Summer 1997: The Heights

The languid and luxurious melancholy of the beginning of that summer of 1997 - the first month or so living in 136 London Road Worcester, began to dissipate as we neared the end of July. This was partly due to the fact that Al seemed to be about more and more and became not uncommon for him to be home from the Kays factory as early as 1:00 or 2:00pm.
He was involved in some kind of amateur dramatic production in Ledbury, though what his involvement was, or how it came about has always remained a mysterious proposition to me. I'm not even sure if Al was acting (he was studying drama as well as English) or whether he was just engaged in some kind of backstage assistace. I tend to think the former as I remember him studying typewritten manuscripts in the play room of 16. I had never been to Ledbury, and the Ledbury he described to me was a quaint and picturesque village, albeit replete with certain sinister qualities, -a place of cats on sunny Sunday mornings languishing on quiet doorsteps belonging to inbred murderers. Or something to that effect. There was also talk of how this Ledbury theatre troupe had access to some kind of 'helmet' that 'belonged to Judi Dench'. This was some kind of trophy or prize that was greatly coveted by the members of this pastoral acting group, and Al would speak of this in hushed and revered tones, as if afraid that too harsh a voice would somehow shatter the sacred resonance of such an object. I would listen with a similar awe, and wished, quite genuinely, that 136 London Road had access to such an icon, though what acquiring this object might mean for the house - and the three residents of the house that summer including myself- I never actually thought about.

We were moving into deep summer by this point - that time of summer marked by unchanging days of crushing heat, blue skies and an intense surreal lucidity. Nothing exists nor can exist but deep summer, like finding oneself amnesiac in a fevered afterlife. With Al about more and more we embarked on a few excursions away from 136 London Road, mostly to nowhere more exciting than Worcester town centre. One day we went to Ghulevelt Park, on the other side of Worcester, where we saw a man a carrying a rolled up carpet along by the river. There was something sinister about him, shimmering in the mad-dog sunlight of the afternoons. We laughed about there being a body in there and then forgot all about him. I didn't think of him until the next summer when a number of bodies began to be found in Worcester's rivers and canals, and the local papers began to talk of a waterways serial killer. I remember being on the banks of the Severn as the police pulled one of the bodies from the water. I was with Corin at the time, and all she said was 'the river man knows, the river man knows everything'. This was all to come of course. As July eased slowly along I hadn't even met Corin yet.

Al and me only took one daytrip outside of Worcester, and that was when went to Bretforton. My parents had lived at this village for a couple of years while I was studying illustration in Southampton. I had spent a couple of isolated summers living here (Why did I never learn over my university days and just get a job?) and I hadn't been back since Christmas, shortly before my parents moved down to Cornwall. Bretforton was truly picturesque (the BBC shot at least one period drama in the village), but like much of the Worcestershire countryside, there was always something dark beneath the surface. There were any number of murder stories centred around the village, and (more interestingly to us) a considerable number of ghost stories; headless women roaming the fields, a nasty presence in Bretforton Manor, a phantom funeral procession and a pub haunted by the spirit of a former landlady. The pub in question, the timber framed Fleece Inn, had 'witch marks' on the floor, symbols scratched into stone, and meant to combat malicious sorcery. It was a long walk from Evesham - the nearest train station to Bretforton - and the flat miles of countryside between both tired us out. We were glad to be back at Evesham, though perturbed to be accosted by a group of youths at the railway station (I think they only wanted a light). That nervy deep-summer heat of the walk had made both Al and myself wary. As they made their roll-ups and lit cigarettes, we made quite sure our backs were against the wall. No sneak attacks on us - and we weighed up the oods. Could we take them? What was our best means of defence?

Another day we found ourselves in and around Worcester Cathedral - just past the base of London Road hill. This was the only time (apart from our graduation in autumn 1999) that I was to actually go inside. The vast interior was as dark-cool and calm as only English cathedrals can own, a welcome relief from the endless heat of the summer outside. In the gardens we met a woman with an odd, soft voice. She said I looked like Jesus Christ with my long hair and beard, and referred to herself as a 'brown angel' because of the colour of her skin. There was something unreal and ghost-like about her, like much connected to that summer, and she melted away into the day, a sunbeam, a sundog, a sunfever, a ghost cast from the stained glass of those meandering afternoons.

We thought 136 London Road was haunted.
This was to be inevitable, judging by our interests and the age of the house. We had no real reason to think this, and there were no strange experiences to relate (there were to be a few odd occurences, but these were to take place in the autumn term that followed). The room that we had decided was going to be haunted was Sal's room, and we decided this because it was so much colder than the rest of the house by a good few degrees. The fact that it was a windowless (and then empty) basement room, and got no sun, didn't figure into the equation at all. It was haunted, of this we were certain. We used the room to cool down in. If we had been out and came back sweating and half sunburnt, the first place we would head to would be the haunted room, where in the slightly eerie gloom we would slowly start to feel more comfortable. We wondered if there had been a murder in the room, or some other dark event that had caused the haunting. All that mattered to us was it was the only place in the house we could cool down, but as we did I kept thinking about out landlord, and the part of the garden he was scared to dig up because he was afraid there was a body buried there.

There was a flurry of activity toward that summer's apex at the end of July. Jim, Mick and Dave visited from Redditch for a couple of weekends. These were strange times, marked by an increase in alcoholic and smoke consumption; Saturday nights having jam sessions in the living room, a time when midnight walks along the canal and quay were aborted because we became convinced that somebody was following us along the towpath. Al's sister, Corin, was visiting from Middlesbrough with her (nearly) one year old daughter Anna. Willowy and oddly mysterious she provided the silvery queen to our ridiculous pack of jokers... (The latter a metaphor I appropriated from Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' - I'm nothing if not honest. I gave Alistair the book to read that summer too. I remember him taking it to his mysterious rehearsals in Ledbury). I was too shy to talk much to her, though I was pleased she liked the supermarket cardboard painting I was doing in the room she was staying in. I hated it though. Can still picture it now, of a blue figure in soem kind of woodland glade. the blue figure looked like a bald alien, some new Hindu god, arms awkwardly held aloft in the attitude of some new and unsure messiah.

It was one of those rare periods in life where you don't want - or need - to be anywhere else in life. Periods like that obviously don't last, and when Corin and Anna left there was a strange emptiness in the house. I remember when their Mum and Dad came down to pick her up - accompanied by Al and Corin's youngest sister Hazel, who then was only 12. She had a cardboard box she called her 'goth shop' that she sold various dark and cheap ornamental objects from. I bought a black candle -very cheaply it must be said. It is one of those things that I do a double-take with when I think that Hazel is going to be 27 this year... two years older now than I was back then.

It was only to be a couple of weeks (I think) before Al went back up to 'the Boro' to see his family before term started. I remember acconmpanying him to Birmingham, where I went record shopping, and he went to the hellish environs of Digbeth Coach Station to carry on his journey north. I remember him in the sun, laden down with stuff, guitars and bags and all the other stuff needed for journeys by coach in the probable Augusts of youth.

I remember returning alone to Worcester, slightly dreading coming back to 136 London road. With only Paul and myself rattling about the four floors, the house seemed suddenly vast and sinisterly empty. I walked back along the canal - the still shimmer of the water, the yellow gravel of the towpath bright and glaring - and there was something different and shifted in the heat of the day. The album I bought that day was by a band called Legenda - some kind of side project of members from Impaled Nazarene. The album was called 'Autumnal', and it seemed an omen at the time.
I could feel the end of summer, somewhere about, and it felt, indefinably, like being followed.