Open Writing

For every Rolls-Royce there are a million men riding rusty bikes. For every country mansion, somewhere there's an acre of slums.

Even this place had to have a flip side, and they'd tucked it away where it wouldn't put the nice people off their dinner, down by the canal.

The houses were cramped Victorian kennels. Some were definitely empty. Some might have been empty. Some had broken windows.

Some still had rags of curtains or newspapers to shield their domestic lifestyles from the curious. But they were more interested in me than I was in them. The kids held up their game of kick-can and watched, sullen and pale, as I parked next to a wheelless wreck.

A woman with a face like a side of beef waddled across the road with a child bobbing on her hip. A man wearing only vest and trousers sat on the front step yawning over the racing pages. They watched me walk down the street and turn right along the canal towpath. When I didn't fall in they carried on with their lives.

The path took me past the rusted hulk of a barge and under dilapidated bridges where bits of crumbling brickwork plopped into the green water below, the only sound, apart from the rustle of rats in the weeds.

Then I stepped out into a canal basin. In the evening light, the water was luminous green. Immediately ahead of me, where a narrow path led through tall weeds, was what looked like an old warehouse. Its windows were intact and it was brightly whitewashed.

In the silence I could hear the rattle of a piano and a few brave voices raised in praise. It was the Spiritualists' Church.

As I edged through the door, a bony-faced woman tiptoed over.

'You're very late. It's nearly over.'

'Sorry.'

'Never mind. You're just in time to hear Mr Kentish.'

I sat down on a wooden bench at the back of the room. There were four other benches with about twenty people sitting on each. All middle-aged or elderly, all women, and all dressed in clean pressed clothes that were the fashions of ten years ago. Jumble-sale clothes. These were the respectable poor. They didn't make a fuss about it. They didn't mind wearing other people's cast-offs. But they liked to come along to the Spiritualists' to hear about their reward in the life to come. It was pretty clear there was no reward for them in this life.

The last of the sunlight now streamed through bright orange curtains. Dust from the bare boards hovered.

'Friends,' I heard Kentish say, and I saw him standing before a temporary altar — a purple cloth, two candlesticks, and a vase of plastic flowers.

He was the same bland man he'd been in his office. He made no attempt to play at magic mediums, and spoke in a voice you'd use in a bus queue or a supermarket.

'Friends,' he repeated, 'bless you all. Many of our old friends are here, and one or two new ones too, and you are all equally welcome here in our little church. I'm getting something now for the lady in the green hat..."

He had messages from men called Jim or Jack, he was getting pictures of thin men and fat men, and they advised their friends here on earth not to worry and to keep on trying because there was a lot of work to be done before they entered God's Kingdom.

The women craned forward in their seats, anxious for the truth.

They nodded eagerly when he said the spirits knew they'd suffered. With ill-health, pain, worry, it didn't matter which — they'd all suffered, and they didn't mind it too much so long as someone up there was making a note of it all.

Then he took one woman's worn hands in his and turned his eyes down on her.

'Make it up with your sister,' he said, in a gentle urgent voice. 'Your mother is saying that to you. Go and see her tomorrow and make your peace with her. Your mother says life is too short to deny family love.'

Instantly, the woman burst into tears.

Afterwards, I stood in the doorway and watched them troop off in their twos and threes through the long grass.

'You're thinking I'm a terrible fraud, I expect,' Kentish said, as he appeared beside me. He didn't look too worried about my reply.

'Yesterday I would. Today I'm not so sure.'

He nodded, not in agreement but because I'd said what he expected.

'It's difficult. Sometimes I don't have anything, and of course I can't expect them to understand that. So I must confess that I waffle along a bit until something comes.'

'Like that stuff about my brother?'

'Is that who Michael was? I did wonder. I could hear him clearly enough. And that woman who'd fallen out with her sister - her mother was most insistent she should make it up. I suppose you think it's some sort of trick, don't you?'

'I'll hold on that if you don't mind.'

'That's your privilege. Now, come and meet Dawn. She's inside. She's the girl I want you to meet. Try to be gentle with her.'

She was sitting on the front pew facing the makeshift altar. At first all I could see was short black hair and what looked like one of those plump pert faces, but I could only see the profile. The rest of her was amply wrapped in a shapeless cardigan, a soiled blouse and a baggy skirt. She had dirty tennis shoes on her feet, one with a broken black lace, and her legs were brown and bare.

'This is Mr Hussy, Dawn,' he said. 'Tell him the whole story from the start, please.'

If anything, she turned away from me even more.

'Where shall I start, sir?'

'At the fairground. That was where it began, wasn't it?'

With her head tucked in she began talking, and when she did the words flew out of her. She had a strong northern accent but I managed to catch what she said all right. It wasn't the sort of story you'd want to miss.

'It was on the last night of the gala' - she too pronounced it to rhyme with sailor — 'near the end, happen half-past-nine, and I heard the bell going on the ring-the-bell machine. I knew it'd be Striker Nightingale. Everyone knew he were back in town.'

'How did you know him, Dawn?' Kentish asked.

'I'd allus known him. From before, when he lived here like. We used to stop at the forge on the way home from school to watch him. All us kids did. Anyroad, I went up to the top of the field and he were doing his tricks. With his shirt off, ringing the bell, hammering away like heckaslikes.'

I edged forward hoping to see more of her face, but now the light was fading and I could see no more.

'I'd seen him once or twice since he came home and he'd been clocking me. You know, fancying me like. Afterwards he chucks the hammer down and comes over and says would I like a ride in his car. That big fancy one. I says yes.'

She paused there. A defiant note came into her voice.

'Well, he were right good-looking, a real hunk, and all the lasses fancied him.'

'That's all right, Dawn,' Kentish said. 'Go on with the story. No one's blaming you.'

'He took us up to Quarry Valley, not in the valley itself, up on the hill looking down into it. He put a tape on his player and, well, there was a lot of necking and that. You don't want all the details, do you?'

She almost shouted that, and turned her face up to Kentish so I could see it quite clearly for a moment. She was pretty. One of those cat faces - slant eyes and a wide mouth with a bold look about her somehow.

'Just tell it the way you want to,' Kentish said, his voice like warm oil.

She calmed down immediately.

'I know lads like messing about and what they want to do to you and all that, but I didn't want him to do that. I never have. Not with anyone, mister. Anyroad, I thought I could look after myself because I've had some right scraps with lads sometimes. So when he went too far, when he started trying to undo his trousers, I pushed him off like. I told him to give over.'

She began to sob, slow gulps of moist air. The two of us waited until she could carry on.

'There was nothing I could do. I got out of the car and he came after me. He banged me over the head, and when he grabbed me I couldn't move he were that strong. I was crying and he were shouting. Next thing he had me down on the grass and then I felt this pain, like fire it were. Down there. Hell, mister, it hurt. I didn't know it'd hurt like that.'

In the silence, our breathing rasped in the empty hall. Outside a bird's song sounded like machine-gun fire.

'You've not done that before, Dawn?' Kentish inquired.

'No. No, never. I were saving myself. I didn't want that to happen until I were in love.'

Again she fell silent, with her head down. This time I thought I'd try a question. She jumped when she heard an unfamiliar voice.

'What happened afterwards?'

'Afterwards? Oh. He helped me up. He said he was sorry. He kept trying to make me promise not to tell. He said he'd give me money. He said he couldn't help himself. He said it'd finish him if it got out.'

'And did you?'

'I couldn't mister. I was crying. I couldn't promise anything. Then he began crying too. He said I could go. He told me to go, shooing me off like. Somehow I got on to the road and somehow I was walking along towards the town when I heard the engine start up. I thought he might be coming after me again so I turned round. I could see the headlamps pointing up into the sky where he was on the side of the hill like, and he was revving the engine up like mad and the wheels were spinning. Then I saw the lights come down out of the sky and point down into the valley, and then there was a crash and the lights went out. He just drove off the edge.'

She wrapped and unwrapped stubby fingers. 'He needn't have done that, need he? I'm not the first lass to get raped, am I?'