By Sam Smith
Published: February 21, 2008
Updated: October 27, 2008 PrintEmail
33) Home
The night is saturated with the smell of wet dust. Light cuts through the wet air and singles out unremarkable bits of the world — part of a trench, a damp back yard and sparkled pram, a line of soak-stained bricks. Fat drops queue on overhead cables to fall with electrifying force onto the hollow roofs of parked cars. Other independent drops fall from gutters and from the points of leaves and disappear into silence. With her fingertips Julie pushes open the iron garden gate. Drops from it, like a volley of arrows, shoot into the wet ground. The drop-laden bushes decide Julie against going around the concrete path to the back door. Her key slots into the lock and the front door swings open easily. That is wrong, makes her take notice. The inside of the house is dark and quiet. Warily she reaches into the dark for the light switch. Stairs and hall, bright and yellow now, appear as they should. So what is wrong? When the door opened there was no answering pressure of air as from a closed house. Part of this house is open. "Paul?" she says, in no expectation of a reply. The brick and plaster house soak up her sounds as she passes through the short hall. Glass lays glinting over the kitchen floor. A window has been smashed, the latch undone. Jars of flour and cocoa have been emptied onto the worktops. The back door is open. In the stainless steel sink a green plant lies beside a heap of black peat half-spilt from a red plastic pot. Julie tiptoes over the crunching rubbish. Rice crispies are in amongst the glass. A black bush glints in the yellow light from the door. Down the side of the house she can see the base of the birdtable lit by the kitchen window. The lawn's sharp grassblades hold round drops by their edges. Nothing moves out there. Except the water in single drops rolling and dropping earthward. Julie's face is a taut mask, only the large eyes moving. She steps back into the crunching kitchen. The flour jars, Self-Raising and Plain, have been emptied upon the worktop and fingers dragged through the grey flour. No money here so no hiding places for it. Fools! Certainly no money in the Coffee Jar, smashed, its circular base lying in a corner with one sharp triangular piece waiting for an incautious foot. Too much danger in the kitchen. Striding over the wreckage she closes the door on it and goes through to the living room. The video has predictably gone. Books have been thrown over the floor, the sofa's cushions chucked off. Julie picks up the cushions, lays them back on the sofa, and she sits down looking at where the video was. It was repaired secondhand, will be worth nothing to the thieves. Paul's voice is in her head, "The poor robbing the poor always pisses me off. It's an act of cowardice. They know their crime, although it's going to be enormous to the victim, is less likely to be reported. Even if it is reported the police aren't going to do much about it. The area you live in, they'll say. Buy yourself a dog. Which is why no-one bothers reporting their burglaries. The thieves know that. And they know that even if they're caught, because of the piffling amounts involved, the courts aren't going to be that hard on them. But let the thieves start robbing from those not so poor as themselves, then suddenly they become a menace to society — to the society from which the judges and lawyers come. Then they will be dealt with harshly. Which is why they stick to robbing the poor. The uninsured aren't going to make a fuss. The poor robbing from the poor is always cowardice." Julie thinks of them in here, excited and enjoying themselves, the unfailing pleasure to be had from secretly prying through someone else's house, imagining their life, sneering at the owner's assumptions of security and permanence. Julie can guess their satisfaction in her home's destruction. And Julie knows that they will have drawn the wrong conclusions about her life, because minds that can break into another's life are not capable of true sympathy. "Bastards!" Julie thumps both hands down on the sofa and goes on her knees to pick up the splayed books. "Michael's room!" Julie runs clumping upstairs. On glimpsing the wreckage of Michael's room she shouts, a wordless exclamation. Everything had its place here, marbles in line according to size and colour. Michael knows if a book or a favourite stone has been moved. Books, stones, toys, models have all been scattered around and around the little room like a giant whisk has been lowered into it. And then the mixture was trampled on. Bedding, lights, games, radio, tapes.... a football poster has been partially torn from its blue tac. Alice's room, not having had so much, doesn't appear as bad. And maybe they decided that someone so young had nothing worth stealing. Julie and Paul's room is wrecked. Drawers have been upended, their clothes thrown about the room. On the floor and over the bed all is one undulating level with coat hangers sticking out here and there like broken limbs and incomplete question marks. The white pockets of some of Paul's trousers have been pulled inside out. Two of her blouses have been torn down the front. The radio alarm has been stamped on. The room is stuffy. She opens a window. Air from the hot stone night falls past her into the room. Light from the bedroom cuts around her shadow and down onto the glinting lawn and part of the dark wet earth of the garden. Beyond the light, out there somewhere, are the thieves. She turns her back on them. Her foot catches in a shirt. She kicks at it. Her other foot is standing on the shirt. Hands on the windowsill she kicks at the shirt with both feet. The shirt doesn't go anywhere, doesn't even rip. Bending, grabbing and spinning, she throws it. The white shirt goes floating like a ghostly owl out through the window. At this moment Julie could laugh at her silly tantrum. She doesn't. "Yes! Take it!" she screams. "Take the fuckin' lot!" She snatches up other garments and throws them at the window. "Take it all!" Some of the thrown clothes miss, go slipping to the floor. She scoops up more, carries them trailing to the open window and throws them all out into the wet and gleaming dark. "Yes! You heard!" she shouts at the black silence. "Take it all. You don't want me to have anything. Take the fuckin' lot! Take my children!" She throws a fawn jumper into the face of the night. "Take it! Take it! You've had everything else. Take it all! Why not?"
True Stories
22 year old John Hood, of Taunton Road, Bridgwater, and teenager Lee Fury were arguing in CJs nightclub, Bridgwater. John Hood smashed a beer glass and cut Lee Fury's face and arm. Lee Fury needed 36 stitches to his face. In November 1989 John Hood was sent to prison for 2 years with half the sentence suspended.
In November 1989 Sedgemoor Chief Executive, David Tremlett, said, "The CEGB were contributing £10m towards the estimated £12m cost of the Cannington and Bridgwater bypass scheme on condition Hinkley C was given the go-ahead and we as a council express grave concern about what is going to happen...."
In September 1989 Brian and Janette Hayman separated. They have two children. 38 year old Brian Hayman could not accept that the marriage of 12 years was finished. Brian Hayman, a computer engineer, attacked Janette Hayman. A court order was obtained granting her protection. In November 1989 Brian Hayman assaulted his mother-in-law. In December 1989 he drove a car through the window of his mother-in-law's house in Ruborough Road, Bridgwater. In January 1990 Brian Hayman planted a hoax bomb in Janette Hayman's house in Leyton Drive, Bridgwater. Brian Hayman was arrested.
In July 1990 cyclist Kelly Ride, of Witches Walk, Bridgwater, was hit by an articulated lorry at the Junction of West Street and Penel Orlieu. 12 year old Kelly Ride received cuts and bruises. The driver of the lorry drove on unaware of the collision.
