Free The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest
Authors: Kate Tempest
to the ground.
He was charged with having sexual intercourse with underage girls. Six counts of rape. He denied all the charges. For weeks there hadn’t been a page that wasn’t full of John Darke’s suspect character and his deviant tendencies.
He had never shown interest in underage girls, but he had been a man who enjoyed sex immensely. Before these serious days he had often indulged in casual affairs, but since he’d met Paula all that had changed. Or had it? The jury could not forget that here was a man who, intent on power, was charging around the country like a rock star on tour, meeting young girls who found him impressive. Who could be sure? Were there not testimonies? Young, crying girls, fourteen and fifteen, weeping in courtrooms, while John sat, silent, dark-eyed, destroyed.
Paula stuck by her man as long as she could but he was so quiet and strained in the visits. And no smoke without fire and she couldn’t bear to think that the man she loved most in the world, those hands that she’d held and adored, were the hands of a man who could do things like these. She swallowed her doubt, but the hook stuck in the flesh of her mouth, pulling her upwards, away from him.
This is a set-up
, he told her, and she nodded and told him she knew that it was. But if enough people believed in a lie, the truth didn’t matter at all.
On 17 November 1995, John Darke was found guilty by a jury of his peers. Some maintained that the jury must have hadtheir perspectives tinted by the hysteria in the papers, but these complaints died down after the complainants found themselves tarnished as paedophile apologists and conspirators.
Paula and Becky threw their clothes into bin bags and moved out of the flat. Paula held her child in one hand and dragged their bags with the other, and together they walked aimlessly into the night. Becky watched her mother dance in the paparazzi strobes.
Who could be sure if the accusations were true? Was he really a rapist of underage girls? Could he have done it? There were those who didn’t believe in the conviction. Who carried on reading his papers and meeting in secret, trying to get mobilised. But the damage was done. They couldn’t gather momentum against such a force. His followers were heart-broken, destroyed. They felt they had been shown by the ruling classes what happens to those who don’t play by the rules. The fire went out of the movement. John Darke’s followers became as shamed as their figurehead.
After three weeks, not knowing where else to turn, Paula and Becky moved in with Paula’s eldest brother Ron and his wife Linda, and their son Ted, who was only a year or so younger than Becky. Ron and Linda lived in a three-bed maisonette in a quiet cul-de-sac away from the bustle of Lewisham Way, up towards Charlton. The house looked out on to a sloping communal green and if you stood on your tiptoes at the top of the hill you could see the river churning its way to Greenwich.
Becky’s Auntie Linda was a tidy-framed lady with natural hair and skin the colour of fired clay. She dressed well and prided herself on her ability to find the only gem in a sprawling car-boot sale. Her heritage was Jamaican/Irish and she slipped between both accents when she was saying something important, but for the most part she spoke in the round vowels of south London. She was a straightforward woman, gentle-mannered. She could not tolerate stupidity and when she encountered it she called it by its name. She worried constantly about the state of things: she’d worry about the city, her family, her business, the weather, her husband’s health. She had a habit of staring off into the middle distance and tutting slowly whenever anything happened, convinced of some prophecy that was becoming truer and truer every day; everything on the news, in the street, in the house, fed her sense of growing dread. But she maintained a mischievous sense of humour. She was Becky’s favourite human being.
Ted
He was charged with having sexual intercourse with underage girls. Six counts of rape. He denied all the charges. For weeks there hadn’t been a page that wasn’t full of John Darke’s suspect character and his deviant tendencies.
He had never shown interest in underage girls, but he had been a man who enjoyed sex immensely. Before these serious days he had often indulged in casual affairs, but since he’d met Paula all that had changed. Or had it? The jury could not forget that here was a man who, intent on power, was charging around the country like a rock star on tour, meeting young girls who found him impressive. Who could be sure? Were there not testimonies? Young, crying girls, fourteen and fifteen, weeping in courtrooms, while John sat, silent, dark-eyed, destroyed.
Paula stuck by her man as long as she could but he was so quiet and strained in the visits. And no smoke without fire and she couldn’t bear to think that the man she loved most in the world, those hands that she’d held and adored, were the hands of a man who could do things like these. She swallowed her doubt, but the hook stuck in the flesh of her mouth, pulling her upwards, away from him.
This is a set-up
, he told her, and she nodded and told him she knew that it was. But if enough people believed in a lie, the truth didn’t matter at all.
On 17 November 1995, John Darke was found guilty by a jury of his peers. Some maintained that the jury must have hadtheir perspectives tinted by the hysteria in the papers, but these complaints died down after the complainants found themselves tarnished as paedophile apologists and conspirators.
Paula and Becky threw their clothes into bin bags and moved out of the flat. Paula held her child in one hand and dragged their bags with the other, and together they walked aimlessly into the night. Becky watched her mother dance in the paparazzi strobes.
Who could be sure if the accusations were true? Was he really a rapist of underage girls? Could he have done it? There were those who didn’t believe in the conviction. Who carried on reading his papers and meeting in secret, trying to get mobilised. But the damage was done. They couldn’t gather momentum against such a force. His followers were heart-broken, destroyed. They felt they had been shown by the ruling classes what happens to those who don’t play by the rules. The fire went out of the movement. John Darke’s followers became as shamed as their figurehead.
After three weeks, not knowing where else to turn, Paula and Becky moved in with Paula’s eldest brother Ron and his wife Linda, and their son Ted, who was only a year or so younger than Becky. Ron and Linda lived in a three-bed maisonette in a quiet cul-de-sac away from the bustle of Lewisham Way, up towards Charlton. The house looked out on to a sloping communal green and if you stood on your tiptoes at the top of the hill you could see the river churning its way to Greenwich.
Becky’s Auntie Linda was a tidy-framed lady with natural hair and skin the colour of fired clay. She dressed well and prided herself on her ability to find the only gem in a sprawling car-boot sale. Her heritage was Jamaican/Irish and she slipped between both accents when she was saying something important, but for the most part she spoke in the round vowels of south London. She was a straightforward woman, gentle-mannered. She could not tolerate stupidity and when she encountered it she called it by its name. She worried constantly about the state of things: she’d worry about the city, her family, her business, the weather, her husband’s health. She had a habit of staring off into the middle distance and tutting slowly whenever anything happened, convinced of some prophecy that was becoming truer and truer every day; everything on the news, in the street, in the house, fed her sense of growing dread. But she maintained a mischievous sense of humour. She was Becky’s favourite human being.
Ted