The Blooding (22 page)

Carole was always given the hard jobs at the home, like washing an
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roning, but Colin seemed to get the pleasant assignments, like playing with the children and organizing activities, and baking cakes for them.

A pudding of a girl, plump and approachable, Carole had bird's-eggblue eyes that narrowed to slits when she laughed. Colin, on the other hand, was quiet spoken, but he had a cynical arch to his brows, as though he were repressing an urge to sneer. A ginger blond, bulky through the trunk and shoulders, Colin sometimes sported a beard, sometimes not. He had a bit of a saw-toothed grin, but if he kept his mouth closed he was very presentable.

They seemed quite different, Carole and Colin, but being the same age, they drifted toward one another during those days at Dr. Barnardo's. She said that after her parents divorced, Colin "was a pillar to lean on." A very shy chap until you got to know him, Carole told her friends.

In August of that year Colin asked her to go out for a drink. He wasn't a pub man and didn't drink often, but when he did, he talked. Carole learned that Colin was a local lad from Leicester, the second child in a family she came to call matriarchal. Colin's older sister was quite assertive like her mother, and was bent on being a doctor with an ultimate goal of research in microbiology or biochemistry. His younger brother was intent on taking a degree in engineering. Colin, the middle child, told Carole that he was "the black sheep" and the "underdog."

We lived in the village of Newbold Verdon then, me mum and dad, a sister and brother. The older sister were very clever, always Mummy's little girl They paid for her all the way through her education clear up till when she was twenty-seven years old And the younger brother, he were the baby so they doted on him. I was in the middle, but I was never neglected I joined the Scouts because Mum expected it She was heavy into the Scout movement They were proud of me then.

But I remember how the other boys used to make fun of me in school when I went in the shower because I were bigger than most and had pubic hair before the others. I guess the problems started at home. I used to show it to girls I knew. Right there at my own house from the age of eleven. I used to like to show it. I started going out on the streets to do it I started showing it to strange girls.

Then came the good part of life. I went to Norway one time with the Scouts, and when the Scout leader left the group, I became a Scout leader with Mum's help. I became a hero at home then because I was doing so good Everyone found it exceptional to be a Scout leader at the age of fifteen. The good side of life was always good and the bad side was bad an
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here seemed to be no in-betweens. That lasted for several months until a new Scout leader got appointed and then all the praise stopped

I enjoyed English, but for me the majority of subjects was a waste of time And the same with church. Me mother was religious but I found it all hypocritical. But I attended church and I became a server, which I hated All the bloody church ever done was make money from old ladies to make itself rich.

Before I gave up on school at sixteen, I made a film on vandalism and it got shown at some local high schools. I loved the glory I got from
thax but school weren't for me. The thing I most hated was everyone calling me "her brother," not feeling like a person in me own right. But I was still a Scout then, at least

There were things he told Carole during the time of their courtship, and things she discovered later. He told her a bit about his history of flashing. He even implied that it used to give him some of his greatest thrills. She tried not to worry about it. She was in love with him.

The first time I got caught flashing it had an effect on me mother of horror and upset. I got visited by a police constable who gave me a lecture and told me how to avoid a similar incident That was worth bloody nowt Then I got caught doing another and had to go to court and it got reported in the local paper and they kicked me out of the Scout movement. It was bad because me mum was the group Scout leader in Newbold. But they allowed me to join the Glenfield Scout Group.

Colin told Carole that he'd wanted to try for a Queen's Scout Award and even the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Scout Award because his mother would've liked it. As part of the Duke of Edinburgh's award he'd had to do voluntary service, which brought him in contact with Dr. Barnardo's Home.

I worked there for five years, taking care of those mentally handicapped kids, taking them for days out The female members of the staff looked up to me. Me mum figured I was back on the straight and narrow and I never did no flashing at Glenfield because of my work at Dr. Barnardo's.

But you get that need. You go out sometimes and cover fifty or sixty miles looking for that opportunity. It's the high I needed. Yet sometimes I didn't get nothing out of it. You never knew how it would turn out Then they caught me again.

became engaged and lived as husband and wife, but during the engage-. ment, even after they'd set the date, it happened again. Colin was summoned before the court for indecently exposing himself to young girls.

"I was naive," Carole later explained. "I simply didn't understand the business of flashing. I actually thought it was like giving up smoking or going on a diet. That it'd be difficult for a few weeks and then just go away. I had no idea how complex it all is. Agoraphobia is about the only abnormality that I can understand perfectly. Any other abnormal behavior, I can't. Anyway, according to Colin, the probation service told him he'd outgrow his problem, even though he was twenty-one years old at the time. They put him on probation again."

In May of 1981, they were married in grand style. Lace gown and veil, top hat and gloves--the young couple did themselves proud.

Colin and Carole settled in Barclay Street in Leicester, and Colin continued working at Hampshires Bakery. He had an artistic side, a flair for drawing, and he was keen on learning to decorate cakes. He was also musical, having played tuba as a boy, and would sit for hours at a keyboard, a piano or a steel drum.

Carole didn't just love her young husband, she admired him. But it took awhile for her to understand Colin Pitchfork, and to sort out the relationships in his family. For instance, Colin didn't know much about his parents, not even how they'd met. He knew only that his father had formerly been in the mines in Chesterfield, and that his mother had been raised in the house she'd raised Colin in, a house his parents retained after his maternal grandparents died.

"They just didn't talk about things" was how he explained his family to Carole.

She, on the other hand, knew all about her family. She was a daddy's girl and always had been. Hers had been the kind of family where they'd kiss each other as quickly as saying hello. And she'd had her own horses as a child, her last being a show jumper named Jamie. She'd ridden in competition since she was seven years old and her dad was always there to watch her win ribbons. He was a civil engineer who sold sewer work and motorway construction to government clients. He'd always worked in a jacket and tie at a middle-class job.

After Carole's father remarried, he and his new wife moved to Narborough village where he became one of the sixteen-member parish council. He was an active youngish man who loved boats, shooting and his daughter. His disapproval of his son-in-law, Colin Pitchfork, was even greater after Colin was caught flashing yet again, and was sent for psychiatric counseling to Carlton Hayes Hospital in Narborough.. To The Woodlands, there by The Black Pad.

I got dealt with by a probation officer and a doctor. I were referred to The Woodlands because that's where they take outpatients. A waste of time. A bleedin waste. Probation officers and psychiatrists, these people are quite happy if you tell them what they want to hear. I can look at the two sides of my life so objectively. I look on meself as quite intelligent, and I can't believe how easy it is to spin yarns to these people.

That particular flashing arrest never got in the papers, so life carried on, really. And the flashing were also carrying on at a nice little rate. I could see it getting up into the thousands in twenty year&

Colin seemed very placid to Carole during the months of her pregnancy in the spring of 1983. He seemed to enjoy a class he was taking in cake decorating at Southfields College. It was an evening class, and he was often tired from working at the bakery, but he was still anxious to get to the community college.

Soon he was riding to school with another student who would drop by and pick him up. Leslie was eighteen years old. To her he seemed worldly and experienced. He certainly knew a lot about making cakes and decorating them.

Colin began ringing Leslie at her home, and then seeing her secretly. Soon, when she came to pick him up at his home he'd invite her in for tea.

Carole had a part-time job working with children at Venture Playground. One day when she was at work, Leslie and Colin had sex in Carole's bed. It seemed foolhardy to Leslie, but that's what he wanted. He used a contraceptive and the sex was straight-forward. She later said he was kind to her. She'd been a virgin up until then.

Leslie was attractive, a fact not lost on Carole Pitchfork. And she was young. Perhaps she had a way of looking at Colin when she'd come to pick him up for class. Perhaps there was the scent of another woman in Carole's bed.

"Why do I keep putting two and two together and getting five?" Carole asked her husband one night, after she'd accused him of being a bit too chummy with the girl.

"I just went out to the pub for a drink!" Colin told her. "One drink!" "You don't have to go so often."

"Twice a week is too bleedin often? Am I a drunkard too?"

He wasn't a drinking man, nobody's pub mate, and since Carole wa
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regnant she really didn't feel like sitting with him in a smoky pub when she could be at home.

"I've asked you to come along, haven't I?" he said. And that was true.

But one evening, after her fourth or fifth accusation, after he was just a bit too late coming home from the community college, he simply said, "All right, it's true."

He showed no remorse or sorrow. It was a simple fact and it was pointless to deny it. It turned out he'd sent flowers to Leslie, which may have been his undoing.

Carole, of course, was heartbroken, and tearfully vowed to leave him forever.

When she moved out and returned to her mother's house for two weeks, her dad learned where Leslie lived. He went directly to the girl's home to inform her father that his teenage daughter was having an affair with a married man. The evidence of flowers brought forth a confession from Leslie, and she agreed to break it off for good.

The flashing stopped the whole time I were seeing Leslie. It stopped because I got a lot of excitement from her, combined with the excitement that Carole would catch me.

The Narborough parish councillor was not a man to let Colin Pitchfork trifle with his daughter. In fact, he would've been totally in favor of a divorce, but his son-in-law was a persuasive talker. Persuasive with Carole.

She agreed to meet with him, and he promised he wouldn't do it again, and when he was all finished explaining, she was the one who felt guilty. Why hadn't she gone out with him to a pub on those nights when he'd asked? Didn't she know a man needed companionship when things were going wrong? Wasn't he a good provider? Was he ever unkind to her? Did he ever so much as shout at her in anger? Wasn't she the one who'd done all the shouting during their rows? That girl Leslie was just .. . convenient

"Just one of them things," he said to her.

"When you love somebody it's easy to blame yourself," Carole later explained. "Even when you feel such a prize fool for doing it."

"Leslie was like the flashing," he explained to Carole. "Something I got a buzz from because it was something I shouldn't do."

"He said she gave him something I couldn't give because she was so young," Carole Pitchfork later related, but Carole herself was not ye
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wenty-three years old in the summer of 1983, and the comparison made her steam.

"What the bloody hell do you mean?" she said to Colin. "I'm too old, am I?"

"No," he said in his quiet, reasonable way. "But Leslie, she was a virgin. And you weren't, were you?"

It was the first time he'd ever said anything like that to her. She'd never forget it, but she'd forgive him almost anything. With Carole, outrage could always be diminished by guilt.

"It was just one of them things, love," he repeated, when he had her emotionally subdued. "Our child will need two parents. And if you don't give people a second chance you'll always wonder if you ought to've done, won't you?"

Even before the birth of their baby, Carole had a yearning to get away from that house in Leicester.

"I want a garden," she told her husband. "And we need a different environment for our child."

Privately, she told friends that she wanted to get away from "bad memories attached to the house." Presumably, memories of Colin and Leslie alone in her bed when she was dragging her pregnant belly around a playground, working with other people's kids while dreaming of her own.

When their son was born in August, Colin was moved to tears and those tears helped wash away her lingering bitterness. She decided to turn the page and try to forget, but it was all becoming just a bit too much, like those romances she read and quickly forgot.