by Rod Madocks
Miss Keyse told me that the household had all liked me before and would do so again. She gave a sharp look to the Necks when she said that. Then that crooked stile of a mouth rapped out more orders, it could have been getting kindling, loading coal, trimming lamps—there were so many jobs keeping that old place going. She complained that Sam Bartlet used to do a lot and now he had unaccountably disappeared, gone back to Abbotskerswell and never returned. She asked me if I knew where he had got to. I said he was taken terrible sick. He’d got the coughing sickness and not likely to come back. She was most discomforted about that. The Necks went on at me later, saying I was a dezaitvul boy and asking what had really happened to Bartlet. I just laughed and said he must have falled scat on his face. What I didn’t tell them was I had just caught Bartlet and given him a hell of a pounding and I told him to never come back to Babbicam agin. The Necks still kept on about where he was until I yelled back at the hags and threatened to stop their squawking for good. Lizzie had to calm me down, told me servants had no call to get in a stewer about things. ’Twas danger for us.
Lizzie was soft with me in them days though she was hard with all else. I fancied she looked at me with a touch of sparky promise. We were strangers yet kin and I kept being drawn to her. She told me how hard her life was, up at crow fart every morning, sweeping out, bringing in the coal, buying and preparing provender, feeding the old mistress dawn ’til dimmet. The Missis went about her devotions and got us to trim all expense but she guzzled away at her dinners like an old sow.
I had to serve at table, putting on those white gloves that Bartlet used to wear. She’d moan about how the dumplings were not right or how the soup was too salty and Lizzie would say to me, “Let her choke on it” and we’d both laugh. The Necks always looked frit when they saw us whispering and laughing together. Maybe they were right to be. [sounds of clinking and bumping. Maybe someone clearing away something. A long pause…] How their faces come at me, called up, floating up, coming up, like reflections in the Ladywell. Bartlet, Gaskin, Templer and most of all—that Harrington.
Doctor Kaiser: You will have to explain to me who these people are.
—All in good time, doc. Gaskin now, he spotted me mortal quick once I got back to Babbicam. He had a habit of creepin’ up. He’d get me when I was lamp trimming out in the yard or maybe in the woodshed. I liked to go in that woodshed where I could be out the way. Old Tib, the tom cat, lived in there. He’d been there when I was a boy and was quite a sort of friend to me. Anyway that Gaskin must have seen me and crept up behind. He always seemed to get the jump on me. He liked to call me “mackerel”, a sort of joke but I didn’t like it. He was an evil-looking old goat. His face looked like it was covered in old leather, all drawn back with no lips and teeth the color of roof tiles. He wanted to know what I was doing and what I had learned in clink. I itched to see him off. Although he was old those twisted hands, like big brown crabs, could still hurt a man. He told me to keep to my hammock of nights, to mind where I be going in Babbicam and all will be well. No wandering of a night. No looking at things that didn’t concern me. He complained that the Missis was a nuisance with her night walks and praying to the moon. Lizzie had warned me how Gaskin had got stronger while I was away. His business had spread from Anstey’s Cove to Watcombe, and they said he had gangs running barrels of brandy from French schooners in the dead of night right down the coast. He said nothing good about Lizzie. She was accommodating of a night he’d said. He told me that was another good reason not to go creeping abroad. He wagered she would be keeping me in anyway. He called her ‘Lizzie lift-skirt’. It was all I could do not to smash him right there but Lizzie kept a hand on me. She told me not to make enemies. Gaskin could see in my eyes that I did not like him. “Now, now, young heller. Dog does not eat dog, mind,” he used to say.
Doctor Kaiser: And those others you mentioned?
—Worst was a lop-sided shape I knew. I made him out soon enough at Babbicam. A figure often perched on the seawall smoking a cob pipe. I could see at once who it was. He was always hanging about just watching. I kept away from him ’til Lizzie asked me to meet a friend on the beach. He came over, a small, well-made man apart from the limping gammy leg. In a sou’wester hat and an oilskin weskit. The same rolling step although his face was at first hid by the hat brim. I knew him. Oh ess, I did know him. Looking a little more weatherworn than a year before but still with that sharp gaze, eyes like hot coins, something steely about him. He could look sharp and cruel from one side but were fair and ’andsum seen from another. Lizzie’d said, “This is Cornelius Harrington.” But I knew that already. Lizzie told me he was a ‘friend’. I did not like to think what that really meant. She said he was a Janner and was in Harris’s fishing crew.
Doctor Kaiser: I’ll have to stop you. Did you say a ‘Janner’?
—From Plymouth. They pronounce their ‘o’s to sound like ‘a’s so my name became ‘Jan’. You see? Also, a lot of them hawkers that came round selling things were from Plymouth. Over-familiar they were, calling you Jan-this and Jan-that. So Janner also means a fellow who needs to be watched, a bit crooked like. Cornelius, he smiled and called me “Brother Jan” and made to know me but I said we’d never met and he was a stranger. He still smiled and chaffed with me and made no mention of our previous acquaintance.
Doctor Kaiser: When had you first met him?
—I’d come across him the year before when I worked for the Brownlows. It was because of him that I’d got into such a fearful mess there and ended up in clink. Even though I felt so bitter about the business I still couldn’t seem to say 'no' to him. Lizzie thought him marv’lous and was always full of his latest sayings. I wanted to judge if he would say anything about me to Harris, his boat master. He said he did Harris’ bidding on board but held no bond on shore. Lizzie kept on asking if we had previous acquaintance. But I could not speak of it. The hurt of that Brownlow business was too much.
Doctor Kaiser: You will need to explain what happened there.
—I will, I will, sir. But first I need to finish about the Glen. It’s important to understand.
The Glen was at the heart of everything rotten. Nights were the worst thing about the place. Lizzie would seem sad and lost, looking out at the yellow lights of the Cary Arms and saying the boys were on the rantan agin. At about ten of the clock we’d have prayers with Miss Keyse reading out awful long Bible bits. The Glen was a ghosty place at night, full of creaking and clicketting. Lizzie used to come down in a night gown and wish me goodnight, “Let not dreams fright ’ee,” she’d say and laugh but there was no merriment in her eyes. I hated the cold sheets of that thin pull-down bed. It had fitted me as a boy but now my feet hung over the end. The pantry door was left open—Missis’ orders. Jane Neck would rattle the bolts on the lower ground shutters and clatter about in the kitchen, then I’d hear the scrape of a pan on the range. It was for milk left to heat for the ole dumman. She liked to stay up writing or reading at her desk. I used to fight off sleep, for it was important to remain sharp. The sea would boom away and my eyes would get heavier. Then there’d be shuffling steps and the rustle of bombazine. The door would creak. I’d hold my breath, eyes open in the dark. Someone would be standing there in the room. They’d be there for a long time it seemed then there’d be another creak and something would come bearing down on the edge of that rickety bed. I’d hear the click of a chain catching on a brooch. Something’d move near my face. There’d be a strong scent. I’ll always remember it. Attar ’o Roses soap and old flesh. A hand stroking, creeping. I’d bite on my blanket. Then as suddenly the pressure would go off. I’d hear slippers scuffing, a cup being poured in the kitchen then after a moment the creaking of the stairs. In the mornings I’d find little white cards left by the bedside, in a familiar hand. They said things like: ‘John, the workman must be worthy of his hire’. That sort of thing.
Blood Afterglow
It’s been slow work transcribing the recordings and looking up all those
history references to get a handle on what was going on. I thought I was starting to feel acquainted with John Lee as much as you can feel comfortable with a violent guy with a thing about his sisters! There were gaps and breaks on the spools though, like the cloudy stains you get on old photos: the mind wanted to fill in the vague and formless holes. For example there is all his folk history stuff. Lee talks about being ‘wisht’ and there was that ‘sin eating’ business that Kaiser picked up on. I can’t find out much about that kind of thing. I do know there was a massive event that happened then. Krakatoa had blown up in what is now Indonesia just about the time when Lee was first sent to jail. That humonster explosion threw up a cloud of dust that turned the skies fiery red all over the world in the winter of 1883 and 1884. The skies still glowed ominously on January and February mornings when Lee returned to the Glen.
The Victorian time was supposed to be one of science and reason and all but there were plenty given to prophetic signs who said the bloody skies were bad hoodoo. The English papers were full of speculations about the meaning of the atmospheric effects. They even cooked up freaky headlines about the red skies. They called them ‘blood afterglows’. Maybe every period is always worrying about something bad coming up over the horizon. I guess there are some dudes who are actually looking forward to the ugly shit happening.
Spool Two
A Babbacombe Murder
Babbacombe Bay, January 1884
—I’d have the run of the place in the early mornings in those red dawns of late winter. The Missis did not usually break cover ’til much later on account of her night time wanderings. The witchy light and the sea mists set me to all sorts of thoughts and fancies. It didn’t take me long to do my jobs and then I’d be free ’til the mistress came to snap out new orders. I’d climb up the cliff path and watch the bay from one hidey place or another. I did not need bloody skies to scare up any thoughts and fancies for there were bad memories enough clinging to the place. For a start there was the ghost of the hopeful little tacker I once was.
Doctor Kaiser: Tacker?
—A kid, the dumb boy I used to be. I’m sorry doc. I get carried away and forget that you don’t know Deb’m words. Mouth spaich, we used to call it, Deb’m talk. So, let’s go back then, it seemed so long before that I’d spent that happy first Christmas at the Glen with Millie looking after me when I first came to the place. She had been so much milder than fierce Lizzie; Millie with her thin girlish wrists and soft words. Still as a cat, she could be. But she made my blood leap with her touch and there was sadness in our parting. Then, there were the sailors who told me tales that set me onto the ill-starred road of going to the Navy and all that led after.
There was also that famous murder, a bloody tale about Babbicam that I had learned early on. It was Richard Harris who told me about it. Harris was an old salt, lived at Beach Cottage and ran a boat crew. A sort of father to me he was then. Harris put himself out to be a friend to Miss Keyse and it was said that she had a mind to take his advice. He was an explainer of the doings of the Bay and of the world in general. He also told about how years before a sailor called Robert Finson had cut the throat of his wife right on the beach there after she had maddened him with her man-cheating ways. They had lived on the very same spot where Miss Keyse’s house now stood. Harris told me that when Finson was done slitting up his wife he slashed at her invalid father, and wiped his bloody hands on the hair of his little niece who was staying with them. Then he tried to kill himself out there on the beach, falling on the blade and a-cutting at his own throat until the fishermen seized him. Harris told me that Finson he was tried at Exeter. They turned him off at Northernhay.
Doctor Kaiser: “Turned him off”? I don’t understand that term.
—That’s old words meaning a hanging. A few from Babbicam travelled up to see him die. Harris’ father saw it as a boy and Gasking also. They say Finson died brave. They broke up the murder house soon after and built a new place on the site. The Keyse family came soon after. And Robert Finson’s crime was all forgot except by the fishermen for Harris said they knew what it is like for a man to lose all sense in a passion.
Doctor Kaiser: So, you are saying that Miss Keyse’s house was built on the site of a murder?
—Ezzackerley, you’ve got it doc. That shivery tale about the Finson murder stayed with me as a young ’un and later it came back to me as I lay in Exeter gaol that first time. Those notions had been all stirred up by the tales of the Exeter ‘death house’ from the older prisoners. The ‘death house’ was a brick shed tucked against the block wall off the governor’s garden. They kept the prison wagon in there until it was needed for a hanging. No-one was hung while I served my six month sentence but the old timers liked to frit the young felons and often filled my head about the hanging of Annie Tooke, the nursing maid, a few years before. I think she had chopped up an infant and left him in the sluices of the Powhay Mills. No-one knew why she did it. It seems she just could not manage the child. Anyway, they said that on her execution morning her screams echoed all over the blocks when she was being taken down. She cried out, “Save me! Save me! Oh don’t do it! Don’t do it!” to all who would hear her as she took the last walk but there could be no saving of her.
Death Penalty
You know that in 1851 the state of Wisconsin hanged an Irish immigrant farmer called John McCaffary for killing his wife by drowning her in a backyard cistern. They strung him up from a tree outside of the Kenosha court house and jail in front of a big crowd. They screwed up the hanging and McCaffary remained kicking and gasping at the end of the rope for nearly half an hour before he eventually died of strangulation. It was apparently such a gruesome spectacle that the state legislators passed a law that abolished the death penalty and replaced it with a penalty of life imprisonment. And so it has remained. We are the only state in the Union to have only ever executed one man. I find myself wondering if Lee ever got to know about that little history factoid.
Spool Two
Lawyer Templer Comes to Dinner
Babbacombe, February 1884
—There was always a rattle and a rush in the Glen when ‘Soapy Reggie’ came a calling—
Doctor Kaiser: Who was that?
—That’s what Lizzie called him. Reginald Templer was his real name. A thieving lawyer always scratching round the Glen that year. Lizzie seemed to know all about him. A shadow used to cross her face when she spoke of him. She told me the Templers had long been the acquaintances of the Keyses and Whiteheads. Whitehead was the name of the Missis’ family. She said she knew Reg Templer in Teignmouth, often saw him walking the promenade trying to get girls. She learned not to stand near him at the dinner table when she was in service with the Chants. His parents lived at Newton close to where Millie worked.
As I said, there’d be a hurrying when he was coming for dinner. I’d be shuttled up to Marychurch for extra provender and the butcher’s boy would come calling. Jane would set to polishing the silver, it was usually kept locked in a chest in the Honeysuckle Room.
Lizzie would get into a stewer whenever Templer came creeping round. I often found her crying into her apron by the range. Whenever I asked her what ailed her she’d say something like it was because she had not prepared the pudden in time. As far as I was concerned they could shove their pudden but sometimes I’d ask the Necks to help in the kitchen if Lizzie was too overcome. Eliza would say that Lizzie could go and swim in her own juice but Jane used to help. I asked Jane why Templer kept sniffing round the place. She told me that there was something boiling with the estate. It was not friendship for Templer was a strange fish. Jane said they always shut themselves in with papers after dinner. She also told me to ask Lizzie about Templer. She was the goose that sits on the eggs, said Jane. I knew not what she meant at the time.
Doctor Kaiser: What did she mean?
—I think now she meant that Lizzie controlled what was going on in and around the house more than anyone realized. The house would get all
jumpy as evening came on. Lizzie usually reined in her tears and came out to sort out the dinner but her eyes often looked puffed and the mistress also paced around and would likely ask me to fetch out something special from the wine cellar. Templer was a strange fellow. A slight gent with skin as shiny as soap and splintery little eyes. I didn’t know what the fuss was about. He was most interested when Miss Keyse told him I was Lizzie’s brother. He told me to look after her and make sure she took the right path. He seemed to find that amusing and laughed a lot. There was something that was odd about him on a closer look, something about his thin eyebrows, the way he moved his neck as if it was stiff and the slight shaking in his hands. Miss Keyse thought him well-made though. He seemed to put her in a confusion with his coarse jokes and chat. She came over all girlish and tendersome in a way I had not seen before. I tried to find out what they were doing over their papers after dinner but Eliza kept the doors shut. As he left the Glen, often quite late, Templer would seem to sway a little. It seemed as if he was toss-pot drunk. He’d tottle about like a seaman with the staggers and his face would be afire with a red flush. He’d call out, “Let me thank the cook!” [Lee shouts this] Lizzie would stand there with her back to the range. Templer used to try and make a grab for her, he’d say things about how such fair hands were born to do more than hold a baking tray. Lizzie always moved away out of his reach. Behind her back I could see she would be pressing her nails hard into her palms.
Doctor Kaiser: So, what was she so upset by?
—Lord, it was hard to find out what was really going on in that house. One afternoon I was in one of my hidey places in the grounds when I saw two figures flittering through the trees at the back of the Glen. They went through the covered path that led to The Vine, which stood deeper in the woods. I moved to get a better view but it was hard to make them out. I thought it was Lizzie’s grey cook’s dress, she seemed to be with a taller shape, a man. Then they were gone, hidden by the laurels. Later, I tried to question her, asking her about who be that stag out there a-squiring with her in the woods? She said I had no rights to question her. She’d put me in a right stewer. Oh, the passions of long ago. Now I have hardly any feelings left, only sadness at hurting Addie by not telling the truth. But in them days I was pulled about by ’em all over. I was powerful drawn to my half-sister. That’s true. I had not met anyone like her before. She was a bold piece yet kept something back from all who tried to hold her. All I wanted was to tame her, to crush her down like a farmyard cockerel pressing on a hen. She was my blood yet not of my blood and I could not help thinking of her at night in my tight little bed. Her refusal to confide put me all in a rage and I often went banging the doors of the Glen. I often heard Eliza saying after my fights with Lizzie that them Lees are a passel of trouble. Little did they know how much trouble we’d really be.