16 Spare time

The trees sigh, sway in the wind, creak, shed leaves like the first reluctant tears. The year is in decline. Autumn arrives, golden and withering and sad, drawing its burden of darkening evenings behind it. More than any other season it seems to warn of mortality. Autumn is the old age of the year, when time suddenly creeps up unnoticed and makes its presence felt. Even the solid oaks surrender their leaves to the tearing wind. The leaves, like restless souls, wander the earth until swept away to be burnt or else are trampled into the soil, sodden with rain. All nature dresses down for the funeral, and chrysanthemums bloom unchallenged as the flowers of death. All but the most hardened of birds, the pigeons and the sparrows, fly south away from the gathering storms and the long, cold nights. Yet autumn rewards those who stay with a store of memories. Autumn, the season of remembrance, of poppy days, hot stews and new school clothes, of kicking through piles of leaves and watching for squirrels, of conkers and hot chestnuts and ominous clouds of starlings.

So the early autumn months took their leaves and November tumbled wearily and gloomily into slumbering Ophelia Street. Slumbering, but with such a moribund air it might have tempted you to prod it gingerly for signs of life. Since the events of the summer, which had first encouraged the suicidal thought, the street had seemed to adopt an irresistible urge for self-destruction motivated by an unspoken fear of…nobody knew what exactly, but nearly everyone believed that Ophelia Street was in terminal decline. The street became more and more like a ghost town from an old Western, and even the local saloon, The Lady Ophelia, grew daily more desolate and inhospitable.

Absurdly, comically, I was enjoying myself. I couldn’t help it. I understood the melancholy around me but I was able to take sustenance from that. It seemed to me that I was growing - not physically, though I might have believed you if you had told me so, but in my own image of myself. Having arrived in the street as a young boy I now felt like an adult, but I experienced no sense of regret for that rite of passage. Looking back made me feel wiser, not sadder. It still does.

Which might make me seem callous, exulting in my own growth almost at the expense of Ophelia Street’s decline. But every day I gained confidence in my own ability to do my job. I became a chronicler of decline and fall, and it gave me satisfaction. I made contacts on the national newspapers and I could see a career developing for me even as the fortunes of the street and the year turned downwards.

The Fermin factory reflected the whole process of decay. First of all, in September, ‘due to falling demand and the consequent need to make economies’, twelve people had been laid off. A month later the news came, though by then it was hardly news, that the factory would be closing permanently. A lot of leather was left to pay off creditors, there were machines and buildings to be sold, but the winding down all seemed to proceed smoothly. Only Keith, in a romantic moment, wondered about the merits of organising a work-in. But there was no wicked boss to protest about. Everyone seemed to sympathise with Gerald Fermin, who had been too ill to control things, and the blame fell on Robert Johnson. Yet no one really cared. The death wish was running strongly by then, and people were already looking outside Ophelia Street for better jobs.

Gradually, as the days passed, the redevelopment scheme which had been resisted quietly but effectively for years started to appear not only inevitable but desirable. Ophelia Street’s present was so grim, perhaps it was best obliterated – so the thought ran. Houses began to empty. It then became evident that most of the street had been owned by one company rather than a multiplicity of landlords; GAF Holdings, the company in question, had sold out to the Council. Those who owned their houses made arrangements with the Council too, whether in despair or relief. And the tenants also started to make their arrangements as Council accommodation was made available, and the removal van became a familiar sight in Ophelia Street.

In the general upheaval cats and dogs, as well as less acceptable domestic creatures, were left behind to run wild. Three mongrel dogs formed an aggressive pack that scavenged among the accumulating piles of rubbish and old furniture. Suddenly, one day late in October, all the stray cats and dogs were gone, and no one knew where and no one really cared until, instead of cats and dogs, two rats scurried down the pavement in broad daylight. By the beginning of November five houses stood derelict and boarded up, three more were in process of emptying, and another two were half-empty, the top flats having been vacated.

Death had triggered the process of decomposition earlier in the year, but the process had since gathered its own momentum and now seemed unstoppable. Eileen and Derek Card had moved out after the murder of their daughter; Brenda Russell and David had gone to live with Brenda’s mother; and young Joe Wheatley had departed too. Having been persuaded by Keith to stay on at school and try for his O-levels, young Joe had taken a temporary job in his summer holidays working as a clerk in an insurance company in the City and had become so well liked there that he had been offered, and had accepted, a permanent job. He had made friends with some of the other boys there, slightly older than himself, and had left home in October to share a flat with two of them, out in the suburbs at Chingford.

For Keith Russell in particular, whose limited vision of the world focussed upon Ophelia Street, the past few months had been a shattering experience. He stood like a captain on the deck of a ship, watching the waves creep ever higher, powerless to prevent the ship being scuttled by its own crew. All his beliefs were being swept away from him one after another: his belief in Ophelia Street itself, in the ideal of the working class community which he had imposed on it, in his marriage, and his relationship with his wife and son, in the right of those most in need to receive most help, for time had brought even Keith to an acceptance of the probability that Ernie Jack had been a murderer. A heavy blow had come with the progress of young Joe Wheatley, which had presented a number of problems which Keith had been unable to reconcile. By doing his job as a teacher, and by acting as the boy’s friend and adviser, Keith had enabled young Joe to’better’ himself a little, and had steered him away from life as a manual worker into a career as a clerk in the City, an occupation with which Keith had no sympathy. By so doing Keith had also succeeded in weakening the family life of the Wheatleys which he admired so ideologically. Yet the Wheatleys were now very proud of their son, and anyway what had he expected of young Joe? He had been unable to think it through and come up with satisfactory answers. All his beliefs, which he saw in the form of remedies to social problems, were now providing him with more questions than he could cope with.

Keith found himself increasingly isolated. Loneliness was something he had no will to fight against. On the whole he enjoyed being alone. Yet one friendship strengthened – more and more he sought the company of Ginny Wheatley. She was old, frail, increasingly senile, yet there was something in her character and behaviour that Keith found reassuring. Perhaps it was the simple fact that she no longer asked for anything from her life. She was merely playing out time.

Then one day Keith called in to see Ginny, as he always did after school. They had developed a ritual which seemed to please them both: conversations were filled with stock phrases, were repeated with slight variations; certain actions were performed, such as making tea, to bring small comforts to each other. So Keith slipped naturally into the ritual on this day too. He knocked and entered in one movement. He put down his briefcase. He said, ‘Can you spare a minute?’ and he sat down in the hard chair by the table. Ginny sat in her armchair, tucked in tight with blankets, her head hanging down over her chest, and her hair, grey like cigarette smoke, falling in wisps over her face; as if in a light sleep from which she would awake any minute. Gently Keith touched her on the shoulder. Her left hand fell free from the blanket, gripping an old fob watch. Ginny had made everything seem natural, especially death. Keith felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude to her, and he cried as he had not cried before. Then for the first time, Keith accepted the inevitability of Ophelia Street’s fate.

Keith had now lived alone for three months, and in that time had made no effort to bring about a reconciliation with Brenda or to reconstruct his future life. Without a future the present becomes eternal. He mouldered. Half the time he tried to prevent it happening; the rest of the time he lay back watching the process, fascinated, transfixed in his own inertia. He allowed his hair to grow longer, but because it was also going thinner, the impression given was merely one of eccentricity. His spare time – and suddenly there was a lot of it – was spent reading or going on lone journeys to nowhere in particular. Sometimes he went by car, more often he walked. His favourite trip was to Hampstead Heath, which he could reach after half an hour’s walk, and there he would wander in the evening silence, thinking, looking about him, seeing little, but enjoying a sense of freedom. At work too Keith found it hard to concentrate and merely plodded along half-heartedly. Besides, the ironic effects of his teaching on the Wheatley family had weakened his commitment to his job.

One day, when he was feeling particularly low, he arrived home from school to find a small terrier dog sitting on the doorstep outside the house. As Keith walked up the steps the dog suddenly became alert, pricking up its ears, standing up on its hind legs and scratching at the door with its front paws, staring at him with bright, dark eyes. He bent down to pat the little creature, and then shooed it off down the steps so that he could open the door. As he placed the key in the lock, the dog scampered up the steps again to stand at Keith’s feet, looking wet-eyed and expectantly up at the man. In spite of Keith’s efforts to exclude the terrier it squeezed through the gap as the door was opened, and ran ahead of Keith up the stairs to the flat. When Keith saw it sitting on the sofa, with its front paws stretched stiff before it, he decided to keep it, realising that it must have been abandoned by one of the families which had recently moved out of Ophelia Street. He called it Charley, after the dog of his childhood and took it with him on his walks.

Between Keith and Brenda there had been no communication during the months of separation. Brenda was too nervous of Keith to see him again; Keith was much too proud to approach his wife, feeling that to do so would be an admission of guilt which he did not accept. Then, in November, with David’s birthday drawing near, Keith wrote to Brenda very briefly, asking her to send David round to see him on the day as he had a present to give him. David’s birthday fell on a Sunday, and he would be in all day.

At 12 o’clock on the Sunday morning Keith sat reading the papers, waiting for David to arrive. He had always hated Sundays, now more than ever. He was restless and nervous, having expected David to be there already, although he had mentioned no time in his letter to Brenda. He had taken Charley out for a walk earlier in the morning, but that had been just around Ophelia Street to avoid any possibility of a mistake. So when the knocker banged Keith sprang to his feet and bounded down the stairs. He was beaten to the door, though, by Charley, who stood there barking excitedly at the flaking paint on the inside panels of the door. Keith opened the door to see David standing timidly at the bottom of the steps, shying away self-consciously. In his hands he held a small parcel of tin foil, which contained his sandwiches for lunch.

David walked hesitantly up the steps, his eyes fixed on the small white terrier who was still barking furiously at him. Keith bent down and picked up the dog to carry it upstairs to the flat. There, sitting on the sofa together, the boy and the dog became friends, and the little animal helped to fill any silences.

‘Mum says, will you take me home in time for tea?’

Keith nodded. ‘Did she bring you?’ he asked.

‘Mum left me at the corner of the street.’

‘I see you brought your dinner with you. I’d bought some sausages, but never mind.’

There was a pause, and Keith sat playing with the dog.

‘Where did you get him from?’ asked David.

‘He just turned up on the doorstep and wouldn’t go away. So I kept him. D’you like him?’

The boy nodded. ‘Wish I had a dog. Mum says nanny wouldn’t like it, so I can’t have one. I wish we lived in the country.’

‘Why?’

‘So I could have a dog.’

Father and son sat looking at each other, but with their eyes bent down, half-watching Charley rolling on the rug between them. Keith tried not to become irritated by the nervous way David fiddled with the buttons on his clothes, constantly undoing them and doing them up again.

‘How is she?’ asked Keith.

‘She’s all right.’

‘She let you come then? No trouble?’

‘I wanted to come.’

‘Why?’

David shrugged his shoulders, and there was a silence.

‘Shall we go out for a bit?’ suggested Keith. ‘We can have a drink, I’m dying for a drink, and I’ll buy myself some sandwiches and you can eat yours. It’s not too cold.’

They both got to their feet. Keith put on a jacket, David had not taken off his coat. Charley was put on his lead. Then they walked down the road to The Lady Ophelia. Keith left David holding the dog outside the pub while he went inside to buy the food and drink. Although the sun was shining, it was November, and the young boy put his hands in his coat pockets to keep warm, with the parcel of sandwiches thrust between his left arm and the side of his body. Keith came out with the drinks and a sandwich for himself.

‘When are you going to take me to the Arsenal?’ David asked.

Keith merely shrugged.

‘You said you would when I was six.’

‘Hey, I forgot. Happy birthday! What’s wrong with me? I forgot to give you your present. I’ll give it when we go back.’

‘You promised me you’d take me.’

‘Ask your mother.’

They both relapsed into silence, eating their sandwiches, drinking their drinks. Keith bent down and let Charley lap some beer he had poured into a dish. David soon finished his food and his lemonade and huddled into the doorway, ostentatiously showing his discomfort.

‘Are you cold? Come on then, we’ll go back. Bring Charley.’

Without hesitation they were off, the child and the dog scurried down the road and stood waiting for Keith at the top of the steps up to the house. Inside, the fire had been left on and a warm glow greeted them as they entered the front room. David and the dog curled on the rug in front of the fire.

‘It’s a bit different from the last time we had a drink outside the pub, eh?’

David nodded and stopped playing with the dog.

‘Do you remember. You went off to play with Elaine.’ Keith paused for a moment, looking at his son, before continuing. He knew he should not, but he could not resist. ‘Do you remember Elaine?’

There was no reply. Keith tried again. ‘Do you?’

There was a flash of anger as David said ‘Course I do!’

‘Then why won’t you talk about her?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Why not? Did she hurt you or something?’

David squirmed uneasily. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

But whatever demon it was inside Keith would not give up. Keith pressed David again.

‘Tell me about it, Dave. What is it about Elaine?’

David looked around, as if for an escape route, but there was none. He would have to surrender at least some of his secrets. So, speaking uncertainly, twiddling with strands of the rug as he talked, his eyes fixed upon the terrier who lay beside him, he started.

‘She took me to the factory round the corner… the one round here. There was no one about, and she opened the door and went in. I didn’t want to go with her, but she said I was scared. So I went in too.’

David stopped, hoping, it seemed, that he had surrendered enough. But his father demanded more. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I followed her in, and we went up the stairs to this room, and there was a man there. Elaine knew him but I didn’t. I wanted to go away. I didn’t like him. But Elaine went up to him and he gave her some chocolate and then he gave me some. Here’s a present, he said. And then she took off her dress, and her shoes, and her socks and her knickers. She told me to do it too, but I said no. I said she shouldn’t do that. Then she put her clothes on again and pushed me out. And when we got into the yard she punched me and knocked me over and said I wasn’t to tell or say anything and if I did then….’

At the end it had come out in a rush, and the secret had raced away from him. Relieved of its weight, David broke down into streams of tears and buried his face in the rug. Charley began to bark and licked what little of David’s face could be seen. Keith sat stunned for a while and then bent down to pick up his son, lifting him onto his lap.

‘Okay, Dave, that’s all now. It’s all over now.’

For half an hour they sat like this, without saying another word. Then Keith got up to make some tea. When he returned he was also carrying a paper bag.

‘Here, drink your tea, and then have a look at this. Happy birthday.’

The child was still subdued and held the paper bag on his lap, while he sipped his tea. Then curiosity returned to his mind, displacing some of the confusion of shame and fear and the other powerful emotions which had filled it for the past half hour or more. From the bag he managed clumsily to extract the present. A football, leather and shiny, rested, gleaming orange, in his lap.

‘It’s a real one, isn’t it? Thank you,’ he said quietly.

‘You can take that to school and play with it.’

David shook his head.

‘Why not?’ asked Keith.

‘I’ll only play with it on the balcony. It’ll get spoiled at school.’

They sat there without speaking, but without strain. The unpleasantness had been driven down into the depths of the child’s mind by the shining image of the football; this was turned round and round, every inch of it receiving scrutiny.

‘Will you take me to the Arsenal, dad?’

Keith smiled, and scratched his fair hair. ‘You’d better ask your mother about that. I’d like to.’

There was a longer pause, before David asked:

‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘Me? No. You do it. It’s up to her. If she wants me to, she knows where I am.’

‘But I’ll show you where we live now. And you can see her.’

‘I know where you live, Dave. But that’s enough for now. Come on, we’d better be going. We’ll take Charley along with us.’

They both got up.

‘One more thing,’ said Keith. ‘Don’t say anything to your mother about earlier. She’d only get upset. Okay? I won’t say anything either. Just show her the present.’

David nodded, relieved to be excused a second confession. The football was returned to its paper bag, coats were pulled on, the dog was put on its lead, and the three of them walked out into the chilly air of mid-November. The sun had disappeared behind heavy clouds since the morning, and the rising wind was tossing leaves in the air as they walked through one of the squares on the way. It was but a short fifteen minute walk to the block of Council flats where Brenda and David now lived with Brenda’s parents. Brenda’s two younger brothers had moved out in the past year or two, so there was room in the flat for Brenda and David.

Keith led David, who led the dog, up the stairs to the first floor and the long balcony along which David would dribble his new football. Keith said goodbye to his son. David knelt down to give the dog a final pat before running along the balcony, waving as he went, and knocking on the red door about half way along. He disappeared inside, and Keith turned to go. Brenda emerged and started slightly as she saw her husband looking at her. Keith jerked the dog’s lead and walked down the stairs and out of the flats without another backward glance.

Keith had much to think about as he strolled home through the grey streets. He was filled with a longing to have his son with him all the time, yet he was determined not to make the first movement towards a reconciliation. To do so would be to admit guilt and he would never do that. He hoped that David would in some way be able to help repair the relationship again, just as he had helped to keep his parents together before. Perhaps David would make Brenda see that it was up to her to come round to see him about it. He was, after all, still living in their home, and it was to Ophelia Street that Brenda would have to return if she wanted to live with him again. At least, for the present, until the redevelopment was really under way.

As Keith drew closer to Ophelia Street, another topic occupied his mind. What was the real significance of David’s story? What should he do about it? Should he tell the police? The fact that Elaine had not been a complete innocent might or might not be important. But who was the man, and was he the murderer? And what would be the effect upon David of having to repeat his story again and again, possibly even in court? What would be the effect on their relationship if he were to reveal what his son had told him in confidence? What would be the effect on Brenda, if she knew what he had done, if she ever discovered the way that he had prised the truth out of David?

But was it the truth, the complete truth? The terrible responsibility which David’s story had placed upon him gradually began to creep over him, until he became overwhelmed with doubts and fears. The man was presumably Gerald Fermin, but even that was uncertain without David’s positive identification. It could be others. And even if it was Gerald Fermin, there was no real evidence to suggest that he had also murdered Elaine. Elaine had not been molested, she had been strangled and dumped in the fish tank. Would Keith, on this evidence, be justified in starting the kind of witch hunt which he had deplored before and which had driven Ernie Jack to suicide? Yet could he leave a dangerous criminal free to continue his activities?

As Keith sat in the silence of his front room, lit only by the glow of the electric fire, the questions whirled through his brain. He used the end of one cigarette to light the beginning of another, and turned the packet over and over in his hands. The picture of Gerald Fermin – outwardly so mild, so respectable – as a murderer and child molester appalled him and drove objective thought from his brain. He thought of David and all that he had gone through. The feelings of hatred and revenge aroused in him, which normally he would condemn in others, were too strong to suppress in himself. He strode out into the dark evening.

An engine roared with a loud snarl of sound as Keith walked down Ophelia Street, and the red sports car belonging to Robert Johnson raced out of the street. He alternated between furtiveness and aggression, not knowing whether to proclaim his mission or to sneak up to the house unseen. Keith stared at the black cat by the Fermins’ front gate, and the cat stared back enigmatically. Quietly he lifted open the gate and went up to the front door. There seemed to be no light from inside as he pressed the doorbell.

Keith rang again, and after another few seconds of darkness within, a light came on in the hall and he could see a shadowy figure growing through the frosted glass panes in the door. Bolts were drawn and the door was opened nervously, as far as the safety chain would allow. Through the crack a woman’s voice spoke: ‘What do you want?’

‘Is Mr Fermin in?’ he asked.

There was no immediate reply. Selene seemed puzzled by the question, and eventually spoke rather breathlessly. ‘I’m afraid my brother is ill. He’s really not well enough to see anyone at present.’

‘Ill?’

‘Yes, he’s in bed actually.’

‘But I have to see him.’

‘Can you tell me why? Is it that urgent?’

Keith considered. He seemed to yield to Selene’s argument. ‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ he replied, as if surprised at the thought, and walked away. He had not given a thought to the possibility of not seeing Gerald Fermin and he was completely thrown out of his stride. He had no choice but to walk away. But as he walked the feeling of numbness gave way to a feeling of relief, and he began to look upon it as an act of fate that had prevented him from seeing Gerald. It struck him then that he had never exchanged even a word of greeting with Gerald. He barely knew him by sight, he was a complete mystery to him. He had met Gerald’s sister only once, in the strangest of circumstances. So how could he presume to judge Gerald? He was surprised to feel a powerful surge of sympathy, a force of kinship with this unknown man, sensing a common bond between them that was stronger than their differences.

He returned home and sat in the glow of the electric fire as he had done before, and hoped with the full intensity of his mind that he would hear the key turning in the lock, signalling Brenda’s and David’s return home. He remained there without moving for hours, frightened to make a move that might appear discouraging, and then, as it was past midnight, he went to bed.