by Sandra Brown
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 a
nd 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.
Granny Jenny had moved to a tiny sheltered house in Bellshill. My mother phoned her every day, and I visited regularly. I said nothing when I noticed that pictures I had given her of my family disappeared. I guessed she had sent them to Leeds. As she reached her nineties, and eventually Alexander was her last living child, she sometimes became pensive. Robbie, her favourite, she mourned openly, but once she discussed Alexander. She pondered on the terrible things he had done. When I looked at her quizzically, she added hastily, ‘I’m just meaning the awful things he pit your mammy through, hen. He pit ye all through hell, and me and Grandpa, tae, God rest his soul. Aye, he wis certainly awfy stupid.’
Renowned for her sense of humour, that day she was depressed. ‘Wicked, wicked,’ she repeated to me, ‘but all of us love our ain. Ye can’t help lovin’ you and yours, even when ye know they’ve—’ She broke off and wiped her eyes. She motioned me closer to her chair.
‘Even when they’ve what?’ But whatever she had been about to confide, she had thought better of it.
Her bright blue eyes dropped from mine. ‘Och, leave it.’ She waved me away dismissively. ‘Sometimes ye’re better tae pit things behind ye, and not stir it all back up. Mak me a cuppa tea, Sandra, hen.’
I decided she had meant the way my father had jettisoned all responsibility for his first family.
Meanwhile, Ronnie and I saved until we could buy our own home, a feat unheard of in the generation before ours; raising our children in middle-class bungalows rather than the tenements or council houses familiar to our parents. I enjoyed the early years of parenthood but although I would not say I smothered my children when they were small, I found it hard not to over-protect them. I could barely let them out of my sight when they were little, and I was always on the alert. I told myself it was normal for a young mother to check constantly who was hanging around the school gates, or who was speaking to kids. I told myself this was uppermost in my mind because of my primary-school training, from the years of being responsible for large groups of children. I just couldn’t get out of the habit, that was all.
The day came when I realized the truth about my reluctance to leave my children with other adults. I had returned to full-time work and was now a lecturer in child education in a college. ‘Auntie’ Rosie, our childminder, had my complete trust, and was adored by both of our two children. Her home was just yards from ours, the arrangement suited everyone beautifully. However, that day when I arrived to collect Lauren, nobody was there. I was told that Rosie had had to go to the dental hospital for emergency treatment; they wouldn’t be long. I was thunderstruck when Rosie told me later that she had been longer than expected at the clinic, and Ally, her husband, had spent the afternoon with Lauren across the road at the Chambers Street museum. I started to shake. I blurted out, in a complete panic, that I had only met Ally once or twice, and I heard myself ask: ‘Ally has been checked out by the social work department, too, hasn’t he? He doesn’t have any kind of criminal record?’
Many months later, when I was able to speak to Rosie about my past, she said that although she’d been offended at the time, what I had said was clearly understandable.
Today, I still insist on knowing where my children are. There is no question of my daughter going off anywhere alone, not even for a country walk. It is, many people say, a sad reflection on the way society has gone. I don’t agree. The dangers were there before, but they went unrecognized, and now at least, while we know we cannot wrap children in cotton wool, we can give them mechanisms for self-protection, explain to them that their bodies are their own and that nobody has the right to touch them.
Chapter Twelve
In 1992 life was going well for me. I had a good marriage, two children who seemed popular and well adjusted at their schools in a pleasant suburb of Edinburgh, and I’d an interesting job. My teaching career had taken a step forward in 1989, when I’d been promoted to senior lecturer, then shortly afterwards to section head. While this brought much more in the way of administration, I enjoyed it, and attempted to keep a balance between the work I often brought home and the demands of my role as a mother and wife.
After a long, difficult spell, however, when I filled in for almost two years for someone senior to me who was on sick leave, I jumped at the chance of a full week’s training in management skills, between 3 and 7 February. The seaside hotel venue was in Portobello, close enough to Edinburgh should any family emergency occur. I had a distinct sense that if anything was to go wrong in the family, it was bound to happen when I was away for any length of time.
Sure enough, it did, but it was not to do with Ross and Lauren. My mother told me when I rang her that my grandmother was ill, and likely to be taken into hospital. Worried, I called Jenny on the Tuesday of the course, and assured her that if she had to go into hospital, it would be like the other two recent occasions when her cast-iron constitution had astonished doctors and she had quickly been discharged. I reminded her to eat, and joked that my mother and I marvelled at her appetite: she was the only woman we knew, I said, who could eat a pot of mince and tatties by herself. Although she laughed, I detected a note of resignation in her voice, as if she knew she wouldn’t come home this time.
‘Och, Ah think that’s me,’ she said, quite unsentimentally. ‘We’ve all got tae go sooner or later, and Ah’ve had a long life, Sandra. If Ah go intae hospital, Ah dinnae want them pittin’ me on thae drip things tae keep me goin’. That wid jist scunner me. Ah’ve lived lang enough.’
‘Don’t say that, Gran,’ I pleaded. ‘You still get a lot out of life, and you always know what’s going on in the world, not like a lot of old biddies—’
‘Och, Ah know that,’ she said flatly, ‘but Ah hate hospitals, and it’s time Ah went. Thanks for phoning, hen, I’m glad ye did, so I can say cheerio.’
Later, my mother told me that Granny Jenny’s sense of humour had been intact until the last. She died in Law Hospital, in the early hours of the Friday morning when my course was due to finish. I received an early-morning phone call from Ron
nie and, through my tears, arranged that I would go to Coatbridge and Bellshill later that day to take my mother to Granny Jenny’s home and discuss what must be done.
Ronnie, though, was unaware that my father had been contacted by the police in Leeds and had already come north. Travelling up by train, he had met up with my cousin, William, and William’s fiancé e, Lily. All three were now installed in Granny Jenny’s tiny house. Later, I discovered that my father had been unhappy to find that one of my brothers had been appointed by her as the executor of her will. In other words, she had excluded her only surviving child. He was shocked to discover her bank book had the joint signature of my brother Norman. He would be the one to sort out her financial affairs.
That Friday morning, 7 February 1992, I struggled to concentrate on the final sessions of the management course. The week had been something of an emotional roller-coaster for everyone involved. There had been role-play exercises and discussions requiring deep soul-searching, which many of the two dozen or so participants had found as gruelling as I had. Nearly all of us had been tearful at one point or another, including several men.
Jeanie, the course leader who had come from Bristol, had given us an interpersonal skills exercise mid-week, which had caused me some problems. With a partner, we had to compare the messages given to us by our parents from an early age. I was stunned at the negative ones I had picked up when I studied the topics of politics, money, relationships, sex, employment, etc. When I looked at the conflicting messages I had received from my parents in my own childhood, I could not understand what had made them think that they had had anything in common when they first met.
From my mother, I had learnt that: to get anywhere you had to work hard; you had to save the pennies so that the pounds could look after themselves; you had to go to church regularly; sex before marriage was not only out of the question, it could not be discussed. My father’s philosophies were the opposite: a girl staying on at school was pointless (‘a good job’ in a factory or shop could always be fixed up by speaking to someone he knew); money was something to spend when it was available, and saving it was none of his business – housekeeping, budgeting and childcare were women’s responsibilities; church was not necessary unless you had an ulterior motive; and sex was there for the taking whenever and with whom you liked.