September Starlings (2 page)

Mr Henderson used to sit here, at a longer table. Five or six of his cronies would join him, each with a pint glass in one hand and some small change in the other. Brows would furrow beneath caps whose peaks were pulled low as shields for giveaway facial expressions. Poker-physogs, these old men used to have, though Anne and I called them domino-sulks. Sometimes, when the game was really vicious, my cousin Anne and I would stand unnoticed for minutes, our breath held tight in our young chests as we watched the silent fighting. A domino would tap sharply to announce a pass. Mr Henderson always cleared his throat before placing a tile on the ale-stained wood. Sometimes, the quiet was broken by an angry shout. ‘’Ow long ’as tha ’ad yon three, Bert Entwistle? ’As tha just picked it up? On’y yer passed afore till tha got a double. Nay, I’m not sayin’ tha’s cheatin’. ’Appen it were a mistake. Sit thee down, no need to jump off th’ ’orse, its nobbut a game.’

I can hear them now. If I close my eyes and breathe in the smell of stale beer, I can be a child again. Halfway up the slope, Auntie Maisie will be baking bread. Boys from the little school will be chasing about, running after wooden hoops or chasing a rubber tyre. Inside the school, Miss Armitage is no doubt picking at her lunch, two fish-paste sandwiches with the crusts cut off, an apple, a piece of white, crumbly Lancashire cheese. She has a secret. Anne and I are sure that she has a secret.

Doors slam, bring me back to the here and now. The car-park is filling up and some men have entered by the back door. McNally’s. That’s how the landlord makes his profits, then. I have a sensitive nose and, even from this distance, I can pick up that slight liquorice scent. While Father’s patent medicines were in various stages of development, the smell of liquorice often clung to coats and shirts, used to enter our house with him. Mother tried to wash it out of clothes, but it was a stubborn odour, a comforting one. This is my father’s empire. He is now a pile of dust in the ground, yet he still lingers here, on the farm he bought for a pittance after the war. These men and women who stand at the bar with their Kalibers and lemonade spritzers are the children of John McNally. They are not of his loins, but they are born of his brain.

I must go outside. The landlord is leering in my direction, pointing me out with a brown, beringed finger. Old McNally’s daughter has come home, perhaps she’s wanting some power, a say in the running of the factory. Maybe she’s regretting that hasty exit with … what was his name, now? Did she marry him? Will you go and talk to her, Doreen, it’ll come better from a woman. I imagine the gist of their talk, flee outside before I can be accosted by a Doreen out of quality control, a Rita from the packing department.

When I stand on the pavement again, the old woman who was drinking cider is waiting for me. In my hand, I carry the remnants of a dry cheese sandwich. I break it, scatter it for the birds. She has fixed her gaze on me, is boring through me with her eyes.

‘I know you.’ The rusty tone is quiet, yet accusatory.

‘I lived here. A long time ago.’

She coughs and extends a yellow claw in my direction. ‘Laura. Is it Laura?’

‘Yes.’ I need to be alone, must find out why I have come here. It’s hard to work out the answers when the questions are still a mystery.

‘Laura.’ The two syllables drift out of her mouth, then
the lips clamp themselves tightly while the ancient crone considers me. ‘Laura,’ she repeats at last. ‘McNally.’ She congratulates herself, straightens the drooping shoulders. ‘Anne Turnbull was your cousin. She went on to university and became a solicitor. I was so proud of her.’ A grin bares dentures that are as jaundiced as the fingernails. ‘What did you do with yourself?’

‘Nothing.’ Who the hell is she?

The mouth is sucked inward again, works in an infantile fashion that seems to be a part of growing senile. ‘You must have done something. We all do something, you know. I was your teacher and you loved my stories. I remember how your face would light up when I opened the book.’

Oh no, this woman is older than God! When I was ten, she must have been nearing thirty. She wore romantic blouses and a hopeful expression, always had a cameo pinned to the lace-trimmed neckline. Five blouses, she had – white, cream, blue, mauve and pale pink. If we were uncertain of the day, we needed only to look at Teacher’s blouse, because her life had a rhythm that defied interruption. To this very day, I remember that Monday meant blue. Her skirts were either navy or grey, always long. When the ‘New Look’ came in, Miss Armitage was suddenly fashionable with her just-above-the-ankle clothes. Anne and I would whisper behind our sum books. ‘Do you think he died in the war?’ And, ‘Someone will come to marry her, because she is so beautiful.’

She is no longer lovely, looks older than her years, which probably number seventy, perhaps seventy-three. ‘Miss Armitage.’ I reach out and touch a frail shoulder. There is no substance here, no discernible bone in the flesh. If I press hard, she will crumble like an autumn leaf – no – more like a leaf from a withered and unread tome of ancient poetry in some dead, forgotten language. ‘How are you?’ I manage.

‘I am very old and very tired, but I hang on just to make a thorough nuisance of myself.’ The beady eyes are keen,
do not match the rest of the picture. ‘The pension pays my rent, buys me a glass of cider on a Friday.’ The eyelids droop as she rakes my body with a stare that almost makes me shiver. ‘Come into the house.’ She turns, stumbles on, knows that a child from her class would never presume to disobey. I am fifty-two, yet I follow as meekly as a mindless sheep.

The cottage has a sitting room and a kitchen on the ground floor. Stairs rise out of a corner of the front room, but there is a bed here, in an alcove to the left of a tiled grate. She lowers her frailty into a padded rocker. ‘Can’t get upstairs any longer. They come once a week, carry me to the bathroom and give me a lick and a promise. Thank goodness the landlord didn’t demolish the outside lavatory, or I would now be totally robbed of my dignity.’

There’s another seat, a squarish armchair upholstered in a linen-effect cloth whose pattern consists of roses in improbable shades of pink and fuchsia. I sink into it, study the room. There are prints of flowers with plain wooden frames, some certificates, a sepia photograph of a child with its parents. On the beige mantelpiece, between two candlesticks of heavy brass, sits a young man in an RAF uniform. Above his head hangs a scroll whose mount is plainly home-made, just a sheet of glass and passepartout. I know instantly that Miss Armitage has managed this herself, that few have been allowed to handle the item.

I check myself, curse my own rudeness, open my mouth to speak. But she is sleeping, has fallen into that deep slumber which is reserved only for the very young and for the ageing. Her jaw sags, while the ill-fitting upper denture rests on her tongue. In the hearth sits a rack containing three short-stemmed pipes, but there is no man here. And these are ladies’ pipes – I saw them on sale in Devon many years ago. Miss Armitage has, it seems, discovered tobacco rather late in life. The stains on her teeth are caused by pipe-sucking, then. The pipe is her pacifier, her security blanket.

So, forty-odd years on, I have seen Miss Armitage’s
secret. The mantel is like an altar with the photograph as its centrepiece. Some tired violets sit to one side of the young airman, while a pale silk rose fills another small gap. Beribboned medals lie flat among the flowers, while twin steel cufflinks squat in a saucer, their oval surfaces displaying a worn crest. A matching tiepin skulks behind them and I cannot bear her pain, her loss. Was this her brother? No. A dead brother might be kept upstairs in a drawer, but only a lover would merit long years of naked devotion.

‘He’s dead now.’ The false teeth click as she speaks. Does she know that she has been sleeping?

‘I … presumed that he was dead.’

She nods. ‘Last year. After I lost him, I too became infirm. They talked about me, you know. After all, I brought him here in the sixties, didn’t marry him. They realized eventually that I was fit to continue as a teacher in spite of my loose morals.’ The irises glisten wetly. ‘And they even helped, came into the house while I was in class, bathed him, took him for little walks. Bless them, bless them all.’

My memory stirs, tries to speak to me. Yes, there was talk, but I was too busy with my own problems, too caught up in trying to keep one step in front of my biggest mistake. Auntie Maisie spoke about a man, and I didn’t listen. But I must say something now. ‘So … he didn’t die in the war?’

She shrugs and I hear a bone grating and creaking. The woman has wasted almost to nothing, so her skeleton must be wearing away too, leaving her bones brittle and fine. ‘The war killed him. For over ten years, he stayed in a hospital for ex-servicemen. When the hospital was closed, the authorities wanted to move Richard to a psychiatric unit. His father was dead and his mother was ill, so I brought him to live with me. I could not have allowed him to go into an asylum.’

I swallow audibly. ‘Was he difficult?’

‘Not with me, not with the Barr Bridgers. He was at
home, you see. I was the only person he remembered well. When I explained to him that I would need to continue working, he accepted the kind people who replaced me during school hours. At the end of a couple of years, we even managed to throw out the sedatives.’ The small head lifts itself proudly, causing the bundled hair to loosen at the base of her skull. The bun wobbles, threatens to break free, settles like the ill-placed nest of some hasty bird.

Does she want me to ask? If I do ask, she might become upset. If I change the subject, then I might be accused of coldness. ‘What happened to him, Miss Armitage? If it’s too painful, don’t talk about it.’

She sighs heavily, blinks a few times. ‘Richard was a rear gunner. His plane went down and the rest of the crew died, they were all burnt to death. Over the years, in his darker moments, he could hear them screaming. The plane was low when he jumped – or so I was told by those whose fighters survived the mission. The Germans got him and his wounds were treated after a fashion.’ She halts, fingers a crocheted armrest. ‘A bump on the head, you see. Some of his brain died. He was judged to be so deranged that he was not imprisoned in the normal sense. The Nazis placed him in a mental hospital in Poland. No-one spoke English and most of the patients were probably beyond communication in any language.’ She leans back, closes her eyes.

‘And he stayed there till the end of the war?’ I ask.

‘Longer than that, my dear. He seldom spoke, you see. In 1947, a Polish doctor recognized that Richard’s few words were in English, so he was brought home and put into the veterans’ hospital. Somehow, his story was pieced together and he was reunited with his mother. But she could not have managed him. When she told me the details, I went immediately to visit him. And he knew me, responded to me. Laura, I could not have allowed them to put him behind bars again. We were engaged to be married, but that was not to be.’

‘No.’

The blue eyes are wide again. ‘We had some happy years. Not as man and wife, you understand. It was like having a child of my own, someone who depended on me for almost everything. Then, when I retired, we were together all the time.’

‘I’m so sorry, Miss Armitage.’

‘Don’t pity me. My life has not been wasted, Laura. I taught many children, gave them a good start. There would have been no other man for me. At least I got back what was left of him, was able to cater for his needs.’

This is all too much for me. I am so near to her – my recent experience mirrors hers too closely. After a few garbled words about being excused, I dash up the steep and narrow stairs, find myself in a bathroom whose area has been stolen from the rear bedroom. Everything is pink. Although the house is rented, she has probably renovated it herself, has chosen warm and hopeful colours. Clusters of carnations spill down the walls until they meet rose-hued tiles. The bath, the washbasin, the lavatory are all pink, but the fitted carpet is a plain burgundy to match the towels. It is all so clean. They look after her, then.

With my face still damp after a cold wash, I stand on the landing, hear the clatter of teacups. His door is open. Blue and white striped pyjamas are folded on a candlewick bedspread. Brown slippers stand on a mat beside the bed. On a pine chest, shaving instruments are laid out next to a man’s handleless hairbrush. I am reminded of a piece I read years ago, something like, ‘I am not dead, I am just in the next room.’

The handle to the front bedroom creaks as I push the door wide. It’s all peach and cream in here. Over the space where her bed used to stand, there is another photograph of Richard, but she is with him this time. They hold their hands towards the camera, fingers intertwined so that her tiny engagement ring will show. And I am crying now, weeping for the gentle soul who bathed my scraped knee, comforted me when Mother’s cruelty showed on my face. Twice I had Liza McNally’s fingermarks printed crimson
on my cheeks. But Mother left my face alone after Miss Armitage’s visit. From that day, I was seldom beaten, and when Mother did lash out, she made her mark where it would not show.

Richard. I touch his image, whisper his name. I did not know him, though I heard and ignored the gossip during my brief stays here. My own difficulties swamped me then, left little space for interest in the troubles of others. But I understand, oh God, I understand. Miss Armitage’s Richard has gentle eyes and a firm chin, is justifiably proud of his wife-to-be.

She calls. ‘Tea, Laura.’

I am summoned, so I descend.

She is enthroned again in her rocker, has pulled out the mismatched Doulton for me. ‘You’ve been crying.’

‘Yes.’

There are roses on the cup, bluebells on the saucer and I am shaking. Was I sent here so that I would know the question? Does she have an answer? I sip, can scarcely swallow.

‘He died in the back bedroom.’ The tone is down-to-earth, commonsensical. ‘I was with him. Would you like some cake?’

‘No. No, thank you.’

She drinks greedily, noisily. ‘What do you do for a living, Laura?’