by Rod Madocks
Maybe these boys have such a capacity for self-deception or they are so split off from their savage natures that they actually believe they are innocent. All our todays are made up of yesterdays. I’m not the forgiving sort. I’ve seen too much pain. I think killers should be offed toot sweet. Don’t whine to me about innocence or squeal about their rights. I’ll never forget the howl of grief from the mom of one of my high school friends who got run over and killed by a drunk. Nor am I easily fooled. Lee may have softened as he got older but I know that psychopaths can bend and morph if enough time and enough pain gets loaded onto them. That’s where I would have set out my store on Lee. He was guilty as charged and good riddance. And maybe I’m there too. I need punishing. They say the best vigilante is someone stifling their own guilt.
I’ve been stalled up but I’ve made a further discovery. Something I hadn’t noticed previously in that frayed old box I picked up in Cudahy.
I must have been so intrigued with the most immediate spoils that I hadn’t looked in it properly. Weeks after I had transcribed the spools in their red and yellow boxes, I was picking about in the old cardboard container looking to see if the original microphone was there among the tangle of dusty old components at the bottom. I worked my way down through to the cruddy sediment there, dried moth husks, yellowed shreds of paper and a litter of burnt-out valves, tubes, wiring and decayed bits of the original casing of the Webster. I happened to flick back the folded edges at the bottom of the box and found wedged under the cardboard two more recorder spools. These had no boxes or labels and one was a flattened jumble of wire like a discarded fishing line. What they contained, once had I straightened them out and spliced them together, makes all the difference.
The first spool had Lee’s voice. It wasn’t the same as the other recordings. It’s as if he’d done them secretly. Sometimes he’s almost whispering. Maybe they were recorded late at night. This is Lee’s private naked voice, not that confident raconteur we’ve heard before. These words are like the axe to the frozen sea within him. There’s stuff there he could never reveal in daylight.
Unnumbered Spool
Mutoscope
Torquay, 1908
—Feel like I’m stogged, bogged and can’t move on. Addie’s downstairs. She’ll be there a bit, doing the ironing most like. Its dark now, one set of headlamps just moved across the wall, sounds like that big Buick Eight from two doors down. Chest is gert heavy tonight, feels like a stone on it pressin’ me down. Keep pantin’ and puffin’ like an old ewe in lamb. Every time I close my eyes I feel I’m back on those Torquay lanes. Dark drang-ways, they were. I’m always going back down those ginnels, something’s pullin’ me there. I’m old and weak and grawpin’ about. Can’t make proper sense of it. There is no good in rakin’ it all over again surely?
[Gap in recording]
… but I’ve been helped by talking into this here machine. Lord knows who will listen to it. Sometimes I shift it back and listen to my voice droning on. Maybe it has helped me get a grip on it all, but I’ve not really set on what matters. I’ve kept my mouth shut about the important stuff all these years for a reason. Once you let the truth out who knows what will come of it? The truth is full of knots Ma said and it can’t be changed even though it’s too bitter to be swallowed down.
I did go back once to Babbicam. It was after I was let out of Portland. That next spring I think. I had to go back at least once and look at it.
If I close my eyes then I see it. I’m back there, there’s the clacketing of me stick down Babbicam Road to Wellswood. Can almost smell that coal smoke dragged down by a brisky sea wind. Can remember all of it like a film playing.
I could twirl my fancy barleycorn stick but at heart I was sick. Kept on asking myself, why the hell am I here? I was slinking really, even hiding from the butcher’s boy in his cart and the women coming along past in their big hats and veils. Gentry probably, looking right through me I expeck. Somehow I reached Lower Warberry. That stone wall. Guess it’s still there just ezzackerley the same. Stopped and had a good keek about. Last time I stood there was that November dawn when I was all blood-dabbled. Cabbage palms and the laurels had shot up over the years and tramlines had come up the hill but it still looked much the same. Further up was the Brownlow’s place. I was wondering if that bastard Kisler was still there. It would have been almost worth another sentence to grind the end of me stick into his face.
I went on up little way to where there was a gap in the wall. The water trough was still there in that gap. Had a quick look then drew back and kept an eye on the neighborhood. Then leant in and rummaged right in the back of the trough. There was an opening there you understand, between wall and trough, a ledge no-one could see. Nort. Prodded down there again then hit on something wedged tight behind. Drew it out. It was not what I expected. It was a flat packet wrapped in oil cloth. Jammed it away under my coat then scratched around at the back of that thing again. Had to keep stopping as people came past, housemaids and such. Ducked down again when the coast was clear then prodded about again. Then I hit on it, stuck far down. Still there from where I put it all those years ago, the heavy end of it covered in rust and the handle all dark and slimy but still in one piece. Twenty three years since I last held it. I walked away with it tucked in my waist-band like a gun. Down past the big house at Bishopstowe to the Ilsham crossings. I thought someone was following me there but I think it was only a gapper-mouthed idiot boy. Saw him off with a chucked stone. Clear at last, I slowed and stopped by the hedge line, then sat on a milestone to unwrap the package. I peeled off the moldy oil cloth and greased paper to find a letter on brown crumbly paper, all riddled with blots and damp stains. It had no date to it and was quite hard to make out. He called me, ‘Jack lad’, and said if I was reading it then I must have made it out. It asked me to find him without fail by enquiries at the Dolphin in Devonport, ’n was signed ‘your friend, Cornelius Harrington’. I considered the thing for a while then wrapped it up and put it away. Hard to say how long it had been there—it could have been ten years or more. That damned evil bugger Cornelius still hovering round me. I’ve always feared he’d fetch up here, even here in this country.
Back then, I forged on across the playing fields and old shooting ranges, past the big old place called Stoodley Knowle then the wind pulled at me and I could hear the sea. Looked out from the cliff top at Walls Hill, Babbicam to my left and Portland a dark shape far on the horizon. I drew out the hammer I’d hid all those years behind the trough—ess, Granfer’s old hammer—then I hurled it as far as I could, end over end, spinning down to the waiting sea. Peered over the edge to see the waves boiling down there over Gaskin’s Rock. There, that was done, the old business cleared. I also fetched out Harrington’s letter, shredded it and lets the fragments spin away. I turned and tracked back to the main road using the All Saints spire like a compass mark.
The Bay seemed almost as I had left it. I thought I’d take a last look before catching the train back to Newton and to Jessie. Stupid really. So far, I’d felt alright. I thought, damn it, I have survived, no need to be frit of the place. There wasn’t going to be no bony hand to shoot out and grab me. I stood by Lovers’ Leap and regarded the sea all stretched out way below. There were new villas on the cliff slopes and a stone breakwater now stuck out next to the Cary Arms. A lot less sand on the beach. Maybe that breakwater had something to do with it, messing the currents. I ventured down the Beach Road—widened and gravelled—then cut through the beech woods down by the Vine. I didn’t want the fisherman’s children to spot me and start ragging. Stood there awhile in the woods with the sea rushing below. I could see the Cary Arms with green lawns and a bright new red tile roof. All spanked up. A few net drying frames and capstan drums still on the beach. Miss Keyse would still have something to complain about. Of the Glen, only a bit of the front wall remained. All rubbed away, ’twas hard to credit. Just the Music Room left: seemed to be a sort of boat house.
It was then, while s
tanding under the Babbicam trees that I really began to feel all jiggered up. All of a sudden the gods-a-mighty sadness of it all came over me and I had to run. Went scammelling back to Torre Station as fast as I could. Sitting on that train my heart began to kick and jump with no warning. I felt I couldn’t catch me breath, a sinking horrible feeling. Do ’ee know it? I choked, fanned meself with me hat. The carriage seems gert hot. The steamer chuffed at idle, then the train jerked. I was choking and fuddled. Kept thinking of that dreadful last run up to Compton in the November dawn. I wanted to tell Jessie all about it when I got in to Newton. ’Twas a terrible thing to live with a bloody secret for so long. I wanted to make it right but nort could. It felt like when those lads on the Implacable stole up on me and did a terrible prank. They sewed me up in me hammock one night while I was asleep. I came to, all hot and strapped up in the dark. I kicked and begged to be released. [sound of coughing] Keep fancying I hear a slamming noise, a trapdoor banging. Addie, are you there, dear? Help me, my chest, I—
[recording breaks off abruptly]
The Secret of Babbacombe Lee
Lee sure is right: you need to be careful when you go searching for the truth. Is it the truth itself or the searching that is so beguiling? It’s not as if I’m particularly addicted to the truth. When I was a kid I used to make up stories about what had happened to me on the way back from class. I’d invent attempted kidnappings, scary and weird events—anything to make me seem special.
This Lee discovery has been such a goldmine for me as an artist. He has led me on a blue-sky journey far beyond my usual haunts. I think I’m going to call myself ‘Scoop’. Yet, when John Lee actually veers towards letting us know what happened on that fatal night in Babbacombe, I feel scared. I’m wondering how I will get on once I crawl away from under the S.O.B.’s shadow.
I thought today about how little I have in my life. A rented apartment, Grandpa’s old deal table as a desk, some electronic gear, the old Webster machine, a beat- up Ford Escape and a few books. Not even a pet to connect me to life. I should really get a career, maybe take up teaching in writing school. Man, maybe I should join the other manqué talents doing creative writing classes? One thing’s for sure, writing in itself is no way to make a living. It’s a hard solitary road. I’m relatively young still, I don’t know shit. Sometimes the writing does give you a high though, it lights you up for a while but it’s the living between the highs which is so difficult. A hiatus between spasms, that’s the scribbling life. It’s also lonely, lonely to see your work in the bookstore all on its own in the poetry shelves, a bit of you split off and to what purpose? Am I the only one to really care about this stuff? Words, books, dreams of the past, fragments in a mirror, they give you nothing. Sometimes I feel all fake-ass, especially when a real bit of life hits you in the face.
Like last week when I drove way north to Stevens Point on the Wisconsin River where the river is dammed up and broadens out into a lake. I went to Bukolt Park, walking by the river and thinking of portage sites, Menominee Indians, river guides, my usual junk. There was a cold nor’-easter blowing down river, November coming and the leaves were pell-melling off the trees. I walked by the brown surging water and stopped at a grove of bankside trees—black ash and big tooth aspens mainly. The tree trunks had perspex cards nailed to them. On each card was the name of someone who had died, their dates and a memorial message.
I watched as a father and young son came past and launched a kayak. They wore camo gear and hunting hats. The father was giving a whole lot of orders to his scared-looking son. The kid was about eight or so. It was late to be on the river and they did not look too familiar with their craft. A bunch of turkeys came flying over from the tree line and the father gave out a whoop. The kid looked white-faced, he wasn’t paddling, just gripping the sides of the kayak. I went on a while and paid them no mind. I was looking at the signs on the trees and reciting the names of the dead like a poem in my head when I heard this screaming. It was the father calling out “Earl! Earl!” His calling was a jabbing electric sound that went through you with a jolt. Some youngsters from the nearby skateboard park were helping him get back up the bank. He was soaking wet and he’d lost his hat. I could see the kayak upended and spinning far out. The father began to run wildly down river looking for his son. He jumped back in the water and grabbed at something but it was only a paddle and all the time he kept up this sobbing scream.
The skateboard dudes and I rushed further down and spotted something. It was the kid, face down in the water with the orange loop of his lifejacket sticking out at the back. We snagged him using a tree branch and dragged him out by the loop. Water was pouring out of him and he didn’t seem to be breathing. His father gave a shriek and started shaking him. I didn’t want to do CPR in case I got it wrong and one of bystanders eventually took over, pushed me to one side and worked on the kid. Someone must have called 911 and responder vehicles began to arrive. I hoped the kid was okay. I last saw him all huddled in blankets with an oxygen mask. I felt like an interloper, a voyeur. The father’s scream seemed to keep on echoing inside me. I drove home with my legs all wet and stinking from the kid’s vomit and the sour river mud. In fact they seemed not to dry out at all the way back home seventy miles and more on I-39. I felt chilled for days afterwards. It was hard to sit to my desk for a while after that. It had been a shock, the first real thing that had happened in a year of book work. That father’s scream seemed so much more powerful than anything I could imagine.
Sometimes I fall asleep at my desk, my hair stirring in the warm breath of the laptop exhaust fan. I usually wake all cricked. In one such fitful sleep I dreamt that I was walking with Grandpa down a road. It got darker and darker. I grew fearful but he said it was only an eclipse. We came to a crossroads and he told me to keep my coat on until the sun came out again. He said that the roads divided there and he had his own road to go on and I had mine. He said, “You go this way, son. Go down the road to the people who love you.” I said that I couldn’t see any people down that road. He just replied, “There will be, son if you travel far enough.” Then I woke.
Yeah, I am lucky, I’ve found Lee and he has found me. It’s a contest though as to who is the stronger. Seems like a spirit war is going on in my apartment. There’s Georgia for one thing. She makes the place rustle like a pile of wind-blown leaves. There’s that Latin poem—Animula blandula vagula—“pale, fleeting, wavering little soul”—that’s Georgia. She shimmers up in the mirror behind me, a vagrant spirit. She shakes her little pigtails and keeps saying, “No, that’s not it, it s not it.” I wish she’d quit bugging me. I should ring Mulvina to get her to exorcize the place.
It was a strange moment loading that last spool onto the Webster and wondering what was on it. The thin metal wires kept whipping back as I tried to wind it on, leaving score marks on my clumsy fingers.
Unnumbered Spool
I have hid myself in the flame
The Glen, Babbacombe, 15th November 1884
—I was fast off but hadn’t meant to be. All of a sudden Lizzie was there shaking me awake and saying it was time. Her candle flame jumped like billy-o in the draught. I asked her what time it was and she told me it was one and thirty and I must be quick. There were no kisses, no touching, just our plan pulling us on. Outside the sea was all boiling up. It was as if the air was sucked out of the house to feed the storm. I was already dressed. Lizzie kept telling me to come on. A bit of me wanted to fid-fad around and pull back. I was frit of what we had to do. Those flags were cold through my socks—no boots, I wanted to go quietly over the floor. Gar, that it had come to this. I had let Lizzie take over and my common sense had said goodbye.
Took my hammer from under the pillow and put it into the waist band of my trousers. That was in case of trouble, I thought. It would have been better if I’d buried the thing with Granfer. Shook out a pillow case and took it with me, came out the pantry. To the right was the kitchen corridor, a dim red glow from the range at the end. Li
zzie has slipped away ahead of me ’n I followed her ghosty shape as she moved towards the stairs. The dining room doorway was a black pool that I feared to enter. I’m not sure if I thought of dear Katie as I began creeping about but I should have. She’d be tucked up in her bed in Tormohan. The poor maid could never give me what I needed; Lizzie’s fiercer flame had drawn me back in.
First, the dining room. The wind was streaming in through the half-open terrace door. Papers danced about on Miss Keyse’s desk. If the outside door was open then who had come in through it? Hell! I dreaded to think who might have entered. I prayed it wasn’t that harpy, Mary Ann. I had seen her the previous night, flitting over the terrace.
I tried to listen and get under the sounds of the storm. Nort else seemed to be stirring. I thought maybe the door had only budged in the gale. I pulled it to but did not bar it. The room got quieter. I felt along the mantle, took down the carriage clock and put it in the pillow case. Candle sticks, and shiny things she called “mice-in”, they also followed into the sack. Some silvered snuff boxes joined them. Take what’s owing, that’s what I kept thinking. This would teach her to dock my wages—the ole dumman.
Lizzie came to me, put her mouth to my ear. She whispered that someone was in the house and pointed back to the hall. My throat went dry, ’n I already wished I’d never started it. Lizzie rested a warning hand on my wrist and put her finger to her lips to quiet me, then slid away. I began to curse at myself for ever getting into it. That Lizzie had put a spell on me. Promising to make me as happy as a man could be in more ways than I could dream. Those promises and the child within her, that’s what led me there.