September Starlings Read online

  She shrugs, sits opposite me. ‘He’s a bit dead, Mrs Starling, passed on with all the other ancient Greeks. Look, there’s been no law broken, love. Human nature breeds gossip and you’ve an unusual name. I know how ill you’ve been.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Listen, here’s my phone number. If you ever need me, give me a call. My name’s Susan, but most friends call me Jenks. There’s an answerphone, so leave a message if I’m out. You need support. I wish I could help all the folk whose relatives are in permanent residential care. The whole family is affected by Alzheimer’s. You need a shoulder, girl.’

  She’s a good woman. Goodness weakens me, and I cry buckets. ‘It’s his home,’ I scream. ‘It’s his home and he loved this house. We chose it together.’ Hysteria threatens. Sometimes, I realize how alone I am, and this is one of those times.

  ‘Mrs Starling.’ I hear the scrape of a chair, feel a substantial arm coming to rest across my shoulders. She smells of iodine, talcum powder, tobacco. ‘Where are your children?’

  ‘No.’ The tears dry miraculously, while alertness strengthens my spine, forcing me upright, making me rebellious. ‘They are not to be told.’

  ‘Told what?’

  ‘That I’ve been ill, that I cannot manage my husband.’ With the three of them as witnesses, I would feel like a totally incompetent has-been.

  ‘But you’re their mother and he’s their—’

  ‘He is not their father.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘My children have their own problems.’ I am a master of understatement. I have not been a perfect mother, partly because I did not understand the role, mostly because of difficulties over which I had little or no control. ‘I have a daughter in medicine. She’ll come home sooner or later. But I will not ask, Nurse Jenkinson.’ No, I will not hang round their necks like my mother hangs round mine.

  ‘Jenks. Call me Jenks, or Susan.’

  I dry my cheeks on a cuff while she pulls away and sits down again. ‘I’m Laura.’

  She chews for a moment on a non-existent thumbnail. ‘I’ll visit you sometimes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Who does the housework?’

  ‘A woman called Eileen comes twice a week.’ Eileen is the one who got away in time, the one I rescued from Mother’s clutches before true despair could set in. ‘And her husband does the garden.’

  ‘Good.’ She peers at the watch. ‘I’ll be off now. Have to go to a terminal case down the road. Laura.’ Her voice is stern, yet I can hear kindness lurking in the background. ‘You’ve done your best, queen. Nobody can ever do more than that. When I first … you know, when I met you at the start, I thought you were a bit uppity. I was wrong. You’re hurt. It’s all right to be knocked sideways by what’s happened to that lovely man.’ She nods, glances at my clock, judges me to be worth the delay. ‘My heart bleeds for people like you, and I’m not supposed to let it show. “Be positive,” they keep saying on these community care courses. But I’m telling you no lies. He’s not likely to get better. Brain cells don’t grow back again. You’ve had your breakdown and you’ve faced the worst.’ A hand touches my shoulder. ‘Make a future, girl. Don’t turn your back on him, but find a life.’

  My throat is choked as I walk her to the door. She picks up her brolly, throws the coat over a thick arm. ‘Be good,’ she says. ‘And if you can’t be good, be bad in a corner where no bugger can see you. Ta-ra.’

  When she has gone, I sit with Ben and wonder if he will ever spend the night in his own house again. It’s so unfair. He smiles, drinks, hums a crippled tune. And talks about strawberry yoghurt.

  Chapter Four

  Ben has gone. The attendants came with Nurse Jenkinson – Jenks – and they carried him downstairs, placed him in the wheelchair, ferried him over to the ambulance. There’s a lift at the back of the vehicle, so that Ben’s chair can be lifted automatically to the right level. Jenks held my hand while the men took Ben away. ‘He’ll be back, love. Just for a few hours now and again. It’s best, Laura. Please believe me – it’s all for the best, really.’

  Her head was turned away when the double doors closed, but I knew that the muddy eyes were full of unshed tears. What does she do for recreation? Does she have a life, some pleasure, a true friend? Oh, I hope she has somebody!

  I stood out under my wind-bent tree till Norman arrived, didn’t want to come into this empty house. He had a cup of tea in the kitchen, passed some time with me, allowed me to think about ordinary day-to-day things like peat, pruning, lawn food. He’s outside now, bent double as usual, a slight hump on his back.

  I scan the Express, do the Target. The nine-letter word is ‘insinuate’ today. Ben used to do those cryptic crosswords in the Telegraph or the Guardian, used to sit here with me sometimes. I jump up, pace about, cannot cope with solitude today.

  Again, I watch Norman. He looks after almost everything out there, leaves to me just the patch behind the garage where Ben and I built our bird sanctuary. Norman never complains about Chewy or Handel, though both animals go through periodic bouts of destructiveness. On poor Norman’s beds, they roam free; round the birds’ section, we put a fence that Strangeways might be proud of.

  Norman, sixty-two at the last count, is brown as a berry and green-fingered. I’ve known him to visit a sick plant at the crack of dawn with one of his organic cures. Like my long-dead father, Norman is a believer in home-made remedies and natural treatments. His wife, Eileen, ‘does’ for me a couple of times a week. She invests most of her time in the cleaning of ornaments, loves china, crystal, silver, spends little of her considerable energy on Chewy-chewed carpets and Handel-marks on lino tiles. Still, she’s pleasant and they need the money.

  ‘You should be working, Georgina,’ I tell my alter ego. ‘You’re standing here talking to yourself, and you know damned well that the book’s due. What will Walter say when you miss your deadline? There’ll be no Christmas card from your beloved agent this year, Georgie, no pretty little lunches or suppers in those exclusive London clubs. Whatever will you do without Perrier water and olives on sticks? All that nouvelle cuisine, all those egos squashed into one small room – oh, you will miss it.’

  Laura, who frequently loses patience with Georgie, has a quiet laugh. I was not meant to laugh today, so a hand covers the grin. I’m the one with the ego, because I am so flippant with Georgina, who has worked damned hard in the past and made me rich. The truth is that I hate being in a room with ‘real’ writers, because they are expressing themselves properly and proudly, whereas I work within certain rigid confines which pay good money while stretching nobody’s mental prowess. To hell with it, I don’t feel at all like working.

  I slump down onto a chair, stretch out my legs, try not to frown as A Heart Divided flashes its neon garishness in my wilful brain. This latest composition, if I finish it, will be translated into thirteen languages and, believe me, it will lose little or nothing in the process. I bake the same literary cake three times a year; only the icing is different. We are allowed a little sex now, but the handsome hero and the hand-wringing heroine must meet, separate after some gross misunderstanding or as a result of some nasty quirk of fate, then come together in great triumph after about 55,000 words. And amen to that, I’d rather defrost the freezer.

  The bell rings. Well, alleluia, I don’t have to write if there’s a visitor. When I open the door, I find a girl, long blond hair whipping across the throat like a silk garotte. She has been before, will not provide me with an excuse for idleness. She is selling double glazing. ‘I am double-glazed, thanks,’ I say in my sensible and rather don’t-waste-my-time-on-my-own-doorstep type of voice.

  She takes a pace back, looks at my windows. I don’t know why she bothers, she’s seen them before. It’s like a play that we enact from time to time, rusting lines still remembered, just about. We’ve had plenty of rehearsals, but there’s no chance of an opening night. ‘Secondary glazing,’ she says rather mournfully. ‘I’ve been to you bef
ore. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  It’s another day of fierce winds. Gusts blow in more than one direction, making the girl’s hair fly in long yellow streamers. I glance over her shoulder to the beach where a few brave souls struggle to remain upright on filthy sand. A hat is wrenched off, is chased by a long-limbed dog, possibly a greyhound or whippet cross, brindled and thin in the tail. He pounces, tears the hat apart. The owner mouths at him, but her voice is snatched away by twisting currents of air.

  The girl’s eyes have attached themselves to my weather-beaten and varnish-starved door. (Ben used to cover it twice a year, but I’m dangerous with a paintbrush, so I leave well, or not-so-well alone.) ‘We do a nice one of those in UPVC,’ she ventures.

  ‘Aren’t they the tripe people?’ I wonder aloud. She does not smile, and I flounder through my next words. ‘No, the tripe shops were UCP, weren’t they?’

  She thinks I’m insane, has no memory of post-war years, manifold tripe doused in vinegar, parents fretting because a child would not eat her portion. ‘Eat your tripe,’ Mother would say. ‘It’s brain food.’ Well, that might explain my non-academic mind, my stupidity. And Mother’s too, since she never ate her tripe either.

  ‘The UPVC doors are great,’ she insists. ‘They really do look real, because they’re a dead—’

  ‘Dead ringer for mahogany,’ I finish for her.

  The intelligent blue eyes are wary now. She is taking my measure, wondering whether to wade right in and pin me against the ropes. The wrestling match continues. There is desperation in her voice. ‘Lasts a lifetime, though. You’re only young, Mrs … er … You’ll be replacing wooden doors for ever, because the salt eats into timber. Can I give you a leaflet?’

  What difference will one more make? I already have two poorly fitting kitchen drawers filled to the brim with junk mail and 10p off something I would never dream of buying. I accept the proffered literature and am judged to be hooked.

  ‘Would you mind if I phoned you?’ So thin, that face, so vulnerable. She looks starved halfway to death, stick-like legs in black leggings, slender fingers whose joints are purpling from the cold.

  ‘Don’t phone me,’ I reply. ‘If I want anything, I’ll contact the office.’

  This does not suit. ‘I’d get no money that way, because I have to order the survey. I’m saving up to do a course in pharmacology at Liverpool Uni.’ The reedy lower limbs are finished off by a pair of huge Doc Martens, making the bottom half of her body into twin exclamation marks. ‘This is cold canvassing in more ways than one.’ She blows on her hands, looks thoroughly pathetic.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter. And I am sorry. It must be dreadful to be so young, so worried. In fact, I can verify the concept, can remember my own tortured late teens and early twenties. Who said that youth is wasted on the young? It’s true. If some of us oldies could be young again, we’d make the most of it to a point where we might well become dangerous. I am weakening, but will not have a new door. This is Ben’s door and it stays. ‘If you’re short of work, come back and do my ironing on Thursday night.’ I hate ironing. ‘And you might put a couple of coats of emulsion on a few walls at the weekend. I’ll pay you three pounds fifty an hour.’

  The promise of such bounty makes her smile hopefully. She lifts a foot, is preparing to walk into my life. ‘Anything,’ she says breathily. ‘I’ll do anything at all.’

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘Freezing.’ The grin broadens, displays teeth that are not quite perfect, spoilt by slightly crossed incisors that are strangely childlike, endearing. ‘I’d love a cuppa.’

  I lead her through to the kitchen, wave her into a chair, set the kettle to boil.

  ‘Posh house,’ she comments, betraying her roots. This is no incoming student, no nomad from another town. The girl is as Scouse as the Liver birds, as Liverpool as the naked statue outside Lewis’s stores.

  ‘I can do you a quick bacon and eggs,’ I say, turning from the stove to look at her. Twin spots of colour dwell expectantly on the fine cheekbones. ‘When did you last eat?’ I ask.

  She shrugs, but the gesture is not careless. ‘What day is it?’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘Yeah. I can’t afford rent, food and books, so I’ve paid the landlord, nicked the books and cut right back on food. It’s funny, you don’t miss eating after a while. You get a bit … a bit other-worldly.’

  ‘That’s dangerous.’

  ‘Well, life’s dangerous, isn’t it? Like this double-glazing lark – there’s men who made a living out of it in the good old days, the eighties. They’d wives and children to keep – what’s happened to them? They’ll be in bed and breakfast, houses snatched back by the building societies. My only dependants are me and my books, so I’m lucky in a way. But nobody’s spending. It takes folk all their time to pay the mortgage, and that’s killed the market stone dead. At least I’ve not got a wife and kids to feed. I run three catalogues and sell kitchen things door-to-door, brushes and plastic plates for microwaves. I used to do a paper round as well, but I got a bit tired, kept falling asleep during Granada Reports, never woke up till Good Morning Britain.’

  I try not to smile. ‘Not surprised.’ I pause for a split second before cracking the eggs. ‘Can’t your family help?’

  The pink sparkle fades quickly from her cheeks. ‘Have you any sausages? I love sausages.’

  I root in a cupboard, find a tin of frankfurters. They will have to do. Walls’ best pork sausages haven’t played a part in this house since my children departed. As the eggs bubble and set, I realize that I am actually enjoying myself. Ben has gone, will not sleep in his own house ever again. I should be mourning, grieving. Instead, I am loving the company of this educated waif.

  Over a steaming plate, she smiles, the eyes brimming with unspoken gratitude. I fold my arms, pray that she won’t cry. ‘It smells like me ma’s cooking,’ she says. ‘She always bought smoky bacon and free-range eggs.’ A fork is crammed into her hungry mouth, leaps out again, stabs at another big portion of food. I find a cob, some Flora, a bread knife, a butter knife. She tears at the bread, devours three large and ragged lumps. ‘I don’t like margarine, ta,’ she manages through a stuffed mouth. As with my daughter Jodie, I am reminded of the honesty of today’s youth. Even if something is free, these young ones will reject it, will not respond to kindness, refuse to resort to what my mother would call ‘manners’.

  She finishes, lines up her cutlery, leans back and burps behind a hand. ‘That’s the emptiness coming back up,’ she announces. ‘Now, that was great, absolutely A one, full marks for presentation.’ She is laughing at me. The laughter is inside, but I still hear it. ‘What’s for pudding?’

  I like this girl, like her a lot. She is lovable, open, tough and hurt. ‘Tinned rice any good? Or I think I’ve a fruit salad in light syrup, you could have that with some Carnation.’

  The blond head shakes merrily, reminds me of a pale summer daisy, heavy on a too-slim stem. ‘How did you know that Carnation is my favouritest thing? It’s made in heaven, I reckon. When the nuns used to go on about manna falling from the skies, I knew it tasted just like angel cake dipped in Carnation.’

  The bowl empties quickly, then she drinks a second cup of instant coffee. She adds so much sugar that a cement mixer might prove useful to stir the mixture. ‘God, I’m stuffed,’ she remarks. ‘Good job these pants have an elasticated waist. My mother’s dead.’ She leaves no space, no mark of punctuation between topics. ‘And my dad’s in Walton.’

  I hesitate. ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Prison. When me mam died, he was away with the mixer, our old man, nutty as a monkey’s dinner. Missed her, you see. It was like something out of a women’s magazine, their marriage. Worshipped Mam, he did, went wrong as soon as she popped her clogs. After a lot of messing with the cops, bits of receiving and stuff like drunk and disorderly, he did an aggravated burglary. I didn’t listen properly, I was too aggravated myself, mad with him.
I think he sort of altered the shape of a policeman’s face too, so he’s no favourite with the Liverpool busies. Been in and out of prison for a while now, me dad. Have you got a steam iron?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then. I can’t be doing with all that sprinkling water – it reminds me I’ve not been to benediction for a while. Being a Catholic’s a bugger, you know. You can tell yourself you don’t care, you’ve educated yourself past all that stupid indoctrination, but it never works.’ She has not honed her vowels and the last word comes out as ‘werks’. ‘I stand in front of the mirror some days and tell myself that it was all fairy tales, all that mortal sin and absolution. But they’ve got you and you know they’ve got you. When I spray dry clothes or plants, it’s all dominoes and biscuits, can’t help it.’

  A small beat of time passes. ‘Dominoes and biscuits?’

  ‘Old Latin. Services are boring now, all in English. Dominus vobiscum, I think it is, but Mam always said “dominoes and—”’

  ‘And biscuits.’

  ‘Yes. It really means “The Lord be with you.”’

  ‘And with thy spirit.’

  She giggles. ‘Et cum spiritu tuo. Are you a holy Roman?’

  ‘No. But I know a man who is.’

  She taps dirty fingers on the table. ‘Are you ill? You look a bit on the pale side.’

  ‘Recovering.’

  ‘Oh.’ An unclean nail prises a bit of bacon from a gap between two teeth. ‘What did you have?’

  I chew this over for a moment. ‘A curable problem that used to be incurable. I’m a miracle.’

  ‘Ooh.’ She likes this, is fascinated. ‘They can shift most of the sods these days, can’t they? There was a woman down by us with that much wrong with her – well – I think she’d had absolution so many times, they were giving her discount on the holy water, ’cos she used it by the barrel. Ninety-seven, she is now. Me mam used to say, “Look at Mrs Foley. Seventy-odd if she’s a day and so many spare parts she rattles. When she does go,” me mother said, “the rag man’ll take her, ’cos she’s at least 50 per cent scrap metal.” It’s like the bionic man – we have the technology. Great, isn’t it?’