September Starlings (47 page)

I stared at the visitor. ‘He hits his mother?’

‘Yes. And I’m no match for him. Even if I could manage him, Phoebe wouldn’t let me raise a finger. It was the same when they were kiddies – nothing was good enough for her Bernard.’

Frank picked up all the snaps and tore them into tiny pieces. ‘These are going in the bin. And Dad and I are going nowhere tonight, Laura. We shall all stay in and watch a bit of telly, give you a hand if the boys wake.’

As if on cue, Edward, who was making much of his sore mouth, let out one of his roars. ‘Teeth,’ I explained to Grandad. ‘He never does anything quietly, I’m afraid.’

A chill swept over me as I walked to the bedroom. Had the badness missed Gerald, even though he was Tommo’s real son? Was it going to emerge in my husband’s nephew, was there a miniature Tommo waiting for me to pick him up and rub Bonjella on his reddened gums?

Edward stopped crying as soon as I reached the cot. His cheeks were scarlet and the little chest continued to heave with the rhythm of recent sobs. Mothering still didn’t come easily. I loved my children, but mostly with my head. Yet how sick I had been moments earlier when I’d seen this tiny chap’s face rubbed out with what looked like Indian ink. ‘No-one will get you,’ I told him. ‘By Christ, I’ll kill him first, Teddy.’

Gerald eyed me from the bed. He was almost three years old, master of all he surveyed, very quietly superior to his little brother. ‘He’s a pest,’ he announced for the umpteenth time. ‘He’s getting pesterer all the time.’ Gerald’s acquaintance with adjectives was short, but he insisted on using ‘gooder’ and ‘badder’ with great relish, usually when describing Edward. ‘He keeps me waker,’ he
grumbled. ‘Screaming louderer.’ Ah, the courtship with adverbs was beginning. Tommo’s son bore all the hallmarks of cleverness, and I hoped that he would direct himself into something useful. Tommo was bright. Bright and twisted and evil. God forbid that my child should … I shivered again. ‘Go to sleep.’

Frank came in. ‘Is this little devil disturbing you, Gerald?’ The amazing man never showed any favouritism, treated both boys as his own sons. ‘I’ll take him away for a while.’

When Gerald and I were alone, I tucked him up and sang to him, pushed the shock of hair from his eyes, watched him watching me. ‘Will you sleep now?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll keep Teddy till he drops off. OK?’

‘I like him really,’ said the sleepy child. ‘He’s my brovver.’

There were times when I knew I was a mother, times when one of my children wore a certain expression, occasions when Gerald’s diction was quaint and heart-rendingly infantile. Whenever he said ‘tewevision’ or ‘bweakfast’, something stuck in my windpipe and threatened to cut off my breath. This was a skill that could be learned, an art my mother had failed to master. Small people were lovable once the fear of them had passed.

In the sitting room, Frank was cradling his son and rubbing balm on the fiery gums. But my eyes were fixed on the senior Mr Thompson, because his face was twisting again as he watched his favourite son playing the part of a father. As I understood him and felt his pain, I sat next to him on the sofa and held his hand. It was dry and calloused, seemed to have healed itself after a dozen pit injuries. This was a good man, another like Frank. ‘Where did he come from, Mr Thompson? How did you manage to have two sons so different from each other? What happened to make Tommo act the way he does?’

‘I’ve asked myself that for donkey’s years, Laura. It was
Phoebe’s fault, I suppose. She favoured Bernard over Frank.’

I patted his hand, felt like a nurse looking after a patient. ‘Are we all our mothers’ faults?’

He smiled weakly. ‘I reckon so. It might start coming right once enough men decide to take more of an interest in their children. But there wasn’t a lot I could do from a seam half a mile underground. She spoiled him, made him too free. He’s been a wrong ’un all his life, ever since he could walk.’

‘I’m scared.’ I tried to swallow the fear, but it bubbled in my throat, made me cough. ‘I’m frightened to death of him, Mr Thompson.’

He shook his head, looked tired, ill and old. ‘So are we all, lovey. And that includes his mother, though she’ll never admit it. Time and again I’d have left home, but I’ve needed to keep an eye on his doings. She just says he’s clever and has to have his head. I reckon he’d have battered our Frank to pulp if I’d scarpered when they were still at school. And now, it’s too late for me to have a fresh start. I’m old, set in my ways.’

How well I understood. ‘It’s too late for my dad, Mr Thompson, but not for you. Get away from him.’

‘And who’ll watch him? Who’ll find the photos with the kiddy’s face blacked out?’ He grabbed my hand tightly. ‘I’m sorry about your father. Don’t think I’m not sorry. Frank says that your parents didn’t rub along too well. And yes, it is too late for your dad. I must sound selfish, moaning on because I’ve never had the courage to walk out. Marriage becomes a habit, you see. It’s all to do with home and a certain chair or a pattern on a rug. We get used to the worst places simply because we’ve not the courage to try again.’

Frank placed the sleeping infant in his day-crib, a larger version of the Moses basket. ‘We’ll leave him there till Gerald’s settled, otherwise we might get stuck with the pair of them.’ He sat in the armchair, part of which was threatening to explode at any minute, as the moquette had
worn thin against too much stuffing. ‘Laura, I’m sure we’ve got to hang on. I’ve got a job I can cope with, a car that you’ve paid for, a decent flat—’

‘She sent the car money back,’ I said. ‘A bundle of cash in a registered envelope. It went against the grain, but I forced myself to keep it.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps there’s hope for her yet.’

Frank’s jaw slackened. ‘She what?’

‘I put it in the bank. She sent a little note about her grandsons needing the best clothes, the best food, about her grandsons being special because their grandmother is special. So we’ve still got four hundred pounds.’

‘Bingo,’ grinned Frank. ‘Let’s buy some grapes and have an orgy.’ He blushed, remembering his father’s presence.

Mr Thompson smiled fully for the first time since arriving. ‘You two are made for one another,’ he said. ‘Can’t you have an orgy without grapes?’

Frank’s tongue stumbled slightly as he answered, ‘No, not a Roman one. Mind, a Lancashire orgy’s different.’ He grinned at the expectant looks on our faces. ‘For a Lancashire orgy, you need cow heels, tripe and black puds.’

His father lost the smile, adopted an expression of great seriousness. ‘Oh heck, I’ll go to the back of our coalshed,’ he muttered.

‘What’s up, Mr Thompson?’ I asked.

‘Well, all these years, I’ve seen myself as a right Lothario. I thought it took just two bags of chips and a couple of cod. No wonder I’ve no luck with women.’

Frank nodded, continued the game. ‘Depends on the kind of vinegar, Dad. You’ve to make sure it’s brown.’

They were two of a kind, a matching pair. Mr Thompson was clearly a man of great intelligence, one of the many who had been deprived of chances. If I closed my eyes and cut out the blue lines of coal-dust in his complexion, he might have been a teacher or a doctor, because folk these days were hanging on to their roots,
refusing to ‘talk proper’ just for the sake of protocol. The sixties crashed through all kinds of barriers, brought much of the Establishment tumbling down. It was the debs who were mocked now, the social climbers, the folk with cut-glass BBC gobful-of-plums accents.

They were both staring at me. ‘Sorry, I’ve been thinking again,’ I explained for the benefit of our visitor. ‘I’ve the sort of brain that can only deal with one thing at a time. Have you asked me a question?’

Frank looked serious, had worry-lines on his forehead. ‘He’s working nights at Yates’s Wine Lodge.’

I held my breath. The wine lodge was just a hundred yards from our flat. ‘Every night?’ I asked. I didn’t need any clarification about the ‘he’.

‘No,’ answered Mr Thompson. ‘Thursdays and Saturdays up to now. He’s still travelling in confectionery, but he says he needs extra cash. I don’t know what to think.’

‘I do.’ Frank’s cheeks glowed with colour. ‘He’s trying to get near Laura.’ He gave me his full attention. ‘Your mother told him once where we were, so she might just have done it again. Or he could have found out from another source, simply by keeping his eyes and ears open.’

I was sick of it, sick to death of wondering when he would turn up, what I would do if he did. And there was Frank to consider. He had a good job and a bad leg, had been dragged about enough. It was never my fault alone, because we shared the burden of Tommo, were both related to him. But I couldn’t make my lovely Frank carry on moving, changing jobs, searching for homes, just because I was afraid of one man. Then Edward’s face, most of it blacked out, came roaring into my mind … I breathed in, checked my terror. ‘We stay,’ I said.

Frank’s forehead flattened itself out instantly, looked as if it had been ironed. ‘It’s for the best, love,’ he said. ‘Because in the end, there’s no hiding place from a man like my brother.’

‘And my husband.’

Mr Thompson stood up, collected his cap, bent over the
basket. ‘Nice-looking little thing,’ he said. ‘I wish … Well, wishes don’t count, do they?’ He strode to the doorway, turned and looked at us. ‘But dreams do count. Follow them and find them.’

‘Oh, what a smashing bloke,’ I said when the door was closed.

‘Of course. I mean, look at me.’

There was just one problem attached to living with a man like Frank. He wouldn’t let me fret, always made me laugh at the most unlikely times. There could be only one thing worse than being with Frank. I hugged him, buried my head in his shoulder. That one thing would be to live with a man who never made me laugh at all. A man who made me cry.

Anne looked all posh and fashion-platey in her tailor-mades, but she was still the same Anne Turnbull underneath all the worsted and silk. Well, she was almost the same … ‘They sort of stand there like this, with a hand on each side of the gown, running their thumbs over the material. There’s a bit of swaying back and forth as well, up on their toes, then down on their heels. They think it makes them look imposing, you see. It’s a good job they get wigs, because most of them are bald. “My learned friend”, they call each other, but you could cut the air with a blunt razor. Honestly, they’re giving each other such filthy looks – you wouldn’t be surprised if it was pistols at dawn. Half an hour later, there’s the whole shower of them in the Dog and Duck, you’d think they’d just got married to one another. It’s a bloody scream. So much for Her Majesty’s Crown Courts, eh?’

I sat on her off-white sofa with my feet on a thick cream rug. One of my eyes was on Gerald, who had both of his eyes fixed on a group of Spode figures just above his head. Edward gurgled, and I tried to keep my other eye on him, prayed that he wouldn’t be sick in the midst of all this opulence. For a junior solicitor, Anne was very well furnished. ‘How do you afford all this?’ I asked.

‘I don’t. The chairs are on the never-never and the carpets and stuff are courtesy of my bank manager. He’s fed up with his wife, so I treat him to a meal now and then.’

‘Just a meal?’

She arched a perfect eyebrow. ‘Of course. I’ve set my sights on a doctor, because that would balance things out. I could see to all the family’s legal problems while he attended to their physical well-being. But I am definitely off barristers. And I don’t want to marry a solicitor, because there’s no room in my life for a pair of briefs. Coffee?’ She lifted a fancy percolator and grimaced. ‘Catalogue,’ she said. ‘Three bob a week.’

I sipped politely from my Susie Cooper cup, gave Gerald a stern look as he weighed up the possibilities of a stool on which he might climb and reach the porcelain figurines.

‘So, you’re in purdah, I take it?’ She wasn’t quite laughing at me, but there was something in her tone that made me feel foolish for hiding away from Tommo all over again.

‘Yes.’ It was no use, she would never understand.

‘What the hell for? Why don’t you just off-load the bad bugger, cut him out of your life? I can do it for you if you like.’

‘Thanks.’ I planted the cup in its delicate saucer, noticed that my hostess had mixed up her fruits, as I had a grape pattern on one piece and a lemon on the other. They were beautiful things, lovely to hold and to behold. ‘I’ve already had the same offer from Dad’s lawyer. He wanted to contest the will, said he had some flimsy evidence of Dad’s change of heart.’

She sighed explosively. ‘Sometimes, Laura, you get right up my nose. Why don’t you do something?’

‘Such as?’

‘Anything. Just something. You let things happen to you, just sit there and wait for life to arrive. It’s not a bus you know, not something that runs to a timetable.’

‘I’ve never known a bus to be on time anyway,’ I quipped. I placed the baby on my shoulder, winded him, hoped that he hadn’t done one of his wet burps. ‘There are two children now, you know,’ I reminded her unnecessarily. Gerald had picked up a heavy crystal ashtray, was trying to balance it on his head. ‘Put it down,’ I said crossly.

‘Babies are happenings,’ she replied. ‘I’m talking about you and the rest of your life. What about it?’

‘I don’t know.’ My older son placed the ashtray on the floor and attempted to stand in it. At home, he had been as good as gold, but now, just a few yards from his own territory, he was behaving like a thorough brat. ‘Get out of that,’ I ordered stiffly.

‘Leave him alone,’ said Anne. ‘Everything’s insured.’

‘Even the stuff that’s not paid for?’

‘Especially the stuff that’s not paid for. Look. You’re twenty-three and you’ve a head on your shoulders. Why don’t you go to night school and pick up a few qualifications?’

She was annoying me, had plainly joined the up-and-coming brigade of women who considered motherhood and housekeeping to be a crime. ‘I’m happy,’ I said lamely.

She shook her head, but every hair remained fastened down, adhered strictly to the swept-back style that she had favoured of late. ‘You’re scared to death. Get out of that dreary flat, find an interest, forget Tommo.’