September Starlings

by Ruth Hamilton

  He lowers his gaze, stuffs the money down the side of his chair. ‘Are you sure he won’t get better?’

  ‘Yes, the doctor tells me to expect no improvement.’

  Tommo nods. ‘He warned me never to tell you any of this. And he’s not alone. He might not come after me, but one of his mates could do it.’

  A ripple of fear rises up my spine, digs its cold fingers into my neck. ‘What is it? Who are these friends of his?’

  The yellowed mask of death shows its teeth, but there is no warmth, no humour in the smile. ‘Look, I don’t know the details, but that Ben Starling of yours gave the impression that our crimes were fairy-tale stuff. He was a prison visitor for a reason. We never found out who he was looking for, but mere were rumours. He threatened me, others too, dropped a few names, London people with big money and clean slates. Your so-called husband talked like a crook, acted like a gentleman. I don’t scare easily, but he put me off.’ He pauses, sighs. ‘I stayed away because he threatened me and because he seemed to be part of something big. He put the frighteners on a few of us, even the old lags were winded by him. Anyway, that’s all I know, so make what you like of it.’

  I stand very still, am conscious of my breathing. There is nothing more to be said. Tommo is making all this up, is reaching deep into the recesses of imagination. Ben is a good man, was always a law-abiding citizen. Even if Ben did say those things, they would have been manufactured just to keep me out of Tommo’s reach.

  Tommo leans forward, thrusts the poker into the grate, stirs the fire to life. ‘The answer’s in London. And, from the little I learned, in other cities, European cities. Like I said, you married two bad devils. But he’s worse than me, I’m telling you. The notches on his gun—’

  I move towards him. ‘He never killed.’

  He shrugs, replaces the poker. ‘You may be right. Perhaps it was all rumour.’

  His skin has paled again, and I feel sick, revolted, because this man is telling a kind of truth. And Ben travelled a lot, went to Europe on a fairly regular basis. But I decide to keep my counsel.

  The drive home is silent. Ruth senses my need for quiet, does not intrude on my thoughts. Truth. How many more kinds are there?

  Diana reminds me of Jodie, therefore of myself in younger days. Physically, the two girls are not unalike, both very slim, both fairly pretty. Diana is blond, as I was, but Jodie, my nomadic daughter, has dark brown hair with reddish highlights, though the lustre doesn’t show until she deigns to take a bath or a shower. She used to be clean, was always getting scrubbed up as part of her job. So her ‘industrial action’ has taken the form of greasy hair and grubby clothes, while my own small rebellions against society – against my mother, really – were feeble battles of words followed by a near-silence that lasted for ages.

  I’ve done the crossword, am sitting here fiddling with my nails, sawing half-heartedly with an emery board. It’s time for Adrian to be let loose with his box of tricks, pink for the body of the nail, white for the tip. Diana is in the dining-room with stepladder, brushes and paint. She is pretending that the latter is luminescent green, as she can’t bear magnolia. Flakey has gone missing again, is no doubt up to mischief.

  ‘Woof.’ Chewbacca eyes me lugubriously, wants a walk. Handel, whose fur has remained remarkably unruffled by the kitten’s arrival, ambles by, jumps into the sink, supervises the dripping tap. He paws the drops, investigates their source, gets a wet nose. Intelligent? He does the same thing every day, finishes up mesmerized by the drip-dripping, falls asleep in the bowl.

  Diana peeps round the door. ‘Was this kitten magnolia when you got it?’

  ‘Black,’ I answer, unperturbed. I’m getting used to her.

  ‘Right.’ She pauses for a second or two. ‘Is your sideboard worth anything?’

  ‘Yes, why?’ The sideboard is of solid English oak, darkened by age, ponderous, ugly enough to be beautiful. I bought it out of pity – I used to do that sort of thing.

  ‘Give us a J-cloth, then, ’cos I’ve splashed a bit.’ She is wearing a lot of Crown vinyl silk, most of it on her face. ‘It’s time for a brew,’ she reminds me.

  The kitten staggers in, a few drops of paint decorating her fluff. Flakey is one of those happy cats, the sort of animal that just accepts life’s roses and thorns, treats both the same. She’s feeding herself, is a real little gem. ‘Have you painted before?’ I ask, scraping together a faint interest.

  ‘Course I have. I did a picture of my mam and one of our house. Oh, and I was good at cows, but they always had too many legs. We only ever had purple sugar paper in our class. You don’t get a good breed of cattle out of purple sugar paper.’

  ‘You haven’t painted since junior school? You’ve never painted a wall?’

  She shrugs. ‘Walls, cows – they’re all the same. Anyway, you needed new cushions in the first place.’

  I will not be taken in by her, will not pick up the tossed glove. There’s something about Diana that allows you to know her right away, a basic honesty that leaves her transparent and trustworthy. ‘Tea or coffee, Diana?’

  ‘Call me Di. A lager would be great, but alcoholism could be in the genes and I might finish up like my dad. He’s got three gears, my dad. There’s drive, reverse and park, and he’s usually parked in a horizontal position after reversing into something or other. I don’t really want to go following in my father’s backward footsteps, so I’ll settle for tea.’

  I fill the kettle. ‘Your dad’s an automatic vehicle, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. If he had to think about moving, he’d never engage his clutch. You can tell by his eyes that he doesn’t actually think, just lets his legs dictate speed and direction. Really, we should fit him with indicators so that the folk behind him won’t pile up when he changes course.’

  I brew the tea while she dashes out with a cloth. When she returns, she places newspaper on a chair before sitting down. ‘Well, that’s spread the paint round a bit. The fireplace looks good with freckles.’

  ‘Great,’ I say as I hand her the mug.

  ‘Aren’t you bothered?’

  I bang my own mug on the table. ‘Biscuits in the jar. No, I’m not bothered. If you had ruined my furniture, you would be mortified, not mischievous.’

  ‘Oh.’ She nibbles at a chocolate digestive. ‘He was best on escalators.’

  ‘Your father?’

  She nods. ‘He’d do one of his halts, and a backlog used to form behind him, loads of people going down the up or up the down. He’s a pest. Everybody knows he’s a pest. I think he’s banned from railway stations and big shops.’

  ‘Sisters, brothers?’

  ‘All wed and fled. There’s only me to take the brunt.’

  I sip my tea, manage two plain biscuits, am recovering at a rate of knots, it seems. ‘He’ll be looking for you.’

  ‘You’re my refuge for the moment.’ The eyes cloud, darken a shade. ‘Thanks for having me. It’s when I go and work at the hospital that the trouble will start. Whether I’m in haematology or pain relief, he’ll find me. At uni, he used to wander about the departments bellowing like a bull till security or police threw him out.’

  ‘He sounds like a man in pain.’

  ‘He sounds like a foghorn, more like. Don’t get me wrong, I love the old bugger. But since Mam went, he’s been away with the mixer, like a schizophrenic. The booze changes him, makes him horrible.’ She looks and sounds so young, so confused. ‘I don’t know what I can do with or for him.’

  Laura, I say to myself. You cannot carry any more passengers. ‘Can I help?’ asks my disobedient mouth.

  The fair head shakes till the scarf falls off. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why don’t you do your PhD somewhere else?’

  ‘Good question.’ She leans back, stuffs her hands into jeans pockets. ‘I suppose I’ve got to be here in case he needs me. I’m just having a holiday for a while, you see. There was only me ever visited him in hospital when he had alcohol poisoning
. There was only me ever went to see the specialist about Dad’s liver. He’s lovely in hospital, all sad and soulful round the eyes. When he’s in hospital, I can see why Mam loved him so much. Then as soon as he’s out, it’s beer and bloody mayhem all over again.’

  ‘You do love him, Diana.’

  She hesitates for a split second. ‘He gets on my nerves. Hatred and love – aren’t they the two sides of a single coin?’

  I think about that. ‘I’ve hated two people, I think. But I’ve never hated enough, never hated strongly. Love’s a lot more powerful for women like you and me. We are likely to act out of love, not likely to act out of hatred.’

  She smiles slightly. ‘I come from a family where all our feelings were strong and always on show. It was a noisy house in a noisy street. School was the same, you had to make a din to be noticed. We were always either in or out of friendship. In meant doing battle on behalf of, out meant doing battle with. We’re of Irish decent.’

  ‘My father was Irish,’ I tell her.

  She looks me up and down as if assessing my value before the auctioneer quotes a reserve price. ‘It doesn’t show. Somebody’s knocked it out of you. Have you no temper?’

  ‘I sit on it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Another loud slurp of Typhoo is followed by, ‘Don’t you ever have a really good belly laugh? That’s part of being Irish too, having a good laugh.’

  Loud glee had no place in my mother’s house. If I exploded with snorts and giggles, my mother would turn off the wireless, forbid me to listen to ITMA. ITMA was not ladylike, I would be better employed practising the piano. Yes, it had all been knocked out of me. I didn’t like the piano, was forced to sit on another emotion, was put to sit on the stool, too, was bullied till I pretended to learn my scales. ‘Mother wanted me to be a lady,’ I say now.

  Diana places her empty mug on the table. ‘Mother?’

  I nod. ‘I never called her “Mam” or “Mum”. That would have been too working-class for her, too familiar.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ The eyes take a journey round my cold and pristine kitchen. ‘Was she posh, well-born?’

  ‘No. Her parents were ordinary working folk, I think. Her father was a tackler in the mill – a weaver, really. And her mother did cleaning jobs.’

  She shakes her head sadly. ‘They’re the worst. Not your grandma and grandpa – people like your mother who go all etiquette and magazines with shiny pages. Did you like her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘No.’

  She whistles on a long exhalation. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In sheltered housing five minutes away.’ Mother followed me in the end, arranged to enact her decorous retirement on my doorstep. McNally’s is in the hands of a management team whose profits soared once Liza’s interference stopped. Even in recession, the firm is doing well.

  The girl folds her arms, seems to be preparing to continue the third degree. But she’s slowing down a bit. ‘You’re like me, then,’ she says. ‘With a difficult parent. If you told her to bugger off, it would do loads for your self-confidence, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘No, it would just make me guilty.’ I don’t lack self-confidence. Self-confidence is an outer garment, something we wear like a hat or, more aptly, like a very concealing coat. I don’t lack a cloak. What’s missing in me is an undergarment, an essential sense of identity. I was my mother’s burden, my father’s child, Anne’s cousin, Maisie’s niece, Tommo’s terrified wife. I became a mother to three, then Ben’s wife. Even my working life has been carried out under another name. Georgina Dawn writes the stories, and I hide behind the pretty words, the simple sentiments.

  ‘And I’d be guilty too if I got rid of my burden,’ muses Diana. ‘Parents are just there, like the wonders of the world, we either appreciate them or ignore them. Mind you, the hanging gardens of Babylon don’t show us up, do they? Laura? You’re thinking again.’

  ‘Yes, I do think from time to time.’

  Another digestive does a quick disappearing act. I was wrong about the anorexia. ‘What’s the computer for in that little room at the top of the stairs?’ she asks.

  ‘Work.’

  ‘What sort of work?’ She’s at it again, the third degree.

  ‘I write small books for women who refuse to give in and take sleeping pills.’

  ‘Mills and Boon?’

  ‘No, but a similar type of thing. It’s a difficult genre to tackle, but I’m improving with age.’

  Her round eyes are riveted to my face. ‘You’re different,’ she pronounces. ‘You tell the truth.’

  Well, I’m saying nothing. There are so many kinds of truth …

  ‘My mother was like you, Laura. She shamed the devil all her life.’

  I’m nodding as if I’m listening properly, but really I’m thinking about truth and self-confidence and identity. When Alzheimer’s removed Ben, part of me stopped existing. Without a picture of myself reflected in someone else’s vision, I have been nothing, could be nothing. So have I been just an idea, my mother’s, Tommo’s, my children’s, Ben’s concept of daughter, wife, mother? Is there no straight-on Laura, must I be inverted by the eye’s lens, translated, righted, validated by another’s brain? Did I take a lover after Ben just so that I might be visible. ‘No,’ I say aloud.

  ‘Eh?’

  I look at her, notice her, see the fresh young skin, the tumbled scarf, the spattered overall. ‘I’m talking to myself,’ I admit. ‘I do that, it’s a sign of age.’ Actually, it’s a sign of growing up. I’m fifty-plus and still developing. I am myself. I shall say that like a mantra every night, I am myself and I do as I please.

  ‘Write a proper book,’ she suggests. Ruth’s always saying the same thing.

  ‘Why?’

  She heaves up the thin shoulders. ‘To leave a mark, I suppose. That’s why they all did it, Trollope and Austen and the rest of that shower. They didn’t do it for money. They did it for eternal life. See, they’re never dead. People keep reading their words and their thoughts. Musicians and writers don’t really die.’

  I sigh, drain my mug. ‘You’re just a romantic at heart, Diana. Incidentally, what’s your second name?’ I may be harbouring a criminal, a runaway, a drug addict.

  After a slight pause, she says, ‘Hulme. I’m Diana Hulme.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She jumps up, ties the scarf. ‘Is any one of us sure?’ In the doorway, she turns quickly, moves like a dancer. ‘What if I spill the paint and make a mess?’

  Seconds pass before I reply. ‘No use crying over spilt magnolia.’ The words are for both of us.

  Chapter Three

  I haven’t thought about it for at least two days. The concept of Ben as a criminal cannot be a true one, so I’ve pushed it to the back of my mind, where it skirts the rest of my thoughts like a silent skater circling the rim of an ice-rink. But it’s there, I must look at it.

  I am in the master bathroom, looking at myself. The figure in the mirror has lived closely with Ben Starling for many years, would surely have sensed any badness in him. I remember that first meeting, hear him saying, ‘I am a law-abiding citizen of this country, Mrs Thompson.’ But it would take a lot to frighten Tommo. Tommo was a killer, an abuser. Nothing much short of a Chicago-style gangster could put so much fear in him.

  A woman of any age has to be brave to stand like this in front of a rather theatrical makeup shelf with seventeen naked lamps glinting on flesh that is also naked, never perfect. After the big five-O, it takes courage or bloody-mindedness, and I would guess that the second of these two qualities is what forces me to judge meat and bone that is over half a century old. Anyway, I won’t find any answers here, won’t discover whether or when Ben did this or that. The nakedness is symbolic, then. I’ve stripped off my body, am preparing to denude my mind.

  The human frame seems to desiccate after a while, starts to dry out no matter how many moisturizers are applied, no matter how many killer exercises are per
formed in the company of morning television. Ben has dried out too. Ben has lost hair, muscle, the power of co-ordinated physical movement. The poor love’s brain has wrinkled too, has given up its moisture, its alacrity. At least my wrinkles are all tangible, all of the visible flesh.

  He went abroad a lot. He and a number of partners dealt in gems, owned several businesses, some wholesale, some retail. Ben never took me with him, even when my children had grown old enough to be left. Our holiday trips abroad were separate from the business. I never asked; he seldom spoke of our pasts, except to help me face mine positively. He tackled the problem of Tommo head-on, asked no questions, just encouraged me to face my monster, to accept that there would be no more threats. How did he know that? Did he really threaten Tommo and other inmates, did he have some power, some force that frightened them into submission?

  I perch on the cushioned seat of a wicker chair. My face is blurred round the edges, made less definite by little nests of cellulite. The cheek-skin is no longer taut, is beginning to fold inward just a fraction on each side of my nose. The lips are narrower, have probably shrunk because of being drawn in so often. Worry shows in the face first.

  I have survived. This fairly well-preserved woman in the looking-glass has come back from the dead, has cut through the red tape of an illness that claimed many women for hundreds of years. Free and strong, I am promised longevity, life without Ben. Although I broke down again, cracked up beneath the weight of my pain and Ben’s hopelessness, I am here at the other side, have dismissed another bad dream. How well you coached me, Ben. How I have loved you, how I still love you.

  No. I won’t cry. This image in the glass needs no further wrinkles, even those created briefly by watery eyes. I dress myself, wonder how I will discover yet another truth, wonder whether such truth is worth pursuing. Ben. Who are you, who were you? And will you die before I find out?

  For about ten minutes, I stand in the bathroom remembering, digging right down to the catacombs of our history together. Things he said to me, things he said on the phone, bits of paper, a passport, a receipt. Millions of pounds have passed through Ben’s accounts over the years. Was this good money or bad? Was he an actor of such high calibre that he managed to fool even a bed partner? No. I cannot have been sleeping with another madman.