by Sandra Brown
Deep within myself, I had acknowledged my memories but knew I had sealed that cupboard long ago.
Only once had it been forced open, just a chink. In 1981, when I was thirty-six, Ronnie and I had gone to live in Pitlochry, in the Scottish Highlands, not long after Lauren’s birth. Ronnie’s job had taken us there for two years. They were happy years for me: I taught art locally in a private school, helped run the playgroup and participated in the thriving amateur drama club. Also, I had done something I had wanted to do for years. I had saved money of my own, and decided I would use it to change the one thing I disliked about myself. I underwent surgery in Glasgow at Bon Secours clinic to have my father’s inheritance removed. When asked what I wanted in place of my own nose, the consultant glanced up when I said, ‘Just one that’s different.’
I was pleased with the result, and surprised that virtually nobody noticed what I had done, not even close family members. I rarely gave it a thought afterwards, but no longer cared if photographs caught me in full profile, as one wedding snap had.
During the exceptional summers of 1982 and 1983, I immersed myself in community drama festivals, and took the children for swimming and picnics in the loveliest of spots. The small town felt so safe that even in the depths of winter I could return home from babysitting in the early hours and walk back alone through the little wood near our home at the golf course. I could marvel at its beauty without once feeling fear. Childhood anxieties of being attacked were remote, and I would join with others in agreeing that Pitlochry was typical of communities thirty years ago. It was in a kind of time warp. I was in a place where everyone knew everyone else, and where folk felt able to let their children play where they liked in the knowledge that they would come to no harm.
Suddenly a bombshell dropped. It was during a panto put on in Pitlochry Town Hall when I was taking the part of principal boy in Aladdin that I happened to encounter a former neighbour from Coatbridge. ‘I remember you, Sandra!’ she remarked at the after-show party. ‘And I remember your dad particularly well. Big, tall, handsome bus driver with dark hair, right?’
I nodded politely as I passed round food for my friends Ian and Linda. I was about to explain that my parents had divorced in the late sixties when she added, ‘He’d a wee black car, hadn’t he, and was a great one for the ladies! But I always felt sorry about what happened to him, you know.’
I frowned. She went on to tell me that my father, who I had always thought was in hospital between 1957 and 1959, had been in prison. According to her, he had been sentenced for the rape of a thirteen-year-old girl, my parents’ babysitter. As the woman chatted, I attempted to act normally, but I felt sick. In fact, I needed a brandy, a drink I rarely touch.
Suddenly it registered with the woman that her revelation had come as a shock to me. ‘I thought you knew,’ was all she could say. ‘You couldn’t miss it at the time, it was in all the papers.’
‘I’d only be eight,’ I muttered. ‘I never knew.’
Cringing with humiliation, I felt I could not discuss it with my husband. Why not just pretend it had never been said? The discovery, however, preyed on my mind and I resolved to speak to my mother. I was devastated. How could she, to whom I was so close, hide something so important all these years? I remembered how adults had whispered or stopped talking when I entered rooms. I had always felt that my father’s absence when I was between the ages of eight and ten had been something shameful. I had been right.
I tackled my mother about the length of time I’d been kept in the dark. I told her how upsetting it had been to learn the truth in my thirties from a near stranger. The information, she reluctantly confirmed, was correct. My father had served a prison sentence in Saughton, Edinburgh. There had been no long hospital stay. I noticed, however, that she was defensive of her actions and protective of my father’s behaviour. ‘I was only trying to shield you,’ she said stonily, and then broke down. ‘I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. Then I always just kept putting it off. But it wasn’t rape. The girl was a teenager who was very promiscuous – she was round all the drivers. Alex was the one who happened to get caught. She was a wee tart.’
Her last phrase was delivered with a venom most unlike her. It hit me that she blamed the child involved. Astonished, I pointed out that the girl had only been thirteen and my father thirty-six: was she seriously trying to say he had been led astray? I was not satisfied with the scant details she provided, and later I resolved that I would find out more about the events that had led to his arrest in December 1956, just before my eighth birthday.
But the opportunity to question her further did not arise easily.
After my initial shock at the conversation I’d had with the woman, I found I was able to put it out of my thoughts, but only for a short time. In my dreams, disturbing images and memories began to surface. I forced them back: lots of people know someone who’s been in prison, I argued inwardly, it’s something I’ll have to learn to live with. I knew, however, that I could not reveal to anyone asking me outright why he had served his sentence. ‘I just won’t tell people what it was for,’ I resolved.
I tried to talk to Granny Jenny who wouldn’t even look me in the eye. ‘All I’m gonnae say, Sandra, is it’s long past, and I hate talkin’ aboot it, for Ah believe it jist aboot killed his father. Sanny wis never the same after yer dad – after whit happened. Yer grandfaither wis a different kind o’ man a’ thegither. The one thing Ah can say aboot Sanny is he died as he lived. He never harmed a soul, but he always said yer daddy killed—’
She stopped as if terrified she had said too much. Lauren, toddling into the room, distracted me briefly as I placed the guard in front of the blazing fire I had just fuelled. Then she went on: ‘Yer daddy killed all Sanny’s love for him. That’s all Ah wis meaning.’
She refused to say any more on the subject. But I was chilled.
On the sunny, clear morning of my grandmother’s death, Jeanie, the management-course leader, noticed a profound change in me and had coffee with me at break time. She had heard I’d suffered a family bereavement and comforted me. We chatted about the assertiveness training which had formed part of the course, and I found myself telling her that a man at work, older than myself, used subtle ways to undermine my authority. I found him difficult to handle. She looked at me obliquely.
‘Women who have encountered very early rejection from their opposite sex parent often have problems needing to be liked by males. They go through life effectively seeking male approval,’ she commented, and suggested some strategies to try with the man at work. I explained that my father had, indeed, gone off in my early years and had returned only to abandon us again. Jeanie said that she could empathize with this. In some ways, she told me, I was a young version of herself. We had had similar events to cope with in our lives, and she too, had had to deal with problems that stemmed from childhood. I told her I loathed my father for the things he had done. ‘Don’t underestimate the father–daughter thing,’ she said, ‘and how powerful that relationship is for the first seven years or so. It’s the very first one you have with the opposite sex. Out of curiosity, when did you last speak to him? Have you ever told him how you feel?’
I explained that for twenty-seven years I had felt unwilling to exchange a single word with him. I was frightened of the consequences.
‘What would you say to him if you were to meet him today? Role-play it with me,’ said Jeanie. I unloaded a lot of anger in the exercise, choosing my words with care. I felt better for it and promised that, should the opportunity arise to tell my dad what I really thought of him, I would grab it.
The opportunity arose that very evening.
I picked up my mother to go to Granny Jenny’s. I knew that because of her blindness, caused by diabetes, she could not see how upset and dishevelled I was, but I gasped when she said in the car, ‘By the way, I think you should know your father’s here at Gran’s. He and your cousin William, and his fiancé e, they’re all here u
ntil the funeral on Tuesday.’
Accelerating, I said grimly, ‘Actually, it’s going to suit me just fine, Mum. I want to have a word with him on my own.’
There was silence while she absorbed this. As soon as we arrived, she began to organize tea for everyone. William and Lily were blowing up an air bed in the living room, as my father had taken the one small bedroom that had been Gran’s. He hovered, watching me expectantly with a half-smile. He did not look like a man of almost seventy-one. He was still a man it was hard to ignore.
‘I’d like to speak to you in private.’ My words were terse, and everyone else studied the floor with interest. He ushered me through to the bedroom, still nodding and smiling. We sat inches apart on the bed, him on the window side, I nearer the door. I was nervous, but adrenaline was pumping through me, and the anger I had expressed in the role-play with Jeanie came back in its rehearsed phrases. Fate had played me the most incredible hand, and I was determined not to cry or lose control. I inhaled deeply, and began.
He drew back, visibly shaken and unprepared for the unrelenting tirade I unleashed.
He muttered, ‘Once you’re a black sheep, you’re always a black sheep.’
I could tell by his manner that he had been wrong-footed by my attack. He tried to get a word in edgeways, making the excuse that his mother had always preferred Robbie, his young brother, to him. He had always felt neglected, and so he was the one who got into scrapes.
‘Scrapes?’ I cried in disgust, my flesh crawling as he tried to pat my hand. ‘Is that what you call going to prison for sexual offences and serving a sentence?’
He caught his breath, and his eyes flickered oddly in the light. I told him how I had learned the truth about his ‘hospitalization’. He looked away.
‘I thought you knew about that,’ he said slowly. ‘Your mam should’ve told you. Her name was Betty, but you won’t remember her.’
‘But I do,’ I retorted angrily. ‘She’d fair hair and lots of freckles and she giggled all the time. She came to babysit.’
His eyes narrowed. There was something strange about them, I realized. They were like grey, flinty pebbles now, remote and filled with anger. But they no longer instilled in me the fear of long ago, I noted triumphantly.
‘No one gave me the chance of turning over a new leaf,’ he said. ‘Not one.’
‘That’s not true!’ I burst out. ‘My mother told me when you got out of jail both of you got down on your knees in front of the minister and prayed for a fresh start. You promised you’d change your ways.’
‘I tried tae,’ he said heavily, looking at his hands, ‘but not everyone would forgive me and let me start again. Your gran forgave me, and your mam, but my father never ever did.’
There was a silence between us now. I thought it an odd thing to say. According to my mother, her father-in-law had been a tower of strength, organizing petitions with my father’s workmates to send to the trial judge to persuade him that the events with the babysitter had been out of character, and getting church people to write saying that my father was a pillar of the community.
‘Why wouldn’t your father forgive you?’ I quizzed him several times. I was not prepared to let go now, not when I seemed to have him on a hook.
Another long silence followed.
‘He wouldn’t forgive me for the Moira Anderson thing.’
My head shot up. Had I heard him correctly? He was looking bleakly out of the window now, where snow had started to swirl past.
Then he went on: ‘I was charged about the babysitter, then I got out on bail. You won’t remember this, it was all a long time ago. It was away back in 1957. My father wouldn’t forgive me for Moira Anderson. You won’t remember her either – you were too wee.’
My heart raced and my throat closed painfully. I did not want to hear any more.
I forced out, ‘You’re wrong. I do remember her.’
‘Grandpa was always convinced I’d done it. He said to me tae tell the polis where I’d put the wee lassie.’
My father’s fingers were now working at the fabric of the candlewick bedspread. He stared unseeingly at the snow, which was flashing past the window, the flakes strangely orange in the neon street light, for all the world like phosphorus. Was it my imagination or was the room darkening? Some instinct told me that I must imprint every detail of this weird conversation on my brain.
Terror wrenched at me, and I cried, ‘But why on earth would Grandpa even connect you to Moira Anderson? What could possibly make him think you were responsible?’
Those cold eyes shifted away again and silence fell. Finally, he said: ‘I told him I had nothing to do with her, but I was the driver of the bus the day she went missing. I told Grandpa I didn’t even know her, but she got on my bus, in all the snow. I was the last tae speak tae her. I was the last person tae see her . . .’
His voice trailed away and my heart lurched. My mind finished the end of the sentence, which he could not bring himself to say, as tears ran down his face.
Alive.
Chapter Thirteen
As I drove shakily east towards Edinburgh on the M8, which that evening was reduced to one lane, blinding blasts of snow tried to claim the few patches of visible road. My mind was in turmoil. With a kaleidoscope of snowflakes dashing against my windscreen, it seemed as if I was venturing through a tunnel of whirling elements with no clear view ahead. This image has stayed with me, and it sums up the state of mind I was in during the days following the conversation I had had with my father.
Over and over, even when I was asleep, I heard the words he had used, like an interminable tape-recording. Two assurances he had given me before we had left Granny Jenny’s bedroom kept echoing through my brain. I had frantically demanded to know if he’d been interviewed when Moira disappeared. ‘Oh, aye, I wis.’ He nodded quickly. ‘I telt them the same as Grandpa. I didn’t even know her.’
These two statements disturbed me because I knew he was lying. I didn’t know how I could feel so sure of it, but my conviction that my father and Moira had known each other was overwhelming.
In the meantime, there was the funeral to get through, but before that I managed to pull myself together enough to telephone Aunt Margaret, my mother’s sister.
‘Margaret, I expect you know my father’s back on the scene at the moment, which has been very upsetting for us all. Never mind having to cope with bereavement.’ She made the normal expressions of condolence at the other end of the line. ‘I don’t want to ask my mum about this, but I wondered if you would know. Was my father ever interviewed regarding Moira Anderson going missing in 1957?’
I was astonished when, after a short silence, my aunt said categorically, ‘Oh, yes, that’s right, he was. In fact I was there at the time. He came in when I was visiting your mum in Dunbeth Road, and I can remember him saying, “Now, don’t put my tea out, Mary, I have to go round to the police station to be interviewed.” ’
I chewed my lip, and said, ‘What else do you remember about it?’
‘Well, your mum was shattered. I can tell you Mary hit the roof. She said, “Whit’s happened now?” because, of course, he was already in all this bother and out on bail.’ There was a delicate pause. ‘D’you know, Sandra, about all that?’
‘I do now,’ I said wryly. ‘So, let’s get this right, you’re absolutely sure he was interviewed? When was this?’
‘It was a Monday, the week after she disappeared. We were living in Alexander Street, just round the corner from her home, and I remember all the men searching in the back closes. He said to us that he was being seen because during the week some woman had said Moira got on his bus. She’d thought she’d heard the driver say, “Hello, Moira.” He was going round to explain to them that it was another girl that he’d actually spoken to that day – a different Moira, a Moira Liddell, who gave all the drivers sweeties, and the lady must have been mistaken . . . Anyway, your mum was in a state, and I waited with her till he came back about an hour later.’
Mentally I pictured the scene, reminding myself that my father had had only to walk round the corner to the local station. It would never have occurred to either woman, as one sister comforted the other, to check on his actual movements. As far as they were concerned, when Alexander Gartshore returned to say that all was well, they accepted that he had been through a full police interview and had not been detained. Both women shared a family trait of always seeing the best in others and would go to great lengths to defend an underdog. I could almost see the relief on their faces when he returned, his tale seemingly checked out.
Not only had he convinced them but there was also every chance that if his name were to arise in the investigation they would staunchly defend him and spread the word that he had already been questioned. I shook my head at my father’s sheer audacity. I was quite unprepared, however, for my aunt’s next revelation, when I outlined the weird conversation he and I had had. She murmured that my grandfather had indeed had problems in believing that his son, already bailed for sexual offences involving a young girl, had had nothing to do with Moira’s disappearance. When he heard that Alexander had been driving the bus on which she was alleged to have travelled, he and Jenny had journeyed from their home in Bellshill to Coatbridge to confront him.
Ignoring my father’s protests, my grandpa had produced a crowbar and proceeded to pull up floorboards in the kitchen of 51 Dunbeth Road. He was aware that his son had recently renovated the scullery and had purchased new flooring from the ironmongers, Nelson and Clelland, who traded in the town’s main street. He also knew that the sink units had been replaced, and he pulled out everything to check behind the new ones, ripping out the false panelling.