Starlight

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Shrill – like,’ he said, ‘more like a kid’s voice. Somethink about green – green grass in a tunnel. Very queer, it was. Quite uncanny. It properly upset one of the ladies in our ’ouse, Miss Barnes, Gladys Barnes. Almost crying, she was.’

  ‘Miss Barnes? Do you live in the same house with Miss Barnes? She comes to church here.’

  ‘She may do, for all I knows. It’s a free country. She may do,’ was the answer, given with dignified indifference. ‘But she certingly lives in my house.’

  Gerald was rebuking himself for feeling a sense of congratulation that at least two of his most trying parishioners were under one roof …

  As the hour of seven at that moment sounded faintly, high amid the clouds and the trumpeting wind, he modelled his conduct on that of his Vicar and said decidedly:

  ‘Well, thank you for telling me all this, Mr Fisher –’

  ‘When I assumes a name every month, there’s no harm in calling me by that name. I have no objection. Benjamin Jowett.’

  Gerald ignored this. There were limits. ‘I hope we may be able to help Mrs Pearson. The next thing will be for one of us to call on her – I am sure Mr Geddes would – and … talk to her. One of us will do that immediately after the holiday. And now – home, I think, don’t you?’

  As he led the way towards the vestry he felt a mingling of priestly fatherhood towards the obstinate soul dwelling in the ancient flesh shuffling beside him, mingled, in an odd way, with a sensation that was faintly filial.

  Slowly they made their way, Mr Corliss leading and Mr Fisher following, down the nave sunk in shadows. The only light now shone by the altar, where the flowers and evergreens glimmered. The wind still shouted in the dim rafters. Mr Fisher began slowly to speak.

  ‘I only hope she’ll make you welcome. Very set against the church, she is, I gavver. ’Eard ’er taking on against the bells this morning. Quite carrying on, she was. Angry.’

  18

  Mrs Pearson suggested that Gladys should take Erika out to the Archway Road and show her how to shop in England, and Gladys eagerly agreed; company was company, and to be in the position of instructress, guide and patron to a young girl strongly suspected of being mental and with origins shrouded in interesting mystery, was an attractive prospect. To do Gladys justice, some real kindness also came into the matter.

  Promising herself some interesting talk with her charge, she set out one morning through the dull streets, under the dull January sky, towards the Archway Road, accompanied by Erika, in a new bright red coat and spike heels.

  Erika had a note in a red purse and, under Gladys’s supervision, was to buy a large packet of fish fingers, a large packet of frozen peas, a white loaf, a large tin of peaches and some cream.

  Gladys, while envying the lavishness in housekeeping implied in this list, for her part intended to keep her eyes open for a nice piece of stuffed rolled breast of lamb. Last you three days – if you was careful – and only twice the price of those fish fingers. She meant to instruct Erika in the craft of making every penny pull its weight, reduced to pathetically microscopic dimensions though that weight might be.

  Archway Road was just another street to Erika, and streets, for her, were associated with weary limbs and aching feet and the continual dreamlike drifting past of indifferent faces – faces – faces – the ever-increasing weight of her grandmother’s bony arm leaning on hers, and the unrelenting cold. Hunger in the long streets, and the glare of sun on the bonnets of great pink or pale-blue cars; hunger and the doubt whether there would be food that night; hunger and cramped sleep in hovels or even rain-lashed doorways. Pain from hunger, icy-wet feet, fingers without feeling from the merciless cold. The wind’s long howl.

  ‘Cheer up for gawd’s sake,’ remarked Gladys, observing the reflection of these memories in her face. ‘What say we have a cup of tea after we done our bit of shopping, warm us up, might go in one of those Wimpies, Mrs P. wouldn’t mind I’m sure, ever so kind, gave you that coat, very smart those heels, wonder you can walk in them.’

  But what Erika had suffered in dumb resentment from hard pavements and wrenched, weary muscles, she now suffered with something like cheerfulness because she was a girl, and over fifteen years old, and because the shoes were the first pretty ones she had ever owned.

  Pretty was the word in English: Mrs Pearson said it often. Erika kept her face, still overcast with memories, bent down into the damp English wind so that she could look at the glossy brown plastic shoes and their little bows. Pretty.

  They went briskly – that is, Gladys went briskly, dragging Erika in her wake – from shop to shop, and gradually Erika began to have the very rare sensation hitherto associated, for her, with cessation of cold, and a half-filled stomach: pleasure.

  There was no painfully prolonged bargaining, no apprehension, no-one shouted at them or told them to be off. (Gladys would have had a good deal to say about the notion of anyone shouting ‘Be off’, at them, but Erika had not enough English yet to breathe her vague thoughts aloud.) The fabulously expensive foods, wrapped in shiny stuff, went into Gladys’s shopping bag. Oranges and carrots glowed through the grey air. Erika, as usual, felt hungry.

  ‘There!’ observed Gladys at last, poking a pound of bright green sprouts down into the capacious depths, ‘nice sprouts, the frost’s done ’em good, nothing like a bit of frost for livening up the sprouts, Annie’ll like those, we’ll just go over there and see’f we can see a nice bit of rolled breast, then we’ll ’ave our tea. Won’t we?’ She suddenly squeezed Erika’s stick-thin arm, her face beaming with companionship and the thought of boiling hot tea. ‘And what say a bun?’

  Erika nodded. Her lips quivered; it might have been hunger; it might have been a smile.

  This large sugary plump bun floating in Gladys’s fancy was due to a certain expansion in her ideas about housekeeping.

  The repainting of the cottages, the arrival of central heating, a telephone, and grand furniture, and, finally Mrs Pearson, ever so kind and making no trouble, had given her a sensation of sharing in this prosperity; not as a conscious pensioner, or someone out to get what they could from a wealthy landlady, but more as a child might revel in the golden glow of a sunny day and feel itself enriched.

  Gladys now felt that she could go to a better shop for a whole pound of sprouts, and treat poor Erika to a bun.

  Erika was divided between voluptuous sensations centred on bun and tea, and a dim wonder that frost – one of the English words she did know – could be ‘good’ for anything.

  Gladys, having exchanged some pleasurable back-chat with the butcher’s young man and chosen a satisfactory piece of rolled and stuffed meat, battled her way through the shopping crowds and charged across the road in front of the impatiently throbbing traffic, monsters of ugliness and power briefly held in leash by the red light.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she demanded suddenly, when the buns and teas had been ordered and they were sitting in the steamy, crowded, deliciously warm little café.

  Erika, who had been slowly gazing about her, brought her eyes to rest on Gladys’s face.

  ‘Erika.’

  ‘’Course, I know that, silly, I mean your other name, like mine’s Barnes. Erika what?’

  After a longish pause, there was a shake of the head.

  ‘Go on!’ cried Gladys, registering unbelief with every note.

  Another pause, filled this time by the arrival of the tea and buns, slapped down by a cross, pretty little Italian girl. Gladys fell upon hers, urging Erika to do likewise, but after a satisfying gulp and swallow she went back to her subject.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘you must know it, girl.’

  However, noticing that her companion’s munching and sipping had ceased and that the usual shadow had returned to her face, she cried robustly – ‘Oh well, ne’mind, Erika will do us all right, won’t it?’ and resumed her eating and drinking.

  But faint new feelings were struggling in Erika. She set herself conscio
usly to search, fishing confusedly about in memory, because she was grateful to Gladys for providing the treat of hot tea and bun.

  ‘Grössmutter’ – she said at last – ‘Frau Hartig.’

  ‘Hartig! There you are!’ cried Gladys. ‘You’re Miss Erika Hartig! Got a whole name for you now, haven’t we?’ and Erika, after a long stare at her triumphant face, slowly nodded.

  ‘Miss – Erika – Hartig,’ repeated Gladys taking a huge bite of starch and sugar. ‘Now we are all right, Froline Erika Hartig – Miss.’

  It may be said that the slow upward climb of Erika began from that moment. Up till then, all her sensations had been negative ones; cessation of cold, absence of hunger’s pain, the end of endless weary wandering. But here, with the gaining of Fraulein – miss in English – her stumbling foot struck rock. She was a person.

  ‘Miss … Erika … Hartig,’ she repeated softly. ‘Miss …’

  ‘Here, let’s have another bun, eh?’ cried Gladys recklessly, ‘just to celebrate.’

  The dull days of February went by. Mrs Corbett suddenly broke their quiet by calling Peggy into her bedroom one morning and announcing that she was going to Bermuda.

  ‘For six weeks, dear. I cannot stand these grey skies of ours a minute longer. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

  ‘Marvellous, Mrs Corbett. Wonderful to see blue skies again.’

  ‘Oh I know, dear – and flowers – I’ve been keeping count, and do you know there hasn’t been a break in the clouds, to my certain knowledge, for ten days. Ten days without a gleam of sun – I do really feel it’s more than one ought to be asked to endure.’ She rolled her kind, stupid eyes round on Peggy.

  ‘I think you’re absolutely right. If I could go, I’d be off tomorrow.’

  It was not a hint. She had known from the first instant that she would not be going too; what arrangements had been made for herself, she would doubtless hear in a moment. But it amused her to make this kind of frank remark sometimes.

  ‘Ah, that’s the point – I wanted to talk to you about that (do sit down, dear – that’s right). Now about you – I want you to look after my boys for me, in their own dear home, where they’re comfortable. Everything will go on for them just the same as usual. I’m afraid they’re going to miss me dreadfully. I was tempted to order cream for them, every day while I’m away, to make up a little. But I thought, no. Their health comes first, and it would be very bad for their little figures. Don’t you agree?’

  Peggy nodded. Mrs Corbett’s way of talking to the dogs often irritated her, but she had to admit that her love for them was neither selfish nor unintelligent; their jet-bright eyes and satin coats and lively leapings proved that.

  ‘And about Arnold, dear. I think it would be better if he stayed at the Club.’

  Peggy nodded again; this time, her agreement was with all her heart. Her time was not worth much to her, but she did not want to spend it in fighting off Arnold Corbett: sulks so often ended in attack.

  ‘The servants might be silly about – they might be silly,’ Mrs Corbett explained. ‘They’ve been with us for such a long time, you see, ever since my husband’s early days, when he was starting his firm; Hobbs was one of his mechanics, and Mrs Hobbs got into the way of coming in to help from time to time, and Doris is her sister, and old Hetty was just a friend. I even got Frobisher through them. They’ve never been trained, of course, they just drifted into the job, and now I should never dream of getting rid of them. But they are crotchety; I admit it, and so jealous of everyone I have in the house. Arnold is always saying I ought to pension them off. But I’m used to them and they’re used to me. Now, dear, I’m afraid to-day will be a busy one for you. I want you to arrange about my tickets and everything.’

  ‘Are you going alone, Mrs Corbett?’

  Yes, Mrs Corbett was going alone. In the hotel at Hamilton she would find other rich old men and women to gossip and play cards with. Peggy came out of her private world and went into that other, unreal one; of telephones, and routes, and times, and reservations. A week passed quickly in this bustle.

  When she came down to her lunch, after Mrs Corbett had been gone some hours, she found Arnold there, returned from driving his mother to the airport. She lost no time in making her attitude plain.

  ‘I expected you to be lunching at your club,’ she said, as she seated herself; she was wearing a dark tweed suit, which made her appear very slender. She looked at him steadily; her fingers were keeping open the place in a book.

  ‘All right, all right. I only want a bite of lunch. I do live here.’

  Peggy employed herself with serving the dish which Doris was holding before her, and they began to eat.

  ‘Aren’t you going to read?’ he asked presently.

  ‘My manners aren’t my strong point, but I do draw the line at reading at meals when someone else is there.’

  ‘I don’t mind, if you want to.’

  ‘It isn’t an interesting book,’ said Peggy, and smiled, which caused him to exclaim:

  ‘I say, I do wish you’d be a bit nice to me sometimes.’

  She paused, as if thinking about an answer, then said indifferently:

  ‘I suppose you mean let you kiss me.’

  ‘Right first time,’ he said, laughing. ‘You’re what my erks in the R.A.F. would have called a caution, aren’t you? Care to make any further suggestions? I’m game if you are.’

  ‘No thank you …’

  ‘I’m clearing out this afternoon, so you can draw a deep breath.’

  Peggy said nothing, but smiled once more; it was as if a stormy sunlight had touched her face.

  He was staring at her miserably.

  ‘You’ve absolutely landed me, you know,’ he added suddenly. ‘Hit me for six. You could do anything you liked with me – even marry me, and that’s something I’ve never said to any woman yet. I don’t know how you’ve managed it – you’ve been ruder to me than any girl I’ve ever known – and when you smile like that – I could die for you. That’s exactly how I feel, and I’ve never felt like it in my life. Never. About any woman. I could die for you.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Peggy, getting up from the table, ‘you should read Kipling on that – ‘I am dying for you and you are dying for another’. That’s what he wrote about our situation – if it is a situation. He’d come across it before, perhaps.’

  She went out of the room.

  ‘But I love you,’ he said, as if in astonishment, to the elegant disorder of the big table and the impersonal afternoon light, ‘I love you.’

  19

  By tea-time, he had gone. Peggy settled herself into the routine of the house with cat-like satisfaction. The servants waited on her with obvious dislike and a curiosity about her comings and goings which amused her; she had the dogs for company.

  She saw Arnold from time to time when he looked in for his letters; sometimes, he would telephone to ask if there were any for him and keep her for a few minutes in conversation – to listen to her voice, she supposed, indifferently.

  She didn’t believe that he had never spoken of marriage to any woman. In her experience, men of Arnold’s type frequently spoke of marriage, but always in such a way that no definite proposal could be extracted from their remarks. They looked on themselves as glittering prizes, and enjoyed dangling themselves tantalizingly in front of women’s noses. She sometimes gave a thought to poor Gwen Palmer, and she did not think it would kill Arnold Corbett to see that he and his money were not always wanted. Whether it would ‘do him good’ or not, she neither knew nor cared.

  Once a week, she went over to see her mother. Her relationship with her father expressed its tensions in cool short exchanges, often with a sting in them, but his satisfaction in Mrs Pearson’s improved health and spirits since her settling into Lily Cottage was so strong that he could not keep it to himself, and it burst out in questions. ‘Doesn’t your mother look better? Haven’t you noticed it too? She’s livelier, isn’t she? She enjoys her life
, now.’

  He spoke of enjoyment as a thing other people experienced. Bliss he knew, and cessation of suffering, but never ordinary simple enjoyment. His mother had laid the foundations of passion and pain in him both strong and four-square. Her dour nature, absorbed always in the moral problems looming beyond the practical ones of their poor life, had pressed like an iron clamp on the soft voluptuous one of a little half-Eastern boy; and Thomas’s jokes, Thomas’s joys, were not felt like those of ordinary men.

  He went about his business during the day; meeting his managers or looking in at the fruit and vegetable shops in crowded Stratford or comfortable Ealing; sometimes taking a ten-shilling note or some silver and coppers from the hand of the derelict in charge of one of his junk shops as he walked past it; telephoning the rent-collectors who went round his dilapidated properties in Islington or Kennington.

  All his projects were on a small scale … but his wiliness and persistence and his contempt for the law, blent with a natural dexterity in handling money, made him successful.

  He owned solid things: houses, ship-loads of half-spoiled fruit, dilapidated little shops, collections of other people’s battered and abandoned possessions. He could never wring from them enough money to buy the laughter and the security his mother had denied him when he was a child.

  And in the evenings, when his crowded, yet curiously shapeless, day was over, he would go home to the small house with the bearded mask sneering by its door.

  An Oriental’s day; devious, and full of coffee-drinking and long, apparently aimless conversations which caused blistering private comment among the enslaved creatures he employed. From these conversations, something solid always emerged which profited Thomas Pearson.

  Mrs Geddes, a silent, calm, stout lady in her late seventies, began her régime at the Vicarage by a gesture which – had anyone there had the kind of imagination to see it as such – would have appeared symbolic.