Evil Relations (48 page)

‘I never heard directly from Brady and Hindley again after the night of Edward Evans’s death,’ David states. ‘I made no attempt to contact them and nor did Maureen while we were together. The thought couldn’t have been further from her mind.’

Following her divorce from David, Maureen had a change of heart and worked hard at a reconciliation with her sister. In 1975, after her marriage to Bill Scott and the birth of their daughter Sharon, Maureen and her new family visited Myra in Holloway. She later declared in a rare interview: ‘I was really nervous the first time. I think, honestly, in the back of my mind, I still had a repulsion for what she’d done, what she’d got herself involved in . . . I didn’t know whether I’d be able to act normally. I went in and there she was. She was nothing like she was when she first went in. Actually, at first I didn’t realise it was her. She’d really changed.’ Myra decorated her cell with photos of Sharon, and showered her niece with gifts, calling her ‘my queen’ and ‘my little ray of sunshine’. Unbeknown to David and Mary, she wrote to Maureen: ‘Ask [
David
] for some up-to-date pictures of young Paul, David and John to put on my wall, Moby.’ Maureen quietly ignored the request. It was years since she and David had been in touch.

In July 1980, Maureen and Bill were enjoying a night out at a pub close to home when she began to complain of a violent headache. The next morning Bill woke to the sound of Maureen retching in the bathroom. He called a doctor, who told him she was probably suffering from flu but agreed to pay a home visit. The doctor took one look at Maureen and rushed her straight to Monsall Hospital. She was transferred to Crumpsall (North Manchester) Hospital later that same day, where she was diagnosed with a brain haemorrhage. She seemed to recover well after emergency surgery, but while Bill was at home he received a telephone call from the hospital: Maureen had slipped into a coma. Returning to his wife’s bedside (‘the doctors were rushing round with lots of gadgets’), and knowing that her chances of survival were diminishing by the minute, he decided anything that might help Maureen was worth trying.

He asked a friend to get in touch with David Smith.

* * *

It’s a hot summer’s day and I’m relaxing in the garden, enjoying a cigarette and listening to ‘Hey Jude’ turned up loud, when I notice a car going past unusually slowly, its driver peering at me.

I stand up, throw my cigarette away and go into the house; Mary is out. Instinctively, I brace myself for a visitor, thinking,
another scumbag journalist wanting to poke at cold coals
. I pace over to the window and, right on cue, the car returns. The driver climbs out and I wait for the inevitable knock at the door.

When I open the door, he tells me quickly that although he’s a reporter, he isn’t here for an interview. As he outlines the reason for his visit, I stare at him in stunned silence. Then he begins to prattle, insisting that I know him from a long time ago (I don’t), that he’s a friend (he isn’t) and that whatever happens today, I have his word that this won’t end up in the newspaper. On this last point, I believe him, but ask him to wait in the car.

When Mary arrives home with a few bits of shopping, she tells me there’s a car parked outside and that the driver watched her walk in. Then she sees my expression; her face whitens.

Quietly, I tell her what my visitor told me: Maureen is dying. She’s had a brain haemorrhage and is in a coma, with the thinnest sliver – or perhaps none at all – of survival. I keep my voice even: ‘They say, don’t they, that some people come round if they hear music or a voice that means something to them? Something from the past, something close. But that might be nonsense . . .’

‘We’re going to the hospital,’ Mary says firmly. The kids are scattered about the house, but she brings them together to explain the situation and tells them gently that they can come with us if they want to say goodbye to Maureen. John and Jody are too young to understand properly, so Mary arranges for a neighbour to look after them, but 13-year-old Paul and 12-year-old David – suddenly seeming like tiny boys again – change quickly into their best clothes.

We troop out to the car. I climb in beside the driver and Mary huddles in the back with the boys. The reporter’s name is Ian, and he’s keen that I should realise how close he’s been to ‘this story’ for many, many years. He knows Maureen and her husband Bill very well and visits Myra regularly in prison. I clench my fists on my knees, thinking,
you’ve just slipped into enemy territory, pal.

In the back of the car, Mary tries to reassure the boys that they mustn’t worry – everything will be all right. Paul is quiet and sullen, while David is agitated. Mary promises that they don’t have to see Maureen unless they want to and the decision is theirs alone. The boys remember too much unhappiness: too many partings and pain. ‘She’s not our mum,
you’re
our mum,’ David insists, very upset.

We arrive at the hospital and are shown into a grim little waiting room. Another group stand in the corridor: Maureen’s husband and family. A nurse comes in to speak to us, smiling and addressing me as David. She thanks me for coming and explains that there is very little hope for Maureen now, but her husband would like me to talk to her. ‘Miracles do sometimes happen,’ she adds.

I understand how desperate Bill must feel, but it’s like everything else: what can I do? I look at Mary. She turns to David and Paul, asking them one last time if they want to say goodbye. David is very definite in his reply (‘
No!
’), but Paul steps forward after a moment’s hesitation, quietly declaring, ‘I’ll go with Dad.’

The nurse gestures towards the door, telling us that there’s no rush and we are to take as long as we need. For Paul’s benefit, she explains Maureen is hooked up to various pieces of equipment that are keeping her alive. He puts his hand in mine and together we follow the nurse. Bill is still standing in the corridor with his family; our eyes meet. I can tell from his expression that he’s already grieving. We don’t speak to each other, but the sense of the two halves of Maureen’s life meeting and ending here causes my breath to come in short, rapid bursts. Only the small hand holding mine stops me from panicking.

We come to another corridor and the nurse points to a door before leaving us, her shoes hardly making a sound on the linoleum floor. I push the heavy door and we go in.

Maureen lies silent and still in a vast space. Everything is at one end, as if the room has capsized, and the distance from door to bed feels incalculable. My hand hangs limp, but Paul clutches two of my fingers tightly.

The room is dark, with only the bed lit by a small light above the metal headboard. She lies there as if already dead, surrounded by machines faking life. To the right is a monitor, its screen showing the small, still figure in the bed. I stare at the grainy black-and-white image for a long time, willing there to be some movement. It holds the three of us as if in freeze-frame, just a snapshot from a very old movie.

I look at her. Inside my chest a tiny balloon of pain inflates and presses lightly against my heart.

Maureen, it’s me. I’m here, girl, you’re not alone. Wake up, this isn’t the way to end it. Don’t you remember I loved you almost as much as I loved rock ’n’ roll?

The words stay in my head.

Mary told me to be careful with Paul, but there’s no one here to be careful with me. The painful balloon in my chest swells as I think back to that toothless tramp by the bus stop telling my mum’s dead, the white-suited doctor with his matter-of-fact expression explaining that my daughter is no more, and then Dad lying helpless, twisted and ravaged, on a bedroom floor.

Now it’s Maureen’s turn.

I feel the old fighting urge surge through me, but there isn’t an adversary to confront. The balloon becomes something sharp, boring through my chest and out through my spine.

I sit down gently on the edge of the bed. There’s no comfort in it; the mattress is hard and unyielding. Maureen lies carved from white marble, the light from above lending her skin a perfect sheen. No hint of life flickers beneath her closed eyelids. I turn my head to look at the machines. On one, lines rise and fall as oxygen is emptied into her; another has no apparent purpose but emits a small, steady beep,
beep
, beep. She is covered from feet to waist by a starched sheet on which her arms lie in thin immobility, the skin bearing pale purple evidence of hospital injections. The surgical cap she wears makes her face seem longer and thinner than it is. This isn’t the Maureen I choose to remember; my fingers touch the white sheet, but I see her as she was when we first met, all huge, thickly mascara’d eyes, twirling skirts and screamed laughter as she dances in the street with her friends to an Elvis song on Radio Luxembourg . . .

They hammered us into the ground, girl, they screwed us up and spat us out, but we tried to survive, didn’t we? We really tried to make it, but it was always the Hindley thing that got to me. I regret it now. I know you suffered as well, but I couldn’t help you because of your name. Because of your name, Maureen . . . because of your name.

I lean forward very gently so as not to touch or disturb her. She smells lovely: clean, sweet talcum powder and the soft scent of the flowers on her bedside cabinet. Then I whisper: ‘Maureen, I know you always liked McCartney best, well, our Paul has come to see you.’

He moves closer to me, pressing against my leg. I ask him to say hello and he does. I ask him to come closer and say it again because maybe she didn’t hear him. Obediently, he says a louder ‘hello’. I watch the black-and-white screen, holding my breath, willing the miracle to happen – the flicker of an eyelash, the slight movement of a thumb, even a single tear appearing in the corner of a sleeping eye. I watch and wait, but there is only infinite stillness.

Paul plucks at my hand questioningly. I tell him Maureen has heard him and that she’s only sleeping. Then I notice the rosary on the bedside cabinet and pick it up, running my fingers down the beads. It must be new. Somehow, you can tell when a rosary is old. I wonder if it’s been blessed; they feel stronger then. I place the cross in my palm and clasp it as hard as I can, hoping it will hurt. I press and press until I can press no more.
Help us, please, help us
. My hand is sore. Carefully, I replace the rosary on the cabinet and tell myself that I need to take Maureen back too, to when we first met.

Do you remember, girl? Do you remember you were always there for me? Once upon a time we shared a kind of love, something that breeds best in the city streets, something real, a friendship at first, then lust. As teenagers we shared ourselves with each other and you were always there for me in every way. You were my pillow when I lost the one I adored and you gave me what I craved, the first of my children. We were happy for those few months in Gorton, do you remember? But then our precious little girl died and we buried her together. A year later you stood next to me after the worst nightmare of our lives, hated, damned and disowned, ridiculed and cursed. There was no God for us then.

But I remember you best when we first met, I picture you jiving and shrieking to Elvis, and still giving yourself after I’d cheated on you. We prowled the streets at night with the gang, singing Beatles songs like our lives depended on it – you loved Paul and I loved John. God, we had our young lives and it was fab.

But after October 1965 we didn’t stand a chance.

Paul is becoming tired. It’s almost time to go and I press my fingers into my eye corners, thinking,
I’m so sorry, Maureen. I can’t find a path through to the darkness that shrouds you. I can’t share it.

The monitors haven’t acknowledged us. The black-and-white screen is still frozen in time.

I look at her. Again and again, I look at her.

I hated you for all the wrong things, girl. I hated you for leaving the boys, I hated you when you went back to Myra and reappeared on telly, a different person standing alongside the cranky do-gooders, spouting on her behalf. You tore the soul out of me then. Why did you let them get to you, how could you betray yourself so much? But most of all, I hated you for being a Hindley. I couldn’t handle it, but now I know how much wrong I did you. I just couldn’t see it then and didn’t understand that we were both growing poorly together but in separate ways.

I’m so sorry for not being there when you needed me most. I’m more sorry than I’ve ever been in my life. But I could only see your sister; I stopped seeing you.

Forgive me.

I take a breath and exhale slowly. Quietly, I tell Paul to say goodbye because we’re going home. Remembering earlier, he speaks in a clear, loud voice: ‘Goodbye.’

I lean forward and kiss Maureen’s forehead, remaining still against her skin.
Can you feel this, girl? Do you remember how it used to be? Do you remember how we did everything together to Elvis because you loved him so much?
I whisper in her ear, ‘Are you lonesome tonight . . .’ I go on singing the words softly on an empty stage, all the while thinking:
If you want to come back, girl, then they can bring the curtain down.

I reach the end of the song. This time I’m leaving her for ever. One last, despairing glance at the monitor . . . but it’s still showing the same clip from a black-and-white movie no one wanted to see.

I get up from the bed. Paul holds my hand and we walk towards the door. When he steps out into the corridor, I pause with one hand on the door and turn back for one last, lingering look.

The pain has gone for you, Maureen, so let go now. There’s another place where you need to be, where someone very small and precious waits for you. Another flower for God’s garden, remember? Look after her.

Goodbye, girl.

Outside the room, Bill stands with his back to the wall. We look at each other wordlessly. I clasp Paul’s hand tightly and together we walk down the long corridor to Mary and David, and then out into the fresh, clean air.