September Starlings (42 page)

No-one ever came to ask me about Tommo. As the months went by, I got snippets of information from my father, items of gossip that he had gleaned from the floor of his factory. Owing to some weird technicality, Tommo was out on bail, then he was dragged in for questioning again, then he was home. For a long time, I feared that his victim was having second thoughts.

Finally, the girl and her family left Bolton and the matter was at an end. I understood that young woman, felt for her, empathized completely with a decision that might have seemed rash on the surface. She couldn’t face it. She couldn’t talk about what had been done to her, balked at the concept of reliving the ordeal in a courtroom full of men. When I heard about her flight, I cried. He was free
now, at liberty to search for more prey. He reminded me of a cowboy with notches on his gun, or of an Indian with scalps hanging from a rawhide belt. My flesh crawled for a while, but I settled determinedly to my new way of life, found comfort in my lover, in my son who was growing at an alarming rate. I never stopped waiting for Tommo, but I did not always actively expect him. He would come one day, and I hoped that I would be strong enough, well enough protected to survive the showdown.

Mother sent letters via Dad, pulled him to pieces on paper for his refusal to tell her of my whereabouts. ‘I have a grandson, but I am not allowed to see him. Life is boring here and I would like to visit you occasionally. John stays with you sometimes, I am sure of that. These pharmaceutical meetings are just a figment of an imagination I never knew he had. That Tommo has been lurking about again. I hear that he lost his job when he was arrested, but he seems well-to-do, is always extremely well dressed …’ She had decided to be an invalid, was always asking Dad for medicines. I could not manage to worry about her, scarcely gave her a thought unless she wrote to me. I never replied, never bothered to put pen to paper. My coldness towards her still bothered me, but I was busy with my son, very busy with my neighbour.

Hetty Hawkesworth had taken over my life, had shown me how to make what she called ‘bother-money’. I asked her what it meant, and she tapped the side of that little hooked nose. ‘It’s for getting you out of trouble, girl. Or into it. Whichever road, bother’s easier when there’s a bob or two in your pocket.’

Hetty and I baked three times a week, and the Chapman’s Country Fayre van picked up our offerings on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We made scones, date loaves, pies, tarts, angel cakes, devil cakes and any other kind of cake that showed its face in the women’s magazines. These were sold to various shops in the region, then the Chapman’s Country Fayre man paid us a commission once a month. We did not invite the taxman to
join our party, so we made a tidy profit, even when the ingredients were expensive.

Gerald was an easy child, would sit happily for hours with a rolling pin and a bit of grey pastry, always enjoyed licking out our mixing bowls. He walked early, talked early, but reserved his speech for special occasions. When he was almost two, he made his first jam tarts and Hetty made him a junior partner. Gerald was happy. I felt his happiness even when he was serious, knew that I had passed my test as a mother.

After six months or so of baking, we were rich women. Hetty had a new three-piece suite and a perm, while I had £417 in the bank. We sat in her garden drinking tea and making plans. ‘I’m going in for pots,’ she declared. ‘Nice pots, Doulton and the like. I’ve never had a set that matched. Mind, I’d have to stop chucking stuff at him.’ ‘Him’ was her husband, and she ruled him with a rod of steel. ‘I’ll pick a pattern from the catalogue.’ She cast an eye over me. ‘And what will you do with your money?’

‘Save it.’ I watched Gerald as he chased a butterfly. His little brother or sister was a cluster of cells in my womb. How would I cope with two? Would the second one be easier? Oh no, there was no better-behaved boy than my little Gerald – angelic, he was. I smiled, knew that I was becoming a mother in spite of myself.

‘Laura? Have you got cloth ears?’

‘Sorry.’

‘I asked you why you don’t treat yourself.’

‘Well, you never know what’s going to crop up, do you?’

Hetty shrugged. ‘That man of yours is on good money. You should use what you earn to buy some pleasure, a holiday or something.’

The problem was that I could never relax completely. I had a good man, a sweet little son, a pretty house that was rented by my father for me, decent clothes, television, fresh air and sunshine. Letters from Anne, who was studying in London, and weekly missives from Confetti
kept me smiling, wiped out the anxiety that my mother’s messages brought. Auntie Maisie and Uncle Freddie phoned once a week, passed on some of the Barr Bridge gossip. In spite of some tension, I was quite content, fairly happy with my lot. But it might all disappear. If he found us, if he came …

‘What’s up, lass? You shivered then as if somebody had stood on your grave. Is there trouble?’

I trusted Hetty, could have depended on her for my life. But I couldn’t talk. Not about that, anyway, not about Tommo. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I said. ‘So the money will do for the baby.’

She grinned, displaying a beautiful array of teeth whose architect had no doubt been commissioned by the National Health Service. The top set slipped, and she clicked the plate back into position with the tip of her tongue. ‘Well, I’m glad about that, love. He could do with company, could Gerald.’

Hetty was a caution. She had a bad heart, arthritis and a thyroid condition, but she moved as fast as anyone I had ever known. She was one of those people who seem to do everything at running pace, so I asked her about this terrible need for speed. ‘Why are you in such a rush, Hetty?’

She poured more tea, gave Gerald a cup of orange, swept the crumbs off the ricketty-legged card table that doubled as an al fresco dining piece. ‘Well, I’m fifty-five and it’s catching up with me,’ she said. ‘See, we always have a past, even when we’re only two minutes old. It kicks off like a little pebble, but it picks up all sorts and gathers weight and speed as we get older. Gerald! Come away from that cat, it scratches.’

Gerald looked at her, ignored the order, carried on tormenting her cat. ‘He’ll learn the hard way,’ I said. ‘Go on, Hetty.’

‘I’m running away from my avalanche,’ she said. ‘That snowball has grown bigger while it’s rolled down the hill. When it catches me, I’ll be dead, because it’ll crush me. So I just keep on the bloody move all the while.’

It was a strange philosophy, yet it was right for her. She would be running the day she died, would fight till her eyes closed. ‘We all run from the past, I suppose.’ Was my snowball gathering weight and speed, would it crash through my door and pin me against a wall? My snowball had strawberry blond hair and a cruel upper lip and I wasn’t running, I was sitting in a back garden waiting for the landslide to happen …

She glanced at me sideways. ‘What about your past? Why doesn’t your mam come to see you? You’ve mentioned her in passing, so I know she’s not dead.’

‘She’s ill,’ I answered. Well, she was practising to be ill.

‘Then why don’t you go and see her?’

‘I can’t stand her.’

Hetty nodded. ‘Aye, well that’s as good a reason as any. My kids were glad enough to see the back of me and all. Mind, they come at Christmas and other holidays, but it’s lovely when they’ve gone. Peaceful, like. What’s she done?’

‘Who?’

‘Your mam.’

I ran to rescue Gerald from the claws of Hetty’s furious feline. ‘Leave her,’ I said. ‘Stop poking sticks at her.’

‘Bad cat,’ he muttered. Then he forgot the whole incident, went off to dig for worms. He loved worms, was always bringing them into the house, especially at meal times.

I went back to Hetty, drank my tea. ‘Mother’s not a nice woman,’ I told her. ‘She’s very selfish, very demanding. And she used to play the field, liked the men.’

Hetty grinned. ‘Men? I’d sooner play bingo any time. Are you sure you won’t come with me one night? They have a big payout every so often, you know. Mrs Millichamp takes us down in her Mini, but I’m sure we could squeeze you in.’ It was just like Hetty to change the subject in this way. Because she realized that I didn’t want to talk about Mother, she skipped easily onto safer ground. ‘Will you come to bingo, Laura?’

‘No, thanks.’ I never went out without Frank. We had started to use the car more often, sometimes driving to Liverpool or Southport, but I didn’t dare to go out alone. Sometimes, I was scared at home, spent minutes at a time staring through various windows, scanning the fields as if I expected Tommo to materialize. Perhaps he would forget me. Perhaps I would be able to go home one day. No. He would never forget that I had left him, would never forgive Frank for winning me and taking me away.

‘You should get out more. You worry too much.’

Sometimes, I felt that I didn’t worry enough. I gathered up my son, said cheerio to my chatty neighbour, went home to cook a meal for my husband. Because he was my husband, except for a little scrap of meaningless jargon with a rubber stamp mark.

He came home early, threw down his old canvas satchel – Frank never went a bundle on briefcases – and ordered me to pack. ‘We’re moving,’ he announced. Those spots of colour were on his face again, twin roses that sat on his cheeks whenever he was disturbed.

‘Why?’ My jaw hung. I felt stupid, shouldn’t have asked, knew the answer. ‘Tommo?’

He nodded, scooped up Gerald, held him tight. ‘He’s mobile and he’s following me. I don’t know how long he’s been doing it, can’t work out how much information he has, whether he knows about this place and so on. I’ve rung John and I’ll not be working for him for a while. We’re going to Manchester.’

‘Manchester’s near Bolton,’ I said.

‘It’s a city. It’s either Manchester or Liverpool. We’re sitting ducks here if he gets the address. It seems that somebody told him about me being employed as a traveller for McNally’s. So he’s got himself a job with Rumworth’s, the toffee people. Puts you off Rumworth’s famous rum truffles, doesn’t it?’

The advertisement ran across the front of my brain, the Rumworth’s Rummy cartoon that was on telly almost
every day. ‘I’ll phone Rumworth’s,’ I decided. ‘I’ll tell them what he’s doing.’

Frank frowned. ‘He’s doing nothing, love. Mr Walker in Ormskirk just mentioned that a man called Bernard Thompson had been in to sell him some sweets.’

‘And Bernard Thomson enquired about his long-lost brother, I take it?’.

Frank smiled grimly. ‘He did better than that, Laura. He’s looking for his nasty older brother who ran off with you. So folk will start to look at me sideways, I’m afraid. Even so, Bernard’s doing nothing wrong. He’s just telling enough of the truth to make himself look like the injured party. And there’s no point in getting involved with details, because the whole truth isn’t particularly believable.’

‘Stranger than fiction.’ I touched his face, stroked Gerald’s thick brown hair. ‘Where to, then? Which bit of Manchester?’

‘Sale. It’s Cheshire, really, but it’s densely populated, a Manchester suburb. Your father knows some influential people, so we’re to be allowed a new house for a while. Only one pair of semis is finished, and we’ll occupy one of the two. It seems that I’ll be there as a nominal night-watchman just to look after the building materials when the men are off site. Strange job, but I think your dad’s had it tailor-made for us.’

‘Hetty will miss me,’ I said. ‘She’s going to be doing all the baking herself.’

Frank lowered Gerald to the floor and put an arm across my shoulders. ‘You can’t tell Hetty anything. If Tommo gets to her, she might give him our address.’

‘I can’t lie to her.’

Frank shrugged, then straightened his shoulders. ‘There is an alternative, love. We can just stay put and face him. But he won’t fight fair. The difference between fighting with my brother and with an ordinary human will be as big as the gap between warfare and terrorism. He’ll not stand up to be shot at. He’ll come carefully. I think
we’d best just do a bunk when Hetty’s at one of her afternoon bingo sessions.’

‘I know you’re right, I do know.’

‘So?’ His eyebrows were raised. ‘It’s up to you, Laura. I can’t carry on in the job, because he’s going to blacken the name of McNally in every shop while I’m involved with the firm. But I can always find another job in St Helens or Liverpool—’

‘No, we’ll go to Sale.’

We moved while Hetty the Hawk was out for a few hours. One day, when I could talk, I would tell her why. And she would understand.

Edward Thompson was born in 1963. He had sandy hair, deep grey eyes and a fine set of lungs. He screamed as soon as his head was born, and he continued in the same vein for several months. Gerald did not like his little brother, thought that the new arrival was a pest. ‘He’s a pest,’ he said daily.

Daily, I agreed with him. ‘He’ll grow up, Gerald. He won’t always cry.’ We kept the radio on all day, had the volume turned as high as we could bear. When Dad brought us a Hoover, I used it more often than was really necessary, because even the drone of the machine was preferable to Edward’s screaming.

The small estate on which we were living was almost completed when I came home from hospital, so we faced another packing session when Edward was just a few weeks old. This time, my father had found accommodation for us in a Liverpool suburb called Woolton, and we were expecting to move to our new home by the end of August.

Sale had been OK, but we hadn’t been able to settle. Frank became restless there, grew tired of having no proper job. So the idea of moving on appealed to us, as Frank was confident about getting work in Liverpool on the strength of my father’s reference. But I had grown fond of the house, which was not much more than a
modern box, all open-plan and pale cream walls. There was a school at the back, and I often watched the children playing on the field. The shopkeepers in Sale were friendly without being inquisitive, which taught me that a larger community, especially a middle-class one, was probably the safest place in which to hide. Everyone was too wrapped up in his or her own ambition to take an interest in us.