Wild Thing (11 page)

‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘A break will do you good, Lew. We all need to get away from this place now and again.’

I almost skipped home that night, I was so happy. The following day I bought presents for Jean and the kids, stuffed them into a big hold-all and headed for Euston station. Approximately three hours later I arrived in Preston, where I had to change trains for Burnley. I had a 15-minute wait, so I sat in the station buffet. Should I? Shouldn’t I? I sat staring at the public telephone in the corner wondering whether I should call Jean to tell her I was coming home or not. The voice of uncertainty that had haunted me for months returned. I told myself that whatever I thought or felt, I should not make the call; I should arrive unannounced. An hour later I was getting off the train at Burnley and striding towards the hairdressing salon where Jean worked. The voice in my head had not gone away, and it was still telling me something was wrong.

Reluctantly, and with a sense of impending doom, I stopped at the first public phone box I found and picked up the receiver. ‘Could I speak to my wife, Jean?’ I asked the receptionist at the salon. ‘Tell her it’s Lew, her husband.’

As soon as I heard Jean’s voice, my heart sank; she sounded worried rather than pleased to hear from me. ‘Hello, Lew. Where are you?’ she asked.

‘London,’ I lied. ‘Why is that? Is everything OK?’ Jean said that I sounded closer. I pretended to laugh and told her I was: ‘I’m in Burnley, Jean. I will be with you in ten minutes.’ There was a sense of panic in Jean’s voice as she mumbled OK and quickly replaced the receiver. I stepped out of the phone box and walked as quickly as I could to the salon. I was terrified of learning the truth about whatever had been or was happening, so instead of going into her workplace I stood across the road from it. After ten minutes Jean hadn’t emerged, so I bit my lip, crossed the road and walked in. ‘Is Jean here, girls?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ the receptionist replied. ‘She has had to leave early.’ I ignored the receptionist and made my way out to the staffroom at the back of the premises. ‘You can’t go out there!’ the receptionist shouted.

Continuing to ignore her, I looked for Jean, and when I was satisfied that she wasn’t in the salon, I left. My heart was either pounding, breaking or both by now. I’m not sure what it was doing, to be honest. Up until this point in my life I had never loved any woman other than my mother and my wife, and so had never suffered any sort of emotional trauma. I knew that whenever I did find Jean, whatever she had to tell me wouldn’t be good news. Regardless of what that news might be, I just had to hear it so I could try to put things right. I ran to the bus stop as the rain began to fall. When I turned the corner, I was just in time to see the bus disappearing up the street. Unlike the first time I had set eyes on Jean, I was on foot and therefore unable to pursue it. I ran into the road and stood in the path of an oncoming car, which was forced to brake violently.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ the female driver shouted out of her window. ‘I nearly ran you over.’

I hadn’t got a clue what to say, so I blurted out the first thing that came into my head: ‘I have to get to Crawshaw Booth. It’s an emergency,’ I said.

The woman could see I was in a distressed state, so she told me to get into her car. ‘Put your foot down,’ I said when I climbed in next to her. ‘I don’t have much time.’ Eyeing me with a degree of suspicion, the woman put the car into gear and sped away, ignoring speed limits and traffic lights. We arrived at my home in record time. I got out of the car and asked the woman to wait a moment. At the front door, soaking wet in the pouring rain, stood my children Glynn and Joanne. When they saw me, they ran towards me, and I hugged them both. ‘What are you doing out here in the rain?’ I asked. ‘Where’s your mother, and where is your brother Billy?’ The children explained that they didn’t know where their mother was, they were locked out and Billy was with a childminder. I carried the children to the woman’s car and asked her if she would give us all a lift to another house, as we had no key for our own home.

The woman must have thought that the emergency I’d spoken of involved the children being locked out and left alone, so she kindly agreed to take us to the house where Billy was being looked after. I had no idea that my son Billy was being cared for by somebody other than one of our close friends; Jean had certainly never mentioned the fact to me. Glynn and Joanne told me that the arrangement had been in place for some time. I found it hard to believe, but it turned out to be true, as they had no difficulty in pointing out the house where ‘our Billy’s carer’ lived. When I knocked on the door, the woman who answered was initially reluctant to let me take Billy, because she had no idea who I was. When Billy emerged from a room, he shouted ‘Daddy, Daddy’ and ran towards me. It was only then that the woman agreed to let me take him.

Fortunately she also had a spare set of keys for my house, which she handed to me. I returned to the car with the three children in tow and asked the woman if she would take us back to our home. Displaying the patience of a saint and not some woman who had been hijacked by a madman, she smiled and said certainly. When we arrived, I thanked my rescuer and took the children to the house of some nearby friends.

I explained the situation to the friends and asked if the children could stay with them until I had located Jean. Fortunately they agreed to assist me. I kissed the children goodbye, assured them I wouldn’t be long and walked back to our home struggling to hold back my tears. I let myself in and walked around the house calling Jean’s name, but there was no reply. I went into the main bedroom and began to look through the drawers in Jean’s bedside cabinet. What I found struck me like a knife through the heart. A man named Paul Smith had been prosecuted for driving the wrong way along a one-way street, and his summons was in my wife’s bedside cabinet. I had never heard of the man, so I assumed the presence of his property in my home could mean only one thing: the woman I loved, the mother of my three children, was having an affair.

I ran out of the house and down the road to a friend of Jean’s named Connie. ‘Where’s my wife?’ I asked, ‘and who is Paul Smith?’

Connie looked shocked and very worried. ‘I don’t know where Jean is, Lew,’ she replied, ‘and I have never heard of Paul Smith.’

I could tell by Connie’s face that she was not telling the truth, but I could also see that she was too scared to say anything that might upset me further. I turned and ran back to where my children were being looked after. I felt as if my world was falling apart, and I needed to cling on to what I had left. I thanked my friends for looking after the children and walked with the kids to a public phone box.

Huddled inside, safe from the driving rain, the children clung to me as I telephoned my parents, Jean’s parents, our brothers, sisters, friends and anybody else who could possibly have enlightened me as to what was going on. Each and every one of them denied being aware of anything untoward. The children began to cry because of my demeanour, so I picked them up in my arms and carried them home. That night we all slept together. The children kept asking for Jean. I lied, telling them that Mum had gone out with a friend for the night and would return in the morning, but they sensed that all was not well. My emotional state, like my wife, had betrayed me.

 

THE NEXT MORNING I WASHED AND DRESSED THE CHILDREN, AND THEN MADE
them breakfast before taking them to a friend of Jean’s who had offered to babysit. Once I knew that the children were together, safe and being looked after, I went in search of my wife and the man who had assisted her in destroying my family.

Unfortunately for Smith the police officer who had stopped him for committing a relatively minor traffic violation had written his parents’ address on the summons. With every step I took towards their house, I grew increasingly angry. I was no longer wondering whether or not Smith had taken my wife; she had confirmed that when she ran away when I turned up in Burnley. I was now considering how I was going to kill him, having tried, convicted and sentenced him to death in his absence. The door of his parents’ home shook as I hammered my fist against it, but nobody answered. ‘Come out, you useless bastard!’ I shouted through the letterbox, but again there was no reply. I knocked on the neighbours’ doors, but they said they had no idea if he was home or not.

As I was walking back towards Smith’s parents’ house, an elderly couple asked me what I wanted. I told them I was looking for Paul Smith. ‘Paul’s our son,’ the lady said. ‘Is there a problem?’ Despite my anger I tried to be as polite as possible – his parents, after all, couldn’t be blamed for anything he had done. I told them that I was looking for my wife. I described her, described our children and gave Jean’s full name. The expression on Mrs Smith’s face told me that she knew my wife. ‘He told us it was his girlfriend,’ she said. ‘Jean didn’t wear a wedding ring, and she certainly never mentioned having any children.’

The full extent of Jean’s deception hit me like I had never been hit before. ‘When I get your fucking son, I am going to pull the bastard apart with my bare hands!’ I shouted. ‘His bollocks will be posted through your letter box. Let the bastard know I am looking for him.’

As I walked away from the house, a police car pulled up and an officer got out. ‘Oi, you,’ the policeman shouted, ‘stay where you are! I want to talk to you.’

I turned around and glared at him. ‘Do yourself a favour, mate,’ I replied. ‘Leave me alone. Get back in your car and fuck off.’ The policeman looked at me, looked up and down the street, took his hat off, got back into his car and drove away without saying another word.

In desperation I returned to Connie’s house. I could not believe that, as Jean’s best friend, she would not know anything. When I arrived, I didn’t bother knocking on her door, which happened to be open; I just walked straight in. A man whom I had never seen before was sitting in the lounge with Connie. ‘Do you know Paul Smith?’ I asked.

‘Who wants to fucking know?’ the man answered with a smirk. A moment later his cocky demeanour had gone. The man’s eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets as I squeezed his throat tighter and tighter. ‘Nod your fucking head if you want to live to answer my questions, arsehole!’ I screamed.

The man, who was struggling to breathe, nodded his bloated purple head, so I eased my grip. I asked him again if he knew Paul Smith, and he nodded furiously. ‘I can hardly breathe, mate,’ he gasped. ‘Please help me.’

I told him to save what breath he had for my questions and advised him not to refer to me as his mate. ‘I am Jean Martindale’s husband. We have three children together. Tell me everything. If you lie once or hold anything back, I will squeeze the fucking life out of you.’

Every word the man uttered tore through me. He said that his best mate Paul Smith had been sleeping with my beloved Jean in my bed. ‘I told him he was out of order,’ the man said. ‘I even told him he was wrong because Jean was married with kids, but all he said was “too bad”.’

I think those words hurt me more than anything else I was told that day. Jean was forfeiting her family for a person who could not care less about whom he hurt. I squeezed the man’s throat a little tighter. ‘Where does Smith work?’

He could see in my face the pain his words had inflicted. He could also see that my pain was quickly dissolving into uncontrollable anger. ‘He isn’t my mate any more,’ he replied. ‘He is a lorry driver at the metal factory in town.’ I let go of the man and, without saying another word, he ran from the house clutching his throat.

‘Is Paul Smith here?’ I asked a man sitting behind a desk in the transport office of the metal factory. The man, who didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading, said Smith had not been in for a few days. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked why I wanted to know. I didn’t answer. I grabbed the man’s shirt, pulled him out of his chair and across the desk, and pinned him against the wall. I advised him to look at people who were talking to him in future and demanded to know everything he knew about Paul Smith. The man was so scared he could not speak coherently. He just kept murmuring that he was the foreman and he had not seen Smith for days. I know my behaviour was totally unreasonable, but I was not thinking straight. I was distraught and extremely angry. My world had fallen apart.

I left the factory and spent the rest of the day roaming aimlessly around the town and anywhere else I thought I might find Jean and Smith, but they had simply vanished. Anger turned to sadness, and sadness turned into self-pity. As I sat with my head in my hands, I suddenly felt ashamed of myself. The children had not seen either of their parents all day, and here I was chasing a woman who had deserted us all. I collected the children, took them home, embraced each one of them and assured them that everything was going to be all right. ‘Dad’s home now,’ I said, ‘and wherever Dad goes, you will all be with me. I promise you will all be OK.’

The next morning I telephoned Peter Koster, apologised for not being able to go into work and explained the situation to him. Peter, as always, totally understood and offered to do all he could to help. ‘Do what you have to do, Lew,’ he said. ‘Take as much time off as you need. Your job here is safe.’

I was not sure what I was going to do. I was more than capable of looking after the children or working, but I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t bring myself to leave the kids with a childminder while I went to work – not after they’d been abandoned by their mother – so I decided to stay at home and sign on the dole. It was an awful time; the children were extremely upset. They were convinced that I would leave them too – so much so that they would cling to me wherever I went. If I had to use the toilet, they would stand outside and insist I leave the door ajar just in case I ‘escaped’ out of the window.