Where There is Evil

by Sandra Brown

  I did so silently, fully expecting him to lash out at me with his fists. Instead he peered at me in the gloom, and muttered something about how inconsiderate I was to worry my mother, who, he said, had sent him out looking for me. ‘Who was that little runt?’ he demanded, as he parked our car.

  I explained how our journey had come about, and I said I had spotted his vehicle on the viaduct. ‘It must have been when you were searching for me,’ I said sardonically, looking him right in the eye. ‘Too bad you missed us then. I’ll let Mum know I’m fine.’

  ‘No, no,’ he glowered at me, ‘there’s no need, I’ll tell her. She’ll be in her bed now anyway, so just leave it. We’ll say no more about it.’

  That incident alerted me to danger: my father would have beaten up the young man if he had had the chance, and he had looked almost pathologically jealous. I realized I would have to think of other strategies to deter him from coming anywhere near me.

  Protection came in the form of my friendship with Irene. We started to go around together in the second year of high school, and shared the usual teenage interests that occupy all adolescents. We haunted the local church halls on a Saturday night, where for the princely entry fee of one and sixpence you could dance all evening to top-ten hits and learn the Locomotion, the Hitchhiker and the Twist, while sipping nothing more dangerous than Coke and lemonade. We became part of a group that circulated round churches and Scout halls, where pairs of girls could dance to their hearts’ content, often in large groups round a pile of handbags, till duos of bashful young males tapped them on the shoulders.

  Irene lived several miles away, and when we went out together I often stayed at her home. We adorned our bedroom walls with posters of the Fab Four cut from a magazine called 208. Irene’s older sister, Elizabeth, tolerated the chatter of two youngsters late into the night, and their parents liked me – so much so that when they went on holiday I was taken with them several summers on the trot, and consigned my memories of Montrose to the holiday-from-hell album I placed in a bottom drawer. Irene’s father taught me to swim and dive in places like Bournemouth and Scarborough and effectively took the place of my own father. He encouraged us to cycle everywhere, and to go off youth-hostelling all round Scotland. I can still feel the warm breeze in my hair as we cycled through the pass of Killiecrankie, singing ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ and sipping lurid Creamola Foam.

  It was through Irene that I met my first real boyfriend, John Somerville, who lived in Muirhead, another small village near her home. She had gone out with him first, and knew his family well, so I had no qualms about him and we went out together happily for almost three years. Although I was only fifteen, John was an athletically built eighteen-year-old, who ran at county level and who could have played football professionally. He was striking, with broad shoulders, piercing blue eyes that crinkled when he smiled, and fair hair.

  My father could not ignore his fitness and strength: he was a motor mechanic in Fagan’s garage near my home in Whifflet and thought nothing of removing car engines single-handed. He and John detested each other on sight, which did not surprise me, and I now realize that John was the physical tower of strength I needed to support me. My father no longer dared beat me whenever he liked, as he knew his behaviour would not go unchallenged.

  Granny Katie was a rock of strength too and staunchly championed everything I did. When she met John she brushed aside my mother’s concerns about a lad courting me when I was still so young. Granny had only a few years left, and died of cancer at Christmas in 1966. Her death was a great blow to Mary in what was yet another turbulent period in her life caused by my father.

  Chapter Ten

  When my father ran off from Coatbridge in 1965, my mother decided that she was going to see a solicitor about a divorce. Everyone held their breath to see if she would change her mind. She did not.

  Still somewhat bemused, as well as in a state of deep relief, I told the tale of his hasty departure to one of my friends at high school as we perched together on art stools and worked on life drawings for our Higher art examinations. Myra Readings was a cool, fair, beautiful girl whose home in Alexander Street I often visited after school before catching the Cliftonville bus to Ashgrove. Her parents seemed to have such a warm, stable relationship and, as an only child, she came from a lovely home and seemed to have everything anyone could possibly want. Now she shot me a look of undisguised horror, when I described how my father had vanished with his clippie, Pat Hanlon, who was half his age.

  ‘They’ve run away together completely out of the blue? My God!’

  Myra’s shocked tone caught the attention of several heads which turned with great curiosity towards us, and red-faced, I motioned her to keep her voice down.

  ‘Well, I don’t think it was out of the blue for the two of them, really. They dumped a brown paper parcel behind our front door,’ I whispered. ‘Later, it turned out to be their bus uniforms, folded with their badges and hats, all wrapped up to be handed in to Baxter’s bus depot.’

  ‘So it was planned!’ Myra’s huge blue eyes rounded in astonishment.

  I thought of the journey my mother and I had made to Gartlea bus station in Airdrie to return these items. We’d crossed the yard and entered the gloom of the depot, and were shown into a filthy office for the use of the inspectors, whom my father loathed (he called them ‘wankers with watches’ when he spotted them loitering at bus stops), and my mother handed over the parcel with a muffled explanation, then sat beside me. The man to whom she entrusted it went off to see about any due pay. We knew that my father’s time sheet would be in. It was the only paperwork he ever did.

  My mother was petrified that no money would be forthcoming, even though common sense told her that, traditionally, there would be what was known as lying-in money and some holiday pay. When the man returned, he doffed his peaked cap and cleared his throat, obviously finding his task difficult. ‘I’m very, very sorry to hear what’s happened to you, Mrs Gartshore,’ he sighed, ‘and Mr Baxter is very vexed to hear your news, too. He says if there is anything he can do to help your . . . predicament, just let him know.’

  My mother’s eyes were downcast as she nodded disconsolately, but I saw relief in them as he offered her a brown wages packet before he ushered us out. It was only when we got home to Whifflet that she allowed me to open it at our kitchen table. When I tried to ask questions, she said, ‘Now, now, then,’ as if she was trying to calm a restive young animal. I pulled out a long strip of typed information on greaseproof paper, which was folded concertina-style with some notes, mainly fivers. These she sorted into piles for different household requirements, and then she put the lying-in cash into an old biscuit tin, saying with weary conviction: ‘We’ll need this kept aside, for as sure as God’s my judge, he’ll not send us any support, neither for me, nor any of his three weans.’

  ‘So what happened then?’ Myra’s voice brought me out of my reverie. She almost fell off her seat in astonishment when I revealed that, at the end of her tether, my mother had hit my dad over the head with a frying pan. Myra had never met my mother, but knew Alexander Gartshore from the bus that passed her door. She was aware that he was six foot four, while his wife was small.

  ‘She hit him?’ Myra’s huge blue eyes were like saucers. ‘My God! Why?’

  ‘She came home from the Women’s Guild at the church at half past nine one night, and there he was, canoodling in his Cortina, right at our gate, with this girl, and they weren’t bothered who saw them. When my mum realized what was going on and pulled the car door open, he told her they were going off to Leeds, just like that, and wanted to take my wee brother Ian with the two of them,’ I explained, quite matter-of-fact, and trying to ignore Myra’s stricken face. ‘So my mum ran into the house and tried to stop him packing while the female waited in the car. She was so furious with him, she must have seen red, and she walloped him with the frying pan, right over the head. But he didn’t belt her back.’

  ‘And d
id Ian go with them?’ Myra knew that I was fond of both of my brothers, but I was particularly protective of Ian, who was only nine. I shook my head.

  ‘No, thank goodness. And it’s good riddance to bad rubbish, as far as I’m concerned. We’re better off without him.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re not going to lose your wee brother, too, but I can’t imagine how you can say you won’t miss your dad, Sandra – I’d hate it if mine went away, I know I’d miss him so much. You’re bound to, you know.’

  If only you knew, I thought to myself.

  But I was unprepared for the depression into which my mother slumped in the autumn of 1965. I constantly felt I had to keep her spirits up. I would cajole her, with remarks like, ‘We’re doing just fine, Mum. We’re far better off without him. We’ll manage, just wait and see. You’ve got me, haven’t you?’

  Her eyes would blur with tears, though she nodded in agreement. I knew, although she could not say it to me, that she missed him and needed him, and that angered me, for I knew there was no future with such a man and that tears were pointless. Once or twice, when the months were slipping by and his return looked more and more unlikely, she made remarks that cast him in a good light. She pointed out to me one evening as I toasted some bread on a long fork and held it near a roaring fire, where I was drying my hair, ‘You know, it was your dad, Sandra, that got me this grate, just after we moved here. I’ve always liked it. Don’t you miss him?’

  A yawn froze in my tonsils.

  She spoke again in the same wistful tone. ‘I know you hate it when I mention his name, but he does have good points, he really does . . . I can remember telling him when we looked round here that I’d love a new fireplace and grate, and the very next week he stopped his bus to let me know he’d won the sweepstake at work. ‘‘Just you go and pick any grate you fancy, Mary.’’ Those were his very words. ‘‘I want us to be comfortable in this house.’’ He handed me the lot when he got it, and ye know, a lot of men wouldn’t have done that. They’d have blown half of it on drink, but not your dad. I got my fireplace and grate, jist as he promised.’

  She looked at me beseechingly, but I would not meet her eyes. There was no chance of me ever feeling comfortable in any house I shared with my father. I could never tell her that one of my last memories of my dad was a weird incident that had occurred in church of all places.

  Just weeks before he left my father, hardly a regular churchgoer, happened to sit beside me. As it was a warm late-summer day, I had on a navy mini-dress, bought with money from my sixteenth birthday, with a neat white Peter Pan collar, and a cardigan over it. Granny Katie had admired my new navy blue high heels with their white piping and my matching shoulder bag, and had made remarks about me being sweet sixteen. I hurried round to the little kirk with a spring in my step, and my newly washed fair hair bouncing on my shoulders. My mood changed the moment my father settled beside me, and he smirked as I wriggled along to my left to make more room – in vain, the pew was packed that day. I was stuck with him.

  Smiling sardonically, because he knew I hated him being in such close proximity, he deliberately cast his eye over all the women sitting in the rows in front of us, with the air of an experienced cattleman at a sale of bloodstock. When the service began, I felt claustrophobic, and more and more aware of my breathing. During the sermon, I could swear that I could hear my own blood rushing through my ears, and my heart pounding as if I was running a marathon. It seemed so loud to me that I was amazed no one else could hear it. What was causing such panic? I couldn’t be sure at first whether it was being hemmed in by rows of people in a warm atmosphere, or whether it was the air of malevolence I felt coming from my own father. I suddenly realized that his eyes were boring through my dress, observing every movement of my thighs. The service seemed endless, and I was stuck to my seat with terror, unable even to close my eyes in prayer.

  I knew that day, beyond doubt, that given the glimmer of an opportunity, my father would ravish me without compunction. Little wonder, then, that I dismissed my mother’s nostalgic longings for him with exasperation.

  I was determined that we would survive without a main breadwinner in our home, but financially, things became difficult, and even minor items became major expenditures. As funds grew scarce, it looked likely that I would have to abandon my plans to go on into higher education and seek employment. I swallowed my pride and went to see Mr Cooper, still an awe-inspiring figure though I was now a fifth-year prefect.

  That interview in his office, in the spring of 1966, when I stammered my way through my explanation for asking to see him, is vivid in my mind. It was practically unheard of for a pupil to go to his room without a summons from him. I told him something of our circumstances, and of the pressure on me to leave school and go to work. His brows knitted together.

  ‘So, you see, sir, my mum’s been left with three of us to bring up. I don’t want to leave school, Mr Cooper, but it might come to that, and my gran who lives in Bellshill, well, she says she can get me a good job in Woolworths there, if she can just speak to someone she knows—’

  ‘How old are you, my dear?’ he interrupted, in his booming voice, and his big bushy silvery eyebrows stopped frowning.

  ‘Seventeen just a few weeks ago,’ I took a deep breath. ‘I could leave at Easter, sir, but I’d like either to go to art school or to be a teacher, and for that I’d need my Highers . . . but I’m helping out my mum as much as I can just now—’

  ‘In what way?’ he interjected.

  ‘I work on Saturdays, in Glasgow, in a record shop, till six, and in the evenings I go cleaning offices with my mum, but we’re really struggling, and this week it’s been difficult even to get enough to cover my bus fares to school, never mind lunches.’

  ‘Hasn’t your mother applied for free school meals for you and your brothers?’

  ‘Definitely not, sir, she’d be far too embarrassed to do that . . . She wouldn’t want any of us singled out for free dinners. She has her pride.’

  ‘Tell me about your Saturday job and what that involves.’

  I told him I earned seventeen and sixpence for working all day in Paterson’s, a large music shop in Buchanan Street. I had got the job, selling long-play records down in the bowels of the store, through my friend Irene, who had persuaded the eagle-eyed, austere manageress to interview me. Irene sold singles and EPs. Our camaraderie was the one thing that kept me going.

  The rector rose and crossed to the window, his black gown flapping behind him. ‘Slave labour,’ he grunted at last. ‘Seventeen and sixpence is unacceptable in your present position for what your work is, if what you tell me is true. It won’t do.’

  I gazed at him silently, so curious I had forgotten to be nervous.

  ‘I shall speak to the Carnegie Library Committee, of which I am a member this year, and propose that a position is found for you on Saturdays and over holidays, at a decent rate of pay, and to cut down on the number of expenses you are currently paying for travel, etc. Do you like books, my dear?’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Did I like books? I assured him I had had my ticket to the adult section of the main library in Coatbridge before I reached the official age, because I had exhausted the supply in the junior section. ‘Books – they’re the most important thing of all, sir. I’d love to work there.’

  ‘I make no promises, but I have high hopes for you, and I will do my best. Meanwhile, I will make arrangements for you to be given school dinner tickets in the normal manner, but your mother is not required to pay for them. Please tell her that. And one other thing, I think you should consider primary teaching as a very suitable career, Sandra. Say to her I said so. Now, back to class.’

  I was so excited I could hardly breathe, and had to squeak out my thanks as he showed me gruffly to the door. I returned, walking on air, to my English class. I was desperate to rush home and tell my mother that perhaps, after all, I did not need to think of Woolworths, and could ignore Granny Jenny’s remarks that it w
as not worth while to keep a girl on at school: ‘They just go on tae huv weans, so it’s a waste o’ time.’

  My mother was delighted, and I heaved a sigh of relief. Mr Cooper indeed used his influence and I gave up travelling to Glasgow on Saturdays to work instead in the Carnegie Library, where I loved my part-time work in the children’s, then the adult section, for some four years. I picked up the necessary Highers to train as a teacher.

  I parted from John to concentrate on my studies and found college life suited me. Mr Cooper’s interest in my career continued and he played matchmaker unwittingly, too: the library was where I met a handsome fellow student delivering Christmas mail, who later became my husband.

  Chapter Eleven

  As adulthood beckoned it seemed to me that the best way to cope with the past was to bury the rotten memories and avoid any connection with my dad. I tried to deny the influence he had had on me or that I bore any resemblance to him. I was furious when Granny Jenny had remarked that all three of his children had inherited his height but I also had his nose. I spent weeks studying my reflection in Granny Katie’s triple dressing table mirror and was convinced that Granny Jenny might be right, but would never have given her the satisfaction of saying so.

  Many people found it remarkable that my mother had not turned against Granny Jenny for her son’s treatment of his first family but they got on well and my mother stressed, ‘It’s not Jenny’s fault that her son Alex turned out so feckless . . . she’s done nothing to us, and she’s still your gran.’