Where There is Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

One, called Jeannie, could twirl with all the dexterity of a trapeze
artist, and showed us how to ‘tummle yir wulkies’, which involved placing your body next to the iron rail at the park entrance, then tumbling over it head first. She loved all animals
but her looks were spoiled by an Alsatian someone had tied up outside the Co-op. That incident taught me to be a wary of dogs I did not know, and although Jeannie assured me I should only worry
about strays, I knew differently.
    The other Catholic girl lived just opposite the Co-op, at 218 Calder Street, and was one of a big family, which I envied. She was called Rena, and her dad, Eddie Costello, worked in the scrap
yard and knew my father. Our homes were a stone’s throw apart, and she and her pals taught us wee ones to play ‘Truth, Dare or Promise’, but they only bothered with us if they
were bored, and certainly not if any lads were about.
    When I was seven, we moved house and lost contact with most of our Partick and Calder Street neighbours, but years later when I was living in Whifflet, next door to Granny Frew, I encountered
Rena. It was 1963, I think. I was in my navy High School blazer standing at the bus stop at the top of Ashgrove. A woman with a wee baby was already there waiting for the bus up town, and just
before it appeared over the brow of the brae, I felt she was vaguely familiar. As we boarded both of us exchanged greetings with the conductress, and although I sat a few seats forward, when I
heard the words, ‘Hello, Rena,’ I turned my head to look. It was her, chatting away as she perched the wee one on her knee. She still had such a nice smile, though now the make-up was
very Dusty Springfield, her blonde hair sprayed stiff with Belair, eyeliner black and tilted up noticeably at the corners, Egyptian-style. She must have been about nineteen, but still looked
younger than her age, despite all the Max Factor. I could not catch her eye and was too shy to move near her. Over the brief journey of just two or three stops, the two women exchanged
pleasantries, and I learned that our families were once again living close to each other. Her baby was lovely, and beautifully dressed, but while the clippie was cooing at her, Rena was observing
the reactions of others to the colour of the little one’s skin.
    ‘What are you calling her?’ she was asked.
    ‘Mary, after my mother,’ Rena replied, ‘and she’s being christened in St Mary’s.’
    Before I could smile at her the clippie had helped her off, and they waved a cheery farewell to each other.
    I never saw Rena and her child again and never thought of her until one day in the spring of 1994, when the grim events that had occurred in Gloucester, England, began to unfold on the front
page of every newspaper. With mounting horror, I realized who Catherine West, Fred West’s first wife, had been.
    I telephoned my mother and we asked each other how a local girl like that could have lost all contact with her large family. The other news item that had stunned me was that Rena
Costello’s first little girl was also missing, and suspected dead. But the police were searching for the remains of a child called Charmaine, which couldn’t have been the same one.
Sadly, it turned out that Rena had named her baby Charmaine Carol Mary.
    But I have happy memories of Partick Street, where I became, like Moira Anderson, an incorrigible tomboy. I played from morning till night both in our building – out of sight of my mother
– and outside, climbing the dykes that separated Partick Street from Kelvin Street. I whined for baseball boots like the boys and, in despair, my mother relented. I thought nothing of running
over the roofs of the wash houses and lowering myself off walls nine or ten feet high. I practically lived in an overflowing neighbouring scrap yard, which belonged to Martin and Black’s, the
factory renowned for huge wire ropes that were sent round the world to hold up steel