My first remembered dream in my new house in Newcastle under Lyme
'I was growing up in Liverpool and one summer when I was around fifteen years old I went to our swimming pool with a gang of friends. It was literally a pool, surrounded by rocks. The seaside perhaps. Someone had strung a rope across the pool and we dared each other to be tightrope walkers. Holding a long stick for balance we each made a few tottering steps before falling off the rope. Among us was a boy noone liked; a hanger-on desperately eager to please and win approval. I didn't recognise him; he was someone else's friend. To all our chagrin he proved to be a natural tightrope walker. He crossed and re-crossed he pool showing off his skill to us all.Finally I could not stand it longer: I tugged at the rope. He fell, hit his head on a rock and died. What could we do? We had told nobody we were going to the swimming pool, so we decided to cut up the body (how I don't know ) and hide the pieces in a disused lime-kiln, where by crawling through a hole in the wall you could reach a space tall enough to stand up in. We had used this place as a den. After putting the body parts inside the lime-kiln we covered the entrance hole with leaves and sticks and then returned home.
We denied every having met the dead boy that day.
Two or three years later, maybe more, the body was discovered. Eventually the police pieced together some of the facts and my friends were arrested, but somehow I avoided being caught up in the investigation. My friends covered for me. They admitted cutting up the body and hiding it but insisted the death had been a simple tragic accident they had been too frightened to report. I heard about all this from far away in another city, and anxiously followed it in all the papers. I had to endure hearing the case being discussed by people in the streets.
Eventually I was called to the Court, but mainly as a character witness and to substanciate some of the facts in my friends' stories. They still stuck by me and noone suspected my involvement in the death.
After the Court hearing was over for the day I left the building, and stood waiting for a bus. The family of the dead boy arrived; his mother and several brothers. The brothers saw me and outraged by may support for my accused friends dragged me away to see the spot where the body had been discovered.
'How could I call people who had done something like this my friends?' they asked. 'How could I stand up for them?' One of the brothers picked up an old tin of white paint and threw the remaining contents at me. Afraid and dripping with paint, what could I do? I pleaded my innocence: I sympathised with them: I said I understood their feelings. All the time I was being eaten alive by guilt. I wanted to confess but I wasn't strong enough. I felt if I just stayed quiet for long enough trouble would pass and my life would go back to its dull normality.
Eventually the mother intervened. She apologised and made her sons do the same, and she wiped away the paint as best she could.
We went back to the bus stop and then on our separate ways.
I was left with my secret and my guilt.
We denied every having met the dead boy that day.
Two or three years later, maybe more, the body was discovered. Eventually the police pieced together some of the facts and my friends were arrested, but somehow I avoided being caught up in the investigation. My friends covered for me. They admitted cutting up the body and hiding it but insisted the death had been a simple tragic accident they had been too frightened to report. I heard about all this from far away in another city, and anxiously followed it in all the papers. I had to endure hearing the case being discussed by people in the streets.
Eventually I was called to the Court, but mainly as a character witness and to substanciate some of the facts in my friends' stories. They still stuck by me and noone suspected my involvement in the death.
After the Court hearing was over for the day I left the building, and stood waiting for a bus. The family of the dead boy arrived; his mother and several brothers. The brothers saw me and outraged by may support for my accused friends dragged me away to see the spot where the body had been discovered.
'How could I call people who had done something like this my friends?' they asked. 'How could I stand up for them?' One of the brothers picked up an old tin of white paint and threw the remaining contents at me. Afraid and dripping with paint, what could I do? I pleaded my innocence: I sympathised with them: I said I understood their feelings. All the time I was being eaten alive by guilt. I wanted to confess but I wasn't strong enough. I felt if I just stayed quiet for long enough trouble would pass and my life would go back to its dull normality.
Eventually the mother intervened. She apologised and made her sons do the same, and she wiped away the paint as best she could.
We went back to the bus stop and then on our separate ways.
I was left with my secret and my guilt.