September Starlings

by Ruth Hamilton

  They looked at her, glanced at me, questions on their shiny clean faces.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Upstairs. I’ll go and fetch her.’ As I ascended the flight, I heard her speaking to my sons. ‘You may visit me any time you like. Perhaps you will all come to stay with me one day. Gerald, don’t pick your nose. Edward, come here and I’ll wipe that little mark off your cheek.’

  There were times when I couldn’t remember why I disliked my mother, occasions when I really believed that I was being unreasonable where she was concerned. Yet here she was in my house, where she had spoken no more than a few dozen words, and my hands were itching, as if they wanted to attach themselves to her throat.

  I came down with my daughter. ‘This is Joan.’

  Mother smiled, rose from her seat, scrutinized my baby’s features. ‘Are you sure you got the right one? She’s so dark.’

  I nodded. ‘Oh yes. I gave birth here in front of my own fire. So I won’t be telling her that there was a mix-up.’

  She coloured slightly, must have heard an echo from years ago – ‘There’s been a mistake, John. This is not my child.’

  I sat down, perched Joan on my knee while Mother hung over us. ‘She’s very beautiful. How can you give such a plain name to such an adorable child?’

  ‘I like the name.’

  She simpered, tickled Joan under her chin. ‘May I hold her?’

  I sat there and studied my mother, remembered her hands on my forearms, felt the pain when she squeezed me too tightly. Lights danced before my eyes as she beat my skull, and the roots of my hair tingled, as if she had pulled my plaits again. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You may not hold her.’

  Tension crackled in the small room, seemed to bounce off the walls like the winter sun, whose over-bright rays were licking the bright, white paint. ‘Why do you hate me?’ she asked coldly.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She sank onto the sagging sofa, placed her bag on the floor, took a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. I wanted to remind her that she had used this same item as a duster just moments earlier, but instead, I turned to my sons. ‘Gerald, take Edward next door, tell Auntie Liddy I won’t be long.’

  When the boys were gone, I addressed the woman who had asked me a question to which I would never have an answer. ‘There’s no love between us, Mother, so I can’t understand why you’ve bothered to come.’

  ‘You’re my daughter.’

  ‘When it pleases you, yes. As a child, I wouldn’t have known who I was except that my father reassured me every time you turned on me.’

  She twisted round and took in the size of my new life. ‘You can’t stay here. It is absolutely ridiculous to think that a daughter of mine is living in such conditions. You must come home. I shall buy you a house, and I won’t interfere.’

  I waited until her head had stopped its journey round my living room. ‘I can’t live in Bolton. You know who Edward’s father was, and I’m sure that you don’t want the disgrace of having us living near you. After all, your son-in-law is in prison, isn’t he? By the way, my divorce has come through.’

  ‘The children,’ she wailed. ‘They deserve better, they need—’

  ‘I needed.’ My voice was loud, too loud for the festive season. It was no use, anyway. There was no point in self-pity, no point in whipping her for the sins she refused to remember. ‘Look. Two of my children are the result of rape. My middle child is illegitimate. I’m not fit company for a woman of substance, Mother.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I don’t want them living in Bolton, where people remember Tommo and Frank. And that’s all there is to the matter.’

  She inhaled deeply. ‘May I smoke?’

  ‘No. White paint soon shows the nicotine.’

  She jumped up, agitated without her fix. Deprived of cigarettes, she was like a cat on hot bricks. Her face was fixed to the window when she spoke again. ‘This is an awful place. Look at those terrible flats, those nasty little council houses.’ She swivelled, fixed her gaze on me. ‘If you insist, I’ll buy you a house here, in a better part of Liverpool. Are there any decent areas in this awful city?’

  I was hardly a Liverpudlian, but I was immediately on my mettle. This was my place, and I didn’t like destructive criticism, especially from a woman whose every word seemed to be trimmed with sarcasm. ‘You don’t know the first thing about Liverpool.’

  She sighed dramatically. ‘Noisy people, I should imagine. They would need to be loud to produce these so-called groups. Beatles, Pacemakers – wherever do they get such names?’

  ‘Go home,’ I said quietly. ‘Go home and leave me in peace. All I want from you, Mother, is silence.’

  The door opened and Liddy’s small face peeped in. ‘Are you coming, Laura? Only I’ve sliced the ham and opened five tins of new spuds – good ones – they used to be Jerseys when they were alive. Hello,’ she said to the stranger. ‘Are you Laura’s mam?’

  ‘Yes.’ The lip was curled so slightly that Liddy might not have noticed. But I saw the contempt, the false superiority that was enjoyed by the small-minded creature who had birthed me.

  I rose, clutched Joan to my chest. ‘This is Liddy Mansell, my next-door neighbour. She acted as midwife when Joan was born and we have become close friends.’

  Liddy grinned. ‘You’ve got to be friends living so close to one another.’ She nodded her tiny head, awarded Mother a good view of the dark roots. She was dressed for the festivities in a short blue skirt and a crocheted blouse that showed bra straps and several inches of bare stomach through the very open pattern. The shoes were white, with very tall heels that were scuffed, and Liddy’s make-up was as colourful as the baubles on my tree. ‘You’ve a look of your mam,’ she said to me.

  ‘We’re late,’ I told my mother.

  She followed Liddy and me out of the house, signalled to the chauffeur. He got out of the car, opened the lid of the boot and lifted out some parcels. ‘Christmas presents for the children,’ she said to me.

  I smiled at the man, recognized him. He was the fellow who had refused to allow me near my father’s factory. ‘Put them inside the house,’ I ordered the red-faced driver.

  Liddy stepped through her front door, tottering on the stilt-like shoes. I turned to follow her, flinched as a hand reached out and stayed my progress. ‘Laura, you don’t belong with these people.’

  I faltered, raised my chin and cast a last remark over my shoulder. ‘No, you are the one who doesn’t belong.’

  And as I sat through the meal, I tried to think of a place where my mother might fit in. Apart from hell, I came up with no ideas.

  Chapter Eleven

  We had five good Christmases in Seaforth. By 1971, I was no longer a full-time mother, as the education system had finally managed to absorb all three of my offspring. But Liddy, rampant as ever, had got herself pregnant for what she declared was the ‘abso-bloody-lutely’ last time. ‘He’s only got to look at me. He’s only got to stand there in George Henry Lee’s – we don’t even need to be in the bedding department. I can’t work out how it’s happened this time, ’cos we don’t get many chances, like. We’ve three in the back bedroom, two on settees in the downstairs – there’s only our Mary what’s left home, and she keeps turning up like a bad half-crown and—’

  ‘Twelve and a half pence, Liddy.’

  She bridled. ‘Listen, they can say what they want, but I’m taking no notice. Mind you, have you seen what they’re doing? Something that used to be three bob’s shot up to nearly thirty of them new pences. They’ve just moved what Jimmy calls the decimated point.’

  I worked out that she meant decimal, sat perfectly still while she continued. Music hall had not passed on in Wordsworth Street, Seaforth, not while Liddy continued to strut the boards. Or the flags, if we were downstairs.

  ‘And she’s lingering, isn’t she? Not that I wish her any harm, but she was supposed to be dead at least four years ago. Hanging on with the splinters on h
er broomstick, she is, always has a gob on her like something out of a nightmare. I’ve not seen her for years, but she won’t have improved. Jimmy’s running two homes, you know.’ Her face softened. ‘He’s a good lad, is Jimmy. The old girl’s got to have a colostomy next, and he’s worried sick. And so am I. They’ll not let me stop here, Laura. It was bad enough when our Mary was with us, the housing trying to put me in one of them cardboard boxes.’ She waved a hand towards my front door, indicating that she was referring to Seaforth’s latest housing developments. ‘Open the oven door in one of them jerry-built shacks, and you’ll be dipping your bread in next door’s beef gravy. There’s no privacy.’

  ‘You think they’ll move you when the baby arrives?’

  She glared down at her bulging belly. ‘What colour are my shoes? Do they match?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She fell into a chair, puffed and panted as her belly rose, round and huge in front of the tiny frame. ‘I don’t want to leave you. You’re my best mate, like. And it’s private here, what with you on one side and owld Charlie on the other. He suits me, does Charlie, deaf as a post and easygoing.’ She shifted uncomfortably, tried to find her ever-changing centre of gravity. ‘We’ll be needing a crane to get me out of this chair.’

  I handed her a cup of tea, gave her a paper napkin so that she could balance the cup on her bulge without scalding the skin. ‘Drink that and stop worrying.’

  She grinned. ‘How’s your mam?’

  ‘Dying. That’s the fifth time in about eighteen months. I think she’s been reading about the liver this time. Or it might be the kidneys – my cousin Anne gets mixed up with all these different diagnoses. When Mother finally decides to fix herself on leprosy, I’ll be able to get her put away.’ My lovely Uncle Freddie had died during the previous year, had slipped away during sleep. At his funeral, I was accosted by my mother. ‘See? He died a healthy man. It’ll be my turn next, but will you come home? Oh no, you’re too busy entertaining your low-life friends. If Freddie can go out like a light, then so can I. My body is a mystery to medical science. There’s so much wrong that it’s a miracle when I wake up in the mornings.’

  Liddy was staring at me. ‘Do you think he’ll be getting out soon? I mean, life doesn’t mean life, not really.’

  For most of the time, I tried not to think about this, was driven now to answer. ‘According to Anne, he hasn’t behaved himself. So he’ll not be coming to torment me yet.’

  ‘But what about when he—’

  ‘Liddy, don’t. As far as we can work out, he has no idea where I am. Unless my mother has furnished him with the information, of course. But he gets no visitors except for his own mother – his father disappeared from the scene ages ago. Mr Thompson’s Christmas cards have come through Anne, and the stamps were franked all over the country. And Mrs Thompson won’t know where we are.’

  ‘Unless your mam … Never mind. Once Jimmy comes to live with me, you’ll be frightened of nothing.’

  When Liddy had gone home to do battle with her youngsters, I set about preparing a meal for my own three. They were fairly good kids. I had been lucky so far, was blessed with two children who created few waves, who seldom needed admonishment. Edward was the exception, but even he was not outright naughty.

  Jodie came home first. Despite my intention to furnish my daughter with a plain and sensible name, the ‘Joan’ had been corrupted years earlier. I had made up a silly little song, ‘Joanie, rag and boney’, and she had started to join in when I sang it. A head cold had reduced her ns to ds, and she had insisted on calling herself Jodie from the age of two. So here she stood, a beautiful ruffian, the jewel-like eyes sparkling after a day at her books. She was advanced, they said at school. At the grand old age of five years, she had already stated her intention to be a doctor, ‘or a nurse if I can’t get to uni-vest-ity’. She flung off the winter coat, prised off the boots, grabbed a biscuit from the tin. ‘Mam, have you sold another book?’

  ‘Yes, but not for a lot of money. And it’ll be Christmas in a few weeks, you know.’

  She nodded, crunched the biscuit in time with the movement. ‘Only we’re doing parcels at school, you see, for old people with no dinner on Christmas Day.’ She finished the biscuit and arranged her face in a fair imitation of an impish angel. ‘I told our teacher that you are a very kind person, Mam. I said we’d give four frozen chickens and four Christmas puds.’

  Jodie was always generous with my money. So far, we had adopted several donkeys, half a dozen children in Third World countries, and a granny in the next street. The last, a tired old lady called Myrtle, was besieged twice weekly by my charismatic and benevolent daughter. Jodie washed dishes, broke dishes, went for shopping, bought the wrong things. Each granny-day, I made a secret visit of my own, went round and rescued Myrtle from the results of my daughter’s mistakes. Often, this activity took me back to my own childhood, prompted me to remember old Nathaniel ‘Good’ Evans and the stolen flowers. Jodie was, I suspected, very like me.

  ‘All right,’ I sighed. ‘But don’t promise anything else without asking me first.’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t mind,’ answered my tousle-headed philanthropist. ‘But in future, I’ll ask first.’ That ‘first’ would have crucified my mother, as it came out as ‘fairst’. All my children were Scousers, and Mother would blame me for that.

  Gerald came in next. He was a quiet boy, industrious, fascinated by numbers. At ten, he had a bank account that contained almost £30, and it was he who had led me through the Hampton Court maze that was decimal currency, the recently imposed system which was tormenting Liddy beyond endurance. I passed on my learning to Liddy, but Gerald would need to spend some time with her. ‘You’ll have to sort Auntie Liddy out, Gerald. She’s still a bit mixed up about the change-over.’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded the mousy head, shook the drops of winter rain from his coat, hung it neatly on a peg at the bottom of the stairs. This undemonstrative child needed rhythm and reason to his life, often wore a mark of panic between his eyebrows when things changed, however minimally. Occasionally, I caught him staring at me, as if he wanted to ask questions but, so far, I had been lucky. He loved me insofar as I provided the constancy and stability he needed. In fact, I suspect that his affection for me was strong during childhood, too powerful for him to express properly. ‘Get a glass of milk and a biscuit, Gerald. The pie will be ready at about six o’clock.’

  Edward came in howling. Immediately, Jodie ran to his side, hugged as much of his plump body as could be encompassed by such young arms. ‘What’s the matter, Edward?’

  The first words defied comprehension, yet Jodie interpreted their meaning with very little difficulty. ‘He’s lost his PE shoes and he thinks somebody’s pinched them.’

  My younger son was a professional victim. Wherever he went, he was troubled by others who happened to occupy the same space at the same time. In fact, I had watched him during the pre-school years, had been a witness to several of the misunderstandings that seemed to plague him. A child would ask him a question and Edward, his head bent low, would mumble an answer if his mood happened to be good, or he would simply walk away without coming up with a reply. Sometimes, this antisocial behaviour was ignored, but he took some beatings from those whose tolerance was minimal. Edward clung to me, hated school, would winge and wail until I relented and left him in bed. But as soon as school had started, the minute he realized that he was safe, Edward’s headache or stomach upset would improve miraculously.

  I often looked at my ginger-haired eight-year-old and wondered whether he might be an interesting specimen, an example of the theory that genetics can triumph over environment. Yet my other two, who seemed to have little or none of their father in them, proved that environment can overcome nature. Although we were not wealthy, I strove to provide stimuli for my children, did my best to entertain and teach them. But Edward was not terribly responsive and I wondered whether he would turn out like Tommo.

  Tommo had b
een a difficult boy, but his offspring were docile by comparison. Although Edward’s father had been a wonderful man, I could not help thinking that some of Tommo’s genes had perhaps appeared in his nephew, had been once removed by Mother Nature on one of her less sensible days. ‘Stop yelling, Edward,’ I said as kindly as I could. ‘You’ve probably mislaid the things in the cloakroom or dropped them outside.’

  He sniffed back the abundant tears, pushed away his sister, looked at me with those soft grey eyes that might have been attractive had they not been surrounded by so much lard. Edward was a compulsive eater with the ability to dispose of half a pound of biscuits in a single sitting.

  ‘One biscuit,’ I warned him. ‘Then we’re all going for a bath.’

  Everyone groaned. They hated the public baths, but they were too large now for cosy spongeings and splashings in front of a fire. ‘It’s icy cold,’ moaned Edward. ‘I’ve been sneezing today,’ offered Jodie. Gerald said nothing, but he looked glum.

  ‘We’re going.’ I relieved Edward of his coat, brought all three outer garments to steam on a maiden in front of the grate. ‘One day, we’ll have our own bathroom.’

  Edward snorted. ‘There’s no space for a bathroom here.’

  ‘We won’t always be here,’ I informed him.

  Gerald looked at me quizzically. ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ I said airily. ‘Not too far, so don’t start bothering your head about changes. When I’ve done another three or four books, we might have a deposit for a better house, one we can buy instead of renting.’

  Jodie beamed. ‘A garden. A dog and a cat – can we have a rabbit?’

  ‘No, you can have meat pie like everybody else.’

  She pretended to look hurt. ‘I didn’t mean a rabbit to eat, Mam, I meant—’

  ‘Kitchen, all of you,’ I said. ‘Hands and face washed, then, if you’ve homework, do it here on the table before I set it.’