Where There is Evil (25 page)
Read Where There is Evil Online
Authors: Sandra Brown
I had photocopied this information, and read it several times in a grim attempt to try to understand what had occurred on that February night so long ago. I came up with several
theories and succeeded in reawakening my wish to be regressed back to my troubled childhood, to eliminate any shred of suspicion about my dad’s relationship with me. I decided to go to an
expert in hypnosis regression, recommended by my GP, Brian Venters and with the knowledge of Ashley, who was still counselling me.
Hypnotherapy is a powerful tool, which, in the correct hands, can provide the key to deeply rooted emotional problems; it taps into the subconscious, where the experiences we meet early, and how
we deal with them, lay down our behaviour for a lifetime. I had never been hypnotized, had never witnessed any kind of stage show, and had only read articles on the subject. Everything learned or
seen is stored in the brain, and using hypnotherapy to reach what is present in the deeper recesses means you can re-evaluate with adult eyes what took place in the past and cut through the
child’s confusion. Often the subconscious reveals events repressed by the conscious mind because they were too distressing for the child to cope with at the time.
It is important that the hypnotherapist is able to deal professionally not only with helping the client access the subconscious, but also with any revealed trauma. I had every faith in the woman
with whom Brian Venters put me in contact, a Glasgow GP named Hetty McKinnon, and visited her home one Friday evening.
Hetty showed me into a charming study, lined with antiques, and soon had me installed in a comfortable winged armchair with a little footstool in front of me. She set up the tape recorder I had
remembered to bring, and tested its volume. Recordings could be passed on to Jim if they proved useful.
‘Now, you’ve absolutely nothing to worry about.’ She beamed at me. ‘When we start to regress you, just let me show you what to do should there be anything that worries
you, so that I know you’re concerned about it.’ She demonstrated how I should move my finger to alert her.
Reassured, I felt tension slip out of my body. I concentrated on her framed watercolours, then closed my eyes and let myself drift as she suggested, while her gentle voice washed over me. She
made it clear that I could stop what was happening at any time simply by opening my eyes. It was just like entering the lightest of afternoon naps.
Hetty described my arm, which I had to extend straight in front of me; it would be as heavy as one of the huge iron bars which were manufactured in the foundries of Coatbridge many years ago.
Within a second, I could not budge it when asked to move it, neither could I curl my fingers. It was the strangest of sensations.
‘I want to take you back, Sandra, maybe to think of happy occasions first from your past, then others. Go back to when you were a little girl. Imagine you’ve got a book in front of
you and each year will be on a page so we’ll have to turn back a few, and more and more, till we can reach 1962, when you’d be thirteen. Then 1961, when you’d be twelve. If
there’s anything on the page to worry you, just show me by giving the signal which I have shown you.’
Slowly we drifted backwards from 1993. Images were flashing through my brain, some happy, some disturbing, but nothing to make me feel I wanted to pause and talk of the memory.
Fragments passed me as if I were in a long tunnel like a kaleidoscope of visions.
I frowned. One vivid picture came from Ashgrove, not long after we had moved there. I was twelve. I was wearing my best dress, a bright sunshine yellow one with some fancy embroidery and a
little matching bolero, originally bought for my uncle Bobby’s wedding.
I examined the memory more closely.
I’m terribly proud of my outfit, but now it hurts under my arms, and there’s a faint line you can see where the hem has been let down, so it’s no longer
just for Sundays any more, and I’m playing out in the street. Then I go reluctantly to Allison’s van that has stopped at my granny’s gate. My mother’s shouted at me to
get items from the butcher for her and Katie, but I always look warily into the sawdust interior at the back. Dead carcasses swing about, still swaying from the vehicle’s momentum, as do
dark brown sticky fly papers; and the white trays are clogged with bits of minced meat, attracting large bluebottles which make me feel sick. Clutching my wares in their hastily wrapped brown
paper, I run up the path to Katie’s door, then stop dead as I feel the blood soak through the cotton material of my dress. I scream as a gory ox tongue rolls out of the package and right
down the front of my frock, marking it so that I can never wear it again. The crimson splashes are everywhere, the rivulet down my leg and in my sock a dreadful reminder from the past. I end up
yelling like a banshee and now all the linked sausages are scattered about on Katie’s red Cardinal-waxed steps. My father, running from his garage to see what has occurred, curses me for
the needless fuss I am making over some bloodstains, and wallops me for stupidity at dropping what will be his tea all over the path. My granny Katie also clatters me across the head to silence
the shrieking, which I cannot stop for a good minute, particularly when I see her pick up the huge dripping tongue. ‘What a stushie to make about a frock!’ she declares as she
shoves me in the door. ‘God bless us, stop drawing attention to yerself!’
I let the memory drift away. I had been terribly ashamed at the time: to draw all eyes to you was the worst of offences and against my granny’s code. Then, I had not been
able to cope with it. As an adult, it makes perfect sense to me why the sight of all the spilt blood had had such an effect: it had brought the sexual attack I’d suffered from my unknown
assailant in Dunbeth Road three years previously straight into my mind with no warning.
I did not make any signal to Hetty, and let her turn another page back, then another.
The early 1960s . . . Davy Crockett hats . . . crocodiles of children bouncing jauntily to the baths with wee string bags stuffed with ancient family towels and our elasticated, horribly ruched
swimsuits.
1960, 1959 . . . wonderful memories here, of splashing in and out of tubs in back yards, skipping about through sprays of water hosed into groups of kids by adults enjoying amazing summer
weather. Lurid-coloured plastic hula hoops.
1958, 1957 . . . I am absolutely fine till 1957.
‘Is there something on that page worrying you?’
Hetty has spotted my finger trembling. I have still not spoken so far on the tape.
When I do, it is a childish little voice that speaks, and it astonishes me. I find myself listening to what this wee girl is saying. I’m quite detached from her, yet she is
me
.
‘It’s very hot. I’ve got flu. Lots of people have it – my two little brothers, they’re usually in my bed here, but I’m on my own. They
might get it, in the bed in the wall, where I am, with flu . . . but it’s OK, Mum’s here . . .’
Hetty tried to establish when this had taken place, and asked some questions about winter, and took me back a little to Christmas in the same period.
‘My dad’s not here. He’s not, and we have to go on Christmas Day to my aunt Bessie’s. I’ve asked for the
Girl’s Crystal
annual
– but he’s not going to be there. We’re not allowed to visit him.’
Hetty asked me about missing my father, and how I had enjoyed Christmas.
‘I think the tangerines in my stockin’ – he put them there, with the gold coins. He must have remembered about me, he knows the gold chocolate coins are my
favourites. Children aren’t allowed in the big hospital where he is . . . The gold coins, I know they’re from
him
. The other children at school, they said: “Your
dad’s been sent away to a bad place,” and I said, “No, he hasn’t! He’s in hospital, he’s hurt his back,” an’ they said “He’s
forgotten all about you,” but he’s not forgotten about us . . . I wish there was a real Santa.’
How strange, I think to myself. This child is devastated to be without him.
We went further back, and I gave an involuntary signal to Hetty.
‘Is there anything else on this page which worries you, little Sandra, aged seven?’
Loud sobbing can be heard on the tape.
‘He wants me to get my friends . . . There’s Joy, the Elizabeths an’ the others and he keeps wanting to play our games. It’s horrible.’
‘What’s horrible about it?’
‘Because we jus’ want to play our own games, but he – he keeps
doing
these things . . .’
‘Is he touching you when he plays these games?’
‘He’s touching my friends an’ he won’t stop.’
‘What is he doing to them?’
‘He’s puttin’ his hands under their clothes and he’s ticklin’ them, and makin’ them laugh – but I don’t think it’s very
funny.’
‘You don’t laugh. Does he do it to you?’
‘No, but he doesn’t want me to tell.’
‘Does he speak about this?’
‘He gives me money and ice cream, he can be so nice. He says there are some things you shouldn’t say . . .’
‘Some things should be secret?’
‘Uh-huh. But I went to play with Elizabeth an’ she came to the door and said: “I can’t play with you any more, your dad does funny things,”
an’ she’s going to tell people at school.’
‘And you start crying?’
‘Yes, he gives me sweeties, and he gives them to my friends, and money as well. I
tried
to tell my mummy about it – I saw him. I saw him trying to take
girls into his car at the park. My mum wouldn’t believe me.’
‘You did try to say to her, but she doesn’t believe you?’
‘She says he went into Molly Gardiner’s shop for cigarettes for his clippie because he was going to work, an’ she says how could he be talking to people at
the park if he was on his way to work? He wouldn’t have had time. I told her an’ said why was he there? He was talkin’ to them and I think he was wantin’ them to go with
him. I wasn’t there, this time. I wasn’t meant to see him, it was jist an accident that I saw him with them.’
‘And did he say anything to you, Sandra?’
‘ “Keep yer mouth shut, in future.” And he burnt me with the spoon. After I’d been trying to tell my mum, he put the teaspoon in his tea, no milk in
it, an’ then he put the teaspoon in my face.’
‘And it’s sore.’
‘Yes. It’s sore.’
The furthest back we went that day was 1953, when I was just four years old. I had had no recollection of this memory in my normal day-to-day living; I described the panic of my
brother Norman having a fit, and the terror of going along what seemed miles and miles of great long corridors at Yorkhill, the hospital for sick children in Glasgow, which I revealed in some
detail. Then:
‘My mummy’s giving me such a row! It’s because I’m so . . . she keeps saying, “You’re so crabbit. Why are you so crabbit?”
An’ then the doctor comes, an’ the doctor says – the doctor’s
black
– an’ he says: “Can you not see that this child has chicken pox coming
out? No wonder she’s upset,” an’ there is red itchies comin’ up, m’m. I’m kept in hospital too.’
Hetty explained afterwards that a number of things from this memory had caught her attention. My description of the hospital was very much as she remembered it when she had
worked there years before, and my child’s reaction to an ethnic face had not surprised her: immigrant doctors were rare in the early fifties. (I discovered later from my mother that the
incident had indeed taken place, although she, too, had forgotten all about it. She confirmed that Norman had had a fit aged eighteen months, which had involved a short spell in hospital. And yes,
I
had
ended up covered in a rash there.)
Hetty remembered flu sweeping Scotland the weekend Moira vanished. Then she said I would need one more session with her. We set a date for an October evening before my Open University
examinations.
After my session with Hetty, I received a message at work, asking me to meet Lord James Douglas-Hamilton at his local surgery in Davidson’s Mains, another suburb of Edinburgh, on Friday 24
September, at 5 p.m. All he could do, he said, was add his voice to John Smith’s and ask the Lord Advocate why no one would meet my family or myself to enlighten us. The whole business seemed
to strike him as distasteful.
My cousins asked about the hypnotherapy. Had I been a victim too?
‘We haven’t finished, but I don’t
think
so,’ I said slowly. ‘Much of what has come up are the same memories I’ve given the police in my witness
statements, but the details are just that bit sharper. We went pretty far back, but not as far as the memory with Doctor Vicky. It must have been even earlier, so I’ve not dealt with that
nightmare.’
Not yet.
I had a meeting over tea at the Sheraton Hotel with Irene, my oldest friend, and her cousin, Sheila, who’d known me for years too. Sheila’s husband, Bill, had grown
up beside A and B and knew of my father. He’d told me that he did not doubt for one minute what my cousins were saying: my father’s predilection for young girls was ‘well
known’. Bill had a colleague, Richard Kinsey, who Sheila felt could give me the best advice and recommend a top lawyer who might help our cause.
I telephoned Richard. He was a well-known expert in criminology at a Scottish university. He was generous not only with his advice, but also with his time: our chat lasted some two hours.
He told me to think carefully before launching a private prosecution, and cautioned me on its inherent difficulties. He was keen to know what my motives were. Did I realize I would be placed
under the spotlight? He warned me of the personal scrutiny I would receive from the media. A private prosecution would hit the headlines, the journalists would have a field day with the daughter
who wanted to see her father in court, and my husband and I could court financial ruin, if none of my cousins or myself qualified for legal aid. ‘You and your family run the risk of losing
your home,’ he pointed out, ‘and even if it doesn’t come to that, how will you feel if your kids are perhaps pointed out at school – others would certainly gossip about
their mum and what’s in all the papers – or what if you have reporters hanging round your gate? Have you thought all this through? Because some will view your desire to see your father
behind bars as a revenge trip. A moment ago you called him an evil bastard. How would that sort of vilification come across in a high court setting? You would find it incredibly hard to separate
off your emotional relationship with this man when sitting in a witness box.’ He reckoned that the only person who could help me, if I was determined to bring my father to court, was the top
Scottish lawyer Alistair Duff.
