The British Sense of Crime

Once at a family barbecue -
in my brother’s back garden, it was,
back when he lived just down the road -
the conversation turned
to a terrible murder in the news.

A man had killed his girlfriend’s granddaughter.
Strangled her. She’d turned him down, it appeared,
and so to keep the secret of
his paedophilic bent
he ended everything she was.
Poor girl was only 12.

You’d think her mother, finding out,
would be in pain enough,
yet gossipmongers came about
and chucked up all that British stuff:
“Why was the youngster’s grandmother
enjoined to such a man,
decades her junior?”
That was a popular one, brought up by
my grandmother, much more respectable
than those city-dwelling people.

As if the murder was an act
of simple bad manners,
resulting from poor hygiene of
social acceptability. Standards
of what’s right and wrong
when choosing how to show yourself
to people down the shops and pub.

The dirty heart of murder can
be made to stop beating,
the hidden wisdom seems to say,
‘long as you mind your Ps and Qs
and keep your laundry tucked away.