September Starlings (29 page)

My cheeks burned in anticipation of a long argument, though none was forthcoming. As the heavy, smoke-laden
seconds ticked by, I began to feel the edge of my father’s power. He was a polite man, a correct one. But he had brains, the sort of inventive cleverness that breeds a non-aggressive success. She knew it. In later years, I looked back and understood a little of the young woman who was my mother. He would become rich and she needed his money, craved the kudos that went with money. I was the weapon she used to stay with him, as I was the one person in the world he really cared about. Father’s capacity for human love was not immense. He liked rhyme, reason, a formula. In people, he found no strict pattern, nothing to analyse. But he allowed Liza to come along for the ride because she was the one who gave birth to his daughter.

Busy days followed this one, hours of packing and cleaning and casting out of the rubbish that accumulates in an established family. For the first time in years, I was given permission to go next door. In fact, I was asked to go. She was casual about it, so deliberately nonchalant that I knew straight away that my errand had been planned. ‘Ask Maisie if she needs any more packing cases. And see if they’ve a pat of butter to spare.’

When my bated breath became easier, I ran to the adjoining house and almost wept when the door was opened to me. Auntie Maisie cried for both of us, hugged me tightly against her ample chest, called me a dear girl and a poppet, sat me down, made me eat three lemon curd tarts. The house was so much brighter than ours, with bordered patterns on the walls and a yellow-painted ceiling. Uncle Freddie came in from the garden where he was trying to grow potatoes. He threw some sad-looking specimens onto the table, swung me up in his arms, staggered beneath my weight. ‘By Christ,’ he muttered. ‘Have you been eating lead piping? She’s solid, Maisie, is our Laura.’ And Anne just stood still with her heart in her eyes. I could feel Anne’s relief and happiness, needed no words.

‘The country,’ I said to Uncle Freddie. ‘We’ll be all grass and stuff.’

He laughed. ‘Aye, we’ll be bumpkins inside a fortnight, wearing our nightshirts while we drive the cows home. We’re having a cottage in Barr Bridge, a little stone place with climbing roses in the back yard. And Maisie’s planning on getting a suntan.’

Auntie Maisie giggled and flicked him with the ever-present tea towel. I’d forgotten how she always wore one on her left shoulder. She mopped her face with the same cloth, found me a glass of dandelion and burdock, cut the butter in half and wrapped my portion in greaseproof paper. ‘Take this to our Liza, lass. And tell her we’ll be round when we’re nearly packed, see then if we want any more boxes.’ The rift was not mended, but a bridge had been built. Auntie Maisie’s relationship with my mother would never be an easy one, and my heart went out to her. All her life, she had made room for her sister. Now, it was my turn to make room for Liza. We understood and pitied one another, though nothing was said.

Anne took me to the door. ‘I’m glad things are right, Laura.’

Things would never be right. ‘So am I.’

She closed the living room door. ‘Hey,’ she whispered. ‘There’s been a lad looking for you. He keeps hanging about and asking everybody have they seen you.’

‘Oh?’ This came out squeaky. ‘I don’t know any boys.’

‘Well, he knows you. Another lad with red hair hangs around with him.’

The lad with red hair would be Ginger. Was little Art pining for me, standing at the end of a cul-de-sac and lisping his way nearer to my house? ‘Take no notice,’ I advised. ‘We’ll be gone in a few weeks.’

‘Tommo, he’s called,’ she said.

‘Well?’ I was hot, unaccountably so. The butter would be dripping out of my hands in a minute. ‘Well?’ Anne was still infuriatingly slow to part with a secret.

‘He says he’s got his eye on you. He means he likes you, wants to know if you’ve got any other boyfriends.’

The sweat dripped down my spine. ‘It’s Ginger who
likes me,’ I mumbled. ‘Ginger, not Tommo.’ When you are nine, underfleshed, big-boned and a coward, it’s nice to know that a boy is interested in spite of your shortcomings. ‘I don’t like red hair much,’ I said smartly.

‘Not him,’ she said. ‘It’s the other one who likes you, the one with the funny colour of hair. It’s not red, more sort of pinkish, I’d say.’

‘Strawberry blond,’ I remarked, smart again. ‘I saw it in a magazine of mother’s. That’s what they call that colour of hair. Strawberry blond,’ I repeated, aware of Anne’s fierce scrutiny.

‘You like him.’ The tone was accusatory. ‘Didn’t we say we’d never—’

‘Shut up. I don’t know him, not properly. I’ve seen him a few times and—’

‘And you know the colour of his hair. Well, I’d never have believed it.’ She looked and sounded just like Auntie Maisie. ‘Laura with a boyfriend.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend.’ I transferred the butter to my left hand, hoped that it would keep in spite of the heated conversation. ‘I can’t help it if he’s following me.’

She softened, looked sorry for me. ‘Well, he says he’ll follow you wherever you go.’

I did not understand this at all. As a thief, I’d been useless, as a beggar, I’d been a terrified amateur. And Tommo had never even spoken to me, not properly, except when we’d walked on the station bridge that evening. Even then, he had hit me and commanded me to be a beggar. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t the other one, the boy with the carroty red hair?’

Anne shook her head. ‘No, it was Pink-Head,’ she whispered, shielding her words from any adult with acute hearing. ‘I think he loves you. The one called Ginger says Tommo’s smitten. When Ginger found out that I’m your cousin, he came to see me on his own. “He’ll never let go now,” he said. “Tommo always gets what he wants, so tell her to be careful.” Is he dangerous, this Tommo boy?’

I tried to look dignified. ‘How should I know? He’s not somebody I’ve seen more than once.’

She stood her ground. ‘He loves you and he’ll not let go.’

This was getting really stupid. Grown-ups were the ones who loved and refused to let go. ‘Rubbish,’ I announced. I stalked off with the watery butter, stopped on our doorstep to try shaping the oozing grease into something resembling a newly-patted quarter. The smile on my face was probably idiotic, very broad and stupid. He loved me. The selfish, strong and silent Tommo was my very own boyfriend. And soon, he would have to walk a terribly long way to find me if he wanted his sweetheart. Well, if he really liked me, he would do just that.

‘Laura, I am so sorry to be losing you.’ She was losing her veil too, had been hasty when dressing. ‘It’s such a shame, because you’re doing well. Your English homework got top marks again. Is there no way that you can carry on at St Mary’s?’

‘I’m not old enough for the bus, Sister. Dad says you’ve given me a good grounding, so I should be all right at the village school. It won’t be for long. Once I’m eleven, I’ll have to come to one of the big schools in Bolton.’

She poked a pin into her head, flinched slightly as it caught her scalp. ‘I’m always attacking myself with these pins,’ she said, as if talking to herself.

‘You shouldn’t have been a nun.’ I bit my tongue, marvelled yet again at my own audacity. Perhaps I was brave because I was leaving the school.

‘Why?’

‘Well,’ I shifted in the chair, groped for a reasonable explanation. ‘You wouldn’t have needed pins if you’d just been a woman.’

‘I’m still a woman.’

‘Yes, but you’re a nun with pins. A lot of the little girls think you don’t even have legs. When I came to St Mary’s, I was sure you all went back to heaven every night to play your harps. A few of us were scared of you because of the
black clothes. But now I know you’re just like everybody else underneath.’

She grinned. ‘My mammy said I’d never make a nun. I was always in trouble, you see. I mind the time we all went strawberry-picking over to Father Martin’s place. He was a wealthy priest who’d given up a large house as part of a seminary for young boys who were called to the priesthood. But he still owned the garden, and he grew fruits and vegetables for the market, then he used the money for his church. Well, I was in the most awful state, Laura, for I’d eaten more than I’d collected in the punnets. And didn’t we find out that I’m allergic to strawberries? So off we went to hospital, me and Mammy and Father Martin and him so grim-faced you’d have thought the world was at its end. God’s punishment, he called it.’

I stared at her. ‘So you’ve done ordinary bad things like ordinary people do?’

‘Well of course. Did you think we were all born clutching a rose and with a halo like the Little Flower?’

‘I never thought about it.’

‘You surely did think, for you said just now that we all played our harps after sunset. Nuns are not perfect, Laura. We still go to confession and tell all the sins we’ve committed. Don’t let the habit fool you, for we’re as mortal as the rest of humanity.’

I swallowed, bit back the tears. ‘I’ll miss you.’

‘Ah, so you’ll miss old Confetti, will you? Would you write to me, Laura?’

‘Yes.’ I was not going to cry.

‘Every week?’

I nodded. I was definitely not going to cry.

‘Until one of us dies?’

I was going to cry. ‘Don’t die.’ The world would be a dark place without people like Confetti. ‘Please don’t die.’

‘Well, I’ll do me best to carry on alive. Is that you weeping, Laura McNally?’

‘I’ve got something in my eye.’

She hovered over me, poked around with a corner of a
handkerchief, made me blink against her clumsy attempts to remove the non-existent foreign body. Confetti had a gentle soul and a heart full of love, but she was all fingers and thumbs. ‘There’s nothing there at all, child. So you’re crying.’

I flung my arms round her and buried my face in the rough cloth of her uniform. ‘I want a mother like you,’ I mumbled.

She was shaking. ‘Laura, I can adopt you in my heart. It’s a tiny sin, because I should have no favourite, but I feel your need for a good friend. When you write, tell me everything, even if it’s bad. It will go no further.’

‘Like confession?’

‘Exactly like that.’

‘And you’ll write back?’

‘Even if they send me to Africa with three priests and a brass band playing. Even if they send me to the Eskimos and make me skate five miles across frozen water to the post office. Even if I get caught by cannibals and stewed in a pot with praties and onion, so help me, Laura McNally, I shall still write to you.’

I stood back and fought for my dignity, dashed the drops of wetness from my face and forced a smile to appear on lips that were stiff with grief. It was like giving up my family. I knew now what these nuns had. They’d found sisterhood and God. While God was an important being, fellowship with other people was the first step towards Him. More than ever, I wanted to wear that veil, but with pins that wouldn’t fall out. ‘I’ll be a nun,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back and be a teaching nun like you.’ Perhaps safety pins would suffice. Though being a nun and a pharmacist might prove difficult, and I’d already promised Dad that I would work with him one day.

‘We’ll see.’ She sounded just like any other grown-up who pretended to believe what a child was saying. That disappointed me, because Maria Goretti had always taken me seriously. ‘You don’t think I’ll do it,’ I said.

‘You’ll go with God, my child. Listen to Him and hold
His hand. If He wants you to join the order, then He’ll tell you. If He wants you to marry and have babies, then He’ll find a way of letting you know.’

‘I’ll miss you, Sister. I really, really will miss you.’

She grinned and her face shone, but it was like a rainbow after a storm, because the tears made her eyes brighter. ‘Call me Confetti. And when you write to me, put “Confetti” on the envelope, because the sisters think it’s hilarious. Mind, it’s not as funny as the other name I’m called. Is it?’

‘You mean Spaghetti?’

She started to giggle. ‘Very Italian, isn’t it? Still, perhaps it’s apt – after all, Rome is the seat of the Church. And the real Maria Goretti – God rest her gentle soul – was from Italy. She’s to be a saint soon, you know.’ She bent down and delivered a peck to my left cheek, then to the right. ‘
Au revoir
, Laura. Come and see me.’

I walked out of that school and did not turn my head. I had not left her behind. Confetti was a part of me, because she had done more for me than anyone else except old Tommy-gun, and poor Tommy had retired now on health grounds, something to do with rheumatics and poor circulation. But I carried Confetti home with me, prayed fiercely that her goodness would shape my thinking, make me generous, kind, more tolerant of my mother.

She was waiting for me. ‘Laura, your room was in total chaos. Didn’t I tell you that the Pearsons are coming to measure for curtains? This is not really our house any more. I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed at that desk of yours. And why do you leave a coat hanger on the floor almost every day? I could have broken my neck …’

On and on she went. There was no charity in me, because I was tempted to imagine how much better life could be if she had broken her neck. If she went and broke her neck, she’d be in a wheelchair and I would leave her in a place far away from me, in a room at the other end of the farmhouse. Then I could do as I pleased and there’d be no more speeches and—

‘Are you listening to me? He knocked at the door as bold as brass and asked for you. Now, he was a well-spoken boy in decent clothes, but I do not know him. Where has he come from? Laura, why is this boy coming here and asking for you?’

‘I don’t know.’

She took a deep breath and prepared to pick up the threads. ‘He says that you know him as Tommo, which sounds very common in my opinion. His real name is Bernard Thompson, and he wanted to know our new address. Well, I am not going to stand all day on the doorstep telling my address to every Tom, Dick and Harry—’

‘Tommo, Dick and Harry.’ Here came Clever-Clogs again, little Miss Brains with the untamable tongue.

Her expression was vague. ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing. I coughed.’ There’d be no place for me in a convent. Strawberries were one thing, lying to your mother was another matter entirely.