September Starlings Page 13

  I rallied, waded in. ‘Was she pretty?’

  Two gentle eyes smiled down on me. ‘Yes, she was pretty.’

  Well, that would be a bit of a change in the corridor, then. If we got a nice-looking saint in a frame, life might improve minimally for those condemned to ‘sit out’ during religious lessons.

  ‘So I was baptized Maria Goretti in memory of that wonderful child,’ she continued, ‘and I have been fortunate enough to keep the name within our sisterhood. So remember Goretti, child.’

  ‘Sorry, Sister,’ I said. The girl next to me, who was already six and ought to have known better, was doubled over with the pain of trying not to laugh, so I kicked her under the desk, though the smile of innocence never left my face. At last, I had found a victim, someone more vulnerable than I was. Confetti had the face of an angel, was plainly unused to the carryings-on of sophisticated English infants. Years later, whenever I pondered about poor Confetti, I came to the conclusion that bullies are the bullied who are simply passing on the pain. As my mother’s victim, I chose my target and homed in on it. And even then, as I teetered on the edge of my sixth birthday, I was filled with guilt and shame. My tormenting of Sister Maria Goretti was short-lived, so perhaps I did have a heart after all.

  The nun adjusted her veil, fiddled with the huge rope of beads that dangled from her waist. ‘Who made you, Laura?’

  Ah. I knew that one from the playground. Mary Pickavance had taught me the first two or three in exchange for a halfpenny Spanish and a back-to-front ladybird in a matchbox. Back-to-front ladybirds – the few that were black with red spots – were valuable currency at the Convent of St Mary. ‘God made me,’ I replied triumphantly.

  ‘And why did God make you, Laura?’

  I inhaled in preparation for this longer answer. ‘God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him for ever in the next.’

  Mary Pickavance could contain herself no longer. Although I kicked her again, she held up her hand and jiggled it in that annoying way that says, ‘Teacher, I’m great and important.’ St Mary’s was packed to the rafters with great and important little egos.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ asked Confetti.

  ‘Sister, she’s not a Catholic. She doesn’t come in for religious lessons.’

  Confetti blinked, put her head on one side. The class groaned its displeasure, as its members had been waiting to see where it would all end. If Sister had got as far as question four, life might have become really interesting. ‘My poor child,’ said Confetti soberly. ‘The faith is in you. And one day, you will be welcomed into the arms of God’s family.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  I sat down, belted Mary Pickavance with my ruler, bit my lip against the agony when she stabbed me with the very sharp point of her pencil.

  The next day, I brought a bunch of flowers to our lovely form tutor. She made a fuss of me, put the blooms in a vase, sent me to the cloakroom with the pitcher. I watched as she poured in the water, marvelled that a nun, who would probably become a saint in time, was putting stolen flowers on her desk.

  Norma Wallace, the class sneak and snercher, lifted her hand. There was so much righteousness behind the movement that her arm trembled under the weight of so much stiffness and indignation. ‘Sister?’

  ‘Yes, Norma?’

  The girl’s tongue pressed itself against a couple of remaining incisors as she performed one of her noisier inhalations. ‘She pinched them. Off a few gardens on the road. There was an old man trying to chase her, but she ran too fast.’

  The silence was deafening. It was broken only by the sound of a huge, collective sigh, then by the rattle of Norma Wallace’s laboured breathing. Sister shook her head and her eyes were huge pools of misery. ‘Did you steal the flowers, Laura?’

  I scratched the side of my nose. ‘I picked them.’

  ‘Where did you pick them?’

  ‘Out of the floor.’

  ‘The ground, Laura.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She approached me and I backed away. Confetti might have been slow in some ways, but I’d seen enough Irish tempers running riot at St Mary’s, was aware that many colleens are born with too many words, hard hands and far-seeing minds. Some nuns knew what you’d done simply by looking at you. ‘Laura?’ She sounded so wounded, so beautifully sad.

  I swallowed, stopped moving away, wedged my back against the edge of a desk. ‘They were just growing and they were pretty. You hadn’t got any flowers on your desk.’

  ‘I don’t need flowers. I need good girls.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘And what must we do now, Laura?’

  I shrugged. I didn’t know what Confetti must do, but I would surely separate Norma Wallace from her chronic catarrh at the first opportunity. ‘Not sure,’ I mumbled.

  They were all enjoying it. A drama of this nature took the pressure off them, relieved five-, six- and seven-year-old minds from the torture of chattering in French when they hardly knew English, from chanting lists of battles and prime ministers and capital cities. Such distracting little performances were a regular occurrence, their theme varying from holes in paper caused by assiduous erasers to Someone Who Did Not Know The Ten Commandments. Not knowing the commandments was a bit like treason, a crime for which no excuse sufficed. However, theme and plot were unimportant – entertainment value was what counted. Twenty-odd rapt faces watched Sister and me taking centre-stage. Short of applause and encores, we could not have been nearer to stardom.

  ‘We must take them back, Laura. I shall get Sister St Thomas to sit with the class. You and I will go directly to the old man’s house and you can explain your lack of manners, Laura.’ She paused, wrung her hands for a few seconds. ‘It is perhaps as well that you are ignorant, child, because a Catholic girl would know that absolution can only be granted when full restitution of property has been achieved.’

  This was another load of mumbo-jumbo, nearly as bad as the ‘Bonjour, ma Soeur’ that was required each morning. And exercise books were suddenly cahiers or livres, and a proper book was whatever an exercise book wasn’t, and we sat on chaises and ouvred portes and now she was on about restitution of what?

  She must have noticed my blank expression. ‘To be forgiven in confession, a sinner must return stolen things, Laura.’

  ‘Oh.’ I thought about it. ‘What if you can’t? Like if the man isn’t in?’

  ‘We wait for him.’

  ‘Right.’ I glanced at the wilting blooms, wondered whether they were worth all the angst. ‘What if he’s gone till tomorrow?’

  ‘Then we return tomorrow.’

  My imagination was heating up, oiling itself for further hypothesis. ‘What if he’s gone on holiday? Or to London to see the King or the patent?’ After a suitable pause, I added, ‘What if he’s dead? Old people fall over dead sometimes. My Auntie Maisie told me about their next-door neighbour in Florence Street – he died on the outside toilet and my grandad – he was Auntie Maisie’s dad and my mother’s dad – he had to go in and—’

  ‘Yes.’ Confetti was suddenly as colourful as the misnomer with which I had endowed her, several shades of pink and off-white, with glorious violet eyes that grew wider by the minute. ‘If we cannot repay directly, then we contribute to the poor box.’

  I thrust my hand under the gymslip skirt, heaved two pennies from my knickers pocket. ‘There you are, Sister. For the poor box.’

  She shook a hand, would not take the money. ‘No. You must go back with these flowers, Laura. I will accompany you. There can be no forgiveness unless you visit the old man.’

  ‘Sister?’ I eyed her cautiously.

  ‘Yes, child?’

  ‘I don’t have to do the resti … restichewing …’

  ‘Restitution, Laura.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m not a Catholic, so I don’t go to confession. My mother hates papists.’ At last, I had found a use for Mother. ‘She says confession’s just so that you can go out and do
the same things all over again. Like Catholics say they’re sorry, only they’re not. Mother says if they’re not drinking, they’re stealing and if they’re not stealing, they’re … breeding. What’s breeding?’ This was a fair enough question, as I thought ‘breeding’ must be something to do with having a fight, because Catholics were supposed to go in for that sort of thing, fighting and shouting.

  Confetti’s face could have used a frame at this point. Although she wasn’t ugly, she looked dead, sort of strangled. ‘Laura?’ she gasped eventually.

  ‘Yes, Sister?’

  ‘Confession is about being sorry, about asking God to give strength against sin.’

  I looked straight at her. ‘So my mother is telling lies?’

  Oh God, the poor woman would have been happier in a den of lions at that moment. ‘Not … er … not quite, Laura. Your mother is simply mistaken. Now, we shall go down the road and find the garden from which you took the flowers.’

  The man was waiting for us. He had gathered around him a clan of supporters, men in flat caps, women in aprons and slippers. As we approached the group, I felt Sister’s hand tighten in mine. She was scared to death, and so was I.

  The offended party separated himself from the gaggle. ‘Is it thee?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Well, no matter who I was, the answer had to be right.

  ‘I’ve took prizes fer my dahlias in t’ past,’ he announced. ‘And along comes this one, nobbut a kid, and takes t’ bloody ’eads off me good blooms.’

  ‘Nay,’ said a bystander. ‘They’re moth-ate this year, Nat. Sithee.’ He snatched the tattered bouquet from Confetti’s hand. ‘No colour in ’em. You’d not ’ave got far wi’ these.’

  Nat squared up to the main speaker. ‘Listen, Ernie Grimshaw,’ he spluttered through teeth that bobbed up and down a lot. ‘Get thissen ’ome an’ shut thy gob about other folks’ gardens. Tha wouldn’t know a cabbage from a rhodo-bloody-dendron.’

  Ernie Grimshaw went purple. ‘That lass did thee a good turn when she lopped yon dahlias. They’re weak an’ weedy, just like thee.’

  The women giggled and shuffled off in their slippers, then the men broke ranks and wandered in various directions away from the house. Nat grabbed the stolen flowers from Ernie Grimshaw, pushed the man away, then dragged me and Confetti up the short path into his house. In the narrow hallway, we all breathed again.

  ‘Lass,’ he said to me after a second or two. ‘Get thissen in t’ front room and peep through t’ curtains, see ’as ’e gone, nosey owld bugger.’ As I went on my secret mission, he spoke to Sister. ‘Cum in, love. I’ll just put t’ kettle on an mek a brew.’

  I found them in the kitchen, he bustling about with a tea caddy and some cups, she sitting demurely at the table. ‘He’s gone,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry about your flowers, Mr …’

  ‘Evans, love. Me father were a Welsh farmer. I’m Nathaniel Jacob Evans and God alone knows what I ever did fer t’ deserve a moniker like that. Dust tha like sugar, Sister?’

  ‘Well, I do.’

  He nodded. ‘Thought so. Are you a country girl?’

  ‘I am.’

  He settled down across from her and began to talk to her as if she were a real person with legs, not a nun who floated about in a long black frock. ‘Dust tha like England, then?’

  ‘Well, I do and I don’t. Noisy, but very nice people.’ She looked at the clock. ‘Good heavens—’

  His loud laughter was infectious. ‘That’s me, Sister. Good Evans.’ We all giggled at the feeble joke and Sister went bright pink. ‘I never thought,’ she gasped. ‘But we must go.’

  ‘’Ang on a mo.’ He beckoned me with a bony finger, drew me towards a large box in the corner. ‘You done me a turn, lass, ’cos me flowers was rubbish – I’d never ’ave won t’ wooden spoon wi’ that load o’ weeds. So I’ll show thee this, ’cos tha’s a fine grand lass.’ He drew back an old grey blanket to reveal a squirming mass of fur. ‘Kittens,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Their mam’s gone fer a walk. Nobbut five days old, they are.’

  My heart was won in that moment. I felt as if love came to me first of all through my fingers, flooded into my whole body as I touched the tiny creatures. Some part of me wanted to cry, but it was nothing to do with sadness. There was just me and the kittens, everything else disappeared. ‘Kitty,’ I whispered to the nearest one. ‘So pretty, little kitty.’

  Somebody said, ‘Poetry’ – probably Mr Evans. A hand touched my shoulder and drew me back into the other world. ‘Come, Laura.’

  ‘Sister …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look at these kittens, please.’

  Her face went all soft as she bent over the box. ‘Laura,’ she whispered. ‘Just look at the beauty in there and you will know God. All that fur, those lovely faces. Wouldn’t it take a great architect to design such perfection?’

  I knew what she meant. ‘Mr Evans?’ I pleaded. ‘Can I come again? I’ll …’ I looked round frantically for something I might do. ‘I’ll clean up, do the dusting and fetch coal.’

  He placed a hand on my head, and I thought how lovely it would have been if I’d known my grandparents. There’s something wonderful about old people, as if they know all our sins and forgive us anyway. ‘Any time, luv. The owld place misses a bit o’ spit an’ polish since Elsie died. She were a good ’un, my missus, but she were fierce wi’ a duster. Would you ’appen like one o’ these ’ere cats?’

  My heart did a little dance, but the music lasted just a few bars. ‘My mother doesn’t like animals.’

  Sister drew me towards the door. ‘Ask her this evening, child. Every girl should have a pet, a bit of responsibility. Goodbye, Mr Evans. I shall call again with another sister. We might do some shopping for you when you’re in need? Will that be of use to you?’

  He followed us to the door. ‘I’m not a Roman, luv,’ he said to Sister Maria Goretti.

  She beamed at him. ‘Mr Evans, we do not confine friendship to those who practise our faith. It’s not about them and us, you know. We’re all in the one mess together, and we must take each other’s arms for guidance.’

  I loved the woman from that moment. I still tortured her, still came out with remarks that stained her fair cheeks to beetroot. But there was an empathy between us. On our way back to school, she straightened my hair, redid my school tie and dug in one of her many pockets for an inch of barley sugar. ‘Don’t steal again, Laura McNally,’ she chided gently.

  ‘I won’t.’

  We stood at the wrought iron gates and grinned at each other. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But you’ll torment the life out of me all the same. Ah well, such is the will of God. If you are one of my crosses, then I shall bear you gladly.’

  I wanted to tell her there and then that I loved her, but I hadn’t the words for how I felt. We walked into the classroom, endured Sister St Thomas’s gimlet stare, carried on with arithmetic in the same old way. But Confetti looked at me sometimes and smiled a secret smile. In a way, I had found my real mother.

  By the time we reached the grand age of eight, Anne and I had developed sufficient independence to meet each other on the sly. I was still forbidden to go next door, and my mother continued the silent feud. But I learned how to create happy accidents, became used to Auntie Maisie’s timetable. At weekends, I would manage to be near the shops she patronized, would turn up at the butcher’s, the grocer’s, the tripe shop. And I always got a hug and a kind word, which was a great deal more than I received at home.

  Anne and I took to loitering after leaving our separate schools. We had a favourite wall, and we would sit on it for ten or fifteen minutes to discuss matters of great importance. ‘I learned a new word,’ pronounced Anne one afternoon. She whispered it in my ear, her heated breath stroking my cheek. ‘It’s very rude,’ she added as she backed away, the skin on her cheeks stained bright with excitement. ‘Of course, you won’t hear stuff like that at St Mary’s. Everybody’s too posh there to know about these interesting t
hings.’

  I shrugged, would not be outdone. ‘It’s to do with babies,’ I said confidently. ‘How they get inside their mothers. And what you said is just another word for kissing. Kissing makes babies, then the babies grow in women’s stomachs.’

  She kicked her heels against the wall on which we were perched. Anne’s shoes were always badly scuffed. She was lucky, never got smacked for a torn dress, for ribbons lost on the way home. ‘How do the babies get out?’ she asked.

  ‘Belly button.’ I was more than confident, as the truth had been told during recreation by a girl called Rita Turner whose parents were of a medical persuasion. ‘It’s like letting the air out of a big balloon, only you get a baby instead of air. The nurse undoes the knot and a baby pops out.’

  Anne thought about this for a few moments. You could always tell when Anne was thinking, because she frowned deeply and chewed her lower lip. Her mouth was often sore and chapped in winter because of all the meditation. ‘So if my dad had kissed your mother when she wanted him to kiss her, then she would have had a baby.’

  ‘Yes.’ This was becoming rather intricate, but I wasn’t one to let go and admit defeat, was stubborn enough to stand my ground, even when the foundation was made of quicksand. I was the one with the superior education, so I had all the answers to life’s many questions. In a way, I was like my mother – never more ‘right’ than when I was completely wrong.

  ‘But, Laura – why hasn’t my mum had a lot of babies? ’Cos my dad’s always kissing her. Sometimes, she even starts the kissing, so I should have some brothers and sisters. Well, sisters.’ Anne and I disliked boys, could not entertain the concept of brothers. ‘And my dad kisses me too. Why haven’t I got a baby?’

  I clicked my tongue and adopted a haughty stance. ‘For goodness sake, Anne, you’re too young. Anyway, dads don’t kiss children on the lips. It has to be on the lips and with your mouth open a bit so that the baby can crawl down into your stomach. It is very small, too small to see.’ After what I considered to be a visionary and very conclusive statement, I sat back and basked in the warmth of my own glory.