People don’t just disappear, do they? I don’t mean a clothes-on-beach John Stonehouse sort of disappearance. Nor a dead-nanny-on-floor Lord Lucan type of crime. Those were elaborate, doing-a-runner schemes. As was my father disappearing for good with the teenage bride of a neighbour. That had simply been middle-aged madness, but I digress. No, I mean a person who achieves a vanish-into-thin-air disappearance, leaves no trace whatsoever and is never heard from again. Sometimes it does happen.
There were only a few of us who lived as far away from our school as a thirty-minute train journey. We would gather on the train platform in our bottle-green blazers, kids surrounded by bowler-hatted grey men with briefcases who had been passing their entire grey lives riding the 8:10 train to grey jobs in The City. Being children, we always boarded the eighth carriage, the last that fitted onto our station’s platform, and walked through the long connecting corridor to the empty twelfth carriage which served as our pre-school playground. Spending an hour each day travelling back and forwards on trains meant we got to know each other well.
Then, one day, one of us was not on the platform. Maybe a doctor’s appointment? But the next day it was the same. If a family holiday had been imminent, surely he would have told us? A week passed. No sign of our friend. Another in our group phoned his home and learned that he had been killed in a car accident. It was a huge shock. Aged twelve, we always imagined we would live forever. Until then, the most tragic incident witnessed at school had been Marina Hirons’ screams on breaking her arm in a playground fall during netball. The school failed to acknowledge our friend’s death. His name was hurriedly deleted from the morning class register. No announcement was made at morning assembly. Counselling? What was that? We were expected to demonstrate stiff upper lips. But I never forget our young schoolfriend and the way he suddenly disappeared from our lives.
After that loss, I witnessed further disappearances. Did I mention my father walking out the following year, taking with him everything he had ever bought for his family? Or my girlfriend fifteen years later who, after admitting to sex with a teenage work colleague, then disappeared while I was away with half the contents of the flat we had jointly furnished. (Maybe a pattern here?) Or the female tenant who disappeared in 1986 from my ten-person Deptford Housing Co-operative house. After several months’ absence, I requested the key to her top-floor bedroom which I coveted as less noisy than mine on the first floor. I opened her door with trepidation and the scene uncannily resembled a TV detective entering the bedroom of a missing person. All her possessions had been left in situ, except that she had gone. It took me a week to clear it all out in black bin bags before I could move in. Sorting through her personal stuff, I began to feel I knew her life, even though she might possibly be dead.
The most memorable disappearance happened that same year in my workplace. Mary Strong was an affable middle-aged woman employed as full-time secretary at Radio Thamesmead community station. She lived locally, was very outgoing and chatty with everyone who worked in or visited our office. It seemed as if she had worked at the station forever because she knew everyone who had passed through its doors. We saw her as a reliable, responsible fixture in the building, someone who was adept at solving problems and making things happen. Then, one day, she did not come to work. She would always phone if there was a problem. Now her home phone remained unanswered. Nothing was heard from her. A week passed. Someone at the station visited her Thamesmead flat. There was no answer and no sign of her.
Mary’s boss at Radio Thamesmead was the station’s formidable volunteer chairwoman, Lesley Pullar, whom I respected immensely. She took me aside at work and confided how extremely worried she had become about the sudden disappearance of her previously reliable, right-hand woman. She explained that Mary had long been entrusted with administration of the station’s finances and had held the organisation’s cheque book to pay its bills. Then Lesley suddenly and uncharacteristically became sombre and tears started to well up in her eyes.
“Last week,” she admitted, “Mary asked me unusually to sign a blank cheque to pay a bill because she knew I was going to be away … and I have to admit that I did what she asked.”
The gravity of her words hung in the air. I looked at her in shock. Surely the disappearance of such a reliable mainstay of our tiny radio station could not be connected to this blank cheque. We had to consider all possibilities. Lesley regularly came to the radio station but, as I worked there full-time, she requested my input to understand what might have happened. We attempted to figure out what events might have led up to the day of Mary’s disappearance. I consulted my diary and subtly asked my team if they had observed anything untoward in recent weeks.
At that time, only four local radio stations had been licensed in London, of which Radio Thamesmead was the smallest and the only one to broadcast solely on a local cable system, rather than on the FM or AM wavebands. Despite the station’s audience probably never having exceeded a hundred listeners, in the minds of people seeking publicity we were worth a visit. It was a relatively simple task for Mary Strong to arrange their on-air interview. As a result, whilst I was there, politicians such as former British prime minister Edward Heath were happy to visit Radio Thamesmead for an interview, as were musicians such as legendary reggae singer Alton Ellis who lived locally.
One such visitor was musician Rudolph Grant, younger brother of superstar Eddy Grant who was probably the most successful black singer/songwriter/producer in Britain during that time. Rudolph had recorded a popular reggae song ‘Move Up Starsky’ in 1977 under the name The Mexicano (which I had bought as a single), despite him having been born in Guyana and having no apparent connection with Mexico. By the early 1980’s, he was recording under the name Rudy Grant, had secured a contract with renowned producer Mickie Most’s RAK Records but, having failed to find commercial success, was no longer with the label. Rudy had visited Radio Thamesmead recently to promote his music and had been a big hit with Mary Strong, who then talked about him regularly to station staff. It was apparent to those of us working in the office that the two had struck up a friendship that had extended beyond his promotional visit.
Mary had a desk in the Radio Thamesmead office, where Lesley told me the station’s cheque book was kept locked in its top drawer. Problem was that only Mary had the key. We searched for a duplicate in the office but found none. I asked Lesley if I should break open the desk. She reluctantly agreed. I took a letter opener to the top drawer and broke the lock. Inside we found the station’s cheque book. Lesley was too terrified to open it. I picked it up. Inside there was no blank cheque. It had been torn out. With Mary’s usual efficiency, every cheque stub had been inscribed with the date, the payee and its amount … except for the final cheque stub which had been left blank. Our worst suspicions had now been confirmed.
Lesley contacted the bank and was told that the entire balance of the account had been withdrawn with that one cheque she had signed. This would be as much a disaster for Lesley as for the radio station. She contacted the police. They explained that there was little they could do because Lesley had signed the blank cheque and given it to Mary, but they would investigate. I felt immense sympathy for Lesley. She had trusted a long-time salaried employee and this is how her confidence had been repaid. Now she had the difficult task of explaining to the station’s management committee that its funds had suddenly disappeared, along with its most trusted member of staff.
Eventually Lesley heard back from the police that it was believed Mary Strong had taken a flight to the Caribbean immediately after her disappearance from Radio Thamesmead. There was nothing we could do. I do not recall reading anything about Mary’s disappearance in the press. Understandably, the incident was too embarrassing for the radio station, and for Lesley Pullar, to court public attention. By the end of 1986, when I moved on from working at Radio Thamesmead, Mary had not reappeared.
Now, whenever I recall colleagues I knew at Radio Thamesmead, I imagine Mary Strong could have been lounging on a deserted sandy beach drinking iced cocktails in the shade of palm trees by the sunny Caribbean Sea … leaving the rest of the station’s team volunteering for free or working for peanuts in two cramped, terraced houses on one of the most deprived council estates in London. As Hughie Green would say: Opportunity Knocks!
According to Wikipedia, Rudy Grant’s “single [record] ‘Mash in Guyana’ proved a major success in his country of birth” and “he wrote the song on a visit to Guyana in 1986,” only his second return trip since his family had emigrated to Britain in 1960.
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