Following Kevin’s passing, I thought I would add some comments to the next few chapters of Serial Killer by way of explanation and highlighting his importance to the Read ‘Em and Weep series.
And as another way of remembering Kevin.
How did it all begin? Kevin was at a party in France and he got talking to an American writer about the strange world of British comics. The American was bowled over by the idea and said it would make a great TV comedy series. He encouraged Kevin to record it in some way.
When Kevin told me, I agreed and so we set out to write it together. It was green lit by Gareth Edwards, a producer of Spaced, a comic-related TV comedy, but his BBC boss turned it down on the grounds it was too niche.
In this chapter, Dave is proud to discover that his earliest memory is of the West Ham Union Workhouse operating as a night shelter for families. That is not one of Kevin’s memories, but actually one of mine and my earliest childhood memory, from when I was around three. I’m told that my mother had a bust-up with her mum and stormed out in the middle of the night. So the Langthorne – previously the West Ham Workhouse – was the only place for our family to go.
Like Dave, I don’t find such incidents remotely embarrassing. On the contrary. Families – and Catholics in particular – believe in sweeping everything under the carpet, hiding all their secrets, and presenting themselves as irreproachable upright citizens when we all know the Truth is very different. It’s important to breathe some Truth into life and that’s one of the functions of comedy.
Pat.
Dave hated Christmas. He suspected the reason was because his mother had disappeared with a lover one Christmas, and his dad fell apart. So Canon Williams came to the rescue and arranged for Dave and his sister to be looked after by an ancient Virgin Soldier: Miss Chumleigh. She did her best, and at least they were safe and fed, but she had no idea how to amuse children.
All Dave could remember was being in her living room crammed with stuffed animals and birds under glass, some in carefully recreated nature scenes. He wanted to stroke their fur and feathers to comfort them for being dead, but the elderly spinster refused to release them from their glass prisons, so all he could do was stare at dead foxes, weasels and squirrels over Christmas and Boxing Day. ‘Merry Christmas, Miss Chumleigh.’
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‘Perhaps,’ Dave said to his mum, ‘if I told Joy that sob story, she might give me a second chance?’
‘It is a bit of a tear-jerker,’ agreed his mother, from the chair opposite, opening a packet of Park Drive. ‘But let her calm down first.’
‘So where were you that Christmas, mum?’ asked Dave as she lit a cigarette.
‘It’s a long story,’ she said hastily. ‘Another time.’
‘How very convenient,’ he snapped.
‘There isn’t time, son,’ she said, inhaling deeply. ‘You’ve got to get ready to see Annie.’
Dave was visiting his sister and her family in Richmond on Christmas Eve. His mother had insisted. After all, she said, Christmases are for families. And she thought that Dave might pick up further clues as to who had murdered her. Dave doubted it. He’d tried quizzing his sister about their past before, and Annie was brilliant at stonewalling, a gift she inherited from her mother. She gave nothing away.
His sister had a successful music shop, Pie Records, in Red Lion Street, and the family lived over it. Her musical taste was very British: Rod Stewart, The Who, The Stones, The Kinks, Cream. All reminding her of her sixties youth and those incredible concerts on nearby Eel Pie Island.
She didn’t approve of Dave, and thought he could be a bad influence on her three young children: Mick, Keith and Dusty.
Her husband Elliot was a mobile DJ; he was into the blues, Velvet Underground and New York Dolls, but that was rarely what audiences wanted to hear when he played at company parties, wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs.
Dave liked prog rock. Annie disliked prog rock, so Dave, with his preferences for Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Genesis and Emerson Lake and Palmer, was always arguing with her.
She especially disliked Emerson Lake and Palmer, whom she regarded as pretentious and Dave agreed. It was the reason he liked them so much, so there was really nothing to fight about, but they did anyway. As if they hadn’t got enough to fight about already.
Richmond was also as far away as possible as Annie could get from Mordle Street where they had grown up, in a fading, once splendid Georgian house, just twenty minutes from King Edward VIII dock. She wanted to forget her childhood and all the bad things that had happened. And it was the norm in her parents’ families to sanitise the past so that everyone who passed became a paragon of virtue. The dead had never been unfaithful; gay; alcoholic. Never had children out of wedlock or relationships with priests. Were never ‘a bit odd’. Or worse.
Despite Annie being a sixties chick, she still had that ability – and need – to block the truth. Her talent ran on the female side of the family; information was withheld from the males as a matter of course. But they didn’t realise that no matter how they suppressed family secrets, the shadows were still left on the wall.
The Liquorice Detective was very interested in the shadows.
So, once again, Annie was ready with her standard defensive responses to Dave’s interrogation: ‘Could be’, ‘Mum could have done that,’ ‘Dad might have done,’ ‘Yes, it’s possible,’ ‘Wouldn’t surprise me at all,’ ‘I wondered about that, too,’ ‘You might be right,’ ‘Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,’ ‘Can’t remember’, ‘It was all such a long time ago, Dave,’ and ‘Does it really matter now?’
And when he pressed her hard, she warned him, ‘I admire people who are stoic and stop going on and on about the bloody past.’
Anything, rather than give Dave the hard information he was looking for. Annie’s husband agreed. His advice had become the family motto: ‘Keep it shallow’.
As they sat down to eat that evening, Elliot addressed them. ‘Just to remind everyone,’ he said, looking pointedly in Dave’s direction, ‘there’s a “No talking about the past at the table” rule. We can discuss Christmas. Politics. Mrs Thatcher. Films. Football. Schools. But not the past. Let’s keep it festive. Let’s keep it shallow. Okay?’
Everyone nodded.
‘Play nice,’ Elliot smiled. Then he remembered and added hastily, ‘Oh, and if we could stay off music, too.’
‘What about dreams?’ asked Dave. ‘Is it okay to talk about our dreams?’
‘Yeah, it’s okay to talk about dreams, Dave,’ said Elliot expansively.
‘Are you sure?’ said Dave. ‘I mean … I don’t want to break the rules.’
‘Absolutely sure, Dave. Yeah. You go ahead.’
‘Okay. My earliest dream,’ said Dave, ‘was when I was about three years old. And this dream has always stayed with me. I was in a hospital. I assume it was a hospital because it had green and white walls. Some sort of institution, anyway. Although there was no medical equipment around.’
Annie stopped drinking her soup.
‘There was me, mum and you, too, Annie, and we were hurrying along this corridor. Maybe in a basement because there were lots of overhead pipes. It was hot. And mum was upset, walking very fast, pulling us along.’
Annie stared sadly down at her soup.
‘Anyway, it was just a dream, smiled Dave. ‘Strange dream, though. It almost felt real. But it couldn’t be. Because I’ve never been to hospital. You were crying in my dream, Annie. I wonder why?’
Annie pushed back her soup.
‘Something wrong with the soup, sis?’ asked Dave innocently.
There were tears forming in the corners of Annie’s eyes. Elliot put a protective arm around her and whispered, ‘It’s okay, Annie. It’s okay.’
‘So – what’s the latest on Mrs Thatcher?’ asked Dave breezily.
‘You are such a shit, Dave,’ said Annie, fighting back her tears.
‘What …? What did I say …? It was just a dream,’ protested Dave. ‘And I wasn’t unhappy. I thought it was a great adventure.’
‘Yes, you would,’ said Annie.
Annie decided she’d better tell him. She’d throw Dave this bone, so he could go off growling with it in a corner. It was Christmas after all. And there were other family secrets it could distract him from.
‘All right. I suppose you’d better know,’ she sighed. ‘Mum had this blazing row with dad and she stormed out, taking us with her. But she had no money and nowhere to go that night, so we all went to the Langthorne.’
‘Is that a hotel?’ asked Dave.
‘Langthorne Hospital.’
‘Why would we go to a hospital?’
‘Under the National Assistance Act, they put up people who had nowhere else to go.’ The tears were running down Annie’s face now.
‘What? In a hospital?’ Dave looked baffled.
‘All right! It wasn’t just a hospital. They’d renamed it because they didn’t want to put people off.’ She dried her eyes, but there were more tears coming.
‘It was the West Ham Union Workhouse.’
A smile lit up Dave’s face. Just as she knew it would.
‘I was in the workhouse?’
‘We all were.’
For a moment, she allowed herself some moments of sad reflection on that terrible night. ‘It’s awful really. People were so scared of the workhouse they had to change the name to the Langthorne. Of course,’ she added hastily, ‘it would have been different in the fifties.’
But Dave didn’t hear that bit. ‘So my earliest childhood memory is of being in the workhouse. That is great news, Annie. You’ve made my Christmas.’
‘I knew you’d like it,’ she groaned.
Dave considered the possibilities. ‘Did I pick oakum, Annie? Did they stop my broth when I was bad?’
‘No, Dave, although I would have, if I was the beadle.’
‘Hey, how about that? The West Ham Union Workhouse, eh?’ Dave turned to Elliot and the kids. ‘I’m right up there with Oliver Twist.’
Only Dave would see such an event as a source of pride.
‘So what was the argument about?’ asked Dave, hungry for more information. ‘It must have been a pretty big bust-up?’
‘I have no idea,’ said his sister unconvincingly.
‘How long was I in the workhouse?’
‘We were there for just one night. Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘What happened next? Where did we go? Back home or somewhere else?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Okay.’ Dave could hardly say, ‘Our dead mother is listening and she’s just told me you’re lying.’
So he let it go.
The little one had been staring intently at Dave all through dinner. Finally she spoke. ‘Uncle Dave?’
‘Yes, Dusty?’
‘Why does everyone say you’re weird?’
The next morning, the plan was for Dave to be around long enough for the kids to open their presents, thank him, and then get rid of him as soon as possible. Elliot would drive him over to Marble Arch to spend Christmas day with Joy and Greg.
Joy had forgiven Dave. He’d explained that, because it was all so new, he didn’t understand the etiquette of the sexual revolution and what it was appropriate to say. Joy had relented because she needed some company – she wasn’t seeing either of her parents over Christmas – and wasn’t sure how things were going to go with Greg.
The kids opened Dave’s badly-wrapped presents: Caning Commando sweet cigarettes, a crumpled Caning Commando mortarboard with medal and poorly manufactured Caning Commando toy figures. There was Victor Grabham, Alf Mast and their greatest enemy: the Oberspankerfuhrer, a.k.a. the ‘Blue Man’, in his underpanzer. They were still in their boxes but the cellophane was ripped and they looked like they had been played with a few times.
Then the kids saw Dave had another interesting bag alongside his overnight bag. ‘Is that more presents for us, uncle?’
‘No. It’s my Christmas present to myself, Mick.’
‘What is it? What is it? Tell us, uncle, please.’
‘Okay, but I’d better check with your mum first it’s okay.’
He checked. It wasn’t okay. This was exactly the kind of thing Annie was concerned about and why she discouraged Dave’s visits.
The kids looked anyway. ‘It’s a fur suit! It’s a fur suit!’ they cried excitedly.
Dave explained he was going to wear it when he went to Joy’s.
‘We want to see you wear it. We want you to put it on now.’
‘Well, that’s really up to your mum, Keith,’ said Dave diplomatically, trying to keep the peace.
‘No!’ Annie snapped. ‘No!’
Memories of Dave’s troubled, furry childhood passing through her mind. And her fear that his strange obsession might run in the family and be handed down to her children.
‘Please! Please! Please!’ they chorused.
Eventually Annie gave in, even though she knew she was going to regret it, and said Dave could put the suit on when he was ready to leave.
So he did.
The kids looked at him open-mouthed as he entered the living room in his fur suit. This was not what they were expecting at all. They’d never seen this animal before. They were lost for words. They backed fearfully away from it.
Annie stared at him, shocked. ‘Oh, fuck,’ she said.
Elliot came in from the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about and the cigarette dropped out of his mouth as he, too, took in the strange creature. ‘Oh, fuck,’ he said.
‘You have surpassed yourself this time, Dave,’ said Annie as Dave, still wearing the fur suit, climbed into Elliot’s camper van. She did not mean it as a compliment.
Elliot drove Dave into London. Trying not to be distracted by the weird animal sitting next to him, he talked about how, whenever he got a chance, he flew out to New York and trawled Greenwich Village looking for rare records.
He had come back with The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith and the New York Dolls. The garage band, anti-establishment music sounded really exciting to Dave and suddenly his story for JNP66 really came together. He thought it through as they drove through the empty London streets.
It would be a gang story with a similar vibe: kids fighting back against a society that offered them no future. A story of feral youth set in a near future dystopia where kids were given medication that turned them into zombies, just like they turned dad into a zombie; rock music was illegal and the cops could enter kids’ houses and confiscate their outlawed vinyl.
Only saccharine muzak would be permitted. Banned albums were melted down in mobile furnaces by the black-uniformed ‘Insinerators’, just as Dave had seen books burnt by the sinister Firemen in the film Fahrenheit 451.
But a small group of teenagers would band together for musical freedom. They’d have a cool look, a bit like the gang in Clockwork Orange or the Sex Pistols or these American ‘punks’.
They’d be called The Damned and they’d fight back against their oppressors.
Just as Dave felt he should have fought back against Mr Cooper.
Serial Killer by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill is the first book in the Read Em And Weep series and is on sale digitally or as paperback.