Shocked and shaken
Jeremy Clarke
I'm sleeping with a 104-year-old woman. Yep, 104, going on 105. Have been for the last fortnight, too, since she fell between bed and commode in the night. The fall knocked the stuffing out of her. In particular, it took away the strength in her legs. So until she gets her legs back I've been sleeping beside her on a camp bed and helping her on and off the commode in the night.
Normally, you can hit me over the head with a chair and I won't wake up. But somehow, as soon as she flings back the duvet and swings her legs out, I'm awake. It's just as well. She's a determined woman — they don't make them like that any more — and if I don't get to her in time she'd probably try to stand up and keel over. I spring up and embrace her by putting my arms under her armpits. 'Oh, hello!' she says, all surprised. I pull her up on to her feet and cheek to cheek we do this intricate little dance that takes us full circle. Then I lower her on to the commode very slowly and withdraw. When it appears that no further profit can be gained from her being where she is, I come out of the shadows and offer my services again. 'Oh, hello?' she says, all surprised. I hold her in my arms and we dance our intricate little dance again, then I lower her slowly back to our starting position. We do this on average about three times a night.
Last Sunday afternoon, tired from lack of sleep, I took my boy and his grandparents (on his mother's side) to a cheap-jack superstore that sells everything under the sun at knock-down prices. My boy and his grandparents headed off to the kitchenware department looking for toilet rolls and cat litter; I had no money so hung round the discount-book section browsing amongst the waist-high piles of remaindered paperbacks until they were ready to go home.
The vast majority of the books were about depravity of some sort. (The only nod in the direction of literature was an Edgar Allan Poe collection.) I began by looking at books about Hitler and the SS, of which there was a surprisingly large selection. From these I moved on to witchcraft manuals and encyclopaedias of occult practices. By the time I tore myself away from these and began delving into True Crime, I was feeling sort of toxic and a hair's breadth removed from reality. In the True Crime section, I found a book called The Corpse Garden — The Crimes of Fred and Rose West, by Colin Wilson. I picked it up in a spirit of derision. Everything about the book, like all the others, suggested cheapness and tawdriness. No photos, no end-papers, no margins, recycled paper, not even a bargain at £1.99. I read the first smartly written page and then the next 50. I couldn't put it down.
I must have been away when the excavations at 25 Cromwell Street and subsequent trial were going ahead. I knew that the Wests had murdered a lot of young women, but I had absolutely no idea of the sheer depravity of their home life. I've never read anything like it. I was shocked, shaken. It was so unexpected, too. 1 take the family on a Sunday afternoon shopping expedition and I go and lose what's left of my innocence amongst the pulp paperbacks of the discount-book department.
My boy and his Nanny and Grandad came and found me just as the store was closing. They were smiling and laden with sacks of cat litter and multipacks of small white toilet rolls. I borrowed £1.99 from my boy and paid for the book at the check-out.
Once the book was mine, it was almost as if I had a physical addiction to it. I just couldn't put it down. I read it walking to the carpark. 1 got it out while waiting for the lights to change. I read it at the tea table and, when I dropped my boy off at his Mum's later on, all I could think about was getting home as fast as possible and reading some more.
1 still had my nose in it when it was time to go and lie beside my 104-year-old lady again. The small side light we leave on doesn't give out enough light to read by, so I lit a candle and held the book open under the flame and read till there were no more pages left. Then, with an oddly triumphant feeling that there were limits of depravity that I had never even imagined before, I rested the book on the floor and watched the 104-year-old lady's face while she slept.
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