September Starlings Read online

  He shouts from the hall, ‘I’ll be back. I’m not giving up, Laura.’

  Neither am I. When I was a child, I didn’t really like children – except for my cousin Anne. As a mother of young children, I struggled against enormous odds just to keep food in the house, just to feed and clothe them. There was no time for love, no chance to escape the fear that kept me cowed and silent. Children were a part of the terror, a part of the nightmare.

  And when we got away, it was too late. There were too many worries. There is no excuse for depriving children of love, because that is their birthright. But I had a reason, and the reason was that I didn’t understand what a mother’s love was, what it ought to be. My children are well and strong. They have good bones, good teeth, good health. But they never had a good mother, never had a pattern of security that they might copy, learn from. I’ve tried not to scream at my own mother for being such a burden, because I look at her and see myself in thirty years. She was my model, but who was hers? Were they really sweet, those parents of hers? Or did she, too, have to escape, has that made her bitter?

  We go upstairs, Flakey and I. She lies in a shoe box, all tiny and warm, a nest of handkerchiefs beneath her. I place her liquid food on my desk, lie the dropper beside the jar.

  And I carry on writing Laura.

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  It’s hard to remember in detail the very early days of your life. There are flashes, of course, mind-pictures of a particular garden, a porcelain sink in a kitchen, raincoats dripping, a mousetrap under the stairs. How I worried about those poor mice.

  Smells are easier than pictures. Auntie Maisie used a light, powdery perfume, something on the lines of Je Reviens, but less cloying. Her house was always full of baking and sewing, rich, yeasty scents and that crisp aroma of new calico. Uncle Freddie smelled of coffee or of wet earth and potato skins, depending on what he’d been dealing with at the Co-op. My dad was liquorice and peppermint and Mother reeked of bad temper. Bad temper is something to do with cigarette smoke and a particular brand of eau-de-Cologne that seems to have disappeared from the market.

  Sounds, too. Oh yes, the noises are there. The rag-and-bone man with his ‘aynee owld raa-aags’, the clatter of metal scoop against metal churn when the milkman filled our jugs, the gentle snort of his horse as it champed on the bit. Mill hooters, the clang of a tram on Chorley Old Road, the whirr of a trolley bus in town. ‘Bowton Evernin’ Newers’ sang the boy on the corner. Bolton was a noisy, smoky, comforting place.

  There were other noises, not so welcome. ‘Laura, have you tidied your room?’ and ‘I should never have had you, you are a dreadful child.’ The crack of flesh on flesh when she struck me, the screams I kept inside my head because whenever I yelled, the violence got worse. My father singing to me, my poor dear father who never understood her, never understood me. He was a great man and a weak human being.

  No, I must try to remember the better things, like the noises from the house next door. ‘Pull up a chair, Laura. Now stand on it and give us a song.’ Uncle Freddie was the most terrible tease in the whole world. That knowledge had been passed on to us by his wife, Auntie Maisie.

  ‘What shall I sing?’

  ‘A pretty song. A pretty girl should always sing a pretty ditty.’

  I was not a good singer, but they listened while I murdered ‘Alice Blue Gown’.

  Then Anne would do ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ or ‘Run Rabbit Run’.

  ‘Treacle toffee, that’ll shut you up, Annie.’ Auntie Maisie’s face was round, glowing like the sun. ‘Here, Laura, you get some before Freddie pinches it. Keeps swallowing bits of his teeth, greedy old bugger.’

  My mother never said things like ‘bugger’, so I would giggle and keep the secret. Secrets from my mother were rare and as sweet as the toffee. I would sit in the warm glow of Maisie Turnbull’s love, would soak up the happiness, try to keep it in my heart where it would warm me till morning. But it never did. Somewhere on the way from their door to ours, I always grew chilled and lonely.

  There was bunting in the street when the war ended. Liza McNally, my supposed mother, wouldn’t let me go to the party in the avenue. I often dreamed of the whole thing being a mistake, hoped that someone in authority would come along and say, ‘Sorry, Mrs McNally, but Laura is not your child.’ She would have been pleased, too, had I not been hers, because she was always saying that I wasn’t good enough. I hoped, but the hope grew dim with the passing of time. The facts of life were a topic for the future, and I imagined that I might keep the same father and get a better mother. ‘You are not going outside to mix with those people,’ she announced through a cloud of Craven A exhaust. I was not to be allowed to celebrate the end of a war.

  My father spoke up for me, but she refused to be moved. John McNally believed that the rearing of infant children was a woman’s job, so she often had the last word when I was very young. Father said, ‘It’s not worth upsetting her, Laurie-child.’ He brought me sweets that night, barley sugars and Uncle Joes. He was a kind man, but he was powerless in her presence.

  My mother closed our curtains on Victory Day. ‘It’s common,’ she said, pursing her reddened lips. ‘No child of mine is going to run about outside with sandwiches.’

  ‘But Mother—’

  ‘Don’t argue with me. I’ve had enough of your cheek just lately.’

  I sat in the dark and imagined rescue, but no-one came. Cousin Anne did not arrive to knock on our door, to urge me to step outside, because Mother had severed relations with next door some weeks earlier, had cut me off from my kith and kin. Although cowed for much of the time, I was moved to speak up on this occasion. ‘You don’t want me to have anybody,’ I accused, my feet spread wide, arms folded to demonstrate my anger. That’s a thing I recall quite clearly, the way I copied her body language.

  She clouted me across my left cheek. ‘You do not need Maisie and Freddie. Anne has a coarse mouth, something she’s inherited from that unbearable man. Laura McNally, you will be a lady if I have to drag you up screaming all by myself.’

  My face was stinging. ‘I don’t want to be a lady. Cyril Mort’s got fireworks, saved up since before the war. His dad said they’d be lit once Hitler was in the muck where he belonged.’

  She dragged me into the kitchen, waved a bar of red carbolic before my eyes. ‘Must I wash your mouth out, girl? You do not use such words in my house.’ Carbolic burns, sears the skin from your tongue. I knew that, because I’d received mouthwashes before for simple words like ‘ta-ra’. Common words, she called them. Above all, I was to become an uncommon child.

  It was sickening. I’d heard my dad asking the milkman for horse-muck to put on the roses. The word she objected to must have been ‘muck’, as it was the only unusual one to have slipped from my tongue.

  ‘You are not to look at me in that fashion,’ she screamed before smacking my head so hard that it crashed against the sink. Immediately, she panicked. Although Mother was a vicious woman, she made it her business to ensure that the marks of cruelty seldom showed. My head was grabbed, pushed over the sink, doused in cold water. ‘It’s your own fault,’ she mumbled, choking slightly because she had no hand free to take the cigarette from her mouth. ‘The way you look at me, the way you disobey …’ The towel was hard and rough. I kept my expression neutral as she rubbed me dry, but my dislike of her grew larger and heavier, even as I stood in that kitchen.

  ‘We shall go into the sitting room.’ Her voice shook; she had frightened herself with her actions, was terrified of being out of control, even for a second.

  Liza McNally lived on her nerves and announced that fact regularly to me, to my father and to anyone else within earshot. The nerves were visible that afternoon, the day of the street party. She stood by the fireplace smoking, smoothing her perfect hair, picking at the buffed and painted nails. I can see her now if I close my eyes, pearl choker, round-necked navy frock with lace on the collar, dark shoes, nylon stockings donated by
an American serviceman whose life had reputedly been saved by my father’s stomach balm. Even with my eyes open, I can see the seeds of bitterness in her expression, a clear acidity of temperament that would not abate with the passing of time. After contact with the sink, my head was already sore, and she did not improve matters when she pulled at my hair till I heard some of it snapping away at the scalp. ‘Selfish child,’ she muttered as she dragged me out of the kitchen.

  Hatred is a strong word, perhaps too strong to express the feelings of a five-year-old child. But something boiled in my chest, got brewed up in the summer of 1945, has simmered ever since. I was perplexed, lonely, excluded. She watched me, fastened me to the chair with her eagle vision, willed me not to move. It was a long day, one of the longest in my whole life. The cruellest part was the party dress. She made me wear it, pretended that we were having our own ‘select’ gathering in the dining-room at the back of our house. The curtains were closed, of course, to keep out the noise of the ‘rabble’ outside. The ‘rabble’ consisted of hard-working middle-class people, factory managers, shopkeepers, self-employed businessmen. Whatever, they were not good enough for my mother. The party dress was washed and pressed just in case anyone outside should catch sight of me and pity my isolation. Saving pride and face was my mother’s way of life, even her ration d’être, but I had only just begun to learn that.

  I fidgeted, of course. Sitting straight and still in a chair is difficult for an adult, impossible for a child. There was a pattern on the oilcloth at the edge of Mother’s Indian carpet, brown and beige squares with diamond shapes inside the beige bits. The toes of my patent shoes tapped out a message in the diamonds. ‘I am not her little girl, she is not my mother.’ It was silly, but it helped. Inside, I was defying her; inside, I had a secret.

  ‘Stop that stamping. You are so irritating. Go upstairs and stay away from the windows.’

  I obeyed. Well, I obeyed by going upstairs, but I broke the second law, of course. A long table had appeared in the middle of the road as if by magic. It was made, I’m sure, from lots of ordinary dining tables swathed in sheets and coloured paper, but to my infant gaze, this was a miracle. There was dandelion and burdock, jelly, a huge cake with red, white and blue icing. I saw sandwiches and pies and jam tarts. And Anne saw me, glanced up and waved, looked sad without me.

  My door burst inward. ‘I saw her waving at you, Laura McNally. Thank goodness I had the foresight to peep through a crack downstairs. You are shaming me. Why can’t you do as I ask? Why?’ I cowered in a corner as she raised an arm to strike again.

  The shape behind her spoke. ‘Because your requests are unreasonable sometimes.’

  She turned on him. At least her attention had strayed from me. ‘This child is a disgrace. You are never here, so don’t criticize me and my methods of dealing with her. I cannot have her mixing with the people next door, not after the way they insulted me.’

  ‘The people next door are your sister and your brother-in-law. Anne is Laura’s cousin, so there should be no bad blood.’ My father must have seen the anger in her face. He stepped back, one foot in my room, the other escaping to safer territory on the landing.

  ‘Do not tell me how to behave,’ she screamed. The revels outside seemed quieter, as if the whole party had slowed to listen as Mother ranted. ‘I could have married Eddie Cross. He would have been glad to have me, and there would have been none of this staying at work all hours. He’s got his own building business, and it puts your pathetic shop to shame. Even through the war, Eddie made money. And I’m condemned to stay here with your wayward child while you linger on Blackburn Road with your potions and lotions – what sort of a life is this for me?’

  Father’s voice was quiet. ‘Then your father should have taken his shotgun elsewhere. He should perhaps have sent Eddie Cross up the aisle instead of me.’

  She threw a glance over her shoulder, had a quick look at me, pushed him outside and slammed my door. But I could still hear it all.

  ‘As it turned out, the shotgun was unnecessary.’ John McNally had one of those voices which, though very soft, seem to carry well.

  ‘I didn’t know that. As far as I was concerned, you had had your way and the symptoms indicated—’

  ‘No, you had had your way. And your way was the fastest route out of the weaving sheds. Why do you impose all this nonsense on the child? Are you so anxious to avoid questions about your humble beginnings? I am proud of mine, grateful that my parents worked so hard to give me a chance. As for you believing that you were pregnant at the time of our marriage, I’ll have to take your word for that.’

  I fastened my ear to the door, tried to ignore the drumbeat that was my heart. Never before had I known Father to interrupt her and to use strong words. I feared for him, feared that she might turn on him. But after a small pause, he continued, the voice still calm and conversational in tone. ‘Your word,’ he said. ‘I had to accept it then just as I must now take your word about Laura. She will grow, Liza. And she will grow away from you, beyond your reach. Already, she doesn’t love you. The girl will have the sense to get away in ten years or so. God, I hope that she can escape your clutches.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘I dare. But for the most part, I shall keep my opinions to myself, just as I always have. She will have some stability. She is the reason why I tolerate this silly situation. When she is grown, I hope she is a match for you.’

  He did not often stand in my corner. When he had time for me, he was considerate and loving, but for the most part, John McNally was a man with a mission, a brain full of formulae and chemicals, no space for life’s trivia. He loved me, but he had little room for me in his busy life. So he left me to her, trusted to luck, but my meagre store of luck kept running out.

  We lived in a large semi-detached house on a spoon-shaped avenue called a cul-de-sac. Our house was right at the tip of the spoon and it was fastened to Cousin Anne’s. Auntie Maisie was my mother’s sister, while Cousin Anne was almost my twin, as we were born within a week of each other when the war was a few months old.

  As babies, we saw a great deal of one another, because our mothers worked shifts at a paint factory down Bridgeman Place. I was not very old when I realized that my mother was ‘too good’ for such labour. Liza McNally was simply making her patriotic contribution towards the downfall of somebody called Hitler who had a funny moustache and a strange way of talking. As the wife of a dispensing chemist, she would not normally demean herself in such a way.

  She would stand in front of the mirror dabbing a smelly liquid on her hair. ‘Laura! Is it gone? Can you see any more paint in my hair? Laura, bring my manicure set. The paint is eating into my skin. Laura, get my hand lotion. Where are my slippers? You are four years old and you know that my feet are tired. Some eau-de-Cologne for my head. See if there are any Aspros in the cupboard. If not, go next door, see if Maisie has a spare tape of Aspros.’

  When I went next door, things were completely different. Auntie Maisie might have paint in her hair, on a hand, on a shoe, but she would be laughing with her husband or toasting bread in front of the fire. She even laughed when she got a blob of blue on her nose, a big smudge that took days to wear off. I would look at her, try to fill my mind with the sights and sounds of her home. ‘Have you any Aspros, Auntie?’

  She frowned sometimes. Even when she frowned, her face was happy. ‘Another headache, sweetheart? Look in my brown bag.’ And I heard them whispering about me, about my parents. Things like ‘No wonder he stops out late’, and ‘Time she started thinking about that kiddy’. There were always smiles and cuddles, bites of toast, a finger-dip of condensed milk, a spoonful of treacle. I did not mind their concern even when it bordered on pity, because they loved me. Any feeling born of love must be good – even a child can sense that.

  During the war years, I stayed at Anne’s when Mother was on duty. The two sisters’ shifts were staggered so that children could be minded by members of their own family. Sometimes,
Uncle Freddie was with us in Anne’s house, and such times were filled with so much laughter that I often suffered from hiccups for several hours after returning home. Anne didn’t like coming in our house, but I was safe when she was there, was free to act like a child.

  The oddest and funniest of days were brought to us courtesy of Freddie Turnbull Esquire. He always called himself ‘Esquire’, said it gave some standing to a poor man who spent his days knee deep in spuds and spilled sugar. Uncle Freddie Turnbull, a huge man with whiskers and a limp from the Great War, was considerably older than my gentle father. He was what everybody called ‘a scream’, because he was forever imitating people. Not famous names, just the folk from round and about. ‘They’d not make one straight man between them,’ he would say about those who traded in our area. ‘If they’d a pair of eyes or legs among them, they’d be stood up in the front lines with a pop-gun and a tin of corned beef.’

  It was awful, even excruciating, but it brought excitement into our narrow lives. ‘Sithee,’ he said, the face serious and concerned. ‘Just go to the door and pay yon feller. He’ll be stood waiting for his money while bedtime if you don’t shape. Come on, Laura, come on, our Annie.’

  ‘I’m not doing it.’ I stood my ground, felt the butterflies trembling in my chest. ‘I’m not doing it unless you promise to behave.’

  ‘I promise.’ A hand lay on his heart. ‘I’ll upset nobody.’

  Anne snatched the money, sniffed, knew what would happen. ‘Don’t laugh, Laura,’ she said. ‘Mam says we’ve to be polite no matter what Dad does.’

  Hand in hand for companionship and security, we opened the door like a pair of Christians who expected death at the claws of some enormous feline. ‘How much is it?’ we asked the tradesman.

  It was truly dreadful, extremely testing for two robust and high-spirited young girls. The milkman had a lisp, the coalman suffered with a stammer, while the insurance man, cross-eyed and bow-legged, always said the same thing. ‘Eeh, aren’t you a pretty pair, a sight fer sore eyes come rain nor shine.’