September Starlings (75 page)

Will tug and ache.

I am standing on the doorstep of the man who wrote this poem. His name is Kevin McCann and I can hear him walking towards me. Life has made me all kinds of fool thus far, and I am now the fool who has rushed up ten flights of stairs with a collection of verses in my hand. Kevin McCann took some finding. I searched the whole of this city’s education system, found that the writer had escaped the classroom. Many do these days. They get out of teaching, discover that living is pleasant, wonder why they never tried it earlier.

A girl opens the door. She has shiny brown hair that cloaks her shoulders, a small silver ring on a slender finger, blue jeans, boots, a pale green shirt. ‘Yes?’

I smile, assure her that I’m not selling anything. ‘Is Kevin McCann here?’ I ask. She cannot be Kevin McCann, surely?

I am led along a hall and into a cosy living room where candles flicker and cast shadows on a poet. He is approachable, almost handsome, clad in ordinary clothes. Did I expect a serious writer to wear something different, then? A smoking jacket, a toga, a suit of armour? His work has enlivened and disturbed me, because I found it good, found it among my husband’s papers in the bottom safe. Kevin’s hair is long, not curly, not straight, just bent a bit. He has a smile that means hello.

‘I found this.’ I thrust the slim green book beneath his nose. ‘He’s marked off this ‘Trouble with Wings’ one. Can you tell me why?’

His eyes seem blue, but I’m not sure. ‘Can you tell me who?’ he asks.

‘My husband.’ I sit in a comfortable chair, find myself in the company of a pretty blond rat in a cage.

‘That’s Basil,’ says the girl. ‘I’m Danielle, so the other one must be Kevin.’ She sits on some cushions, draws in the long legs, rests her chin on her knees. Basil chews at a bit of apple, keeps an eye on me.

‘I’m Laura. Laura Starling.’

Kevin knows my name, knew it before I opened my mouth. ‘Ben,’ he says. ‘The bird man, the one who works hand in glove with the RSPB. Gardening gloves, he told me. He said a seagull’s bite can be a lot worse than its scream. How is Ben?’

Well, I’ve had the surprises, the shocks. Ben’s association with this young man is good news, the happiest piece of information I’ve gleaned so far. I tell him how Ben is, tell him all of it, not just the bearable oddments. Kevin has the kind of face that deserves the best truth you can achieve, so he gets the ranting, the dribbling, the
incontinence. ‘I found your poem with the other papers. The story of his life’s in that safe, I think, but I’ve not tackled it yet.’

Danielle offers me wine. ‘It’s peach,’ she informs me. It is sweet and fruity, slakes a thirst I hadn’t noticed till the first sip.

With the minimum of Dutch courage, I ask these two how much they know. ‘Enough,’ says Kevin. ‘Ben read Danielle’s thesis about the concentration camp, showed an interest that was more than academic. A few years ago, your husband asked me about the poem. So I can only tell you what I said to him.’

I notice something hanging from an overhead lantern, cannot stop myself from interrupting, ‘So it was from you, the Indian dream-catch.’ Metallic threadwork converges into a central hole, making the ornament into a rounded-off spider’s web. Ben told me the theory. Nightmares are supposed to be held back by the wider net, while pleasant dreams can find a way through the gap in the middle, are able to float down and access the sleeper. ‘I think it works in a way,’ I say. ‘He’s quieter now while asleep, but the living nightmare continues. I took the circle to the nursing home and hung it above his bed. I suppose the sleeping tablets help, too.’

They know when to be quiet, these two. There’s a peace about this place, a tranquillity that does not argue with the field of energy that surrounds the flat’s inhabitants. They have taken me in, given me wine, allowed me to pour my heavy burden onto their heads. I could stay here until the energy wakes. Perhaps the room becomes noisier then, when the words fly. He writes the words, but she is in them. Even the little rat belongs, is in its proper home. The rodent is round and content, is a squirrel with bad PR and no bushy tail. Since the plague, these intelligent creatures have been avoided and feared by the masses.

Kevin sits and focuses on Danielle, as if she is his pulse. I can feel the love between them, know that it is big enough to include me, my Ben and a million other people.
‘Can you help me?’ I ask at last. That Indian catch has another significance for me, because it sums up all I have learned in the past twenty-four hours. Danielle knows the camps, Kevin is the father of the poem, they both know Ben. I have come full circle within a circle of beliefs that stem from native America. This is a moment of magic.

‘It was a joke at first,’ he says. ‘When I was a kid, I wanted wings. Then, later on, I read how the American Indians treat birds like messengers from God. In their faith, a bird wears the wings of a holy being, something like an angel.’

He is smiling slightly. ‘So I kept wavering between the concepts. How would a man with wings cope in a supermarket? I imagined Heinz beans tins swept off the shelves, women scooping up children to save them from the heavy feathers. An albatross has a massive span – think how wide a human’s would be.’

Danielle picks up the thread. ‘But we all want to fly, even if we can only do it metaphorically. It isn’t difficult to imagine how great it would be to sit up there and watch the world. An eagle is supposed to be capable of focusing on the tiniest object. At the same time, he’s got this wide view of life. It’s taken us thousands of years to get something that birds had all the time, but we needed machinery to achieve it.’

She leans forward, touches my knee. ‘No two people have taken that poem the same way. It means so many things. Poetry’s only good if it does that. What Kevin meant when he wrote it isn’t the important part. It reaches people. But for Ben, it meant so much, it covered a lot of ground for him.’

I haven’t been able to read the rest of the stuff yet. I’ve dipped into it, hurried out of it. ‘There’s that other pile of papers,’ I remind them. ‘I was all right with the poem, but his life story’s going to be hard. He was in a concentration camp, I do know that much. And that burn mark on his arm was no accident.’ I take a gulp of peach wine. ‘He heated a poker and burned off his number.’

‘He can’t wash it off his soul, though,’ says Kevin. ‘He can’t cleanse his memory, not completely. I think he’s gone through a period of denial, a better beginning, he called it. To live with you, he got new wings.’

I lean back, beg support from the chair. ‘And he’s living the worst part of his life all over again.’ Would I have treated him differently had I known his history, his youth? Would my pity and sorrow have shown? He wanted no pity, my Ben. He wanted a start that was fresh enough to squeak like a new shoe. Yet he wrote it down. ‘He wrote it down,’ I say. ‘And he wants more wings.’

‘Understandable,’ offers Danielle. ‘He’s worn out a few pairs in his time.’

How much do they know, then? I am surprised that the answer jumps so quickly into my head. It doesn’t matter. If Ben told Danielle and Kevin any of it, then at least he has managed to share the weight with strangers. A stranger can often be so much closer than a friend, as the picture arrives in black and white, no colours lent by preknowledge and prejudgement. ‘Was he confused when he first came to you?’

Kevin thinks for a moment, nods. ‘Yes, he thought he had started with Alzheimer’s disease, though he was still together enough to know that he was missing a lot of stuff. That was the sad part, the fact that he realized what was happening to him. He came in a taxi with the address of the flat on a piece of paper.’

‘Where did he find your work?’ I ask.

‘The book of poems was among some stuff he picked up at the university,’ Kevin tells me. ‘I was lecturing there, taking a couple of writers’ groups. I was a bit worried about him, because he kept jumping from one subject to another when he visited us here that day. Anyway, the taxi waited, and I went down in the lift to make sure that Ben would get home OK. The driver knew where to take him, so I guessed that your husband had provided for what he was calling his gaps. We’ve never forgotten him. There was something about him that stayed with us.’

‘We had a new kitchen.’ I am remembering again, but audibly this time. ‘Ben attacked a very close friend. I was getting some After Eights out of a cupboard that wouldn’t shut properly. Until then, I hadn’t noticed anything unusual about Ben’s behaviour. Sometimes, I’ve hated that cupboard, even though the firm came and made it close. It was as if I’d let something out with the After Eights and the Kenya coffee. Perhaps if I’d managed to close the door …’ I flounder, stop in my tracks. ‘Silly, isn’t it?’

Neither speaks, neither finds me silly.

‘I’ve got to read the rest of it, haven’t I?’

‘Ben asked for my work on Sachsenhausen,’ says Danielle. ‘He sat there, in your chair, read every word and pored over the photographs. When he passed it back to me, he thanked me for being a new witness. He made me cry, Laura.’

Oh God, what am I going to do? The new wings he needs are to be made by me. I have to plan, stitch and sew, make sure that the ailerons will take my man upwards, ‘fishtailing and chandelle’ as Kevin says in the poem. ‘Having wings just means being unusual, doesn’t it?’ I’ve got past trying to sound intelligent.

Kevin agrees, up to a point. ‘We’ve all got wings if we want them,’ he tells me. ‘But most of us don’t like them to show. Don’t forget that this poem can be hopeful, too. At the end, he feels the feathers threatening to erupt again.’

I haven’t read it that way. ‘But I thought the tugging between his shoulder blades was regret. Like a man who has a leg amputated – he still feels when the missing knee aches or when the absent foot itches.’

‘You were low when you read it,’ says Kevin. ‘You weren’t flying when you found the words.’

We can all fly. He is telling me that and I am believing it. The girl on the cushions has known for years that she can take to the air. It’s something to do with integrity, then. ‘Why did Ben need more than one pair of wings?’ I wonder aloud.

‘To fit his many circumstances.’ Kevin has probably travelled deeper into my husband’s thoughts than any other living creature.

I decide to go further. ‘Which wings does he need now?’

He shakes his head. ‘Only you know that, Laura. He told me his past and a little of his present, but the present he discussed has become history now.’

Danielle has a brainwave. ‘It might not help, but if it does …’ She is excited, has risen onto her knees. ‘Take the papers in, and the poem. Read them to him, let him know you’re sharing it. That might bring him forward a bit, tip him out of the worst part of his past.’

I don’t think so. I cannot believe that a story read aloud can darn the holes created by Alzheimer’s. But I’ll try anything, anything at all. I’ll even make those wretched wings if necessary. The young people go into the kitchen for coffee and food. I am left with a rat called Basil and a poem that is breaking my heart.

Van Gogh sits all around the walls, his gorgeous insanity translated, printed and framed. A native American stares down at me, arms folded under his woven dress. Beneath him sits another stark truth.

Laurel and Hardy linger in a corner, their closest companion a tiger, a big fellow, possibly from Bengal. Books teeter on top of books, Stanley Kubrick’s
Clockwork Orange
is announced on another poster. Above it all, the dream catch turns on the end of its thread. Nothing is expected of me. I can stay or go, I can be myself.

She reminds me a little of Diana and Jodie, this calm-faced girl whose hair is free, whose mind has found its own liberty. She is educated, I think, but she is not hidebound by her achievements. And Kevin is a man whose ideals have made a bypass round all middle-class mores. This is what my daughter meant then, when she announced that she would find herself before settling down to practise what has been preached at her across a hollow lecture hall. The young are cautious these days. They have stopped jumping onto the roundabouts we created for them, have learned to step slowly and carefully across into adulthood.

I eat with them, read more of Kevin’s brilliant work, ask if I might return. ‘Any time,’ he says. ‘And we’ll visit you, too.’ I have told them about Chewbacca, about Handel and the fluff-ball kitten. Kevin and Danielle came late into my life, but they arrived at the right time. They know Ben and they care. I come away relaxed, ready to face the rest of the story.

My Darling Laura,

You may not have noticed just yet, but I am beginning to lose my memory. At first, just the small details of everyday life were fading, things that were too unimportant to cause concern. If we went out, I could not always recall where we had been, with whom, for how long. These problems I dismissed as trivial, until I started to struggle with addresses, names, pieces of business. My dear wife, it is possible that I have been launched on the slope that leads to dementia. It is a slippery road and I can find no purchase beneath my feet. We are both powerless to stop what is probably coming. As I descend, I shall no doubt gain momentum. While I can still reach for words, I shall use my lucid periods to write to you.

Our marriage was not blessed by a priest, but the church knows of our difficult and unusual circumstances and accepts your divorce. Although we married in a registry, we shall still meet again in heaven, because all my sins are now forgiven. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the happy years we have had. My love for you is undiminished – I wish I could say the same about my brain power, which seems to be lessening daily. Laura, I am forgetting our yesterdays. How many gulls did we have then, did the thrush die, have I eaten breakfast? I am not ready to discuss this with
you, yet I am guilty about the grief you may soon feel. I fear my steady diminution, as it is difficult to assess and understand. Dementia is a state about which little is known – as a potential sufferer, I do not possess the ability to think clearly about a situation that already clouds my judgement. I am living in a vicious circle, though I do hang on to the hope that I am mistaken. If that is the case, then I shall improve and this letter will not be needed. However, should I deteriorate, you will find this in the bottom safe. The key and the combination will be in a place I shall remember. It is so important that I know it will not be forgotten, no matter how sieve-like my mind might become.