September Starlings

by Ruth Hamilton

‘Stop him!’ I yelled. ‘Do what you have to do, Les.’

  The violence was terrible. Ben fought, struggled, cursed in several languages as Les restrained him. After a quick glance round the door, Ruth ran screaming from the house. That was strange, I think now, because Ruth is not a screamer. I phoned for an ambulance, sat still as a gravestone while my husband was handled by blue-clad men. Les and Ruth left, followed the ambulance to Fazakerley. I stayed, listened as the coffee bubbled, inhaled the smell, came to hate the wonderful aroma of coffee. Humans are resilient, but it was some time before a percolator was used again in this kitchen.

  The next day, I visited my husband, brought flowers, purple grapes and a book about birds to a normal man who kissed me, discussed the weather and pied wagtails, asked about my children. The previous night had been wiped from his memory, but I knew in my bones that the initiating buzzer was still stored in some compartment of his brain. Like a file on a computer, the information simply waited for the buttons to be pressed in a certain sequence. I was also aware that Ben was not in charge of himself. The programming was random, not controllable. Up to that point, I had never been so terrified in my life. Even when Tommo was beating me, even when I ran away to save my children, I was not conscious of such intense, almost immobilizing fear.

  A babyish doctor took me on one side, his upper lip still downy, as if he had not yet begun to shave. This sad child spoke about tests, asked me to be brave, outlined the cruel and merciless symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Ben would be patchy, he said, would have good days and bad. My theory was wrong, he insisted. I was imagining that Ben had suffered some sudden return of memory, had perhaps recalled a traumatic experience that had lain dormant and had been followed by a bout of comforting amnesia. This was nothing to do with shock, the doctor said sadly. Ben was remembering things he had always known, but his decaying brain could no longer cope. If we were lucky, this sort of episode might not repeat itself for years. On the other hand …

  On the other hand, my husband is upstairs being fed and cleaned by a woman whose moustache is well established, whose hands, unlike mine, are sure and steady and used to such labours. In a few minutes, I shall make some more tea. Tetley bags for her. After all, she is my husband’s mother at weekends.

  The newspaper is not readable – I just look at the pictures. Wars, rumours of wars, starvation and threatened drought. Little black faces, huge eyes in masks of death. I am useless, stupid, unimportant, a failure.

  She comes in, surprises me. ‘Don’t cry, Mrs Starling.’

  I have not felt the tears escaping, but her words alert me to the moisture on my cheeks. ‘It’s a hard life.’ I wave a hand towards the newspaper, try a grin, but a disobedient sob escapes my custody. ‘Sorry, nurse. I’m a bit tired.’ Oh, she will hate me now. I’m just a wealthy fashion plate with a big house, a special car, painted nails and a bad attitude to duty.

  She sits opposite me, uncertain because she has not liked me. Then she takes my hands in hers. The nurse’s poor fingers are red, nails bitten so low that the pads above them are swollen, look sore. ‘He’s quiet enough just now,’ she says soothingly. ‘Please try not to fret yourself, love. It’s just one of them things what happens.’ The Liverpool accent, which usually trims just the edges of her words, spreads its gushing splendour throughout the suddenly enlivened speech. ‘Me dad had this, you know. We found him down Scottie Road one night in his ’jamas, three sheets in the wind and no shoes on. No socks either. He flushed his teeth down the toilet and wouldn’t go for any new ones. It killed me mam, the way me dad was. She just keeled over one day in the butcher’s, spark out in sawdust, she was. They tried to fetch her back, but she’d given up. Don’t you be doing that. It often happens, the partner going first. Why don’t you go away for a few days, have a proper break? You like your little holidays, don’t you?’

  I shake my head. The only person who knows the truth about my ‘breaks’ is Ruth Edwards, and I trust her completely. ‘I’ll go again sometime, but not just at the moment.’

  Nurse Jenkinson releases my hands, props her fat elbows on the stripped-pine table. ‘Play one of your records, then.’ She has caught me cheerful once and has not forgotten. ‘You like the Beatles, don’t you? He lived near me auntie, that Ringo one. Little terraced house, gone posh now, all white paint and hanging baskets. Yanks come and take photos of it.’

  The Beatles Tour. I’ve done it with my own New Jersey relatives, ‘Strawberry Fields orphanage on your left, ladies and gentlemen’, then, ‘Penny Lane, there’s the barber’s shop, sorry there’s no fire engine today.’ Another avenue, tree-lined, grass-verged, a hundred eyes feasting on the oriel bay where Lennon twanged his guitar until he got it right. But I’m in no mood for Sergeant Pepper today; the weather is too Wagnerian.

  She tries again. ‘You look peaky. Take a course of vitamins.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And eat your greens.’

  My appetite has not yet returned. That, according to Dr Ashby, is thoroughly understandable, though he insists that I try to eat a little more each day.

  Nurse Jenkinson brews her own tea, changes the subject. ‘He’s talking in different languages again.’

  Immediately, I am alert and defensive, yet I don’t understand this quick reaction of mine. ‘Ben is fluent in five or six languages. He’s travelled a lot.’

  She sits, slurps noisily on the cup’s edge, is one of those infuriating people who tackle hot drinks from a safe and sloppy distance. ‘What are you going to do today?’ Greedy eyes fix on the biscuit jar. I nod and she pounces on an innocent custard cream. ‘There’s been no inroads made here,’ she comments, spitting crumbs on to her uniform. ‘Don’t you eat biscuits?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She’s nosy, far too inquisitive for comfort. My diet is a private matter between me and myself. However, I must remember to throw out some biscuits for the birds, or this woman might make a chart for me too if the biscuit jar stays full. ‘I don’t eat much between meals,’ I say. I haven’t been eating much at all, but that’s my business. Progress is being made and that’s the important thing. Two squares of chocolate and a whole Cup-a-Soup yesterday. And that’s not bad going for someone who was drip-fed only weeks ago, who accepted virtually no nourishment during the subsequent breakdown.

  She attacks a bourbon, breaks open the sandwich, scrapes pale brown incisors across the chocolate filling. ‘He likes birds, doesn’t he? That garden of yours is a real sanctuary. Nice to have an interest like that. Very nice.’

  It’s more than an interest, was a consuming passion for Ben. He worked alongside the Royal Society, was one of the chosen few. Like Tiggywinkles hospital for hedgehogs, we have been a nursing home for gulls, sparrows, owls. And for many, many starlings. They are his favourite birds, and I’m sure that his surname was adopted deliberately. One owl refused to leave, returned each night and twitted about all over the place until his saviour woke and twitted back. Ben has walked on the shore with a starling in each hand, one perched on his foot. I am doing my best, but the feathered world misses Ben’s knack of communication.

  ‘I’ve no animals because the flat’s too small. But I like dogs and horses. Most of all, I’d like a donkey.’

  She’s human after all! ‘Why a donkey?’ I ask, trying to keep the surprise out of my tone.

  ‘Stubborn. They’re stubborn like me. Most of my patients are bloody-minded, so I’d know how to handle a donkey. They need a rest at the end of their life, specially if they’ve been giving rides at Blackpool.’

  Animals and people never fail to surprise me. The boys once kept a fifteen-foot python in the house. He used to wind his soft, kid leather length around me and flick his tongue rudely at the television, always hissed when I stroked him. Some people are so phobic that we had to hide the poor creature in the attic and pretend we’d given him away. The terrified were often men, big men whose prime urge was to kill our snake. (Ben thought the whole thing was connected with penis envy, but I wasn’t convinced.) The ta
ller and broader the man, the bigger the terror. Two large heroes yelled, ‘Kill it, get the poker, get rid of it!’ Brave warriors, those men. They want to kill what they don’t understand, and that is how wars begin. Kill it, occupy it, devour it, subjugate it. And thus Homo sapiens makes his way towards his own destruction.

  Nurse Jenkinson amazes me, reminds me of that long-dead reptile. We expected him to be vicious, were pleasantly surprised by his docility. This woman’s outer appearance belies her true self. She loves donkeys, probably loves her patients. But I, like the cowardly men I decried, judged her on her negative points.

  ‘You look depressed.’ She is longing for a cigarette.

  ‘Smoke if you want to, nurse. It doesn’t bother me – I used to smoke myself.’

  She lights a Benson’s, waves the match until it gives up its spiralling ghost of blue smoke. ‘How did you stop? I’ve tried time after time, even got the new nicotine patches, but they made me itch and gave me nightmares. And I’d be twenty stone but for these.’ She waves the glowing end in my direction and my gorge rises as ash spills and scatters on the table. ‘How did you stop?’ she asks again, thick eyebrows scurrying up her face in amazement. She plainly assesses me as one who is too weak to break free from the weed.

  I shrug. ‘I was frightened of being ill.’ That excuse will have to suffice, though my real reason for quitting lay in the fact that my children needed food and shoes.

  She nods sagely. ‘I’m scared too, but the more I worry, the more I smoke.’ She looks me up and down. ‘The weight’s dropped off you these last three months. I reckon that suit would cover you twice.’

  ‘Menopause,’ I reply briskly. ‘Some get thin, some get fat.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. I’m like you, I never eat between meals. I wouldn’t care, only I’ve no sweet tooth.’ She remembers the biscuits, flounders. ‘I need a bit of carbohydrate of a morning, but I never finish a full meal. It’s no fun being fifty, is it?’

  Being fifty was all right by me. At fifty, my body was healthy, firmer, and my husband was sane. We had our final good year, travelled through Normandy and Brittany, camped out in fields, watched the birds, marked our cards every time we saw a new one. At seventy, my husband was agile, quick on his feet, flat-bellied, demanding in bed. And even more urgent under two spread-out sleeping bags and a French navy star-spangled sky.

  Nurse Jenkinson finishes her smoke, heaves herself up, crimson hands splayed on the table. ‘I’ll go now. Six o’clock, I’ll see to Mr Starling again.’

  I do not follow her. She is capable of making her own way out of the house and I am feeling sluggish. Chewbacca is barking in his kennel and the cat is still staring at me. He must have hollow legs, he eats more than I do. I wait, listen as her car grumbles itself to life. Like its owner, the car is shabby and asthmatic.

  Ben is in his chair, a rug across his knees. He can walk, but he chooses not to, or has forgotten a skill he learned seven decades ago in a place he has not loved. The television is on, Channel 4, something meaningful and Open University-ish. Ben stares, slack-mouthed and dribbling, at a young woman in folksy clothes that she probably made herself out of wool culled from briar-edged sheep fields. She wears owlish glasses, half a dozen earrings and an intelligent expression, discusses earnestly with an invisible interviewer the merits of paganism. I flick the tuner to BBC 1 and the hymn-singing. ‘Hello, Ben,’ I say.

  He answers in code, a mixture of what sounds like Greek and Russian – something with an upside-down alphabet, anyway.

  ‘Speak English,’ I say.

  ‘Order arrived … from the top. Strawberry yoghurt,’ comes the disjointed reply.

  I crouch, place myself in front of him and at his level. ‘Do you want a strawberry yoghurt?’

  ‘There are more.’ His mouth has tightened, looks almost normal. But the eyes are vague and I notice that a white age-ring has appeared around each hazel iris.

  I use my handkerchief to mop up the saliva on his chin. ‘More of what, Ben?’

  ‘No shoes. We took the cow to the market and it was too thin, Mama. Has Ruth been lately?’ The face crumbles, collapses inward. ‘Laura, what is happening to me? Get me to a telephone. I must speak to them, warn them that I am … that I am not here.’ His tongue protrudes, licks the lower lip. ‘Damson wine, so sweet and strong. They are drunk, you know. My mother will not be pleased. The singing is so lovely. It is all written down. Such pretty music.’ His head droops, the chin resting on his chest. Like a young animal, he tires quickly, falls asleep easily. The end of life is so like the beginning … Is this the end? Or will he go on and on? The mild sedatives keep him quiet up to a point, yet the nightmare returns regularly, shines the cold light of misery in his eyes.

  Music. He was talking just now about music. I mute the television, search the radio bands for something suitable. There’s heavy metal, then a guttural contralto followed by somebody talking rubbish – something to do with compost and roses, anyway. Perhaps I should carry the music system upstairs, or have extra speakers placed in this room. He loves Mozart, Verdi, the Ying-Tong song by Milligan and Secombe. But he’s too far gone. I’ve tried it all before, have clung to straws for months on end.

  Outside in the garden, the congregation has gathered for its Sunday service. On a podium that doubles as a bird table, a lone blackbird stands, his wings not quite folded. He reminds me of a dark-gowned schoolmaster whose patience is thinning, whose arms are not quite akimbo as he wills his charges to be still and quiet.

  There are starlings everywhere, sleek, oily fellows with glints of purple in their plumes. This disorganized choir shuffles and struts, beaks pretending to search the ground for food. They know, though. They know I’ll be out in a few minutes with their ‘suitable supplements’. I learned from Ben to be careful with summer feeding. Mrs Blackbird, brown and dowdy, is a floating voter. She sits on the fence, separate from everything, one eye on her bossy mate, the other on some sparrows in the apple tree.

  ‘Your birds are here, Ben,’ I say without turning my head. ‘They miss you, sweetheart. Woeful Wally comes back some nights, twitting and twooing outside our window. And we’ve hedgehogs, you know.’

  ‘Don’t give them bread, Laura.’

  I swing round, capture the moment and hold it like a precious flower in my mind. I dare not move, speak, breathe.

  ‘Hedgehogs do not thrive on flour and yeast. Dog food, perhaps.’ He shivers. ‘I am afraid of the dogs.’

  He loves dogs. But since the change in him, I have kept poor Chewy away.

  ‘They bite. We thought he would not do it, but these people cannot be trusted. Of course, it’s all written down. But will they learn? Do you think that they will learn?’

  ‘Who?’ I whisper.

  ‘Well, I think it’s time to go.’

  ‘Ben!’ He is slipping through my fingers like water from the tap, trickling away to leave me alone, thirsty. ‘Ben!’

  ‘There is no need to shout, Laura, because I am not deaf. Where’s that bloody woman? The trouble with these people is that they’re never here when they’re needed.’

  ‘The nurse?’

  ‘Yes. She doesn’t know about the strawberry yoghurt. I haven’t told anyone else about it. Could she be trusted? Do you think she’s on our side?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’

  He grunts, allows his eyes to travel round the room. ‘So many allegiances, so many partisans. I am late for school,’ he announces clearly. ‘The bell went ten minutes ago, I’ll need to hurry. Will you come with me?’ So he sleeps, goes back to school in his dreams. Still, school is better than the other place. A shiver travels the length of my spine, pricks my scalp with its sharp and chilly fingers. There is a place in Ben’s past and I can’t find it. But it finds him day after day, pushes him into a nightmare whose duration increases as the days move on.

  And I fear that he will be consumed by his memories, that soon he will go into that horror forever. ‘No, Ben.’ I am answering his latest
question. ‘No-one can go with you.’ I cannot save him and my tears begin again.

  Chapter Three

  ‘The answer is Winston Churchill. It really is this time. Honest, Les. Cross my heart and hope to end up losing. See, it says here, “Winston Churchill”. Now, do you believe me?’ She waves the card beneath his bulbous nose. ‘He was made an honorary citizen of the United States. And that’s an end of it.’

  It is not the end, because they continue their argument for several minutes, quarrelling loudly about Churchill and any other subject that might have cropped up in the game since it began an hour ago. When I intrude, when I dare to ask for my own question, they carry on fighting about bits of trivia.

  It’s great being the mistress of your own house. You just get ignored while the neighbours come to blows over a game that’s supposed to be pleasurable. It occurs to me that a room containing Ruth and Les Edwards can seem very full, can render me all but invisible. ‘Would anyone like a drink?’ No response. I am now sure that I’m not really here.

  There is a lull in the shouting, and they both glare at me as if it’s all my fault. Something childish giggles in my breast. ‘I’m not playing. And you’re not playing any more either. This is my toy, so you can both go home to Mummy, see if she’ll put up with the tantrums.’

  Ruth and Les are mortallious when it comes to Trivial Pursuit. Ben never played the game – I bought it just before his absences began. Ruth arches the perfect brows. ‘Are you sulking, Laura Starling?’

  ‘Yes.’ I fold up the board and sweep all the awkward little playing pieces into the box. ‘You are both becoming extremely naughty. I can’t manage all this “I’m cleverer than you are.” It’s like being back at school in the infant department.’ I wear what is meant to be an expression of sweet innocence. ‘Shall we try Scrabble?’

  The noes are simultaneous. We have played Scrabble for so many years that the board is almost worn away. Ben was good at Scrabble. I blink, swallow, suggest three-handed bridge.