Transcript
NOTE: Square Peg is intended to be heard, not read. If possible, please listen to the audio, which relays feeling and tone not captured by the transcripts.
ROB: His claim against the MoD, it goes back to like, 1992.
MARIE: Wouldn't you move on? After such a long time, like thinking, “Okay, I'm not going to get this just move on and do something else.” If you can't change something, then don't put too much effort and then move on and do something else.
ROB: But he thinks he can change it, he thinks he--
MARIE: Yeah, “can't” doesn't exist for him! [laughter] There's no such thing as “can't”!
ROB (laughing): Frank should have been a motivational speaker. You know one who goes out, gets out in front of like a big crowd: “Can you put a square peg in a round hole? They say it can't be done!”
[music]
ROB COLLINS (narration): This is Square Peg. I’m Rob Collins. Part 4: Shaggy Dog.
Monday, October 30th, 2017. I’m near the end of my trip, and I don’t have the story I want—or need, really. Frank makes a lot of accusations against his brother, John. I can’t just put those out there without giving John a chance to respond. I may be an amateur reporter, but even I know that. Yes, I sent John a letter—two actually, I followed up—and he hasn’t responded, but that’s not enough. And besides the journalistic ethics, it’s just not satisfying.
But Frank doesn’t want me to try to speak to John. He fears that if I confront John, something bad might happen. Frank’s facing some serious health issues and says he can’t handle the additional stress. And of course, I don’t want to hurt Frank. The whole point was to help him.
But then Frank surprised me by expressing some ambivalence about this. Or at least, I inferred some ambivalence. When asked if he had regrets about his family relationships, Frank said:
FRANK: No, fate‘s looked after my life. Why should I? Ask them that question.
Ask them that question. And then Frank said that deep down he still somehow wanted to reconcile with this brother of his, the one who’s been so terrible to him all of his life.
FRANK: I think if John Carver had the bloody guts to come and confront me now, after what he's done to me, I have always been there ready to welcome a brother, which I've never had.
Now, mind you, I didn’t then say to Frank, “OK so let me go talk to John!” Maybe I should have, but I’m pretty sure he still would have objected.
I really have no idea what to do. So I’m happy that Marie was able to come down to Scunthorpe again, joining me for my last couple of days here. Marie, you might remember, is French but studying at the University of York. She really wanted to meet Frank and help with this project.
Marie was supposed to arrive this morning, but she took a wrong train connection and didn’t get here till around 2. So we met Frank and Kiki for a late lunch, which was nice. Marie and Kiki seemed to bond, as French was their first language.
MARIE: So I got to talk French with Kiki and she was telling me it was just about his family asked question about her, and then what surprised me is that--and I said, “Did you meet anyone else from Frank's family?” and she said, “No, I never met his brother or his other sister. I know he has a son and his son has two children, two grandchildren, and Frank said that he never wants to meet his grandchildren.” And then, this is when we switched back to English and we went back to your conversation where Frank was talking.
ROB: Well, I didn't know that Frank had any grandchildren.
MARIE: Yeah, me neither. Two grandsons.
ROB: And he doesn't want to meet them?
MARIE: That's what she said, she said, he doesn't want to meet them.
ROB: That's so sad. I mean--
MARIE: So it must be because of his relationship with his own son that he doesn't want to meet his grandchildren, because--
ROB: What does that say about Frank?
MARIE: Exactly.
ROB: Again, this doesn't surprise me about Frank to hear that about grandchildren, because he's such a-- stubborn is not even near strong enough word— he's not going to be the one. So, if that was me, or I think any normal person, and if you have a strained relationship with a child, but you know that child, your child, has children, you have grandchildren, wouldn't you do everything possible?
MARIE: Yeah, to try to make it up, and, I don't know--
ROB: All the talks I've had with Frank, he never once mentioned to me having grandchildren.
[music]
After the late lunch, we said our goodbyes to Frank and Kiki. I’m leaving Scunthorpe tomorrow, and I don’t know when, or if, I’ll see them again.
Marie thinks we should go and try to see John now.
ROB: Although the time change the time just fell back an hour the other night and so now it's getting dark earlier. So it's now-- I don't know what time it is.
MARIE: It's 4:20.
ROB: 4:20, but it feels like 5:20. We both feel like they were so-- all these hugs as we're leaving, I just can't in good conscience-- Let's go straight to John now after all of that, you know? I don't know what to do.
MARIE: I feel some kind of despair in your eyes.
ROB: It's not despair, I'm not despairing I'm just, the day— [sighs]
MARIE: I know.
[music]
MARIE: I think we should go now.
ROB: It's getting dark.
MARIE: It's not that dark if we go now, like right now. I know we care about Frank, I know we do, but I feel like we need--
ROB: What about Rose?
We’d also talked about maybe trying to see Frank’s sister-in-law, Rose Carver. She was married to Frank’s younger brother, Eric, who died in 2005. We were told that Rose ran the dry cleaners in town.
MARIE: We can do both! Let's start with Rose.
ROB: At least we go to Rose we're going to a business, we're not going into someone's home at 4:30 in the afternoon.
MARIE: 4:30 is not that late.
ROB: I know but just to go an old person's home and knocking on the door without even calling first.
If it sounds like I’m chickening out here slightly, it’s because I am.
MARIE: What do you have to lose? You're leaving tomorrow! [laughter] There's nothing to lose.
ROB: Let's go talk to Rose, and see if that's even the right place.
[sound of door chime]
ROB: Is this? Down at Carver's Fish and Chip Shop, someone told us that the woman who used to--
CLERK: Own that, she owns this now.
ROB: Oh does she?
CLERK: Yes, Rose Carver.
ROB: Rose Carver.
CLERK: Yes.
ROB: Is she available to talk? Is she here now?
CLERK: Oh no she's not. I can take your telephone number and your name.
ROB: Sure, I can give you my card actually.
CLERK: Yeah and I'll get her to call you back.
ROB: That'd be great.
I left one of my new business cards for Rose, the ones with my virtual UK phone number. Then Marie and I got some dinner and some sleep. The next day was October 31st. We had one last day in Scunthorpe. I couldn’t leave without at least trying.
ROB: All right, it is Tuesday morning, Halloween, Marie and I are sitting in a car outside of what we're pretty sure is John's house, it's raining and we're going to knock on the door. Anything to say Marie?
MARIE: It's exciting.
ROB: It's exciting.
We’re in what I think is one of Scunthorpe’s more upscale neighborhoods. The houses are detached, single story, not huge, but they look new and well kept. There’s a brick driveway that leads past the house to a detached garage behind it.
I feel like I know everything and nothing about the person who hopefully lives in this house. I have a picture of him in my mind from that menacing photo that Ana, my researcher, found online recently, but everything else I know comes from Frank.
[car door opening and closing, raindrops on umbrella, footsteps]
ROB: Right here, wouldn’t that be the front door?
MARIE: The garage is open?
ROB: It’s dark inside, no lights on.
MARIE: Yeah but the garage is opened.
ROB: Should we walk back to the garage?
[footsteps]
ROB: That’s not him.
I said, “That’s not him.” I said that because we see an older man in the garage, but it isn’t the man in the photo I got from Ana. That man was large, red-faced, and disheveled. This man we’re approaching is slight and neat. He wears rimless glasses, a plaid shirt and jeans, well put together. He looks to be polishing the car in the garage, a late model BMW convertible.
ROB: Excuse me, sir? Good morning, is this the Carver residence?
JOHN: Yes.
ROB: I’m looking for Mr. John Carver, is that you sir?
JOHN: Yes.
ROB: My name is Rob Collins, I sent you a letter about a project I’m working on for the radio, did you receive my letter?
JOHN (in distance): Yes I did, but we don’t want anything to do with it really.
He said that he received my letter, but didn’t want anything to do with it.
ROB: I understand and part of why-- Frank Carver doesn't know, he doesn't want me to be contacting you, but he's said things to me that I feel I must, you know, verify and just give you an opportunity to discuss, but I know it's sensitive and I don't want to be a—
OK, from this point on I can’t use most of the audio of John speaking. We were standing about 10 feet away from him, and he’s pretty soft-spoken. Unfortunately you can’t really hear him.
But I didn’t even mean to record a conversation this way. I was expecting to be told to fuck off and have a door slammed in my face.
ROB: And I understand and part of my dilemma is— He contacted me over in the states, and he's sent me a copy of this book that he's doing, which he talks about his life, and so-- but I've tried to asked other people and it’s just been difficult to find out if what he's saying is true.
In response to this, John says that a lot of it isn’t true.
ROB: It's not. Would you be willing to—it could be off the record—anything to—
He declines, saying again that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. He adds that he’s sorry. But he doesn’t ask us to leave.
ROB: No I understand. I'd be happy to pay you for your time—-
I know journalists aren’t supposed to do that, pay people, but I was desperate. Again though, he said no. He said that things had happened in the past, but he just didn’t want anything to do with it. He didn’t want anything to do with him--Frank, that is.
ROB: No, I understand that. The things that he's said about what you've done— He just says to me he feels like you've ruined his life and it doesn't seem— Seeing you now, you seem like a very nice person and that's why I'm trying to reconcile what he's said with—
In response to this, John said, “He’s got his problems.”
ROB: Yes, and I'm trying to understand that. I know you don't want to talk and I'll leave you alone but I'm just trying to understand.
John then said that he understood that, what I was doing. He said it was nothing personal. He said that Frank had done other things like this, and that the whole thing was sad.
ROB: That's what I'm trying to understand. It does seem like it's sad but, it does seem very sad, but yet he seems like someone who's had a hard life and—-
John said that was Frank’s own doing.
ROB: So what happened with his eye? He blames you for what happened with his eye.
John said that was a tragic accident. He said he wasn’t the sort of person to do that on purpose. And I think I believe him.
ROB: You seem like such a nice man and this is-- He's built you up in my mind as being this monster.
MARIE: Mean character.
ROB: And you seem like a very nice man.
John said that it’s been a nightmare.
ROB: And he really didn't want me to speak to you. I told him I sent you the letter and he got very upset that I had done that. I said, “Well I feel like I need to give you an opportunity.” He said, “No, no, no.” He acted like if I did that, that you would do something to him.
MARIE: He describes you as someone who is dangerous.
JOHN: Me?
This is the only point that John speaks up somewhat.
MARIE: He describes you as someone who is dangerous.
JOHN: Me?
That’s genuine surprise in his voice, and it seems fitting, because this does not at all seem like a dangerous person. I don’t know who the scary guy in that photo that Ana found is. It could have been an incorrect caption, but I didn’t verify it. I just accepted that the man in that photo was John because he looked like the bully who Frank described.
MARIE: He describes you as someone who is dangerous.
JOHN: Me?
MARIE: Yeah. that's why we were-- You don't seem like dangerous at all.
ROB: No. No!
MARIE: It's crazy.
Has this whole thing been one elaborate shaggy dog story?
[music cue]
ROB: All right, so Marie and I are sitting in the car outside of a restaurant near John’s house. We've just driven across the street from where he lives to reflect on what’s just happened. Wow. Wow. It’s tough because John did not deny being responsible for Frank's missing eye, but he said it was a tragic accident, which I believe him. You could tell that John to this day, that happened over 50 years ago, feels very bad about it.
MARIE: Yeah.
In the immediate aftermath of meeting John, my head was spinning. If John wasn’t the dangerous one, did that mean Frank was? If so, what about Kiki? Should we tell her anything?
Part of my reaction had to do with that stupid photo, the one of that menacing man that we found online and thought was John. Of course, Frank had nothing to do with that. It was totally my mistake. But it played into my initial sense of things being all topsy turvy. By the way, I later learned that the man in that photo was Ken Carver, of Liverpool. No relation. Ken, I’m sorry for the less than savory words I used before to describe you.
Looking back, it’s clear to me that I was never really trying to be anything like a real journalist, or a good one. I wanted John to be the scary guy who’d tell me to fuck off. I wanted it all to be true. Because something about Frank compelled me. To want to help him, yes, and maybe be the hero, but also because I had the sense that there was a story here that I needed to tell. And I don’t think I was wrong about that. I just didn’t yet know what that story really was. But while sitting in the car with Marie after meeting John, I at least started to go in the right direction.
ROB: So we ended up talking to John for over an hour. He joked about that at the end, that he certainly did well in saying he wasn’t going to say anything. Remember that?
MARIE: I do remember.
ROB: Yeah, and what was it like by the end?
MARIE: We were all very friendly, I guess he was happy he talked to us and he wished us all good things for the rest of the podcast and--
ROB: I think he was a little happy to see us go, but yeah, he was very polite. So let’s go over what else we’ve learned from that long conversation. I told John a little bit about Frank’s situation now, that he had a companion--
MARIE: He said that was good to him, he didn’t want to worst thing to happen to Frank, he wasn’t--
ROB: Yeah, he didn’t wish Frank ill. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, he indicated that Frank had caused a lot of trouble for him through the years, but he never retaliated because of what happened. And when he said “what happened,” he was referring to the tragic accident.
MARIE: Yeah. But after the thing with the police a few years ago, that was the last straw. He said after that, he was done with Frank.
I had begun to wonder if the whole thing with Detective Mandy was exaggerated, but apparently not. It just feels a whole lot different now. All of Frank’s stories do.
MARIE: And John said that it’s been terrible. The whole time, it’s been terrible for him and his wife, for his whole family. He said that when they were in their forties Frank would wait for him at the bus stop with a knife, and threaten to stab him. He was waiting for him the whole day at the bus stop. John’s wife was very worried.
ROB: Yeah, but through all of this, John carried this guilt over the accident, and so that no matter what Frank put him through, John just kind of put up with it, because he felt guilty. And Franks says, John never tried to help me, John never did this. But John said that he did. He told us a story that in the late 1980s, after Frank got back from Africa, that Frank came to John, saying he wanted to go to Australia to work, do you remember this?
MARIE: Yeah, I do.
ROB: And he said he needed 2000 pounds to get to Australia, and John said that he gave Frank the 2000 pounds. But then, we’re having that conversation, but this woman walks over from the house, who we later learned was John’s daughter, Julie.
MARIE: Yes, John’s daughter. This is the daughter who Frank said came up to him in the street and said, “Are you trying to kill my father?”
ROB: So I guess she was in the house, and saw all of us standing outside by the garage. And she came up. And so Marie, describe Julie.
MARIE: She was calm, maybe worried about her father, but she was nice. She had blond hair, very short. And she did not feel sorry for Frank at all, and she used to be scared of him.
ROB: Yeah, there was definitely no love lost between Julie and Frank. I remember she said Frank was just a guy who wanted free handouts. But then, do you remember, Julie said that her son, Julie’s son, only had one eye, but it doesn’t stop him from doing anything. Which was bizarre, she was like, my son only has one eye, and it didn’t stop him from doing anything. Which I’m like, what? Your son only has one eye? Do you remember this?
MARIE: It’s such a, like, this family is cursed or something? This is so strange.
ROB: She didn’t say how her son lost his eye, or anything.
MARIE: No. It would have been interesting to know that.
My God, it was like a Greek tragedy. John was somehow involved in his brother losing an eye, and then many years later John’s grandson loses an eye?
ROB: And then I remember John said that Frank could have done really well in his life. He said Frank was tenacious and bright. But he’s got this self-destruct mode in him.
MARIE: Yeah. John found the whole thing very, very tragic.
ROB: Yeah. But I came away thinking that the tragic figure in this whole story might not be Frank.
MARIE: Yeah, it’s John.
[music cue]
ROB: I mean, Frank’s tragic too, he lost the eye, was bullied and abused, but John. John was responsible for a freak accident 53 years ago—I mean I’m not yet 100% clear about how exactly that accident happened. But I think it must have been an accident at least in the sense that John clearly did not intend for Frank to lose his eye.
MARIE: And he’s been dealing with the consequences of this incident his whole life.
ROB: Yeah.
[car sound]
I’m relieved to be driving away from Scunthorpe, toward Manchester and then home. I feel grateful that I don’t have to see Frank again. I don’t know what I’d say. I don’t know what to think. Yes, my gut reaction is to believe John, especially considering how Frank didn’t want me talking to him. But was that fair? Sure, John seems kind and gentle now, but I knew from Bill Baynham, Frank’s Army roommate, that John wasn’t always like that. Have I gone from being played by Frank to being played by John?
I check into the hotel and have dinner at the restaurant. I honestly just want to have a few drinks and not think about it for a while. But as I’m settling in, I get a phone call from Rose Carver, Frank and John’s sister-in-law. I’d left my business card at her dry cleaners the night before.
Well, actually Rose tried to call me earlier in the day, but there was a problem, caused by me, and it’s kind of an embarrassing story.
That’s after the break.
[break]
I’m at dinner in Manchester, flying home early the next morning. I was hoping to forget about the Carvers for a little while, but I’m snapped out of that by a phone call from Rose Carver. Apparently, she’d tried to call me earlier in the day. I had received this strange email a couple of hours earlier:
“Good afternoon Rob my name is Rosemary Carver I believe you have been trying to contact me, I rang the telephone number you left with my staff and it was a over 18 dating site. Why have you been trying to contact me. Kind Regards, Rosie”
I had no idea what she was talking about with the over 18 dating site. But then I had a missed call and got this voice message:
ROSE: Hi, is that Rob Collins? It's Rosemary Carver here, I have sent you an email. To be honest with you your business card has got a three wrong on it so it's actually taking through to a dating site. If you'd like to have a look at the email and just come back to me. I won't leave my phone number at the moment because I don't really know who I'm speaking to. Okay then Rob, thank you, bye.
Rose said that my business card had a 3 wrong in it. These were the business cards I had made especially for this trip. I got a virtual UK phone number through Skype that would ring through to my US mobile. That way people in the UK could call me more easily. But on these business cards I had apparently made a typo and added an extra “3”, which gave too many numbers, but when you dialed the number on my card from the UK you reached:
[strange music]
RECORDING: This is Telephon, the best place to chat on the phone, with one to one chat, bulletin boards, and voicemail dating, we’ve got it all. Remember, all calls may be recorded, and you must be over 18…
Sorry, Rose. It seems my life is cursed by typos. Fortunately I gave out very few of those cards. Anyway, Rose and I finally speak on the phone. I tell her what had happened that morning, about meeting John, that I was expecting a monster but found this very decent seeming man.
ROSE: John is a very family, caring man.
She said that John had always felt guilty about the accident.
ROSE: John had so much hurt over it for many, many years.
ROB: That is definitely the sense that I got and as I said in the email, after speaking with John I felt very bad for him that he has this guilt over this accident, but yet his brother has spent the rest of his life holding it over him. Does that make sense?
ROSE: Oh yeah, Fran would do so many terrible things, it was always related to his eye. He would just do some terrible things.
[sighs] Yeah, it’s just one other person who’s clearly on John’s side, but it reinforces my initial gut reaction, that John was telling the truth.
Rose then put me in touch by email with Frank’s ex-wife, Gloria. Well, by mistake. Sort of poetically just considering how I met Frank, but Rose CC’d when she meant to BCC. Gloria wasn’t comfortable speaking on the phone and she didn’t want Frank to know we were communicating, but she also confirmed the gist of what Rose and John said.
And then to top it off, John agreed to speak with me again. I wrote him another letter when I got home requesting a follow-up, and a week or so later, John called me.
First he told me that he’d called the number on my business card—
RECORDING [weird music]: This is Telephon, the best place to chat on the phone…
I am such an idiot. It’s kind of amazing that he would figure out the typo and then still reach me. But I start by asking John for specifics about what happened with Frank’s eye. I still couldn’t quite get my head around how you could accidentally break a glass on someone’s face.
ROB: But he said it was a terrible accident at the time.
JOHN: That's right.
ROB: At the time, that's what he said happened. He says now that at the time he was trying to protect you. He didn't want you to be-- To get in trouble because he says your father said that you would take care of him later. So he says now that that was a lie. What actually happened was that you attacked him and you intentionally hit him with the glass, which—
JOHN: Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
ROB: It sounds like you weren't attempting to stab him with the glass. You were--
JOHN: No. I mean it's a long time ago and I explained to the police at the time. It's something like 45-50 years ago. To remember things precisely, you really can’t. You've got a general thing of what happened. Things like this that's happened you remember why or what-fors, but the actual precise detail, I mean I can't even remember the exact position of furniture, things in our room at that time, now.
ROB: But you don't remember the details of that moment?
JOHN: I wouldn't make exact detail because it 'd be wrong to do that because you can't remember exact details. Nor can he. It's just a thing that happened. We know what happened, we know why it happened and how it happened and that was it, really.
I ask him about the police investigation that happened in 2011. I was never able to get in touch with Detective Mandy, but John said they dropped the case pretty quickly. And not for the reason Frank believed, or said he believed. Frank said their sister testified that Frank was drunk and just fell onto the glass. And who knows, maybe it got back to Frank that way. But John said that their sister simply confirmed that it was an accident.
JOHN: After that episode that's when I said that is it, I do not want to be involved in anything to do with him again. Because we've had many many years of worry, heartache, it's been terrible. It's enough.
We talk about how Frank told me that John might hurt him.
JOHN: No, we've never given him any stress. I've never responded to all the actions and there's been a lot of actions that he’s waived upon us, I've never responded to it because of what happened. And I couldn't allow myself to let anything else happen like that. So I just took it all.
I’ve since heard from some other members of the family who didn’t want to go on the record for various reasons, but they further confirmed this pattern in Frank and John’s relationship.
Oh, and I learned something else, though not from John, which is interesting, that he didn’t mention it. Remember how Frank has two grandsons he’s never met because he’s estranged from his son and ex-wife? Well, Frank doesn’t know this, but John has a relationship with these grandsons Frank has never met. John is their godfather.
Actually I’m not clear as to whether he’s godfather to one or both of them, but I guess it doesn’t matter. He’s in their lives. These boys know John, but not their own grandfather. It’s Frank’s fault of course, but man. It seems like the ultimate insult, but I’m sure that wasn’t John’s intention. It was probably hard for John in a way to assume that role. Because John said that he kept trying to have a good relationship with Frank—until 2011.
JOHN: But after the police thing, then that's when I said that is it, no more.
ROB: In his version you have never apologized for what happened with his eye and you've just refused to help him time and time again. All he wants to know is why, why have you ruined his life which--
JOHN: The apology thing, when that actually happened, I cried for a week, I was absolutely heart-broken. By his bedside I was telling him how sorry, well it was an accident and all this, we went through it all, we've been through all that. But how many times do you have to say sorry? Yeah, I bought him some machinery for—he was going to London with eye problems, he said he was going blind in his good eye and he needed this machinery to help him train his eye to become stronger, so I bought him that. There are several other little things that I've gone along with, but I don't know, you think you’re maybe getting okay with him then suddenly it's all been an ulterior motive there. He always comes out with the knives afterwards, and that's been the story of our lives really.
Oh, Frank.
[music]
Square Peg is a LUSID48 production. It was written and produced by Ashley Hall and me. Visit our website, squarepegpodcast.com, to learn more.