22nd October 1932
Mother has been shouting for me up the stairs, on and off, for at least the last twenty minutes. I am currently pretending not to be here. I know what she wants, she wants me to go to the corner shop for her ciggarettes. Even though Mrs W has said she can't have any more on tick. But she knows Mrs W thinks I'm a her 'luvly boy 'and that I remind her 'of my Winston' and hence, can deny me nothing. Why Winston is no longer around no one wants to say. You just see an awkward look fleet across their faces. Whatever the reason, he long ago abandoned this place.
What am I doing instead? Well, I'm enjoying staring out of my bedroom window, just watching. There are regulars who pass by each day like clockwork. Current;y, Mr B, lunch pack in hand, is waiting for his regular lift into town to turn up. I'm expecting R soon, on her way to buy cake from Mrs W's in another doomed attempt to please her grump of a husband. There's not a lot going on around here otherwise. Its only just a village, with a few straggled streets, a tiny chapel, a pub and Mrs W's general store. Our Victorian terraced houses look like they've been in a pub brawl, and lost a few teeth. I'm fourteen years old and don't mind saying, I'm mostly bored.
What I do is read novels and listen to classical music on the radio. I don't understand why people think that's odd. Even my Mother wonders where I got my posh 'la-di-da' tastes from. Not her, nor my Father either - inbred in the Pennine hills, hardly ever ventures down to the valley bottom, let alone into Halifax, if he can at all help it. And he chides me for being 'such a sissy'!. Doesn't think its healthy for a boy my age to have no interest in sport and few friends. He's ashamed of me, and hasn't minded saying so either. So I lose myself in stories, escape into listening to music for a while, observe the world outside, there is frankly not much else to do.
Sounds like Mother stomping up the staircase. Better conclude.
15th January 1933
It's been snowing heavily for a couple of days now. As usual the buses can't make it up the steep and tight bending approach roads to the moor top. Abandoned where they slip until it begins to thaw. After a few hours of snow yesterday, we were officially cut off from civilisation, or should that be more cut off? There is therefore not much work on the farm, so once he'd checked and fed the animals Father was sent home by his boss. Been slumped in his chair ever since, generally getting in Mother's way. She is whining at him all the time. To the same tune I've heard all my life. 'There are jobs around the house you could be doing, but do you do them? do you eck' I'm keeping well out of their way today. War has been declared. I don't want to get caught in the crossfire.
I can't see much anyway, no one is about, just one big continuous flurry of snow. I despise, no, I hate the Winter. I like observing people, where they are going, what they're up to, I get a bit despondent otherwise. But it has meant I've reached the end of the book I've been reading, its taken me ages, hundreds and hundreds of pages. Its Thomas Hardy, so the plot trajectory has been clear from the start, no one will escape their past misdemeanors. Like the weather outside, it was never going to turn out well, and it didn't.
6th March 1933
For the first time this year there is a whiff of Spring. Mrs Goodall obviously believes so. She's stood by the terminus bus stop spruced up in her best coat and hat, which usually means she's off into town in hot pursuit of a cheap shank of beef. The bus is late, I've got the timetable here, should be 9.45 and its already gone 10. She keeps glancing nervously at her watch. Well, here it is now. Oh...she's not going into town, she's meeting someone off the bus. Its a young chap, early twenties, dapper, quite handsome, his face half hidden behind a floppy fringe,he kisses her! She seems very pleased to see him, and does that annoying thing of tidying up a lads hair in public, even though he's fully grown up.
11th March 1933
There was a lot of talk at school today about exams, our interests, favorite subjects, to start thinking about your future career etc etc. I just want to do something that will enable me to get away from this place. So just tell me what that is and I'll do it. Mr A talked vaguely about being ambitious and grasping opportunities blah d blah. He obviously wasn't brought up round here. I think I might like teaching, I'm quite good at drawing.
One of the things you can rely on my Mother for, is the fast transmission of gossip. She tells my Father everything, even though he professes to not want to know 'about other folks goings on'. I hear it all from the other side of our kitchen door though. Mother slaps the back of my head hard if discovered - some things not being 'for your ears', apparently. Nonetheless it very quickly came to light that Mrs Goodall's visitor is her nephew Duncan, her younger sister Daphne's eldest. Not much more to report, as yet.
12th March 1933
Saw D walking up to Mrs W's this morning. Came back with a cigarette lit, hanging suspended to one side on his lips, he's such a film star. Still no news, as yet ,on why he's staying with Mrs G, but Mother;s got her sniffer dogs out, it wont be long.
I've decided to grow the fringe of my hair longer, not exactly like how D has his, but similar. Mother might not let it alone for long. She keeps threatening me with the scissors, says my hairs too thin, lank and greasy - 'you're not a hermaphrodite' - which is probably the longest word she uses but doesn't know the meaning of. Don't really care, if floppy fringes are good enough for D, then that's fine by me.
14th March 1933
There's one problem with an attic window, like seats in a theatre, it has a restricted view. By rights I ought to be able to see all of what happens up and down our street on either side. Yet I have a better view of the pub at the top one side and Mrs W's on the other, than the bits closest in of the houses next door. Case in point, this afternoon D was out doing some gardening for Mrs G, but he kept sitting down on the doorstep which placed him out of view. He seemed to be making heavy going of the digging then stopping and staring across the valley blankly, before returning to more aggressive digging. It has also been unseasonably warm, shirts have been removed and laid over walls !
4th April 1933
The gossip update came incomplete. Mother came in all of a terrible fluster, literally bursting a blood vessel to tell Father something scandalous. She'd been to her hairdressers in Mytholmroyd and someone there knew someone else who'd worked in an engineering works in the Pudsey area over Bradford way. Seeing I was all ears, she said, 'and you young man had better clear off to your room'. As I left, she made a point of closing the kitchen door loudly behind me.
I made the sounds appropriate for going back to the attic, then returned. What I heard was muffled and spasmodic. There was some big upset, something happened at the engineering works, beaten up, sacked, bricks thrown through windows somewhere, sent away for safety. This was followed by a prolonged silence. Then she clearly said ' Should we say anything to Lawrence, do you think?' That's the bit I don't really understand, what's this got to do with me?
April 24th 1933
I was in Mrs W's on an errand. There was the usual gaggle of local woman in a gossip huddle by the entrance. Whilst looking for the items on the shopping list Mother had sent me with, it suddenly went deathly quiet, the clucking chatter abruptly stopped. Just the echo of the entrance bell and the door creaking closed. I turned and there was D. He gave me a self conscious nod, but looked deathly white as if the ground was about to swallow him up. I've not seen him close up before. Its obvious why the fringe is long; it conceals a serious scar down his temple.
He walked over to the counter and bought twenty Players, Mrs W looked at him with what I read as sympathy in her eyes. Once he'd left, the group resumed talking, becoming indignantly more animated. Mrs W appeared to become really irritated and barked 'Are you going to buy anything Masie Thomas or should I start charging you for floor space?' which appeared to stir everyone into action shopping lists came out, baskets quickly filled and paid for. It was clear Mother's news has been widely disseminated and had not resulted in universal admiration or understanding, quite the opposite.
22nd June 1933
In the Summer I take the old pack-horse track when I walk too and from school in the valley bottom. It keeps me out of the way of a gang of bullies who pursue me, call me names - 'my lady' and 'girlie' are the current ones I get from them. The old pack-horse track is actually more direct, its steep and overgrown in places and, to be honest, it is more knackering. But I'd rather that than be pushed or chucked over a stone wall again.
About half way down, on the left is a granite overhang we used to call 'the cave' when we played there as kids. I often stop there for a while. As I approached today I could see two people already sat down there on the grass. I didn't think they'd seen me, so I hung back in the bushes, watched for a while. Holding hands, hugging and kissing, the usual sort of thing. I couldn't really see who they were as they walked further away from me. In my rush to hide myself in the gorse I got badly scratched on the face, which took some explaining away when I got home.
8th July 1933
I've been spending most of today listening to the radio and reading. Even though its really hot out there I'm indoors staying out of the sun, my pale skin turns bright red if I stay out too long in it. There are plenty of folk walking up and down the street as if they're on the seaside promenade. D comes out at least once a day, a visit to Mrs W's for cigarettes mostly, but also, I notice, an occasional wander down the pack-horse track.
9th July 1933
Once the warm weather arrives people open there windows wide, to let fresh air into there stuffy little lives, Mrs G does it like clock work every day from ten in the morning to early evening some days. Yesterday evening I was sat here reading, pretty much as I am now. I heard raised voices from next door.
'Your Mother promised me there'd be none of that Duncan, that you'd put a stop to that....behaviour'
then a male voice
'I don't think I was seen Auntie, we are careful '
'round here its better to assume everyone will see, because sooner or later they seem to know everything somehow'
there then followed a very long pause
'Sorry Auntie, I just wanted to see....... '
the voice tailing off into smothered sobbing.
'Well Duncan try to think beyond your self, consider what the consequences for me would be, should the police knock on my door'
Mrs G's tone sounded kinder
'the situation isn't fair on you.....this was only meant to be a temporary solution..... I should go somewhere no one knows me at all'
'and where might that be?'
'Down south, anywhere other than here.
'Your Mother's not going to thank me for pushing you to go still further away'
'but if I stay here there will never be an end to this, not a good one anyway, it will keep coming back, Askew's such a twisted vindictive bastard'
with that the window suddenly slammed shut.
I did some investigating, well, I looked through a telephone directory in the Mytholmroyd Library. and there is an Askew's engineering works in Pudsey.
31st July 1933
In the middle of the night the police came knocking next door. Their car headlights having illuminated their presence and the whole terrace, so obviously everyone came to their window to peek out of their net curtains, if they have any. The police weren't there for long. Once they'd left I could hear Mrs G through the wall wailing loudly on and off for an hour or so. Something bad's happened for sure, but no one, not even my Mother, knows what. Mrs G hasn't put a foot outside the door all today, and there's been no sign of D either.
1st August 1933
The whole place has been rife with speculation. I can see folk stopping complete strangers to ask what they know, if they've heard anything. Mother has been unusually quiet.
At teatime, Father came home, the Evening Courier was tucked under his arm. He had a triumphant smirk on his face as he laid down the paper in front of Mother and put his finger on the lead story - Savage Murders in Mytholmroyd. She put on her glasses and carefully read the paper. 'I knew something like that would happen' and went back to tend to tea.
I picked up the Courier to read:
'A local man walking home from a local Public House in Mytholmroyd found the dead bodies of two young men in a back alley. The police say the bodies were of a twenty two year old, Stanley Riley of Headingley and twenty four year old Duncan Hemmings, originally from Armley. Both bodies had been brutely attacked, being severely kicked and incurring several heavy blows to the head that were the cause of death. Police suspect the attack happened shortly after the pubs closed at 10pm. Its not known at time of going to press exactly what the relationship between the two men was. There are indications they may have been former work colleagues. Police enquiries are continuing and all the deceased's relatives have been informed. Police are appealing for any witnesses who may have seen the two men at anytime during the night of the 31st July to come forward.'
Mother emerged from the kitchen, she'd obviously been weeping, saw I'd read the newspaper article. She stared right at me and said. 'I really don't mind what you choose to do with your life, but don't ever end up like that Lawrence, I couldn't bare the shame of it' and returned to the kitchen sniffling.
Father, following her into the kitchen, cleared his throat uncomfortably and half gestured towards me
'Don't you start blubbing too Lawrence, make yourself useful and set the table'
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