September Starlings

by Ruth Hamilton

  They were waiting for me on the open-air market. Tommo, careless as ever, had struck a pose on an empty stall, his expression aloof and magnificent. He was the real boss of the gang, the brains behind all our wickedness, though Ginger provided weight, voice and muscle. Tommo rarely addressed the group, preferring to brief Ginger privately before each assembly. But it was strange how we all came together as if responding to some magnetic force. Nobody seemed to state properly where we should be, when we ought to arrive at a certain place, yet we would turn up as if driven by an unseen hand, would simply arrive, nod at each other and meld together into a single unit of mischievous humanity. Though Tommo remained detached for most of the time, seemed to be amused by half the things we did.

  ‘Yer on a job, Lo,’ announced Ginger without preamble. ‘Down near t’ station.’

  I gulped, swallowed a mouthful of air. This was to be my proper initiation, then. I had not been ‘on a job’ yet, a job of my own. I had served my apprenticeship as a mere labourer by helping to carry stuff from one disused air-raid shelter to another, from Ginger’s back yard to Art’s coalshed. ‘What are we doing?’ I asked.

  Tommo nodded, gave Ginger the awaited permission. ‘Yer’ve got fer t’ stand on Trinity Street,’ said Ginger.

  ‘Why?’

  Enid simpered, cast a veiled glance in the direction of her hero, Ginger Nelson. ‘’Cos yer’ve lost yer busfare ’ome.’ The twins fluttered quite frequently, were both in hot pursuit of Ginger’s affections. But Ginger’s heart was mine. Enid and Irene knew it, I knew it, while Ginger remained blissfully uncomfortable in my presence. If Tommo was aware of any of this, he kept it where he kept most things, in a place that never showed in his eyes.

  ‘Can yer cry?’ This came from Irene, the other twin. I could tell the difference now, because their shorn heads had reseeded themselves, and the vegetation was dark brown on Irene, a lighter brown on Enid.

  ‘I can cry.’ Well, I supposed that I could. And I had to look right, had to do the right thing in front of Tommo. He seemed to be a very judgemental person, very quick with a sniff and a raised eyebrow when one of us failed to meet standards that he had never bothered to lay down in the first place. ‘I can pretend to cry,’ I added lamely.

  He sniffed now, jumped down from his throne of weather-beaten and splintered wood. ‘You’ll cry,’ he said coldly. ‘I’ll guarantee it.’ His English was quite good, though he seldom used it. Tommo’s father had been an altar boy, had even been a candidate for the priesthood till Tommo’s mother got the better of him. According to Ginger, there were books in Tommo’s home. Not magazines, not romances like my mother’s collection, but proper books with a lot of pages and leather covers. Also according to Ginger, Tommo was a ‘jeenyus’.

  Tommo made me cry. On the railway bridge, he thumped me on the chest, pinched the backs of my hands till they glowed with pain, hit me across the mouth with an oustretched palm. While he did these things, he smiled. The smile was almost gentle, almost kind. He even remarked on a handprint left by Mother, asked if I had been a naughty girl at home. If only I had remembered the expression on Tommo’s face, the serenity, the calm, then my life would have been so different … But I had something to prove, so I did not flinch, though my tears ensured that the evening was a success.

  I worked the 45, 46 and 47 buses, the ones that stopped outside the ladies’ toilet on Trinity Street before driving off up the moor to decent houses. After an hour and a half, I had collected 3s 7½d, because I was quite good at being a little girl who had lost her fare. Back on the bridge, Ginger was sulking. I felt sure that he had tackled Tommo about the beating, and I felt sorry for my staunch red-haired friend. I gave him the money, but it was grabbed quickly by Tommo.

  ‘Divide it,’ I said. I felt stubborn and strong, because I had defeated my mother, had refused to let Tommo break my spirit, had collected the day’s booty. Although Tommo fascinated me, I knew that he needed fetching down a peg or two.

  Tommo looked at me, swept his arrogant eyes the length of my body. He smiled again, then gave the five of us sixpence each. It was not good enough. I walked to the edge of the bridge and tossed my handful of coppers through the iron trellis. Everyone except Tommo screamed at me, berated me for throwing money onto the rails. Tommo remained as still as a statue. He knew why I had committed the foolish deed, but he simply smirked and walked away.

  ‘I hate him,’ I said softly.

  Ginger heard me, blushed to the roots of his colourful hair, bent his head and stared at his boots. They were ugly things, brown and scuffed and lacking laces. Occasionally, he stepped out of them when running, had to dash back and retrieve one or both. These had been his brother’s boots, and his brother was four years older, four years bigger. ‘Tommo’s all right,’ he muttered. ‘Yer’ve just got ter get used ter ’im, that’s all.’

  Enid shook my arm. ‘Th’ art a reet ’Oly Mary. Yer could ’ave give us t’ money if yer di’n’t want it.’

  I was suddenly tired of the whole thing, fed up with waiting while they pinched empties from the back yards of shops, while they tied people’s door knockers to lamp posts. It was boring. ‘I’m going home,’ I said.

  Ginger grabbed me. ‘Are yer finished wi’ us?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied smartly. ‘The people on the station gave me money because of a lie. It’s not right – they’ve worked for that bus fare. I’m not doing it any more.’

  As I trudged off the bridge, I heard Irene saying, ‘See? She is an ’Oly Mary.’ It might have been Enid who said that. But I couldn’t see their new batch of hair and I wasn’t going to turn round. I had left them behind me and I was the loneliest girl in all the world.

  Chapter Eight

  Life alone was not exactly thrilling. Several times, I almost gave in to the urge, almost ran all the way from our house up to Deane, but I managed to stay away from the gang. Had I returned to Ginger and the rest, I would probably have become inured to bad ways, might even have slid into the habit of juvenile crime. It was time to put a stop to my sinful behaviour, because my father was an honourable man. Although he had let me down in my brief moment of triumph, he had done nothing to deserve a delinquent daughter.

  Gang or no gang, trouble followed me wherever I went. Even when a day started out bright and normal, something unforeseen would crop up – a pile of spelling mistakes, a blotted sum book, an unlearned poem. I was a lively child, and I always seemed to meet misfortune halfway, had a habit of sticking out chest and tongue, a tendency to over-defend myself.

  But I was not ready for Norma Wallace. We had got on quite well for a while, would have shared Mr Nathaniel ‘Good’ Evans had he lived, but Norma turned on me. And I retaliated. She cornered me one morning during our enforced absence from a lesson about Gifts of the Holy Ghost. I felt quite smug about the missed class, as I’d almost learned the list from a girl in Standard Four – something about wisdom, understanding and fear of the Lord with a few other bits in between that I was trying to discover in the recesses of my cluttered mind. One was fortitude. I liked the word, wrote it down in my rough book.

  She snerched extra loudly. Norma had developed a variety of snerches, or perhaps I had learned to interpret their hidden meanings. There were the necessary snerches – those she employed to keep her face clean – and the intentional ones. The latter usually preceded an announcement of great moment, so I looked up from my ‘fortitude’ and waited for her statement.

  She pushed the stringy hair from her face, fixed a red-rimmed eye on me. (She hadn’t been crying. Her eyelids were constantly red owing to her everlasting cold.) ‘It’s your mother’s fault,’ she snapped. ‘Mr Openshaw’s had to leave.’

  My mouth hung open for a moment, then I snapped it shut as soon as my wits began to return. ‘I beg your pardon? What are you talking about?’ I sounded like a child who was pretending to be grown-up all of a sudden.

  ‘He was a good preacher. Mummy says he’s the best we’ve ever had.’

  It
was a pity that Mummy didn’t supply snot-rags, I thought. Then a dim light began to break amongst the clouds of my fuddled thinking. Openshaw. She was talking about that terrible man who ranted and raved at the Methodist chapel. ‘You mean the minister? The one who shouts about hell?’

  She heaved another strangled breath up the clogged nostrils. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know him, Laura McNally. I used to see you at the morning services.’

  I hadn’t been able to see anyone who had sat outside the eight or so inches of vision allowed by that stupid bonnet. ‘I never noticed you.’ This was the truth.

  ‘She went after him, followed him all over the place,’ said Norma. ‘She chased him till he had to run away to another chapel in a town near London. My mother says that your mother is very cheap. And I heard my dad saying that Liza McNally is a Jezebel.’

  Norma Wallace had annoyed me – albeit off and on – for some years. I hated and pitied her for her appearance, disliked the filthy habits, the bitten nails, the way she courted the nuns and did all her work efficiently, proudly. Had someone pleasant spoken ill of my mother, I might not have minded. But to have this prudish, judgemental and ugly girl saying anything at all about my private life – well – it made me angry beyond endurance. I belted her full in the face with my atlas, a solid weapon with a hard blue cover.

  The scene became extremely colourful when a mixture of red and yellowish-green poured from her ruptured nose. Mother Hyacinth, a high-grade non-teaching nun who was visiting the school, rushed to the scene, mopped the mess from Norma’s face, fetched the cane, gave me six stinging strokes on each hand. Mother Hyacinth spoke to me after the caning, seemed rather shaken by the whole thing. Perhaps she was not qualified to issue corporal punishment, as she worked in an administrative capacity at both school and convent. ‘It is a shame that you lost your temper. Norma was wrong to bait you, but you really must pray for self-control.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’ I was beyond caring. And the easiest way with nuns was to agree completely, especially when they were in the wrong. They were educated women, but their life experience was narrowed to the point where they saw little, because their vision was as narrowed by their vows as mine had been by the silly hat.

  I stood outside Sister Agatha’s office, listened while Confetti pleaded my case. It didn’t matter. I would be leaving St Mary’s eventually, would have a fresh start at another school where no-one would know about my mother. Or so I hoped. ‘She’s a good girl,’ said Confetti. Then I heard a few splinters of conversation like ‘her mother’ and ‘Methodist chapel’ and ‘didn’t deserve to be caned’. And it still didn’t matter, except that I wanted Norma’s nose to be a proper shape when it settled down.

  When I arrived home that afternoon, I entered the front room on a voluntary basis, looked at my mother with an expression that was meant to echo her own.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ She was plainly uncomfortable.

  ‘What’s a Jezebel?’ I asked.

  Several emotions did a procession across her face. She knew what I meant, knew that I had heard all or some of the story. ‘I’m not sure,’ she answered, her voice crippled and low.

  I nodded. ‘Neither am I. But Norma Wallace from the Methodist chapel understands it. And so does Mr Openshaw. He’s had to move to London because of a Jezebel.’

  I walked upstairs, threw myself on the bed, tossed my homework into a corner. Life without my friends was boring, but at least I could relieve myself of learning.

  Things started to happen after a short while, events that served to take my mind off the isolation I had imposed on myself. Men arrived from London, Birmingham, Coventry, big men in bulky black suits and bulky black cars. I looked at them and thought of funerals, then I sat back to watch.

  My father had no proper office yet, so he was forced to bring home these people after showing them round his almost ready factory. Mother was coy, discreetly made-up, secretly overwhelmed. I knew about the secret overwhelming, because I’d seen her practising in front of mirrors. ‘How do you do, Mr Simpson, Mr Lewis, Mr Charnock?’ She always put her head on one side when she greeted them, whether she was in the mirror or face to face with flesh and blood reality. She was a Jezebel who was preparing to go up in the world; she was uncertain, afraid of letting herself down among all the business folk who were invading our home. Her unease communicated itself to me, and I began to fret slightly about developments, about major changes. Mother was worried even though she was grown up, so how would I cope with my father’s promising future?

  Dad wore an air of great seriousness, explained to me that some of the visitors wanted to buy him out before production had even begun. But he had registered McNally’s Cooling Tea with the patents office, was determined to go it alone if no-one would back him with cash. I wore a blue dress and a winning smile, was declared ‘sweet’ by the funereal financiers as I passed out biscuits and tiny sandwiches. In the end, several of the bankers lent money, so Dad was able to set his empire in motion.

  There were ten muslin bags to each box, and my father’s mother’s coat of arms was emblazoned on the packaging, a pig’s head with a shield surrounding it. I studied the first real packet, yet another item that I would preserve for ever. ‘Nice except for the pig,’ I judged.

  ‘Never dismiss the pig, Laurie-child,’ he answered. ‘My forefathers made a living out of pigs. A porker is an animal of great wisdom and intelligence, and it makes a good parent.’ Mother came in, stood with a foolish smile on her face while Dad concluded, ‘And don’t forget the swine’s sheer stubbornness.’

  My dad’s signature was on the side of the box under some words about the product’s efficacy. The legend PATENT PENDING sat on the lid to warn others not to copy the recipe. In reality, no-one could have managed it, because the secret was guarded for years like the crown jewels. ‘Very nice, John,’ said Mother.

  He did not look at her. She was just beginning to realize that her husband was not a fool, and was trying, against all odds, to revitalize a marriage whose soul had passed on for all eternity.

  ‘You’ll be a great success,’ she added quietly.

  He nodded, looked at his watch. ‘Not with Fennings and Beechams so well established. Haven’t you always said that?’

  ‘Well … perhaps I was wrong.’

  At last he awarded her a cursory glance. ‘We were both wrong.’ He was not talking about the kind of chemistry that comes in liquid or powder form. ‘But then we all make mistakes, don’t we?’ He walked out, leaving her with a silly expression on her face, as if she had just been clouted with a wet dishcloth. She would never be close to my father again, would never be a wife to him.

  There followed a difficult time, the duration of which I have never managed to assess accurately. There was less coal to burn and the meals were smaller, a blessing for which I was thankful, as my mother never learned to cook properly. She became thinner, keener, watched me like a hawk, pinned me to the table and stood over me as I laboured with history, geography, sums. She was going up in the world, so I must not disgrace her on the academic front. My father stopped coming home regularly, sometimes labouring for two whole days at a stretch without a break. He was an honourable man, and honourable men do not play the fool with investors’ money.

  Then suddenly, it was all over and Dad came home with a baby doll in a large cardboard and cellophane box, a full quarter of Keiller’s butterscotch all for me and, in a long brown envelope, a description of the house in which we were going to live. It was an old farmhouse with barns and stables, but Dad had already converted the outbuildings into factory sheds. The doll stayed in its packaging, but I made much of the sweets, as Mother’s stews were becoming totally indigestible.

  He spread our future on the table, some drawings of a kitchen, living room, laundry, bedrooms. His face glowed with pleasure as he outlined his plans, while he ignored Mother, who sat motionless in a chair pulled out slightly from the table. To me, her separateness was total. She was an alien being, had
no part to play in my father’s great step forward. But I wished that she were different, someone who could sit with us and share the excitement. ‘The barn conversions are almost completed,’ he said proudly. ‘Electric power is going in as we speak. I shall be able to fall out of bed and straight into work each morning.’ He paused, loosened his tie, as if success seemed so unbelievable that it threatened to choke him. ‘Anne will be moving to the village of Barr Bridge with Maisie and Freddie. Our house is just outside Barr Bridge, a few hundred yards up the moor.’

  I could feel her eyes boring into my spine. I shivered, found something to say. ‘Will I still go to St Mary’s?’

  He shook his head. ‘Too far away, I’m afraid. You’ll have to make do with the village school for a year or two.’

  My heart leapt at the thought of school with Anne, then sank like a lead weight at the thought of school without Confetti. I hadn’t realized how much I cared for my surrogate mother until separation was threatened. And would Mother accept this? Would she allow her daughter to associate with ‘common people’? I was old enough now to understand that my mother was seriously odd, if not deranged. She acted common, ran round with men, expected me not to show her up. It was hilarious and horrible.

  She continued to say nothing. It had been my experience thus far that Liza McNally was at her most dangerous when keeping quiet. It was like the calm before a storm. Mother often exploded after a long, quiet sulk. But that happened with the weather too, I thought irrelevantly. There was usually a dark grey lull before thunder, but at least the hall barometer told us what to expect. Life would have been a lot easier for me and my dad if Mother could have been fitted with a barometer.

  She struck a match. I froze as she scraped the box, waited until she breathed her first sigh of smoke. ‘Shopping,’ she said, leaving a meaningful pause behind the word, ‘will be very difficult.’ She extinguished the flame with a small puff of air from between pursed lips.