by June Thomson
‘She’s just gone,’ he said in the same voice: ‘And she won’t be coming back. Not this time.’
He turned to me now and the pain was etched in his face. I felt anger.
‘I hate her!’ I said.
‘Don’t!’ he said: ‘Don’t say that about your mum … ever!’
‘But Dad!’
‘Dad nothing. She’s your mum. She always will be.’
Those would be the last words Dad would ever speak to me, or any of us, about Mum. He never uttered a bad word about the woman. I was about to reply but my rancour was stilled by faces at the door – my brothers and sister.
‘June,’ Dad went on: ‘You’re a big girl now, the oldest, and I’m relying on you to help me with the others. We’re a family, we’ll get through this together, you wait and see.’
Dad’s words had the same effect as always. I was soothed. I extended my arms to Roger, Jim, Linda and Gordon, who was little more than a tot. They filed into the kitchen, a deserted, sheepish little bunch seeking comfort and reassurance.
I tousled Gordon’s hair, lifting him onto the chair as the others took their places around the table. Dad hoisted the pan from the cooker and said: ‘The tea’s ready.’
I had grown up in an instant. My childhood had become as much of a dream as my love affair with David Cassidy. I didn’t know it then but I was taking my first steps on a journey into a future in which my personal sense of unworthiness would convince me that I did not deserve to be happy. I was, in a sense, being trained to put up with less, to accept rejection as the norm.
Giselle: I never doubted for a second that I was loved.
‘Giselle!’
My mother’s disembodied voice. Trying her best to sound angry and failing. My dinner must be ready.
‘I’m coming, Ma!’ I shouted from the bedroom.
I turned back to the mirror. For the thousandth time I was appraising my looks, and I hated what I saw. Who could love me? I stood out like a sore thumb in my class at school. All of the other girls were tall, pretty or blonde, or all three. Here I was, aged 13; short, gap-toothed, red-haired and covered in freckles. Not a pretty sight, I thought, especially when accompanied by a crippling shyness that could make me blush to the roots of my hair if someone so much as spoke my name.
‘Gi-selle!’
This time there was an edge in Ma’s voice, which suggested she was running out of patience. I wasn’t unduly worried. Ma’s bark was far more ferocious than her bite. In fact, she didn’t have a bite. She was a softie, a sweetheart, who was loved by all. That’s not to say she was a pushover, because she wasn’t. But to this day, when I conjure her up in my mind’s eye, I picture a woman with a smile on her face. When my mother Jean was alive, it took a lot to switch off that smile.
‘Gi-se-lllle!’
I realised suddenly that the voice was closer than it should be.
‘Ma?’ I said, as she appeared at the bedroom door.
She wore an expression of mock anger, her brow furrowed in a feeble attempt to look stern. I almost laughed, but I didn’t. This was a game we played. The rules were simple. She would look angry. I would look penitent. Anger wasn’t in Mum’s nature and I had never known a reason to fear her or my big, bluff father, who, when it came to his family – and his youngest daughter – had an awesome bark but even less of a bite.
‘You looking in that mirror, again? You’ll wear it out!’ she said.
‘Look at me, Ma! Red hair and freckles! God hates me!’
‘But I love you, darlin’. C’mon, you’re beautiful,’ she said, enfolding me in her arms.
‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m not like the other lassies. They’re pretty and tall, not a wee carrot-head like me!’ I cried.
‘I’ve seen the lassies in your class,’ she said. ‘They all look the same. You’re special. None of them can hold a candle to you. You’re a lot prettier than they are. You wait and see. When they grow up they’ll all wish they looked like you.’
All lies, of course, but beautiful lies, spoken by a kind woman who for all of her life would live in the confines of a small, safe world, the boundaries of which extended no further than her home and her family.
‘You get in there and get your tea,’ Mum said, guiding me out of the bedroom. I was momentarily buoyed by her support.
Perhaps my red hair and freckles weren’t so bad after all. Somehow, though, I wasn’t convinced. But my mother – and my father – had a knack of arming me against the world. My mother held my hand as she led me to the kitchen. For as long as she lived, my mother would hold the hand of her ‘baby’.
The kitchen was pandemonium, loud with the sound of my brothers and sisters – William, Alex, Johnny, Tam, Janie and Katie. It was a typical Glasgow household. Some of them had already left home, but they always found their way back to Ma’s for tea.
‘Giselle Ross,’ said Da. ‘At last! We can eat now.’
Da never called me or my sister Katie simply by our Christian names. He always appended our surname. Don’t ask me why. It was just a tradition and it always sounded as if he were about to give us a telling off. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Da was like Ma, a sweetheart. You wouldn’t think it, if you met him. John Ross is a pre-war model, a long-distance lorry driver, and a bit of a man’s man. Ma was always hugging and kissing us, but it has to be admitted that the modern expression ‘touchy-feely’ was not coined on behalf of my father. He loves us all fiercely, but we don’t demand big public shows of affection. Christmas and New Year in his home are marked by a firm handshake for his sons and a peck on the cheek for his daughters.
When I was a child and being bullied at school, Dad would tell me, ‘If someone hits you, Giselle Ross, you hit them back. If you don’t, lady, I’ll come and hit you.’
Of course, he would do no such thing. It was his clumsy psychology lesson on how to stand up for yourself. I looked around me. I was safe. I was secure. What did it matter if I had red hair and freckles? I had all the love I needed. I never wanted to leave this place and I wouldn’t for the next two decades. I didn’t know that then, of course, but my brothers and sisters would fly the nest, one after the other, and I, the youngest, would stay. I would live a cloistered existence of my own making and not for a single second regret it by worrying whether I was missing out.
What had the world to offer me that I could not find at home?
June: You were so fortunate. If my mum couldn’t love me, how could anyone else?
Mum had cleared at arguably the most vulnerable time in the life of a teenage girl.
I was sad, deeply sad, but I tried to hide it behind a mask of indifference and bravado. A mother’s love should be the rock upon which each of our lives is built, but in my case it wasn’t to be the case.
Did my mother not love me enough to stay? If she had loved me why would she leave me? Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but I could not help how I felt then, and I can’t help how I feel now.
I’m certain she must have loved me in her own way – or is that just something I comfort myself with? I still don’t know. What I do know is that from that moment I knew I couldn’t rely on her.
Her leaving had dredged up many emotions which I now realised had been experienced subconsciously. Even when she was in my life, I did not feel the closeness with her that I had with my father.
I had been able to identify with my pals’ closeness to their own fathers because that was my experience. I never doubted for a single second that Dad loved me. Our closeness was a living thing and it remains so. I have no idea what the catalyst was for Mum leaving us for good. I wouldn’t see her for many years and then I would learn that she had eventually met someone else.
Mum and Dad had very different personalities and it was a period when ordinary couples were not expected to be openly affectionate towards each other. So there had been no real tell-tale signs indicating her impending departure. One day she was there, the next she was gone.
To this day, Dad w
ill still not say a bad word about her, but I have always had the impression that he was secretly relieved when she left.
It must have been very difficult for him but he was armoured by his reputation for being a good and decent man. He was held in such high esteem and so well liked in the community that no one dared gossip about the breakdown of his marriage.
Dad was a foreman at the local dye works and he continued to work in the factory and function as father and mother to us all. In those days, in those circumstances, no one would have raised an eyebrow if Jim Martin had decided to deliver his children into the care of social workers. In fact, this was commonplace when a working man was deserted by his wife.
He was, however, made of sterner stuff. It must have been hard for him in a town such as Kilbirnie, in Ayrshire, a grim, grey industrial place that produced a similar breed of people.
Dad did not whine. He just did the best he could and his best was very good.
Ironically, I would repay him by going off the rails.
Giselle: Wherever I turned, wherever I looked, Ma and Da were always there …
The words written in my final school report card declared that Giselle Ross had grown into an amenable young woman who might do well in the world if she would just ‘push herself forward a bit more’.
Fat chance. I had no wish to push myself forward, or to trek too far into the world beyond the confines of my home and family. The word ‘confine’ conjures up a sense of being restricted. I wasn’t. I embraced the safety of home life. I harboured no ambition for a high-powered executive career. Was that wrong of me? Maybe. But I was being true to myself. One must never confuse contentment with a lack of ambition.
Teenage love affairs were mysteries to be experienced by others. I had never had a boyfriend. I was – and I remained for a long time – an innocent. My days revolved around the home, like a wheel that turned contentedly through one day to the next. Ma and Da were the hub, my brothers and sisters the spokes of the wheel. I had no notion of becoming a mother, but Ma demanded that her house be ‘filled with babies’, and in time it would. I would then become a brilliant auntie to the children in this ever-extending family.
When Katie had her two children, Paul and little Giselle, I drew them into my loving world. I saw them every day. I was like a second mother to them, as Katie would become a second mother to my Paul and little Jay-Jay when they came along.
From time to time, Ma and Da would, to coin a phrase, make efforts to persuade me to get a life. I had a life, a wonderful life, and one that satisfied all of my needs. I felt no jealousy of others who lived a different kind of life.
And so it would go on.
June: You were the perfect daughter; I was acting like a brat …
I wasn’t so much bad as wilful, an attention-seeker. These days psychologists would have a name for it and I’m sure they could come up with any number of reasons to explain why I began acting out. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to recognise that the change in my behaviour coincided with abandonment and a flood of teenage hormones. I may have been secretly relieved that Mum was out of our lives but it did leave a huge void.
Afterwards, I felt as if I were searching, always searching, for something or someone to fill the emptiness. I pushed back the boundaries – pinching and drinking vodka from Dad’s cupboard; staying out late; running away from home. All stupid stuff, really. I just yearned to be noticed, to be valued; for someone to put their arms around me and assure me that I was safe. In the aftermath of my misdemeanours, my granny was drafted in to bring me back to my senses. She was a lovely old woman with a particularly simplistic view of the universe, which, as far as she was concerned, was painted in black and white.
She would declare, ‘Just remember, June, once you’ve made your bed you have to lie on it – think of what you’re doing to yourself and your dad.’
Poor Dad. He was so busy with work and looking after the home that the only way – in my confused mind – that I could get his full attention was by getting into bother. I can still remember the weary conversations, the pained expressions on his face.
‘Why are you doing this, June?’ he would say in an exasperated tone of voice, in reference to my latest escapade. ‘Why can’t you just behave like everyone else?’ he would go on.
Dad could not fathom why I was playing truant constantly and getting into daft scrapes. In retrospect, it is almost as if I was being ‘bad’ to test his love, trying to establish how far I could push him before he, too, abandoned me.
‘I can’t,’ I would reply, without knowing why, my face set in a perpetual scowl. His hurt looks wounded me to the core, but I could not help myself.
One of the worst things I did to him was to run away from home. I decided I would hitchhike to London. I set off with two pals, not giving a second thought to the pain it would cause him. When it was discovered that we were gone, he had everyone out looking for us: friends, relatives, the police. Our big adventure was, of course, doomed to failure. We actually made it south of the border but it wasn’t long before we ran out of money and were forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of the police. We were returned home in disgrace by social workers.
Dad was mortified and he lambasted me. Did I know the trouble I had caused? Did I realise how worried he had been? What kind of example was I to my brothers and sister? I stood, head bowed, stung by his words – but for some inexplicable reason a part of me was pleased to be the centre of attention.
I would never again run away from Dad, but it would take me a long time to shake off my recalcitrance. If someone said, ‘Don’t do that, June,’ that is precisely what I would do. What I needed was to be truly loved, to find someone of my own, someone who would make me the centre of his whole world. I would find him. Desperation shines like a beacon, and so often a light in the darkness attracts a predator.
His name was Rab Thomson.
Giselle: As time passed, we were walking to the same destination – but from different starting points …
The woman in the mirror was far less vulnerable than the girl had been. I swept the brush through my gleaming red hair. Ma had been right. The hair I had hated so much as a teenager had become my crowning glory.
It had been a long time since I had first stood in front of this looking-glass, bemoaning my perceived imperfections. I still did not care much for what I saw, but I was safe, perennially cloistered by invisible walls that had been built over so many years by my loving family. My brothers and sisters had long since gone, creating new lives of their own outwith the fortress. I remained. My ‘job’ was still to look after my parents.
My mother’s health had deteriorated badly. She suffered from chronic asthma, which obviously affected her breathing. It was extremely debilitating. She would spend nights in the living room, sleeping in a chair, propped up by pillows. I was never far away. I delighted in being able to look after her – and Da – as they had looked after all of us. I still had no sense that I was sacrificing myself and I had long since come to terms with my detachment from the ‘real’ world. It was a price worth paying. I was content. I saw the good in people, rather than the bad. I had learned how to do that from Ma. She helped her neighbours. She would not pass a beggar without giving him money. She bought sweets for children who had none.
When we were young, Ma and Da would take us on trips, days out in the car, walks in the countryside, strolls along seaside promenades. It was my turn now to chaperone them. I loved them. I loved their safe world. I embraced it. I never wanted to leave it. It might have remained so until one day, at the age of 32, I walked into our local post office with Ma. The man standing behind the polished wooden counter had soft brown eyes and he smiled at me.
His name was Ashok Kalyanjee.
Chapter 2
Love of Our Lives
‘From the beginning, they were brought together by what I call a constellation of symptoms … which would have catastrophic results.’
Ian Stephen
&
nbsp; June: Isn’t it so strange how two chance encounters brought all of us to this place?
They were lining the back wall of the dance hall, a posse of young bucks with drinks in one hand and cigarettes in the other. They wore leather and short-sleeved button-down shirts, and affected a couldn’t-care-less attitude. This languid disdain was a smokescreen. Their eyes were watchful, scanning, taking in the ‘talent’.
Saturday-night meat market in Kilbirnie. Everyone looking for something, anything to dispel the gloom and break the Monday-to-Friday monotony. I was 17 and I shouldn’t have been at the over-18s dance, but small-town childhoods are short; everyone grows up quickly when there is so little to look forward to. You might as well get on with a life that is pretty much mapped out for you from the moment you’re born. Go to school, leave school, get a job, marry the first man who is nice to you, have his kids. The line of our horizon struggled to go beyond the edge of town.
I was determined to break the mould. No matter what, I was planning to go to London. I had been saving my ‘tips’ and whatever I could spare from my wages as a trainee hairdresser. The money would take me to the bright lights and freedom. We – the girls – were dancing with each other, waiting for the ‘tap’ on the shoulder. There were few niceties involved in this mating ritual – a grunt, the tap, and if you were fortunate, a mumbled ‘You dancin’?’ Whenever this was said to me, I always had to suppress the urge to reply, ‘Of course, I’m dancin’. What do you think I’m doing, signalling to the boats at sea?’ Of course, I never did. It would have been a break with protocol.
I was fighting a losing battle against the pounding music in a vain attempt to tell my friend Wilma that it was time to go. And then I saw him. He had broken away from the posse and was heading for me, walking across the crowded dance floor through a tobacco haze that transformed his friends into ghosts. I knew instinctively that I was his target. He walked with purpose, his long mane of strawberry-blond hair flowing behind him. Perhaps it wasn’t time to go after all. I signalled to Wilma with my eyes, the semaphore of the dance hall. She looked behind her and turned back to me, making a face.