Starlight (Vintage Classics)

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Well I only hope you haven’t upset her badly, that’s all. I’ve never had anyone so good with the dogs since dear Alice,’ said his mother, ‘I don’t want her leaving … yes, do draw them, please, Doris,’ (as the old woman came into the room), ‘it’s getting chilly.’ The dogs, disturbed, got up and rearranged themselves, turning in circles, at her feet.

  Doris waited until she had performed half her task before she sent up her rocket. Pausing precisely between the drawn curtain and the undrawn, and looking full at Mrs Corbett, she said, in her primmest voice:

  ‘I beg your pardon, Madam, but I think there’s something you ought to know.’

  ‘Oh. Well I hope it’s something pleasant for I’ve heard enough unpleasant things for one day … what is it?’

  ‘Miss Pearson’s took her cases off with her, Madam. And the drawers is all anyhow, and her room upside-down. I’ve just been in to turn the bed down.’

  Arnold started. Mrs Lysaght exclaimed, ‘Well!’ Mrs Corbett said, ‘There, Arnold, that’s your fault. She’s gone off now – I knew it – I knew she would.’

  ‘Shall I see if there’s anything missing, Madam?’ Doris asked, no muscle of her face reflecting her triumph in this moment of kitchen-prophecy fulfilled.

  ‘Of course not – don’t be silly,’ said Mrs Corbett, distractedly, ‘I expect she’s taken some things over to her mother’s. Now don’t go telling everyone she’s run off, Doris.’

  Doris compressed her lips and went out of the room.

  ‘Would you like me to telephone her mother, and see if she’s there?’ said Mrs Lysaght. ‘I do have her number.’

  ‘Oh no, no – leave it alone, please – I’m not running after her – if she can walk out as calm as you please, leaving me and the dogs, after all my kindness – let her go.’ Mrs Corbett was almost crying. ‘I’m not surprised – I told you I thought you’d upset her, Arnold.’

  ‘Oh nonsense,’ said Arnold. ‘I’ll go up and have a look – there may be a note or something – the whole thing’s probably a scare – Doris always hated her, anyway (I don’t know why you can’t sack that bunch and get in some human beings) … She’ll be back. She knows which side her bread is buttered.’ He hurried out.

  Mrs Corbett and Mrs Lysaght sat in silence, Mrs Corbett gently moving her toe among the curled-up, silky mass that was the dogs. Once, Cee barked a gruff little ghost-bark, as he hunted some flying cat through his dreams.

  Peggy had gone to the nearest Underground station, and the telephone boxes.

  They were all occupied, the one outside which she took up her place by two laughing, very young girls, their faces sparkling with sexual mischief as they took it in turns to speak, feeding the box again from a mass of coppers in the pocket of one as fast as a call was concluded. After a few seconds, Peggy tapped sharply on the window.

  The faces turned to her, amused and defiant; then they went back to their fun. She rapped again, furiously this time; her heart was beating painfully and her eyes seemed to burn; her throat ached.

  ‘Coo – look at ’er! I can’t remember his number, where’s the book?’ The young voice sounded sharp and fresh through the closed door.

  Peggy wrenched it open, gripped each child by a shoulder and, amid shrill cries of anger, pulled them out of the box and went in and slammed it. At once, the noises of the station and their voices were shut off; she was alone with her purpose.

  She had the right money; she had made all her plans. She gave a number, seeing, out of the corner of her eye, a coloured woman ticket-collector good-naturedly shepherding the protesting children, with their spike heels and tight black trousers and mermaid hair, towards one of the exits. Then she gave a great, harsh, breath –

  ‘Fred? I … I …’

  ‘Where are you?’ said his voice instantly, ‘where are you, Peggy?’

  She told him, hearing with furious impatience the sound of another voice, fainter, that was saying something in the background. (‘Don’t talk to her, Fred, please don’t talk to her, please –’ it was saying. Gabbling, thought Peggy. Shut up. You’re done for.)

  ‘I’ll come and get you to-night? Where will you be? (Don’t, Janey, it’s no use.) Yes? I can’t hear?’

  She gave him the name of a railway station in London, and a place.

  ‘I’ll be there …’

  ‘Please, Fred, please – please,’ said the voice of his wife.

  ‘Leave me alone, can’t you … I’m sorry, God knows, but leave me alone … Peggy? Yes, right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘All right. I’ll wait.’

  She thought that his wife had dragged away the receiver. She heard his voice shouting, then the line went dead. She replaced the receiver and stood for a moment, drawing in breaths that were sweet with triumph. The rapture was almost unbearable; the release from pain too exquisite. She was going to see him, to be with him, and for ever. She had given in; her battle was over. She had surrendered.

  Presently she found herself sitting in a taxi that she did not remember entering, going down into London. Janey Rattray and her brats, who had held Fred back from her for nearly a year, were defeated.

  She had won.

  When the taxi reached the station, she paid off the driver, and picked up her case and went to the appointed place: to wait for her life to begin.

  The daily visits from the clergy of Saint James’s were welcomed by the Barnes sisters, just as soon as Gladys realized that neither Mr Geddes nor the curate were going to take advantage of them to plead with her and Annie to go more often to church.

  Gladys felt herself responsible for this incursion of respectability, in its highest form, into life at the cottages, and the feeling was accompanied by a sensation of being protected. Someone, she felt, was now keeping a daily eye, so to speak, on the more helpless inhabitants.

  Too much of an eye, she was soon saying, so far as Erika was concerned; for Mrs Geddes had had the latter to a buffet-supper at the Vicarage, introducing her on that occasion to some members of the Youth Club; and was now talking about ‘training’; this, looming ever larger on Erika’s small horizon, seemed to be connected with ‘being a nurse’, and, as it threatened those vague but splendid plans of being a cook that Gladys had in mind for her protégée, it was suspect.

  Gladys had loudly pointed out that nowadays nurses had to be ever so clever and ‘go into a lot of those examinations’, whereupon Erika had announced that examinations would not frighten her; Mrs Geddes had said she was ‘bright as a botton’.

  ‘Oh you are, are you?’ retorted Gladys, jealousy wrestling with affection and pride in her heart, ‘well that’s nice to hear – p’raps she’ll tell you how you can smoke smoke smoke all day without drying up the poor souls you’re nursing like so many kippers? We’d just like to know, wouldn’t we, Miss Gallagher?’

  The three were standing outside a small greengrocery shop in one of the back streets near the cottages; Gladys had suggested going to old Mrs Watson’s that afternoon, as it was ‘that blowy, sure to rain again any minute, we won’t go up the Archway.’ The use of her old acquaintance’s surname, rather than the usual ‘Violet’, was intended to make Erika feel her present behaviour was more or less shutting her off from familiar intercourse with approving friends.

  Miss Gallagher, having named her requirements to Mrs Watson while the latter moved slowly around a kind of cave in the wall piled up with potatoes and carrots, felt that something pleasant might usefully be said.

  ‘Going to the dance next week?’ she asked of the silent Erika. ‘In the church hall.’

  ‘Never knew there was one!’ cried Gladys, eager, as always, for news, ‘never heard about no dance, did we, Erika?’ Erika slowly shook her head. She had progressed to lipstick; it was called Way-Out Melon.

  ‘You ought to go,’ Miss Gallagher said; she, for her part, was always eager to send someone off to somewhere nice, and, for that matter, to go herself, when her very exiguous means would permit.

&n
bsp; ‘I would lak,’ pronounced Erika, after some, but not much, reflection.

  ‘Oh Mrs P. would never let her, no, can’t be done, it’s the Church, see?’ Gladys accompanied this with meaning nods and more than one wink at her friend. ‘Very funny about Church she is, isn’t she, Erika?’

  ‘I would lak,’ Erika slowly repeated, her eyes fixed on distance.

  ‘Oh she ought to go. It’s going to be lovely. They’re having The Spacemen and refreshments. Only three and six. You ought to go,’ said Miss Gallagher earnestly.

  ‘Well, best forget it,’ said Gladys. ‘Don’t want no more trouble – Vicar knocked him over, don’t want any more of that, do we? I was just looking out of the window, drawing the blackout – blackout! hark at me!’ (a cackle of laughter in which Miss Gallagher more gently joined) – ‘and there they were, just down the street. Called out at him and the Vicar stopped and they had a word and he hit him. Never so surprised in my life – gave me quite a turn.’

  ‘The Vicar did? Hit who?’ Miss Gallagher exclaimed, stupefied. ‘The Vicar?’

  ‘Shouldn’t have said that, no, don’t tell a soul, Violet, never do if it got round, no it wouldn’t, yes he did. Fell over. I nearly hollered out loud. The rackman. Fell over. Good thing it wasn’t raining.’

  Many years’ acquaintance with Gladys Barnes had taught Miss Gallagher that incidents related by her had a colouring of drama which they did not, if you happened afterwards to hear the facts from someone else, actually possess. She now dismissed the account as ‘one of Glad’s tales’ and turned the conversation once more to a matter about which she might afterwards hear something interesting that was also true.

  ‘Oh you ought to go,’ she said to Erika, ‘oughtn’t she?’

  Gladys earnestly repeated that it wouldn’t never do; the dance was ‘got up’ by the Church.

  ‘Let her go up to that buffy-supper at the Vicarage but I s’pose that’s different, p’raps she might, as it’s that Youth Club, I don’t know, reckon all your money’s gone on cigarettes, hasn’t it?’ to Erika, ‘spends I don’t know what, don’t you?’

  ‘I zmoke Mrs P.’s cigarettes,’ explained Erika with dignity, ‘all der time.’

  ‘Oh … well. I s’pose it’s all right then,’ said Gladys, righteous indignation collapsing under the calm enormity of this statement, ‘so long as she don’t mind … ’ow many a day do you reckon, for mercy’s sake?’

  ‘You heard from your nephew lately?’ put in Miss Gallagher; not hastily, but slid in on a gliding note, bred of long practice in diverting the course of situations created by Gladys Barnes. The stratagem was successful.

  ‘Only yesterday!’ cried Gladys dramatically, ‘well, how strange you should ask. Only a p.c. but ever such a pretty little place, Osney, regular village it is and got a job in the old Guard House. Under the National Trust it is, got a little bungalow right next door to it and a good bit of garden, has to show people round it, there’s a kind of museum, old guns and things, says we must go down in the summer and see it. Fancy you should ask.’

  ‘And how’s the old gentleman these days?’ pursued Miss Gallagher, seeing that the subject of Georgie Barnes must be limited, unless they delved into his past life, to what had been on the postcard.

  ‘Not himself,’ announced Gladys, with equal drama but in another key, ‘not himself at all. Very frail. Doesn’t have his walk every day now, and don’t go far afield with those rubbishing dolls. Hasn’t given himself another name not for weeks now. Used to go right up as far as Harringay this time last year, but none of that these days. Up in his room most of the time. Comes down to us for lunch most Sundays. Annie will have her way. Don’t smell no fish and chips, neither.’

  Miss Gallagher looked mild inquiry.

  ‘Sometimes of a Saturday,’ explained Gladys, ‘very arbitary about what he eats, always going on about brown bread, nasty old cardboard I say, but likes his fish and chips every now and then, we always smell it, been looking deffly pale too. Well so long we must be toddling.’

  Summer’s getting along – if you can call it summer, she thought vaguely, as they hurried homewards before the threatening rain; a wet, cloudy, hushed summer, reluctant and brooding. The green leaves hung limp in the soaked air. June: seems more like September, thought Gladys.

  At tea-time, when she accompanied Erika with the tray on a visit to Mrs Pearson, she found the latter looking disturbed.

  ‘Anything the matter?’ asked Gladys bluntly, after the tray had been settled and the first cup poured, ‘he been upsetting you?’ The Reverend Gerald Corliss had just left, and Gladys had not quite the respect and liking for him that she had for the Vicar.

  ‘No, oh no, dear. But I am upset – there’s going to be a phone call and it’s going to bring trouble.’ Erika, who had been about to launch a request that she might go to the Spacemen’s dance, lowered her curtain of sulks and instantly determined that go she would, no matter what ‘trouble’.

  ‘Oh don’t say that!’ cried Gladys, dismayed and excited.

  ‘It’s true, dear. It’s coming. Later this afternoon. You’ll see.’

  ‘But who’ll it be? Who from? Can you tell that, too?’ Gladys asked, almost whispering, as she approached closer to the subject of her landlady’s mysterious powers. She stood by the bed, with folded arms, looking fearfully down on the skeletal form.

  ‘Something to do with Peggy. I dread it – oh, I do dread it,’ Mrs Pearson whispered.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Gladys, in spite of a sudden fear that the anticipated call might be from ‘another world than this’, ‘I’ll answer it. Give them a bit of my mind, too, if we have any sauce. You leave it to me.’

  ‘It’s kind of you, dear. All right, if you like. But Erika could do it, couldn’t you, schatz?’ turning to her. Erika parted lips well coated with Way-Out Melon.

  ‘I would lak,’ she announced, ‘go to that dance with the Zpacemen.’

  ‘With – what is she talking about?’ demanded Mrs Pearson, turning wearily to Gladys.

  ‘Some dance at the church my friend was telling us three and six quite enough too nothing but washy lemon powder and bang bang bang enough to deafen you on those drums and they like doing it anyway – Oh my goodness there it is!’

  The telephone bell’s shrillness seemed to leap out into the silence of the house; urgent, insistent, frightening.

  ‘I’ll go – I’ll go,’ Gladys babbled, not moving.

  Mrs Pearson gave her a loving smile. ‘You’re a dear soul, Glad Barnes. Off you go, then; it’s nothing to frighten you – only bad news for me. Bad news about my Peggy.’

  30

  ‘H-hullo? Who’s there?’

  Gladys half-expected to hear some ghastly tones from the vaults or haunted seashore of a horror-film.

  ‘Oh is that you, Gladys? How nice to hear your voice,’ said Mrs Lysaght. ‘I just –’

  ‘Oh – oh – it’s you! Oh, I’m not half glad – very pleased to hear you speak – I was –’

  ‘Why, is something wrong? I hope Mrs Pearson hasn’t been very much upset by all this business?’

  ‘No – she’s all right – a bit better, I’d say, with them calling regular every day but keeps ever so thin – what business, excuse me?’

  ‘Why – but you don’t mean to tell me she hasn’t heard? It’s hardly believable – the girl’s own mother. Have they quarrelled?’

  ‘Not so far as I know – but what’s ’appened? We never heard a thing.’

  ‘That girl has simply gone off,’ proclaimed Mrs Lysaght. ‘About a week ago. Left half her clothes and her room upside-down and never said a word to anyone … she worked for a great friend of mine, I know her quite well, I used to see her almost every time I went there – and my friend is so upset. The dogs miss her dreadfully, you see.’

  ‘Poor little things. Well I never,’ marvelled Gladys, enjoying all this the more because it was so unlike the eerie communication from comic-book-land which she had anticipated. ‘’Ave yo
u told the pleece?’

  ‘No. My friend, Mrs Corbett, won’t hear of that. She says Peggy’s of age (and more than capable of taking very good care of herself, if you ask me) – and it’s up to her people. But I did think my friend ought just to get in touch with Mrs Pearson, to see if she had any news. However – she won’t, so that’s why I called up.’

  ‘She won’t half be upset,’ murmured Gladys.

  ‘She hasn’t heard from her, then?’

  ‘Not for days, I don’t think. She did say, though – only this afternoon, it was ever so queer –’ Gladys paused, hesitating and blundering.

  ‘Queer? How?’ Mrs Lysaght pounced.

  ‘Said there was going to be a phone call with news. Said it not fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘News about Peggy?’

  ‘That’s the funny part.’

  A pause followed. Both were wondering what to say next. Into the silence came a faint imploring call from upstairs:

  ‘Glad!’

  Gladys started. ‘There she is! Calling out. I’ll just run up and tell her – shan’t be a tick.’

  ‘Yes, do – oh – and, Gladys, see if you can’t persuade her to give me a sitting. You know – tell my fortune – I would so adore it – I’m thrilled by all that kind of thing.’

  Gladys toiled up the stairs. A conviction that Mrs Lysaght was a bit soft was in her mind, so firmly lodged behind the barriers set up by habit, loyalty, and gratitude for those pound notes sent off every Christmas, that it never rose beyond them. But she did feel that this was hardly the moment to make a suggestion about telling fortunes.

  Mrs Pearson was sitting upright, a listening look on her white face framed in the burden of princess-like hair. She heard the news, given by Gladys with a conscious attempt at softening it, in silence; then lay back on the pillows.

  ‘All right, Gladys. Thank you, dear.’

  ‘She said would you tell her fortune,’ added Gladys, ‘but don’t you do it, not if you don’t want to – I’ll tell her, shall I?’ She lingered, troubled by this silence, this weary falling back on to the bed. Mrs Pearson shook her head. ‘Oh – I don’t know. I can’t say now. Tell her …’ her voice changed slightly ’ask her to ring up again.’