September Starlings (70 page)

I turn the key, grit my teeth while Elsie strains herself to come to life. But she can’t move, because I dare not shift her. A man sits on the bonnet, squats in a position that is almost lotus. He is a lunatic. I’ve been aware of that, have watched him swimming in icy November water, smelly water, too. He has climbed up trees, across trees, inside trees. He has talked to the trees, has swung in Tarzan fashion from branch to branch, his only anchor a piece of frayed washing line left behind by the scouts. Robert has nothing to lose but his reputation, and he cares not one fig-leaf for that. In fact, I ought to be grateful for the fact that he has remained fully clothed.

Well, to hell with it all. While this lot of pram-pushers is talking about me, some other poor beggar will be left alone. I climb out, straighten my coat, lock both doors. A child stares, his mouth oozing melted orange lolly-ice. Two older women have stopped mid-sentence, Sunday
shopping forgotten in all the excitement. There’s a button hanging off my coat. It has been my experience that when dignity is required, elastic breaks or a button comes loose. With my head held high, I stalk towards the group of witnesses, stumble over a drop in the pavement, manage to remain upright. That’s another thing that spoils dramas, a tendency to lift the nose so high that nothing is truly visible.

‘Laura, what about your car?’

I stop, listen to the silence. There must be fifteen or twenty people standing between us, but not one of them is breathing. ‘Keep it,’ I shout, throwing my voice ahead, not bothering to turn and look at him. He can have the bloody car. My feet slow long before the message from my brain has reached them. My feet remember that I’ve promised the car to Edward. When I get too old to drive, Edward will adopt my baby. Elsie is valuable, a collector’s item. Robert catches up with me. He seems unflustered, is fit enough to endure any barb I might throw at him. ‘Why do you want me?’ I ask. ‘I’m old, far too old. Your children need a younger stepmother, someone who can tolerate the noise, even add to it.’

‘I didn’t ask you to marry me.’ He is so attractive, 6 feet 2 inches tall, brown wavy hair, bright blue eyes. He should be on the telly in that Nescafé advert, ought to be borrowing coffee from a female executive who pretends disinterest in his body.

I look him up and down. A dozen pairs of eyes are fixed on us. Some people have gone away, their constitutions too delicate to witness raw emotion. ‘Bugger off, Robert,’ I say.

‘Would you?’ He is serious. I know he’s serious because his eyes aren’t crinkling at the corners. ‘If you were free? And if I asked you?’

My tongue clicks, making me feel and sound like one of those old nuns who tried to educate me many moons ago. ‘How quaint. These days, the women do the asking and the telling. No, I wouldn’t ask you and no, I wouldn’t
marry you. I’m going to be a recycled virgin.’ A young mother giggles, understands how I feel, pushes her pram away.

Robert is plainly intending to persist. He is leaning against the shoe shop window, has assumed the age-old attitude of the young buck on the prowl, seriously casual. He opens his mouth, ‘Now, look—’

‘I’m leaving Crosby.’ Well, that is news to me, but what a splendid pearl of wisdom. I wonder how I’m managing to be so resourceful. There again. Perhaps I do intend to leave. That could have been the plan all along, so secret that I haven’t even told me about it yet.

He falters, blinks a few times, then crosses the pavement and steels his spine against a lamppost. It’s like being fifteen again, keep off the streets or the boys will get you. ‘Where are you going?’ The tone is low, disappointed.

‘Never mind.’

‘I can visit. Have stethoscope, will travel.’

‘No. To go where I’m going, you’d need a visa.’ I am learning so much about my intentions today.

‘Rubbish. Even if you’re going to Russia, the cold war’s over. As for the rest of the world, a visa never was a problem.’

Again, I am inspired. ‘I’m taking Ben home. He’s a foreigner, wants to be with his own people.’

‘But—’

‘No.’ I walk away, push past a few lingering witnesses, leap into Elsie and drive off at a speed that is extravagant. He is still leaning on that lamppost. Perhaps a little lady will pass by – it worked for George Formby. Sainsbury’s is open, has defied the Lord’s day, but it’s peaceful and the parking is free on Sundays. Robert was just a plaything, I tell myself firmly. He was a toyboy, he’ll find some other strong woman to amuse him.

The pigeons swoop, pick at a McDonalds carton. From the corner of an eye, I watch as a single starling awaits his turn, just as we all await ours. Time to go home.

She has finished the painting, has done a good job. I saunter about, pick up the odd piece of valuable tat, a figurine, two crystal paperweights, an old Venetian vase. What will I do with these tangible memories? Ben was with me when I bought some of them, he even chose one or two while on his business trips. What was he doing, where was he doing it? No, I won’t think.

I have to leave here. Some part of me realized that long before my subconscious leapt into my mouth when Robert was performing for the crowd. I’m going. This is Ben’s home, our home, this is Benaura. He won’t get better. He won’t kick me out of bed on Saturdays, won’t ever be here to persuade me to make the tea. ‘Every day, I do it,’ he used to say. ‘Go on, woman, earn your keep.’ Then he used to chase me round the bedroom and beat me with a pillow. I never made the morning tea, not once.

Benaura is my property, was signed over to me by a weary man with a weary brain. ‘Take it, Laura. It is brick and mortar, no more than that. And the money in my British accounts too. What time is it?’ That was an early symptom, asking the time, the day, his address. ‘Are we in a hotel, Laura?’ I won’t cry.

Where am I going, then? Will I abandon Ben in Heaton Lodge, just turn my back on him, leave him to sit alone like the old lady who never gets visitors? Don’t worry now, I tell myself. Take it easy, you’ve been ill, you’ve had a rough time, old girl.

I sit on an arm of the sofa, fix my gaze on the window. They are here, the September starlings, fighting, shouting at each other in the pear tree. Ben loved them so, envied
their anger, their survival skills. Among some species, when a bird fails to keep up with its peers, its life is ended by other members of the same group. Do Starlings kill Starlings? Is that the kindest thing, is it? Laura, does that idea sit with the others that have surprised you lately? You’re so sure about leaving here, so positive about new starts, clean sheets. Don’t think. Look at the birds, but don’t think.

This is Monday. On Mondays, I force myself to face my mother. My failure to arrive at her door and at her beck and call would just cause a lot of bother on the phone. I glance at the instrument, accuse it silently. In about half an hour, her special ring will be reborn, that piercing, endless freep-freep that belongs only to Liza McNally of the School Hill Retirement Apartments, Crosby, Merseyside. Even Telecom succumbs to her special power, seems more alert when prompted by a bony, nicotined finger with pearlized varnish on the talon. Perhaps they know that she holds shares in their grasping empire.

Diana is out, has gone to bend a different ear. When I think of her, I smile. She has brought life to this house, has made me laugh, made me function. Diana is a pharmacologist, a student of drugs and their various applications. Perhaps she will find a cure for Ben after he is dead. Jodie will pen the prescription, will use Diana’s medicine to cure a sufferer, a victim of Alzheimer’s. I wish it had come sooner. How many of us are thinking this? How many have relatives with this terrible illness?

The phone. It’s too early, won’t be Mother. Mother is like an alarm clock, is tuned in to the rhythm of her joyless life. At half past ten, she will torment me. At four o’clock, it will be the turn of one of the wardens who look after the apartments.

I lift the receiver, suddenly sense bad news. ‘Hello?’

Diana’s voice is squeaky. ‘Me father. It’s me dad.’ She must be in a tight spot, because the accent is thickening by the second. ‘They’ve just found him.’

My mental picture of Diana’s male parent is a sparse one, just a bundle of rags with a meths bottle peeping from a pocket. ‘Where?’ I ask.

She chokes, breathes heavily. ‘In the river.’

It is difficult, almost impossible to think of something sensible to say. I am sweaty but cold, and my slick fingers tighten on the receiver. Gooseflesh creeps up my arms, makes me shiver. ‘Diana?’

‘What?’

‘Is he … is he dead?’

A small pause is fractured by a sound that is half sob, half cough. ‘What do you think? Even the bloody fish are dead in this muck. I can’t … will you come for me?’

‘Of course I will.’

She blubbers. I can imagine the poor little thing wiping her nose on the sleeve of that dreadful anorak. After a huge sniff, she tells me the address. 47, Cannonfield Street. I feel sick, an empty sick that is probably made worse by not eating. After grabbing an apple, I dive out, jump into Elsie. She’s in one of her moods, needs talking to before she’ll start.

From the top of Diana’s street, I can see the Mersey. It killed Diana’s dad. My hands are shaking. I did not know this man, but his daughter has loved him. Even as she cursed his waywardness, she loved him.

There’s a policewoman at the door, a smallish person with no hat and a well-cut uniform. The hat is on the sideboard, and the cluttered sideboard is just two short paces away from the pavement. ‘Mrs Starling?’ The short arm of the law seeks mine. ‘She’s heartbroken. Can you take her back with you, let her stay in your house?’

‘Yes.’

Diana is in a corner, on a chair that is already occupied by a pile of newspapers. This makes her taller, almost as tall as if she were standing. The house reeks of take-away food, rotted cabbage, stale sweat. A low mantelshelf is covered in papers, brown envelopes with windows, junk mail. Another armchair seems to have exploded, its guts
pouring onto a rug that tries hard to be a shade of maroon, fails due to many spills and black-edged burn holes. An ashtray on the floor spills its dead. Hanging over the squalor is a black crucifix, Christ’s agonized figure shaped from a silvery metal and affixed to dry, polish-starved timber. There’s a pulley line above the fire, several pairs of greyish underpants draped over its slats.

‘Laura.’ She reaches out for me as the policewoman releases my arm, but there is no time for condolences. An army of people arrives, pushes past me. The newcomers talk very quickly in a language I mastered years ago. There’s our Jack, our Audrey, our Peter, our Mark. Sundry spouses line up in front of the sideboard, a small platoon not at ease, but hardly ready for inspection. Our Jack has matters well in hand. ‘We’ll see to it, Di,’ he blusters. ‘He can go in with me mother, I’ll soon get it sorted.’

Diana is white. She leans back in her chair, closes her eyes. ‘Shut up, all of you.’

The room is instantly quiet. Everyone waits for the little waif to speak. Someone coughs, a match is struck.

‘You’ll see to it?’ asks Diana. ‘It? That “it” was my dad. And not one of you turned up when he was in the ’ozzy with the DTs. Even you never came, Sal, couldn’t be bothered to see your own brother in bloody prison.’ This remark is addressed to an older woman who loiters near the door, plainly anxious to be on her way. ‘So you can just bugger off, the lot of you. Nobody wanted him when he was alive, so it’s up to me what I do with him. Go on, get gone.’

They won’t go. I’ve seen all this before, have witnessed these scenes a long time ago. They will fight, grieve, fight again. It’s like a ritual, a pattern that must be observed. Because they are bereaved, emotions are strong, tempers frayed to lacework.

Our Audrey steps forward. She may be Diana’s sister, or she may be an in-law. Whatever, she will be family, will have been absorbed into the unit as soon as the ink on the
certificate was dry. Baptismal or marriage, any certificate means full membership. Our Audrey has bleached hair, an ankle chain and no bra. Her eyes have been outlined with thick, black stripes, making her into a cut-price Jean Shrimpton. When she talks, her breasts jiggle about like two animals fighting in a sack. ‘Don’t you be coming all the ’oity-toy with us just ’cos you’ve ’ad wot you might call an education, like. Me mam bought this ’ouse with that bit of a win wot she ’ad with Littlewood’s in the seventies. So it’s between all of us an’ no messin’.’

I can’t believe it. Their father is on a slab at the morgue, and they’re carrying on like vultures hovering over carrion before it’s begun to rot. So this is what happens, is it? The deceased is at the funeral parlour having a last hair-do, and the kids start fighting over bankbooks and other items of interest.

Diana’s eyelids lift slowly. ‘Take the bloody house,’ she says wearily. ‘I’m off back to Blundellsands.’

Our Audrey is not best pleased. ‘You can’t just go and—’

‘Can’t I? Just watch me. I saw to him when he was alive, didn’t I? Well, I’m having him cremated and then—’

‘Put him near a gas oven and you’ll blow both cathedrals to kingdom come. There’s that much bloody booze in him—’

Diana jumps on our Mark, smacks him across an acne-scarred cheek. ‘Shut up, you. He was a drunk. I know he was a drunk, so there’s no need for you to go disc-jockeying it all over Radio flaming City. In case you haven’t noticed, he was your father. It doesn’t matter what they were, what they did wrong or right. At the end, you just say, “These were my parents.” We owe everything to them.’

Mark shuffles, backs away. ‘I don’t know about that. It was the other way round, ’cos he died owing me a fiver.’

Diana pokes a hand into her pocket, throws a jangle of coins on to the rug. ‘There you are, Judas. Sorry I can’t manage the rest of the thirty pieces, but that’s all I’ve got
on me at the moment. You can have the rest when I’ve sold me Rolls Royce.’

The money stays where it is. ‘Sorry, girl,’ mumbles Mark. ‘I was only messin’.’

Mark shuffles again, his large feet bursting out of some size 11-ish Adidas trainers whose laces trail on the floor. He lights a badly squashed Superking, tosses the empty packet in the general direction of the fireplace. ‘I’ve left me van,’ he grumbles, quieter now. Our Audrey agrees, mutters a few words about kids abandoned to the questionable mercies of ‘’er next door’. A woman with dyed black hair takes two steps to her left, peeps into the kitchen, freezes, pulls her head back into the room and displays an expression of complete bewilderment, looks as if she might have caught a glimpse of hell’s doorway. ‘Yer’ll not sell this ’eap of crap. Bloody cockroaches are ’avin’ a disco in the back kitchen. There’s enough grease on them walls to start a chippy.’