The Starlings

by Vivienne Kelly

  ‘Did you have a good afternoon with Grandpa?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, hoping that she would not ask whether Rose had been there.

  ‘Did Hawthorn win?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Did they lose by a lot?’

  ‘Thirty-six points.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ She made a face. ‘Daddy won’t be pleased, will he?’

  ‘No,’ I said. And then I thought, well, I might as well ask. ‘Where were you? Just now?’

  ‘I slipped over to see Maddy.’ She pulled out some carrots and started to chop them.

  ‘Isn’t Maddy back at school now?’

  She darted a shrewd glance at me. ‘Yes, but we still had a few things to straighten out. Sorry—I was hoping I’d be home before you. But I knew Pippa was here.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘Have you been home long?’

  ‘Not very.’

  She glanced at me again. ‘How do you know Maddy’s back at work?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Somebody must have said so.’

  ‘Which somebody?’

  I shrugged and nicked a piece of carrot, crunching into it.

  ‘Which somebody, Nicky?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I made a daring move. ‘I think it was you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You said something about Maddy being back. The other night.’

  ‘I don’t recall that.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ I said, starting to slope off. ‘Somebody said something. Maybe it was Daddy.’

  She said no more about it, but kept on chopping. Bright splinters of carrot split from the knife’s blade and flew around the bench.

  ‘How was Grandpa?’

  ‘Good.’

  Now the question came.

  ‘Was Rose there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You like Rose, don’t you, Nicky.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think she’s beautiful.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said my mother dryly. ‘Rose is beautiful, is she? But people who are beautiful on the outside aren’t always beautiful inside, you know.’

  ‘I think she is,’ I said, intrepidly. ‘And Grandpa thinks so, too.’

  ‘Well, I know Grandpa thinks that. But that’s just the point, don’t you see?’

  ‘No.’

  She stopped what she was doing at the bench and poured herself a glass of wine. ‘Nicky,’ she said, ‘sometimes people aren’t all they seem. Iago smiled and smiled, you know, but he was still a villain.’

  ‘I know about Iago,’ I said. ‘It’s horrible of you to compare Rose with Iago.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did.’

  I knew she was beginning to get cross, but I was cross, too. We both heard my father’s car coming in. My mother took a swig of wine and said, with obvious relief, ‘Well, never mind, darling. We can talk about it some other time.’

  During dinner, which was later than usual, my father mulled over the game. He tried to put a gloss on what had happened, but it was clear that Essendon had murdered the Hawks.

  ‘We’re still third on the ladder,’ he said. ‘Anyone can have a bad day.’

  Pippa’s eyes still had their puffy look, and she was very quiet. Neither of my parents appeared to have noticed that anything was wrong with her. I looked at my mother. She actually wasn’t listening. Of course, it was easy not to listen while my father blathered on—in fact there were times when one tried not to listen—but tonight not a single word was penetrating my mother’s brain. It was not a question of pure boredom or of neglect. She was not there.

  ‘So,’ my father was saying. ‘Defeat doesn’t mean the end of the world. We can bounce back.’

  He took a mouthful and munched. Donizetti stalked past and some evil associative genius prompted me to say, ‘Rose has slippers with black cat faces on them. Just like Donny.’

  Abruptly my mother was back with us. Very much with us.

  ‘Where did you see Rose’s slippers?’

  ‘At Grandpa’s.’

  ‘But where at Grandpa’s?’

  ‘In Grandpa’s room.’

  ‘In his bedroom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know what colour Rose’s dressing-gown is, Nicky?’ Pippa’s voice had recovered something of its usual flip tone.

  ‘It’s pink,’ I said.

  ‘And her nightie? Oh, well, I guess that’s under the pillow.’

  ‘Pippa!’ said my mother.

  ‘Well?’ asked Pippa. ‘You want to know, don’t you? If I don’t ask Nicky, you will, won’t you? You want to know if they’re sleeping together, don’t you?’ Her face was scarlet.

  We all stared at her.

  She laid her knife and fork carefully on her plate and stood up. ‘Hypocrite,’ she hissed, straight at my mother, and stalked away. We heard her footsteps clattering on the staircase and her bedroom door slam.

  My mother’s face had turned white.

  ‘I’m getting very tired of this,’ said my father. ‘That young woman needs to learn some manners.’

  My mother made a small mumbling noise.

  ‘I’ll speak to her,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said my mother, sharply. ‘No, don’t worry, Frank. It’s a difficult time for her. Adolescence is no fun. I’ll have a word with her later.’

  ‘You let her off too lightly,’ he said. ‘She needs the riot act read.’

  ‘No, no. I mean, yes, I will, I’ll be firm.’

  ‘Make sure you are, then,’ he said. ‘Can’t have her speaking to you like that.’

  I was bewildered by this. Of course Rose and Grandpa were sleeping together—her slippers and toothbrush were there, for heaven’s sake—and I couldn’t see why Pippa thought this was in question, or why it mattered. Rose had herself told me it was a sleepover. There was also something that was sinister and disturbing in this episode. I’d frequently heard Pippa misbehaving, but I’d never before heard such an outburst from her. She had sounded disgusted. I was not sure where this disgust came from or what it meant. And she had spoken with a kind of vicious authority.

  I also found it hard to interpret the expression on my mother’s face. It wasn’t irritation or anger. And then it came to me that it was fear.

  If the exchange at the dinner table led to a conversation between my mother and Pippa, I was unaware of it. Had I dared to speak to her in the way Pippa had, there would have been consequences. For a reason I could not fathom, and despite my mother’s undertaking to my father, Pippa continued to evade such consequences. My mother and Pippa were pointedly civil to each other. But the tension between them coiled like smoke.

  Parent-teacher interviews for the senior school in the following week coincided with a late commitment of my father’s, and Pippa and I were to be on our own during the early evening. As usual, we caught the tram home from school together.

  ‘Nicky, you go on home, will you? I’ve got something I have to do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Are you meeting Adam Pascoe?’ I enquired, cunningly.

  But to my surprise Pippa bit her lip and her eyes welled over. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing anything like that.’

  ‘Well, what are you doing, then?’

  ‘Nothing that you need to know about. I’m just going to get off a couple of stops early. I’ll be home in no time.’

  ‘I don’t have the keys.’

  ‘I’ll give them to you.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to leave me on my own.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Are you going to visit Grandpa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re supposed to go straight home.’

  ‘I know that, idiot.’

  ‘I’ll come too.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you let me come,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell.’

  Pippa’s face wa
s full of exasperation. ‘You’re a little sod,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got as much right to visit Grandpa as you have.’

  ‘I’m not actually visiting Grandpa.’

  ‘Well, then, why are you going there?’

  ‘I want to talk to Rose.’

  This seemed reasonable to me. ‘I like talking to Rose, too,’ I confided.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pippa, listlessly. ‘Rose is nice.’

  ‘Well, can I come?’

  She sighed. ‘Don’t butt in, that’s all. It’s a private thing.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I can talk to Grandpa while you talk to Rose.’

  We got off the tram early and walked towards Grandpa’s. It was cold and drizzly, but Pippa didn’t put her umbrella up, so I didn’t either, and when we arrived at Grandpa’s house we were wet, which was especially inconvenient for me because of my glasses. Pippa’s curls had started to droop and her face was damp. Rose’s Datsun was parked at the front, and it was she who opened the door to us. She was in her nurse’s uniform, her enamel nurse’s badge pinned to her navy cardigan and her hair tied back. She was delighted to see us, or said she was, she brought us into the kitchen, turned on the central heating and gave us towels to rub ourselves with while she made Milo for me and tea for her and Pip.

  ‘I’m only just home,’ she said. Your Grandpa isn’t here.’ She rattled around with mugs and plates. ‘There’s some of that cake left, Nicky: you’d like some, wouldn’t you? He had an appointment in town this afternoon, but he should be back soon.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Pippa. ‘It was you I wanted to talk to, actually.’

  Rose cast her a glance. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that should be easy. Just let me find marshmallows for Nicky’s Milo.’

  Rose settled me with the jigsaw, Milo, and cake.

  ‘Come into the kitchen, Pippa,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to do a few things for tea tonight, and you can talk to me while I’m doing them. You’ll be okay, won’t you, Nicky?’

  I was a little disappointed, because I’d hoped to uncover what Pippa needed to consult Rose about, and I could hear only the low hum of their voices in the kitchen. A patch of sun-drenched cloud was giving me a lot of trouble, however, and I pushed around jigsaw pieces for a while to try to latch two or three of them together. I was having no luck at all, but my attention was distracted when a terrible wail, high and sharp and stretched, came soaring from the kitchen. At first, in my shock, I thought it was the cry of some strange large bird—an albatross came to mind—trapped and keening; but there was something unearthly about it. Perhaps it was a banshee? Frightened, I jumped to my feet and ran to the door, which was ajar: I peered through and saw no albatross or banshee, but only my sister howling, her head on the table, Rose hanging over her and stroking her, hugging her. The crescendo of the wail started now to diminish, shattering into smaller sobs, like a great wave that flung itself at a wall and fragmented into tiny drops.

  I watched, mesmerised.

  ‘So,’ Pippa finally hiccupped, ‘so I don’t know what to do, Rose, and I can’t tell anyone, and I’m so scared—I’m scared.’ She slumped on the table and gave herself up to weeping. Rose said something soft that sounded like a question.

  ‘Eight days,’ said Pippa, with intense bleakness. ‘Eight days.’

  Another soft question.

  ‘No, nobody. I can’t tell Gina. She’s dropped me—she’s furious with me—she found out we met—she says I was trying to cut Fran out—Fran is Gina’s sister—and Gina thinks I was chasing Adam—and it wasn’t like that—but I can’t explain it to her—and she won’t believe me—I didn’t—I wasn’t—he was the one who tried to get me to do things. And I can’t tell him, Rose, don’t tell me I have to tell him, I can’t, I can’t.’

  Her voice was rising again, in a terrified shriek.

  ‘Don’t fret so much, Pippa. There may be nothing to tell,’ said Rose, her voice raised slightly to counter the volume.

  ‘How can there be nothing to tell?’ Pippa’s voice throbbed with anguish. ‘I must be, Rose. I must be. What other explanation could there be?’

  ‘Pippy, darling, just worrying can make it late.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You’re making that up,’ said Pippa.

  ‘I swear I’m not. Anxiety can do strange things to our bodies, Pippa. Just the nervous tension of waiting, of hoping, of fearing. Honestly. I think it’s the likeliest explanation. You would be so unlucky for it to be anything else.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘Truly. But listen, even if I’m wrong, it’ll be all right, Pippa. I can help. I will help.’

  ‘You won’t tell anyone?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘Mum and Dad?’

  ‘Heavens, no.’

  ‘Grandpa?’

  ‘He doesn’t need to know,’ said Rose. ‘Nobody needs to know.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But what will I do, Rose?’

  ‘Right at the moment, you don’t need to do anything. Stay calm, try to relax. Keep in touch with me. Either way, it will be okay, Pippa. I won’t let anything happen to you. Remember that.’

  I had not the faintest idea what any of this meant, but I could tell that Pippa had somehow entangled herself in a grave situation, and that Rose was going to help her, and I listened to what I could catch of the conversation as if my life depended on it. Nothing much was said for a while. Pippa snivelled and coughed, and Rose made murmuring noises of reassurance. After a while I went back to the table to resume my work on the sky. Eventually I heard Rose suggest that they join me. I heard the chair legs scraping on the floor as they stood.

  ‘I didn’t know who to go to, Rose,’ Pippa said. ‘I suppose we don’t know each other all that well but I couldn’t think who else to talk to. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘You couldn’t have done better,’ said Rose. ‘I’m so glad you did come to me.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Pippa. ‘You’re practically family now, aren’t you?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Rose. ‘I don’t think your mum’s too keen on the idea, though.’

  ‘Who cares what she thinks?’ Pippa’s voice was harsh. ‘She’s in no position to be making judgments, anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pippa. She hesitated. ‘Actually, I do mean something.’

  Rose said nothing.

  And then Pippa said, quietly but steadily, ‘My mother is having an affair.’

  Rose’s amazement was evident. ‘You can’t mean it.’

  ‘Oh, can’t I?’

  ‘But how can you be sure?’

  ‘I am. That’s all.’

  They came out from the kitchen, then. I hadn’t made any progress.

  ‘Do you want help, Nicky?’ asked Rose. ‘Or would you rather keep going on your own for the moment?’

  ‘On my own,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I couldn’t help you anyway,’ said Pippa, in a praiseworthy attempt to sound normal. ‘I’m hopeless at jigsaws. Nicky sees things much quicker than I do.’

  ‘I’m not seeing very much at the moment,’ I said, trading a moment of rare modesty for Pippa’s equally rare tribute. ‘The clouds are really hard. When I do the waves I think they’re the hardest bit, but when I do the clouds they are.’

  ‘Is it a fire?’ asked Pippa, studying the box top. ‘I thought the ship was on fire, but is it?’

  ‘It’s a sunset,’ I said. ‘It looks fiery because of all the colours. The ship is being towed away to be broken up, because it’s old. Grandpa explained it to me.’

  ‘We ought to be going,’ said Pippa.

  ‘But I want to see Grandpa.’

  ‘Grandpa mightn’t be home for a while,’ said Rose. ‘He went in to see his lawyer, and he thought it was going to be a fairly long appointment. He mightn’t be home till dinnertime, Nicky.’

  We left soon after. It wasn’t
raining anymore as we walked home, but when I glanced at Pippa I saw that her face was still wet with sliding tears.

  She saw me looking at her and scowled at me. ‘Did you hear any of what I was saying to Rose?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘Why ask me, then?’

  ‘Well, don’t tell fibs.’

  I felt like saying that telling fibs didn’t seem too bad compared with whatever she’d been up to, but thought better of it.

  We trudged a little way in silence.

  ‘Pippa,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s an affair? I mean, what exactly?’ I added ‘exactly’ in case Pippa assumed entire ignorance on my part.

  ‘So you were listening!’

  ‘I couldn’t help hearing some of it.’

  She sighed. ‘It’s when two people—well, when people get too friendly.’

  ‘Too friendly?’ I was all at sea.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that what Mummy is doing with Mr Bloomberg?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told Rose that,’ she said, but more to herself than to me.

  ‘Why did you, then?’

  ‘Well, anyway, why shouldn’t Rose and Grandpa be happy together? I mean, Didie was a bad-tempered old cow, let’s be honest about it, and he put up with her for years.’

  I was shocked that Pippa should say this about Didie, even though I thought it might be true. I waited a moment and returned to my main interest. ‘Is Mummy being too friendly with Mr Bloomberg?’

  ‘Oh, Nicky, just shut up, will you,’ cried Pippa. ‘Don’t say anything, ever, to anybody, about any of this. Do you understand?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, far from understanding. I thought for a little while. ‘Is it like Desdemona?’

  Pippa threw me a glance that I couldn’t interpret. ‘God, you are a weird kid.’

  ‘Well, is it?’ Our mother had read Lambs’ Tales to Pippa, too, so I knew she would know what I meant.

  ‘Sort of, I suppose. But did Desdemona do anything wrong? It was that guy who made it up, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Iago,’ I said, patiently. ‘Iago said Desdemona had given Cassio her handkerchief.’

  ‘Nicky, you know, you’re too young to understand. I know you hate being told that, but that’s how it is.’