September Starlings (16 page)

I ran towards her, tried to help her to the bathroom. For my pains, I received a hefty swipe across the ear. ‘Keep away,’ she screamed. ‘A lot of this is your fault. You just sit there, little daddy’s girl, no time for me. I’ve got nothing and nobody, nothing, nobody—’ Her self-pity was cut off by another bout of vomiting.

I backed away, scuttered across the landing and into my own bedroom. She didn’t want me and I didn’t want her.

It was to be years before I understood that my mother was raped in her bedroom that night. Nothing came of it. She had been out looking for excitement, had found the wrong kind. No policeman came and, as far as I know, my father was never told of the incident.

After this occasion, I was filled with more uncertainty and revulsion than I had ever known. There were people I had heard of, drunks, layabouts and thieves – the sort who got their names in the
Bolton Evening News
. My mother was like two different women then. She was a posh lady some of the time, a wandering streetperson at others.

Dad came back and life returned to normal. Except that some of the zest had gone out of the beatings. Perhaps a few grey cells had been uncorrupted by booze that night. Perhaps she worried that I might remember her behaviour and report on it. The cruelty continued for many years, but the earlier intensity had been diluted.

As I grew up, as I began to understand my parents, I never once felt safe or secure. I have heard it said that a bad mother is better than no mother at all. That is a gross untruth. A bad mother is an affliction, a chronic disease that distorts your thinking to the end of your life.

And I still had a long way to go.

As I had to be almost good at home, school was the place where I let down my hair. I also let down my family, though Mother and Dad were not aware of that fact for quite some time.

My early stabs at rebellion were not severe enough to warrant parental intervention, but I did become naughty, almost wilful in some instances. Many of the nuns were old, severe, used to handling fractious little girls. Yet among their number were one or two young ones, newly qualified as teachers, with the bloom of Ireland still glowing on their cheeks, the bright light of vocation shining its powerful torch in their eyes.

One such was Sister Maria Goretti. She became our form teacher, replaced Sister Ignatius who was returning to the Mother House for rest and recuperation after a bout of rheumatism. Maria Goretti floated into our classroom on a cloud of lavender water, hope and charity. She told us her name, then asked us all some questions about ourselves. She called this a ‘getting to know you’ session.

My turn came. ‘My name’s Laura McNally,’ I answered sweetly.

‘And what is your favourite lesson, Laura?’

I looked at her, wondered what to say. History was good, especially when old Ignatius got worked up about wars and persecutions. Sums were all right, spelling was easy. ‘Religion,’ I said. ‘That’s the best subject.’

Her eyes burned with renewed intensity. ‘It is so wonderful to meet a child who takes an interest in the most important of all our lessons, girls. When I was a small girl in Ireland, I knew straight away that I would take the veil,
for I loved our religious classes. Do you know your catechism, Laura?’

I smiled, tried to simper. Other girls were beginning to giggle and snort behind hands and handkerchiefs, because they knew that Norma Wallace and I spent forty minutes each morning in a corridor with a lot of dead people. ‘I’m not sure, Sister Maria Confetti.’

The ‘Confetti’ was a genuine mistake, but it added greatly to the air of tense delight that was beginning to pervade the room. ‘Maria Goretti,’ she corrected gently. ‘I have been allowed to keep my baptismal name, you see.’

I didn’t know what she was on about, but I nodded in a way I imagined to be sage.

‘Maria Goretti was a little Italian girl who was a virgin martyr.’

They were hot on martyrs, were the Catholics. I had been wont to call them ‘tomatoes’ till one of the sisters had put me straight with a lecture and two playtime detentions.

The nun was warming to her subject. ‘Maria Goretti died when she was twelve, was murdered while defending her purity. One day, she will become a saint.’

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.’