No Easy Road Read online

  I was stunned and embarrassed and if the ground opened up I would have gladly jumped in to hide the shame. Suddenly, I was the daughter of a wino and everyone knew about it. Why didn't I have the kind of mother everyone else had? My mother was the butt of jokes and sniggers and innuendo. She was looked upon as scum. I felt sick to the stomach. Because I was her daughter, I realised the outside world would look at me in the same way.

  I always tried to hide the fact my mother was an alcoholic from the other children at the home, never bringing her up in any conversation. Once I saw my mother staggering up to the home holding on to my father. It was early evening and I was playing in the playground. She was wearing white high heels and a coat pulled in at the waste and a white headscarf. Her clothes were shabby and dirty and creased, as if she slept in them. I felt embarrassed as they passed by me. My father called out, saying he had a bag of sweets for me. Then they both made their way slowly up the driveway to the front door.

  Someone, I don't know who, answered the front door bell and turned them away. I saw it all through the window of the playroom, which I ran into to hide, to feel safe, to be as far away from them as I could. I felt no connection or bond or any sadness either as I watched them disappear down the gravel driveway and out of the home. I just couldn't accept her as my mother. She was not what I always wanted a mother to be and my father was simply a stranger who hung on to her arm, nothing more.

  At every opportunity, the house mother liked to remind me who I was and the sort of family I came from. She also took great pleasure in letting me know my future. When I was young, I was a really cute child and the staff at the home and the house mother's eldest daughter liked to take me out with them on Saturday trips to the town to look around the shops. I looked forward to these treats.

  If there was someone famous appearing at Her majesty's Theatre, and the children from the home were given free tickets, I was always the one dressed in the pretty party frock, scrubbed clean, hair shining, who at the end of the show presented the stars with a bouquet of flowers. Ruby Murray and Andy Stewart were two of the stars I met. But there were many others, all of them well known in the entertainment world at the time.

  I sat in the audience at the front of the theatre and then up I went when the show ended. Spotlights shone brightly in my face as I looked out into the darkness at the sea of faces in the audience. It was hard to make them out. I smiled sweetly and dropped into a curtsey and then handed over the big bouquet of flowers in my hands. It was almost as tall as I was, neatly tied in a beautiful red silk ribbon. I knew the routine well. I was a real professional.

  But the girl with the cute turned up nose started to grow up and my sweet angelic face changed along with the innocence of a small child. The young girl good enough to present flowers to the stars was now a tink as far as the house mother was concerned. As the years passed, such name calling became part of everyday life.

  I don't exactly know when I first started to feel dirty and unclean inside, or when thoughts of my father and mother started to repulse me, or when I began to loathe and hate them. But over the years, and at every opportunity, the house mother drummed into me how I would turn into an alcoholic, a tink, just like them. By then, my brother Billy and me also lost our Christian names. We were simply referred to as "those Whytes".

  "You'll grow up to be a prostitute, just like your mother!", said the house mother venomously, time and time again, always out of earshot of anyone who might be listening.

  The name calling, verging on hatred, started to affect me deeply and to drag me down. The other kids at the home started calling me names, too, especially during arguments, when they couldn't get the better of me. Eventually, I started to believe it all and I began to feel more and more uncomfortable at school because I thought other people must see me as the house mother did.

  One day, in the English class, dark despairing thoughts ran through my head. What was the point of being good at anything? I'm not going to try any more. So I simply stopped. I didn't think about the lessons any more and never answered questions or put up my hand.

  When I was in primary school, I always tried to get the answers right. I really wanted to do well. My ambition then was to become an air hostess and travel the world. I used to lie in my bed and dream about what it must be like to visit foreign countries. But, after years of brainwashing, my life felt bleak and without hope. Any ambitions I may once have had were gone. I sat in class believing I was dirty and not worthy of anything. So I drew more and more into myself with every passing day.

  I found it increasingly difficult to talk to my classmates, even the ones I knew from years back. They were a mixture of kids, some from very poor backgrounds, who lived in some of the most deprived areas of Aberdeen, and others from better off families. But I felt nothing in common with any of them. Why would they want to bother with someone like me? My self esteem was all but gone. I was simply a nothing, a nobody.

  For many years, I tried to understand why the house mother subjected me to such cruel mental torture. Why did she once show me off to the world only to turn on me with such venom? Was it something to do with my background, the people and way of life I once represented? I never figured it out. Whatever the reason, her hate filled words stayed with me, following me like a dark shadow for a very long time.

  Chapter Six

  Everyone was too busy to pay any attention to me. So I sneaked along to the large cubby hole under the stairs. You were not supposed to go in there but I didn't care. It was my favourite place. Most days I was all but invisible, hardly noticed by members of staff busy with the daily routine. So no one ever missed me.

  The cubby hole was a large cupboard, a private space I made my own. Its shelves were filled with long forgotten outdated shoes handed into the home over years by well meaning members of the public. They were cast-offs, gathering dust, mostly adult shoes, which was why I liked trying them on.

  I slipped on my favourite pair of white stiletto shoes which were far too big for my small feet. But I didn't care. I loved them. I felt all grown up.

  One day, I made my way unseen to the cubby hole as usual and heard muffled voices just as I was about to enter. They were the voices of my brother Billy and sister Lottie. Instead of opening the door and joining them, I pressed my ear against it and listened. They were talking about a ghost that appeared to them one night while in their beds when they lived at Linmoor.

  The ghost, a lady in grey, swooped through the dormitory past rows of sleeping children letting out a high pitched screaming sound as she collected the souls of the dead.

  "If she hovered over you and you were awake and caught sight of her black eyes, you'd never wake up again", said Lottie.

  Well, hearing that unsettled me, terrified me, and I ran back to the safety of the kitchen. Later, as bedtime approached, I couldn't get the grey lady out of my head. I tried all kinds of excuses and ploys so I could stay up longer. But it was no use.

  I lay in bed with my rag doll and old battered teddy bear on either side of me for comfort. Moonlight flooded the room and the rising wind rattled the small attic window. Dark shadows from the branches of the old tree outside in the driveway danced and swayed across the walls. I gripped my bedspread even tighter, convinced the lady in grey was coming and I would be her next victim.

  Sleep was all but impossible and morning seemed a long way off. Every few minutes, I plucked up the courage and peeked out from underneath the bed covers. Each time, I half expected the black eyes to be staring back at me. Thankfully, they never did and eventually I drifted off to sleep. My soul was safe for another night.

  Linmoor was once an old mansion which was converted into a children's home. It was situated deep in the countryside, surrounded by a forest.

  Billy and Lottie were there for a short time before they came to the home. Whether it was ever haunted by the ghost of a grey lady, I don't know. More likely, they knew I was listening outside the cubby hole door that day and wanted to give me a sca
re. It certainly worked.

  * * *

  I wanted to run around in the playground for a couple of hours more because it was still light outside. But life in the home followed a strict timetable. There were no exceptions to the rules. Still being the youngest, I was always first to go to bed.

  Climbing the steps to my attic room, I opened the bedroom door and was surprised to see a young girl sitting in the bed opposite to mine.

  "Who are you?", I asked her.

  "My name's Josie.", she replied.

  "You've still got your clothes on. You're supposed to take them off and put your pyjamas on when you go to bed."

  But Josie only smiled at me as she fidgeted and bounced about inside the bed covers. I got undressed, put my pyjamas on and sat up in bed looking at her.

  Once more, I repeated, "You've not got your pyjamas on."

  Josie didn't listen to a word I was saying as her blue eyes darted around the room taking in her new surroundings. I was happy to have a new pal come to stay at the home and I felt we were going to be the best of friends. She was the same age as me, her dark hair cut to just above her neck. And her skin was the clearest I ever saw, pink and glowing, making her look radiant. She was wearing her school uniform.

  "When did you come here?", I asked.

  "I went to the shops for sweeties. I got murdered", she said, still smiling at me.

  I didn't understand what murdered meant as we continued chatting away. All I knew was I liked her and I would be happy tomorrow walking with her to school and being in the same class. I don't remember falling asleep. But when I woke up in the morning, Josie was gone, leaving behind a neat and tidy bed.

  I hurried downstairs to breakfast looking for her but she wasn't there. So I asked a member of staff where Josie was.

  "She's the new girl", I explained.

  "There's no new girl."

  "She was in my room last night", I argued back.

  The member of staff gave me a strange look and told me to stop talking and to eat my breakfast so I could get ready for school. I didn't believe her. I talked to Josie. She talked to me. So she was bound to be about somewhere. I thought maybe she was hiding in the home and would turn up ready to go to school with me. But she never did. I kept looking out for her over the next day or so. But my new friend was nowhere to be seen. I walked to school feeling empty inside and sad we never played together.

  Was Josie simply a figment of my imagination? In all my years at the home, children were never brought in for just one night. The staff were always aware of any new arrival. We led very sheltered lives, never watching the news on television or reading any newspapers. I couldn't even read properly. So I never really appreciated what murdered meant.

  I never forgot Josie. Every time I thought about her, a picture of a happy six year old popped into my mind. To me, Josie was real and solid and very much alive. It was only long after leaving the home I realised she was not of this world. She was a ghost, a spirit, someone who brought joy into my life early one summer evening.

  Josie wasn't the only friend I made I couldn't quite explain. There was the young boy Thomas, who used to wait on me every morning on the way to school. I always saw him standing a little bit away from the entrance to the home. Then we talked to each other for a few minutes.

  He was a rather good looking boy, aged a few years older than me with short platinum blonde hair. His hair fell into a fringe in front of his face. He told me he came from the run down flats which were visible running down the nearby brae.

  But there was something different about him compared to all the other school kids in the area. He wore a jacket which appeared much too brightly coloured for the times. I never registered this as strange until many years later. He also appeared much too clean and tidy and well dressed for the street he said he lived in.

  Thomas stood there, always in the same place, carrying a satchel over his shoulder. We talked for a few minutes before I said goodbye and continued walking on to school. But I never once saw him leave for school. Whenever I looked back, he was just gone.

  When I came back from school, Thomas was waiting for me, standing in the piece of waste ground near the home. He walked with me the few yards to the spot where he stood in the mornings. We said goodbye and I made my way into the home. But I never saw him go into the flats where he said he lived. When I turned around, he was simply not there any more.

  These short morning and afternoon meetings went on for some time until one day Thomas announced he was going away. I wouldn't be seeing him any more. That made me feel sad. True to his word, one school morning he never turned up. I never saw him standing near the home again.

  Many years later, while living in England, I was getting ready to go to work early one morning when there were several loud hard knocks on the front door. My partner John also heard the knocks. We were both in the large hall cupboard putting on our coats at the time.

  I quickly popped my head out of the cupboard to see who it was and clearly saw a young man standing and smiling on the other side of the large clear window panels making up the front door. He was tall with platinum blonde coloured hair cut into a fringe and wearing a modern brightly coloured padded jacket.

  I asked John to go and see what he wanted. John poked his head out of the cupboard a second later and said there was no one there.

  "But I've just seen him", I said, rather perplexed. "He was standing there clearly."

  As I glanced out the front door, all I saw was the empty path leading to the closed gate at the bottom of the garden. There was nobody to be seen. John rushed out into the street and bumped into the post woman delivering letters. He asked her if she'd seen anyone else in the street in the last few seconds. No, was her reply.

  The incident left us both puzzled. All day long, I couldn't shift the nagging feeling I knew the young man's face from somewhere. Then it clicked. He was the same young man who used to wait for me all those years ago outside the home. His jacket, which once looked so out of place, now fitted in perfectly with the fashion of the 1980s. Coincidence? Mistaken identity? It was yet one more mystery in my life.

  * * *

  When I was a young kid, I totally believed in magic. One evening, shortly before Christmas, we were given free tickets to the theatre to see Peter Pan. We had a great time and at the end of the performance we all walked back home.

  I wasn't looking forward to this part of the evening for the route home took us past St. Nazareth House, a large creepy mansion with grey walls which were once painted white. The black steel gates with gold spear tips on top kept prying eyes out and the nuns and their charges firmly locked inside.

  The only time I ever saw the St. Nazareth kids was on a Sunday, as they walked to church with the nuns. They went to a different church to us and although our paths briefly crossed, they never spoke to you or even smiled. They looked unhappy.

  Every week I noticed the same pretty girl with sandy coloured hair. We always exchanged a quick glance at each other, but nothing more. As the years passed, we both watched each other growing up. We were two lonely children on much the same path in life, separated by no more than half-a-mile.

  But we were never destined to become the friends I'm sure we would have been if circumstances had been different. Little did we know in a few years time I would be the first girl to switch on the Christmas lights in Aberdeen and the following year, she would be the second.

  I met her briefly only once after we both left our homes. She was working at the harbour gutting fish, a freezing job at the best of times but much worse in winter. I was 16, so my social worker got me a job there, too, and during a tea break, I tried to talk to her. I asked her what it was like with the nuns. But she was shy and distant and answered only with a shrug of her shoulders. It was plain she didn't want to speak about the past which had affected her deeply. I knew then the pretty girl who once passed me week after week on the way to church was now no more. The spirit inside her died somewhere along the road.r />
  Although I was tired and ready for bed after the long walk back from the theatre, my mind was still filled with thoughts of Peter Pan. I climbed up onto my small pink dressing table underneath the attic window in my room to look at the stars twinkling in the blackness above me. I imagined seeing Peter, Wendy and the Lost Boys soaring through the night sky and longed for them to fly into my bedroom and take me to that magical land called Neverland. Eventually, when tiredness overtook me, I sleepily crawled into my small cosy bed surrounded by old battered toys and cuddled up to my shabby teddies.