Evil Relations (8 page)

He pauses, remembering. ‘When I wasn’t smoking, I was scrapping. One fight stands out from that last year: me and a boy called Tony Jackson were caught knocking lumps out of each other on the cricket field. The teachers broke it up on the understanding that we’d take part in an “organised” fight against each other, after school. Word went round – anyone who wanted to watch could do. All the kids turned up, of course, and stood around this makeshift ring in the middle of the playground, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight.” One of the teachers stepped forward to act as referee and I was completely dumbfounded when he strapped a pair of boxing gloves on me.
Boxing gloves
! I’d never worn them before in my life. It was like putting clown shoes on a long-distance runner – a real handicap. Tony Jackson was twice my size anyway, and I wanted to gouge my nails into him, pull his hair and stick my fingers in his eyes. That, to me, was fighting. But Jackson was used to boxing, so he threw me all over the place that afternoon and was declared the winner in front of the whole school. I was gutted, but it didn’t take me long to bounce back.’

Sticking with his seditious mood, David set his mind resolutely against preparing for his 11-plus exam. Aware that he was expected to pass English with flying colours, he ignored the set questions and scribbled down the lyrics of a Ray Charles song instead, then turned over the paper and waited impatiently for the bell to ring. ‘I didn’t want to push myself or yield to anybody’s expectations of me,’ he admits with a shrug. ‘I couldn’t be bothered with all that. Obviously I realise now just how stupid my attitude was, but aged 11 I saw things from another angle entirely. I upset my English teacher by deliberately fouling up my exams. He knew what I was capable of because he’d read the compositions in my exercise books. But the bottom line was I didn’t give a damn.’

There was a particularly harrowing element in his home life that he couldn’t articulate to anyone. Miss Jones’ nephew occasionally stayed overnight, sharing David’s bed. He abused David while the 11-year-old boy lay there terrified and silent, eyes tightly shut, pretending to be asleep. David told no one about the abuse and pushed it to the darkest recesses of his mind. He found unexpected solace in a place far beyond Gorton: ‘I had some good friends back then – Roy and Dennis Cummings, and an older boy called Walter King who I got to know through our mutual love of comics. One afternoon, Roy and Dennis suggested that we should all go camping at Alderley Edge. I’d never been there before, but it soon became a favourite spot for all of us. We had to go by train, but we never paid – we’d sneak on and then jump off before the conductor caught up with us. At Alderley Edge there were woods and water, we’d climb trees, swing on ropes and build fires. I broke my collarbone after falling off a rope-swing and had to travel back on the train in agony. But I also used to go to Alderley Edge by myself and that’s when I found the cave . . . it was my secret hideaway. I’d swim and paddle on my own there. It was somewhere to feel happy, far away from the misery of Gorton.’

Despite finding an escape route, David’s behaviour spiralled out of control and he ended up in serious trouble, harming someone to whom he’d been close. He and one of the Cummings boys had come to blows and when Dennis Cummings pitched in to defend his younger brother, David retaliated with a knife.

‘It was a terrible thing to do,’ David admits, swallowing hard. ‘Dennis recovered fully, but it was an unforgiveable thing that I did. These people had looked after me ever since I moved to Gorton out of sheer kindness and compassion, and that’s how I repaid them.’ He swallows again. ‘Not good. Not good at all.’

At the age of 11, David was brought before magistrates on an assault and wounding charge. He was put on probation. Ironically, it was his aptitude for fighting that sparked the interest of the headmaster at Stanley Grove, the secondary school he began attending in autumn 1959. Sidney Silver ran a boxing club – and saw David as a potential champion.

School uniform was compulsory at Stanley Grove, but on the number 53 bus up Kirkmanshulme Lane into Longsight, David got out a needle and thread to narrow the regulation brown trousers, and only put on his school blazer when it was time to disembark. He was medium height for his age, of slim build, and out of school he favoured skinny jeans, black or white T-shirts, and winkle-pickers. Occasionally, he was sent home for infringing uniform rules, but Sidney Silver was eager to harness David’s rebellious streak into something that would benefit rather than blight the school’s reputation.

‘You didn’t get on at Stanley Grove unless you were able to bring in medals and trophies,’ David recalls with a slight grimace. ‘It was that sort of place. The headmaster was obsessed with accolades, which suited me down to the ground for a while.’ Encouraged by Silver, David took up boxing and acquitted himself extremely well in a number of inter-school matches: ‘I liked it, though the Queensberry Rules weren’t my cup of tea. I just used to keep punching with my right fist until I brought my opponent down. But together with another boy called Willatt, I trained at Stretford Boys Police Club, in a room within the police station itself. We both got drawn in the Manchester Schoolboys Boxing Championships. I didn’t own a pair of proper lace-up boxing boots like everybody else – I wore galoshes. But Dad promised me some boots if I won.’

The finals were held at Kings Hall in Belle Vue, home of countless amateur boxing matches. Jack Smith yelled himself hoarse among the roaring ringside crowds. ‘Dad wept like a baby with pride when I won,’ David recalls. ‘He grabbed my certificate and was straight down to the pub with it, bursting with pleasure that his boy had come out on top. When I saw him later that night, the certificate was full of beer stains from being passed around his mates. He kept to his word, though, and bought me some proper boxing boots.’

Questioned about the relationship with his father as he was growing up, David struggles to find the appropriate words. Sensing the difficulty, Mary interjects. ‘Let me answer that. They loved each other to bits, without a shadow of a doubt, but they fought like cat and dog all their lives. Even then, after an
explosive
row, Dave would chase after his dad as soon as it was over, to apologise and make sure it got sorted quickly.’

David nods, ‘That’s exactly it. We were all right, weren’t we, when it really came down to it?’

‘Very much so,’ Mary replies. ‘Very close, unbelievably close despite everything. Jack was always there for Dave when he needed him. Jack worshipped him.’

Keen to clarify the relationship, David explains, ‘In all the books that have been written about the case, and in
See No Evil: The Story of the Moors Murders
, my relationship with Dad was only ever shown as abusive, but there was so much more to us than that. It wasn’t only physical fights and shouting. Did we love each other? Yes, of course. Did we cause each other a lot of pain? Without a doubt. Women caused the biggest ructions between us as I got older because Dad was an out-and-out misogynist and I couldn’t handle that. But that came later. He was beside himself when I won the fight at Kings Hall.’

Despite being selected to represent Manchester against Oldham in the 11–12 years bracket, David decided to abandon boxing after Annie told him he’d ruin his looks if he continued. ‘She told me I’d end up with a broken nose and cauliflower ears. I was her baby – a substitute for the handsome boy who’d died in Crewe station – but still her baby. I was discovering girls at this point, too, and the combination of not wanting to put them off and my habit of always following Mum’s advice put an end to my boxing career. Funnily enough, Dad wasn’t all that concerned – he wouldn’t push me into something I didn’t want to do. But Sidney Silver was very displeased indeed.’

The headmaster asked to see David and Jack. It was a broiling hot afternoon as he indicated that Jack should sit opposite him, while David was made to stand. Listening to the headmaster’s barely disguised irritation and watching the beads of sweat gather on the man’s thin moustache, David felt his temper beginning to fray.

‘Sidney Silver was well known for his handiness with the strap and slipper,’ he recalls. ‘If you were sent to his office, you knew something wicked was about to happen. But he was in pompous mode that day, harping on about how I was more capable than Dad realised and that he had great expectations of me in the ring. Dad didn’t say a word in his own defence, but I was fuming. Being forced to stand in the hot sunlight in the study while the headmaster prattled on didn’t help. All at once my temper snapped: I lunged across the desk and punched Sidney Silver square on the nose. And that was it. I was expelled on the spot.’

He gives a lopsided grin: ‘I suppose there’s a certain irony in my boxing career coming to an end after I floored the headmaster who didn’t want me to give it up.’

Departing Stanley Grove in disgrace, David was taken on as a pupil at All Saints’ School, opposite Gorton Monastery. He hated it there: ‘I couldn’t settle. I still only had one interest at school and that was writing. At home I’d even write short stories and poetry, just for myself. But the rest of the school day meant nothing to me.’ Within a year of enrolling at All Saints, David was again in serious trouble: ‘There was a fight in the playground. A boy called Percy Waddington – whose name always reminds me of a deck of cards – called me a bastard. Now, I never used illegitimacy as an excuse for my behaviour, but this
was
a period when the word “bastard” would fire me up. I was immature and still smarting at being taken from Mum. In my own eyes, I was never a bastard, but if someone else called me that . . . I couldn’t just turn the other cheek.’ In retaliation, David picked up a cricket bat and broke Percy’s fingers. His strict probation officer, Mr Wright, was appalled when informed about the incident. With one assault and wounding charge already to his name, David was hauled before the courts again.

‘Was I scared?’ He nods. ‘Yes. Not scared of the court itself, but really frightened about what the outcome might be.’

A short, sharp shock was proposed by the magistrates in an effort to bring David into line. Outside the courtroom a police car waited to ferry him to a substantial building set in vast grounds, from which there was to be no unsupervised leave for several weeks: Rose Hill Remand Home.

* * *

I’m Tom Sawyer and the biggest confederate there ever was, Jesse James, rolled into one. Saturday is my day and I have so much to do that it gives me a headache just thinking about it. I’m a ranch-hand on his wild white steed, weaving through the traffic on Stockport Road; I’m a gunslinger holding up stagecoaches on the corner of Aked Street, and run into the hallway singing, ‘Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.’ At night, after I’ve had my bath and been topped and tailed, I spend an hour in the parlour behind the settee with my wooden rifle and handkerchief mask going
pom-pom
at the bad guys stalking the alleys outside . . .

. . . but then the whistle shrieks and I wake to a house I loathe, the dingy back entries of Gorton replacing the lovely cobbled streets of Ardwick. I tell myself I’m still Tom Sawyer, I am
not
David Smith, I am
not
David Hull either. Leave me alone and let me find my adventures. Gorton is not my world, it’s full of thick locomotive smoke that fills my bedroom and the sun never crawls properly over the rooftops. Sleep is always ruptured by the foundry horn and late in the afternoon labourers are released from work to that same awful sound. It just goes on and on. I lie in bed trying to convince myself that these dark streets where rain falls like stair-rods aren’t my streets. My street has a happy market and it has colour. Wiles Street is empty and lifeless; it’s black and white, a monochrome nightmare.

I turn bad and want to be free. I am an outlaw and I want to run away, as far from Gorton as I can. And I find a place – my place – miles away at Alderley Edge: this is a secret world with a river, wonderful woods, and a cave that I call my own. I go there whenever I can, taking my sleeping bag with me. I build a raft and hide it away until I can come back again, eat beans and bread that are tastier than ever before, and wash them down with a stolen bottle of milk. David Smith has gone; I’m Tom Sawyer again and nobody knows me.

It doesn’t last. They find me and take me back. They steal my world, my adventures and dreams, and put me back in their world, in Gorton, with the bedbugs and the choking, black locomotive smoke. They put the boot in and force me to grow up.

Then they send me to remand home.

* * *

Rose Hill was in the Northenden district of the Greater Manchester sprawl. Originally the ostentatious seat of the Watkin family (Sir Edward Watkin was known as ‘the second railway king’) throughout the Victorian era, it was acquired by the Manchester Poor Law Guardians during the outbreak of the Great War. The building served as an ophthalmia school, a convalescent home for children, and then as a residential nursery until its re-branding as a remand home in August 1955. After several incarnations, it eventually closed in May 1990. Seventeen years later, amid a large-scale investigation into children’s homes in Greater Manchester, one hundred and sixty-eight former residents of Rose Hill were awarded £2.26 million as compensation for the sexual and physical abuse they suffered there. Since then, Rose Hill has been converted into luxury apartments and the enormous grounds have been divided into plots for further development.

David was not a victim of sexual abuse during his weeks at Rose Hill, but as the police car turned in at the lodge on Longley Lane, he braced himself for the harsh drill system in place at all remand homes: ‘I knew it wasn’t a holiday camp and I was really upset at being sent there – I wasn’t nearly as hard as I made out. Like all newcomers, I went through reception upon arrival: registration, followed by a bath and the doling out of uniform.
That
came as a shock, I can tell you. They took away my leather jacket and skinny jeans and handed me a white T-shirt, green shirt, short beige trousers, knee-socks and clumpy shoes. I’d been a hip young dude until I walked through the doors of Rose Hill, then all of a sudden there I was dressed as one of the Famous Five. I can’t begin to describe how mortified I felt. If the authorities wanted to bring me down a peg or two, they were definitely going the right way about it.’