September Starlings (3 page)

‘I write.’

The grey head nods. ‘I should have known that. You are comfortable?’

No need for lies here. ‘I am wealthy, Miss Armitage.’

‘My name is Alice. I can see from your clothes and from your jewellery that you have done well.’

‘I married well.’

The miniature face is clouded by confusion as she remembers my flight from this village. ‘But that boy was …’

‘I married well the second time. He was a jeweller.’

She regains her composure, is glad that I gave her the
opportunity to resume the perfect manners. ‘Was? Is he dead, dear?’

I shake my head. ‘He’s … he’s in a nursing home.’

‘Oh.’ There is so much wisdom in her face, and it has nothing to do with age. She was always wise, always sensible. ‘Richard raved so. I bought the television set for him, because it seemed to soothe him. The memories were so dreadful. I should have hated for him to die when he was hearing the pilots’ screams. It was important that he should go in peace, or I might have imagined him suffering that terrible nightmare for all eternity. Are you sure about the cake, Laura?’

I nod. She is telling me something and I am impatient to hear the end of her message.

‘Then I shall eat it. The old are allowed to be gluttonous.’ She bites, chews, gulps, swills down the residue with a draught of tea. ‘He is older than you?’

‘Yes.’

Her cup clatters in its ill-fitting saucer. She probably uses a mug when she has no visitors. ‘
Coronation Street
tonight,’ she states. ‘I do enjoy that programme. Richard liked it. He died on a Monday, just before
News at Ten
. Though it hasn’t been the same since Hilda left. The Street, I mean. Don’t worry, this isn’t quite dementia. I’ve always been a scatterbrain.’ She sniffs, nods her head repeatedly, reminds me of Katherine Hepburn in that
Golden Pond
film.

I know all about dementia … ‘And he was peaceful?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She is staring again, is pushing her knowledge into my head. Her next words come in a whisper. ‘There is the Maker in all of us, a little piece of the Lord. He tells us what is best, Laura. God guides our hand when the time comes.’

The breath catches in my throat. ‘Did you …?’

‘Did I what?’

The clock’s ticking is metallic and harsh. There are no words on my tongue and I feel weak, stupid. Who or what sent me here? Which entity planned that I should meet
this old woman, drink tea with her, watch the dentures wobbling about as she stuffs herself with angel cake?

‘I am terminally ill,’ she says softly. ‘At this great age, most of us are knocking on death’s door. But I’ve a definite and specific condition. The diagnosis was made on the Friday.’ She pauses, drags a dry, age-weathered hand across her mouth. ‘And Richard passed away three days later. Just before the ten o’clock news.’

‘Alice?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Are you suffering?’

Her smile is bright and brave. ‘No, I’m just dying an inch at a time. I’ve no regrets, Laura, none at all. Will you wash the dishes for me?’

‘Of course.’ I stand, lift the tray. ‘Thank you.’

The kitchen is tiny. In the parlance of today’s estate agents, it might well be a ‘galley type’ or a ‘kitchenette’. There’s a porcelain sink, a gas cooker, a 1950s-style unit with glass doors in the top, two shallow drawers, a letdown centre cupboard, two further drawers, then a couple of cupboards at the base. Tomato plants flourish on the tiny sill next to a miniature brown, blue and cream teapot with DEVON announced on its belly. Home-made recipe books are propped on a shelf, their covers made from school drawing paper, yellow, purple, fading magenta. There’s a rack of pans, a kettle whose whistle has been lost, an aged toaster, a colander on a hook. So clean, so poor.

Her garden is long and narrow, is not suffering. Someone has cut the grass, weeded the borders. No, she is not poor. They come and look after her, keep up her standards, love her for educating their families. This lovely lady is rich beyond measure and deservedly so.

‘Many of them have gone, moved on.’ She is behind me, reading my mind. ‘The cottages are mostly sold, bought by first-time buyers with babies and cars. But the farms have been handed down, you know. It’s the farmers who look after me. I miss your aunt.’

‘So do I.’ Auntie Maisie Turnbull was a wonderful woman, a giver of love. She was the only real mother I ever knew. ‘Anne’s living in Bromley Cross.’

‘She sends me flowers and plants, ruins me.’ There’s a catch in her voice and she covers it with a quiet cough. ‘And she takes me to her home at Christmas. She never married and that’s a pity, because she would have made an excellent mother. Have you kept in touch with her?’

I smile grimly. ‘Oh, yes.’ Without Anne, I would have been insane years ago. Anne does not discuss me, has not shared my troubles with Miss Armitage. Like her mother, Anne is caring, trustworthy.

Alice Armitage walks back into the sitting room, shuffles as she goes. ‘He might have lingered for a while longer,’ she mutters quietly. ‘But I was unable to calculate my own span. Perhaps it was all for the best.’

I replace the Doulton, pile it carefully into the top of the unit where a mixture of china gathers in happy confusion. Did she help him on his way? Did she?

She is tired, has placed herself in the armchair. ‘Is this jeweller husband of yours going to get better?’

Ben’s face leaps into my mind. ‘No.’ I bite back an unexpected sob. ‘He suffers. Like … Richard did.’

She smiles sweetly. ‘God is good. Be His messenger.’

Again, she is asleep. I creep from the house, tiptoe past the window, have almost reached the Black Horse before I breathe normally. Something is working in a mysterious way today. Questions, answers, an old woman who drinks flat cider and smokes a pipe.

I shall not go up to McNally’s, because my father is not there. But I’ll visit his grave, drive through Bolton, head for home on the M62. In Crosby, I shall rest until the morning, then the future will begin. But first, I shall wade through my past, look through the pages of my life and try to make some sense of it.

They’ve done things to my town. I always feel proprietorial about Bolton, wonder why I haven’t been consulted by developers. How dare they tart up the old
Market Hall, get rid of the Palais de Danse, stick a fast-food place just yards from the Victoria Hall? I can’t drive through the main square, as it’s been pedestrianized, but I can see the clock. When my insecurity showed, Dad used to say, ‘Laurie-child, I’ll leave you when the Town Hall clock strikes thirteen.’ It never did strike more than twelve, but my sweet father went softly into his own night.

I’m going to my other home now. And I’m going to write everything on bits of paper. Elsie grinds her gears up Derby Street’s slope, seems to be in a temper since I changed my mind about the motorway. This is the old route to Liverpool – St Helen’s Road, Atherton, Leigh, Lowton, East Lancs Road. When this long stretch was laid, families used to come and picnic on the verge. Watching the great road coming to life was easily as much fun as sitting in a picture house.

We take so much for granted, refuse to take the world seriously. Wars on TV, real wars with real victims. And we fail to notice because our senses have been dulled by over-indulgence in passive pleasures. I have just been cured of a disease that would have seen me off ten years ago, yet I sing no songs, fly no flags. Somewhere inside, I’m relieved to be alive, yet I feel nothing except the worry about my husband, my Ben. Perhaps I’m like the rest, then, all Barclaycard and Big Macs, no effort, no gratitude, no wonderment. Oh no, I tell myself firmly. If Ben could be cured, I’d be dancing on air to celebrate a double reprieve.

I am in Merseyside now, driving past Kirkby with its tower blocks filled with displaced persons who used to have a real life in a wonderful city. Again, we didn’t scream our displeasure when Liverpool lost its soul.

Anyway, I’m all right, Jack, should be happy, relieved, shouldn’t be thinking all these morbid thoughts. Was the fear my prop? Did my illness sustain me, allow me to be justifiably self-centred?

Now, I have to face it all. I have a fresh start with a mended body and a healed mind. Not many people get
a second chance, an extra stab at life. A lot to think about now. There’s Mother, Ben, my children, the activity I laughingly call my career. Time has been given back to me. And time is the most precious gift of all.

I must use it and use it well.

I am forced to sleep alone these nights, and I miss his arms, his breath in my hair, even the snoring I once recorded for him on a thirty-minute cassette, a din that might have registered high on the Richter scale. He laughed, of course. Laughed, stroked his chin thoughtfully, chased me round the kitchen and, armed with a wooden spoon engraved with the legend A SOUVENIR OF SKEGNESS, threatened me with GBH. I love him so much. If I love him so much, then why can’t I bestir myself on his behalf, why don’t I keep him with me and …? Yes, Dr Ashby, I heard you all right. Even now, your dulcet tones echo in my lughole. ‘The treatment has taken a lot out of you, Mrs Starling. An all-clear doesn’t mean you can pick up a broom and start sweeping the world’s problems into a neat pile.’ Bloody doctors. They carry on as if every last one of them is an emissary from God.

Benjamin Starling is here in this house, so I must not let the bubble of self-centred guilt rise up. I must go and see to his breakfast, paint on a smile, be happy. Yes, I’ll do all that in a minute.

We had our honeymoon in Skegness, bundled the children into the car, deposited them at Anne’s house, then went off to find a boarding house on the other side of the Pennines. It took a while to pick out the right place. People must have thought us weird, because we pressed our noses against a dozen windows before we found what we wanted. She stood in the hallway of the Shoreside Haven, wrap-around pinnie, arms folded, a turbaned scarf failing to hide the curlers. Mrs Hyatt was her name. She
was terrifying, of a breed that had begun to die out in Blackpool.

Ben was courteous, as always. He wanted a double room for six nights, plus full board with HP Sauce, the
Daily Mirror
and a gingham tablecloth. She didn’t do papers. ‘I don’t do papers,’ the dinosaur said.

‘This isn’t the Park Lane,’ I advised him gently.

‘Then I shall manage without my newspaper,’ he said gravely.

His humour was infectious, virulent. The bed did not squeak, so he loosened a few springs, tested the tone until he achieved what he chose to identify as middle C. According to him, ‘Air On A Bed Spring’ should be played on everyone’s wedding night. The next day, my disgraceful husband sat for two whole hours on the beach in a string vest, knee-length swimming trunks, flippers. And he wore a knotted handkerchief on his head. He was getting into the swing of it, he said, was becoming a comic figure from a postcard. Skegness was not ready for him, had become too sedate. But I was not sedate and I was ready for that lovely man.

This bed is vast, king-sized. Entombed in its barren acres, I miss the squeaks and I feel like a pea on a drum, a pimple on the moon’s cold surface. Perhaps I should buy another, a single bed for a single woman. No, I’ll never be single in Benaura. What a name that is! He manufactured it, of course, took one syllable from Benjamin, two from Laura. ‘It’s daft,’ I said. He had prepared an answer. For him, it almost translated into ‘bene’ and ‘atmosphere’, implying that our house is surrounded by a halo of goodness. Has it been extinguished, then? Ben, Ben, my poor, sweet, gentle man.

As soon as the curtains are opened, I smell rain and feel the wind rushing across the creaking leaded window. Weather can be shut out now by a second sheet of plain glazing, costly interior panes supplied by some company in Speke. The rep did not understand my desire to hold on to the frail lights, but I studiously resisted his photographs
of patio doors in pale-brick dormer bungalows, of square pebble-dashed semis with sturdy plastic bays that were ‘a dead ringer for mahogany’.

After a quick wash in the
en suite
so-called master bathroom, I make up my face. Sometimes, when he isn’t here, I loll about in Jodie’s old cast-offs, frayed jeans, long sweaters that almost cover my knees, then ankle boots or, if the climate is friendly, those thonged sandals called Jesus-wellies. But today, I pat my face dry, apply moisturizing foundation, blusher, lipstick, a greyish shadow that emphasizes my irises, still clear and blue after fifty-odd years. The ‘odd’ doesn’t matter – half a century is enough, a reasonable number at which to stop counting.

I have kept my hair long, because Ben loves flowing tresses on a woman. All the fashion magazines insist that ladies of mature years should have short hair, but what do they know? The comb catches in a knot, twangs its teeth while breaking free. Perhaps those women’s weeklies are on the right track after all. Tresses is definitely the wrong word. Wires might be nearer the mark, because my hair has toughened over the years and with various treatments, some performed by an effeminate and very pleasant young man called Adrian, others delivered in a hospital and against my better judgement. Still, they saved my life, I have to admit grudgingly. But my once healthy mop has faded to a salt-and-pepper blonde that performs cruel dentistry on many a comb.

I pull on my French navy suit, a good jersey wool with a scooped neck and elbow-length sleeves. A pearl choker hides the slight creping at the throat, while a quick dab of Chanel does its best to lift my spirits. She will be here shortly. She will stand on my doorstep with her back to the sea and she will make me know my guilt, my inadequacy.

It is not my fault, I tell myself firmly, noting yet another worn patch on the stair carpet. It is a beautiful staircase with three turns and two small landings partway up. We bought the big, draughty house for its stairs and for an ill-treated fireplace in one of the living rooms. We have been
kind to the fireplace, have released it from its prison of paint and Formica. My cat has not been kind to the staircase, though. He has sharpened his claws on the carpet and on some finely carved rails.