September Starlings

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Were you knocked out?’ asked Mr Bowen.

  ‘I can’t remember.’ Talking was exhausting, and I didn’t really know what to say anyway.

  Ida struggled to her feet and they stared at one another above my throbbing head. ‘He’s done it to her while she was unconscious,’ announced the furious woman. ‘That’s the truth, isn’t it, love?’

  I wiped the blood on to my torn skirt. ‘I can’t remember,’ I repeated in a monotone that sounded nothing like me. Not being able to remember had been useful in infancy, but it seemed to cause more trouble here.

  ‘See?’ screamed my next-door neighbour. ‘He’s bloody well raped her while she was spark out on the floor. He wants his membership withdrawn, he does. You’ll have to deal with him, Ernie.’

  Ernie looked too weak to deal with the peeling of an orange. ‘Right, sweetheart,’ he said.

  ‘Sweetheart’ adjusted the turban that failed to cover a headful of curlers, orange and blue with little spikes sticking out of their surfaces. ‘Ernie’ll see to him, just you mark my words.’

  The ambulance and Tommo arrived simultaneously, the former announcing its presence with clanging bells, the latter standing with his mouth open and gazing down on his prostrate wife. ‘What happened?’ He had the face of an angel and hair like gold, was the devil in a Saturday night suit.

  Ernie squared up to Tommo, who was at least four inches taller than the little man. ‘You’ve forced yourself on an unconscious woman,’ he snapped. ‘And that’s bad news for any right-minded bloke. A bloody disgrace, you are, putting her through this. She must have been knocked out, else she’d have screamed blue murder when you broke her leg and we’d have heard her, me and Ida. We’ve heard her many a time before now. Well? Anything to say for yourself, you rotten young sod?’

  ‘No.’ Tommo shook his head, tried to look innocent. ‘I didn’t do that, I didn’t hurt her.’

  Ida Bowen wanted a few lines in the script. ‘Listen, toe-rag. We’ve heard you. These walls are like paper, you know. What sort of a man are you? Why do you keep making her cry? Does she have to be knocked senseless to put up with you? Well, she’ll have to go in hospital now. I hope you’re proud of yourself, you blinking evil bully.’

  Tommo raised a fist, seemed intent on hitting Mrs Bowen, but her husband intervened, made a strange sound in his throat, then smashed the outer edge of his hand into Tommo’s neck. Tommo gagged, made a choking sound, then fled out to the yard just as the ambulance crew came in.

  ‘See?’ Ida looked thoroughly satisfied with everything. ‘I told you that there judo stuff would come in useful.’ She turned to me. ‘He’s what they call a master or a dan or summat. Shall we fetch your mam?’

  ‘No.’ Good heavens – Mother on top of all this?

  ‘Right.’ She stood back while the ambulance men placed me on the stretcher. The pain seared my flesh, but I still managed to mouth my thanks at the Bowens. ‘Nay,’ she said. ‘You just knock on this wall, love. And get bloody shut of him, he’s no use at all to man nor beast.’

  She was right. All the way to the infirmary, I knew that she was right. But there was no way out of the situation. I was married with a baby on the way and a leg that wanted attention. Fortunately, it was a bad break, and I stayed in hospital until my pregnancy reached its end. Perhaps fatherhood would change him. Perhaps …

  The pain was terrible. I’d just recovered from traction after my leg had healed, was reasonably sure that my lower limbs would be a matching pair, and now I was back where I had started, filled to the brain with an agony that was next to unbearable.

  A blue-clad sister messed about with the blood-pressure gauge, gave me a friendly if somewhat professional smile, patted my hand. ‘Very nice, dear. Coming on a treat, you are.’

  Tommo had gone out, was sitting somewhere along the corridor reading Titbits or Reveille or Woman’s Weekly. He seemed capable of getting away with everything, had clearly been put in this world to cause me as much trouble as possible. There had been no repercussions, as I had felt too shaky to send for the police. And what could they have done? Even in the 1960s, it was difficult for a woman to sue the man to whom she was married. I was his property, just another piece of furniture for his home.

  Mother and Dad had been, had been coming for months to visit a daughter whose bones, though young, seemed to be on strike, refused to heal within a decent time scale. Today, I had sent them away, could not bear to have anyone near me. Even Frank, who had been arriving at my bedside several times a week, would have received no smile of welcome at this juncture. There was just me and the pain, and one of us had to win.

  A doctor came in, one I hadn’t seen before. He talked to me about distress, something to do with the baby’s heartbeat. He intended to allow me just a few more minutes, after which I would be down in theatre for an emergency Caesarean. With that awesome possibility in mind, I went to work, co-operated with the contractions, produced a healthy boy whose lungs might have put a cathedral organ to shame.

  Tommo stood by the bed, his face wreathed in a wistful smile that might have touched my heartstrings in days gone by. He ran a finger over his son’s head, caught my cheek with a fingernail, flinched when he saw the cold stillness in my face. ‘He’s grand,’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we call him Gerald?’

  ‘Yes.’ I really didn’t care.

  ‘After my grandfather. My mother’s father.’

  I shrugged. ‘Whatever you like.’

  ‘Gerald John?’ His eyebrows were arched as he quizzed me. ‘The John after your dad?’

  ‘Gerald John sounds stupid,’ I said. ‘Gerald Thompson will do.’

  Tommo edged away from the bed, though his eyes never left my face. ‘I’ll be different,’ he muttered. ‘Now that I’m a dad, things will get a lot easier.’

  ‘Yes.’ Even that didn’t matter. It wasn’t tiredness or depression that was causing my lethargy – I really and truly didn’t give a damn about anything. Tommo, the baby, Frank, my father – as far as I was concerned, I wouldn’t have cared if everyone and everything had just disappeared in a puff of smoke. I included myself when I didn’t bother to count my blessings. We could all have faded away, then I might have enjoyed just being nothing and nobody for all time.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want me to bring anything in for you or for Gerald?’

  ‘Ask the nurses.’

  He took a tiny step towards me. ‘Some more fruit? Some of Mam’s cake?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Laura?’ There was a sharp edge to his voice, though he was plainly fighting for self-control. ‘I’m sorry. What more can I say? I didn’t know you were unconscious. I didn’t know that your leg was broken.’ He breathed in a bit more courage. ‘Even when you are awake, it’s like being with a corpse. How was I to know the difference?’

  I stared at him, wondered what he was talking about. Was love-making the subject of his meandering? Should I tell him about his brother, his delicious brother who knew how to pleasure a woman, how to bring her to the brink of an experience that felt like a mixture of disaster and screaming joy? Ah, I was feeling something at last, was beginning to remember, beginning to care. Should I say it? No, it wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth upsetting an applecart that had no value anyway.

  ‘Does your dad know what happened that night?’ He was worried, then.

  ‘Not unless he’s talked to the Bowens. And I don’t think he has.’ I paused, fiddled with the baby’s blanket. ‘No, he doesn’t know about your problem, Tommo.’

  ‘What?’

  I looked up at him. Since coming into hospital, I had learned a lot from my stays on several women’s wards. Women in a group without men could be lewd, coarse and very funny. But underneath their banter ran a strong thread of disdain for men, for their inadequacies, their infantile minds, their stupidity. ‘Premature ejaculation,’ I said with the air of
one who is learned about such matters. ‘It’s what’s wrong with you, why you can’t do things properly.’

  He staggered back as if I had hit him with a brick. ‘I’ve been coming here for bloody months visiting you,’ he spat. ‘I even offered to stay with you during the birth.’

  ‘Big of you.’ Yet again, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, even though the words were coming from me. It was probably hormones, I thought wearily. My mouth seemed to be developing a habit of going into freefall whenever I suffered a hormonal upset. ‘I don’t want to live with you any more.’

  His face coloured until it matched the rim of a picture on the wall, a pale watercolour of a mother and baby that was trimmed with burgundy. ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief if you’re not careful, Tommo,’ I said. ‘There’s temper in your face. You’d better watch out for strokes and heart attacks in a few years.’

  ‘You can’t leave me.’

  ‘Can’t I?’

  He pulled at the collar of his shirt as if it choked him. ‘Where would you go?’

  Away with your brother, I answered internally. ‘To a place where I won’t be raped. Somewhere quiet and peaceful where my bones won’t get broken.’

  ‘I’ve promised, haven’t I?’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’ve promised all right. But it makes no difference. I’m going away. You won’t find me, so don’t try. And I promise you that I’ll name this baby after your grandfather. When he’s older, I’ll make sure that you see him from time to time. One of the many differences between us is that I am capable of keeping my promises.’

  He darted across the room and grabbed my wrist. ‘You’ll not get away from me, Laura. I’ll make damned sure of that.’

  ‘Let go of my arm.’ I pressed the button by my side, heard the bell screaming somewhere down the corridor. ‘They’ll be here in a minute. Get out.’

  He ran from the room and I suddenly realized that I was shaking, that I had probably been shaking throughout the whole ten or so minutes. But Tommo had gone. I was rid of the monster.

  Chapter Three

  We sat on Darwen Road in Dad’s parked van. I was in the passenger seat next to my father, while poor Frank squatted in the body of the vehicle with his hands on a small wicker cradle that contained my son. Dad screwed his head round and looked at the man behind him. ‘What have you done to your hair?’

  Frank grinned wryly. ‘It’s a noticeable shade if left to itself, Mr McNally. I’ve got the sort of crowning glory that can be relied upon to be visible in a crowded room. I bought the dye from your shop on Blackburn Road. Does it not suit me?’

  Dad chose not to answer the unanswerable, turned his attention to me. ‘Look, Laurie, this is taking things a bit too far. I mean, how do you expect to get away with it? Running off with the man’s brother, leaving all your possessions behind, carrying a new-born child into God alone knows what.’

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head, longed to be somewhere peaceful, some place where nobody asked questions. ‘I love Frank.’

  ‘It’s not five minutes since you loved Tommo.’

  ‘That was a mistake, Dad.’

  Dad tapped an impatient rhythm on the van’s steering wheel, nodded his head jerkily in time with the beat. – ‘You’ve forbidden me to tell your mother, and she’s asking all sorts of difficult questions. You know what Liza’s like with scandal – unless she’s at the centre of it, of course. Come to think, you’re acting rather like she used to behave, completely amorally.’

  Frank touched my dad’s shoulder. ‘You don’t know what Laura’s been through, sir. None of us knows – even I’m not sure of the details. But I can tell you what my brother is. He’s a curse, a blind boil on the face of humanity. Ever seen a cat with its neck broken? That was just to prove that a cat’s neck could be broken, because he’d read somewhere that a cat can jump from the highest window without severing its spinal column. Mind you, the book said nothing about hitting an animal with a brick.’ He paused, swallowed, clearly had difficulty in admitting kinship to such a bestial man. ‘Shall I go on? Small dogs, rabbits, birds?’

  Dad shook his head, eyed me seriously. ‘Were you just another of his little animals, Laurie?’

  I tried to sound brave and practical, didn’t want to think, needed not to remember. Forgetting was impossible, but actively remembering was not something in which I intended to involve myself. ‘There’s a baby now, Dad. A small animal, I suppose. Because we are just animals, aren’t we? He might hurt Gerald. In drink, he’s capable of anything—’

  ‘And sober, he’s positively dangerous,’ Frank muttered.

  My father swivelled in his seat again, fixed his eyes on my brother-in-law. ‘Why have you got yourself involved in this, Frank? And what are your parents thinking of? Don’t they know what he is?’

  Frank shook his dyed brown hair. ‘Dad knows. Dad tried to warn Laura, then started hoping that marriage would work a miracle on Bernard. As for Mam – well – she’s said all along that her Bernard is playful, that he has an inquisitive mind. She can’t accept my brother’s sadism any more than she can embrace my bad leg. Her eyes are closed, Mr McNally. But what she says and what she thinks could well be two different things.’

  The baby whimpered. Frank lifted him out of his basket and passed him to me. Under a thick white shawl, I fed my child, the child for whom I had no feeling. Because of my lack of love, I determinedly did everything right, breast instead of bottle, followed the feeding-on-demand school of thought, talked endlessly to the poor little thing.

  ‘Where have you been staying?’ Dad asked me.

  ‘In a bed and breakfast on Bromwich Street. Frank bought some things for the baby, and I emptied my account for my own clothes and food. Now, I’m destitute. And Frank’s left home too.’ I waved a hand towards the suitcases at the back of the van. ‘It won’t take Tommo long to put two and two together. He knows I get on well with Frank, so he’ll be looking for both of us any minute now. Which is how Frank came to make such an awful mess of his hair. It’s supposed to be black, but it’s actually greenish in some lights, especially when the sun shines. A bit like Anne Shirley’s in the Green Gables book.’

  Neither of them smiled at my attempt to lighten this dynamite situation. Dad was still tapping, this time on the dashboard. ‘You’ll have lost your job at the library, of course,’ he said to Frank.

  ‘Daren’t go back.’ Frank looked sad, because he had loved his work. ‘So I’ll get no reference. But I’ve no address either, you see. Even if and when we do get an address, I won’t be able to give it out. Bernard will be at the library as soon as it opens. As my brother, he can soon persuade them to help in the search for me.’

  Dad stopped tapping, had plainly started thinking. ‘Can you drive, Frank?’

  ‘Never had the chance. But the bad side of me could use a car clutch, I’d say.’

  ‘Then we’ll get you driving and you can work for me.’

  Frank’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, then darkened just as quickly. ‘I can’t come near Barr Bridge, Mr McNally. I really do appreciate your offer, but it’s out of the question. He’d find me. When he finds me, he finds Laura. I’d starve before I’d let him near her again.’

  My father’s face softened. ‘You want to protect this daughter of mine, don’t you?’

  The pale cheeks showed twin spots of colour as he said, ‘He’ll not break her leg again, sir. I’ll break his bloody back first.’

  Dad smiled. ‘Have you never heard of a telephone, lad? You’ll be a traveller, you’ll be drumming up more outlets for McNally’s products. You see, there are a lot of smaller shops that still don’t stock the teas and the other bits and pieces. You’ll have a map and a car, and you’ll travel.’

  Frank glanced at me. ‘She’ll be on her own. I don’t fancy leaving her alone, not after what she’s been through.’

  My father touched my cheek. ‘Would you feel safe with forty-odd miles between you and Bolton?’

  Tommo would be n
o respecter of distance. I would never feel safe anywhere on the planet as long as Tommo lived. It was going to be just a matter of time, wherever Frank and I went. ‘I’ll feel safe enough,’ I lied. ‘Just get us out of Bolton.’

  We spent the following week or two at an inn near Ramsbottom, emerging from our hide only to seek fresh air for the baby. Our names remained unchanged, as Thompson was not uncommon, and we continued to call ourselves Mr and Mrs. Although both titles were technically correct, I felt as if everyone knew the truth. This was my husband’s brother, and I was the most awful sinner.

  The Sister House,

  Chorley New Road,

  Bolton.

  3 September 1961

  Dear Laura,

  I am sending this via your father’s factory, as I understand your need for secrecy at such a difficult time. My poor girl, how can you carry on being so hard on yourself? I know that what you have done is unusual, but you really could not have carried on with that terrible fellow. And him a Catholic too! Laura, the main thing for you is to be safe and to keep Gerald safe also. Please do not worry about your lack of maternal affection. You will learn to love that little boy – I know you will. After such brutal treatment, you cannot expect life to turn instantly into a bowl of cherries. I am praying constantly for you and Frank. God is good, and He will surely understand your love for that kind man. Old Tommy-gun over in Mayo is praying like billy-o as well – I bet she has worn out a whole rosary these past weeks.

  Well, I’m still getting into trouble for what the Revd Mother calls my unconventional views on topics like birth control and the ecumenical movement. I suppose I just feel that all Christians should bury hatchets – not in each other’s brains, though. Sometimes, I get as confused as you are, my dear girl. Life’s not simple. The commandments make it seem clear enough, but living’s an art form and getting it right seems to be a matter of luck (God forgive me for such blasphemy). But factors outside of us often affect and guide our instincts, and instinct affects our interpretation of God’s laws. I had better start praying for myself, too. You are not the only sinner in this world, Laura.