September Starlings (51 page)

‘Is that so? What kind of a pest is this brother of yours?’

‘A bloody pest.’

She nodded. ‘Ah, that sort. Ah well, we’ll see if I can sort him out for you.’

It was as if she had always been there. Gerald took to her immediately, made me feel redundant. Even Edward fell under her spell, stopped moaning about Gerald pinching his toys, pinching his arms, ruining his tiny life. In a sense, I was rather jealous of Confetti, because she displayed all the hallmarks of a natural mother, whereas I had needed to train myself through books and by many bouts of trial and error, had learned mostly through my thousand mistakes.

When the boys were in bed, we sat together in front of the dreadful electric fire. The evening was warm, so we used no heat, but the fake coal glowed and flickered as a wheel of metal spun over a light bulb in the base of the fire.

‘Marvellous,’ she declared. ‘The things they’ve invented. We always burned peat over to home. And here you sit with a nice clean electric heater, no grate to scrub.’

‘I hate it.’ My tone was petulant.

‘Don’t hate anything or anyone, Laura.’

‘That’s difficult.’

She nodded. ‘I know. There’s your mammy and that pig of a husband. Is your divorce done? Are you free from him?’

‘Not yet. Anyway, you’re not supposed to believe in divorce.’

‘I’m a sinner, sure enough. I’ve even gone so far as to put down my name as a voluntary worker with the FPA. Family planning, that is. Of course, I’ll not be involved in the mechanical side of the process, but I can answer the phone and book people in for appointments.’

I stared at her. ‘Why? It’s one thing believing in birth control, but to go out and actually encourage it – what would the Pope say?’

She giggled. ‘Five Aves and a Pater Noster, I shouldn’t wonder.’ The smile wiped itself off her face. ‘No, this is a deep thing with me, Laura. It’s about women’s freedom. You see, that Pankhurst woman and all those others, they believed in us having our franchise, which was all very well and necessary in the broader scheme of things. They began the fight, but we mustn’t put down our weapons yet. We’re still victims, you see. Like the men are in charge all the while, and those of us who had not the benefit of being born male are just here for those who were. A woman’s life can be very small, my dear.’

‘I know.’ My life was the size of this house, stretched no further than the Co-op on Derby Street. ‘But how can you make a woman’s life more fulfilling?’

‘By giving her some control. By allowing her to choose motherhood or to reject it, by letting her decide when to allow her body to be hired out as an incubator. We should all be citizens with rights, equal rights and equal duties. For example, if you were to take the bread knife and stab your husband, what would you get? A life sentence?’

‘Probably.’

‘Yet he can interfere with you whenever he likes. He’ll come in from the pub with a bag of chips and a great drunken smile and he’ll expect his rights there and then. Well, once he’s eaten his chips. Can you prosecute him for his deafness when you say no? You are still his property, Laura. Until the day comes when you can sue your partner for rape – and you of all people should know about that – then we have no dignity at all.’

So I was living now with a missionary. The fire in her eyes burned far brighter than the 60 watt lamp in my two-bar heater. I could not understand how the convent had managed to contain her for so many years. Within the order, Confetti must have stuck out like a boil on the face of a saint. So she had let herself out, because a vocation as strong as hers needed freedom, not confinement. This woman must have suffered beyond measure, as she was a strong believer in God. Her arguments with Rome were
fundamentally unacceptable. And I knew that she was terrified by what she was doing.

‘You’ll be all right,’ I said.

She stared into the poor imitation of fire, sighed from the depths of her soul. ‘I hope so, Laura. Oh, I hope so.’

We had a wonderful Christmas in 1965. Confetti organized me, pushed me into inviting Ida and Ernie Bowen who had lived next door to me during my time with Tommo. She also persuaded me to write to Hetty Hawkesworth, my good friend from the country. I received a note from her, read with delight her slanted hand. Hetty had won a national bingo prize, was going off on a cruise without ‘him’. It seemed that ‘he’ had been stepping out of line, but she intended to leave him a few bob before she sailed into the sunset, just enough for the odd pint and a fish supper on Fridays.

‘They’re all at it,’ beamed my house-guest. ‘Soon, we shall be recognized as true human beings.’

Confetti was completely unrecognizable, though she still looked just about human. She had taken to wearing the strangest clothes, great full-skirted dresses in Indian cotton, headbands, beads, shawls with fringes. On her feet, she usually sported clogs with leather uppers and wooden soles, and she clanked as she moved, because both wrists were a tangled mass of slender metal bangles. During these colder months, she was making few concessions to the weather, with the exception of one or two eccentric purchases. It was with great pride that she showed off her sheepskin coat, 15 shillings from a second-hand shop, and her fluffy boots, £1 from the same establishment. Her dowry had come through from the convent, but she had plans for it.

When our Christmas meal had been consumed and our guests had wobbled off beneath the weight of laden bellies,
she tackled me again. ‘This coming week, you will visit your mother.’

For answer, I blew into what Gerald called a ‘ter-ter’, a whistle attached to a tube of paper with a feather stuck on the end. My breath expanded and unrolled the tube, sounded the whistle, caused the feather to collide with Confetti’s earnest face. ‘Get lost,’ I said politely.

‘Isn’t that just great?’ she asked.

‘Don’t be rhetorical, Goretti,’ I warned. ‘Or I shall become hysterical. You go and see my mother. Then, when you’ve seen the dragon, go and visit your own parents.’

‘They’ll not let me in.’

‘Quite. And my mother won’t put out the red carpet for me.’

She dragged some multi-coloured streamers from her hair, handed them to the children. ‘She sent you a card and a cheque. There’s about five hundred pounds worth of cheques in that drawer. At least she remembers you.’

I nodded. ‘Oh, she remembers me all right. In the same way as we all remember the war and toothache and smallpox. Anyway, stay out of my tin and mind your own business.’

I went, of course. Goretti Hourigan was, still is, a great manipulator. She works on the theory that a drip of water, however small, can wear away stone in time. She dripped. Into every conversation, she dragged the importance of family, the sadness of growing older without seeing one’s children, the futility of a life without love. The anecdotes came thick and fast as the days went by. ‘And of course when she got there, her mother had passed on and the wake was starting. Her mammy was all decked out in the coffin and Padraig Mulvanny was playing a sad song on his melodeon. The fiddler from the next town was so upset that he couldn’t tune up for weeping. His sadness came from the fact that the wilful daughter had neglected her mammy for so long.’

‘Shut up, I’m going.’

‘She went into a decline after that, hadn’t the strength to hold the rosary. Aye, she was a broken woman and all because she had left it all too late and—’

‘I’m bloody going!’

I scarcely recognized McNally’s. There were new buildings, low sheds prefabricated in concrete, embellished with dark wood and large windows. In the centre of all this magnificence a garden had appeared, a sweep of lawn with a fountain at its centre. A cherub in greyish marble balanced on a plinth, one foot stretched out as if ready to walk away. He carried a pitcher, and it was from this that the water poured. The base of the fountain had been inscribed, IN LOVING MEMORY OF JOHN McNALLY, FOUNDER OF THIS COMPANY. How thughtful of Mother. How difficult it must have been for her to find those few kind words for a man who had irritated her for so many years.

I was accosted at the door by a bulky man in a navy blue uniform. He tweaked the cuffs of a white shirt, made sure that they showed for an inch or so below the blazer sleeves. There were cufflinks too, spoked circles like a pair of wagon wheels. ‘Can I help you?’

‘No.’ I often judge people fairly quickly by listening to their first words, am sometimes right, frequently wrong. That ‘Can I help you?’ had been patronizing, even scornful. I glanced down at my shoes, shabby after two years’ wear, straightened my shoulders, looked him full in the face. ‘I’m just visiting, having a walk around.’

He coughed, placed a huge hand to his mouth, curled the fingers in a gesture that was too delicate for someone of his size. ‘I’m afraid that’s not allowed, miss.’

‘Madam.’

‘Ah.’ He turned round, gazed towards the nearest building. ‘This is the office complex. Do you have an appointment to see somebody, an interview for work, perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to leave.’

‘Really?’ I perched on a low wall at the side of the path
leading up to what was now the office complex. It used to be a cow-field, I thought. ‘And I shall have to refuse to leave.’

‘One moment, please.’ He walked away, swinging his arms like a corporal who is about to face a fierce sergeant. I became bored with watching him, stood up, sauntered across to the old section, the barns that had been used by my father. There were padlocks on the doors, bars at the windows. A man swept the ground with a stiff broom, and I asked him about the old part of McNally’s. These were the storage sheds now, he informed me. I stood and looked past the bars, remembered my father weeping at his bench. Mother had wiped him out completely, had built a new and clinically clean empire.

‘Laura?’

I swung round. ‘Mother.’ She was a true fashion-plate, a two-dimensional figure from some up-market magazine. Her face was thickly but expertly made up, and the jewels on her fingers were not paste. The suit was perfectly cut, a business outfit with a feminine finish in the finely tailored lines.

‘My dear, how are you?’ The accent had been worked on, was just about halfway between Mayfair and Manchester Piccadilly. ‘It’s been ages.’ She kissed the air at the side of my face, made little squeaking noises that were meant to illustrate her supposed joy. ‘Come. We’ll go inside and have some tea.’

So this was Mother’s latest role. Confetti would have been delighted to meet such a wonderful woman, a female who could build a business with one hand and apply face cream with the other. But Mother was not sufficiently emancipated to allow herself to be seen with a shabby daughter. We entered the office building by a side door, cut through a corridor before reaching Mother’s office. A plaque bore the legend, ELIZABETH McNALLY. CHIEF EXECUTIVE. I caught sight of a pale girl at a typewriter, glimpsed her worried face before Mother closed a second door. ‘My personal assistant,’ she said.
‘An absolute treasure.’ She pressed a button and a disembodied voice asked, ‘Yes, Mrs McNally?’

‘Tea for two, please.’

I slouched in the chair opposite Mother’s, noticed the despair on her face as she assessed my poor deportment. ‘So, I just came to see how you were,’ I said. ‘Since you never have the time to come and see how we are.’

‘I’m no worse than usual.’ She screwed a pink cigarette into a white holder, flicked a switch that turned on a window fan. ‘Extractors,’ she mouthed. ‘I know you don’t like tobacco smoke.’

‘Your grandchildren are very well, thank you for asking.’

‘Give me time.’

‘And Gerald will start school soon. He already reads, writes and counts.’

‘Good.’ She flicked ash into a hideous ashtray of dark onyx. ‘You obviously don’t need money. I notice that my cheques have not been cashed.’

‘Quite.’ I had done my duty, had obeyed Confetti’s instincts, was ready to leave at any moment. This was a farce, though Mother probably considered it to be a drama in which she played the chief role. As ever.

‘And you sent back the car. You could have kept it, you know.’

I hadn’t wanted it, hadn’t wanted to look at the vehicle that Frank had driven to his death. Most of all, I hadn’t wanted anything from this woman. ‘I can’t drive.’

‘But you must learn.’

‘Yes, I must.’

She tapped scarlet finger-nails on the huge desk. There was a lamp on its surface, one of those brass things that are often seen in American movies, a very important-looking item designed to shine its light only on the paperwork. Her eyes followed mine and she informed me, ‘It’s a reading lamp.’

‘Yes.’ We hadn’t seen one another for years, and we were talking about lamps and old cars. ‘Well, I’d better go.’ I stood up, smoothed my coat.

‘Can’t you buy yourself something a little more sensible, Laura? A nice camel-hair coat or something in tweed?’

‘No. I’ve children to feed.’

She opened a drawer, pulled out a tin, took a wad from it and threw it on her desk. ‘Is cash preferable to cheques?’

It was plain that she didn’t remember anything, that she had wiped the slate clean not only of my father, but also of me. Perhaps I was just a small and unsavoury problem that she recalled occasionally, like a troublesome molar or a bout of flu. ‘You are just like Tommo,’ I said. ‘You do things, say things, forget things. It’s all forgotten, isn’t it? The cruelty, the neglect, the nastiness?’

She sighed, put her head on one side. ‘You know, dear, most of that is in your own mind. I do worry so about you. Have you mentioned to your doctor that you have these strange dreams? Because that’s all they are, just nasty dreams. I never hit you, seldom shouted at you, gave you a very happy childhood.’ She rose, came round to my side of the desk and perched on its edge. ‘I’m a wealthy woman, Laura. Because I’ve a head for business, I finished what your father never had sufficient courage for. Oh, he had moved into other towns, but his thinking was too … too small. I expanded properly, went into mass production. But although I keep going on the surface, I am not a well woman. I need someone to live with me.’