Where There is Evil (7 page)

For many years, I accepted that my father’s absence had been due to mental illness – which then carried such a stigma it could not be discussed.

In all families there are unspoken agreements about what may and may not be discussed. People live with the worry that in a moment of unguarded confidence, a dreadful secret
might be disclosed that could never be recanted, and that might shatter the family.

In 1957, children were kept in ignorance of sexual matters and few of us had effective strategies to deal with flashers, or someone touching us inappropriately on the bus or at the pictures.
Then people avoided discussing sex with their children, through embarrassment. Facts had to be gleaned from playground pals, who were mines of misinformation. I was so naïve about the monthly
cycle that when my best friend at primary, Carol Fairley, told me with a giggle one day that she had a period, I said in all innocence: ‘I’ve got one too – bet mine’s better
than yours! I’ve made a great pattern.’

Her shocked face puzzled me till it dawned on her that I had thought she’d said ‘peerie’. (We were very proud of these small wooden toys which we spun on the ground using a
special whipping cord. They would birl for ages, depending on the skill of the player, and I had discovered from some older girls the trick of colouring circular bands of rainbow chalk on the
surface, so that a really good shot produced a wonderful, mesmerizing kaleidoscopic blur of vivid hues.) Then she dissolved into giggles, until she realized she had a chance to show off her
superior knowledge of what I could shortly expect to happen to me each month.

Although my father made a brief reappearance shortly after my eighth birthday, on 7 January 1957, I was told by my mother that he would be going away again. She spoke in tones
of misery, so I knew that I would not see him for a long time. This filled me with a mixture of relief and shame that I could not have explained to anyone, even if I could have found someone
willing to listen.

When he disappeared again, it was spring, and by that time the search for Moira was in full swing.

What do I recall of the actual weekend of her disappearance? When my mother and I discussed it, many years later, our memories dovetailed together in the jigsaw of events. It had been a landmark
for us both, and for quite different reasons.

My mother said that my father had had an early rise that day, to take the miners to the Annathill colliery, then had been home mid-morning before going out after lunch to do a two until ten
shift. She told me that she could recall that weekend in some detail because her parents had had a visitor from Australia. Grandpa Frew’s sister, Auntie Cis, who had emigrated years before,
had come for a reunion. A family gathering was held on Saturday evening at Ashgrove to celebrate her arrival, and my mother was annoyed that my father had not arranged for someone to swap with him,
particularly when he had already done an early-morning shift. She organized us to attend the party, then had to call it off anyway; like many others in the town, I had succumbed to Asian flu, which
was sweeping Scotland.

It was the first time I had ever been ill with a high fever, and I remember it well. It was not until Sunday, on cotton-wool legs, that I went unsteadily to my grandmother’s, having been
off school all week. I was delighted to be given pretty handkerchiefs embroidered with kangaroos, from the Australian guest of honour. My mother told them I’d been put straight to bed with
the younger ones, the night before, in the recess bed in the wall. At ten o’clock, she had debated whether to send for the doctor as my temperature was sky high, and she kept looking for my
father parking his car in our yard.

There was no sign of him, but she found that once she had sponged me with a flannel and water I was a bit better. Worried by his non-appearance when the snow had been so bad earlier, she decided
not to go to bed but to keep an eye on me while she made some vegetable soup for the Sunday.

It was nearly midnight before my father’s car drew up outside in the yard, and he let himself in. She told him about me and reminded him to go next day to say hello to her aunt. Then she
offered him some soup. He said he was tired, and she noticed he did look exhausted, but the weather had caused mayhem.

On Sunday, my father got up early and took the sandwiches she had wrapped in the waxed paper she saved from the loaves of bread we got at the Co-op. He went to work, saying he’d be back
mid-afternoon. I arose looking much better, but my mother decided against going to church. After lunch, she thought I was well enough to go to Coat’s Sunday School, five minutes from our
home, and she sent me off with Norman. As it was after three, she expected to see my father, but again he was delayed and she thought he must have gone to see Aunt Cis. When the door opened at
last, it wasn’t my father but her sister-in-law, my aunt Betty, who, like Aunt Margaret, stayed in Alexander Street just over the hill. She was breathless with hurrying, and frozen, her legs
mottled with purple and blue from the cold.

‘You’ve no idea what’s going on at our place!’ She threw herself on the couch and told my mother that men were combing the streets looking for a child, who had vanished
the day before. ‘There’s men everywhere, all checking our closes and coal cellars, and even the bins. They don’t have any idea what’s happened to this wee lassie at all.
Isn’t it terrible?’

My mother agreed. ‘Who is it?’

‘Someone told me it’s one of Andra Anderson’s lassies, the middle one,’ her sister-in-law announced, self-importantly. ‘Moira, I think she’s called, but I
could be wrong. He works in the creamery beside me at the Red Bridge. I hear he’s worried out of his mind, poor man. If she’s run off after an argument, and caused all this fuss with
the polis getting involved, then I bet he’ll kill her when he gets hold of the wee besom.’

When we kids returned, it was to find them tutting in disapproval over their tea. My mother asked me if I knew the missing girl. I said I knew her wee sister, Marjorie.

‘Och, she’s bound to turn up,’ my aunt Betty rolled her eyes heavenward, ‘and I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes when she does. She’ll be for it!’

‘No, no, it’s her folks I feel heart sorry for,’ my mother murmured. ‘They’ll forgive her anything, as long as she’s all right – you know what
it’s like when kids get you up to high doh like that. She’s probably shut in somewhere, from playing hide ’n’ seek. She’ll probably have just curled up and gone to
sleep. You’re right, she’ll show up, large as life, and wonder what all the fuss was about.’

But the days of searching turned into weeks. Aunt Cis left us, and though we never again met, her diary of the visit still exists with these events meticulously noted.

My father went off the scene again, the first of many prolonged absences, and our lives settled into a hardworking, yet uneventful routine without him, but as my mother took on the role of a
single parent I was given responsibility for things that today I would not dream of asking my young daughter to do.

As well as helping to parent my brothers, I went cleaning with my mother, at Falconer and Prentice’s, the quantity surveyors’ offices, in nearby Church Street, opposite the side door
of Woolworths. This made up part of the wages we sorely missed from my dad’s income. In those days, there was no income support or any single-parent benefit. On some occasions I went at dusk
to these offices on my own to clean them though I was not yet ten years old.

I thought the lives of my friends uneventful compared to mine. They went home from school to meals laid on by mothers who did not have to go out to work – then, the norm was for women to
be at home. I do not recall any of my pals doing char work as I did. Yet while my mother treated me in some ways as an adult and confidante, she also protected me from what she saw as information
that would taint me.

On one horrifying occasion I was attacked and assaulted in Dunbeth Road. My aunt Margaret was ill and my mother sent me to her house with some fish one evening. I trotted off, to walk a
five-minute journey, one year on from Moira’s disappearance. Although it was dark, it was not late, just around teatime. Near the high school, a young man suddenly leaped out at me. I was
knocked off my feet and I landed on my back. My hood slid down over my eyes and I could not get a good look at him, but I was overcome by two things: a horrible smell of Woodbines, and an
excruciating pain after his hand shot under my skirt. I was gasping for air, while he muttered obscenities, and already I could feel a giant bump forming on the back of my skull where it had hit
the ground. A sense of outrage shot through me and I let out a yell. A light came on in the porch of a big house, and the man ran off, but not before aiming a savage kick at me.

Despite the noise, no one appeared. Shakily, I got to my feet and picked up my battered parcel. My uncle opened his door to a small, dishevelled girl, scraped and bruised, with blood tricking
down over one knee-high school stocking. It was a good half-hour before they could calm me down with the obligatory cup of tea.

‘You’ll be OK, Sandra,’ my aunt murmured soothingly, after I had blurted out what had happened. ‘Your uncle Archie will walk back with you and make sure he isn’t
still about, and he’ll speak to your mum.’

We duly went home together, passing the police station, and my uncle and mother spoke in whispers as I got ready for bed. I waited for my mother to ask me what had happened. Instead, she gave me
a cuddle, a hot-water bottle, and reminded me to say my prayers. She assured me that we would talk about everything later, when I felt better, then gave me a quick goodnight kiss. Adult voices
droned as I drifted into sleep.

I was sent to school the next day as if nothing untoward had occurred. I was too humiliated to mention it to any of my chums, and my mother did not discuss it with me. What should have been
reported by her as an indecent assault on a child was swept under the carpet, as if by not confronting it my mother could convince herself that her child remained untouched.

When my father returned from his long absence, his attitude towards me had taken a turn for the worse. While he had been gone I had grown, and I had my tenth birthday just after he reappeared. I
withdrew again and, though I was not a naughty child, the beatings started, ostensibly ‘to knock the cheek’ out of me. My mother kept us as separate as possible. As she had gathered
some self-esteem from the way she had coped during his absence, she asserted herself more than she had before and several times she intervened when he beat me black and blue.

‘They may have beaten you up where you were,’ she yelled at him once, in front of me, ‘but don’t you lift a finger to my weans without good reason!’

I noticed the antagonistic looks that passed between them with satisfaction.

‘Keep out of his way, Sandra! Don’t annoy him or give him cheek,’ she hissed at me, and mostly I complied with this, but she could not always be around. I wouldn’t answer
my father when he used endearments, I refused to kiss him goodnight, and I ignored his rules in preference to my mother’s, which we had got used to during his absence. I would even curl my
lip in contempt at him and not bother to disguise it, which caused dreadful ructions.

One beating he gave me was so bad that I ran away, my lip split from a blow which, uncharacteristically, had been delivered to my face, where others might notice it. I wandered for hours, left
Dunbeth Park when the gate was locked at sunset, and trailed around the streets till dawn found me almost back home, sitting on the stone steps of the town hall. I must have nodded off, for the
next thing I remember is a kindly policeman with a torch picking me up and carrying me round the corner to the station. There he examined my face, made me a cup of Cadbury’s hot chocolate and
asked what ailed me.

I dissolved into tears. ‘My dad’s a great big bully, an’ he thumps me for nuthin’.’ I heard myself get the words out, before a huge wave of guilt swept over me.
This was an overwhelming betrayal, although I owed my dad no favours. But what of my mother? Hadn’t she enough to cope with, without me giving her extra trouble? She must be worried sick
about me. ‘Maybe I deserved it. I’ll have to go back, I s’pose,’ I added flatly, looking at the floor. ‘They’ll be angry, though.’

He regarded me sympathetically, and handed me a chocolate biscuit, a big treat. I was torn between wanting to stay in front of his one-bar electric fire, and heading for home. I gave him my name
and address, as requested, and he scrawled them in his wee notebook, rather than in the gigantic ledger on the surface of the mahogany counter. I wriggled down reluctantly from the chair.

‘But you’re just round the corner!’ He smiled at me. ‘I’ll walk you round, will I?’

He must have seen how my face changed as my father, dressed immaculately in his uniform, came to our back door. Of my mother, there was no sign, but my father stood there, a smirk on his face
that I couldn’t understand. Smiles passed between him and the friendly policeman as I hovered uncertainly on the step.

‘Think we have some lost property here.’ The young cop spoke in amiable tones.

‘You’ve saved me the bother of coming to the station,’ said my parent affably, placing a hand on my shoulder that told me my nocturnal adventure was over. ‘In you come,
young lady, you’ve had your mum up the pole with worry.’

‘Bit of a tiff, then?’ The young officer’s voice lost none of its friendliness. ‘The lassie’s got a split lip there, but nothing too serious.’

‘Och, just a bit of a dust-up, that’s all,’ replied my dad soothingly. ‘Nothing I can’t handle. Just you let me deal with it, officer.’

I was pushed into the living room, while both of them spoke about kids these days, and then the younger man departed with a wave. I realized with sickening accuracy that there was no way the
younger guy could confront the six-footer standing on our step. They had recognized each other by sight, and the cop was just one of many who jumped on and off my dad’s bus: he would dismiss
what he had seen.