Authors: Calvin Wade
SIMON – September
1986
“Do you have sugar in your tea, Simon?” Ernie asked as he stirred the teabag around my mug with a spoon. I noticed his hand trembling as he tried to fish it out.
“Two and a half please, Ernie.”
“Two and a half! That’s tea in your sugar, not sugar in your tea! Your dentist must love you.”
I was sitting on an old brown sofa with buttons on it, in the dining area of Ernie’s kitchen. The carpet was equally dated with flowers and several stains on it. I guessed his wife had chosen it before she died and it had never been replaced. Ernie walked across carrying my cup of tea, he wasn’t too steady on his feet and some of the tea spilt over the top and on to the carpet. Ernie seemed unperturbed.
Ernie had invited me to his house as he wanted to tell me more about why he disliked the Booths so vehemently, but with being hard of hearing and Boffin being out in their garden, he decided it would be wiser to retreat indoors. Once we were inside, he recounted various tales of torment he had been subjected to at the hands of the Booth brothers. It had begun with simple, stereotypical childish games like ‘Knock and Run’ but had then progressed to more troubling issues like fireworks through his letter box and if the Booths dog had a poo on their back patio (the lawn was overgrown and full of weeds), one of the boys would scoop it up and throw it over the fence into Ernie’s beautifully maintained garden.
“Why have Luke, Matthew and Mark decided to pick on you?” I asked as I blew onto the surface of my tea. Ernie had not brought any biscuits across. He had probably decided it was not in my best interests to have any.
“I’ve no idea, Simon. I don’t think young thugs need a reason to target someone. Maybe it’s because I’m close.”
“Have you told the police?”
“No, they’d probably just give them a ticking off and then they’d use it as an excuse to up their game. I’m hoping if I ignore them, eventually they’ll grow bored of me or perhaps I’ll die and then it’ll be impossible for them to get at me.”
My tea was now ready to drink. I took a sip, there definitely wasn’t two and a half sugars in it, more like one.
“What about their Mum and Dad, could you not tell them?”
“Their Dad died years ago, his motorbike was hit by a lorry on the M6. He was alright actually, Trevor. I remember his bike, it was a red Kawasaki. He was always out on his front path, polishing it. He used to work over at the ROF. Next door used to be just his, until he met Lizzie. Back in the day, when they were courting, I always knew when she was coming as I used to hear her tottering along, with her high heels on. I used to have a little look out from behind the curtains as she used to wear short skirts and she had this pair of incredible legs. She was a decent looking young girl in her day, Lizzie was, but since Trevor died she’s become a bit of a state. She’s not worried about anything these days other than getting as much drink down her neck as her body can fit. It’s very sad really. That motorbike crash took his life, but it ruined hers too.”
“So there’s no point having a word with her then.”
“I can’t see it helping. Maybe you and your brother could sort them out for me! How is the young ragamuffin, Simon? I often used to see him, walking up and down this road, blowing bubble gum and looking like he owned the place, but since I’ve been back from Australia, I haven’t seen him.”
Sometimes, in moments like this, when I had to break bad news, I had a real urge to laugh. There was nothing funny about it all, but I still had the urge. It was like a form of awkwardness. I contained the impulse.
“Ernie, Colin died a couple of months ago.”
I used to hate it breaking the news. The main reason was because the people I had to tell used to feel so guilty for not knowing and for mentioning him. The likes of old Ernie could not have been expected to know though, it had been in the local papers but I’m sure Colin’s death hadn’t hit the headlines in Brisbane.
“Colin died, oh my goodness, Simon, I’m awfully sorry to hear that.”
Ernie took off his thick rimmed glasses as though somehow, that would help him digest the news.
“Thanks, Ernie. He drowned in the canal, up by the ‘Top Lock’ pub.”
“That’s terrible. Were you with him?”
It was a genuine question, a question I had answered several times before without blubbing about it, but for some reason, on that day, I welled up. Perhaps it was because Ernie asked in such a heartfelt way, my guilt re-surfaced about not having been with him. I didn’t want to start crying in front of Ernie, I was thirteen and he was eighty six, I concluded he didn’t have long left in his life and death was probably not a subject he much wanted to discuss. I tried to pull myself together and when that looked like it was failing, I tried to escape.
“Sorry Ernie, could I just use your bathroom, please?”
Ernie didn’t have his glasses on but could probably tell from my quavering voice that I was on the verge of tears.
“Of course you can, if you go up the stairs, the bathroom is the door straight in front of your nose.”
“Thanks Ernie.”
The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was created in the 1950s and had not moved forward with time. The cistern for the toilet was in a high black box and was
put into action by pulling a silver chain. I also noticed that despite it being summer time, there was a chill up there, with no central heating, poor Ernie must have been freezing in the winter. I turned the cold water tap on and dabbed my face, before looking up at myself in the mirror above the sink. My face looked blotchy and my eyes did not disguise the fact that I was upset.
“Tessa! Let go! How many times do I have to tell you? I’m sick of this now!”
It was Boffin’s voice. I saw my reflection smile a little at his frustration.
The bathroom window was frosted glass, but I carefully eased the window open so I could have a look at Boffin’s dilemma. His back garden was to the left of Ernie’s, he was sat on a step by the rear of his house, trying to pull what looked like a rubber bone out of the a black Staffordshire Bull Terriers mouth. The dog was clasping its teeth tight together and trying to pull away backwards. After a minute or so, the dog let go, Boffin threw the bone into the long grass and Tessa the dog ran off excitedly into the garden wilderness to try to receive it.
There was nothing particularly unusual about a teenage boy throwing a toy for a dog in his back garden. There was however, something very unusual about what Boffin was wearing on his head, a very distinctive New York Yankees baseball cap. I had seen loads of caps with the letters ‘N’ and ‘Y’ at the front, but the cap was navy blue with white lettering that just said ‘Yankees’ in joined up writing at the front and ‘NEW YORK’ in capital letters on both the left and right sides. The top of the cap was white and on that there was a sketch of a top hat with the stars and stripes of the American flag on it, in red white and blue. There was also what looked like a white baseball circling it with the word ‘Yankees’ in red lettering.
My brain went into overdrive. I was aware that the older boy who had been spotted walking to the canal with Colin was wearing a baseball cap, but the police had
never revealed any details about the cap at all. The colour had not been mentioned nor the logo, perhaps there was a reason for this. Perhaps, if they discovered a teenager who owned the unusual cap that eye witnesses had described to them, it may provide vital clues in piecing together the hours before Colin’s death. I needed to speak to the police to see how much detail they knew about the older boy’s cap. I gently pulled the window closed, ran down the stairs and made my apologies to Ernie.
“
Ernie, I’m really sorry I’ve got to go!” I blurted out before rushing towards the front door.
“What about your cup of tea?” asked poor, confused Ernie.
“Sorry Ernie, you have it!” I shouted as I ran into his front path, leaving the door open behind me. I didn’t hear what he then said, but I guess it would have been something to do with the sugar content. I wasn’t too concerned. I had important matters to deal with. I was running home and from there, if Mum would take me, I was heading to the police station. I felt like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Three Investigators’. I was certain that the New York Yankees baseball cap was going to be the vital clue in solving my brother’s murder mystery and once it did, Luke ‘Boffin’ Booth would be spending the rest of his life behind bars.
SIMON – September 1986
Dad and I were in the car, driving back from the police station.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” I moaned as we drove along past my school, Parklands and back towards home.
“Not necessarily,” Dad replied, not exactly trying to be upbeat, but maintaining a neutral stance, “what did you expect them to do, Simon? Put their blue light on and speed around to Luke Booth’s to arrest him?”
“No, but I thought they may have been grateful to receive a valuable lead in a murder investigation. The police have already told us that every eye witness who saw Colin that day said he was with an older boy wearing a baseball cap.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean it was Luke Booth or his baseball cap.”
“True, but as I told you before we went to the station, I reckon the police must know what sort of baseball cap it was. I just have a hunch it was a New York Yankees baseball cap, so I thought if I told them that Boffin owned one, they may realise it was definitely him who was with Luke and probably him who killed him.”
Dad stopped his car to allow some old lady to pull out of a side road and then grew frustrated with her delay in pulling out,
“Come on, come on, stop dithering, that’s it dear, get a move on.....unlike you Simon, the police don’t jump to conclusions and have hunches based on people they don’t like. They collate all the information and work on cold, hard facts. I thought that Constable, Mr. Gidda , seemed very interested in the fact that Luke Booth owned a distinctive cap, the police just aren’t going to tell us how their investigation is taking shape.”
“Dad, do you think Colin was with Luke Booth?”
“Simon, I have absolutely no idea who he was with or why he headed up to the canal. As I keep telling you, even if they do figure out who he was with, that doesn’t mean to say that person murdered him. The post-mortem said he drowned, he wasn’t strangled or stabbed and dumped in the canal, son, he just drowned. You keep calling it a murder investigation, Simon, but that’s not what it is.”
I didn’t reply straight away, I kept quiet whilst I took in his point.
“It still doesn’t make sense though, does it? If I went to the canal with one of my mates and I somehow fell in, my friend wouldn’t leave me to drown. He wasn’t there on his own, Dad. Why didn’t whoever was with him get him out the canal?”
“Perhaps they couldn’t.”
“If they couldn’t, then they would have told the police that he fell in and they tried but failed to get him out. Why hasn’t anyone come forward to tell the police what happened?”
My Dad didn’t answer, probably because he didn’t have an answer. I did. My answer was that Luke ‘Boffin’ Booth went with our Colin to the canal, they probably had a row, Boffin pushed him in and despite Colin not being able to swim, Boffin went home and left my brother to drown. Some of Colin’s other friends were weird or a bit odd, but none of them would leave him to drown and then deny they had ever been there. Boffin would though. Boffin definitely would.
Part Five
Old Before Our Time
NICKY – November 1991
From the age of five or six, a little girl dreams of her first kiss. Once I started playing with dolls, the most glamorous, most attractive doll would always be paired up with the handsome prince. They would hold hands, they would kiss and on an almost daily basis, I would marry them off in an elaborate wedding attended by all my other dolls and often a few cuddly toys would be invited too. I wanted to become that glamorous, attractive doll and dreamt of the day my very own handsome prince would arrive and we would share our first kiss watched by adoring onlookers on the highest turret of a faraway castle.
My dolls and my six year old self would have been horrified to discover that my first kiss did not take place in a romantic, faraway castle, but instead it happened in a damp, wooden bus shelter outside Parklands High School in Chorley. Jason McLaren and I were not surrounded by cheering members of the Royal Family of a tiny, beautiful island. I don’t think we were surrounded by anyone although it is not impossible that an old lady with a hair net or a mother pushing a pram may have passed by. The bus shelter itself was as far from romantic as penguins are from the North Pole, its walls were adorned with graffiti, with hairy penises and testicles the most popular sketch. Why teenage boys thought penises either spurting sperm or with oversized testicles were hilarious was well outside of my humour zone. I have never met a teenage girl yet, who has sneaked a Swiss Army knife into her pocket with the sole intention of carving a vagina on to the walls of a bus shelter. It must be a boy thing, even Michelangelo liked to draw penises, although to be fair to him, they looked a little different to those I remember on those bus shelter walls.
Other than as a romantic notion when playing with toys, throughout my school years, my interest in boys had never really flourished, except in a platonic way.
Outside of school, I had known and been friendly with two older boys, Joey Neill and Simon Strong for almost as long as I could remember, but I had always just treated the pair of them like brothers and at school, any friendships I had, were just with the more intelligent sex.
Jason McLaren changed everything. Jason was School Sports Captain and fitted the handsome prince mould from my doll playing era. He was intelligent, muscular, confident and popular. Since the start of Fifth Form, Jason had let it be known, through indiscreet conversations with close friends of mine, that he wanted to go out with me. I found this flattering, but I was a little unsure how to react to his attention. Initially, to avoid embarrassment, I opted to try to keep my distance, whenever possible, from him. This however, became impossible, as Jason pursued me with great determination. He started joining after school groups that I attended like the Young Enterprise Scheme and Bible study. One dark, damp Tuesday evening in November, Jason had been the only boy at a Bible study meeting alongside at least a dozen girls. I clearly remember us reading Mark 16 that evening and afterwards discussing whether we believed in the resurrection of Christ. It was quite evident that Jason had never read a bible passage in his life but he was an eloquent speaker and the argument he put forward about the impossibility of a resurrection may have even caused the most devout Christians to leave that session with a grain of doubt. Since my mother’s death, I had clung onto Christianity as a coping mechanism, but I remember that night questioning whether Mum really had risen up to a Christian heaven after she had passed away. I certainly began exploring alternative solutions more vigorously after that session.
After the meeting, I was last out after collecting the Bibles, but as I headed out the door, I noticed Jason lingering in the corridor, looking towards me with a huge smile and an attractive coyness that only revealed itself when I was nearby. I knew he would be waiting for me, so had volunteered to collect the Bibles up, enabling me to depart alone and not be surrounded by a group of friends. Once my friends saw Jason hovering, they were aware of how the situation was evolving and hurried away to chatter excitedly about our blossoming romance.
“Hi Nicky!”
“Hi Jason! Did you enjoy the meeting?”
“Not really, to be honest.”
“Really, why not?”
“All that God stuff’s not for me.”
“Then why go?”
We both knew the answer to that question, I should have paused long enough for Jason to answer but I was scared of an uncomfortable silence, so found myself saying,
“Did you just want to check it out?”
“Something like that....how are you getting home, Nicky?”
“Bus.”
“Me too, I’ll walk you down.”
So there we were, at the bus stop surrounded by those carved, hairy penises and hearts with arrows through. I guess girls carved the hearts. Sums things up perfectly, I suppose. Each sex carves what our brains are lead by. Jason lived in Eccleston, I lived in Euxton, which meant we were both heading in the same direction on the same bus. Intentionally, both of us had dawdled so we had conveniently just managed to miss the bus that our fellow ‘Bible Study’ attendees had caught. We were alone. We discussed Christianity, atheism, school friends and teachers until the inevitable moment arrived when the only thing left to discuss was ‘Us’.
“Nicky, you know I like you, don’t you?”
I smiled.
“I had an idea! Atheists don’t normally attend ‘Bible Study’ and then unleash a diatribe against Christianity, arguing Jesus probably didn’t even exist in the first place and going on to explain that there were no Roman records indicating Pontius Pilate had executed Jesus.”
“Do you not agree?”
“I think Jesus Christ is either the most significant man that ever existed or completely insignificant, I don’t think there should be half measures with religion. Embrace it or ridicule it, but don’t go at it in a half-hearted fashion and just turn up for Christmas mass and pray to God when you want a new telly.”
“Pretty deep! So you noticed I was just there for you?”
“You hardly listened to a word Mrs.Southall said Jason and you just kept looking over towards me, trying to catch my eye!”
“You noticed?”
“Jason, it was impossible not to notice!”
Jason smiled and moved towards me. I noticed his teeth were white and straight, which were both positives, yellow and crooked may well have denied him a kiss. His eyelashes were also the longest eyelashes I had ever seen on a boy. I wished I had eyelashes like that, they were wasted on him. He slipped his arms around my waist, clasping them together behind my back.
“It’s all because I like you, Nicky. I mean. I really, really like you. Could we do something together some time out of school?”
“Bible Study is on again next week.”
“That’s ‘IN’ school.”
“It’s out of school hours.”
I mentally berated myself for saying something so stupid in the first place and then attempting to carry it on.
“No, I didn’t mean after school, I meant a date, Nicky. Will you come to Preston with me one Saturday, just the two of us? We could go ten pin bowling and then maybe to the cinema.”
I wanted to say that I’d love to, but that was a little too confident for me. I just grinned and said,
“OK.”
“Great.”
With his arms still interlocked around my middle, Jason continued to shuffle his feet towards me. I knew what was coming. The kiss. My first one. I had practised on my male dolls and more recently on my pillows whilst watching music videos, but now I knew the practising was over, this was the real thing. I wanted it to be perfect, I had waited more than ten years for this day, but sadly it wasn’t, it was awkward. One of those moments you look back on, shake your head and shudder a little inside! The kiss itself was fine, a little clumsy but as a novice I expected that. It was also sensual and minty, as we had both been sucking polos in anticipation. It was the motion of bringing our heads and our lips together that made me cringe, largely because no-one ever educates you about which way to tilt! Originally, I tilted left and Jason tilted right, so although we both began moving our mouths in a kissing motion, it was uncomfortable so to compensate, we both re-adjusted, I went right and Jason went left. It was a bit like when you are walking along a street and meet a stranger head on and keep sidestepping into each other.
“Sorry!” said an embarrassed Jason, his cheeks now flush with a combination of passion and shame, “we both need to go to our left, I think.”
“That may help!” I giggled, praying we did it right. We did.
After that, our first ‘real’ date went well, with the exception of my string of gutter balls at bowling and second, third and fourth dates were hastily arranged to follow. Kisses became instinctive, then as our trust in each other grew, so did our desire. Jason was the first boy I kissed and the first man I made love to and it really did feel like making love. He was tender, he was beautiful and I loved him so, so much. Love didn’t just blossom in those early days, it thrived. There can be no doubt Jason McLaren changed my life for the better.
It is easy for me to say now, looking back, that I have a lot to thank Jason for and I do not regret a single moment but being candid I know somewhere deep in my soul as well as love, there is resentment. Part of me still resents Jason McLaren not because of what he did, but because of what he didn’t do. At the time, I hated him, but hate is a wasted emotion, all I feel for him now is pity.