Kirkby Malham (By Accident)

On September 20, 2014 By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized2 Comments

Sometimes a little accident can take you to a wonderful place. After a lovely walk to Goredale Scar, neat Malham in the Yorkshire Dales, we’d planned to stop and have a wander in the village of Airton. Instead, without thinking, I turned off and parked in the village – it’s almost more of a hamlet – of Kirkby Malham.
Other than a few houses, there’s a pub and a church. But what a church. It’s sometimes called the Cathedral of the Dales (which I didn’t know beforehand), and stepping inside, it’s easy to understand why. The details are here, but the beauty is in the viewing and the experience.
There’s been a church here since the eighth century, possibly the seventh. This building, St. Michael’s itself dates from the late 1400s, quite simple, but unusually with small, rounded-arch Italianate windows on the north and south walls and a simple but gorgeously crafted ceiling.

The font, though, is from Norman times.

It’s a church of old box pews, both the smaller ones from the 18th century, one of which has a name on it:

And the older, Jacobean, high box pews, which would likely have been reserved for the gentry.

There was gentry in the area, too, notably a family named Lambert who lived in the nearby village of Colton. Colonel John Lambert fought with distinction on the side of Parliament in the Civil War. He died in Plymouth, but a memorial to him stands in a chantry chapel. Next to it is the poignant memorial to his son, the last of his line, able to trace his ancestry back to the Norman Conquest. Sad enough, but the feat of being able to trace his family back that far in an age before genealogist, when parish registers and widely dispersed poll tax records and wills were the only paper is quite a feat.
There’s a lovely lych gate standing right next to the pub, and just inside, the village stocks, still used annually to raise funds.

And they do need funds. With a leaky roof, they after £100,000 to get things fixed. The vicarage, which was given a makeover in the 19th century, is a lovely, simple – but fairly large- building that dates from 1612.

Kirkby Malham, well worth a visit, a pop a few quid in the church box while you’re there. Helping to preserve history is never a bad thing.
To finish off, click here for a local folktale (like me, you might need to read the explanation at the end to understand it fully). Seriously, how can you resist something called ‘The Legend of the Banquet of the Dead’?

Behind the Gods of Gold

On September 19, 2014 By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’d always said I’d never write a Victorian crime novel. I was certain of it. With so many already out there, what was left to add?
But somehow, I reckoned without Leeds tapping me on the shoulder.
Walk through the city and the Victorian era doesn’t just echo. It roars. It’s a time you can literally reach out and touch. The city’s architectural jewels are its grand Victorian buildings – the Town Hall, the Corn Exchange, and the solid, powerful edifices put up by the banks and insurance companies. They were the bricks and mortar promises of solidity, propriety and prosperity. A reminder of when this was one of the industrial powerhouses of the British Empire. And at the other end of the scale, the back-to-back houses in places like Harehills and Kirkstall stand as brusque accusations of the poverty so rife back then.
A world away, yet still close enough to be a very real part of today. But I wasn’t interested.
Then Leeds gave me the tale of its Gas Strike.
By 1890, the workers had begun to organise. The unions had were gaining strength. And that year, with the Leeds Gas Strike, they showed their power. Their terms of work changed by the council, wages cut, jobs slashed, the gas workers had no choice but to walk out. ‘Replacement workers’ were drafted in from Manchester and London to stoke the furnaces and keep the gas flowing. But they didn’t know they’d have to face a mob thousands strong. In fact, they’d been recruited under false pretences, believing they’d be employed at a new works. As soon as they discovered the truth, most abandoned their posts. The lights were flickering. Factories were closing. Within three days the strikers had their victory. For austere times it was an glorious story: the workers won.
I was intrigued. This might be a tale worth telling.

Reading more about the strike led to Tom Maguire. He was a young labour activist in Leeds, still in his middle twenties in 1890, a believer who helped build the labour movement, and became one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party. More than that, he was a poet (it’s a line from one of his works that gives Gods of Gold its title) who died in poverty in 1895 – yet thousands reportedly lined the roads as his coffin was taken to the cemetery.
There was definitely something here. But it needed something more personal to tip the scales and make me renege on my no-Victorian promise.
A couple of years ago I wrote a short story that took its inspiration from Atkinson Grimshaw’s dark, evocative painting Reflections On The Aire: On Strike, Leeds 1879. It shows the river, almost empty of ships, and a woman standing alone on the bank, clutching a bundle. Annabelle Atkinson. That was what I called her. And even then I knew we had unfinished business. She was too powerful, too vibrant a character to ever be satisfied with a single, brief appearance.
But she bided her time. It was only when I was researching the Gas Strike that she came and sat beside me in a swish of velvet.
‘I know all about this, luv,’ she said with a smile. ‘I was there, remember? Do you want me to tell you about it?’
So Annabelle introduced me to her fiancé, Detective Inspector Tom Harper, and the other characters in her life. We strolled along the streets of Hunslet and the Leylands together, drank in the Victoria in Sheepscar, were jostled by the crowds on Briggate and window-shopped in the Grand Pygmalion on Boar Lane. We sang along with the music hall tunes they loved – “My Old Man,” “Sidney The One-Week Wonder,” “’Enerey The Eighth”.
After that, how could I walk away?
Especially when with them came the ghosts of my own family, of Isaac Nickson who brought his wife and children to Leeds from Malton in the 1820s, of his descendants – William, John William, Harold Ewart – and the stories they had to tell me.
I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t even have a choice any more.
‘Tom Harper pounded down Briggate, the hobnails from his boots scattering sparks behind him…’

A Leeds Storytime

On September 16, 2014 By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

It’s been a long time since I wrote a #leedsstorytime on Twitter. Taking a folk tale and re-telling it, maybe embellishing it a little. Because if the stories from the tradition aren’t told, they wither.

There was a place called Jenny White’s Hole in Leeds. It was a set of stairs between two houses on the Calls, leading directly down into the River Aire. No one seems to know about Jenny herself. This is my take on how it got its name.

Jenny White was a pretty Leeds lass, courted by all the lads. She worked as a mill hand and took her fun in the evenings. It was a time of factories and smoke, the bitter taste of soot in the air. But Jenny was young, she loved life. People danced to fiddlers and sang the songs they’d known all their lives. It was a hard life, but there was sun in it, too.
The lads threw their caps at Jenny. They all wanted her. But she only had eyes for Joshua, a handsome lad with cruel eyes. He paid her no mind, though. He could have any girl he desired, and his father was a mill foreman, with power and prestige. But his friends told him to court her. She was a right bobby dazzler, she’d make a good wife. So he looked. She was pretty.
More than that, she was willing. Where lads usually did her bidding, she was willing to make all the time she had for him. Joshua, though, saw her weakness. She loved him with all her heart, but he treated her cruelly. He wouldn’t turn up when he promised, just leave her standing for hours, lonely and heartbroken. Even when they were together, he’d hardly give her attention. Unless they were alone. In those moments she felt happy.
So she was overjoyed when Joshua suggested they wed. He might not be perfect, but he’d be hers forever. Yet she quickly learned that married life with Joshua was worse than courting him. Much worse.
He’d stay out in the beershops until all hours, coming home drunk and taking out his anger on her. After a year of this, Jenny White understood the gap between the hope of her heart and her life. He wasn’t going to change, for her or for anyone. She had nothing and no one; her parents had died.
With each day the feelings grew worse. And there was no way out, no escape. To a friend she bemoaned “the marriage vows as false as dicer’s oaths.” One night Joshua didn’t come home at all. Part of her hoped he might have died, to free her. But someone told her he’d left the inn with a young, pretty girl.
Despondent, Jenny began to walk. Her route took her along the Calls, a street of low, dark houses, poor and dismal. Between two houses stood a set of steps, leading down into the chilly, damp blackness. Jenny followed them. And as she placed one foot in front of another, her spirit began to lighten, as if she might fly away. Down she went, as the water of the river lapped around her feet. Down until it reached her knees.
Someone saw her disappear down the stairs and ran, looking to stop her. But when he looked, there was no Jenny in the water. She’d moved out of sight and out of this world. No body was ever found, although people searched.
Some said she’d drowned. Others believed she’d drifted until she found a place where lovers spoke truly. Where hearts were safe and words were bonds. Perhaps she’d slipped through to somewhere she could smile and laugh again. But it seemed as if she gone through a hole in the world. Which is why that spot became known as Jenny White’s Hole.

A Little Bit Of History For The Soul

On September 15, 2014 By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

It’s a time to look forward to: Heritage Days. The weekend when so many older buildings are open, free of charge, to the public. Many of them aren’t even on show for the rest of the year. And Leeds is definitely blessed with them – 83 this time around. It’s impossible to see every one over a single weekend, of course.
This time around it began with a tour of Beckett Street cemetery. Far more interesting than it sounds, one of the oldest municipal cemeteries in Britain (the oldest is in Hunslet, also in Leeds), which contains the fascinating subscription graves (or guinea graves, as they’re known). For a guinea, the dead could be commemorated on a gravestone, rather than be buried nameless. The downside is that there will be five or six bodies in the grace, and more on the other side of the stone. Even in death, they’re as crowded and packed together as they were in life.
But the place does have the grave of Tom Maguire, who features as a minor character in Gods of Gold, and who, in life, was one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. A great man.

Sunday was Gipton Well, about half a mile from where I grew up. It’s a place to take the waters, just small, but once only one of many spas dotted around Leeds. Built in 1671, it’s fed by a small spring, and the privileged few who used it would wade or sit in the water, removing clothes in the outer room, which also had a fireplace, before plunging into the cold pool. The place has resonance for me, as the climax of The Constant Lovers takes place there. Going inside for the first time in many years, it was just as I remembered it – but in better, cared-for shape.

And then, Whitkirk Church, which dates from the 15th century, with a tower completed by 1440, and a continuous line of priests since 1185, although there was a church mentioned in the Domesday Book. Originally a Knights Templar church (it’s close to Temple Newsman, which was owned by the Templars, and there are two small houses close by with Templar crosses), it’s been renovated a couple of times, but still retains a beautiful medieval simplicity – although some of the memorials are very elaborate for as small church.

The graveyard also has this wonderful headstone. A very modern sentiment. No names or date on it, just these words.

The highlight of 2014’s Heritage Days, though, was a chance to tour Templeworks in Holbeck. The area was one of the Victorian industrial powerhouses of Leeds, although manufacturing is long since a thing of the past.
When it opened it 1841, Temple Mill (as it was then) was very modern. It was the brainchild of John Marshall, who’d run Marshall’s Mill next door since the 1790s.

The frontage of Temple Mill is a replica of the Temple of Horus at Edfu in Egypt.

Behind that, though, it was thoroughly modern. The mill itself was the largest room in the world, with 17 exits in case of fire.

Used for spinning flax, it ran without electricity, powered by steam, generated in the cellar, while the light came from a forest of skylights on the roof that look like something from a science fiction film; they must have seemed completely alien at the time.

To provide the heat and humidity needed for spinning flax, all the iron pillars holding up the ceiling in the mill were hollowed, allowing water to trickle down naturally. The moisture level was increase by turfing the roof and having sheep crop the grass there (they were transported up and down in the world’s first hydraulic lift).
Marshall was a hard master, but also enlightened to a degree. He ran a crèche for the women who worked at the mill and there was schooling for the young workers until they were 12.
The building was in continuous use into the 21st century, last as a catalogue headquarters for Kay’s. These days, though, as Templeworks, it’s an artist’s co-op that survives without funding. Much of the income is generated from TV companies filming there, but it also hosts theatre and music events.
That reinvention is wonderful, but typical of what’s going on across Holbeck. The factories have gone, but these days it’s the digital hub of Leeds – and what is digital except the industry of the 21st century?
But some of the history is left behind in the fabric. Like these wonderful chimneys still standing at Tower Works, both of them based on old Italian church towers. Like Temple Mill, they’re a reminder that there could even be romance in industry.

The Book Launch

On September 12, 2014September 12, 2014 By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Thank you so much to everyone who came to the launch for Gods of Gold last night, and those who couldn’t make it but were there in spirit. It was held at the Leeds Library, the oldest subscription library in Britain, founded in 1768 and in the same location since 1808. I was in the ‘new room,’ which only dates from 1880…

I’m grateful to the staff there for their work, and for having me as a guest. They also had the Yorkshire Weekly News from July 1890 on display, with a very long (and wonderfully biased) story about the Gas Strike that forms the backdrop to Gods of Gold (hint: they weren’t happy that the workers won).

There was wine (of course) and two people brought homemade cake, which was delicious. The only downside was that those sitting there had to listen to me wittering on.

On the upside, there was time to mingle. I got to meet old friends and new, including my MP, Fabian Hamilton, and a wonderful woman of 93, very spry and alert, who was able to tell me about Kirkgate and Bell’s Pharmacy in the 1920s and 1930s. I feel incredibly privileged to have had everyone come out for me and this book.

Thanks, too, to Radish Books for taking care of the book sales. I was astonished when the pile was devoured by customers in seconds (even my own copy vanished, but thankfully someone returned it). It’s a pretty magical feeling when someone ask you to sign a book for them. Events like last night make all the hard work of writing worthwhile. And even more grateful to everyone at Severn House for their belief in my work.

Thank you all.

Annabelle Atkinson and Mr. Grimshaw

On September 10, 2014 By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Annabelle Atkinson is deep at the heart of Gods of Gold. The whole idea began with her, really. But she made her first appearance in this story I gave to Leeds Book Club a couple of years ago. And after that, she would leave me alone; she still hasn’t.

But, as the book launch for Gods of Gold is tomorrow night, here’s the first time Annabelle showed herself. A little different, a little younger, but still recognisable…

Inspired by the painting Reflections on the Aire: On Strike, Leeds 1879, by Atkinson Grimshaw

On both sides of the river rows of factory chimneys stood straight and tall and silent, bricks blackened to the colour of night. Smoke was only rising from a few today, but the smell of soot was everywhere, on the breath and on the clothes. It was the shank of an October afternoon and the gas lamps were already lit, dusk gathering in the shadows.
He stood and looked at the water. Where barges should be crowded against the warehouses like puppies around a teat there was nothing. Just a single boat moored in the middle of the Aire, no sails set, its masts spindly and bare as a prison hulk.
He coughed a little, took the handkerchief from his pocket and spat delicately into it. This was the time of year when it always began, when men and women found their lungs tender, when the foul air caught and clemmed in the chest and the odour from the gasworks cut through everything so that even the bitter winter snow tasted of it.
What sun there was hung low in the west, half-hidden by clouds. A few more minutes and he’d be finished then walk home to Knostrop, leave the stink and stench of Leeds for trees and grass and the sweet smell of fresher air. First, though, he needed to complete the sketch, to capture these moments.
Tomorrow he’d start in the studio, to try and find the mood that overwhelmed him now, Leeds in the still of the warehousemen’s strike, no lading, no voices shouting, no press of people and trade along the river.
“What tha’ doing?”
He turned. He hadn’t heard her come along the towpath. But there she was, peering over his shoulder at the lines on the pad, the shadings and simple strokes that were his shorthand.
“Tha’ drawing?”
“Sketching,” he answered with a smile and slipping the charcoal into his jacket pocket.
“Aye, it’s not bad,” she told him with approval, reaching out a finger with the nail bitten short and rimmed with dirt. “I like that,” she said, pointing at the way he’d highlight the buildings as they vanished towards the bridge, hinting at the cuts and alleys and what lay beyond.
“Thank you.”
He studied her properly, a girl who was almost a woman, in an old dress whose pattern had faded, the hem damp and discoloured where she’d walked across the wet grass. She wore her small, tattered hat pinned into her hair.
At most she was twenty, he judged. As she opened her mouth to speak he could see that one of her teeth was missing, the others yellowed, and her face held the start of lines that belonged to a woman twice her age. Her cheeks were sunk from hunger, the bones of her wrists like twigs. But her eyes were clear and full of mischief. She carried a bundle in her left hand. At first he thought she was a ragpicker, done for the day; then he noticed how she cradled it close and understood it was what little she owned in the world.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Anabelle Atkinson, sir,” she replied with the faintest of smiles. “Me mam said she wanted summat nice around her.”
He nodded, watching the water and the sky again. In a minute the sky would part, leaving the sun pale as lemon reflecting on the river. Perhaps the last sun of the year, except for a few days when the sun would sparkle on the snow around his home. He held his breath for a moment, ready to work quickly.
“My name’s Atkinson, too,” he said distracted by the light, committing it to memory.
“Happen as we’re related, then.” He could feel her eyes on him. “But mebbe not.”
“It’s my middle name,” he explained quietly, “but I prefer it to my Christian name.”
“Why’s that, then?”
Very quickly he fumbled in his pocket, drawing out coloured pencils and adding to the sketch, the reflections on the river, the gold of a fading sun mingling with the browns and greens of the dirty water, smudging with the edge of his hand, thinking, putting it all away in his memory for tomorrow when he’d sit in the studio with his paints.
“It suits me better,” he answered her finally, squinting at his work, then at the scene before adding some more touches.
“That’s right,” she said slowly, as he was about to add more umber to the water. “That’s it.” There was awe in her voice, as if she couldn’t believe nature could be captured that way. “It looks alive.”
“It’s just preparation,” he explained. “I’ll paint it soon.”
“That what you are, then? An artist?”
“I am.”
He was a successful one, too. Whatever he put on canvas sold, almost before it had dried. For the last nineteen years it had been his living, since he broke away from the tedium of being a railway clerk, the job he thought might crush his heart. With no training and only the support of his wife, he’d known that painting could make his soul sing. These days he was a wealthy man, one who’d made art pay him well. Now they knew him all around the country; in London any man would deign to receive him.
“You must make a bob or two.”
Grimshaw smiled.
“I get by.”
“You’ve got good clothes and you talk posh.”
He chuckled.
“Don’t be fooled. I’m not as posh as you’d think. I grew up in Wortley and my father worked on the railways. What about you, Annabelle Atkinson? Where do you live?”
“Me mam’s in one of them houses up on the Bank.”
He knew them, squalid back-to-backs with no grass or green, some of the worst housing in Leeds. No good air and the children ragged as tinkers’ brats. It was where the Irish lived, crammed together in dwellings that everyone said should be pulled down.
“How many of you?”
“Only four now. I’m not there no more, though. Had a job as a maid in one of them big houses out past Headingley.”
“Had?” He eyed her sharply.
“They didn’t like me having gentleman callers. Said it wasn’t proper for someone in my station.” She put on a voice as she spoke and her eyes flashed with anger. “Me mam won’t have me back. No room, not if I’m not bringing in a wage.”
“What are you going to do?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll find summat. There’s always work for them as is willing to graft.”
He thought of the life in her and his own children, six alive and the ten who’d died. Of his wife, twenty-two years married, with her stern face and the eternal look of weariness.
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“There’s rooms. At least when they turned me out they paid what they owed. I’ll not go short for a while.”
He looked down at the sketch. It caught everything well, and it would be a good painting, another one to bring in a good ten pounds or more. But it was a landscape unpeopled.
“Annabelle Atkinson, can you do something for me?”
“What?” she asked warily, too familiar with the ways of men.
“Just stand about ten yards down the path, that’s all.”
“Why?”
He tapped the drawing with a fingernail.
“I want to put you in this, that’s all?”
“Me?” She laughed. “Go on, you don’t want me in that.”
“I do. Please.”
She shook her head, smiling all the while.
“You’re daft, you are.” But she still moved along the path, looking back over her shoulder. “Here?”
“Yes. Look out over the river. That’s it. Stay there.”
He was deft, seeing how she held the bundle, her bare arms, the hem of the dress high enough to show bare ankles, and a sense of longing in the way she held herself.
“I’m done,” he told her after a minute and she came back to him.
“That’s me?” she asked.
“It is.”
“Do I really look like that?”
“That’s how I see you,” he said with a smile. She kept staring at the paper.
“You’ll put that in your painting?”
“With more detail, yes.”
“What?”
“The pattern of the dress, things like that.”
Self-consciously she smoothed down the old material, her face suddenly proud, looking younger and less careworn. He dug into his trouser pocket, pulling out two guineas.
“This is for you.”
“What? All this?”
“I’m an artist. I pay my models.”
“But I didn’t do owt. I just stood over there,” she protested.
“I sketched you, and you’ll be in the painting. That makes you my model. Here, take it.”
Almost guiltily she plucked the money from his hand, tucking it away in the pocket of her dress.
“Thank you, sir,” she said quietly. “You’ve made my day, you have.”
“As you’ve made mine, Annabelle Atkinson.” He closed the sketch pad and put away the pencils and charcoal, then tipped his hat to her before walking away.
“So what is your name, then?” she asked.
“Atkinson Grimshaw.” He handed her his card. “I wish you and your baby well.”
“Me in a painting. There’s no one as’ll believe that.” She began to laugh, letting it rise into a full-throated roar, and he laughed with her.

Tiger, Tiger

On September 9, 2014September 9, 2014 By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Jack had the shelter built at the bottom of the garden right after Mr. Chamberlain came back from Munich. I used to stand in the back bedroom and watch the men digging out the ground then laying the brick and putting on the concrete roof.
“When Hitler comes we’ll be safe now,” he told me. “And we won’t have to share it with anyone.”
He was wrong about that. But Jack was wrong about most things; the only time I can remember him being right was building the shelter. Even then, we didn’t need it. No bombs dropped in these parts of Leeds. We had a few raids, but nothing like those poor people down in London. I can’t imagine how they stood it.
Whenever the siren went off, everyone in the street would come into our shelter. None of them had built one; they’d more sense than brass, I suppose. Jack had signed up to do his bit. God only knew where he was – the only thing he’d managed to get past the censor was that he had brown knees. The way he managed to swing things he was probably in Filey, not Egypt.
So it was me and Michael for the duration. But he was at school during the day, and after that he was off with his pals until dark, pretending to machine gun every Nazi and win the war by himself. Still, once that siren wailed he was down in the shelter and as scared as the rest of us.
I had a job three mornings a week at the museum on Park Row. It might not have been as worthwhile as assembling shells or putting Spitfires together, but it was a little something. I enjoyed it, working there with Miss Woods and Mr. Johnson, who was too old to fight. He knew all about history, though. He’d given me a proper tour of the exhibits one day, even telling me about the Indian stuffed tiger that stood inside the doorway and the Egyptian mummy at the top of the stairs. Mr. Johnson boasted he could read the hieroglyphics. I didn’t believed a word, of course, but it didn’t matter. I liked the work there and it took me out of the house, around people, into all the whirl and bustle of town.
For some reason, I loved that tiger. It was threadbare, a little like an old teddy bear that had been loved too much, but it had personality. Every week I’d dust it and polish up the glass eyes in its head. The snarling mouth didn’t scare me. I always felt as if I could stroke it and it would just start purring.
From the bus I’d seen some of the damage the early raids did, all that wreckage at Marsh Lane Station, and it made me shudder. We weren’t safe at all; if a bomb landed on the shelter, we might as well have been hiding under cardboard. Jack had just wasted his money on an illusion again.
Michael was already in bed when the siren sounded. It was a Friday night, right on the stroke of nine, and for a moment my heart stopped, the way it always did when it heard the wail. In less than a minute he was down in the kitchen, socks, slippers and dressing gown over his pyjamas. I’d been listening to the wireless, one of those dance bands that sound like everyone else.
It was March. Outside, the sky was very clear, so many stars up there, and very cold.
“Stay there,” I told Michael, and dashed back into the house for our overcoats. Over the next quarter of an hour the neighbours drifted in. We talked for a while until all the gossip had been given out and we all knew which butcher might have mince the next day. There was a primus stove down there, the kettle boiling to make a pot of tea, and with the oil lamps at we could see each other – well, make out the faces and shapes, anyway.
After an hour and a half we’d run out of things to say. Shivers kept running through me from the cold. We were ready for the all-clear to sound, to go back to our beds and warm up. But there was only silence. Then I heard something off in the distance, like a hum growing louder. The Germans were coming.
It seemed like we were down there forever. We could hear the explosions down towards the city centre. God, I thought, what if one of them goes off course and drops its load on us? Old Mr. Henderson from number eleven climbed on the roof of the shelter to give us a running commentary. He was sixty if he was a day, but he was still active and in the Home Guard.
“Those are incendiaries,” he announced with a shout. “I can see them burning.” And later, when the planes seemed to come wave after wave and the soft crump of bombs was a constant sound, he’d cry out, “That must have done some damage,” until we all clambered out to join him.
A little after three we were all back in our houses. Michael trudged up to bed, the poor lamb could hardly keep his eyes open, but I couldn’t sleep. It had been like a thousand Guy Fawkes’ nights all in one, all light and fire and explosions. Except there was nothing fun about this. There was just terror and destruction and death.
I thought about the museum, hoping it had survived. And then I thought about Jack, somewhere in the world with his brown knees and I lay in bed and cried quietly until the alarm clock went off.

The bus could only go as far as Buslingthorpe Lane before the wardens stopped it. I wasn’t going to give up. Instead I walked into town. Quarry Hill Flats had taken a hit and there was smoke still coming from the roof of the market, with water running down George Street. The air smelt like gunpowder and I had to tread carefully around the rubble.
“You’d best watch yourself, luv,” one of the auxiliary firemen told me. “There’s stuff here that could tumble down on you.”
I smiled politely at him and walked on. There seemed to be plenty like me, people on their way to work, hoping there’d still be a business standing, and those who simply needed to see what the Germans had done to us. It seemed bad, but nothing like the newsreels, where street after street in London had been blown to nothing. If this was our Blitz then we’d come off lightly.
As soon as I turned onto Park Row I could see something was wrong. There was a huge hole in the road, a crater, and I started to walk faster, almost running down the pavement. I could see Miss Woods in the distance, holding something to her face. She was a spinster, fifty-three years old – she was always very exact – with some small private income. She worked at the museum because she wanted to, not because she needed the money. She was the first in and the last to leave every day, caring for the place as if it was her own home. I watched as she bent down and picked something up.
The whole front of the building had gone, as if a giant, petulant child had swept his hand across and crushed it. Stone, glass and wood were all scattered across the street, fallen into the hole and all around it. Men stood around, one or two in their ARP helmets, most just in caps, staring, pointing and talking.
Miss Woods seemed to be in shock when I looked at her, dazed, her eyes quite blank. She held up her hand and I could see what she’d rescued from the ground, a piece of old, dirty linen. At first I didn’t know what to make of it. Then I took in all the gaping frontage of the museum, the staircase little more than splinters now, and I realised it must have come from our mummy. It might be all that was left of him.
Everything I could see inside the building was blackened. Even the air seemed charred and dead. The desk where I worked didn’t exist any more, only a space on the burned and buckled floor where it had once been.
The tiger, I thought. But he was gone, too, not even a scrap of fur. It had all gone. Everything had gone. There was nothing they could shore up, they couldn’t make do with what was left. The museum was gone. I put my arm around Miss Woods’ shoulders. For a moment the contact seemed to startle her and she began to pull away. I smiled at her gently.
“I know,” I told her. “I know.”

A Seattle Short Story

On September 7, 2014September 7, 2014 By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized4 Comments

Some of you might know that I lived in Seattle for almost twenty years, and that I have two books set there, Emerald City and West Seattle Blues. It’s not Leeds, but the place still has a chunk of my heart.
The main character from those novels, music journalist Laura Benton, popped into my head several weeks ago with a little tale to tell. This is it…(and if you like Laura, those two novels are available as ebooks or audiobooks. Just, you know, a suggestion).

This is to the memory of Cyril/Larry Barrett, a wonderful man and a startlingly original singer and songwriter who died far too soon. And he was a real original.

‘I swear to God,’ he slurred. ‘I’m not shitting you.’
He looked at me, eyes at that point just past focusing, the words barely hitting the mark. I nodded and hoped he’d go away. But Danny had his audience; he wasn’t going to leave anytime soon.
I should have guessed there was a reason for the empty barstool in the Two Bells on a Thursday night, the time most people in Seattle started celebrating the weekend. I’d just planned on a quick beer before walking down to the OK Hotel to catch Girl Trouble.
Instead, I got Danny Hill. Over the last ten years he’d been in at least a dozen bands, none of them good, none of them original. For as long as I’d known him he’d been a drunk. And now he was saying that Nirvana had ripped off one of his songs. It was about as likely as all the Californians who’d arrived here in the last couple of years heading back home again. Especially with Nevermind just out and the whole world suddenly smelling like Teen Spirit. Hey, suddenly we were famous all over again in the Pacific Northwest.
‘I’ll prove it, man,’ Danny said and fumbled in his pocket until he brought out a cassette. ‘You listen to that, okay? Just listen to it. You’ll see.’ He half slid off the stool and vanished toward the john. Time to leave, I decided.
‘He’s ripped,’ Annie the bartender, said, shaking her head. ‘He’s been going on about this all evening. I’m going to cut him off when he comes back. If you’re heading out, do it now, Laura. He’ll be following you all night if you don’t.’
‘Good plan,’ I agreed. ‘I’m going to jet.’

I loved music. I loved writing about it. I’d been lucky enough to make a living from it. Pieces for magazines all over the country, and a lot for The Rocket here in town. The downside was people like Danny. People were always giving me demos, saying they were the shit, they were going to be huge. Most of them ended up like him, working down at Pike Place Market or for Muzak Corporation while they waited for something that was never going to happen.
I still had his cassette in my coat when I walked home later that night. I was living up on Queen Anne, a good, cheap apartment that looked over Lake Union and the downtown skyline. Crane my neck and I could see the Space Needle. Best of all, it was just five blocks from Tower Records.
Girl Trouble had been good – they were always good – a burst of energy that blew out the cobwebs. I just wasn’t ready to sleep yet. I pulled a Henry Weinhard’s from the refrigerator, stuck the tape in the deck and settled back on the couch.
For maybe the first time in his life, Danny was right. I played the song, rewound it, and played it again. Then I dug out my copy of Nevermind. The song wasn’t an exact copy, but it was close enough to make me wonder.
There was no date on the plastic cassette case. I had no idea when it had been recorded, and the whole style was different from Nirvana. Still…

Just after ten the next morning I opened the door of the old building on Fifth Avenue and climbed the stairs to the office The Rocket.
Jack was back in the editor’s ocubbyhole, going over the proofs for the next edition. I tapped on the door and waited until he finished reading the paragraph.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘What’s up? Got two pieces of yours in here.’ He pointed to the byline: Laura Benton. I’d been seeing it for years but it still made me stupidly proud.
‘Got something interesting. Take a listen to this and tell me what you think.’ I put the cassette on his desk. He gave me an odd look, turned in his chair and put it in the player.
‘Shit,’ he said when it was done. ‘Who gave you that?’
‘Danny Hill. He says he wrote it.’
Jack ran a hand through his hair and gave a long sigh. He knew as well as I did that Danny was a lush.
‘Have you heard the radio this morning?’
I shook my head. I’d slept late, tumbled out of bed and into the shower, then walked downtown.
‘Why?’
‘He was killed last night. Hit and run, up in the U-District.’
‘Are you serious?’ I asked, not able to believe it. ‘I just saw him in the Two Bells about nine-thirty.’
He shrugged.
‘All I know is what I heard.’ He took out the cassette and handed it back to me. ‘Sorry.’
‘Maybe…’ I began, then shook my head. ‘No.’ No one was going to kill over a song. Not a band, not even a big record label. That was just stupid. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Look, if you want to see if you can find out about the song, go ahead,’ Jack told me. ‘I mean, it’s probably a coincidence, but…’
‘Yeah.’
‘Just bring it to me if there’s anything interesting, okay?’
I gave him a loose salute and left.

Back in the apartment, I called the Seattle Police Department’s public relations woman. She wasn’t going to give too much away, but she did confirm that a male aged twenty-nine had been struck by a vehicle the night before at a little after eleven. The victim has been taken to Harborview but was declared dead on arrival. The cops were still hunting for the car and driver.
Twenty-nine, I thought. He must have come out here for college. I tried to think where Danny was from. He’d told me once; somewhere back East, I could remember that much, but that was all. As far as I knew, he wasn’t married, and he seemed to break up his bands every six months.
The White Pages showed an address for Daniel Hill on Beacon Hill, nowhere near the U-District. So what could have taken him out that way? That was one question. Then death was another.
First of all, though, I wanted to find out about the song on that cassette. I tried to think back and come up with people who’d played in Danny’s bands. Cathy. She’d done some gigs with him the year before, I knew that. But I didn’t have a number for her.
It took five calls before I managed to find one, and then she wasn’t home. I left a message. All I could do now was wait.
The phone rang a little after six. I’d just finished writing a couple of reviews, the final drafts ready to go in the mail.
‘This is Laura,’ I said.
‘It’s Cathy Leighton. You left a message?’
‘Yeah. I write for The Rocket. I’m calling about Danny Hill.’
‘Oh.’ There was a flat, defensive note in her voice.
‘I know, it’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, a friend of mine called to tell me. I mean, I quit his band six months ago, but…’
‘This is going to sound weird,’ I said, ‘but I saw Danny last night. He was pretty wasted, but he gave me a cassette. Just one song on it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It…it sounds very much like something else. He kept saying he’d been ripped off, that someone had stolen his song.’ I paused. ‘I told you it was strange.’
‘We recorded some stuff, you know, demos.’ She sounded uncertain, as if she was dredging up memories and not sure about sharing them. ‘But it was all kind of funk back then. He was on this thing like he wanted to be Cameo or something – “Word Up” kind of stuff.’
‘That’s nothing like this,’ I assured her. ‘You didn’t do anything more rock, loud-soft-loud, Pixies-ish?’
‘No. Nothing like that.’ She seemed mystified.
‘Do you have any idea who was playing with him recently?’
‘The last I heard, he was looking for people.’ She hesitated. ‘I mean, I don’t want to say anything bad with him dead and everything, but he wasn’t very easy to get along with. And his songs weren’t so great. Not as good as he thought they were, anyway.’
‘I know that. I’ve seen him play before. Is there anyone you can think of who knew him well, a friend or anything?’
‘Have you talked to Mette?’ Cathy asked.
‘Who?’
‘Mette. She’s this Danish girl. They were really close. Not like, you know, but buds.’
‘I’ve never heard of her,’ I said.
‘Let me see what I can find out,’ she offered.

Cathy called back a little before nine. I was zoning out with some stupid TV show, debating whether I wanted to go down to the Ditto and catch Chemistry Set or just stay home.
‘This is Laura,’ I said.
‘Hey, it’s Cathy. I found Mette if you want to talk to her.’ I wrote down the number. ‘I said you’d be calling her.’
‘Thanks,’ I told her. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘If you find out about that tape, let me know. I’m curious now.’

Mette might have been Danish, but there was only the slightest trace of it in her accent, a small lilt of music in the words. She lived on Queen Anne, too, on West Galer just by the top of the hill.
‘I’m sorry about Danny,’ I told her.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice seemed empty and far away. ‘I can’t believe it. I keep thinking…I don’t even know what I’m thinking.’
‘He gave me a tape last night.’
‘Was he drunk?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ I admitted. ‘He was.’
She stayed silent for a while.
‘I’d like you to hear it,’ I said finally. ‘See if you recognize it.’
‘Okay,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘You mean now?’
‘If that’s okay.’
‘I guess,’ Mette said.

I drove over, up Taylor and along the strip past the supermarkets and the restaurants that had blossomed up there. She showed me into a cozy studio, the kitchen with a red Formica table and vintage chairs, then through to the main room. Photographs spilled from a shoebox, all of them of Danny.
I turned and looked at her.
‘Look, if you’d rather do this another time…’
She shook her head, blonde hair swishing from side to side around a big moon face.
‘No, no,’ Mette said in quiet despair. ‘I guess now’s fine.’ She held out a hand and I gave her the cassette.
I watched her face as the song played, the intense concentration, then the way her features softened and the faint smile as Danny’s voice came out of the speakers. She let the whole piece play without saying a word.
‘I’ve never heard it before,’ Mette told me when it was done. But there was more in her tone. ‘I remember the bassline, though. He came up with that a couple of months ago, one night when I was at his apartment.’
‘Two months?’ I asked in astonishment. That was shortly before Nevermind had been released.
She nodded.
‘It wasn’t any longer than that. It can’t have been.’ She pulled a Kleenex from the sleeve of her sweater and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I…’
A thought struck me.
‘Did Danny ever see Nirvana play?’ I asked. He must have done. It seemed as if every musician in town had been to plenty of their gigs.
‘Oh yeah.’ The small smile returned. ‘He loved those guys. I guess the last time was back in the winter. We went down together. You remember when the weather was really bad?’
I did. During February it had been surprisingly brutal, inches of snow and ice shutting down the city for a few days. Seattle was fine with rain, but we couldn’t cope with worse.
‘Yes.’
‘It was just after that. I don’t think I ever saw Danny focus as hard on anything as he did that night. It was like he was taking in every note.’
‘Was he drinking much?’
‘Not really. Just a couple beers. He was fine to drive home after.’
I nodded at the tape in the player.
‘What about the song?’
‘I don’t know. It sounds like he did it all himself. That’s his guitar playing and his bass. I’d know it anywhere. He has a four-track. Had,’ she corrected herself.
‘I see.’ It was simple enough. The riff, the idea, had lodged in his head when he’d seen the band. And it had come out later, all his own work, maybe, but so close to the original.
I didn’t know he was insisting he’d been ripped off. Very likely he’d just convinced himself it was that way. I didn’t know what went on in an alcoholic’s mind. And we’d never find out. Danny wasn’t around anymore to say.
‘Do you know why he’d go up to the U-District?’ I asked. ‘He was down in Belltown when I saw him, at the Two Bells.’
‘Sheila.’ The word came out so quietly that for a second I believed I’d imagined it.
‘Who?’
‘Sheila.’ Mette looked at me. ‘They broke up a month ago. She lives up near there. He’d get drunk and just stand across the street from her place, out of sight. No hassles,’ she added quickly. ‘He wasn’t like that. But she called the cops once. They warned him, but he kept going back.’
It was creepy. It was disturbing. Once I thought about it, I could believe it was something Danny would do. But I could see from Mette’s face that she wished Danny had loved her.
‘Thank you,’ I told her.
‘Do you mind if I keep the tape?’ she asked. ‘You know.’
I did.
‘It’s all yours.’ I didn’t need it any more.

I was awake early, struggling out of strange, dark dreams that evaporated as soon as I opened my eyes. In the kitchen I made coffee and switched on the radio, the news on KUOW.
‘Police have made an arrest in the hit-and-run killing of a man the night before last in the U-District. The deceased has been named as Daniel Hill. The driver is said to have been intoxicated at the time of the accident.’
So simple. So terrible. So fucking empty.

When The Plague Came To Leeds

On September 5, 2014 By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

In March 1645, during the Civil War, Leeds was under the control of a Roundhead garrison when plague broke out. It started in the poor areas, along Vicar Lane and the Calls. The first victim was a young girl, Alice Musgrave. But any hopes that it might disappear soon vanished. Plague raged in Leeds until the end of the year, killing more than 1,300 people, at least one-quarter of the population. Plague cabins were built on Quarry Hill to isolate victims, but it didn’t help…

LITTLE ALICE MUSGRAVE – 1645

Little Alice Musgrave, lying in her bed,
Little Alice Musgrave with plague in her head,
All the prayers for Alice that all the preachers said,
Little Alice Musgrave, buried and dead.

The children sang it for years afterwards, long after most people had forgotten who Alice had even been. At first I’d chase them away and cuff at their heads, yelling through my tears, shouting at them to shut up. But it didn’t help. They’d keep on singing and every word cut deeper and deeper until my heart until I couldn’t cry out any more.
Last week I heard it again. A pair of girls, neither of them more than six, were using it as a rhyme for skipping ropes. The good Lord alone knows where they’d learned it. Alice has been dead these twenty years now. Maybe they’d heard their mother idly singing a memory one day.
I was walking along Call Lane with my granddaughter, her hand tight in mine, and the words just made me stop, frozen as winter. I thought my heart might never beat again.
“What is it, Grandmama?” Emily asked. “Why are you crying like that?”
I had to draw in my breath slowly before I could answer her.
“It’s nothing, child,” I told her. “Just a memory that flew past.” I tried to make my voice light but it was filled with the weight of all the tears I’d cried. “Come on, let’s get ourselves home. Mama will be wondering where we are.” I clutched her hand tighter and we hurried away.

It wouldn’t go away. In the darkness, when I lay alone on the sheet and straw, it came back, singing and taunting. It was as if God wasn’t going to give me the peace of forgetting, as if He’d uncovered all the jagged edges of memory again.
The Roundheads had come again the year before, so loud that we cowered in the house and prayed they wouldn’t come in and kill us. But Leeds had been buffeted like a feather in the wind, from King to Parliament and back again, more dead each time.
But these troops stayed. It felt like a year of mud, when every colour was brown or black and the rains just came and came. The men put up notices for everything – church attendance, how we had to behave, what we could wear. They forbade us from celebrating the birth of our Lord in the old way. That was sinful, they said.
We’d been poor before, desperate for every penny and every bite. But now they took all our joy, too. Snow fell to bring in the new year, only the pikemen with their shining leather boots and glittering weapons allowed on the streets after dark.
We tried to make ourselves into mice, scurrying and unnoticed lest the cat see us and pounce. Sometimes they’d come and drag one of the menfolk away with their accusations of supporting the king. If he ever came home again it was as someone broken and quiet.
I feared for my husband. He’d been a clerk to lawyer Bolton before the attorney had fled. Now his grand house on Briggate was a ruin, a burned-out gap in the street and there was a fine waiting against his name. I kept thinking they’d arrived one day and take Roger off.
He had no work. No one needed a man with his letters. The law was whatever the soldiers said, not something to be argued in a courtroom or written into books. And the cloth trade had dwindled so far that even some of the merchants went hungry. Once it would have been a marvel to see a grand man begging his bread. Now it happened every day.
We had three girls to feed, Alice, Hannah and Anne. They often went hungry, but we fed them before we took anything to eat. When Hannah woke in the night, moaning with pain, at first I thought it was nothing more than an empty belly.
“Hush, love,” I whispered. “Just go back to sleep now.”
But she didn’t stop.
“It hurts, mama.”
I knelt by the bed she shared with her sisters, just a sheet over old straw. Her skin was so hot I thought it could burn my fingers and her shift was soaked with her sweat. I bathed her face with cold water and stroked her damp hair, softly singing every lullaby I could remember. And I prayed. The first of so many prayers to rise from Leeds that year, but God blocked His ear to them all.
By morning she was cold, shaking and shivering with it. Nothing I did could help. I sent Roger to bring the wise woman who lived on Kirkgate. She looked, poking my beautiful little girl with her fingers so that she gave a scream like Christ’s agony.
Outside, where a bitter wind came out of the west, the woman put her arms on my shoulders and looked at me with wise, ancient eyes.
“She has the pestilence,” she said softly.
I opened my mouth. I wanted to say no, to shout, to cry, but nothing came. All I could think was why was He judging her like this? What had she done? She was only eleven, she had no sins to her name.
“I’ll bring something in a little while,” the woman continued. “It’ll help her rest and ease the pain a little.” Then she was gone and I was out there, alone as the cold whipped around me.
The word passed quickly, as if the wind had carried it around the town. The soldiers’ doctor arrived in his neat, clean uniform to examine her then shake his head. A pair of troopers were placed outside our door to keep folk away. We were kept inside. Roger tried to amuse Hannah and Anne, to distract them, while I tended to Alice. The wise woman delivered her little bottle, something clear and sweet-smelling inside, and it worked. My beautiful girl slept. Little Alice Musgrave with plague in her head. But it was on her body, the lumps growing so quickly under her arms and between her legs, the stink growing stronger with every hour, as if death was consuming her inch by inch.
The army left food outside our door, kindling and blankets. For the first time in a year we could have lived like human beings if we’d wanted. But who could have an appetite with this. I tried to keep Alice warm when the cold racked her, hugging her close to give her my heat. Weariness took me deep into my bones but I couldn’t sleep. I only had hours left with my daughter and I couldn’t let any moment of them slip away.
They held a service in St. John’s to pray for her, I heard later. For her soul and her salvation. What good is that when the Lord has turned away, I wanted to shout? But I never said a word.
After a day she’d moved beyond speech, only able to make noise like a baby, each one full of pain and fright. Her swellings turned black, the change coming in the blink of an eye. I kept hold of her hand, letting her know that we all loved her. All I wanted now was for her suffering to end.
Alice lasted until the shank of the day. She wasn’t fighting, not even aware, just waiting. Then she gulped in a breath and it was over. I sat, still clutching her fingers and felt life leave her.

They took her body away quickly, the first to go into a plague pit. No coffin, no more than a winding sheet and a covering of quicklime. They wouldn’t let us go to watch her being placed in the earth. All we were allowed were the four walls of our room and a heaven full of sorrow in our hearts.
Two mornings later it was Roger who began to sweat and by dinner Hannah was ill. I tended to them as best I could, moving like a ghost from one to the other as Anne became a silent, frightened child in the corner, too scared to move in case death caught her.
I hadn’t had time to grieve for my Alice when the others fell ill. All I could do was exist, snatch rest when I could, lying next to a body with the stench of decay, waking to another scream or a moan.
At least he took them quickly, less than a day each. And then it was just Anne and I, waiting and wondering how long before it came for us, too.
But it never did. After a week I walked outside. People talked and went about their business, trying to pretend nothing had happened, as if Alice and Roger and Hannah hadn’t died. Yet I could see the terror in their eyes and the way they shunned me, as if I carried the pestilence like a shadow around me. Then I heard the rhyme for the first time, a group of children playing down the road, throwing a ball from one to the other. Little Alice Musgrave, lying in her bed. I ran towards them screaming and saw them scatter in surprise. My arm caught one boy and I started to hit him over and over as the tears tumbled down my cheeks.
Spring came, sunny, bright and fertile to mock us all. I knew what it meant. With the warm weather the plague would remain with us all. While others held their Bibles close, I prayed it would take me and Anne, that it would lift the weight in our hearts. Each week there’d be fewer faces I knew on the streets, but death kept denying me.

The soldiers left in the end. I’d lost track of how long they stayed; sometimes it seemed as if they’d always been there. Now we have a king again in London, or so they say. It makes little difference to our life in Leeds.
The houses that were destroyed have been rebuilt. Maybe they’re even grander than they were before, I can’t remember. My Anne is married with a little girl of her own. She had one before but Alice died when she was no more than a month old. I tried to tell her it was a fated name, but she wouldn’t listen to me.
I play with Emily, take her to the market and down to the river where men sell the fish they catch. I live with them, accompany them to church on a Sunday, but all I pray for now is to forget.

The Oldest Building in West Yorkshire

On September 4, 2014 By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized3 Comments

A few days ago I happened to read something in passing about the oldest building in West Yorkshire. It’s a church, of course, dating back to someone in the 700s CE, and it looked as if a fair bit of the original building survived.

It’s in Ledsham, about 10 miles east of Leeds, and a little north of Castleford. The name, according to Wikipedia, derives from ham, the Saxon word for home or farm. The conjecture, though, is that Led is an early reference to Leeds. Curious, as in the same period, Bede referred to Loidis, and later it became Ledes; there’s no other apparent reference to Led in relation to Leeds that I know of. It’s even more intriguing as there are two other villages close by, Ledston and the wonderfully-named Ledston Luck. Regardless of name, All Saints church still deserved a visit, and it was certainly worth the time.

This is the original entrance, at the base of the tower at the west end. The decoration, sadly, is 19th century. But the original tower had two storeys (there’s a small blocked-in window higher up, as well as other blocked-in Saxon windows along thesSouth wall.

It’s quite easy to make out the original nave, although the church was added to in Norman times – they increased the height of the tower, for example) and again in the 13th and 15 the centuries, adding a north aisle, replacing the chancel, putting in larger windows, and transforming the original porticus into what’s now the porch.

The final restoration came in 1871, and was quite tasteful. A couple of things that didn’t come out in the pictures, though, are the fragments of an old cross built into the north aisle wall and an ancient stone used in the tower arch with a Roman carving of a cleaver in it.

It’s a place well worth a visit, and there’s more to see in the graveyard. Hard to be certain, but this looks to be from 1665. If so, it’s worn remarkably well. No guarantees on this, though.

And there’s even the mason’s name at the bottom.

The church would be enough. But behind it stands a row of 11 stone cottages, dating from 1610. They were built for workers in the orphanage built by Lady Elizabeth Hastings (which also still stands, now Hastings Hall). The cottages are well-tended, and these days let to older residents of the area.

Down past the hall is the old school house for Ledsham, about the same vintage as the hall and cottages, with the bell in the small tower above the roof.

Didn’t stop at the local pub for lunch, at least not on this visit, but it’s called the Chequers, and has existed on the same spot since at least 1540.

Chris Nickson

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