Where There is Evil (10 page)

‘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 was 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.

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.’

Jenny was proud that she had been born in the same year as the Queen Mother. We were close, though this was more through my efforts than hers, and we never shared the almost psychic relationship
I had with Granny Katie, to whom I related my dreams. Like Joe Gargery’s wife in
Great Expectations
, Jenny wore a rubber apron, to which pins and brooches were stuck and her chest
bristled with jagged objects that ruled out cuddles. Her lively sense of humour hid the fact that she did not find it easy to show affection to children or young adults.

When I enrolled as a student at Hamilton College of Education in 1967 and found I was entitled to the maximum student grant, it did not occur to me to spend the first cheque I
received, which was for the largest amount of money my mother and I had ever seen. My mother presented it at the bank, and we solemnly halved it between us so that I could go and purchase my books.
She could not believe that the huge sum I had received would be available each term. She was over the moon. I couldn’t tell her that many of my peers were well-to-do young women, who regarded
their grants as pin money for their exclusive use. The three hundred students in my year contained a sprinkling of privately educated girls from privileged backgrounds, several of whom even drove
to college in smart little sport cars. I was finally on the same planet as some of the St Clare’s types from my childhood comics, and now I knew I had little in common with them.

The lecturers I related to best were the ones who clearly identified with a strong working-class background, and who encouraged my growing interest in writing. My memories of student days are
warm primarily because I did not have to worry about my father’s presence. I had spare cash, and did not have to borrow make-up and tights from Irene, who had gone to study languages at
university.

My mother followed every aspect of my college career with interest and pleasure, and no one could have been prouder than she when I graduated in 1970 with a teaching diploma that received merit
in academic subjects. After the ceremony, when I emerged a fully fledged teacher, she reflected that education was the key to making something of your life. ‘There are times I wish I’d
never married,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘when I look back and think what a waste, and I know I wanted to be a teacher, or a writer . . .’ Then her face softened. ‘But if I
hadn’t married, then I wouldn’t have had you ones.’

It is only now that I can acknowledge publicly the amount of support she gave me. There was much about her to admire: she had found great courage and strength in the face of hardship during my
childhood, and yet she could also retrieve a sense of fun when she was with children. She made her own childhood sound magical to me, as we lay in bed and laughed about all the adventures and
scrapes her brothers got into. Her own spirit and determination shone through in the stories. Over the years, I told them to the primary children I taught and then to my own two children, Ross and
Lauren.

She sized up all the lads I brought home after my first serious relationship with John, and she was anxious about my eventual choice of partner. It was important to me that she approved of
Ronnie, the man I married at the age of twenty-three. I have put total faith in him, and throughout our marriage we have shared similar values and beliefs. He has shown me, through our children,
how special fatherhood can be. Thankfully, he made a good impression on my mother.

Ronnie and I set a wedding date in October 1971, and we saved hard, putting away almost every penny from my assistant teacher’s salary of forty pounds a month, which was what I received
when I started my first post, ten pounds of which went to my mother for my board. I had been employed on graduation by my old primary-school head teacher, Mr Allan. Ronnie put his meagre wage as a
graduate civil engineer straight into a joint bank account. We knew, without ever discussing it, that the only way we could have a family wedding ‘do’ was to pay for it ourselves.

He also knew, intuitively, that there were elements of my childhood I did not feel able to discuss with him. He had never met my father although our families lived near each other. His parents
seemed to like me, and I respected them. The ugly parts of my past remained locked inside me.

It felt strange to be back at the school I had attended so many years ago, but I enjoyed teaching. The staff at Gartsherrie Academy still contained some of the old guard, but happily they were
held in affection and were more than helpful to the new raw recruits. Miss Pringle, the delightful infant teacher, dedicated to educating children since a whole generation of young men had not
returned from the First World War, was still there; so was Miss McLean, a real character, whose sisters owned the most amazing drapery shop in the town, renowned as a surrealistic labyrinth of
underwear and hosiery you could get lost in. I renewed a childhood friendship, too: Fiona, a long-ago playmate from Dunbeth Park, was in the nextdoor classroom, to my delight.

After our engagement, I heard Granny Jenny and my mother discuss Ronnie approvingly and knew what was coming next. Jenny’s bottom lip trembled and she said to my mother, ‘He should
give away his only lass.’ I flatly refused to consider sending my father an invitation.

My mother agreed, and said to her mother-in-law: ‘Sandra and Ronnie are paying for everything themselves, so it’s up to them who they invite. I’m divorced from Alex, now, and
it’s certainly up to the bride who gives her away, Jenny, she can ask whoever she wants.’

When I got married Uncle Robbie gave me away in church. He was delighted to help out, and brought all his family. They no longer lived in Leicester but had settled on Canvey Island.

‘Stupid bastard,’ was his pithy comment when he saw me in my wedding dress, and we got into the limousine. ‘He’ll live to regret what he left behind him.’

For the first three years of our married life, my husband and I lived fifteen floors up in one of the new high-rise tower blocks that suddenly dominated the landscape in
Coatbridge, just a stone’s throw from my old home in Dunbeth Road, which had been demolished in the mid-sixties. We joked about our penthouse with its panoramic view. Our town had its very
own version of American skycrapers. From my lofty vantage point, I could see that, despite the coming of the high flats, the old games had not disappeared completely: girls still thumped balls off
the walls of the flats, and when I visited the basement launderette, I was pleased to see an occasional game of peever going on.

Everywhere I had lived as a child, my mother always worried about ‘rough elements’. It never seemed to occur to her that the worst influence I ever came across was my father. I also
noticed that these ‘skyscraper weans’ did not venture far from their homes: the lessons of 1957 had not been forgotten.

People still discussed the mystery of Moira Anderson. The whispers and pointing fingers had been hard for the Anderson family when some malicious tongue started a rumour that Mandy Rice-Davies,
the call-girl involved in the Profumo scandal of the sixties, was none other than Moira. A likeness, they said, had been spotted, and the next thing was the ‘story’ broke in the press,
causing the family more heartbreak when the tabloids asked if Moira could be one of many runaways from the north who lost their identity deliberately in London, only to surface years later under an
assumed name. Most townsfolk, though, thought that Moira’s tender age, her background, and the way in which she had disappeared did not match that of a runaway in search of the bright lights.
Foul play, they agreed, had been the cause.

Change was in the air not only in the town, with familiar landmarks vanishing overnight, but also in the classroom: in February 1971 we switched to the metric system and the joy of decimals. My
brothers married and my mother found the house in Ashgrove too large. She flitted round the corner to School Street, and one of her brothers, Bobby, who had been abroad for many years and was also
divorced, moved in. It was company for her, and the arrangement suited them both.

The Anderson girls married and moved away, perhaps feeling they could never have a normal life when the disappearance of their sister was still the focus of speculation in the town. Janet
emigrated to Australia, and Marjorie moved away to England.

On the face of it, I was happy and I found marriage liberating. I enjoyed the years of primary teaching before we started our own family in 1978. For a young woman in her twenties, though, my
health was not perfect. From puberty, I had suffered crops of severe mouth ulcers, which appeared two dozen or more at a time. I was never free of them for long. I was referred to the Glasgow
dental hospital, where I was examined by consultants, dental hygienists and others to attempt to analyse the cause, but to no avail. Pregnancies made little difference, which disappointed those who
said hormones were to blame, vitamins did not help, and blood tests showed up no abnormalities. For many years I had to cope with mouthwashes and, during very bad spells, doses of steroids.

It was a mystery, they said, in someone who otherwise seemed perfectly normal. But although I used to believe that if feelings are not expressed outwardly, they disappear, now I know better. As
a child, I had been required to file away horrific memories.

The more painful they are, the more poisonous they become within our system. After many years of pain, homeopathic medicine, where the whole person is examined, helped me. The ulcers reduced to
manageable levels. Recently, I have even been ulcer-free, and able to enjoy the bliss of eating whatever I wish. Significantly, the homeopathic treatment coincided with a long spell of counselling
when, with specialist help, I was able at last to speak of the secrets I had buried deep within me. I was made aware of how much our emotions and memories are tied into the nervous system and how
stress can manifest itself.

When my grandfather died, my father was traced by the police for his dad’s funeral, and arrived at the last minute. Ronnie and I had a glimpse of him getting into the
funeral car. It was the first time my husband had seen him, for I had never shown him any photographs. I refused to sit anywhere near him. Ronnie and I sat with my mother at the opposite end of the
room, and I would not look in my father’s direction. He spoke briefly to my brothers, which had me seething with anger but, wisely, he knew to avoid me.