September Starlings

by Ruth Hamilton

  I stared at her. Clauses? Whatever next?

  She sighed, and the outflow of air rattled in her clogged throat. ‘A clause is a group of words containing a verb and it makes sense but not complete sense—’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘We all know you’re a clever-clogs.’

  The hurt look was back. ‘See? I don’t mean to be clever, Laura. It’s more that I want to help people, want to tell them what I’ve been learning. It’s so exciting, you see. Words, numbers – they are so … so great.’ Her face had come to life, was colouring along the cheekbones. I caught a brief glimpse of what she meant, could feel the joy as it poured from her. And in those seconds, she looked almost pretty – no. That would be going too far. She looked normal for a while, alive and kicking. ‘But I did want to help with the babies, Laura. The mother said I was unhealthy, too chesty to go near her twins. Still, never mind.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘I can always read instead.’

  ‘You really love school, don’t you?’

  She nodded. ‘Books. I like books and solving problems and learning lists. It’s like being hungry or very greedy, I just can’t get full.’

  She was a brilliant girl, too honest to hide her difference from the rest of us. She could have played the game, might have acted up in class, pretended to be as silly and childish as the rest of us. But she ploughed a lonely furrow, and my heart went out to her. ‘Norma? Come if you want to. I mean it, honest. See, he’s nice, Mr Evans. He’s got a load of cats that he couldn’t get rid of. Sister Maria Goretti took them to a vet so they couldn’t have more kittens. Mr Evans has a terrible name – Nathaniel Jacob, I think it is. So he says if he has to have a wicked name, then his cats can suffer too. There’s Bathsheba and Cleopatra – they’re the girls – then Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Henry.’ I could see that the Henry had confused her. ‘Henry’s blind. Mr Evans said he didn’t want to burden Henry with a terrible name.’

  ‘How awful.’ Her forehead was creased into deep frown lines. ‘That poor cat. Yes, I’ll come with you tomorrow, Laura.’ She glanced at her book, looked up again. ‘How does the blind cat manage?’

  ‘Oh, he’s all right. Animals are better than people when it comes to things like that. He soon got used to going blind.’ I loved Henry. He was the prettiest of all the cats, prettier than my little grey Solomon who lived next door with Anne. Henry was black, fat and sleek. He had the longest whiskers in the world, and he could sniff out a sardine from miles away.

  After my lunch of shepherds’ pie and red cabbage, I ran out with my yellow pass, waved it under Sister St Thomas’s nose. She peered at me through her wire-framed glasses, gave me one of the hard looks for which she was famous, I had the feeling that she did not approve of me, that she wanted to take the ticket and tear it up, fasten me to the chair and force me to eat my way through the more popular chapters of the Old and New Testaments.

  Mr Evans always left the front door on the latch for me. I went into the hallway, picked up blind Henry and carried him through to the kitchen. ‘Mr Evans? I’m here.’ He wasn’t around, wasn’t in the back yard poking about in his flower tubs, hadn’t been in the front garden either.

  I put Henry in the hearth, watched him settle on his old towel, dragged Ezekiel and Bathsheba out of the scullery slopstone. An enamel bucket stood under the kitchen copper, and I filled it with warmish water, topped it up at the cold tap, tipped in some soapflakes and washed all the pots. Where was he? He hadn’t lit the fire – the copper’s contents were no better than tepid, cooler than ever once I’d put some cold in to make sufficient for the dishes. His boots were under the mangle and the brown jacket dangled from a peg on the back door. When he went out, he usually changed into his boots and put on the coat, even in warm weather. I opened the back door, crept down to the lavatory, called, ‘Are you in there, Mr Evans?’ No answer came.

  Back inside the house, I stood at the foot of Mr Evans’s stairs. ‘Mr Evans? Mr Evans, are you asleep?’ Silly question, I thought. If he’d been asleep, he wouldn’t have answered. And if he’d answered, he would have been awake. Blind Henry was winding round my ankles and crying for food. Two of the others were in the slopstone again. I found some cooked fish heads in the meatsafe and divided them among the troops.

  The stairs were dark and narrow. When I got to the top, there were two doors, one leading to the front bedroom, the other leading to the back. The latter was empty except for an old birdcage and some piles of newspapers. The frame of a bed stood against a wall, some of the base-springs loose and dangling. I crossed the landing, knocked, walked in to Mr Evans’s bedroom.

  He was on the floor with his legs jack-knifed at an impossible angle. His face was crooked, as if all his features had been pushed to one side. The top teeth jutted out and covered his lower lip. He was dead. My dear old friend was dead. He was the loveliest old man, kind enough to forgive me for stealing, generous enough to let me love his cats. Being in a room with death is not easy for any of us, but it had a devastating effect on me. I was eight years old and I knew about dying, realized that none of us was here for ever. But I’d never seen it until now.

  I froze for several moments, wanted to walk out of the room, couldn’t move. It was like being paralysed, because my legs would not respond to messages from my brain. Mr Evans’s pyjamas were made of a blue and white striped material. My dad had a pair of the same, and I wondered how I would feel if I found my father like this, folded up on the floor with his face all lopsided and his hands curled into tight, white fists.

  I got out, sat on a stair, took some greedy gulps of air, picked up Henry. Henry knew. He knew what all the seeing cats had failed to notice – that their master was dead. The tears came, and Henry shared them, pushed his fluffy body against my face and acted like a handkerchief. I didn’t know what to do. There were neighbours, people walking past on the pavement. All I needed to do was to go out and shout for help. But I didn’t. If I stayed, then something would happen eventually, someone would come to help me.

  They came. ‘Laura? Are you in there? It’s time for registration. Coo-ee. Mr Evans?’ It was Confetti.

  ‘Sister! Sister, I’m on the stairs.’

  She ran to me, climbed until her face was level with mine. ‘Laura? My dear girl, you look like a mammy who’s heard the banshee. Whatever has happened here?’

  ‘Mr Evans is dead. I had to stay with Henry. What’ll happen to the cats? Is he in heaven? Is he? Do they all go, do they?’ I clung to her sleeve. ‘Is it just for Catholics and has he gone to limbo? Or purgatory? Sister …?’

  ‘Whisht, child.’ She muttered a few more unintelligible words, removed my hand from her sleeve, climbed over me. I heard her walking in his room, waited through several seconds of silence. Sister St Thomas bustled to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sister?’ she called.

  Confetti was behind me. ‘He must have gone last night,’ she said. ‘It looks like a massive stroke. Probably went as he got ready for bed.’

  ‘He didn’t lock the door,’ I remarked, wondering how I could think of such a mundane thing. ‘He died with the door unlocked.’

  Sister St Thomas came up and tried to separate me from Henry. ‘Come away back to school, Laura.’ Her eyes, though made smaller by the spectacles, were rounder and gentler this time.

  ‘I’m stopping with Henry. He’s upset.’

  ‘Look.’ A heavy arm came to rest across my shoulders. ‘Laura, the sisters will see to the cats.’

  ‘Honest?’

  ‘Honest, child.’ She looked so kind, so lovable, not at all like the usual old Tommy-gun. ‘Come on now, I’m not as bad as I’m painted.’

  ‘This one’s blind.’ I clutched the cat to my bony bosom. ‘I don’t care about my mother not liking animals, Sister St Thomas. Solomon’s already living next door even though he’s mine. But Henry is staying with me.’ My head was nodding all by itself, as if someone had wound a tight spring that just wouldn’t slacken off. ‘I’ll run away if she won’t let me keep Henry.’r />
  ‘Come on, pet.’

  ‘She’s a bad bitch, you know. The postman said it on account of her being hoity-toity.’ A brilliant idea flashed across my muddled brain, cut through all the dross and found expression on my wayward tongue. ‘Am I too young to be a nun?’

  She didn’t laugh at me. ‘Oh yes, dear. Seventeen’s the very youngest for a postulant.’

  ‘Oh. See, if I came in the convent, she wouldn’t find me, ’cos she says she steers clear of papists. Then I could keep Henry with me. My mother will try to stop me having Henry, you know.’

  She eased me to my feet, guided me down the stairs. All the way back to school, I held Henry, would not allow Tommy to take him away. She left me in a corridor, made some phone calls, explained that the police and the ambulance men and Sister Maria Goretti would look after my poor old dead friend. Then we went through the chapel, Sister St Thomas doing one of her bobs down and up again in front of the altar. ‘Here, Laura. Come and visit with me. We shall have tea and biscuits and some milk for Henry.’

  She had a lovely little room with cheerful saints on the walls and dark yellow curtains at the small window. Her bed was neat and hard with a woven white cover and a very flat pillow. She sat in the one chair at a tiny table while I perched on the bed with Henry. A girl came in. She wore a knee-length black dress and a dark veil, but she still had all her hair and it was dry and gingery. ‘Hello now,’ she said brightly, placing a tea tray on the table. ‘Aren’t you the one with the cat? Oh, Sister, isn’t he just the most beautiful thing? We had five cats at home, and me mammy could never bring herself to part with a one of them. Clever creatures, they are.’

  Sister St Thomas prised Henry out of my arms and dumped him on the table with a saucer of milk. ‘Here ye are, God love ye.’ She spoke to the girl. ‘He’s blind, Katherine.’

  ‘Oh no.’ She dropped to her hunkers and pushed her face close to Henry’s. ‘Do you know I’m here, lad? Would you speak to Katie and tell her hello?’ And the cat stopped lapping, sniffed the air, then did one of those prr … rr … aws that cats seem to use as a greeting. ‘I’ll keep him,’ she said.

  I eyed her with a degree of distrust. ‘Are you a nun?’

  ‘I’m a postulant.’

  ‘You’ve got hair.’

  ‘Indeed I have and far too much of it. When I start to be a novice, I’ll have a big veil like the proper nuns, but it’ll be white till I take my final vows.’

  I considered her statement. ‘Why?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Why do you want to be a nun? Are you trying to get away from your mother?’

  ‘Ah no, not at all. Me mammy’s a grand woman, but I’m wanting to serve God full time, you see. So I came over the water and Sister St Thomas is looking after me. She’s my special sister and she’ll help me to be a good nun if it’s God’s will.’

  She was nice. She was one of those people you can just look at and know they’re nice. ‘What about if you change your mind? What’ll happen to Henry if you go back across the water?’

  ‘He’ll come along of me.’ She had a lovely lilting voice, as if she were singing instead of talking.

  ‘Will you be a teacher?’ I did not trust teachers, not completely. Except for Confetti – and Tommy-gun was beginning to look a bit more human. Still, it was better to assess the qualities of Henry’s would-be adoptive owner.

  ‘No. I’ll be like a clerk, someone who looks after the fees and the dinner moneys. And I’ll probably help out in the dining hall when I’m old enough.’

  I tried to smile, but my heart wasn’t in it. ‘Do something about the gravy, will you? And stop them reading about lepers when we’re eating.’

  A strange sound came from Sister St Thomas. She had a hand to her face and she seemed to be choking. ‘Goretti’s told me about you, Laura McNally. You would shame an angel, so you would.’ She let the laughter out, then apologized. ‘We shouldn’t be making merry when your friend is just dead. But he’s gone to a good place.’

  I bucked up a bit, responded to the empathy that hung in the miniature room. ‘Mr Evans didn’t like people to be sad. He said tears were only good for watering dahlias with. And I don’t know where he’s gone, ’cos he’s not a Catholic.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. There’s a place in heaven for all good people.’

  This was news to me. According to what I’d heard in the playground, St Peter granted admission just to those who had been baptized in the one true faith. With only Catholics floating about playing harps, heaven might have been a bit boring, so I felt glad that Mr Evans would have a wider choice of company. ‘Will you really look after Henry, Katherine? He likes cod and evaporated milk, but not together. Liver makes him … do things on the floor, but he loves other meat like lamb and chicken and he likes a drink of water.’

  ‘I will care for him. Sister St Thomas will bring him to you sometimes, let you play with him.’

  ‘And the other cats?’

  Sister St Thomas stood up and touched my face. ‘Goretti will place them, dear. She’s a soft spot for all creatures, so she’ll be out knocking on all the doors till she settles them. Laura, trust us. You can trust nuns, you see. We don’t tell lies and we don’t hurt animals.’ Her eyes searched my face, as if she were learning things about me, accepting me as a person and not just as a terrible nuisance. ‘Trust somebody, please. Don’t be going around with your face in your boots, don’t be thinking that the world’s a bad place full of bad people. Life’s hard, but we can help one another through any vale of tears.’

  Katherine went out with Henry, closed the door, left me to the mercies of a woman who was universally known as a tyrant. And the tears chose that moment to begin flowing down my cheeks like small rivers. Old Tommy pulled me into her arms and sat down with me on her bed of concrete. I could feel her sobs as she held me close against her. The big rosary dug into my leg, but I clung to that dear old lady as if she were a raft in a stormy sea.

  ‘God, look at the pair of us,’ she managed after a while. ‘We’ll be flooding out the convent and the Reverend Mother will come on the warpath after us with the fire brigade and the Black and Tans.’

  I looked up at her fat, sad face. ‘Sister? Why do good people have to die?’

  She rocked me in her arms. ‘Ask that one of Jesus, Laura. He died and He was better than any of us.’

  It made sense, yet it didn’t, because I was too angry for reason. The only nice thing was that I was being held as if I mattered, as if I were a worthwhile person. If it hadn’t been for the wimple, I might have been in the arms of yet another substitute mother. A lovely mother who liked cats and wept when good men died.

  It was a black church, its masonry stained by the emissions of a hundred chimneys for a century of time. The clock on the steeple had only one finger, which dangled down just after the six.

  Some men carried in the coffin, a light wood affair with shiny golden handles. I crept in and sat at the back, well away from all those who had a real right to grieve. The neighbours were there, many of them almost unrecognizable due to hats and best coats. Not a single curler or flat cap was in sight as they rose to sing the first hymn.

  ‘Move over, Laura.’

  I turned, and my mouth fell open. ‘You’re not supposed to come here, Sister.’

  Confetti shunted me along the bench and perched beside me. It was a sin. They’d said in the playground that they couldn’t go to a wedding, even a family wedding, if someone was ‘marrying out’. Sister Maria Goretti would go to hell. She would go to hell because I’d stolen some flowers and dragged her into Mr Evans’s life, then into his death. ‘Go outside,’ I whispered.

  She blessed herself. ‘And why would I be doing that, now?’

  ‘Protestant church.’

  She waited for a noisy bit in ‘Abide With Me’. ‘Jesus said that wherever men gathered in His name, then He would be there with them. They pray in pits and factories and on farms and the Son of God is with them. So
He is surely here.’

  She had what you might call a determined chin, Sister Maria Goretti. It was pointed but not sharp, and she had a habit of lifting it when she meant business. Tommy-gun hadn’t come. Tommy-gun had enough sense to stay away and not risk losing her place on the right hand of God. Oh heck. Confetti would get in trouble from the priest, she would have to say about three miles of rosary, would wear the beads out.

  The vicar stood in a pulpit and went on about Mr Evans. Mr Evans had been in the First War, had won a lot of medals for being brave. It made me think when the vicar said that. I had looked at people and had seen that they were old, I’d never imagined them young and healthy. But Mr Evans had been a strong man with a gun and an army uniform. At one time, he had fought for his country and had saved lives. When I met him, he was tired. I stood in that church and I knew that I would not always be young, that people would gather one day and talk about me. And children would think me ancient, a bit silly, worn out.

  They sang another hymn and Sister joined in. It was a beautiful song about the Lord being a shepherd and about not being afraid of death. Then Mr Evans’s box was lifted high by the men and they carried him out. As the sad procession passed us, I turned to look at the door. Father Murphy was holding one side open, and Sister St Thomas held the other handle. Katherine was there, with that tiny black veil perched on the back of her carrotty frizz, and our headmistress stood with the priest, her head bowed in prayer. Sometimes, people’s goodness gets in your eyes and makes them so full that the tears come silently.

  Those lovely sisters gathered round me, and Father Murphy gave me a sixpence and a big hug, said what a brave girl I was. A man arrived by my side and spoke to me. ‘Are you Laura?’

  I nodded, too full for words. They had come, my sisters, my priest, my friends, and they had defied a piece of church folklore by attending Mr Evans’s service.

  ‘He said you’d to have this,’ said the black-clad man. He had red-rimmed eyes and a big nose. ‘Thank you for looking after him, love. He was a good dad to me.’ For the rest of my life, I was to keep that sovereign. Even when the dark days came, I managed to hide it, managed not to sell it for food, for clothes.