s sake.
“ I don’t know why it is Angela, maybe it’s the masochist in me but the rawness of the east coast weather is the pain that makes me feel alive, if that makes sense. A vestige of beauty from inconsequence… the fleeting scents of decaying leaves, the occasional bonfire…ironic- but that makes me feel somehow alive in all this heavy greyness.”
She wore her self-satisfied face and put her head onto nodding mode to show she had been right all along.
“It’s almost spiritual…that’s how I’d put it…. pounding the pavements of wet suburban streets…. up, down and around anonymous box houses.”
“So you’re finally starting to exorcise the ghost of that siren, Leo?”
We were back inside in front of the warm log fire in half an hour or so. I wrapped myself in my tracksuit and slouched down snugly into the warmth and security of the armchair.
”Well, I know she has gone now…..moved right away....there was something inevitable about her life’s journey.”
I turned to look through the sash garden wall. I sighed deeply wondering where the last year of my life had gone.
Angela patted me reassuringly on my shoulder. “ I’ll get us some tea and you can tell me all about it.”
I supped the warm liquid and it’s fragrant scent restored me.
“So you have heard from your wife?”
“Yes, she’s been emailing me almost daily for weeks-since about New Year or so. She’s not been coping too well. I feel bad about the whole thing. I don’t know-I just feel I’m living a lie where I am. I have been trying to fit in with Charlotte and her kids but it’s no good. Her father is the key to it all. He hates me with a passion.”
“Has something been said or done to set him against you?”
“I think I have a strong inkling. At first it was Barb-she’s quite canny and got hold of him-sent him some photos of Charlotte and me-you know- en flagrante delicto.”
“ Ah yes, my dear young man….you don’t need to spell it out….red-handed as they say-- in the very act. “ She nodded.
“ Then a month after I rented out my house in Eccles Drive I got reports from my tenants that they’d had their car scratched, paint daubed on the door saying ‘Paedo!’ and they gave me their two month’s notice to leave. Somehow Charlotte’s father gets himself involved. He comes over and gives me the big speech that if I don’t divorce my wife then I’m not welcome!”
“Ah, calling the shots-but what about your good lady and her children…how did they react?”
“Charlotte’s been a rock, but her kids have been poisoned against me now. I know that-it’s the backchat. I can’t correct them on anything or even speak to them without some kind of snide comment….it’s their dad, too. He’s got it from Charlotte’s father. They think I’m a child molester-they don’t want me near their kids.”
“Oh, Leo. That’s awful. Is there any way forward?”
“I’m debating to move back into Eccles Drive. It’s not what I want but it’s the lesser of the evils. If I can patch something up with my wife, just maybe I can fight my way out of this hole. The trial is coming up fast. I need to act.”
I thought better of confessing I had been getting emails again from Claire Quilty. I kept that my to myself. It had been quite some time. Claire’s interest in me I put down to curiosity about my new love life as much as a call for recognition of her rite of passage to adulthood. Age of majority had arrived for her and she had recently passed her driving test. She let it be known that her paternal grandparents, out of guilt for the paucity of fatherly love bestowed upon their loveless granddaughter by a long-time incarcerated son, made them feel obliged to purchase her a car. Said car was a nine-year-old small Peugeot she had named ‘Pug.’
An extract of one of her emails on the acquisition of a sound system for her new chariot went thus:
“I have to say what really makes it sound good, is all the amps. I got a nice 100 watt amp for the front to go with my Pioneers and a nice 100 watt in the back along with my Pioneers and a nicer 15 inch sub with a nice 300 watt amp, WITH a Delco radio, and I'd whip any aftermarket radio around. The power is what makes a system awesome, not the radio (unless it is a hundred quid job).
I've heard my cousins top of the line JVC CD radio with quite a bit of watts per channel and I could any days blow her away with my new Delco, Pioneers speakers, and 100 watt 8 inch sub.”
The folly of youth, I thought. But I amused her by sending her my congratulations plus my own few pointers about my Blaupunkt with an evenly backlit LCD display that allows me to name my radio stations and CDs. And I can switch it from orange to green with the touch of one buttons.
45
From wheeled locomotion to shank’s pony and as the bard doth say,’ a thing, he could truthfully state, he, as a paterfamilias, was a stalwart advocate of mine from the very first start’. Ulysses. Whoever embarked on a policy of the sort, she said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned. Slip, slap, slip slap feet upon shiny slabs and keep out of the marshy fields, which sagged beside the stream. Only the trees shadow my progress. The darkness protected me. Black stockings, suspenders, high heels and the stance with the look of the slut as her street uniform. I loved the feeling. Better than the sauce. Of James Joyce. A new drug and beginning to feel light-headed with heaving lungs rasped with effort. I ran those dark, lonely streets. "He took shanks-naig, but fient may care." It gave me my intoxicating anonymity. But as our colonial cousins would say, “ shank’s mare.” It was mere jogging-more carthorse than thoroughbred. I’m no Olympian-but it made me more alive than I ever felt. I still wondered if I might by chance happen upon her propped against her beacon signalling out like a barber’s pole to beckon new trade. My sinews were stretched, limbs and lungs flexed and tightened. What a berk I was evangelically proclaiming to the police that it was my civic duty that set me against her. Evangelist or Evil's Agent. Pull the other one, Mr Bloom, sir! Yes, me. I am the vigilante street cleanser wiping out the streetwalkers, harlots, pimps, punters and toms. ‘We can’t allow it officer, can we? They’re not licensed or medically inspected by the proper authorities. I thought of my woman. She had saved me. I happened upon a lone park bench. Not Truva. I wanted to sit and let it sink in. I know the boys in blue are having their little bit of mischief on me. I drew strength by sucking in a low deep breath. I looked up in the night sky the low cloud cleared and saw the stars for the first time. The police fake a record in transcription-the real criminals. The rhythm from my chest was a drum beating no retreat. ‘What of that ‘Get off me’ ruse, officer? Of course I needn't tell you. The truth be out!’
Angela brought in the tea and we both sat mirrored in repose cups in hand.
“ So a lot’s happened recently the, Leo?”
“Yes…. Highs and lows. Like I told you the other week-it’s happened. My brief time living with Charlotte and her two kids playing ‘happy families’ came to nothing. I hope she won’t be an enemy now. I kind of knew it was a tragedy that had to unfold at some point.”
“Sorry to hear. I don’t think you can take the wrath of a woman scorned much more, can you?”
“Well…it’s like this….. I had too much to adapt to and so much to lose if I stayed. She knew the score. Her over bearing father .Now there’s a man you don’t really want as an enemy. I guess being a father myself - your precious daughter you do not want living with a lazy, self-indulgent layabout and a probable child molester, as he so bluntly puts it.”
“So it’s all gone now….you moved out?”
“ Yes- happened so quickly. Tenants couldn’t get out quickly enough. I took the easy option I suppose. Rather than become the respectable workingman other people expected me to be I surrendered to the inevitable. No daughter’s father will make of me a blue collar…..like plumber perhaps or electrician? I think not. My wife? Now have I ever known a woman so forgiving? You see, Angela, I just tallied up the account: I had a roof over my head all paid for now. Plus she wants me to get back onto her Human Rights action “
“Her case, you mean? Your wife is still looking for a big legal win in New York?”
“ It’s all still on, of course, year after bloody year….well,. Butterfly. Flutter-by. Poor Charlotte. Oh, there were plenty of tears, the hurt, the wasted time and money. Of course, I left it as she had found me….my hope still is we may one day sort this tangled mess. Bridges can be rebuilt -once I clear my name- the aphid elope.”
“I do hope you’re right, my boy. I do hope!”
But there had been more bombshells falling that dark winter. The Local Education Authority had formally suspended me from working with children pending the verdict in the trial. Oh, LEA piped! I had heard that even if I were acquitted I would face another ‘trial’ at the hands of the General Teaching Council as well as a review of my fitness to work with children by the Secretary of State for Education. Maybe I shall just be barred by my employer so might move to another part of the country and another local authority who would not know me? I, LEA hopped? Vacation Times - now I'm Not as Active. My wife’s timely rescue saved me, perhaps, from even more protracted pain. Really, there’s no future in being a supply teacher. Too tenuous to depend on your good name good name when there are no guarantees I would come out of a court scandal unblemished. I taught myself to never forget I may never work as a teacher again. Ah, dole pipe!
18.02.04
Leo Bloom
32 Eccles Drive
Brigid Clarke
Punch, Deenan & Flynn Solicitors
Mall Chambers
Norwich NR1 3DX
Dear Anna
Re: Regina v. Leo A. Bloom
I understand you spoke on the telephone with my wife, Barbara, earlier this evening regarding her and my daughter, Lita's attendance at my trial for the 26/27 February 2004.
We understand you wish both witnesses to be available at court for the Friday. Lita will need to be flown in from the United States to attend and we understand you will ensure the Court is aware we need to be reimbursed for the considerable cost of travel for this.
From our recent conversations I understand I need to have a meeting with my counsel prior to the trial to go over the case. Your office has not as yet advised me as to any proposed date or time for such a meeting. As we are only four working days before trial I am concerned that time is running out.
In my last meeting with you I understood Punch, Deenan & Flynn were to commission an independent transcript of the CD audio -has this been undertaken?
Also, you have not yet notified me of any other witnesses for the defence you wish to call. Charlotte Mayes would be willing to give evidence but requires reasonable notice if you want her to attend court. You originally took her statement for this purpose.
Please contact me as soon as possible to discuss the above and inform me of the current position.
Sincerely,
Leo Bloom BA Hon PGCE
46
TRIAL AND RETRIBUTION. My pillow was drenched the back of my neck had a cold wetness that would become unbearable. I did my running to help assuage the pain. "The horse of ten toes" didn’t help. My doctor had doubled me up on my Prozac. Then of course, there was the alcohol. But that didn’t mix so well with my evening street jogging. I was faltering.
I wanted her and I wanted her completely. The cover of darkness let me think it. Long may the seed be spread. Spill it where it doth do no harm. I know the difference and the comfort of a lonely hand. Primeval wants are barely tempered by a conscious and civilised mind. I am a product of a process of evolution and not the finished article. Book of Darwin. Unending imperatives: always a work in progress and always deficient, struggling, ebbing and flowing from event to event. The seed is spent. To think free is great (Democracy). To think right is greater (Darwinism). To give up your right to think and start believing is religion (stupidation) and the world according to Islamists and paedophiles-death to them all!
In my nightmare I am to be judged. I will be ridiculed and poked and prodded. I will stand in the dock exposed, naked. It is dank and dark, forbidding and forlorn. Lordships look down from on high perched in fine repose draped in black on that wretched Old Bailey accused. The mob do barrack shout and mock, “ kick, punch and castrate the paedophiles! We are the paedo-vigilantes-we are the Mujahedin warriors for the sake of God - we are not terrorists! We fight the evil child molesters-kill, kill…kill behead them all!”
The court heard the evidence for the prosecution first:
Chief prosecutor: ”You are Lady Rebecca van Hiller of Knightsbridge you say you were accosted by a vagabond of the street?”
Rebecca van Hiller: “ Yes, Mr Prosecutor. It was after dark, foolishly without maid servant, I was going towards Temple-bar; into St. Dunstan's park, I felt brutish hands upon my person and then a hand in my purse; I felt immediately, and found my handkerchief was gone, my goods displaced all about my person and the prisoner was close by me; I said, you villain, you have picked my pocket and jiggled my jugs; he took from his shabby cloak a blade then slapped me about the face, ‘Do an angry hit -Tonya Harding!’ and then he started from me, and ran behind a carriage; there I saw him with my handkerchief in his hand and lechery in his eyes, tucking it up under the knee of his breeches; I called, stop thief; he ran down Temple-lane, and was pursued; the prisoner and handkerchief.”
Chief Prosecutor: “ Call the next witness. You are a gentleman of the parish of Westminster. Pray, tell the court the events as you recollect them.”
Abel Tractabull: “ Yes, sir. I was there after dusk or so, I was going towards Temple-bar; when very near St. Dunstan's park, I felt a hand in my pocket; I felt immediately, and found my handkerchief was gone, the prisoner was close by me; I said, you villain, you have picked my pocket; he started from me, and ran behind a carriage; there I saw him with my handkerchief in one hand and a cleaver for meat in the other.”
Chief Prosecutor: “ Call the next witness. You are a gentlewoman of prior fine character of Temple Bar. Pray, tell the court the events as you recollect them.”
Cilla Karibdis: “ Yes, goodly sir. I was going by the end of Temple-lane, I heard the cry, stop thief; I saw the prisoner pursued by many people; I went after him, and in about 150 yards down the lane he was seized; He spilled a blade and grubby handkerchief from his grubby hands. I saw a gentleman come upon him and take up that handkerchief. Said gentleman did shriek that upon this shabby rag was wetness and filth. He took it brought it to the prosecutor; the prisoner at first said a boy picked the lady and gentleman’s pocket, and gave it him, but before the magistrate he acknowledged he took it himself and despoiled it.”
Prisoner's defence:
I am but an honest odd job runner. Not a squirty footpad, your honour. “On those cobbled streets, about my business, I did find that good bit of steel. No gentleman did claim it. I snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in my chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket. A handkerchief I did also find and with this did wrap that blade. They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in the dark said for the benefit of them all. You see they thought foreigners on account of them using knives had done the park murders of the invincibles. I did forewarn this fine young lady to beware the evils of the dark park but she did scorn my words. Then I ran with it.”
Verdict of the Court:
Guilty as charged.
His Honourable Worship The Judge: "Leo Bloom, stand up; you have been found guilty of the charges of assault and battery upon the person of Lady Rebecca van Hiller at the place of St. Dunstan's park and the wanton theft of the aforesaid lady’s handkerchief and that of the gentleman of the parish of Westminster.
It is the sentence of this court that you shall be taken form here to a place of your execution and that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead!” Over and over I played the same word game over and over in my head….‘ LEED IT TO HIM…. LO I TIED THEM….no… EDIT ME LITHO…..no… …. TOIL MID THEE.... HIT TITLE DOME…. ODE THE LIMIT…no…no… THEE LID OMIT…not that… OLD-HE EMIT IT….. LITHE DO TIME…. I DO HIT LET ME… TIMID TO HEEL…or was it… OIL DIM TEETH?’
The knotted duvet strangles at my throat as my foot kicks out thudding into the hardness of the wooden bedside cabinet. The table lamp falls with a shattering crescendo of broken glass. The insipid yellow light of dawn signals me to wipe my sweat-covered body and rise from my bed. Each time the same dream but a slightly different format-eerie and so vivid as to be almost real.
47
It was at the Siduri over a chelow chicken kabab and cups of chai that I met my dear friend. Mr Telemachus Johns who ate with relish the sumptuous cuisine of Persia. He liked fried fish roe kuku sabzi, thick mutton kookoo, chicken giblet oresht washed down with a sweet carrot havij bastani. Most of all he liked grilled meat and bean shahm with garlic, onions and herbs, which gave to his palate a fine tinge of faintly scented saffron. He had arrived back from his Thailand adventures and heard the furore about my arrest and upcoming trial and was intrigued to get the news from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
“ So it’s been grim then, Leo…a vigilante’s toll to reckon with then…. one slashed tyre, a broken window and the carnage of your forsythias to the local paedophile assassination squads?”
His lips laughed about the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized his entire strong well-knit trunk. His hands plunged and rummaged in his trunk while he searched for a clean handkerchief. He kept on his blithe broadly smiling face.
“It’s not funny, Tel…I’ve only recently moved back to the house. It’s my poor Japanese tenants who copped the worst of the flak.”
“Maybe it’s not you they’re after….maybe it all goes back to the Bridge on the River Kwai…Burmese chindits…..old world war two vets meting out some belated payback on our oriental cousins?”
“You may scoff…the Turk’s really queered my pitch there. But thanks for the books anyway-they’ve been useful.”
“Cheer up! Don’t be such a Vivian Dark, Bloomer. Understandably, you’re not of Oscar Wilde’s opinion, that there is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”
His welsh wife, Taffy Ann, was a legal clerk, and they had gotten me some dog-eared old texts made for undergraduates of law. He had more questions for me.
“ Didn’t you say you had some theory that a man can’t really be a paedophile if he consorts with a female who has the body of a woman?”
Now he was broaching on the subject just as I had expected.
“I did indeed. I have my facts to aid my theoretical arguments, too! I shall put it to you thus: a girl becomes a woman from the time the distribution her body fat attains that Darwinian perfection of a waist to hip ratio of 0.7. That is what makes the female human body so unique.'”
He looked aghast but I continued with my theory.
“By looking at the female waist to hip ratio, you know when a female is of the right age for reproduction. At that time, and if the mind is mature enough you can argue that you are dealing with a woman and not a child.”
This isn’t just me saying this it’s a long-held view down through the pages of time. From Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of sacred prostitution to the 32,000-year-old Venus of Dolni Vestonice (with a highly pronounced) right up to the modern Barbie doll, with a waist-hip ratio of 0.59. The dream woman for everybody is 0.7.
” I didn’t cook it up my friend. It crosses the boundaries of time and culture and social class. Ask anyone-anyone at random and test the theory. “
To prove my point I waved over to our table that fine waiter, Gilgamesh, who took great pleasure in acquiescing with me on the matter.
“Yes, indeed, fine sirs. I can certainly assure you both that any man I have met from Accra to Bahrain, Cairo, to Zaire, Bridgend to Southend….all men, of all colours and creeds…any man and everyman all do concur on the supremacy of the hourglass. That is when a women is ripe and the fruit is always tastier!” He gives a fiendish back of the hand stroke his moustache and a guttural laugh and a wink. He then asked me if I had seen any good Japanese Shōjo-ai prints lately.
Mr Johns asks, “What about breasts?” He pauses momentarily before continuing to make a valid point, “Quite a lot of men are obsessed with the span between waist and shoulders as well, Leo!'
This was opportune moment to enquire of my swarthy Persian friend whether he might like to add some fine prints from the Bakunyuu genre to his growing cosmopolitan art collection. He responded most affirmatively and I agreed to peruse again the finer antique shops when next on my travels. This was the discourse of the cultured and wise, the sharers of truth and dialectic reason. Those halcyon months saw us garner many such similar fine threads of wisdom from erudite confabulations within that fine establishment. Here resided the wisdom of the world to assist me in my penitent studies. I should be ready for my grand legal inquisition and not to prepare would be to prepare to fail.
“Well…more to the point you shouldn’t have got yourself into playing your wife’s games in the first place anyway, Leo. Always doing her dirty work. She should try getting a grip with her own hands for a change. Besides what you’re arguing is not a defence-you’re merely saying you were attracted to girl after all! Mitigation at best. It’s no good shouting back that paedophiles only molest prepubescents-the law is the law. Under sixteen is strictly No Go!”
He was gloating. Phrases like if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen flew about. I wag a reproachful finger back at him then counter,” The trouble with you Tel is I know you too well. With you it’s whatever’s risqué and anything with a pulse! You always were of the ilk that stood for ‘any hole is a goal’ so…and how was Thailand? Met any of those lady boys or see any risqué shōnen-ai art? Well, perhaps we won’t go there-what more can one say? ”
I saw he did not recognise the reference, but he did understand the implication. In the time it took him to wipe the juices of his plate with a thin, crispy Nan-e barbari I had changed my angle of attack.
“One surprising fact I’ve already, gleaned Tel, is that England is the only country in the democratic world that allows a false confession as evidence in court. Other civilised countries expect a prosecutor to bring other corroborating evidence, but not here!”
“Well, Leo, so now you’re onto that! Juris prudence! It just seems to me it was your own folly to run your gob off- like you’ve always done- and make a full admission under caution. I’ve been arrested and I always knew the rote- say nothing, admit nothing.’ But you inept and blathering said ‘I’ and not ‘we’ when that woman constable asked who sent the texts.”
I put aside my chai and took issue with the point. “ I was arrested for assault, my good man! I was only thinking about the scuffle with her….I didn’t realise I was saying ‘I’ when I really meant ‘we’ and thereafter it was ‘we’ every time! We continued our debate around our rocky table covered with a ‘sofreh’ cloth delicately embroidered with traditional ethnic poetry.
“ Well, Leo, you gave the police woman the ‘I’ and that was your undoing. She took a fancy to it!”
“Yes, once I gave her the ‘I’ she smiled like a Cheshire cat. She had me done up like a kipper in under two hours-bar dotting the eyes and crossing the teas- I coughed like a fool!”
“Yes, poor cougher, you did seem to give something of a premature birth to mister ’sexihunk’ and all in one breath, alone, in the first person singular. More teas, indeed! A divine conception-thank you. I’ll have another brew of chai!”
A diligently and watchful Gilgamesh came over to our table and poured us some fresh teas and took away the wasted gnarled entrails of our feast.
“ So, Leo, where was your solicitor while you were being a coughing prat?”
Good question! Never, ever underestimate the right to remain silent. As my drunken sop of a father always warned me, ‘ better say nothing and be thought a fool, than open your mouth and confirm it’. But I poured out a lot of ‘we, we’ after I gave her the ‘I, you see? ‘ I’ was taking the piss! Or was it she? Pa! I hold pee!”
“Well, Leo, like Einstein said everything is relative, you will notice there is a difference from intelligence to intelligence: some human beings understand irony and some don't even understand what you tell them!”
“And, Tel, as for my solicitor I’d phoned from my cell and gave him the full SP and he said ‘tell the truth!’ and have done with it. Twat! I should have sussed that being that ungodly hour he just didn’t want to rise from his bed to put in his personal appearance and do me the proper job!”
“So, my dear capitulator, do you have a serious strategy at all for your trial?”
“Indeed I have, old boy. Did most of it myself-and a fine effort, too, so my brief tells me. I have a tangential line of attack ingeniously comprised of discreditations of the witnesses and meticulous studies of the complainant’s audiotape! It is all prepared for next week….D-Day!”
“Meaning?”
“Discreditation Day! I’ve pored over the witness statements of Rebecca, Abel, her boyfriend, and that evil karaoke belly dancer, Karibdis, and they contradict each other in their tangled web of lies! The tape discredits Abel ‘cause he says he was at Truva Park hiding in the bushes watching then when I left the park to go speak to Barb (she was watching it all from over the road). Abel claimed he then ran out, spoke with Rebecca asking her if I had hurt her badly. She allegedly says she’s alright and told him to go back quick and hide!”
“Well, what’s the catch?”
“The catch, old son, is she had her tape recorder going the whole time and all you can hear on her tape is her heavy breathing and the sounds like her puffing away on a cigarette while she waits alone for two minutes up until I come back. Then on top of that you can hear two or three boys’ voices calling in the background,’ Becky, Becky, prozzy, prozzy!’ all the way through! Oh lad, I peep!”
“Wow…that sounds a serious big deal! And the police didn’t do anything about it? Surely if there were other witnesses and they did nothing to find them… And they believed the boyfriend’s story even though they knew he was lying?”
“Well, Tel. They knew from the tape she was also lying too, coz in her statement of lies she made out I had asked her to come back to my place for an hour’s sex. Then she goes off on some cock and bull stuff that I’d snatched her asthma inhaler. She alleged we had a big scuffle over it and she shouted for it back then I threw it! Well, none of that crap is on the audiotape either!”
“So you’re confident then? But didn’t you write to the Crown Prosecution Service before the trial and tell them all this or something?”
“Absolutely! I laid out the whole case for them and they wrote back saying they weren’t bothered!”
“Holy Mother of God!”
“Indeed! To top that we got the farce about Lita’s stolen phone…but keep this under your hat…I found pornographic photos on Barb’s computer in a hidden folder under Lita’s screen name-looks like she or Rebecca did some naughty pics using the phone’s mini camera…”
His eyes flickered appraisingly over me. “Sure that’s not your doing, Leo? I bet you’ve had a little squeeze of the lemon and don’t say you haven’t! Peal, I’d hope!”
“He? Load pipe. Is that? Give it up, Mr Judas! One man’s cuddle is another man’s grope and don’t you start on that one….if it were a lad getting a hug from his stepmother not another word would be said, so give me some of that politically correct equality if you can spare the reasonableness of it.”
“So….you had told me something before on the phone about… that you got the cops lined up for a few other things too, if my memory serves me.”
”Yup….I’m thinking of suing them all afterwards for gross negligence or something.”
“Well, good luck with the trial my friend. Don’t put the cart before the horse and all that. But it sounds like they really are taking the mickey!”
The following day I set about tying up some loose ends. Brigid Kearney set for me my final task before the trial. I needed to photograph the play area of Truva Park in good detail. We needed to prove Tractabull had lied when he said he hid behind bushes and that he ran out of his hiding place to speak with the mentally Ill Viral Nag while I departed the scene for two minutes.
I took a drive out Charlotte with me. She had gotten a fancy digital camera for Christmas and I wanted her to be my photographer. We entered the park past the might yew on the corner of road junction with Odyssey Road. This mighty yew was old. The park’s bushes and trees were nearly all deciduous this time of year. But this gnarled out yew was very old indeed. Via Ill Gnarl. They say yews are England’s finest trees, more so than oaks. But I am sure one teacher at Bishop Dupré might dispute that. It was Saturday February 1st and the beginning on the Islamic calendar of Eid Al-Adha. Or Adha Eid and also known as Hari Raya This Silent witness won’t tell of the deeds with that girl of that fateful evening three hundred and twenty-five nights ago. Liar van Gil.
