Cries Unheard (20 page)

“In the court, while they were talking and talking, I remember thinking of what I would say when it was my turn. I’d tell them I wanted my dog. I wanted him with me when they sent me to be hanged.

That’s what I thought would happen: I’d be sent to the gallows and they might just as well have said that right away because it was just as meaningless as life imprisonment or . well. death. None of it meant a damned thing, not a thing. “

But you were frightened just the same?

“I think probably more of the whole thing, the kind of hushed atmosphere, the reaction from adults … adults …” She repeated her words as always in moments of stress, losing all structure, rhythm and pattern of speech ‘. adults, you know, literally avoiding me . looking at me like . like . like a specimen. “

But that isn’t a word you would have known then, is it?

“No, I wouldn’t have,” she said, the search for an intelligent reply reordering her mind.

“It’s one of the things I worry about now. I think that what I felt then and remember, and what I’ve been told since, is mixed in my head and I wonder whether that is what is meant by ” selective memory”. How can one know this? What is memory? I’m trying to tell you and to find in myself the truth, about about… about a hundred things. But what is truth, if it is mixed with truths about fantasies?”

During the time the trial went on and you heard the things that were said, I said, was it in your mind that you had done something because of things which had been done to you? Because you had been hurt?

“No, never,” she said at once.

“But, you know, we are talking about this as if it had been the dawn of civilization. Where … where were all the professionals?”

I reminded her that at least some psychiatrists had tried but couldn’t get anything out of her. Does she think now that with greater effort they could have?

“Of course,” she said.

“Before my mother scared me to death with what they could do to me, anyone with a bit of kindness could have found out … not … not all of it, no, because I now think it was buried in my own mind, but… enough.”

Enough for what?

“I’m not sure. And perhaps nothing would have helped. But when I think of it now, it’s really funny to think that nobody, nobody at all, ever talked to me in a way that could have made what I did real to me.”

But all these doctors Westbury, Orton, Gibbens, Rowbotham* they all spoke to you about the dead children, didn’t they?

“All that remains in my mind is questions,” she said, ‘just impossible questions. You see, now I realize of course that what they must have hoped or waited for is that I would burst into tears and show remorse, shame, regret. But how could I if none of it was real to me? That I remember perfectly well. All that mattered was to lie well. After all, I was saying I had done none of it: that it was all Norma. For a child of my age then it must have been quite difficult to keep all the lies going. “

But why did you put it all on Norma?

* Professor Terence Gibbens saw Mary after the trial at the assessment centre at Cumberlow Lodge, Monica Rowbotham earlier, during her remand in Newcastle.

“Because she put it all on me. I was very angry. She had betrayed me.”

Of all the psychiatrists who were briefly unleashed on Mary, it was Dr. Monica Rowbotham the only woman who saw her, and the only psychiatrist to mention in her report the ‘closeness’ of her relationship with Norma who came nearest to making contact with her.

But because Mary’s one aim by then was, as she now confirms, to ‘put it all’ on Norma, the reason for her anger their fantasies and Norma’s ‘betrayal’ of their pact to be criminals together never emerged. And the haphazard fragments of indications the psychiatrists’ reports provided appeared entirely out of context when quoted during the trial and did nothing except confuse the court, the jury and the public.

The most meaningful of these, in the sense of the potential for providing a host of answers if the questions had been properly asked and the replies properly evaluated, were always those that touched on the bizarre bond between the two girls and its origin. Despite the hopeless entanglement of her lies and truths, Mary’s attempts to communicate some of the essence of these events remained consistent.

Thus in every statement, description, and finally in the crossexamination about Brian’s death, she mentioned, always in the same words, Norma’s screaming. ‘. She just went mad, she just screamed.

“

“Did she say or shout or scream anything particular or just make a screaming noise?” asked her counsel, Mr. Harvey Robson. Just made a screaming noise. “

Whether it was true that Norma had wordlessly screamed at the sight of the little boy on the ground in shock, or had screamed words of blame and fear at Mary, the screaming, we can be sure, happened and has remained in the forefront of Mary’s mind to this day. And on one occasion, when her de fences were down, while she talked with Dr. Rowbotham, the memory, complemented by another image, surfaced in part. And this part, alone, without the screaming that might have suggested the manic aspect of the scene, was heard some months later in court, when Mary, talking about Brian’s death, had said: “I was full of laughter that day.”

There was an audible gasp in the chamber followed by outraged whispers, quickly silenced by the judge. It would be many years before Mary, as an adult seeking understanding of herself as a child, was able completely to articulate the story of the day of Brian’s killing.

And it was only then, when there was no longer any need for lies or embellishment, that she added thus explaining what she had meant when talking to Monica Rowbotham before the trial that Norma had suddenly stopped screaming and ‘started laughing, hysterically laughing, and I started laughing, too’.

So you were very angry with Norma, I said.

“Then, yes, with her. Later I learned to understand it wasn’t really her at all, and it wasn’t even her family. It was those clever lawyers who told her what to say and how to say it.”

But that isn’t really so, I said. Norma had already said all that in her statements to the police, before lawyers had anything to do with it. Her story didn’t change much.

“Not her story, but the way she told it,” Mary said.

“They will have been at her like mine were at me, and hers were much cleverer. I do remember that after Mr. Bryson said over and over I was to be quiet … I just sat you know … maybe I was listening … understanding, I don’t know … I think there were words or expressions, just bits of it I took in because they were untrue or mean to me: that meant something. I was bored, you know, because I couldn’t understand a lot of the words they used. Mr. Bryson had told me that the judge was the most important person and I remember calling him something like your honour or your worship or your kingdom … Oh, I don’t know what I called him, but I tried only to speak to him because the jury … the jury…”

What about the jury?

“They looked at me with those eyes, so I never wanted to look at them.

You know, all the time it was going on, what I was most frightened of was that they [the lawyers] were going to say . tell everybody . that at Seaham, where I had been for most of the time of the remand, I had had a fight with a girl and called her a prostitute.

I was^ taken aback myself, even as I said it, because she wasn’t, you know, and I was frightened even there in case that became known. Miss Alexander, who was the head there, had said she had to write reports on everything I did . so I was frightened that they would ask me how I knew what a prostitute was. That was the most frightening thing of all to me . that meant something to me, you see, everything else really didn’t. “

You were more frightened of that than the idea of their hanging you?

“That was all part of the unreal … you know, the other side. The prostitute thing was real. It was something I knew I had said and how could I explain that I knew what it was? I’d never used that word before, though I’d used the other word on girls when I had fights or arguments … ” whore”. I called my mother a whore once, no, twice. I knew that a prostitute charged money, a whore didn’t.”

So your fear was that they would ask you whether you knew the word prostitute because of your mother?

“I don’t remember now at all whether I ever put it into words for myself. I only remember being frightened of that all the time. I kept thinking, ” Now it’ll come up, now it’ll come up. ” I never stopped thinking about that coming up till the end.”

Her memory of Fernwood, the children’s remand home in Newcastle where she was kept in a locked attic room under twenty-four-hour police supervision during the time of the trial, is particularly unhappy.

“I

felt bored, really bored. I think now it was because of Fernwood that I thought the trial went on for much longer than it did. I was a Category A prisoner la prisoner accused of a serious crime] . I know now what it means but of course didn’t then . and that meant the light had to be kept on all the time with somebody watching me. On weekends, there was no point in waking up because I could just as well just lie there and do nothing as there was nothing to do. I asked for a bath. I remember asking for a bath quite often.

(“She wanted baths all the time,” one of the policewomen told me.

“Some of us stayed in the bathroom with her; a few of us just left the door open but left her alone to give her some space.” ] Once I turned the light off and just lay in the bath and the next minute all hell broke loose. I don’t know what they thought I was doing. I was just. well, I had my head under the water, just a different kind of being alone . “

Perhaps they thought you wanted to drown yourself?

“I think that would have been impossible and they should have known that. It’s funny, you know, that’s the only bath I remember. I mean remember in the sense of feeling it, feeling the water, the quiet … you know what I mean? It was so long, so damned long. I couldn’t go out, couldn’t even lean out the window; there was something about a cat [outside the window], I don’t remember what, I actually thought it was a bantam, and after that I was told I couldn’t even look out the window.”

“It happened the first weekend,” WPC Mary S. told me: she had allowed Mary to pick up a cat that was on the roof outside the window.

“I was looking at a magazine or something and then … I realized she was holding the cat so tight it could not breathe and its tongue was lolling. I … tore her hands away and said, ” You mustn’t do that.

You’ll hurt her,” and she answered, ” Oh, she doesn’t feel that, and anyway I like hurting little things that can’t fight back. “

Mary said she couldn’t recall this incident with the cat.

“I remember feeling irritable a lot. I must have been exasperating for them. I felt so cooped, I wanted to run. I’m surprised I didn’t have any real outbursts, scream and shout you know … I must have contained an awful lot, I was so physical.”

I know they were aware that it was a long tiring day for you, I said, and they gave you your tea as soon as you got back from court, and I was told you had a TV.

“Yes, I remember, there was, but in that attic room it was sort of around a corner and it depended on the policewoman whether I could watch. I remember having a lot of headaches and I didn’t tell anybody and I don’t sleep much anyway but it was very hard to sleep with the light on and the policewoman sitting there. It was all … all nothingness, you know. I remember being glad when the weekends were over. Going to the trial was a relief, like, a break you know, something … not to amuse but to distract me. I didn’t like being alone. I didn’t like not being physical. The police in court … they were nice to me. They’d ask me, ” Would you like this or that? Would you like something to eat, something special? ” There was one of them, I can’t remember his name, but he was really nice. When I was in the dumps a bit he asked me was there anything at all I wanted … and I said I wanted to see my dog. He always called me blue eyes and he used to sing funny bits of songs to me at the end of the day and rume my hair. I loved that…”

But your family came to see you, didn’t they?

“I saw them in the court. And sometimes, for a few minutes during breaks, in a back room there.”

You don’t remember their bringing you things, chocolates, toys?

Because they did, you know.

“Did they? No, I don’t remember it. Only at the very beginning, and at the end, too, I remember Auntie Cath coming and telling me it would all be all right. And Auntie Isa, she took me in her arms, I remember that. She was the only one who did …”

Did what?

“Oh, hold me. The day before … something was said about a summary, and I thought that was something to do with a holiday. I remember thinking, ” Hum, holiday, some sort of convalescence place like Rothbury you know. “

Did you listen to the summing up with care?

“I don’t think so. It was just more of the same, you know. And then I I don’t remember very well but it seems to me after the jury was sent out I was driven … no, I can’t remember …”

What do you remember?

“I just remember sort of… I think Norma’s name was called out and it was, like, not guilty, not guilty, and then it was me and a whole lot of commotion … my mother started screaming and I was just thinking, now what happens next? Like, so this has happened today, what happens tomorrow, you know? I was still waiting for something to happen. I was still waiting for handcuffs to be put on me, you know, to be physically hurt. I think I was expecting … I had expected all the time to be beaten to death.

“The longest chat I remember with my family was after the sentence had been passed when they took me to that great big room and it was just me. Norma wasn’t there and everyone was crying. My dad cried, Auntie Cath was there, she was crying, and I didn’t know what was going on. I was waiting to go back…”

But you had heard the judge?

“It didn’t mean anything … I still thought something physical would happen. When they’d all gone, I asked the policeman you know, the nice one and he started to cry, too … A man, yes, he had sort of tears in his eyes, and when I said, ” What’s happening? “, he just said, ” You are going somewhere nicer. ” And then they came and threw a horse blanket over my head and led me out and put me into … well I presume it was a car. I thought it was the gallows. I was being sat on because I obviously panicked. I heard somebody say things … obviously they were trying to reassure me. But I couldn’t take it in and they only took the blanket off me inside Low Newton fin County Durham] which is a prison for adults.