by David Leslie
Three days after the accident – on 29 December – two black cars gently nosed their way from the Pailis, following a hearse carrying the coffin in which Isobel lay. Hannah sat dry-eyed in the lead vehicle with her parents. The cortège was headed for Daldowie crematorium on the outskirts, to the south-east of Glasgow, but this was a tricky journey for the undertakers. Daldowie is close to the bridge – still in existence – at Mount Vernon where the teenager and her friends had perished, and care had to be taken to ensure their route stayed well clear of the spot, which still showed scars of the impact. While other families in Bothwellhaugh were struggling to clear their Christmas debts, the Martins had an additional sum to find: the cost of their daughter’s funeral. It worked out at £52 19s 10d – over £700 today.
A couple of nights later, families all over Scotland, indeed Scots the world over, would be raising their glasses to toast in 1965. Hogmanay is traditionally the highlight of the Scots’ festivities, a time for fun, drunkenness, singing, roistering and partying. Earlier in the month, Hannah and her friend had been invited to a Hogmanay party in the Parkhead area of Glasgow. The friend, still grief-stricken and shocked over the accident, had wanted to stay away, fearing the emotions aroused by the celebrations of others would resurrect too many recent memories. Out of courtesy, she asked Hannah, ‘Do you think we should go out?’, expecting, and hoping, her friend would respond in the negative. She was taken aback to receive the word ‘Aye’.
The party was to be at the home of a young man who had been given permission by his parents to invite a group of friends, provided it was over and everyone had left by eleven o’clock, at which time the adults would be returning from a local bar where they were to warm up in preparation for seeing in midnight. The fun was in full swing when the young host’s absence was noted, but it was assumed he might have stepped outside with a girlfriend. But he was still missing when his guests left, Hannah and her friend among them; in fact, he had felt a headache coming on and had gone upstairs to his bedroom to lie down, hoping that when he awoke it would be gone. Only he never woke up. Later that night, his parents discovered him dead in bed. The cause was later discovered to have been a brain haemorrhage.
How deeply did Hannah mourn the sudden loss of her sister? It is likely Isobel never realised the hurt her position as mother’s favourite caused the younger girl. Among those who were friends with both were some who recognised a jealousy in Hannah when she felt her sister might be monopolising a girl she herself regarded as one of her own particular friends. After the accident, she singled out a handful in whom she would place her trust from that day. Perhaps Hannah felt that with Isobel no longer about she might now garner a mother’s affection and be given the love that she had craved for so long. If this was the case, she would be sadly disappointed. From then on, Jessie’s near contempt for the flesh and blood she had brought into the world would no longer be a latent barb. She would chastise her daughter blatantly in front of friends, not bothering about the embarrassment she caused Hannah or those around her. It was deeply hurtful to a teenager whose journey through life appeared marked not with milestones but with heartbreaks.
Isobel’s ashes were buried beneath a rose bush at Daldowie’s Garden of Remembrance and a month after the tragedy Jessie insisted her surviving daughter dress up and, with a friend, accompany her on a sad pilgrimage to have their photographs taken at the spot.
Malcolm in particular was heartbroken by her loss. He would sit quietly in his chair before the fire, gazing at the embers while his eyes filled with tears. The others understood, but realised words would have been an intrusion into his sorrow. Families who have suffered the sudden death of a loved one display their emotions in differing ways. Some set up shrines in bedrooms, others simply move away.
Comforted by neighbours at the Pailis, the Martins may well have been happy to stay on at the mining village, but the terrace at Bothwellhaugh could never be the same. In any case, the decision as to whether or not to remain was taken out of their hands. The closure of the pit had created a cancer that spread along the village streets. Once thriving, the village was now dying; old life was moving on and there were no new arrivals to take their place.
Hannah, so close to the unexpected deaths of two young people, hardly felt the chill of the January winds that opened 1965. She knew other pastures beckoned but cared little, blaming her mother’s coldness for her feeling an outcast. And so, as the months moved on, so the remaining families began moving out. The Martins were among the final five families to leave a ghost village. Once four now three, they would find themselves making a short move just along the road with their belongings to Rockburn Crescent in Bellshill. They would be glad to go, finding themselves in their last few weeks in Clyde Street boxed in by empty buildings where vermin scavenged, haunted by eerie sounds and unhappy memories. As the last removal lorry disappeared, the Pailis waited for the arrival of bulldozers.
For the Martins, once moved, nothing was too different because so many of the Pailis folk were settled in around them. The new neighbours were by and large the old neighbours. Friendships continued. Scandals and gossip also.
Nowadays the spot where families lived, loved, sang, sobbed, drank and died lies beneath the waters of a 200-acre artificially made loch, part of the massive Strathclyde Country Park. Those who remember it see it almost daily as they journey on the M74 motorway just south of Glasgow, the streets where boots once clattered on their way to work now coated in silt and travelled only by creatures of the water.
The change of surroundings did nothing to lift the gloom that had fallen over Jessie with the death of her daughter. That, coupled with a long-term weakness of the heart, had understandably left her irritable and feeling continually unwell. With the arrival of 1966, it was clear something was seriously wrong with her. She had difficulty in sleeping and was forever on edge. Neighbours would say Jessie, during her bad days, was ‘a bag of nerves’. It was not meant cruelly, but the fact remained that much of her feeling of irritability was taken out on Hannah who, at 16, with years of abuse behind her, had the mental toughness of someone much older. She was not aware of it, but some of her mother’s vices were rubbing off on her. More and more, Hannah was unconsciously learning to use others to her own advantage.
Meantime a doctor prescribed for her mother the sedative Nembutal. As the months passed she would come to be more and more dependent on the drug, using it from time to time as a means to block out the memory of Isobel in her coffin. Malcolm would warn her, ‘You’re taking too many of those things,’ but he was at work during the day and the task of looking after his wife was left to Hannah and one of her young friends. Frequently, when Jessie had taken an excess of Nembutal, the teenagers would walk her up and down the living-room floor, at times almost carrying her, her limp legs dragging as they struggled to force her to come to life before Malcolm arrived back from the local steelworks.
It was understandable that once her father was home Hannah sought freedom from a house in which there was so much gloom. She was, by now, a regular traveller to the Barrowland, dancing to the hits of the time.
In November, Jessie’s heart was unable to carry on and she died peacefully. There were some who wondered if her reliance on Nembutal had led her to overindulge. But then the answer was irrelevant. If taking it in ever-increasing quantities brought relief from the distress of an existence that seemed barren through the death of the daughter on whom she had so doted, then why should she not seek salvation by whatever means? At the end of the day, it was her life to do with as she pleased.
The same undertaker who had taken care of the arrangements for Isobel was again asked to provide their services. And yet again the sad cortège headed to Daldowie crematorium, once more avoiding the Mount Vernon railway bridge. The bill was £59 7s 4d. In less than two years, the Martin family had been halved.
Hannah’s friends joined her to sympathise, some travelling a few yards, others many miles. Among them there were those who were s
urprised by her apparent lack of sorrow. They would go home to their families, saying how they had seen few signs of heartbreak and no tears. In fact, Hannah would admit only to her very closest friends that the death of her mother brought with it a sensation of relief. It could not erase the stain of the businessman’s knee, or being cast into the role of a prison smuggler, or having to behave as Fagan’s apprentice. Even when Isobel was no longer around, she could not escape the feeling she was still second-best, this time to a ghost. But with her mother gone, the fear, hanging over her shoulder, that abuse might return was gone.
What would come to surprise those who knew her well, and even Hannah herself, was that she would keep the pledge she had given her mother. Admittedly, the circumstances under which the baby was born could hardly have been envisaged when the promise was given, but she kept her word. It would be more than three years before she was called upon to fulfil her vow, but to her huge credit not once did she seek to renounce it.
THIRTEEN
BIBLE JOHN
As she stared out of the window of the bus during her journey to and from the Hoover factory each day, Hannah often wondered about her daughter. Just as Jessie had insisted, she had given the child the name of her sister, Isobel. It is not the name she is now known by but one we shall continue to use. It was difficult for Hannah not to look into a pram and wonder if the tiny being inside was the child she had carried. Or, as time went by, see a mother struggling with bags of shopping in one hand and a boisterous infant in the other and be tempted to call out ‘Isobel’ to see whether there might be a response. She knew, of course, it would have been a useless gesture. The odds against the couple who had adopted the baby choosing the same name as her must have been phenomenal.
She wondered too what had become of the outfit she had pressed into the hands of the nurses who had been with her when Isobel was born. If only she had been allowed to hold the baby, even for a second. But that had been out of the question, according to the social workers with whom she had talked in the lead-up to the birth. To have taken the tiny bundle of blood and flesh just once and then let it go for all time would have been traumatic and potentially damaging. In addition to the emotional stress this would have caused for the mother, the danger would have been that she refused to hand the baby back; an unbreakable bond might have been established in that mere moment. The friend who accompanied Hannah to Rottenrow had been allowed a brief hug but had been requested not to display emotion or go into detail about the baby’s appearance to the mother.
The subject of the birth was not discussed with her father, a fact that was a relief to him probably even more so than to his daughter, because it was Malcolm and not Hannah who was ultimately responsible for Isobel being adopted. Now that sister Isobel was gone, as was Jessie, along with little Isobel, instead of a family of five the house was home to just two. He had had to build a new shape to his life, one without the routines of marriage, one allowing for loneliness. It had been different for his daughter. Since her schooldays, Hannah had all too frequently been used to being on her own, which was why outings with the rest of the family meant so much to her. Now, in her 20s, she was, often without being aware of it, using others to help create her own pleasures.
The search for Bible John continued but with the operation, of necessity, scaled down. When social workers had asked Hannah for details of her baby’s father, she had said he was a shipyard worker aged 20 and did not know his identity. Both they and Hannah’s friends thought it odd she had not remembered his name, or evidently asked it, because that was usually one of the first details any woman would seek from a sexual partner. She said nothing then about having been very drunk, nor of her having been an unwilling participant in that first sexual act or of the attack three years earlier by a stranger with an unholy interest in the Bible. Hannah was always convinced that man was Bible John, a killer lurking around the Barrowland in search of prey, and she had come close to being his first victim.
As time went on, a growing number of police officers engaged in the investigation into the three killings would suggest there had been more than one murderer, that Bible John was in fact at least two people. No one could ever be certain if that was correct. But it was only much later, when she confided to her closest friend what she could remember of the night Isobel had been conceived, that Hannah admitted it had taken place amidst a blur of emotions clouded by drink and she believed one of those two was the man who had so cruelly and without feeling taken her in his car.
Now, on top of all else, she had to live with the knowledge that she had in all probability given birth to the child of the man known as Bible John. That only added to a determination if not exactly to seek revenge on men then to at least use them in the way others had used her. She felt even her own father, in his lack of compassion, had taken advantage of his parental hold over her.
For a time after Isobel was born, Hannah went into a shell, turning down invitations to join her friends for nights out. But as time passed, she emerged and went back to her old routine of hopping on a bus to Glasgow. Many of her friends were envious of the freedom she had to choose her own pursuits. Malcolm never appeared to intervene in her private life and as time went on would happily loan her his beloved Austin Princess so she could drive herself and chums to the dancing in Glasgow. Despite its memories, the Barrowland remained her favourite destination and she thought nothing of going alone, although she frequented the other Glasgow dance halls, too. There were always enough single men on the lookout for a partner. She knew a good number were probably married and seeking a sly evening, or even night, away from a wife and family. Then there were the sales representatives, spotted a mile off by their appalling chat-up lines and oh-so-blatant attitude of being cocksure. The ones to be wary of, she knew, were those who made it too obvious they were single. Having held onto that status, the men were unlikely to want to relinquish it.
That was not to say she spurned romance or abandoned herself to remaining a spinster. Having experienced motherhood, Hannah felt suited to it. When friends became pregnant, she encouraged them to enjoy the sensation, even the physical discomforts that it brought with it. It may have been that she relived her own pregnancy; certainly, she fell in with the hype of it, enjoying being present to hear the excited questions from others as to when the baby was due, what it would be named, or details about the buying of tiny clothes in preparation. One friend in particular was perplexed at how Hannah was able to predict the many feelings and emotions she experienced as the birth of her own child neared. But she would never know the truth. When the friend’s firstborn came into the world, to be followed by others, Hannah lavished affection on them, wishing she could have imparted it to Isobel. The child was in her thoughts constantly. She knew she had a little girl somewhere, but where, she could not be certain. However, the one thing of which she could be sure was that she would never have done to her daughter what her mother and then her father had done to her.
‘Other close pals had babies,’ said a friend, ‘talked about them and showed Hannah their babies. She would praise them, tell them how gorgeous the weans were, say all the things the proud mothers wanted to hear, but she never mentioned her own child, even when someone would ask her, “Hannah, isn’t it time you settled down and got married? You’d make a really good mother. You’re a natural.” She never talked about what she’d had to do. And that must have been a terrible, awful hurt. Being a mother who had to be childless left a massive gap in her life.’
Throughout the ’70s, in between the dancing and nights out with friends, there were occasional boyfriends, but Hannah concentrated her affections on her grandparents, Hannah and Richard, and her energies into making comfortable the home she and her father shared at Rockburn Crescent, Bellshill.
‘For many years, while Hannah was working at the Hoover factory, she would come out of her work and go straight to her gran’s. It was on her way home, but even had it been in the other direction it would not have made a difference
,’ said an old friend. ‘She loved being at the old couple’s, putting her granny’s fire on, making tea, doing the housework, something she had been forced into doing when she was young at home and hated as a result, but she took a genuine pleasure in doing it for her granny of her own free will.
‘Sometimes on a winter night, she would go straight in the door, grab a blanket and sit at the fire, and Granny would produce whatever she had cooked for tea. And then she would maybe get into bed with her granny to watch television. When her granny was old and bedridden, Hannah would arrive and hop right into the bed with her granny. Yet, despite her fondness for and closeness to the old couple, her grandma and granddad never knew she had the baby.’
When the old couple died, Hannah was given a cushion cover, black with a peacock embroidered upon it and made over 100 years earlier by another of the grannies called Hannah. She had passed it down to Granny Hannah Martin. It missed a generation and then came to Hannah, who promised it would be handed on to the next in the family to be christened Hannah. It was a gift so precious she would find it hard to part with it, as her friends would come to discover.
Hannah would never know it, but Isobel was living only a few miles away with her new family. Obviously her adoptive parents did not know the identity of the baby’s mother but at an early stage in the adoption process had asked whether there would be a possibility of the natural mother seeing her child and recognising him or her. Identity was one more reason why Hannah had not been allowed to see Isobel. Now Hannah wondered if she stared directly at the youngster, would she know her? It might have been the case that, as time went by, mother and daughter did pass on the same side of the street, waited in the same queue, stood side by side at the same shop window. But neither knew it. It was just as possible that the baby’s father looked at Isobel without knowing she was his child, danced with Hannah or stepped aside to allow Isobel and her new parents to pass by.