Where There is Evil

by Sandra Brown

  ‘Don’t you think, though, Sandra, that it’s possibly all in your mind?’ Aunt Margaret chose her words with care. ‘You always had a very fertile imagination as a child, you know. Isn’t it possible you’re confused about what your dad said? Do you not think maybe you’ve made a mistake, and that’s why you’re having psychiatric help.’

  I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of what she had said. It would have been easier for some of my relatives to hear I was insane than to confront the truth. I refused to be daunted, though, and arranged a meeting with my cousins at B’s home.

  It was a difficult evening. We had last met at A and B’s mother’s funeral and they were still in the rawest stages of bereavement.

  Only F was not there. Her sister said that she could hardly remember my father, being only three or four when he left, so I imagined that her absence would not matter. I talked at length of what I had been through in the past nine months, while those who had had no inkling sat motionless, drinks untouched. When I spoke of my past and my dad’s history there were shudders of horror and tears.

  When I had finished, I wiped my eyes, and said, ‘I’m pretty sure he never came near me, but for weeks now I’ve been having flashbacks, remembering the things I saw him do to my friends, the womanizing, the lies. I can’t tell when I’m going to have them, they just happen, and I’m right there going through the experience again, feeling the same horrible feelings, even smelling the smells – it’s awful. It’s one thing to know your dad’s a sadistic brute who thought nothing of walloping you with the buckle end of his leather belt, but it’s quite another to realize that he is the most awful liar, that he’s a paedophile who’s molested kiddies all his days, and that there’s one victim, at least, who didn’t escape with her life. That’s why, hard as it is o discuss, I must know about you.’

  C and D told of what had gone on in the garage at Ashgrove. Then A said, ‘Neither of us escaped him, either.’ She and her sister, she told us, had not realized for a long time that they were both victims. The campaign my father had waged against them had been sustained over several years.

  A is a slim woman, with high cheekbones, dramatic brown eyes, like her sister, and an infectious laugh. Now, she was trembling as she told us how B had related to her our conversation in the car, and how they had decided to talk to me. ‘What’s the point of keeping it quiet now, even after all this time?’ Just as you’re remembering flashbacks, Sandra, I have had to contend with incidents that involved your dad – some triggered by even the simplest things. My husband played a joke on me once and left me in the dark, with a bare light bulb swinging about. I was petrified, without being able to think why, then I realized. Your dad pushed me into the cupboard he worked in at your house in Dunbeth Road. I was molested by him there, on more than one occasion, for he was very sly – he’s adept at winning over kiddies. Let’s face it, we weren’t well off in those days, and it was such a novelty to know someone with a car. All the kids were attracted, and I know I was flattered when I was just seven or eight, it made you feel special if he took you somewhere. It seemed so grown-up. Like a fool, I went with him. Then you got into this situation you didn’t know how to cope with at that age. You were in his power, and of course, he was so devious. He made it look as if he was a nice man, taking kids out when he knew our parents couldn’t afford a car – it was as if he was taking us off their hands, so it didn’t ever occur to my family to question what my uncle was actually doing. He thought it all out carefully and only built up gradually.

  ‘I eventually learned how to avoid him, although that was tricky, because we were often sent to our granny Frew’s, and he’d try all sorts of ruses with pocket money and extra sweets. I told my mother when I reached my early teens, but I knew she found it hard to believe, and would never have let such a terrible shameful thing reach her husband’s ears. She told me I’d to forget it, and then he left, anyway.

  ‘He took away all my innocence. It was wicked, he touched me everywhere, so really it was everything except actual penetration. I was so wee, and he was such a huge man, the tallest we knew. Maybe that’s why he didn’t do that, I don’t know. But it’s affected my whole life since. Even the smallest thing can trigger off a memory. One of my children got a job, and when he brought home his work clothes for me to wash, I almost had a heart attack – they were exactly like the navy blue ones your dad wore, Sandra, with buttons right up.’

  A described to us how the abuse in her childhood had caused her to suffer severe depressions, and had interfered with her ability to enjoy relationships. She had questioned her own ability to relate to anyone sexually. After her marriage, although she knew she had married the right man, her fits of depression worsened with her two pregnancies, and she began to feel suicidal. She had been taken into a psychiatric hospital, where it was recognized that she had a phobia about anyone touching her body, but the root of the problem was never diagnosed. She, too, had walled up her awful memories. But A went on, ‘The one good thing that has come out of all of this being brought to light is that I now know why I’ve had all these problems. It makes sense with hindsight, and it’s clear I’m not going crazy. It’s made me realize that the healthiest thing is to be upfront and honest with your family and kids – there are no secrets in our home. And that’s why I told B that there’s no point in covering up what happened to her.’

  It was her sister’s turn to speak. ‘I have been a victim all my life,’ she said quietly. ‘There was a horrible old man I knew, and there was your dad, Sandra. The first one was a ghastly neighbour who would grope at you, but your dad was something else. No way at the hospital could I have told you what he did, but he abused me from when I was seven or so until I was ten, I think. I remember the first time. I hadn’t a clue, being so wee, I just went along with it. But I knew something wasn’t right, and I ran to the back green where Granny Frew was hanging out her sheets. I can still see those lines of washing flapping away, and her getting angry with me. I was told to stop making it up. Another time I tried to tell her what was happening to me whenever I went out to play, she just wheesht me to be quiet, then took me inside as if I’d fallen. I got a cuddle and a biscuit.’

  A and B agreed that this had happened on several occasions. Much as all of us had adored our grandmother, we had no answer as to why she had concealed the truth when her son-in-law was picking off his victims one by one from the ranks of her own granddaughters.

  ‘Mostly, I would just go rigid all over when it happened,’ B continued, ‘whether it was in his car or his bedroom. He even assaulted me there one time your mum sent me with a cup of tea to him in bed. As if you can blank it out. Of course, it stays with you. I can describe the rug on the floor. I can remember him in his stripy pyjamas, his newspaper lying there, so that he could cover his tracks well, and him forcing my head down. Even now, thirty years on, I remember this ghastly sensation of choking. You were petrified, but it wouldn’t have been any use struggling. He had it all worked out.’

  I went cold all over. He could have easily suffocated a young child, forcing her into such an act. Was this what had happened to Moira? I realized I had witnessed several occasions when tense young bodies had gone limp; I’d been at a loss to know why they were not fighting my father off. Now, with the insight of an adult, I could see why a child might adopt this strategy in a frightening situation. Hadn’t I often transported myself mentally elsewhere when confronted with what I could not cope with? Hadn’t I wished to be rescued by one of my comic heroines? It also struck me that my cousins were correct that my dad’s behaviour was premeditated: it had not, as I’d been trying to convince myself, been a result of uncontrollable urges. What had happened to them had been every bit as carefully planned as the afternoon he had packed my mother, my brothers and me off to a film so that he could lure a tiny child into our home.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I drove from my cousin’s home that dark wintry night, reeling. My father’s lifelong hobby had been depravity;
he had the classic profile of the paedophile, whose goal is always to be in close proximity to his prey.

  Before the evening ended, my cousins asked why my father had spared me. I could only repeat what I’d told the police – I had been an articulate child, and perhaps he had not been able to judge whether I would remain silent or not. He might have been reluctant to touch his own daughter, and, in fact, statistics show that girls are more likely to be molested by stepfathers rather than their own father. I felt incredibly lucky: physical and emotional abuse, yes. Mental torture, yes. But sexual abuse, no.

  I described the strategies I had devised as a teenager to keep out of my father’s way, because I had seen what he had done to my friends. They could all recall the amount of time I had spent in my grandmother’s downstairs, and how I would call in every day after school, to make her tea and chat. I would not go upstairs if my father was alone, not even into the bedroom I could lock. My granny must have worked out why I did this. She had been my staunchest ally, often deflecting criticism my father targeted at me.

  A said, ‘If there’s four of us here that he managed to molest before he left in 1965, there are many we played with in Ashgrove he must have approached. We’d not be the only ones.’ They suggested names to me, including my friends from high school, Ellen and Barbara, and the immediate next-door neighbour’s daughter, who had played at some point with every one of my cousins as well as me. I would have to have a word with them all, we agreed, and hope they would understand why.

  Suddenly E burst into tears. I was horrified. She would not even have been at school when my father disappeared. She had been so young that, although she knew she had been abused, she could not be certain of who had done it. She only had one clear memory of her parents carrying her to see Dr Simpson, their GP, at his home. She knew she had seen him because of the pain she had been having on passing urine. It struck me as significant that the doctor had not been asked to make a home visit. Had she ever asked her parents why?

  When she first regained the memory, E had been told that she had had a kidney problem, and a recurring infection had caused her to scream, so it was to do with getting help quickly. We asked what else she could remember.

  ‘I know without a doubt that it happened to me. We moved into your old home at Partick Street, Sandra. I was terrified of the old man who lived below us who had tropical fish. I felt such relief when he died.’

  ‘His name was McLaren,’ I said with certainty, for I could remember disliking him too.

  ‘All I know is I couldn’t pass his door I was so terrified of him.’

  He and my father had been friendly when we lived there, I knew that. ‘What about my dad?’

  ‘I just remember he was so tall, and his bus uniform,’ she whispered, ‘and him being friendly. But I know I hate tropical fish – and these sweeties you get wrapped in purple and gold stripy twists of paper, I forget what you call them . . .’

  ‘They’re toffee eclairs,’ I said. ‘My father’s favourites, which he gave often to kiddies, and he and the neighbour knew each other because they were two of a kind.’

  I was shaken by the things I learned that evening. It was hard to take in that of six women present, aged in their thirties and early forties, not one had had a childhood free of abuse; and I was stunned to have to absorb the certainty that my father had approached at least four, if not five, of my six cousins. They agreed that for Moira’s sake they would make statements to the police.

  Now, as I neared Edinburgh on my way home, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my mother in the dark much longer. I had to tell her of everything I had done before someone else did.

  E’s description of pain when she passed urine niggled at me. I realized that I had once had a similar pain. I had to concentrate hard, but finally, there it was, just as I was about to drop off to sleep. I sat up with a jump. I was three or four years old and I was in the back bedroom of the house in Partick Street. I was angry because it was sunny outside but I was not allowed out to play. I was also furious at having to use an old china soup tureen with red roses on it to peepee in, rather than being allowed to go to the outside toilet. My mother referred to it as the ‘chantey pot’, and insisted on perching me there. An independent spirit and unwillingness to resume my toileting on something reminiscent of a toddler’s potty led to a confrontation, with her using force to hold me there and me screaming my head off, partly through pain and partly through displeasure at being thwarted. The urine scalded my skin, which was nipping with the most awful burning sensation, and it felt as if a red-hot poker had pierced my abdomen. I was tucked back into my parents’ big double bed and my tears were calmed with a favourite Rupert Bear story.

  We were interrupted by a knock at the door, far off along the hall lobby. ‘That’ll be Dr Goldie.’ My mother rushed through to greet him.

  But it wasn’t Dr Goldie, who knew every single Frew and who had brought many of my cousins into the world. Nor was it his partner, Dr Simpson. It was my mother’s cousin, Victor Smith, who was training to be a doctor and of whom she was inordinately proud.

  ‘Look who’s come to see you!’ She led him in. ‘It’s your Uncle Vicky, Sandra.’

  I eyed him, standing there with his important medical bag.

  ‘Are you going to look at my wee sore bottom?’ I asked. ‘It hurts when I go.’

  My mother told him that she had noticed that my stools were an odd colour which perplexed me.

  ‘I wonder where she’s picked it up,’ Victor said. ‘It’s possibly a bad chill in the bladder, which will need to be flushed out.’

  Had I really suffered only a chill that had severely inflamed my bladder? Was my inability to pass urine for several days a result of an infection, or had it been more sinister? I closed my eyes, as I thought of the words the police had used. ‘When we come across someone like your dad, Sandra, we don’t normally have to go very far out of the family. It seems surprising he never got to you.’

  I gulped. What if my dad had abused me as a child, despite my protests to Jim McEwan? I had now come across so many people unwilling to confront my father’s behaviour for fear of upsetting my mother that I began to think it was entirely possible for someone mentally to avoid brutal truths to protect their own sanity.

  I resolved to find out how my mother’s recollection of this incident compared with my own. It was hard to find the right moment but I knew I had to take the bull by the horns some time. I had not intended to blurt everything out all at once to her, but after I had asked her about my childhood recollection of Dr Vicky’s visit, she asked why on earth I needed to know exactly what had been wrong with me. ‘You had a chill in the bladder,’ she said. ‘What on earth are you getting all worked up for? What’s this all about?’

  I looked at her, sitting at her fireside, Christmas cards strung round her living room. The floodgates opened.

  My uncle Bobby was with us and clapped his hand to his mouth as I told my mother what my father had told me. Before I had finished, he said, ‘I don’t want to hear any more. Anything to do with that man is of a sexual nature – he’s brought your mum nothing but pain, Sandra. Stop there.’

  But I could not. I told my mother that I had gone to the police, and that an investigation was under way regarding Moira Anderson’s disappearance in 1957.

  Her face froze. Then she threw back her head into the wings of the armchair and, screwing her eyes tightly shut, shook it violently from side to side. ‘He had nothing to do with that!’ she screamed. ‘He was interviewed and he was cleared. Just ask our Margaret!’

  ‘I have, and she was under that impression too,’ I said. ‘But he lied, Mum, to both of you, to his parents, and then in February, thirty-five years on, to me as well. The police say he was never interviewed at the time. He’s responsible for that child’s disappearance, believe me. There’s things I know about him I’ve never been able to tell you, but I’ve told the police now, and it seems they’ll have to speak to you before they go to Leeds to
see him.’ Then I told her about my cousins.

  ‘Lies, lies,’ she muttered, her hands fluttering helplessly at her ears to shut it out.

  I was worried that breaking such news would destroy the relationship between my mother and myself – we had always been so close. She was subdued for several days and would not speak to me. I was desperate to patch things up, and continued to call daily. Finally, this strategy paid off, and I was heartily relieved the following week when she said suddenly, in mid-conversation, ‘I don’t want to discuss anything about your dad just now, Sandra, but I want you to know nothing’s going to split us up. I know you did what you thought was right.’

  December 1992 brought its usual whirlwind of activity, through which Jim and I kept in touch. He planned to interview my father in the new year. Four cousins had now made statements and Jim told me that my father was now liable to answer charges for his crimes against them.

  When I returned to college for the start of the new term in January 1993 I felt tired and ill. Strange tingling pains developed in my chest, which I tried to ignore. I joked with colleagues about needles from our Christmas tree, which I’d cleared out of our lounge. The sensations got worse, and Sheena, the chief clerical officer, noticed my expression. A first-aider, she said she could not ignore inexplicable chest pains that worsened as I drove. Perhaps I had pulled some muscles lugging the tree outside.

  Red blisters appeared on my abdomen, sprinkled round to my armpit, and a doctor found I had a severe attack of shingles. Had I been in contact with chicken pox? I recalled dropping off some late Christmas presents for E’s children, who had been going down with something. But the underlying cause was the stress of what I had been going through over my father. The body soon lets us know its limits of tolerance.