They say we should write
about what we know, but a lot of us would be struggling if we didn’t use our
imagination. Even imagination can be limited, but I’ve drawn not only from my
imagination, but from my memories and from characters and events in my own life
that would have some people shaking their heads and having their hair stand on
end. Friends who know me well have been known to say that if I ever wrote my
auto-biography nobody would believe it.
As a small child, I used
to go shopping with my grandmother, mainly as a support because she was given
to ‘bad turns’. This wasn’t exactly a happy situation for me, a shy and nervous
child, who had no idea what to do if my grandmother actually did have one of
her ‘turns’. One day, it wasn’t my grandmother who nearly fainted, but me, from
fear of the unknown. My grandmother suddenly pulled me off my feet and shot
across to the other side of the road saying: “Oh, there’s your Uncle X!” No
explanation, but the elderly man to whom she was referring did seem awfully
odd. He was gazing up at the sky and muttering to himself. I knew nothing about
this man, but when his name was mentioned in our house it was always whispered
and it was a bit scary when, looking at a painting I had done, someone said:
“Oh, she takes after her Uncle X.” Since there was a great mystery tinged with
fear surrounding this member of the family, I couldn’t help wondering just how
I took after my great-uncle. There were, indeed, two beautiful oil paintings on
the wall of my grandparents’ house, which disappeared when we moved house, much
to my regret. My grandmother was well known for her habit of throwing things
away, like her brother’s [X] leather-bound, gold-leafed books which were
donated to the rubbish bin.
A few years later, when
I was a young teenager, my mother looked out the window and gasped: “Oh, God,
it’s your Uncle X!” A tap on the door and she opened it, white-faced, but
forcing a smile. She even invited him in. This was the old ‘tramp’ I remembered
being dragged away from by my grandmother years before. But he was no longer
dressed like a tramp or acting like a ‘crazy’ man. He was smartly dressed and
had a head of snow-white hair and a pink and white complexion. While my mother
served him tea and biscuits, I sat at his feet, fascinated to hear him talk,
his voice soft and his accent betraying a gentle Northumbrian burr. We
talked about art and he told me that he played the flute. He was a lovely man,
but remained the black sheep of the family until recent years. All I knew of his
past was that he had spent some years in a mental institution. He seemed
perfectly normal to me and far more sophisticated than one would expect of an
ex-miner. I could have listened to him for hours.
The next time he called,
my mother told me, with panic in her voice, to hide, and didn’t open the door
to him. It wasn’t until many years later that she told me that X, my gentle,
white-haired great-uncle, artist and reader of philosophy, had served eight
years in prison for murdering his fiancée. There are two different versions of
the story. Fiancée or wife, who was heard laughing behind his back and
consorting with other men so he got mad, grabbed at her throat and fractured
her larynx, which the autopsy confirmed had already been fragile. Or, he had
found her in their bed with her lover and thrown them down the stairs, which
had broken her neck. I tried to research the details, but everything regarding
the trial in Durham gaol, I was told, had been erroneously destroyed in a fire.
I assume the verdict was manslaughter, as he was only sentenced to eight years,
but he was later transferred from prison to the mental ‘asylum’ as they were
called in those days, his mind affected by what he had done. The judge who
sentenced him, I was told, was very emotional and sympathetic. The last time I
saw Uncle X, he was in his late seventies, dying in a hospital bed and the
family went to visit him. Many years later, when my grandmother died, I was
given a framed photograph of myself as a child which had hung on her wall for as
long as I could remember. I don’t know why I did it, but I took the back off –
a stiff piece of card – and when I turned it around I found a simple, but
pretty painting of daffodils, painted by my uncle. I created a
novel around this biographical story, but did nothing with it. However, it did
encourage me to write sagas – and maybe I’ll re-hash Uncle X’s saga one day.
Co-incidentally, I did
have connections with another very nice, gentle man, who committed murder. By
now you are probably thinking that I have an attraction to murderers, but when
your own life is touched closely by crime it’s difficult to brush it away.
We’ll call him J to protect his identity and he was a friend’s husband. They
were a lovely couple and everybody liked them. For some reason, which I never
discovered, J’s son was beaten up badly by a local gang, well known to the
police. And the whole family was threatened. J and his wife lived every day in
fear. Then I heard the terrible news that J had been walking through the town
and came across the leader of the gang. Whether this criminal had done or said
something to make J snap, we don’t know. J had a knife and stabbed the young
man to death. Everybody who knew J and his wife were in shock. How could
such a lovely, gentle man do such a thing? He was, of course, found guilty of
murder, but was exonerated and released 18 months later because of extenuating
circumstances. He became depressed and a prisoner in his own home. New Year
came around and I threw a big party, inviting my friend and telling her to
bring J with her. She said he probably wouldn’t come, but he did and I danced
with him and he ended up joining in the fun with my other guests. He and his
wife told me they were so grateful for what I had done for J, bringing him out
of that dark place he had found himself in.
Things settled down,
then we had bad news. A knock at my friends’ door and J answered, only to be
shot dead by members of the gang who had been at the centre of the problem. J
died in my friend’s arms. The son who had been beaten up, for whatever reason,
emigrated to America, and my friend was moved to a safe house to face her
nightmares alone.
I don’t condone murder
but without knowledge of the reasons that drive some people to do what they do,
how can we judge them totally. These are just two crimes I have been close to
and, as a writer who likes writing suspense novels, they may just find their
way into my stories
Just two episodes in my
life connected with crime. There are more real-life stories that I’ve clung to over
the years, believe me, but that’s enough for now.
In both cases there
are questions that cannot be answered. The truth is blurred and there’s nobody
left to say what really happened.
JUNE
GADSBY
JUNE
[Gadsby]
Artist/Writer
Find my books
on Amazon.: historic & temporary
romantic suspense, families at war and wartime thrillers. Read the reviews.
