September Starlings

by Ruth Hamilton

  This is Monday. On Mondays, I force myself to face my mother. My failure to arrive at her door and at her beck and call would just cause a lot of bother on the phone. I glance at the instrument, accuse it silently. In about half an hour, her special ring will be reborn, that piercing, endless freep-freep that belongs only to Liza McNally of the School Hill Retirement Apartments, Crosby, Merseyside. Even Telecom succumbs to her special power, seems more alert when prompted by a bony, nicotined finger with pearlized varnish on the talon. Perhaps they know that she holds shares in their grasping empire.

  Diana is out, has gone to bend a different ear. When I think of her, I smile. She has brought life to this house, has made me laugh, made me function. Diana is a pharmacologist, a student of drugs and their various applications. Perhaps she will find a cure for Ben after he is dead. Jodie will pen the prescription, will use Diana’s medicine to cure a sufferer, a victim of Alzheimer’s. I wish it had come sooner. How many of us are thinking this? How many have relatives with this terrible illness?

  The phone. It’s too early, won’t be Mother. Mother is like an alarm clock, is tuned in to the rhythm of her joyless life. At half past ten, she will torment me. At four o’clock, it will be the turn of one of the wardens who look after the apartments.

  I lift the receiver, suddenly sense bad news. ‘Hello?’

  Diana’s voice is squeaky. ‘Me father. It’s me dad.’ She must be in a tight spot, because the accent is thickening by the second. ‘They’ve just found him.’

  My mental picture of Diana’s male parent is a sparse one, just a bundle of rags with a meths bottle peeping from a pocket. ‘Where?’ I ask.

  She chokes, breathes heavily. ‘In the river.’

  It is difficult, almost impossible to think of something sensible to say. I am sweaty but cold, and my slick fingers tighten on the receiver. Gooseflesh creeps up my arms, makes me shiver. ‘Diana?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is he … is he dead?’

  A small pause is fractured by a sound that is half sob, half cough. ‘What do you think? Even the bloody fish are dead in this muck. I can’t … will you come for me?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  She blubbers. I can imagine the poor little thing wiping her nose on the sleeve of that dreadful anorak. After a huge sniff, she tells me the address. 47, Cannonfield Street. I feel sick, an empty sick that is probably made worse by not eating. After grabbing an apple, I dive out, jump into Elsie. She’s in one of her moods, needs talking to before she’ll start.

  From the top of Diana’s street, I can see the Mersey. It killed Diana’s dad. My hands are shaking. I did not know this man, but his daughter has loved him. Even as she cursed his waywardness, she loved him.

  There’s a policewoman at the door, a smallish person with no hat and a well-cut uniform. The hat is on the sideboard, and the cluttered sideboard is just two short paces away from the pavement. ‘Mrs Starling?’ The short arm of the law seeks mine. ‘She’s heartbroken. Can you take her back with you, let her stay in your house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Diana is in a corner, on a chair that is already occupied by a pile of newspapers. This makes her taller, almost as tall as if she were standing. The house reeks of take-away food, rotted cabbage, stale sweat. A low mantelshelf is covered in papers, brown envelopes with windows, junk mail. Another armchair seems to have exploded, its guts pouring onto a rug that tries hard to be a shade of maroon, fails due to many spills and black-edged burn holes. An ashtray on the floor spills its dead. Hanging over the squalor is a black crucifix, Christ’s agonized figure shaped from a silvery metal and affixed to dry, polish-starved timber. There’s a pulley line above the fire, several pairs of greyish underpants draped over its slats.

  ‘Laura.’ She reaches out for me as the policewoman releases my arm, but there is no time for condolences. An army of people arrives, pushes past me. The newcomers talk very quickly in a language I mastered years ago. There’s our Jack, our Audrey, our Peter, our Mark. Sundry spouses line up in front of the sideboard, a small platoon not at ease, but hardly ready for inspection. Our Jack has matters well in hand. ‘We’ll see to it, Di,’ he blusters. ‘He can go in with me mother, I’ll soon get it sorted.’

  Diana is white. She leans back in her chair, closes her eyes. ‘Shut up, all of you.’

  The room is instantly quiet. Everyone waits for the little waif to speak. Someone coughs, a match is struck.

  ‘You’ll see to it?’ asks Diana. ‘It? That “it” was my dad. And not one of you turned up when he was in the ’ozzy with the DTs. Even you never came, Sal, couldn’t be bothered to see your own brother in bloody prison.’ This remark is addressed to an older woman who loiters near the door, plainly anxious to be on her way. ‘So you can just bugger off, the lot of you. Nobody wanted him when he was alive, so it’s up to me what I do with him. Go on, get gone.’

  They won’t go. I’ve seen all this before, have witnessed these scenes a long time ago. They will fight, grieve, fight again. It’s like a ritual, a pattern that must be observed. Because they are bereaved, emotions are strong, tempers frayed to lacework.

  Our Audrey steps forward. She may be Diana’s sister, or she may be an in-law. Whatever, she will be family, will have been absorbed into the unit as soon as the ink on the certificate was dry. Baptismal or marriage, any certificate means full membership. Our Audrey has bleached hair, an ankle chain and no bra. Her eyes have been outlined with thick, black stripes, making her into a cut-price Jean Shrimpton. When she talks, her breasts jiggle about like two animals fighting in a sack. ‘Don’t you be coming all the ’oity-toy with us just ’cos you’ve ’ad wot you might call an education, like. Me mam bought this ’ouse with that bit of a win wot she ’ad with Littlewood’s in the seventies. So it’s between all of us an’ no messin’.’

  I can’t believe it. Their father is on a slab at the morgue, and they’re carrying on like vultures hovering over carrion before it’s begun to rot. So this is what happens, is it? The deceased is at the funeral parlour having a last hair-do, and the kids start fighting over bankbooks and other items of interest.

  Diana’s eyelids lift slowly. ‘Take the bloody house,’ she says wearily. ‘I’m off back to Blundellsands.’

  Our Audrey is not best pleased. ‘You can’t just go and—’

  ‘Can’t I? Just watch me. I saw to him when he was alive, didn’t I? Well, I’m having him cremated and then—’

  ‘Put him near a gas oven and you’ll blow both cathedrals to kingdom come. There’s that much bloody booze in him—’

  Diana jumps on our Mark, smacks him across an acne-scarred cheek. ‘Shut up, you. He was a drunk. I know he was a drunk, so there’s no need for you to go disc-jockeying it all over Radio flaming City. In case you haven’t noticed, he was your father. It doesn’t matter what they were, what they did wrong or right. At the end, you just say, “These were my parents.” We owe everything to them.’

  Mark shuffles, backs away. ‘I don’t know about that. It was the other way round, ’cos he died owing me a fiver.’

  Diana pokes a hand into her pocket, throws a jangle of coins on to the rug. ‘There you are, Judas. Sorry I can’t manage the rest of the thirty pieces, but that’s all I’ve got on me at the moment. You can have the rest when I’ve sold me Rolls Royce.’

  The money stays where it is. ‘Sorry, girl,’ mumbles Mark. ‘I was only messin’.’

  Mark shuffles again, his large feet bursting out of some size 11-ish Adidas trainers whose laces trail on the floor. He lights a badly squashed Superking, tosses the empty packet in the general direction of the fireplace. ‘I’ve left me van,’ he grumbles, quieter now. Our Audrey agrees, mutters a few words about kids abandoned to the questionable mercies of ‘’er next door’. A woman with dyed black hair takes two steps to her left, peeps into the kitchen, freezes, pulls her head back into the room and displays an expression of complete bewilderment, looks as if she might have caught a glimpse of hell’
s doorway. ‘Yer’ll not sell this ’eap of crap. Bloody cockroaches are ’avin’ a disco in the back kitchen. There’s enough grease on them walls to start a chippy.’

  Diana is finally tired out, routed. I step to her side, place a hand on her shoulder. Facing them isn’t easy. I know people like these, have lived among them. They are honest yet cute in the proper sense, wary, talented, furious without quite knowing why. The one with the blackened hair displays all the charm of a cement mixer, yet her eyes are hurt. Liverpudlians, poor Liverpudlians, people with a history of hard work that is now so historical that it seems like folklore. Building trade, dock work, plumbing? Oh yes, they’ve read about jobs like those. Oh God, I’ve been here, I’ve been stuck in a grimy cottage with three underfed children, a few pennies for the gas, enough bread and jam for breakfast. An image jumps unbidden into my head. Gerald and Edward are lying in their beds. I bend to kiss them, listen as my long hair sizzles in the candle’s feeble flame. Automatically, I wet my fingers, pull them the length of the burning tress, extinguish the fire. Yes, I remember when electricity was a bonus, a luxury.

  They don’t know that. Diana’s family doesn’t appreciate my true empathy, my gut-wrenching understanding of their plight. Georgina Dawn saved me, I’m a lucky one. I was frightened then, before I started to write, and I am still afraid, still angry. Which geriatric judge put the black on his head, which lord of the realm ordered the death of Liverpool? I resent this slow murder of my city – yes, it is mine. I can no longer cover my ears to blank out the pitiful cries of its adult children as they moulder on another mountain of surplus. Butter, milk, people – they’re all de trop, mon cheri. And thus we advance into Europe.

  I look at Diana’s family, see mouths that are thin from waiting, eyes that are hungry for activity, for employment. How many days have they stood in that ever-swelling dole queue? I smile inwardly. It isn’t just the north, isn’t just us, I say to myself. The cancer has spread, begins to be noticed. The difference is that we stopped blubbering years ago. ‘I’ll look after Diana,’ I say eventually.

  Our Audrey fixes her black-ringed eyes on me. They are blue, hard as flint. ‘Are you ’er from Blundellsands?’

  ‘I am.’

  She heaves back her shoulders, thrusts out the trembling chest. ‘Debtors’ retreat, that.’

  ‘Yes.’ I meet the unfriendly and challenging stare. And somehow, she sees me as I really am, knows from words I have not spoken that I have been here before, have been where she is. She can tell that I have endured cold and fear. Perhaps the saying is true, ‘It takes one to know one’. Her lips twitch, but she kills the smile. ‘I will take care of your little sister, Audrey,’ I tell her.

  The thickly painted lower lip quivers. ‘He was all right, really, me dad. It was the drink got him. He could read stories really good, like, used to put meaning in, he done all the different voices. Mind you, he was a terrible Red Riding Hood, sounded as if he’d been doctored.’ She has picked up her aitches for me.

  Mark puffs on his fag, doesn’t bother to wipe a tear from his cheek. ‘’E was good to me ma. ’E never got drunk when me ma was ’ere.’

  The policewoman steps outside, leaves the family to grieve. My hand tightens on Diana’s shoulder – I can feel the sobs building up pressure inside that slender body. Like a volcano that has lain dormant for too long, she will be forced to erupt soon. ‘Shall I make some tea?’ I ask. Tea is always made at times like this.

  Mascara trails down Audrey’s face. ‘There’s no cups, love. He didn’t live here, he just got poured through the letterbox every night, fell on the floor and slept where he dropped. If we gave him something, like pots or pans, he sold them or swapped them. There is pans and that, but they’re filthy in the back kitchen. He got fed by her three doors down – she used to do him meat and veg a couple of days a week. We paid her for it.’

  Like members of the one body, they close ranks and pull me into their midst. I am here, therefore I am seconded without a vote, am drawn in as an honorary sister. They weep and curse and touch one another, each living through a past that has been colourful and noisy. Neighbours slip into the house, grey shapes that move silently round the edges of the scene. Yes, they are indeed scene-shifters, fetchers and carriers of props, because the scent of their offerings cuts through the tears. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I don’t know why I sob anew when I see the sarnies, the teacups, knives, spoons, paper napkins.

  We eat. There are scones and biscuits and little pies, sausage rolls, tarts, triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Audrey puts some food in her shopping bag, ‘For the young ones,’ she explains to no-one in particular. They have aged in this short time, have begun to bear the guilt that attaches to a parent’s death. I can read their thoughts. They wish they’d been kinder, more obedient, wish they’d listened while their mother and father were still alive to make the rules.

  ‘These are Mrs Cooper’s cups,’ observes Diana, a sob still fracturing the words. ‘I’ll take them back in a minute.’ She fingers a saucer. ‘Mrs Cooper collected this set with Green Shield stamps donkeys’ years ago, before I was born, I think. Mam told me. Mrs Cooper only gets these pots out for special occasions.’

  Audrey drains her cup, pats a non-existent crumb from the ample bosom, grins when she realizes that she has my full attention. ‘I could have been a page three,’ she announces proudly. ‘Only I got pregnant and got married. Still, I might give it another go, eh? I’ve kept meself firm.’

  I nod, grant my approval. Where the money comes from doesn’t matter, I remember that. You just get that typewriter or whatever where you can, cut out the questions and carry on with the business of keeping your dependants alive. ‘Shall we go, Diana?’ I ask.

  Diana inclines her head. ‘In a minute. Anyway, our kid’s right. How the heck are we going to get shot of this place?’

  Though I should not become involved in anything else just yet, I cannot help myself. ‘I’ll see to it.’ It is yet another of those times when I say something, feel that I haven’t really said it, look round and seek the guilty party. It’s me, of course. I said it.

  Everyone’s attention is on me. ‘Yer wot?’ Jack is so incredulous that his voice is near falsetto in pitch. ‘D’you know the Pope, missus? ’Cos it’ll take a fuc— a flaming miracle to turn this into an ’ouse again. There’s no floorboards upstairs. ’E burnt ’em before we got the gas fire put in. An’ that kitchen is a f— it’s an ’ell ’ole.’

  ‘Even a hell hole can be fixed.’ This is me talking again, Big Mouth, the last of the big talkers. ‘I’ve furniture, paint, we can get some wallpaper. There’s a chap in Crosby who’ll do the work.’

  Mark bridles. ‘We’re not charity cases.’

  I look steadily at him. ‘Well, I used to be a charity case and I’ve not forgotten. People round here kept me and my children alive when they scarcely had enough for their own families.’ Actually, it wasn’t that bad, not after I’d started writing, but I’ve been near enough to the breadline to be glad of my Warburton’s sliced. ‘I’ve been on the receiving end,’ I tell him.

  ‘Oh, right.’ He sweeps the long-lashed gaze over me, takes in the silk scarf that hides my creping throat, the Italian shoes, breathes in my Estée Lauder scent. ‘Sound,’ he says contentedly. ‘Thanks, missus. That’s sound.’

  ‘Sound’ must mean good, I think. They are truly amazing, a separate and robust breed, strong, resilient, humorous to their last breath. A few minutes ago, they were keening like sick animals. Now, the eye make-up is being repaired, cigarettes are being cadged, plates have been returned to their rightful owners. I have enjoyed their company so much that I feel bereft when they leave, am pleased to accept a kiss from Audrey, a pat on the back from the black-dyed one.

  We are alone now, just Laura Starling and Diana Hulme in a room that stinks of all kinds of rot, wet, dry, human. ‘We’ll have to get it fumigated,’ she says.

  ‘We might put in some windows, Diana. Some of that UPVC
that’s a dead ringer for ma—’

  ‘Shut up.’ She fiddles with a string of hair. ‘Our Mark’s gone to identify him officially. Me dad’ll have to go in a shroud, ’cos he’s got no best suit.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ I am, oh I am.

  She gulps. ‘I’ll miss him. There’ll be nobody waiting for me outside college, nobody chasing me along a corridor. “Give us the cash for a pint, girl,” he used to shout. He was a docker, ages ago when there were loads of jobs. A lot of them are used-to-bes, most round here are jobless.’

  Again, I am slightly afraid. She depends on me, needs me. I should not have taken her on, should not be here. While I’m here, Ben is alone. I pull myself together. ‘Have you seen Bread on TV?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ma Boswell has a nice house.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sounds so down, so defeated.

  ‘We can make this place nice, then you can live in it.’

  She blinks, considers. ‘What about the rest of them? They’ll all want their cut. There’s only our Mark with a job, and that van’s on its last radials. He sells fish, always stinks of it, specially Tuesdays and Fridays.’ She pauses, seeks her point, plucks it out. ‘I can’t pay them.’

  ‘But I can.’

  The jaw drops a fraction. ‘Why?’

  She needs the truth, deserves it. ‘Because I can afford it. I want to help you, Diana. But I can’t keep you with me indefinitely.’ I wait for a second, allow the things that have been wedged in my subconscious to come forth and leap from my tongue. ‘I’m bringing Ben home. You will need somewhere to live while you get through the course at the hospital. Ben is going to be hard work.’

  The pale yellow head nods. ‘I can help you with him.’

  ‘No. There’ll be nurses most of the time.’

  ‘Oh.’ She scratches her nose. ‘Well, it’s very good of you to offer, but I thought you were a floating voter.’