June Thomson - Beyond All Evil - Two monsters, two mothers, a love that will last forever

All the way home, my thoughts had danced with the delights of lipstick, boys and David Cassidy. I was madly in love with the American teen heartthrob – heaven forbid, it was the Seventies after all – and all I wanted to do was play my one and only record on the precious stereo Dad had given me for my birthday.

I had sung the words of ‘How Can I Be Sure’in my head on the journey. I longed to reach home, to rush to my room, to languish on my bed and let David’s velvet voice wash over me while I gazed adoringly at his poster on the wall. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

But David and my girlish crush on him were driven from my mind in an instant. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.

I laid down my schoolbooks on the table and slipped into one of the chairs clustered around it. I traced confusion and concern with my finger tips on the Formica surface. I took a deep breath.

‘Dad?’ I said again. ‘What’s wrong? Something’s happened.’

He still wouldn’t turn round, still wouldn’t look at me. He had a spatula in his hand and he was using it to flick over meat in a frying pan.

‘Your mother’s gone,’ he replied in a voice that was weighed down by his obvious sadness.

‘Where?’ I said, rallying for an instant, believing that she must have left early for her beloved bingo hall.

‘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.