September Starlings (21 page)

‘You’ve been meeting Anne on your way home from school. You were seen more than once, by a friend of mine, and you were sitting side by side on a garden wall in Chorley New Road.’

I made no reply. Replies, in my mother’s massive tome of domestic etiquette, were cheeky unless she had actually solicited an answer. ‘What were you doing sitting on a garden wall like a common person for all the world to see?’

I tried to think about this one before answering, but I failed to come up with something inventive or self-protective. Even as I opened my mouth to speak, I had no real concept of what I might say. So I slipped into automatic, just allowed my tongue to do the work. ‘I was sitting on a wall, I suppose.’ Well done, Laura, I said to my inner self. That will get you a big gold star.

Her cheeks went pink and she reached across to the mantelpiece for her Craven A. ‘That is worse than dumb insolence, Laura McNally. A gifted girl? Who does that Maria Goretti think she’s fooling when she writes your school report? What are they teaching you at the convent? Do you have lessons in how to make your mother ill?’

‘No.’

She slapped her hand down on the chair back. ‘I know that you were sitting on a wall. I do not need a picture, thank you. I have just said that you were sitting on a wall. What I require to know is why you were doing it against my express wishes.’

‘I was tired, I think.’ An express was a train, so I wondered vaguely whether my mother’s express wishes
moved as fast as the 9.15 from Manchester. Or Blackpool. No, it would definitely not be Blackpool, as Blackpool was for common people with yellow bedrooms and poor taste. I shifted about, wondered where I’d ever got the courage to argue with her a few months earlier. I’d told her that she was bad, and that hadn’t done any good. And I was still frightened of her …

‘What is the matter with you, girl? Look at yourself, just look.’

In the absence of a mirror at the correct height, I could not obey this new command, not without turning myself inside out.

‘You are no daughter of mine. I always imagined that I would have a pretty girl child, but you look like a tramp, all rumpled and dirty. What are you thinking of?’

‘Nothing.’ I tightened my lips to stop my loud thoughts escaping into the room, because Liza McNally was capable of reading a person’s innermost imaginings.

She took a chestful of smoke, blew it out in a long blue stream that caressed my face with its filth. ‘Dumb insolence again,’ she announced. ‘I should have thought that the nuns would not allow this type of behaviour.’ She flicked non-existent ash in the direction of a crystal ashtray. Even the air I breathed was an unpleasant shade of nicotine in those days.

My mother was really peculiar. If you talked back, it was cheek, if you stood still and listened, it was this dumb insolence thing. The hardest part was trying to work out which was worse; it was impossible to fathom what to do. ‘If I don’t talk to Anne when she talks to me, then I’ll be rude. Sister Maria Goretti says that we shouldn’t be rude.’

She took a step closer to me, and I wondered whether this was the right time for me to stoop and cover my head with my hands. I really hated that. Cowering and protecting the skull from a larger person is so dehumanizing and humiliating. ‘Don’t quote that dried-up nun at me, miss. When you leave that school at four o’clock, you obey my rules. The Turnbull family is just trouble. I don’t
want you growing up wild like Anne – she gets far too much of her own way. As for Maisie and Freddie – they are no better than they ought to be. I have asked you to stay away from them, and I expect obedience, not criticism.’

The seeds were planted, had been sown when I was very young, but I was too inexperienced to verbalize, even inwardly, the contempt I felt for this thin, selfish, chain-smoking woman. ‘I like Auntie Maisie and Uncle Freddie.’ The words were out before I could check them for flaws.

She nodded, but her mouth was thin with displeasure. ‘You are too young to differentiate between people, so you must simply accept what I say. In time, you will discriminate for yourself, you will realize that the family next door is not up to the mark.’ She was a talking dictionary once she got heated, or even warmish. ‘They are not our sort.’

Anne was my sort, would remain my sort throughout life. I stood and waited for the tirade to continue. Mother might follow up with a lecture on gratitude, a homily on good behaviour, a speech about her own martyrdom. Or perhaps I would get a mixture, a few bits from each well-worn monologue. Whatever, the delivery would take time, but at least she didn’t seem to be lashing out with fists and nails on this occasion.

‘No-one knows how I suffer.’ She looked at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. She had opted for martyrdom, then, was practising a pose that might gain her a halo in the fullness of time. And she could be hung in the corridor at St Mary’s with a lunch menu to her left, a timetable to her right. And Joan of Arc staring across from the opposite wall. I swallowed the wry laughter. No way would my mother merit sainthood.

‘I am alone so much.’ A small kiss-curl above her left ear was smoothed, pasted down with a bit of spit. For a woman who worried about manners, she had some queer habits. ‘Nobody cares about me, considers me, worries about me. You don’t care, your father doesn’t care, and I’m—’

‘He’s busy.’ Where my father was concerned, I was inclined to snappiness, even if my own physical safety was at risk. ‘My dad works very hard.’

She turned, dismissed the holier-than-thou look from her face. ‘Did I ask for your opinion? Did I?’

‘No.’

‘Then keep it to yourself, please. A lot of men are busy, but they still find time to take their wives out for a meal, or to the cinema. He never talks to me. Never.’

She was searching for sympathy, even for love, but I had nothing to offer. ‘He talks to me,’ I said quietly. ‘He tells me about the factory and the shop.’

‘Huh.’ She tossed the cigarette into the fireless grate where it fell among its predecessors, twenty or thirty orange-coloured cork tips resting in the iron basket. ‘How fascinating for you. So now you know all about silly little bits of herbs and muslin bags. How utterly wonderful.’

Dad was not silly. What Dad was making was not silly, yet I held my tongue again. There had been so many days like this one, many of them culminating in a beating. Looking back on life is seldom easy; days have a habit of mixing themselves up, merging into one. When I was eight or nine, I felt as if I had already spent a lifetime rooted to the spot, listening as my mother complained about me, berated and belittled me, undermined my father.

On one such day (there were many, as Anne and I continued to meet after school) a knock at the door interrupted Mother’s moanings and groanings. She crept to the window, twitched the thick lace curtain, fell back with a hand to her throat. ‘You must help me,’ she mumbled. ‘Quick – do something.’

This was quite interesting, as I had never before seen my mother nonplussed. ‘What shall I do?’ I asked. The door was almost breaking away from its hinges. Whoever was outside had no intention of remaining on the path for very long.

‘Say I’m not in,’ she gasped. Her lips were turning an exciting shade of purple, as if her fear had triggered some
chemical that reacted violently with her Sunset Flame lipstick. ‘Whatever happens, you must say that I’ve gone out.’ Her head bobbed about like a cork in water. ‘I won’t be back for some time. Say it!’

‘Why?’

She was whispering now, though the quiet voice was harsh, reminded me of an angry snake I once saw at the pictures with Uncle Freddie. It was a cowboy film, I suddenly remembered. The man in the white hat had been tied to a tree by a crowd of men in black hats. Men in black hats were bad, and they invariably rode black horses. And they let this long, poisonous snake out of a sack and then the man in the white—

‘Laura!’

I felt myself jump, knew that she had seen me jump, felt foolish about it. ‘Yes, Mother?’

‘Go to the door right away and get rid of that dreadful woman. She’s wicked and she tells a lot of lies. Now, say to her … tell her that I’ve gone to the doctor’s.’

‘That’s a lie,’ I answered coolly.

‘Of course it’s a lie!’

‘You said that she’s the one who tells—’

‘Shut up, you foolish girl.’ Mother was forgetting her manners again. ‘Tell her I’m ill, very gravely and seriously ill and—’

‘What with?’ The door was in danger of collapsing inward at any moment. A female voice screamed, ‘Come out, you whore,’ and the letter box was rattling furiously.

‘Never mind what with, just say I’m ill. Get rid of her.’ Mother’s face was now a fascinating shade of red that tended towards magenta. The colour defied foundation cream and powder, shone like a beacon in the ditchwater-dull room. She seemed to be having some difficulty with her breathing, was panting as fast as a dog in hot weather. Seeing her crouching as I had crouched so often was thoroughly enthralling. She had no dignity, no standing. I stepped closer to her, so close that I could almost smell her fear.

‘Laura …’ The eyes were huge and round.

‘It’s a lie,’ I said. ‘We’re not to tell lies.’

‘You will do as I say.’

I hopped from foot to foot, physically expressing the fact that I was in at least two minds. Half my body pulled towards the hall, while the rest dragged me back, made an effort to stay out of the other danger zone. In this room, I was with the devil I knew, but the dark angel on the front doorstep was an incalculable threat. And my whole body and soul ached with the knowledge that whatever I did, there would be trouble.

Her eyes started to bulge from her head, were plainly ready to pop out and roll across the carpet, twin blue and white ‘bobbers’ that would be worth ten plain ‘glassies’ in the streets and playgrounds of Bolton. Shining beads of sweat collected on her brow, ran in small rivers down her cheeks, left stripes in pale powder, small canyons in patches of rouge. One hand reached out, almost touched me, the fingers shrivelling inward at the last split second to avoid contact with my shoulder. ‘Please,’ she moaned. ‘Do this one thing for your mother. God will not mind – this is a white lie. You must, you really must … save me.’ The hands folded themselves against her throat, reminded me of doves fluttering in a nest. But this was no dove, no gentle herald of peace.

I opened my mouth to frame a question about the various shades of lie, snapped it shut immediately, knew that this was not the time for one of my queries about the less tangible aspects of living. I was shaking like an autumn leaf. My mother’s terror was filling the room, was invading me, choking me. I did not like my mother, but nor did I enjoy watching the scaffolding that supported my small existence disintegrating before my eyes. Fascination made way for discomfort, discomfort became fear. The person on the path might have come here to murder my mother.

She ran across the room, bent down low behind a chintz-covered chair. ‘I’ll have to stay in here,’ she
babbled. ‘She might see me if I go into the hall.’

A few more seconds marked their own passing while I absorbed the fact that my dignified mother was a shivering coward with no pride at all. My stomach was sick, ached beneath the weight of tangled and nameless emotions. I longed for Anne, longed to clutch the hand of my ‘twin’ in this hour of dire and dreadful need. The eleven-times table chanted itself in my head, as if my subconscious had dredged up a piece of normality to which I might cling. I backed out of the room, my whole body trembling with apprehension. There was pain in my gut now; I needed the bathroom.

Ten elevens, eleven elevens … It took me a week to walk through the hall and into the small front porch. The letter flap was raised, so the intruder would have seen Mother in the hall, as the inner door was half-glazed. A pair of angry eyes glared at me. ‘Get a move on,’ screamed an invisible mouth.

When I turned the key, the door crashed inward, pinning me against the wall. Winded, I remained where I had been thrust, waited until the door swung away from me. Oh for a few moments of blessed invisibility! My eyes were screwed up and seven elevens were seventy-seven, it all rhymed and made sense …

She was a vast woman, tall, fat, with several loose chins that wobbled every time she moved her head. The body was encased in a tight-fitting coat through which all the blubbery bulges seemed to do battle for freedom. Round her shoulders and neck hung a dead fox with sad, beady eyes and unnaturally red fur. ‘Did I hurt you?’ Like my mother, the woman was rather breathless. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to crash into you like that. You’re not the one I’m looking for, and you have my sympathy, you poor little thing.’ The chins were on overtime, bouncing about all over the dead fox’s middle portions. ‘What a mother you have. Are you all right, my dear?’

I fought for some oxygen, ironed my bruised ribs with the flat of a hand. ‘I’m very well, thank you,’ I answered
untruthfully. Was that a white lie, or would it be grey …? And would several charcoal greys and a few off-whites add up until they became a black? Because that was the case with powder paint – if you mixed colours, you usually got muddy brown or black … The girls at school said that black sins stuck fast to the soul, ruled out any chance of heaven until wiped out by a priest. And I didn’t fancy the idea of hell, did not wish to be banished to the valley of torment just because of my mother, who was forcing me to deny the truth until my soul was as black as soot. And she would go to hell. They all smoked in hell. And if she and all the other smokers went to hell … The woman was staring at me as if I were a very odd person.

‘Come in,’ I managed. She was already in, so I felt really daft by this time.

‘Where’s your mother?’

I paused for several seconds, couldn’t achieve a second lie straight away, no matter what the colour of this new sin might have been. My eyes moved of their own accord to the sitting room. Mother would kill me, would beat the back of my head until it broke wide open. So I had to do it, had to! Breathing hurt, but I finally found the necessary presence of mind. ‘She says … she said she was going to the doctor’s because she’s very ill.’ There was water in my eyes, the sort of stinging moisture that usually comes with the peeling of onions. Because of my dampened vision, the fat lady seemed to be swimming about in a huge pond, a great fish with staring eyes. I coughed and blinked a few times. ‘So she must be at the doctor’s, I think. She’ll be waiting in the waiting room.’