September Starlings (34 page)

‘Oh, Laura. How awful for you and Uncle John.’

I stared at my cousin as if seeing her for the first time. She was older, more adult than I had pictured her, even recently. ‘Do you know what men and women do?’

‘Yes.’

I shook my head. ‘Who told you?’

‘Mam and Dad. They told me about cows first, when I went up with Dad to watch a calf coming out of its mother. But with people, all those things happen in love. Mam says it’s only right for people if they’re married to one another.’

‘It’s a huge sin for Mother, then.’

‘Well … it’s wrong. But Mam says that their Liza can’t help it. She was a very pretty little girl with beautiful curls and a sweet smile. Everyone made a fuss of her and gave in to her. People like that grow up selfish, Mam says. It’s as if they want all the attention all the time, as if the world owes them things. Your mother takes from men, just as she took from the grown-ups when she was little.’ Anne swallowed. ‘Dad and Mam were talking the other night, and I heard Dad say that the only difference between Auntie Liza and a streetwoman is that Auntie Liza doesn’t get paid for each performance. She takes the men’s money in clothes and meals and drinks.’

I’d always known all of this, but hearing it organized into words, having those words spoken to me, was awful. I’d heard other things too, sayings such as ‘like mother, like daughter’ – would I be like Liza McNally? Would I lie down and lean on walls and let men do that terrible thing?

‘Don’t cry, Laura.’

‘Tommo knows. He followed her to the woman’s house,
the woman who kills babies. My mother has killed …’ Sobs choked me, cut off the flow of words.

‘She’ll get well again, you’ll see.’

Even Anne didn’t understand completely, then. She had a good mother, a father who hadn’t dedicated all his life to his work, a father who was there when it mattered. It was plain that Anne believed in loving even a bad mother. ‘I don’t love her,’ I managed.

‘She’s your mother.’

‘She’s cruel. She used to hit me and hit me and hit me and she wouldn’t stop and I put my hands over my head so that she couldn’t give me a headache and you don’t understand what it was like till I learned to make my eyes hard and nobody knows what she’s really like because—’ A hand swiped itself across my face.

‘Sorry, lass.’ Mrs Miles stood over me, the musty smell of her clothes hitting me as hard as the calloused hand. ‘It were fer t’ best. I allers ’its somebody wi’ th’ ’ystericals. Yer’ll be reet in a minute, luv.’

I caught my breath. ‘Where is she?’ I asked after a second or two.

‘’Ospital. Yer dad’s gone down wi’ ’er. They’ll ’appen give ’er some new blood, top ’er up, like. ’Er’s lost more nor a couple o’ pints, I’d say.’

I rose, found my legs to be rubbery, leaned against Auntie Maisie’s table for support until the sobs died in my throat. The room was all yellow and white, gingham curtains and tablecloth, yellow flowers on the sills, deep gold rug, white wallpaper dotted with primroses. It was a happy room. ‘I’d best go home.’ Back to beige and brown and bottle green, back to misery.

‘That lad’s lookin’ fer you,’ said Mrs Miles.

I sat down again. A part of me blamed him, accused him of being the architect of the day’s disaster. But it wasn’t his fault. All he’d done was to colour in the gaps and make me face the whole truth. Yet he knew my mother’s shame, and I did not want to see him for a while. ‘Tell him to go home, Mrs Miles.’

Mrs Miles ambled out, leaving the room all the sweeter for her departure.

‘You should keep away from him,’ said Anne quietly.

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s distracting you, making you fail the exams.’

I shook my head. ‘No, that’s not true.’

But she persevered. ‘You’d have passed except for him. You always wanted to pass.’

I looked at her. Was she jealous of my friendship with Tommo? Was she upset because I wasn’t spending much time with her? ‘Anne, I like being with Tommo. If I go back to St Mary’s as a paying pupil, I’ll be near him. He’s a good friend, my best friend.’

She coloured slightly. ‘I used to be your best friend.’

Things were going to change anyway. Anne would be going off to the County Grammar where she would find new friends, new interests. It was time to leave behind childish things. At eleven, I was old and wise, and my destiny was planned. He understood. Tommo was the only one who could grasp my need to get away from Mother, to begin as soon as possible a life of my own. ‘You’ll always be my special cousin,’ I said.

‘I’m your only cousin.’

‘That’s why you’re special.’ I stood up and walked to the door. ‘I’d better be in when they get back from the hospital.’

‘That boy is bad.’ Her tone was soft, pleading.

‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘You don’t know him.’

Anne leaned back on the horsehair sofa. ‘Laura, I’ve seen his eyes. They are not the eyes of a kind person. Why does he come all this way to see you? Has he no pals down there in the town? It’s as if he wants … to buy you, like something in the window of a shop. He doesn’t like me. I can tell that he doesn’t like me. He wants everybody to stay away from you so that he can have you all to himself.’

Perhaps that was what I wanted. Perhaps his need for me fulfilled a need of my own. ‘He’s not bad,’ I said. ‘He
just likes me a lot. Tommo comes from a nice family – they have books and things. And he goes to Bolton School and—’

‘That’s where you should be.’

I stood in the doorway and looked at her. ‘I don’t need Bolton School, or the County Grammar. Girls just have to look after a house and babies.’

‘Did he tell you that?’

My cheeks were heating up. And this didn’t feel right, standing here and talking about Tommo while my mother was bleeding to death. ‘Leave me alone, Anne.’

‘You’ll marry him.’ This was an accusation. ‘And you’ll be sorry for evermore.’

I tried to laugh, failed completely. ‘I’m only eleven. I’m not marrying anybody for years and years.’

I walked out of the house and up the street until the village was behind me. Halfway to the farm, I stopped and turned, looked back along the single street that was Barr Bridge. He was leaning on a gas lamp, ankles crossed, hands in pockets, the stance deliberately nonchalant. Tommo knew when to approach, when to keep his distance. He stayed, waited for me to continue. He did not follow me, but I knew that he would simply be there. Like the air I breathed, like the earth I walked upon, Tommo would be there for the rest of my life.

She lay in bed for almost three weeks after being discharged from the hospital. It was a strange time, because she was almost pleasant, but I realized as the days passed that she was simply healing herself. Later in life, I was to learn that people are typically calm and gentle after a brush with death, as if they are so grateful to be alive that they forget to be vicious.

‘I’m sorry,’ she kept saying when I took up a meal or a cup of tea. ‘I’m sorry if I seemed cruel to you.’

It was like dealing with a stranger – I didn’t know how to react. ‘It’s all right. Just eat this and drink this, then you’ll soon be better.’ I always escaped quickly, was reluctant to return when the next meal time arrived.

Auntie Maisie did a lot of our cooking, kept puffing her way up the hill with steak and kidney pie, Lancashire hotpot, pea and ham soup, apple dumplings with custard so thick and smooth that it was almost set. ‘Get this down her,’ she would say. ‘Line her ribs for the winter.’

One day, when Mother had been home for a month or so, Dad took some time off work and talked to me. ‘She’s been very ill,’ he said. ‘She’ll take a while to pick up. The … illness she had was very weakening, so she needs a nice long rest. Do you fancy a week or two in Blackpool?’

I thought about this. ‘Will you be going?’

‘Er … no. I’ve a lot on, because we’re trying a new mint flavouring that might be more palatable. And there’s that lung healer I told you about, the little pills for people with bronchitis. And …’ He faltered, knew that he wasn’t fooling me. ‘Laurie, your mother might not want me there.’

I picked up a tea towel and started to dry the dishes. ‘I want to stay here. When the summer’s over, I’ll be going to St Mary’s, so I’d like to spend the holidays at home.’

‘She needs someone with her.’

I dried a fork, placed it on the table. ‘I don’t want to go.’ If I went, I wouldn’t see Tommo, and Tommo was going to take me to the fair in town, had arranged a ride through a coal-bagger who delivered in the country. ‘Thank you, but I’d rather stay here.’

He sank into a chair. ‘She’s your mother, Laurie.’

She was his wife. ‘You’ll have to find somebody else,’ I said. ‘Auntie Maisie might like to go.’

‘No. Maisie and your mother don’t get on.’

I polished a fruit dish. ‘No-one gets on with my mother. If she goes to a boarding house, she’ll be moaning about the food and complaining about the beds. You know what she’s like.’

‘Don’t you think she’s changed just lately?’ There was little hope in his voice, as if, underneath it all, he recognized his own stupidity. ‘She seems quieter and calmer. Things happen, you know, things that alter
people’s attitudes to life. She might carry on the way she is now.’

I stacked the plates in the dresser cupboard. ‘Auntie Maisie says that a leopard keeps its spots no matter what. She wasn’t talking about Mother – she was laughing at Uncle Freddie, saying that he’ll never grow up and behave himself if he lives to be ninety.’ I closed the dresser door and turned to look at my poor father, the man who had loved me until I began to fail. ‘I’m sorry about the exams, but I’ll go to St Mary’s if that’s what you want. Nobody ever does all the things that other people want. I can’t go away with her.’ I paused, looked for words, found none, fiddled about with the buckle on my belt. ‘I don’t love her, Dad. I don’t love my own mother and I feel … I feel ashamed because I can’t love her.’

‘Don’t worry, pet,’ he said. ‘Just try to keep your temper, be as good as you can be.’

I folded the tablecloth, smoothed out the green baize cover that always occupied the kitchen table, placed a bowl of rosebuds in the centre. ‘I’ll do my very best,’ I said. ‘But she’ll not improve.’ I must have sounded about fifty.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Why? Is it your fault?’

‘She’s my wife,’ he muttered, echoing my earlier thoughts. He dropped his head. ‘I’ve failed. I can’t manage her, never could manage her. And now I’m talking to a child whose life should be carefree. Oh God, what a failure I am.’

I stood still, wondered what to do or say. ‘Well, that makes two of us, Dad. Those exams – remember?’

He shrugged. ‘You’ll be better away from here, I suppose. I can’t be at home every evening, Laurie. There are men depending on my success, folk with families to feed. I look after them when I should be taking care of you.’

I smiled at him. Dad had been in the
Evening News
several times, because he employed a lot of crippled
people, men who had lost limbs in the wars, women who arrived on the bus in wheelchairs and worked at benches that had been specially lowered for them. He was a good man with a breadth of vision that encompassed all mankind, yet he wore blinkers in his own house. This was his survival kit. If he had chosen to use his energies on the domestic front, then the marriage would have been over almost from its start. ‘I love you, Dad,’ I said softly. ‘And I’m sorry about the exams and about not going to Blackpool.’

A single tear made its way down his face. What sort of a life have I made for you, Laurie-child?’

‘You’re busy.’ My own water table was rising, and I bit down on my lip. ‘You have the factory.’

‘I have a daughter.’

‘I can look after myself.’

He dried his face. ‘You’ve always done that. You can cook and sew and keep house. But you shouldn’t be doing those things. You ought to be out enjoying life while you’re young enough.’

‘I like housework.’ This was true.

He opened his arms and I ran to him, inhaled deeply to trap my tears and to enjoy the smell of him, all those herbs and mints and aromatic lotions. ‘Oh Dad, I do love you, honest. And everybody else likes you too because you’re so kind. Don’t worry about me.’

‘Laura?’ She was in the doorway. ‘Aren’t you a little old for that?’ She was back to normal, then. Well, she was halfway back to her robust self, though the face was still pale, and the hand on the doorknob trembled slightly. ‘Make me some more tea. That last cup was cold.’

I pulled away from my father, went for the kettle, filled it at the sink. The silence behind me was deafening as I placed the kettle on our new gas cooker. She scraped a match, threw it into a metal ashtray. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been talking to Laurie.’

‘Perhaps you’d better return,’ she said sarcastically.
‘After all, the place could well fall down if you’re away for more than a few minutes.’

I spooned tea from the caddy, placed three cups on the table, cast a glance in her direction. ‘Sugar?’ I asked with all the sweetness of tone I could muster.

She sniffed. ‘You know full well that I do not take sugar in my tea. Only the uneducated take sugar in tea.’

I nodded as if considering the depth of her statement. ‘Yes, but I wondered if you might need building up, Mother. I mean, you’ve been so ill and sugar’s for energy.’ When she shook her head, I turned to Dad. ‘Two sugars as usual?’ I asked. He was an educated man, and he loved sweet tea.

‘Thank you,’ he answered.

We drank our tea in silence, then Dad rose from the table. ‘There is no point in trying to keep anything from Laurie,’ he said to his wife. ‘She already knows things that should not reach the ears of so young a child. So what I have to say can be said in front of her. Liza, you may remain here in this house until you are well, then I shall rent a place for you in Bolton. There will be no divorce. I shall make it known that your health is uncertain and that you need to live close to a hospital. If you want to fight me, then I shall be forced to go to the courts and lay you bare in public.’ He placed a hand on my head. ‘I’ll look after you, Laurie-child. You’ll be fine with me and the good sisters.’