Chapter One – The School Bully

             But do you mind if we leave that for the moment? We’ll get back to it in just a while, I promise. First, though, how did I come to be dangling there in such an unhealthy situation? The long drop was not any mother’s ambition for her little boy, you’ll no doubt agree. Well, the first thing I should admit is that I was a murderer. This is no tale of a wrongly accused innocent being hanged for someone else’s crime. I was being hanged for a murder. I most certainly had committed murder. You see, as a human being I have been a pretty rotten specimen all my life. Early on I discovered the satisfaction of being selfish and a bully simply for the sake of it, and I never could deny myself its pleasures.

            My name is Elijah Hakesley. Yes, Elijah. I suppose my mother must have been drunk when she named me; not that that would have been unusual. She frequently was. That is no doubt why she was never able to tell me who my father was. Too many possibilities. As near as I can tell, my dear mother had married a man she had known since she was a child. This brave man volunteered for military service when the First World War broke out and like twenty-thousand other brave young men he was killed in the first few hours of the battle of the Somme, leaving a young widow at home in London with a few sticks of furniture and a photograph of himself in a silver gilt frame. Mother worked in munitions where she benefited from a rate of pay higher than most working class young women could ever dream of receiving in peace time, at a factory where she spent ten hours a day inhaling noxious fumes from the explosives which did her lungs no good at all.

            After the war the munitions job went. The men were coming home and the women were expected to go back to the kitchen and bedroom. So the end of the war found my mother without employment and without a man. She put that right. Men became her employment. She was obviously not born to be a chambermaid or to serve behind the counter in a hat shop. She found that selling herself was more lucrative. It put a roof over her head, food on her table and she had enough left over to keep herself in gin. So when I came along in 1920 I was not the result of a love match – I was more of an occupational hazard. I expect I kept her from her work immediately before and after my appearance, except maybe when she was visited by men who especially preferred their women in that condition. I have no idea who sired me, and neither did she. Neither have I any idea why she named me Elijah. It must have been a considerable effort for her, because she apparently didn’t have the energy left to give me a middle name.

            Her job gave my mother enough for us to live fairly well, by the standards of the day. Mother looked after me reasonably well, but always, I suspect, out of a sense of obligation rather than affection. She may have loved me, I don’t know. The flat in Paddington was comfortable. I used to sit in the dim living room with my mother – only one light bulb lit at a time to save on the electric – listening to the radio or to records on the wind-up gramophone, or reading or doing my homework, or even having the occasional game of cards with her. But when customers called I was banished to my little room. She didn’t want me to see the men who called, and she most certainly didn’t want them to see me. Many an evening though, she would sit by the fire, saying little, drinking gin which she sipped, for some reason, from a small china teacup. I don’t remember many conversations with her. I don’t remember many occasions when she went to bed sober. But I do remember the music she played. She was a great one for the dance bands. She used to buy lots of records, two or three a week. We had a gas fire in the living room which used to hiss as it burned, giving off an unpleasant though obviously non-lethal smell, which mingled with the ghost scent of the cheap perfume that my mother wore for her daytime appointments with clients. I have vivid memories of that hiss as a background to the records my mother played over and over: “Choo Choo”, “Let’s Do It”, “Whispering”, “Little White Lies”, “Adeline”. There were many more. No one in the building seemed to mind when she played them good and loud. I used to be able to hear every note when I went to the communal bathroom one floor up. She used to sing along to them when the mood took her. I wish I could tell you that I have memories of my mother’s voice crooning gently. But I don’t. She was awful. She couldn’t sing in tune or in time. I never got bored of hearing the same records over and over, but I was became heartily sick of the sound of her trying to sing. I told her to shut up once, and got clouted for my troubles. I’m only glad she didn’t try to dance as well.

            The school I went to was called St Cyprian’s Primary. It was a Victorian monstrosity, one of those buildings that must have looked old and decrepit even while they were still building it. It sat, cold and forbidding, at the end of Malthus Street, soot blackened, scowling with dirty windows at the legion of local urchins and other children who had no choice but to attend. There were two gates in the high wall that surrounded it, one with the legend Boys in chased brickwork above it, the other Girls. I don’t know why – probably some notion that at such a tender age the sexes should be kept apart. To no purpose, because once through the gates we found ourselves together on the area of asphalt that was known as our playground. Suitable for grazing the knees and elbows of stumbling children, otherwise it was featureless, save for our own additions: a hopscotch grid in white chalk, for example, that blurred and faded as it fought a losing battle against the rain and the soles of our shoes.

            At nine each morning the school caretaker, Mr Hopliss, whom we used to refer to as Hopeless Hopliss when we were sure he was not within earshot, used to ring a handbell and we filed in for morning prayers and assembly. We stood in the school hall, under the stern gaze of the teaching staff, who always seemed to manage to make us feel vaguely guilty about existing. The Headmistress was Miss Jolly. God must have been having a laugh when He named her. She was – how shall I put it – a dried up, humourless, petty, spiteful cow. That was when she was having one of her good days. She wore the regulation drab clothing of a spinster schoolteacher – long skirt, shapeless blouse, sensible shoes – a symphony in grey. Grey to match her hair, which was pulled back so tightly into a bun that it looked almost painful. That would not have surprised me. She was the sort deliberately to inflict discomfort upon herself in order to remind herself, and of course us, that life is not for pleasure alone. Through her wire rimmed glasses she regarded each of us with a subdued malevolence. We were too young to understand why – she had lost her fiancé in the war, so the story went, was too old realistically to think of marriage in a country that had lost a million men in battle and where marriageable men were now in short supply, so she was resigned to eternal spinsterhood, never to bear children from a womb that was drying to a husk through disuse. We just hated her, and she returned the compliment. She was occasionally observed to smile, albeit rather bleakly, when talking to another member of staff, but no one had ever seen her laugh. She was seldom without a twelve-inch ruler in her hand, which she used to great effect inflicting summary punishment upon the knuckles and wrists of unwary offenders against the school rules. These were pinned up on the notice board, typed in forbidding ranks upon yellowing paper, at the top of which was written in Miss Jolly’s flowing hand “Ignorance of these rules shall in no circumstances excuse their infraction.”

            More severe punishment consisted of detention, at which I was a regular attendee. And lines. I was always writing out lines. I was responsible for more lines than a convention of fisherman. Usually I must do this or I must not do that. Unless the imposition of lines came from Mr Waters. He liked to be called Captain Waters because he, like most men of his age, had served in the war, and he was technically entitled to call himself Captain for the rest of his life. He probably became a teacher because he couldn’t find a real job. He taught English and History and I am sure that if we had paid attention we would have learned something because as I recall he seemed to know his subjects. When he made you write lines it was always something like Inattention and wanton disobedience will most assuredly lead to perpetual ignorance one or two hundred times over. He was also the teacher who administered the cane to those boys who were sentenced to receive it by any members of the staff. These sombre appointments were always kept in the staff common room after lunch on Wednesdays. I myself received the cane on many occasions in doses of three or six strokes at a time. Always deserved, I might add.

            Now, you may be wondering when I am going to get to the bit about being bullied. That, you may be thinking, is why he went bad and eventually murdered someone. It is very fashionable these days to look for excuses, isn’t it? Well here’s the truth of it: I wasn’t bullied at school – I was the school bully.

            Life at home continued as ever it did, though as my mother aged and the muck in her lungs took its toll, she could no longer tell her visiting gentlemen that she was nineteen. Not that they ever believed her, of course, but the etiquette of prostitution had to be observed. I don’t think any of them believed she was an artist’s model either, but they all acquiesced to the polite fiction that she was a professional model who was just supplementing her income, while between engagements, with a little discreet personal entertainment.

            We still lived in the little flat. I slept in the same little room. Mother still bought records to play on the same gramophone – ‘Here Lies Love,’ ‘Guilty,’ ‘You’re My Everything,’ ‘Goodnight Sweetheart.’ Still she tried to sing. Still the gas fire hissed. We had enough to keep us fed and clothed and pay the rent but little more and like any small boy, I wanted money for sweets and comics and toys. I didn’t work but I discovered that I could take advantage of the fact that I was taller than my classmates, and was stockily built. I took a delight in my ability to appear very threatening and I had the nerve and strength to back up my threats.

            It started in a small way, as I bullied younger boys and girls out of their milk money, or the occasional penny or two that they had in their pockets. A refusal was usually dealt with by a sudden punch to the stomach. There was no risk of bleeding noses or black eyes that way, you see. And being winded like that really hurt. I knew I was safe as long as no adult saw me. The rigid, ironclad code of the playground was that thou shalt never tell tales, under any circumstances.

            Once I really hit the jackpot. There was this boy in the class junior to mine, who used to receive enough pocket money from his father to buy a Mars Bar every week. But he didn’t eat the bar; no, he got a razor blade and cut it into very thin slices which he sold to his classmates for a halfpenny each. He did this every Monday, and the word got round. Here was a chap whose pockets positively jingled with cash. Sixpence, sometimes even more. So I gave him the treatment. I waited until I saw him go into the wooden shed across the playground which was the boys’ lavatory. After he finished peeing he turned and saw me standing behind him. I reckon he knew what I wanted because his face went white. In fact, I didn’t have to say anything. My reputation must have preceded me. I just held out my hand and he dug into his pocket and presented me with a whole shilling in pennies, halfpennies and farthings. Then he pushed past me and scuttled out into the playground. Now my pockets were the ones that were jingling.

            That afternoon I was walking home when I heard someone calling me. Who should it be but this miserable little Mars Bar salesman, accompanied by his mother. I stopped to let them catch up. I was not in the least bit alarmed, just rather curious to see what would happen.

            “You took money off my Harry.” was her opening salvo.

            “No I didn’t.” When in doubt, deny everything.

            “He says you took a shilling off of him this morning.”

            “Well, he’s a bloody liar isn’t he.”

            She wasn’t expecting that. She gasped and seemed at a loss for a moment. Then she retorted with: “We’ll just see what you have in your pockets, Elijah Hakesley, and then we’ll see who’s a liar.”

            This would not have suited me at all. She wouldn’t have been able to prove that the coins in my pocket were the ones I had taken from her precious son, who was saying nothing but looking with wide-eyed amazement at someone who had dared to swear at his mother, but in the circumstances it would have looked suspicious if I had been found in possession of a shilling. So I drew myself to my full height, which was not all that less than hers, jutted my head forward belligerently and clenched both my fists.

            “You won’t touch me, if you know what’s good for you.”

            I don’t know to this day if I really would have hit the old ratbag but she obviously believed me. She drew back.

            “I’ll tell your mother, you just see if I don’t.”

            I didn’t know how my mother would react. Not well, probably. I was not going to chance it anyway.

            “If you ever tell my mother,” and I pointed at her son, “I’ll break his nose in the playground the next day.”

            She looked really shocked as her son emitted a terrified whimper, and clung even closer to her.

            “You’re evil!” she cried.

            “Oh, fuck off!” I said as I turned away, as though tired of the whole thing and I was pleased to note that if she had looked shocked when I swore before, she was utterly devastated now. This had not gone at all the way she had planned. She covered her son’s ears with her hands – a bit too late for that, I thought.

            “I said you’re evil, Elijah Hakesley, and I meant it. You’re born to hang.”

            I gave her two fingers over my shoulder as I walked away. But how ironic – the silly cow was absolutely right.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 -- Diadem Road