Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

53. 1968

1968

Everyone in Hemston had their own view about what happened that night: How the young farmer lost his life. Some thought Frank Johnson had finally flipped and shot his brother after an argument. God knows, they said, pausing to chat as they collected their milk and papers from the village shop, he’d had more put upon him in the last few years than any man could be reasonably expected to take.

The first story, broken the next morning by the Daily Express , had caused shock waves in the village with its stark headline: “Novelist’s Love Tryst Ends in Death.”

To think, people said, putting the kettle on for another Nescafé, lingering over their Rice Krispies and Weetabix, their hot buttered toast, something so menacing had happened right on their doorstep. It was more lurid and shocking than one of Gabriel Wolfe’s novels.

Back then, only the sparest facts were known. Frank Johnson had been arrested for the murder of his brother, Jimmy. Jimmy, known to be unstable, had gone on a ten-hour drinking spree and threatened to kill Beth Johnson’s lover, Gabriel. How it ended up that Jimmy was the one who got shot, was anyone’s guess.

And guess was what the villagers most liked to do.

As the weeks passed, more details emerged. Frank Johnson pleaded not guilty to the dual charges of murder or manslaughter and was released on bail while he awaited trial. He and his wife kept to themselves in the intervening months, never seen in the village, although Frank could be spied on his tractor from time to time. Stories kept appearing in the press. Every paper, be it broadsheet or tabloid, wanted a piece of Gabriel Wolfe’s fall from grace. A former pupil at the Immaculate Conception Convent told The Daily Telegraph about the licentious love affair which began when Gabriel and Beth were teenagers. The Mirror ran a piece about their open-air “sexploits” alongside a photograph of the lake at Meadowlands. Neither Beth Johnson nor Gabriel Wolfe was available for comment.

As the date for the murder trial drew closer, the villagers were buzzing with excitement. It would be at the Central Criminal Court, in London, and many of them planned to go along and watch. Frank Johnson in the dock, Gabriel Wolfe called to testify as a witness; it was their very own Hemston soap opera.

Days before the trial was due to begin came a further shock.

Frank Johnson had broken his bail conditions and was now awaiting trial in Wandsworth Prison.