CRAIG: 

I was wearing my dungarees the day Barry was murdered.  I used them to paint in.  They belonged to my mum originally.  She wore them while she was pregnant with me.  They were her maternity dungarees. 

Sometimes I wear women’s clothes to work.  They can’t sack me, it’s discrimination.  Anyway, I’m always out of sight of the general public, so I’m not bringing the company into disrepute.  Wouldn’t that be ghastly?   

I’m never offended when people think I’m gay.  Nine times out of ten, they’re just curious observers rather than aggressive idiots.  Not all aggressive idiots are straight, by the by.  Homosexuals hate me.  They think I give them a bad name, though heaven knows why.  Hey ho.   

I like wearing women’s clothes because women’s clothes are sexy, and I feel sexy when I wear them.  I love the feel of the fabric when I get an erection on the bus in a pair of French knickers. 

I’m not going to make excuses, because there’s nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s not abnormal, it’s not perverted – it’s a healthy expression of male sexuality.  If people want to be gay, that’s fine too.  Most people don’t have any qualms about that sort of thing nowadays, or am I just hoodwinking myself? 

I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I’ve got a tremendous amount of faith in human nature.  It’s like this chap, Razor, who moved in a few weeks back.  Other people had reservations because he’s been in prison, but I told them in no uncertain terms, give the fellow a chance!  The satisfying thing is, I was right, because the man is jolly pleasant.  It irritated me immensely when the police took him in for questioning.  Just because someone’s got a criminal record it doesn’t make them a criminal.  Why didn’t they take me instead?  Was it because I was wearing maternity dungarees? 

Although the printing of these observations is not paid for out of the funds of the Royal Society, yet as the Council of that body are the visitors of the Royal Observatory, it may not be misplaced to introduce the subject here.

Some years since, a member of the Royal Society accidentally learned that there was, at an old store-shop in Thames Street, a large quantity of the volumes of the Greenwich Observations on sale as waste paper. On making inquiry, he ascertained that there were two tons and a half to be disposed of, and that an equal quantity had already been sold, for the purpose of converting it into pasteboard. The vendor said he could get fourpence a pound for the whole, and that it made capital Bristol board. The fact was mentioned by a member of the Council of the Royal Society, and they thought it necessary to inquire into the circumstances.

I’ve got a confession to make.  It’s awful.  We’ve got this retro telephone that we use for the landline.  I got it from a charity shop.  I like retro memorabilia, not just to be fashionable and pretentious, but because I feel there are certain cultural items that are worth preserving.  I like old bookshops.  I bought a book the other day called “Decline of Science in England” by Charles Babbage, the man who invented the computer.  It was first published in 1850.  My edition was from the early twentieth century.  Perhaps it’s a collector’s item, but I only paid two pounds for it.  I have no idea what the book is about, but it’s jolly funny! 

Anyway, what was I saying?  Oh yes.  My confession.  Razor was shouting at me to “GET AN AMBULANCE!” so I marched straight into the living room and picked up the retro phone, and as I dialled the three nines, I couldn’t help a part of me from acknowledging the chicness of the gadget in my hand. 

How awful is that?  My friend was dead in the other room, and there was me, feeling all stylish with my retro phone.  Really, seriously – how awful?! 

Now, the Observations made at the Royal Observatory are printed with every regard to typographical luxury, with large margins, on thick paper, hotpressed, and with no sort of regard to economy. This magnificence is advocated by some who maintain, that the volumes ought to be worthy of a great nation; whilst others, seeing how little that nation spends on science, regret that the sums allotted to it should not be applied with the strictest economy. If the Astronomer Royal really has a right to these volumes, printed by the government at a large expense, it is, perhaps, the most extravagant mode which was ever yet invented of paying a public servant. When that right was given to him,--let us suppose somebody had suggested the impolicy of it, lest he should sell the costly volumes for waste paper,--who would have listened for one moment to such a supposition? He would have been told that it was impossible to suppose a person in that high and responsible situation, could be so indifferent to his own reputation.

The police took Razor away, and I was left alone in the house.  There’s seven people living in this place altogether – eight if you count Pet, who’s like a semi-official lodger now. 

Appropriate name, don’t you think?  We joke about it lots.  “Our tenancy agreement says no pets,” I’ll say.  She’s cute.  But anyway, even though there’s eight people here, it’s not often we’re all around at the same time.  That’s a good thing, because human beings need their space.  That’s a proven fact. 

When the police took Razor away, though, I really didn’t want to be alone.  I texted everyone and told them to come back to the house.  I didn’t tell them any more than that, because I didn’t want to say it over the phone – least of all the funky retro one with the dial.  I knew there’d be a wait before people got back, so I carried on painting.  I’m repainting the living room.  The wallpaper in there is vile – truly awful, 70’s tack.  Glittery blue with silver swooshes.  It’s not even ironic. 

I had about half a wall done when Samantha came back.  Out of everyone, she was the person I didn’t want to break the news to.  Not because of Barry but because of Razor.  Their whole “special relationship” thing.

So, as soon as I tell her Barry’s dead and Razor’s been arrested for his murder, she slips into some kind of denial.  That’s all I can call it – she’s the psychologist, not me – it was like she refused to take it on board and started having a go at me for not doing the paint job properly.  She said you’re supposed to strip the wallpaper off first, anyone knows that, and I should’ve put some sheets down because I was getting flecks of paint on the furniture and on the carpet.  I didn’t admit this at the time, but I was doing it intentionally – I wanted a faint Jackson Pollock vibe about the place.  I knew she was upset about Barry and Razor, so I said I was sorry, but she just kept on at me, saying how stupid I was, and eventually I had to take her by the shoulders, and look her square in the face and tell her, “Sam, did you hear what I said?  Barry’s dead.  They’ve taken his body away, and they’ve taken Razor, because they think he killed him.”  

She wouldn’t speak.  She wouldn’t look me in the eyes. 

I shook her, and said, “Did you hear me, Sam?  This is serious.  This is really happening.” 

She said, “Get off me,” so I let go, and she wrapped her arms around me, pressing herself up against my maternity dungarees with the paint stains. 

I’ve got another confession to make.  When she hugged me like that, and wept in my arms, clinging to me like a favourite teddy … well … it felt awfully nice. 

A short time since, I applied to the President and Council of the Royal Society, for copies of the Greenwich Observations, which were necessary for an inquiry on which I was at that time engaged. Being naturally anxious to economize the small funds I can devote to science, the request appeared to me a reasonable one. It was, however, refused; and I was at the same time informed that the Observations could be purchased at the bookseller's. [This was a mistake; Mr. Murray has not copies of the Greenwich Observations prior to 1823.]  When I consider that practical astronomy has not occupied a very prominent place in my pursuits, I feel disposed, on that ground, to acquiesce in the propriety of the refusal. This excuse can, however, be of no avail for similar refusals to other gentlemen, who applied nearly at the same time with myself, and whose time had been successfully devoted to the cultivation of that science. [M. Bessel, at the wish of the Royal Academy of Berlin, projected a plan for making a very extensive map of the heavens. Too vast for any individual to attempt, it was proposed that a portion should be executed by the astronomers of various countries, and invitations to this effect were widely circulated. One only of the divisions of this map was applied for by any English astronomer; and, after completing the portion of the map assigned to him, he undertook another, which had remained unprovided for. This gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Hussey, was one of the rejected applicants for the Greenwich Observations.]

We weren’t allowed to stay in the house, but no one had anywhere else to go, so the police booked us all into a B&B on the other side of town. 

The place was very oldy-worldy in that quaint English way that always makes me feel faintly ill.  Still, the pillows were an absolute luxury compared to my lumpy, sweat-stained old potato sacks back at home.  We stayed there for a week, but it could have been ten times longer as far as I was concerned.  It was like a little holiday. 

The night we moved into the B&B, the whole gang piled into my room and we stayed up all night talking and watching TV.  Pet and Gogo stayed in their room across the hallway, but everyone else was there.  Razor arrived at 7.30 in the morning.  The police released him after having kept him awake all night with questioning.  Dunder and Foxy were crashed out on the carpet.  They’d brought their duvets downstairs, and it felt like a proper sleepover from back in the day. 

As it happens, it was an awfully fun night.  It sounds bad to say it – really awful – but we bonded, which can only be a good thing.  Sometimes good things come out of bad things … Is there a proverb that runs something along those lines?  There must be.  I can’t think of one, but there must be.  Not “good things come out of bad things,” because not all bad things have good consequences, but some good things.  To hell with it.  Let’s just say, “some good things come out of some bad things” and leave it at that. 

Me and Samantha – or “Samantha and I,” should I say – were still awake.  We’d been talking all night about anything and everything.  I don’t think we even mentioned Barry once, which makes me feel a little guilty.  I also felt a little guilty about sitting up talking with Samantha all night – she’s Razor’s girl after all.  It’s not like we did anything physical, but sometimes conversation can be the most intimate act of all.   

When Razor walked through the door, we were both so pleased to see him, we took it in turns to give him a hug.  He told us all about how the police had questioned him for hours about Barry’s murder, but they had to let him go because they didn’t have any evidence.  Apparently, they’d be in contact with everyone in due course to get their stories.  I made some remark about wondering who on earth would want to do something like that, but Razor got the wrong end of the stick and said I was accusing him.  I understood why he got angry – it had been a long night – but his shouting woke up Dunder and Foxy, which may have been just as well, because people had to get up and go to work. 

He stormed through to his allocated room, and Samantha followed him.  I thought it would be best to leave them to it.  

There was, however, another ground on which I had weakly anticipated a different result;--but those who occupy official situations, rendered remarkable by the illustrious names of their predecessors, are placed in no enviable station; and, if their own acquirements are confessedly insufficient to keep up the high authority of their office, they must submit to the mortifications of their false position. I am sure, therefore, that the President and officers of the Royal Society must have sympathized MOST DEEPLY with me, when they felt it their duty to propose that the Society over which Newton once presided, should refuse so trifling an assistance to the unworthy possessor of the chair he once filled.

The other good thing about that night was that I got to watch Foxy sleeping – another of those intimate moments.  Throughout my conversation with Samantha, I was picking up Foxy’s gentle puffs of air.  They were calming, like whale song.  I kept looking down at her body, curled up in the duvet, with her arse poking tantalisingly out the back. 

I slept with Foxy once, last year.  In the morning, I thought we might be boyfriend and girlfriend, but she started talking utter nonsense, accusing me of only doing it out of sympathy.  “Pity” she called it.  I said, “Foxy, I like you.  Really.  I don’t do pity – I’m really not a pleasant enough person.  I just follow my instincts.”  She said, OK, she believed me, but we couldn’t take it any further.  The whole thing was a mistake.  I believed that for a while, but I’ve been watching her recently, while she’s making a cup of coffee or watching TV.  I went in her room the other day while she was out.  I know it was a bad thing to do.  I just wanted to smell her.  I buried my face in the sheets.  I hope I’m not getting obsessed, or even worse, falling in love.  Maybe I just want to sleep with her again.  Maybe that’s all it is.   

Foxy, apparently, was nicknamed ironically.  She’s not a conventional beauty by any means, so kids in the playground being as they are – all fine when they’re on their own, but unimaginable horrors as a group – like a microcosm of society, I suppose – they called her Foxy as a cruel joke.  Or that’s what she says.  I suspect there’s more to it than that, because if the name was so hurtful to her, it doesn’t explain why she’s stuck with it, and introduces herself as Foxy to strangers.  Anyway, I love the name.  I think it’s highly appropriate too, because the woman has something otherworldly about her.  It shouldn’t work – it really shouldn’t work.  One of her eyes is higher up on her face than the other.  Everything is an odd size.  Her nose is twice the size it should be.  Even her butt-cheeks are asymmetrical. 

I can also report from exquisite personal experience that Foxy’s natural hair is purest ginger, in contrast to the jet-black dye that smothers her scalp.  If I were feeling cynical, I might suggest that it’s that very principle kick-started the whole goth movement (or whatever they’re calling it these days) – pale-faced ginger kids dying their hair to avoid the teasing.  With some people, it’s disastrous, but with Foxy it works.  She should look like a witch – no offence to Foxy, or to witches.  I think she’s beautiful.

In reply to my application to the President and Council, to be allowed a copy of the Greenwich Observations, I was informed that, "The number of copies placed by government at the disposal of the Royal Society, was insufficient to supply the demands made on them by various learned bodies in Europe; and, consequently, they were unable, however great their inclination, to satisfy the wishes of individual applicants."

According to Razor, the police believe there is no doubt about the violent nature of Barry’s death.  He was strangled and stabbed.  It’s obvious to me that no one in this house would ever do anything like that.  I can only assume it was a break in.  Whoever killed him obviously wanted to make sure they made a proper job of it.  In a way, you could say they killed him twice.  The strange thing is, the weapons they used were already in the house – they didn’t bring their own.  They stabbed him with a kitchen knife, and they strangled him – this is the strange part … they strangled him with a pair of socks.  A pair of socks, for heaven’s sake.  How awful is that?  Really – how awful? 

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