Who Knew Felix Marr?

by Paul Kelly

  Smokey was delighted to hear my news and confirmed his belief that I had never been a murderer and wished me every joy and happiness when I would be leaving prison but asked me to be sure and keep in touch with him.

  Within a week, I walked free through the prison gates and my life’s ambition had radically changed. I would never ever get involved with a gang and I would always remain a boy. Manhood was for arseoles who should grow up. I had spent six years in that prison and now I could throw off those awful drawers and get into something a bit more comfortable where the ball scratching ceased. .. but what gave me even greater joy was to find Emily, Smokey’s sister waiting for me at the prison gates. I was stunned when she threw her arms around me and kissed me telling me that she had got to know me well through her conversations with her brother, but she didn’t call him Smokey. She knew him as Everard. We walked away from the prison together with my thorough knowledge of reading and writing and although we were only mutual friends, I had a funny feeling that a lady had come into my life who would change my style of living forever... in other words, I had fallen in love and people who say there is no immediate love when you first meet a person can drop dead. I was deeply in love and my heat knew it. What was even greater was the fact that I had asked Emily if we could meet occasionally and she agreed to give me her telephone number which made me think that perhaps she had a stronger feeling for me than just friendship. .. I knew what I felt for her and it wasn’t just friendship but I was still left to wonder if she felt for me as deeply as I felt for her. After All, she had only heard of me from her brother... but then I remembered he told me that he thought I was ‘quite handsome’ and I walked along the road with a spring in my step feeling like a king and hoping I had met a queen.

  Chapter Nine

  My meeting with Smokey’s sister Emily was to me the day I was born. She was 27 and I was a nobody. I had no name... no real name given to me by a real birth mother or father and I thought the best thing for me to do before I made any further arrangements which might include Emily and myself as a couple was to go back to the house where I was brought up by a supposed auntie and find out All I could about my existence and just a week after my release from prison I took myself off to number 86 Clarkeston Road. I had been given a very large sum of money which I was told was my compensation for the time I was wrongfully imprisoned... not for the many thefts and injuries I had caused to so many people during my ‘gang days’ but because of the murder accusation which was incorrect as there was no bullet in the gun I was handling. This money would be more than sufficient for me to settle down with a normal existence, buy a house and a car if only I could drive and therefore although Angus, my old boss would have denounced Charlie for his actions, I suppose I should be grateful to Charlie for supposing that he was better at theft than Travis when he chose for us to go to the post office instead of the bank. I went straight to an estate agents and told them what I wanted and they gave me several addresses of flats and small houses and I went to see one of the houses in Coburn Road, but the owners were going out and as they were interested in a buyer for their property they asked me to have a look around the garden until they came back and then they would let me see the entire property and I went back to Mansfield Road and waited there for a little while before I went out again to look for the house I had seen.

  It was a very wet morning when I started out from my old premises at 97 Mansfield Road and waved goodbye to All my colleagues who still lived there, but I was soon to learn that Angus had moved away to a destination that he kept to himself and nobody ever saw him again. I couldn’t help but thinking how much money he had made from his ‘gang slave labour’ before he took off.

  I reached Clarkeston Road about eleven o’ clock but when I went to number 86, there was no-one in. I rang the bell several times but with no answer so I took myself off to a nearby café and had a coffee and a cream bun which gave me time to go back to Clarkeston Road again about mid-day and a blonde lady came to the door to ask what I wanted and would I tell her who I was... well there was a difficulty there immediately as I didn’t really know who I was but I explained that I had lived in the house as a child and I had known the lady who owned the place to be ‘Auntie’ somebody or other as I could not remember the lady’s name for a short while until I suddenly thought of the name ‘Jimmy’

  “The lady had several children and I was one of them called Jimmy, I think,” and when I said that, the blonde lady suggested that the lady I was referring to could have been her mother but she had died five years before... Her mother was named Maud Beresford , but that she never knew her father’s name and then she told me that her mother had adopted several children and I might be one of them but she asked my name and once more, I could not give her an answer. If I had told her I was Felix Marr, she could well have told me that she was Santa Clause, but the name Jimmy seemed to cop up in my mind and when I told the blonde lady that I could have been known as Jimmy, she scratched her head for some time before her eyes lit up and she suggested there might be some stuff belonging to her late mother that could help us in our investigations and she invited me into the house and put the kettle on.

  She went up into the loft and nearly fell off the ladder that she had to use to get there, but eventually as I was drinking my tea, she appeared in the lounge again with some papers in her hand and spread them out of the table. I could hardly see what was written on those papers as they were placed upside down on the table so that I would have to read upside down to know what was in them, but the lady suddenly coughed and turned the papers around in order to enable me to read what was written there and I could see a number of names but the writing was very poor and I had to look very closely to understand what the writing meant and once again, I was grateful for the tuition giving me in the prison by Smokey.

  There were about twelve or so names and I quoted them aloud to the blonde lady thinking that perhaps she would remember some of the names and be able to put some identification to them but she kept shaking her head until I mentioned Jimmy...

  “That name does something for me,” the lady said, “I think we had several boys in the house... little boys and girls too, but they must have All had different names and I can only remember one little boy whose name was Jimmy and that was Jimmy Hereford. Does that help?”

  I jotted the name Hereford on a diary I had in my pocket and thanked the lady as I left the house, but I made my way to a local police station and asked then how I could trace a young lad by the name of Jimmy Hereford and they told me to go to another office nearby where they would be better able to help me as they kept records of missing people and it would be best if I tried there and I did as they instructed me, but when I enquired at this other office, they wanted to know the date of birth of this Jimmy Hereford and that was precisely what I wanted to know “Do you know the parents name... mother or father?” the man behind the counter asked me, but again, I was lost for words. “Any brothers or sisters or even aunties,” the man asked but his enquiry fell on deaf ears until I suddenly thought that the old lady who owned 86 Clarkeston Road was known as Auntie Maud to All the children who live there but Auntie Maud had died and even if I had known her surname, that wouldn’t have helped as there were several other children in that house who were born of different parents. I gave up and left the office not knowing what else to do and I felt utterly alone and without a single person alive in the world who could help me and then as I was leaving the road to go back to the estate agent, a policeman called out as he was standing on the police station steps.

  “Try the Religious organization, mate. They might help.”

  I thanked him and looked up the telephone directory to find the address of the nearest Religious organization, before I went back to Coburn Road.

  “Do you have a register or list of children whose parents died before they could attend to their children,” I asked a Religious organization officer and she looked at me
as if I had gone mad.

  “I don’t know what you mean, young man. We only have a register of our OWN members, living and dead, but I don’t think that would help you in any way, unless you are one of us, are you?”

  I shook my head and giggled softly to myself as I had no idea of any sort of religion and certainly not of the Religious organization, but as I was desperate and on the last stage of my journey, I asked the officer if she would do me the kindness of checking that register in the event that someone in that lot might possibly be connected in some way to me and after a few moments of silence where the officer seemed to be in a sulk, she went into another room and brought out a large sort of book which I thought must be the register she was speaking about.

  “Name, please?” she asked and again I shook my head. “I’m sorry I don’t know of any name, but there was a lady who took care of me when I was a little boy, but there were several other children in that house, both boys and girls as the lady could not have children of her own and as she loved kids, she adopted us. We called her Auntie Maud and I think her other name was Beresford, but I can’t be sure.”

  The lady officer looked through the register for a while as I sat waiting for an answer but when she spoke again, she looked angry and asked me to repeat the surname of the lady called Maud again and when I did, she slammed closed the book. I guessed I had come up with nothing again and then to my complete surprise, the lady officer told me to leave her office immediately and I guessed I must have said or done something wrong as she demanded that I get out of the building. I was quite willing to get out if there was nothing in that form in her eye and I guessed there was some information in that register that she was unwilling to tell me but I insisted that she should tell me if there was anything in that book that I should know about and she swallowed hard before she spoke again.

  “The lady that you call Maud Beresford was a Religious Organization officer, but she had disgraced us by living with a foreign gentleman who did not believe in any God and she gave birth to a child outside of marriage. That is all I can tell you, now will you please leave this office”

  I left the office alright, but before I left, I asked the lady at the desk if she could tell me the date when this lady had done her ‘evil deeds’ and she hesitated before she told me that it was in March of 1948 and looked again at the register but I was confused to think that if this lady who called herself Maud Beresford was my mother, then she must have left the man she had been living with, as she had remorse of conscience, being with the Religious organization and then set up an ‘orphanage’ of her own and taken in other children to ensure that they had a proper home, even if they had been illigitimate or simply abandoned by their own parents.

  As I walked away, I felt very sad to think that the woman who had done such courageous work for others could have been my mother. Whatever she had done, she had left me with no religion or a God that I could claim to be my own and I returned to the small house that I had visited hoping it was still on the market and hoping that I might have enough money to buy it or to put down a mortgage on it, if nothing else as I thought it would be wonderful to have a house of my own after all the buggering about I had done in my past life, but when I got there, I found that someone had already put in a price for it which was much the same price as I had thought of and the house was sold and so I decided to go back to Clarkeston Road and ask the blonde lady if her mother’s name was Maude Beresford and if she and a neighbour told me that her neighbours would be back about four in the afternoon as thy had gone to collect their children from school and this made me think that at last, this house was a proper home to a married couple who had children of their own and I doubted if the blonde lady who lived there would be able to give me the information I required, even if Maud Beresford had been her mother, so I left the area and telephoned Emily, hoping she might be able to meet me for dinner that evening. Emily was out when I phoned but I spoke to her brother Adrian and he seemed to brighten up when I told him who I was and said he was sure Emily would be pleased to have dinner with me that evening, but she wouldn’t be home until about five thirty. Adrian said he would give her my message and asked me if I could give him my telephone number so that Emily could return the call, but I didn’t have a telephone... Didn’t even have a home yet, but Adrian understood when I explained my difficulties to him and he wished me well and assured me once again that Emily would be pleased that I had phoned her and asked me if I could tell him where I wanted to meet Emily and at what time and she would be sure to be there. I met Emily as arranged and we enjoyed a lovely dinner. We talked for hours and it was nearly ten o’ clock that evening before we left the restaurant and I called a taxi to take Emily home telling her that I had hoped to have a car of my own fairly soon as I was taking my driving test the following week. We also arranged to meet the following Wednesday and go to the prison to see Everard and although I fully agreed to do this, I wanted to smile when Emily called her brother Everard and I truly wished he had been baptized with another name as even I, with my weird name of Felix Marr, thought Everard was a bit ‘heavy’ to say the least.

  As I had nowhere to go until I could get a home of my own, I had to return to Mansfield Road and although the gang were pleased to see me, I wasn’t happy there and didn’t sleepwell at all that night.

  The following morning I went back to the Estate Agent again and he gave me an address to go to where a young man had been divorced and he wanted to sell the house as quickly as he could in order to start his life again with a different partner and I got down to that house as quickly as I could. The address was 15 Somerset Close and it was rather a nice looking house at the end of a group of terraced houses. Not like one of those lovely houses that stand on their own with beautiful gardens, but I felt sure that when I got to be a rich man, I would have a house like that... when I got rich... whenever that might be and could pigs fly?

  Chapter Ten

  The house that I had visited in Somerset Close was really beautiful inside and even if the exterior looked a little ‘dated’ I knew I could soon do something to rectify that if I got the opportunity to buy the place and I was so excited, I hoped that Emily would come to see this house with me and then I thought I might be too enthusiastic and presumptuous because although I really loved Emily and wanted to share my life with her, there was nothing ‘definite’ in our friendship as yet. I knew how I felt and I wanted to feel that she felt the same for me, but we hadn’t actually discussed that possibility as yet and I didn’t know what to do, especially as it seemed definite that the house at Somerset Close could be mine if I wanted it.

  I phoned Emily and told her about the prospects because she knew that as I had just come out of prison, I would need somewhere to live and happily she agreed to come with me to Somerset Close, but nothing was said about having the house as a married home for two people in love and then. .. a bolt came out of the blue when Emily told me that IF she was getting married, the Somerset Close house would be perfect for her and I could contain myself no longer and I pulled her close to me, outside the house in Somerset Close and asked her to marry me, forgetting that I even knew my true name or the date of my birth and then I remembered that the woman in the Religious organization place had told me that the rebrobate woman who had been a member with them and who left because she was pregnant with an illigitimate child was in 1988, then I concluded that as we were now in 2013, I must... if I was that child, be twenty-five years of age and my name could be Jimmy Beresford...

  To my great surprise Emily agreed to marry me and said she had falen in love with me long before she even met me as she had talked a lot about me to her brother who we called Smokey and he had told her what a very nice chap I was and suggested that she should get to know me... and from that moment on, I believed in miracles.

  I knew that Emily was 27, so that wasn’t too much of an age difference for a couple who wanted to get married, was it... and I had been tol
d that the religious mother who gave birth to her illigitimate child in 1988, COULD have been the lady who gave birth to Felix Marr so and I wondered what ‘Smokey, Everard would think of me being his brother in law... and if he would come to the wedding? I still wanted to use my Felix Mann name as I didn’t really like the name Jimmy. It reminded me too much of the time when I lived at 86 Clarkeston Road with half a dozen other kids and had an auntie called Maud.

  We were going to the prison to make a visit to see Smokey in the next few days and I would give him my news then, now that EMILY had agreed to be my wife and I had GREAT HOPES.

  At the prison, we met Smokey as he was leaving the ‘eating room’ and before we could tell him our wonderfully great news, he told us that he had seen the policeman who had assaulted Andy in the toilets and several of the prisoners had beaten him up so that he was covered in blood and feeling very sorry for himself, but he forgot All about that randy policeman when we gave him our good news and without a word of congratulations, he broke down and cried like a baby saying that he could not wish for better news even if he was to be released from prison in about six months time, so we decided to wait until he did get out of prison before we would get married.

  I wondered if he knew about Anna; his supposed clamour model and love of his life and I knew if he could see her now with her sixteen stone weight and a belly to match, he might think that his time in prison was less of a ‘punishment for his ‘supposed wrong-doings’