Evil Relations (18 page)

Following the death of their daughter, Maureen returned to her former job as a part-time machinist with her mother at a factory in Gorton. David abandoned his position at Moseleys, ‘bailing out’, as he puts it, from routine. Neither of them could bear to return to Wiles Street; they remained at 39 Aked Street, with David feeling acutely that he was back where he’d started. But Ian and Myra were there for them when they needed to get away from the small web of condemned streets that seemed to trap them in their misery.

‘They’d call for us and we’d go off for the day or just the evening,’ David remembers. ‘We went up to the moor very often, taking wine and the pistols that he and Myra had bought after she’d joined a gun club. Sometimes we went to another spot in Derbyshire – we’d take the rifle with us then instead, using it for target practice on trees. He taught me how to play chess when we stayed in, but more often than not we all went out together. On one occasion we were heading to Blackpool for the day, the girls in front, me and him sprawled out in the back as usual, when another car came past and overtook us a bit sharpish. It was full of lads, larking about. I didn’t think anything of it until Ian started banging on the partition, his face contorted with anger. He yelled at Myra to go after them, burn them off.’

He pauses to cough, lighting another roll-up from his tin. ‘We shot off, the car juddering as it picked up speed. Ian started moving towards the back, feeling for one of the empty bottles of wine we’d drunk. He picked it up as Myra swerved the Morris in front of the car that had overtaken us. Then she hit the brakes: the driver of the other car slammed on his brakes, too, and at that moment Ian hurled the empty bottle straight at their windscreen. Myra put her foot down and the other car shrank into the distance. Ian’s mood altered immediately – he realised then that he’d lost control, even though it was only for a moment, and told Myra to turn around and head for home. So that’s what she did. We never got to Blackpool.’

David smokes his cigarette in silence for a while, then speaks quietly: ‘The moor was their sacred spot. That’s where we went most of all.’

* * *

Saddleworth Moor again: hell’s garden, an abyss where devils play and souls can never rest. I hate the place with a passion, even though I don’t particularly know why.

I am on my back, the plaid blanket itchy against the nape of my neck. Myra sits straddling me, pinning me down, holding my hands above my head. Bottles and sandwich wrappings lie scattered about, and out of the corner of my eye I can see Maureen nearby, laughing as she hasn’t done since we buried our daughter. The sun burns brilliantly behind Myra, stinging my eyes and turning her blonde hair into a white cloud. We’re having a play-fight, teasing, having fun. Myra wears a simple white blouse with too many buttons undone. I can feel the warmth of her legs across me, below the billowing floral skirt she wears. I’d have no trouble in wrestling her off, but I don’t even try. Hair lacquer tingles my nostrils and I can feel her breath as she pins me down tighter.

Hold him down
, Ian is saying,
keep him down.
He’s lying on the blanket beside us, holding one of the long grasses that grow so thickly on the moor. He prods at my ear with the blade of grass, irritating me. I flick it away and he laughs:
who’s a little baby, then?
The red wine has got to us all; he digs his fingers into my waist, tickling me until I scream with laughter and Myra pushes me down ever further into the ground.

God, why do I like this day? I hate this place, it does nothing for me, but for the first time since I lost my baby I’m able to laugh and Maureen is laughing too, her head thrown back against the sun. I take in another lungful of hair lacquer, trying to wriggle away from Ian’s bony fingers on my skin, and give in to the laughter.

Now it’s early evening on the moor; everything is bathed in the glow of the sun sinking behind the hills. The wine is finished and the picnic blanket lies rumpled among the long grass. Maureen is running in front of me, laughing, her black hair catching in her mouth as she turns to look at me following behind her, my feet sinking into the warm earth. I hear Ian’s voice carried on the warm breeze:
grab him, Hessy, bring him down, hold him there.
My limbs are feeble with alcohol and sun – I tumble over the uneven ground and roll in the cotton-grass. Myra is on top of me again, hands on my shoulders, legs around mine, forcing me back. I’m shouting through my laughter:
get off, leave it out, just get off me . . .

I can’t move as she bears down on me, knees pressing into my waist, hair lacquer choking me again. I catch a glimpse of Maureen sitting in silhouette against the dying sun, her mouth lifted in a gentle smile.

When the sun slides behind the hill and the reservoir is nothing but a black inky stain in the valley, we gather the empty bottles and the blanket and leave the moor, heading home to the sleeping city.

On 23 July 1965, David and Maureen moved into their new home at 18 Underwood Court, Hattersley. It was Myra’s 23rd birthday. A month earlier David had helped Ian decorate the house on Wardle Brook Avenue. Gone was the distempered cream interior of all the new homes on the estate; Myra had chosen a pink emulsion for the walls and imitation brick wallpaper for the fireplace. Underwood Court was 300 yards away and despite the abundance of stark rules in the communal lobby (‘When the buzzer goes, please push front door’; ‘No dogs permitted’; ‘Will persons please keep this door closed for their own interests’, etc.), both David and Maureen were pleased with their new flat and keen to make a fresh start.

‘We’d been living with Grandad in Aked Street since Angela died,’ David recalls, ‘and asked to be re-housed on compassionate grounds. Our old home in Gorton was still privately owned by Miss Jones and Dad paid rent to her. But that house, like all the others in the neighbourhood, was put under a compulsory purchase order. People were given a choice of three areas for the move. Some turned places down – you’d find streets where almost every house was boarded up but for those families holding out for the area they wanted. Hattersley wasn’t popular with people from Hyde because it was too full of “Mancs”. Dad would eventually move in with us towards the end of the year, but he was working away a lot at the time and carried on living in Wiles Street with my dog Peggy – we couldn’t bring her to Underwood Court because of the rule on not keeping dogs. Rusty had died of distemper. We got a couple of cats instead – Maureen loved her cats.’

There were seven tower blocks in Hattersley. Most new occupants found it difficult to adjust to living several storeys above the ground, surrounded by building plots and with no amenities. ‘There
were
things about the flat that I really liked,’ David admits. ‘It was modern and light, with under-floor heating and a proper bathroom. And the balcony was a real novelty, of course – Ian envied us that because of the views. He’d be straight out onto the balcony whenever he came to see us. But the biggest drawback was Mr Page, the caretaker. He was a proper jobsworth and had it in for me from the very beginning. I tried to stay out of his way, but not a single bloody day went by when we didn’t bump into each other and he would give me the old gimlet eye or have a go. The neighbourhood around Underwood Court was like a moonscape back then – barren and undeveloped. Mobile vans came round selling groceries because there were no shops, and everyone had cigarette machines at home for the same reason. It was a world away from Gorton.’

Living in close proximity to each other, David and Maureen socialised with Ian and Myra more than ever, but it was still the older couple who decided when the four of them would meet and how their time together would be spent. They could be curiously awkward: on several occasions David strolled round to Wardle Brook Avenue only to be told by Myra that Ian didn’t want to be disturbed. Sometimes in the evening she would ask David to wait by the wall of the New Inn while she checked with Ian; if it was all right for him to come in, the landing light would flash on and off, on and off. During one visit, Ian and Myra rose from their chairs in silence and remained upstairs until David and Maureen took the hint and left.

Sometimes the pair were even less welcoming, as Maureen later told a crowded courtroom: ‘[If] we called unexpectedly . . . Myra would do a lot of moaning and shouting and Brady would go upstairs.’ She then recalled another incident: ‘I had been working on some cushion covers for my sister [
and
] took them round to Wardle Brook Avenue. It was about 9 p.m. I knocked and could get no answer. As I began to walk away, Brady opened the door. I told him about the cushion covers and he barred the way. He put his arms around the door and said they had company. I gave the cushion covers to him and went home.’ There was no question that Myra could be every bit as sullen and disagreeable as Ian; her temper often had the edge on his, and sometimes her wrath was directed explicitly at David.

* * *

Summer 1965: the Beatles have just taken the top spot in the hit parade with ‘Help!’, knocking off the Byrds’ ‘Mr Tambourine Man’; girls’ skirts are getting shorter as men’s hair gets longer; the war in Vietnam is raging; Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs has escaped from prison. England is swinging, but me and Maureen are stuck on Planet Hattersley, an overspill estate full of overspill people, a vision of the future that’s standing still.

In Manchester, there’s a polio scare and mass inoculation is being doled out to the population on sugar cubes. I haven’t bothered to have mine and don’t give it another thought until I pay a visit to Wardle Brook Avenue with Maureen. It’s the weekend and Ian greets us in fine form, relaxed and friendly. Myra, on the other hand, is agitated and in one of her dark, serious moods. She has them from time to time and is prone to slipping into them at odd moments. She goes through to the kitchen to make tea with a mardy look on her face. Unwisely, I call out to remind her that I take two sugars. A harmless enough request, it nonetheless triggers something in her head; she returns with the hot teapot a minute later and launches into a fanatical rant about the polio scare. Then her gaze falls on me.

‘Have
you
had your sugar cube at the doctor’s?’

Picking up bad vibrations, I shrug and admit cautiously, ‘No, not yet.’

She goes berserk: ‘You fucking moron! You stupid bastard! You could be carrying it, killing us all, and what happens then, eh?
Eh?
Go on, get out, get the fuck out of my house right now, you fucking moron!’

My own temper snaps: ‘Shut your fucking mouth. It’s up to me whether I have the vaccination or not. You don’t fucking tell me what to do.’

Maureen is sitting next to me. She bursts into tears and covers her face with her hands. Ian looks up in mild amusement from the chair where he’s sat, one ankle crossed over the other knee.

Myra screams: ‘I said get the
fuck
out of my house!’

She comes at me psychotically, the scalding teapot in her grip: ‘Out, out, get the fuck OUT!’ I duck just in time; the teapot flies across the room, spilling its contents in a brown arc before shattering in the corner near the television.

Maureen runs for the door, arms clutching her head. I rise to my feet, fists clenched.

Myra stares at me, frozen with unadulterated rage, and I stare right back.

A soft voice comes from behind us: ‘Myra, cut it out.’

But she persists with the blazing, spiteful glare until he speaks again, his words sterner but his tone equally serene: ‘Myra, fucking stop now. Just leave it.’

Her shoulders drop and the flame in her eyes is quenched by the sound of his voice at last; it’s over.

I turn and leave. Maureen waits for me at the end of the short path, sobbing as we walk past the new houses with their bald little gardens. A small group of children stop kicking a football against the wall of the terrace to stare at us. I hurry Maureen home, my anger still smarting from the memory of my sister-in-law lobbing a red-hot teapot straight at my face.

It’s hours before I’m able to relax, but just as we’re getting ready for bed the entry phone rings. Maureen buzzes our caller upstairs. I stand behind her in the small hallway as she opens the door to Myra.

It’s obvious from her smart clothes and perfectly teased hair that she and Ian have been out for the evening, but when she speaks her manner is subdued and remorseful: ‘Ian’s told me to come and say that I’m sorry.’

Noticing Maureen’s relieved smile and sideways glance at me, I mumble, ‘All right,’ but I’m lying. All is forgiven because Ian commands it? No way.

Failing to recognise my mood, both sisters lean quickly forward to give each other a hug.

Myra untangles herself from Maureen’s arms and jerks her head towards the lift. ‘Ian’s got plenty of drink in. Why don’t the two of you come over for a bit?’

Unable to bite my tongue, I murmur, ‘Well, only if you’re sure I’m not contagious . . .’

The eyes flash again, but Maureen says eagerly, ‘That’d be great. Give us a minute to get our things . . .’

Jackets and footwear on, we head out from Underwood Court. The girls are very chatty and hold hands as we follow the now-familiar route in the light of the muted streetlamps: Underwood Road, cut through Pudding Lane and into Wardle Brook Avenue. I push my hands deep into my pockets, dragging my heels and thinking,
screw you, Myra, if it wasn’t for Ian you’d be nursing a busted face.

Ian opens the door with a beam on his face like the Cheshire cat’s Scottish cousin. In the cosy little sitting room it looks like bloody Christmas: on the Formica coffee table are three bottles of red wine, white wine and whisky next to two plates piled high with the shortbreads Ian loves, and the dark chocolates that are my favourite. I feel suddenly silly for nursing a grudge when they’ve gone to so much trouble. Ian, sensing my embarrassment, wraps an arm firmly around my shoulder and guides me to a chair, pointing out the chocolates and telling me to help myself as he uncorks the wine, cigarette dangling from his lip.