Noose (7 page)

People applauded and some grown-ups handed the wreaths to their children immediately. Ian's father didn't seem to want to part with his. Dog-collar approached, though, and with quite a large smile and creepy voice said, ‘I expect you wish to make your own, individual gesture to the Captain – so understandable – but this will be a unique opportunity, don't you think, for your boy to become part of the fabric of our community and its admirable history of which you are a considerable element?'

After a while, Ian's father seemed to feel silly clinging on to the wreath and handed it over. In a small, slow procession with other children, Ian carried it to the end of the pier. A folding card with writing on it was tied to a carnation stalk. He wondered whether his father didn't want Ian to read it. This could be why Mr Charteris had meant to drop the wreath from the pier himself. The card was in a small, transparent cellophane envelope that florists gave with a wreath so ink messages would not run and blur in the rain at a grave or funeral. When Ian was hidden from his father by the children behind him in the procession he quickly opened the envelope and read Mr Charteris's words. Luckily, none of them were too big for him.

‘
Remembering Top Dog Corbitty today, who failed twice. (One) he lost the race and (two) he idiotically fucked up his try at rescue by getting his head banged by a boat.
'

Ian carefully pitched the wreath and its accurate card on to the smooth surface of the unclean sea and watched them float slowly away, bobbing gently on the swell, quite a waste of money. He felt glad he'd had the chance to read those words, and liked to think of currents carrying them to who knew where, far across the world, such as Japan or Africa, because, as his father had said, the Bristol Channel might not be a major piece of sea but it was connected to many other seas – even oceans. He thought they showed his father was still just as he usually was – alive, ratty, ready to spot others' mistakes and even tidily number them off years later, not at all in need of a wreath himself yet.

T
hose incidents with his father at the centre would have all kinds of strange results, some close to disastrous. And then came other incidents where Ian himself was central: at the prison gates and, of course, what had happened before, to bring him and his mother there beneath the high stone walls – the stuff the ward sister at St Thomas's spoke of.

At first, on that morning, things had seemed fine to Ian. A warder in a navy-blue uniform and with his peaked cap on came out through the small door cut into the bottom of one of the main gates and fixed a notice. Ian reckoned that anyone could have told from the way the officer walked that this notice must be something serious. Of course, the people grouped and waiting outside the gates
knew
it would be serious. That's why they had come. The warder's legs and arms seemed too stiff and he did not look at any of the people around. Although the notice was almost too high for Ian, he did manage to read the typed announcement. It said the hanging had taken place at eight a.m.

The warder used four drawing pins, and for a while nobody in the crowd had a proper view of the notice because the back of his head and the cap got in the way. Then, though, he disappeared into the prison, still walking that stiff and very solemn walk, and Ian went forward a little and could make out the plain, hard words. The notice was signed by the governor and by a doctor in black ink over their typewritten names. Ian thought this showed matters had been done right. It made things seem tidy.

The talk in the crowd outside the gates was quiet and OK. His mother mentioned to some people that without her son this hanging might not have taken place at all. ‘It's true,' she said. ‘If anyone were to ask me how the investigation that led to this execution started, I would point to Ian.'

As an adult, he was ashamed of it now – his part in getting someone killed – but he knew he'd felt important. ‘Oh, yes,' she said, ‘Ian was a witness. He had to go to the court, although he's only eleven. It was very unusual for a boy of that age to be a main witness in such a big trial, but they made a special rule to allow him. It was in the interests of justice. That's how I heard it described more than once – oh yes, more than once. Mr and Mrs Bell from the chip shop and myself also went into the box, of course, to say what we'd seen that night in the public shelter, but Ian did it so well that the judge gave him considerable praise. Considerable. Ian could provide the evidence because he was there when it happened. Close. Very. I was there when it happened, too, and my other boy, Graham, younger, but they did not need him in the court because Ian had said everything and it was clear.'

Ian felt people looked at him in a surprised and rather admiring way. He saw they found it all unusual. Some of them really stared, but he understood why. They were not used to boys getting someone hanged by the neck until dead. He didn't smile when his mother spoke about him, and how he had set things going that had ended here outside the jail. He thought it wouldn't have seemed right, because a hanging was not something amusing, although it was in the interests of justice, obviously. All of it was in the interests of justice – the jail, the wall, the warder, the gates, the death.

One of the women his mother talked to said she thought hanging too good for some. She nodded her head towards the prison gates to show she meant the man in the notice, which was all he was by then, a man in a notice. ‘Knives. Dirty. Foreign,' she said. ‘Someone uses a knife, he deserves to get the noose, or worse. Maybe a flogging with the cat-o'-nine-tails first. Not him now, because he's dead, but a message for the rest. The cat-o'-nine-tails cuts into their skin. Such beatings are very memorable and can be described in the Press.'

Another woman his mother talked to knew a lot about hangings. It might be her hobby, Ian thought, such as studying books and newspapers about it. She said the prisoner would fall through the trap and then they'd wait until he was still, totally still, ‘no jigging about with his legs', because, obviously, that would show he still had life left. She told them he might spin or swing on the rope but that was different from jigging. The jigging came from inside him, his nerves still able to work. But the spinning or swinging could be caused by the wind, even though the hanged man was undoubtedly dead. Sometimes people said, ‘He'll swing for it', meaning get hanged. This used to be especially true in the navy when people who mutinied were hanged from what was known as ‘the yard arm', which was high up on a mast, and sea breezes would make the body sway about. The woman told them there was a story where a wife had murdered her husband and kept frightening herself with the memory of something she'd read in the newspaper about a hanging: ‘the drop was fourteen feet'. This meant the killer went through the trap door and fell those fourteen feet until the rope caused a stop and his neck was broken, or her neck in some cases because women, too, could murder, perhaps with poison or a kitchen knife.

The woman explained that the group present in the jail yard at the scaffold couldn't see whether his face still twitched after it happened because there'd be a bag over it. This was to stop him watching with deep fright for the moment when the hangman pulled the lever that opened the trap. The bag was a sort of final kindness. Also, it meant the witnesses didn't have to watch what happened to the murderer's face when the rope ran out and did the jolt. This could be exceptionally unpleasant for those observing. There had to
be
observers, so it was known everything was carried out right, in the interests of justice, but their feelings should be taken into account.

Eventually, they'd bring him or her down for the doctors to make sure he was dead. This would be after a few minutes if it went properly. Hanging should not be about strangling but about snapping the neck to cause a quick death. The job of executioner had its skills. It might seem simple, just to put the noose around the neck and pull a lever for the drop, but things could go wrong if there was clumsiness. She said not to believe tales that one hangman whispered to the prisoner: ‘Have I got noose for you?' This was a crude, cruel joke. She said that unfortunately the bowels might discharge at the moment of the neck snap because all control was gone, and the prisoner might have had quite a breakfast, which was another special kindness offered.

As soon as they'd agreed, someone had to go up to the Governor's secretary on special early duty to type out the notice. Hangings were always in the a.m. Or they could have the notice done already, say the day before, but not signed. The woman said she found this strange because the notice declaring the prisoner dead had already been typed out while he or she was munching egg, bacon and mushrooms at breakfast, sort of ‘dead man – or woman – eating'. But, of course, the notice didn't have any signatures on it at the time of the breakfast, so really it didn't count till later, after the breakfast had been finished, and so on.

The signatures could not be written until the doctors decided he was definitely gone. Lastly, the governor gave the piece of paper to the warder and ordered him to bring it out and put it on the gate. The woman said this was what was known as the official announcement, on account of the famous rule that justice had to be not just done but
seen
to be done.

This did not mean all the people could watch the actual event, though they used to be able to in history, such as at a place called Tyburn. Instead, now, everybody could read the statement outside. This was why the crowd had come to gaze at the prison walls and the gates and then the notice. Luckily, it was in the summer holidays or Ian would have been at school and not able to come here with his mother. Graham had gone to play at a friend's house.

Ian used to say the man would be hung, but his mother told him paintings got hung, men and women got hanged. He learned you had to get a more particular word for a man or woman on the end of a rope than for some picture on a hook. She worried about picking the correct words, and about correct pronunciations. She didn't want to sound what she called ‘pig-ig', meaning pig ignorant and rough. Ian's mother explained to the women that Ian had been in the newspapers when he went to court. They printed all his first names, she said. That was the way they did it in courts and the papers, not just Ian but Ian Timothy Edward Charteris, to make sure of his identity. ‘Crucial – identity,' she said. ‘And names. So that everything tied up nicely.'

But then, while his mother was talking about the knife that was used in the murder, and which several observed before and after the stabbing, she seemed to notice someone at the edge of the crowd who really upset her. Ian wasn't tall enough to see who it was because of the people around him, but he could tell his mother had become shocked and angry. She had a way of letting her jaw slant down a bit when she felt like this, and crouched forward slightly. It reminded Ian of newsreel pictures of a boxer coming out from his corner ready to clobber. ‘We'll go now, Ian,' she said, and took his hand to draw him away. ‘It's over. I think we've seen enough here.' It was said in her refined, un-pig-ig voice, but with a certain amount of blare stitched into it.

‘What's the matter?' he said.

‘A woman I don't want to meet,' she said.

‘Which woman?'

‘One I don't want to see or speak to.'

‘Who? Why?' Ian said.

‘She has no right to be here. It's close to a disgrace.'

‘Why? The people here are only a crowd in the street. Anyone has a right.'

‘She shouldn't be here. It's insulting, and hurtful.'

‘How?'

‘Insulting. Cheek.'

‘But who?'

‘We're going.' The woman who knew so much about hangings wanted to talk some more about them but Mrs Charteris said: ‘No time for that, I'm sorry. We have to leave – urgently.'

The woman made a ‘hark-at-her!' face. ‘I listened to you going on about your son, didn't I?' she replied. ‘Now if someone else wants to talk, nothing doing –
so
hoity-toity.'

When his father came home from working on the sand dredger later in that day, Ian told him about the notice on the prison gate and the crowd. ‘But we couldn't stay very long because Mum saw someone, a woman, who she didn't want to meet.'

‘Who?' his father asked, but he said it in a strange, weak sort of voice, as if he knew who, but had to ask, and had to pretend he didn't know which woman.

‘Someone I didn't want to see,' his mother said. ‘You know who.'

‘Oh,' Mr Charteris said.

‘I don't know who it was,' Ian said. ‘I couldn't see. There were too many people.'

‘Your father knows who.'

‘Do you, Dad?'

‘You get all sorts at that kind of event I should think,' he said.

‘Yes, all sorts,' his mother said. ‘Absolutely all sorts.'

She spoke like she was talking about muck. In the crowd this morning she'd said: ‘We'll go now, Ian,' and they went home on the tram. His mother wouldn't talk any more about the hanging or the woman and in a while Ian gave up asking questions.

T
hat encounter with the hospital sister brought unpleasant memories of all this back to Ian, of course, and once he'd phoned over his story about Daphne West to the
Mirror
,
he went home on the Underground and thought some more about those events of 1941. Obviously, the episode at the prison gates wasn't something that could stand alone. What had led to the trial mentioned by his mother and to the hanging?

What had led to them was the knife murder in the public air-raid shelter in the street where the Charteris family lived. It was still there, naturally, at the time of the execution. The war went on. They had walked past the shelter when they left the tram after that trip to the prison gates. But there had been no trouble like that in it since the terrible incident. These shelters were meant to keep people safe from bombs and anti-aircraft-gun shrapnel, not to get someone stabbed to death in. But this is how it had been.