September Starlings (22 page)

The ridiculously tiny mouth pouted. She had made herself even sillier by painting the Cupid’s bow a dark and unbecoming pink, a strange shade that bordered on brown, and I was not a lover of the colour brown. The lips sat pursed and tight in the acres of lard that formed this unfortunate face, but the eyes above were liquid, vibrant, dangerous. ‘Then I, too, must wait,’ she announced
ominously, her words coated with acid. ‘She’ll not get away from me this time, love, I’ll see to that.’

She stamped into the sitting room, her broad feet threatening the house’s stability. I leaned against a wall, buried my face in a coat of my father’s, sought comfort in the aromas of peppermint and black Spanish. After several loud beats of time, I lifted my head until the noise of my heart was no longer crashing on nerve-tightened eardrums. Silence. The angry woman and my mother were sharing a room, yet there was no fight, no conversation. I lingered in the hall, watched the hand on the grandmother clock, dreaded the outbreak of war in our own living quarters.

I peeped round the door, was reminded of Uncle Freddie and the films again. Was it the Three Stooges? I wondered. Or perhaps Laurel and Hardy? Whatever, whoever, there had been a fat woman sitting on a chair behind which the heroes of the piece had concealed themselves. I dared not laugh, forbade myself to think about Uncle Freddie sneaking me out to the Odeon. ‘Don’t tell your mother, Laura,’ he had said. ‘Your mother doesn’t approve of the cinema unless the film is what she calls a classic. Comedians are not classical, so keep your lip buttoned once you get home.’

Well, the current situation was not a celluloid story on a sticky reel, would not be punctuated by adverts at half-time. Or would it? It felt so unreal, so funny, so hazardous. Perhaps the film might stick in a minute, might even melt and leave a silly hole on the screen. And everyone would boo and jeer and sing, ‘Why are we waiting?’ Oh, I must take control of myself. The hilarity of the scene was making me worse, was causing my stomach to grind like a butcher’s mincer. It was a farce, a hoot, I had to run!

I fled past the open door and into the kitchen, spread my hands across the coal-burning stove, gripped its enamelled edge. My mother was in the front room, was in a pickle that was terribly amusing and dangerous. Would
the fat lady hit Mother about the head, would she be my revenge? No, that must not happen. Although I had little love for my female parent, I didn’t want her brains bashed in by an ugly person with a dead fox round her neck. Somehow, I had to find a way of getting rid of the fat lady. A snort of hysteria squeezed its way down my nose, and I altered it into a very unprofessional sneeze. Anne was the actress – I wasn’t terribly good at imitating sneezes, voices and suchlike.

‘What’s your name, dear?’ The voice was high-pitched, probably strangled by corsetry on its journey to the outside world. ‘Dear? Can you hear me?’

Several more seconds elapsed before I made full contact with my own Christian name. It was silly, being so frightened that I forgot who I was, but not silly enough to make me laugh again. ‘My name’s Laura,’ I replied at last. I definitely needed to go to the bathroom by this time, dared not move, was too scared to pass the woman on my way to the stairs. What was happening to my thinking? I had talked my way out of many tricky situations, could surely manage one more. But this was not my tragedy, it was Mother’s. Talking my own way out of a corner was one matter, but I didn’t fancy my chances of pleasing my mother, no matter how hard I tried.

‘Are you there, Laura?’

‘Yes.’ I swallowed a great mouthful of air, and it landed in my stomach like a lead pellet. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea, Mrs … er …?’

‘Mrs Morris, dear. And no, I don’t want anything, thank you. This is not a social call.’

‘Oh. Right.’ I had to get her out of that room. Should I shove some papers inside the stove, waft the smoke into the house and scream about fire? No. Mother might be fooled too, might come out of her hiding place and into the clutches of this intruder. There had to be something, some ploy that would work. On tip-toe, I moved along the hall, pushed myself to stand in the doorway, tried to act casual and normal. ‘Would you like to look at our garden?’ I
asked. We had a very ordinary garden, just some grass, a few flowers and an apple tree, but it was worth a try. My mother was curled up like a cat, limbs drawn in, head so far down that it touched her knees. She would get cramp any minute, I thought. And for a dignified woman who set a lot of store by ‘doing the right thing’, she looked like a completely graceless bundle of clothing.

‘I don’t want to see your garden, Laura. What did you say was the matter with your mother?’

I raised my eyes to the ceiling, tried to take my attention away from this painfully ludicrous scene. ‘Headaches,’ I replied. ‘She gets a lot of headaches.’

‘Hmmph.’ The dead fox had slipped when I looked down, was hauled up cruelly by huge, dimpled hands until it sat high on plump shoulders. ‘She’ll have more than a headache when I catch up with her. Anyway, isn’t your father a chemist?’

‘Yes. He’s at work. He works up …’ My mother was stirring in her den behind the chair. ‘Up Blackburn Road. In a chemist shop. And … he’s making a factory somewhere on a farm.’ Any minute now, I would surely explode in gales of laughter or in floods of tears. Mother’s head was up and she was mouthing at me, but I couldn’t concentrate. If I’d stared behind the chair, Mrs Morris might have followed my gaze and … I gulped. She was such a big woman that she could have killed my mother by sitting on her for a minute or two. ‘He’s working,’ I repeated lamely.

‘Pity he can’t cure a simple headache, then,’ snapped Mrs Morris. ‘When does he come home?’

‘Er … about six o’clock, usually.’

Mrs Morris drew back her head until I could count three full chins, plus one more that was still in a developmental stage. She turned and looked at the mantel clock. ‘Ten to six now. I’ll wait for him, he’ll do.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, he’ll do very well, will Mr McNally.’ She settled back, was just a couple of inches away from the crouching figure. All that separated them was the padding on the armchair.

Mother was mouthing again, something that looked like ‘Get her out.’ My need for the lavatory was suddenly urgent. After a gabbled ‘Excuse me’, I fled up the stairs like a real living fox with the hounds snapping their fangs at its brush.

I was never fond of the bathroom. From a very early age, the toilet terrified me with its strident gurgling, made me worry about demons and dragons and slimy opportunists that might live in dark water and bite people’s extremities. Even when I was almost nine, mature enough for the voice of reason to reside more frequently in my head, I was still scared. I told myself every time that there were no evil forces in our drains, yet something elemental made me shiver each time I pulled the chain.

But on this occasion, with the rest of the house full of ill-concealed malevolence, I decided to opt for whatever lived down the pan, because the devil downstairs, which was now known to me, was far fiercer than any reptile that might poke its forked tongue out of a U-bend.

When the cistern had refilled itself, I went through the eleven-times table again and added on two Hail Marys, a Glory Be and the Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer. After the pipes had settled, I squatted on the floor and counted diamonds on the wallpaper. Each diamond had three flowers in it, and I struggled to multiply the diamonds by three. It must have been six o’clock. I stood on the toilet seat and opened the small window, strained to hear the Town Hall clock as it announced the safety zone. Dad was on his way. Dad was sane and comfortable; he would take away the dragons.

The landing was silent. I stood as still as a stone and listened to the ticking of the grandmother clock. It hiccupped, creaked, played its tune and bonged six times. He was late. If he’d decided to stay and invent something, then Mother might very well squat behind that chair till midnight. And Mrs Morris could stand up at any minute, walk round the room, find my mother hiding like a criminal in her own house.

I heard him. My father clopped when he walked, because he always bought real leather shoes with real leather soles. The gate moaned, swung open, took an age to shut. He pushed wide the front door, stepped inside, paused in the hall. Papers shuffled as he looked through the mail, and I heard the soft sound of his coat as he removed it and hung it on the stand.

‘Mr McNally?’ She was in the doorway of the sitting room. I crawled along the landing, held on to the rails, held on to my breath.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘I want a word with you.’ I could picture her chins wobbling indignantly. ‘Really, I wanted a word with your wife, but she seems to be out.’

‘I see. What do you wish to talk about?’

‘My husband,’ came the swift response. ‘I’m not the first to come after your wife. Doreen Shipperbottom had a do with her last year, because that woman of yours was chasing Ernest the length and breadth of the Market Hall, pretending she was after a particular brand of Turkish delight.’ She cleared her throat in a way that thoroughly expressed her disgust. ‘The delights she was interested in had nothing to do with Turkey, Mr McNally, nothing to do with Ernest Shipperbottom’s sweet stall.’

My father’s sigh was loud enough for me to hear quite clearly. He was a man with a problem, and the problem was not a new one. ‘Why should this concern you?’

‘Why?’ she screamed. ‘Why? Can’t you keep her under control? It’s like having a bitch on heat wandering the streets. I’ve heard of folk locking up their daughters, but it’s coming to a pretty pass when we have to keep our husbands on a lead. She’s not normal. She’s one of those nymphomaniacs, can’t leave the men alone for a minute.’

He took her into the kitchen – I followed their path with my ears, then I crept like a cat down the stairs as the kitchen door clicked into its jamb. In the sitting room, I beckoned, urged her to come out of her hide. One of her
knees cracked, sounded like a bullet emerging from the throat of a pistol.

‘Come on,’ I whispered. ‘Be quick, please!’

She put a finger to her lips, stared at me with so much pleading in her eyes that I almost worried about her for a few seconds. As she pushed past me and into the hall, the kitchen door flew open. ‘I told you!’ screamed Mrs Morris. ‘I told you I could hear something.’ She flew with a speed that was commendable in a woman of her weight, grabbed Mother’s hair, swung her round and smashed her face into the wall. ‘Bitch!’ she screamed. ‘Dirty, fornicating bitch!’

Instinctively, I beat my father to the scene of the crime, lifted my foot and kicked the wide rump. ‘Don’t you dare hit my mother. Don’t you dare touch her, you ugly, fat person.’ The tears streamed down my cheeks. My foot kept reaching its target until Dad dragged me away. ‘Go upstairs, Laura,’ he said.

‘No, I won’t. Mother had to hide behind a chair, so I’m going for a policeman.’

My mother turned and looked at us, an arm coming up to protect the already injured face. I knew how she felt. I knew all about it, because I had had a bloody nose more than once. Yet I hated seeing Mother suffering as she had made me suffer. ‘Laura, go into the sitting room. We don’t need the police,’ she said.

I bit my lip, fought to stem the weeping. ‘I’m stopping here.’

Mrs Morris glared at me, then focused her attention on her victim. ‘And what were you doing behind a chair, Liza McNally?’

‘I was … playing hide-and-seek with my daughter.’ Mother never played games, unless they were adult and dangerous, but there was no point in disabusing the unwelcome visitor, so I held my tongue. ‘Laura? Weren’t we playing?’ pleaded Mother.

‘Yes.’ Another black blotch stuck to my soul. I almost felt it rushing into me and sinking its claws deep in my belly.

The bloated woman screamed again, ‘You were hiding from me. You’re a liar as well as a scheming witch. Adulterous, that’s what you are.’

Adulterous meant old, grown-up, I thought. My mother didn’t look old, certainly nothing like as old as Mrs Morris.

‘Have you finished?’ Dad sounded as if he were asking a diner to pass him an empty plate.

‘She’s been going with my husband for ages. They are at it in his office every lunchtime. I’ve three children, Mr McNally. How will they feel when they find out that their father is having an affair with the chemist’s wife? And how will you feel when I name her as co-respondent in a divorce suit?’

‘Calm yourself, please.’ My dad sounded tranquil, quite resigned and unruffled. He was, I decided, a dignified man. His wife ached to be dignified, missed by a mile. But he was a true gentleman. ‘It will stop, I promise you,’ he said to the fat woman. ‘There will be no further trouble.’

‘She’ll only start on somebody else’s husband. Have you any idea of the number of men in this town who have received favours from your wife?’

He gazed at me. ‘Go away, Laura.’

‘No.’

‘Laura? This is the wrong place for you. Please go upstairs.’

I walked past them, went up six or seven steps, sat down out of sight, listened avidly.

My father spoke first. ‘Mrs … er?’

‘Morris.’

‘Mrs Morris, my daughter is only nine years of age and she is in this house. If only for her sake, I beg you to leave. We may, if you wish, discuss this matter further on neutral ground.’

There followed a short pause that was punctuated only by my mother’s irregular breathing. I pressed my face against the banister, prayed for the fat woman to go away and leave my father in peace.

But she started to yell again. ‘Go anywhere near my husband again, and I’ll kill you. There’s a lot of us in Bolton wouldn’t mind turning your guts into garters, so be warned. One of these days, we’ll organize a posse and come after you. There’ll not be one single hair left on that dyed head of yours—’

‘My hair is not dyed.’ Even now, in the midst of chaos, Mother defended her natural beauty. ‘Which is more than can be said of yours, Florrie Morris. As for your husband – who on earth would want a man as bald as a coot and with a beer belly down to his knees? Talk sense. I’ve too much pride to be dallying with the failures of this world.’