Starlight

by Stella Gibbons

  She learned Mrs Corbett’s language, during the next fortnight or so; setting herself to master it precisely as she would have done the sounds necessary for communicating with a horse or a bird. It was a simple language. Peggy thought the late A. J. Corbett had summed his wife up accurately when he had called her ‘a fool, but good-tempered’.

  One day at luncheon, she asked if it would be all right for her to go that afternoon to see her mother?

  ‘Quite all right, if you can manage to be back by not later than six … there’s this party. Not a real party as I said, but I shall want someone to help hand things,’ explained Mrs Corbett. ‘I daren’t hire anyone, haven’t for years, the servants get so upset … we’ll have our real party on Christmas Eve, of course, as usual. How is your mother, dear?’ pausing on her way to her afternoon rest. ‘Better, I hope?’ She stood, half-way up, looking down at the dark, slender, beautiful being in the hall below.

  Yes, thank you, Peggy thought that she was better. She seemed pleased at the idea of having her own home again. Peggy smiled up at Mrs Corbett, all grand-daughterliness.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Mrs Corbett glanced out through a window half-way up the stairs, at the busy suburb down behind the screening trees. ‘There’s nowhere like your own home, I always say.’ She climbed ponderously on, and Peggy went off on her own affairs.

  9

  ‘You’re looking better, Mum,’ she said to her mother an hour later.

  ‘Am I, dear?’ Mrs Pearson smiled. ‘I expect it’s the idea of having a place of my own again, after all these years wandering about. You don’t remember that little wooden house we had in Tashkent, do you?’

  ‘“The sloms of Tashkent” – I’ve heard that one ever since I can remember.’

  ‘That’s your father … it was a slum, I s’pose, but it was pretty. Fancy having a house with a wooden staircase up to the front door because of the mud the river brought along! That’s what I’ll always remember about it – and how we were always laughing, Dad and I, and when the storks came that first spring and nested on our roof “I’m sure of having a baby now,” I said, and your dad said, “Leave that to me.” He could be very naughty, in those days. We were ever so happy,’ she ended, in a wondering tone. ‘We were young, of course,’ she added, as a child repeats an excuse it has overheard used by adults, ‘I was eighteen and your dad was twenty-two. Easterns grow up so quick.’ She sighed.

  Peggy tried to see the picture, the little wooden house, stork’s nest, laughing young pair, through her mother’s eyes for a moment. Her expression was touched by derision and a little disbelief. No: it was useless. She could not see her young parents laughing in their happiness.

  ‘I wish you’d tell me why things went wrong,’ she said at last, lying back in the chair she had drawn up beside the bed, and put out her small hand, with its muscles made strong by handling horses, and gently covered her mother’s skeletal one.

  ‘How do you mean – wrong, dear?’ Mrs Pearson turned away, groping uneasily for the cigarettes under the pillow; her face was almost hidden in trailing silky curls. One corner of her lips, white now, showed between the gold.

  ‘Well, isn’t something wrong? You aren’t like most people’s mothers, are you, for a start?’

  ‘I’ve always been a good mother to you, Peggy, I’ve done my best, I’ve always put you first, I had such a struggle you wouldn’t believe with your grandmother, she was so harsh with you …’ Mrs Pearson dashed the curls aside, revealing her frightened face. ‘You don’t remember what it was like, you were too little –’

  ‘It’s all right, Mum, keep calm. I’m not complaining. I only wonder sometimes how your being ill started. That’s all.’

  ‘Your dad always saw to it you went to good schools,’ Mrs Pearson went on wildly, keeping her head turned away.

  ‘All right. All right. I hated them.’ Peggy’s voice was so calm that it seemed to quieten her mother. In a moment, Mrs Pearson tried to light a cigarette, then dropped it on to the eiderdown. ‘Light it for me, there’s a dear – ta.’ She drew in smoke, then let it out in a gasp and went on more quietly, ‘I had this power, you see …’

  ‘You mean you believed you had it and a lot of fools believed it too,’ Peggy said hardly.

  ‘It isn’t like that, dear.’ Her mother looked at her in gentle surprise. ‘I did have it. Some people do. I’ve been told I could be one of the great mediums.’

  Peggy shrugged. ‘It’s all absolutely beyond me … but go on.’

  ‘– and we were so poor, Peggy – your grannie, too. She put your dad out to work almost before he could walk properly. I’ve never forgiven her for that – herding sheep and running errands – and if she caught him begging or stealing because he was hungry she’d whip him. Whip him? – he was nothing but a baby. She’d always kept her self-respect, you see – read her Bible every day.’

  ‘Look, Mum. I’ve heard all this before, or most of it. But you’ve never told me how you first got ill.’

  Mrs Pearson did not answer for a moment. She lay on her side, the cigarette drooping between her lips and sending its delicate smoke upwards in one wavering grey column, while her beautiful eyes looked away; to somewhere or at something that was not in the room. She began to speak slowly, in a low, reminiscent tone.

  ‘We were so poor, and I had this power, and I could see into the future, you see, I could touch a ring or a scarf, and know … and once, it was one very cold morning and you were crying because you were hungry and there was hardly a bit in the house. And your dad –’ she paused, and her eyelids fell, covering her eyes. ‘I’m not blaming him. He couldn’t find work and we were almost desperate. And he was proud of me, too. He brought someone along.’

  Her voice died away. The room was quiet. Peggy got up, and wandered over to the window and, pushing aside the curtain, stood looking out over the desolation of the great crater and its machines, and the full moon riding above them. She let the curtain drop and turned back to the room.

  ‘Some man who wanted to know about some business speculation, and I told him.’ Her mother was half-lying, half-sitting up on the bed, looking straight across at her, and nodding so that each beautifully-shaped curl clustering round her face nodded too. ‘I used the power for that, you see, and after that … there were lots of them.’

  ‘People wanting their fortunes told?’

  ‘It seemed like hundreds. Every day. I got so tired, Peggy, and the power began to go. We got a lot of money. And your dad was so pleased! and so proud of me. He’d never had any money before, you see, dear, you mustn’t blame him. He’d always done such shocking rough work.’

  ‘It was overwork, in a way, then?’ Peggy put the question, though she was now slightly bored with the subject, and turning in thought to her own inner world. She suspected that her mother’s story did not … was not … there must be something … But time was drawing on, and she must be going, and she felt no strong interest.

  ‘Oh I wish you wouldn’t bother me!’ Mrs Pearson burst out, pressing her hands against her head, ‘I can’t bear talking about it. Leave me alone, please dear, do leave me alone. I told lies sometimes. There, now you know. Earned money by lying, and making-up. Because my power had gone.’

  ‘Now don’t get upset,’ Peggy went over to the bed and rearranged the blankets and eiderdown. ‘It was nothing – heaps of people must have done it. And if the customers got their money’s worth, what does it matter?’

  Her manner was like a nurse’s; detached and brisk.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The voice, whining and quick and high, came out from the coverings she had drawn up to her mother’s chin and made Peggy start. At the same instant, she caught an extraordinary kind of flash from the violetblue eye visible in the sideways-turned cheek, seeming for an instant to change its colour.

  ‘Mum?’ She bent over her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course, dearie, only a bit tired. And there’s a lot I want to tell you one day a
bout your grannie, now you’re old enough to know. She made this marriage late in life, you see –’ the voice sounded ordinary again.

  ‘Do you want some tea?’ Peggy interrupted, bored now.

  ‘I will if you’ll have it with me, lovey.’

  ‘I can’t, I must get back. She’s got a party on, and she’ll want me to hand things.’

  ‘Peggy, I wish you’d stay. Won’t you? Just till your dad gets back? It’s so lonely here … and … I get thinking … and … besides …’ Mrs Pearson whispered.

  Here, after a knock at the door suggesting a ladylike hesitation about intruding, Mrs George came in with a tray.

  ‘Here’s your tea,’ she said. ‘Oh – hullo,’ to Peggy. She set the tray down by the bed. ‘My god, four o’clock and nearly dark. Makes you sick, doesn’t it? Shall I pour out?’

  ‘I’ll do that – thanks.’ Peggy set about it in silence. Mrs George hesitated, moving Mrs Pearson’s collection of ornaments about on the mantelpiece and looking uncertainly from mother to daughter. She had suddenly become ravenous to know when the Pearsons would be going: Nora Pearson ‘gave her the creeps’.

  ‘Well, how’s that place of yours getting along?’ she demanded, accepting a cup from Peggy and sitting down by the electric fire, ‘if you’ve got workmen like the lot that came in to repair our second-floor-back ceiling, I pity you, that’s all.’

  ‘They aren’t a firm. It’s some men Tom knows,’ said Mrs Pearson, now revived by tea, and sitting up, ‘they’re to do with one of the shops – I don’t know much about it really. But Peggy says they’re working hard.’

  ‘Any idea when it’ll be ready?’ asked Mrs George, trying to sound casual.

  ‘By the twenty-third!’ Mrs Pearson exclaimed, smiling. ‘In three days’ time I’m moving in. In the afternoon. This young girl, the German –’

  ‘What German? You surely aren’t having one of those au pairs, Nora? Never there when you want them and always getting pregnant? And a German! You must want your head ex –’ She broke off, confused.

  Nora was half-mental anyway, having these queer turns and saying she could tell the future and all that; she really did need her head examining.

  ‘She’s not sixteen yet. She’s had a very hard life out there. She won’t get into trouble,’ Mrs Pearson answered, with that serenity she sometimes unexpectedly showed, which was so unlike her usual manner and which was accompanied as if by some celestial dancing-partner, with the sweetest of child-like smiles.

  ‘How’d you manage about all the formalities? Papers and that?’ Mrs George asked. ‘There’s no end of bother, getting these girls over here.’

  ‘Oh Tom doesn’t bother about papers and that kind of thing. You ought to know that by now, Marie. He knows someone who has a friend. It was easy, really,’ Mrs Pearson almost laughed.

  ‘You’ll have to let the police know. It’s the law, Nora – you’ll have to,’ said Mrs George warningly, driven to speak because she feared repercussions upon the family of George.

  ‘Tom’ll see to all that. It’ll be all right.’ Mrs Pearson leant back on the pillow, smiling still. ‘I know it will. I’ve seen.’

  ‘Mum, I really must go,’ Peggy interrupted, pulling on her gloves.

  ‘All right, if you must, dear.’ Her mother looked up at her, and Peggy stooped, and just touched her forehead. She nodded at Mrs George. ‘’Bye.’

  Mrs George saw no reason to give her more than a grimace and silence.

  ‘Peggy!’ Mrs Pearson sat up suddenly.

  ‘What, Mum? I’ve simply got to fly,’ irritably, and pausing at the door.

  ‘You aren’t walking back over the Heath, are you? Because there’s danger there, and I can’t protect you now. I could have, at one time, but now … it’s so hard. I can try, try until I feel as if I’m leaving my –’ she stopped, drawing in on a great gasp, her eyes fixed in a Medusa-stare.

  ‘Don’t fuss, Mum, you know I never take any notice of that kind of thing. Besides, I like danger. I’ll be all right. See you.’

  She shut the door.

  Mrs George was beginning something about the papers, and readily supplying details of the most recent horror, with her thick legs held out to the warmth and her second cup of tea at her elbow.

  ‘Don’t, please, Marie. It isn’t that kind of thing. But anywhere lonely, that’s been spoiled – that’s where they come.’ She spoke in an undertone that Mrs George could hardly hear. She leant back on the pillows looking exhausted.

  ‘Who come?’ Mrs George asked curiously; then lowering her voice, ‘I say – Nora. How about reading the tea-leaves?’ Her eyes were avid and scornful and afraid.

  Mrs Pearson shook her head without looking up. She had languidly reached for a women’s magazine from the table beside the bed and was looking with pleasure at each bright, enticing illustration; seriously considering the merits of every advertisement.

  ‘I can’t do that, dear,’ she said in a moment without glancing up, ‘or rather – I could if I’d let myself. But I said I never would again, you know. Not deliberately. Not even for a friend.’

  10

  Peggy walked quickly northwards. By quiet roads and short cuts she came out at last on to the former meadows of Parliament Hill, and walked straight up them, crunching through grass now lightly whitened by frost. She passed one or two people taking their dogs for a run. Below, London began to arrange itself into a colossal shallow bowl, filled with sparkles and glints.

  She stopped, once, to look down at the new skyscrapers in their fierce delicate beauty; they were squares, oblongs, towers, bastions, made of light without visible walls; palaces built for the god Mammon out of glittering shadowy silver and palest gold, insubstantial, chilling. Then she sped on. The air was very cold.

  On the summit of a hill she paused again. Moonlight had come into its own, and the lights below seemed remote. The greyish expanses of Hampstead Heath now spread away towards a barrier of ancient forest. She went straight towards it, down into a valley where clusters of reeds looked brown against the pallid grass.

  She glanced, indifferently, towards a shape that was moving erratically among the reeds; colourless as the tussocks around it: featureless, no more than a bundle of clothes that suggested humanity.

  The figure stooped, retrieved something from the grass, and, retracing its steps to a pile of objects that glimmered at a distance, placed it on the heap. At the same moment, Peggy heard the sound of a motor-cycle engine, and saw a red light coming down a distant path.

  She quickened her pace, and was soon at the top of the opposite slope and disappearing into the shadow of some large trees. She wanted no involvement with humanity.

  The engine stopped, and the rider dismounted, revealing himself in the chill light as a policeman, and a young one. He advanced leisurely towards the figure, which had stood still at his approach, with uplifted face turned towards him.

  ‘Busy?’ he inquired, when he was within a few paces of what he now saw to be an old man – and a mental case, he judged.

  ‘Isn’t it time you were at home, Grandad?’ he added, as it was borne in on upon him that here stood no ordinary old man but a true ancient, who must be nearer ninety than eighty.

  The young policeman, whose name was Charley Mackray, had tried to make his voice at once authoritative and kindly; indeed, his disapproval was mild. But it was disapproval; ninety-year-olds should be safe at home on a frosty night in December, full moon or no full moon.

  He had expected a whine about ‘doing no harm’ or a whine of some kind. But the voice that answered was no whine; it was weak, so worn by the use of almost a century that it barely carried across six feet of air, but it sounded sane, and it did not lack dignity.

  ‘I am collecting the litter,’ it said slowly. ‘It is an outrage on these meadows, all what’s left of the pools and streams where the monks once caught their Friday fish. On fine nights, this is what I do. I puts it into a heap. And I keeps the clean paper.’

&nbs
p; Charley Mackray did not know what to do or say for a moment, because he was so surprised. The reference to monks and fish and pools, too, had rather confused him: a number of other things and people seemed suddenly to have intruded themselves between the Law, represented by himself, and this grotesque figure.

  ‘Well, that’s nice of you, grandad, but there’s keepers for that job, you know, paid by the Council. That’s their work.’

  ‘The ’Eath covers six hundred acres. They can’t possibly collect all the litter scattered by all these ignorant people; there aren’t enough of ’em,’ was the retort.

  ‘Well, neither can you, if it comes to that … and at your time of life you ought to be at home, not out here – miles from anywhere and … getting colder every minute.’

  Charley here made a noise meant to playfully convey arctic chill, and stamped his feet on the path, which rang in satisfactory confirmation beneath their impact. ‘Now how about you getting along home?’

  ‘I’m not cold. I don’t want to go, not yet. I haven’t finished my work. You can leave me, officer. I shan’t come to no ’arm.’

  Charley looked at him, in growing irritation and helplessness. He was doing nothing wrong. But he was very old, he was plainly eccentric, and he ought to be somewhere safe, where people could keep an eye on him.

  ‘Suppose you came over bad suddenly and fell down – you might freeze,’ he almost pleaded, ‘you go home, be reasonable, don’t be like that,’ he ended youthfully.

  The old man, slowly stooping, showed signs of beginning to return to his task.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this – you’re loitering, that’s what you’re doing – what’s your name?’ Charley demanded with sudden official sternness. ‘Come on now.’

  ‘Lancelot Fisher,’ was the answer, given instantly, while the small figure seemed to freeze into the stillness of a bird surprised by a hawk. The voice had suddenly become almost inaudible.

  ‘Address?’ Charley made as if to take out his notebook, with fingers in the edge of a pocket, while wondering what on earth to do next.