by Shelley Day
This is it. This is now. This is Your Life, Stella Moon.
Stella folds the crepe paper back round the book and re-sticks the Sellotape as best she can. She lowers the lid of the little blue suitcase and presses the clasps shut. She lays her head back against the bristly velour of the seat and closes her eyes. Stella breathes. In. Out. In. Out. Bless you, Marcia. Stella doesn’t think she can do what Marcia asks, but she’ll give it a go. Let nobody say she didn’t even give it a go.
Chapter Two
Newcastle, and Stella gets off at Worswick Street bus station. The big clock says nearly five to eight. It’s dark, cold, drizzly. Stella pulls the cardigan about her and clicks around the corner in the kitten heels. Somehow she’s going to have to get a coat. She’s looking out for the number 61, but any of the 60s will probably do. Everything looks the same – not what you’d expect, after seven years. But places don’t change that much, not really: it’s you that changes. What you see is where you’re at. Who said that? Stella can’t remember, but there seems to be some truth in it. She’ll take a chance with whichever of the 60s comes first.
Coming round the corner, Stella sees there’s a 65 already there with its doors wide open and its wipers humming. Stella steps on and slides some coins under the glass.
‘Chillingham Road, please, far end.’ Her own voice unfamiliar, far away, yet its loudness surprises her.
The bus man doesn’t seem to notice. Stella takes the ticket and pockets the change. She sits down near the front, the little blue suitcase on her knee. On the wall behind the driver’s cab there is an advert for Brook Street Bureau, a recruitment agency. New life means job. She’ll have to get a job. She’ll need a reference. Marcia. Marcia’s not exactly the ideal person to give a reference, though, is she? But there’s no-one else. It wouldn’t look very good, would it? A prison warder for a referee. Stella will have to think about that one. But not just now. First things first. Grandma Willoughby.
Even if she hasn’t got a free room at the boarding house, Grandma Willoughby will make space for Stella. She’ll let Stella stay until she gets something sorted.
‘Forgive and forget,’ Grandma Willoughby will say, ‘let bygones be bygones.’ She’ll make a pot of earl grey – Ruby Willoughby always adds the bergamot to the black Indian leaves herself – she can’t be doing with any of this new-fangled, ready-made rubbish. She’ll set out the china cups with the primroses on. The two of them will sit down at the big oak table with the thick chenille cloth, the brown glass vase overflowing with powdery mimosa the colour of egg yolk. A biscuit barrel with gypsy creams and home-made shortbread with bits of almond in. Stella can almost hear the clink of teaspoons against china, smell the scent of the flowers and feel the warmth of the fire burning in the grate. She’ll hug Grandma Willoughby for a long time, resting her cheek against Grandma Willoughby’s, soft and papery, breathing in the smell of rosewater, lavender and a hint of rouge.
She’ll go on hugging and hugging until Grandma says, ‘Away with you now, our Stella, and let me get on,’ as she pats the back of Stella’s hand with the pads of her fingers. ‘You stay as long as you like, our Stella,’ she’ll say, disappearing into the scullery. ‘My home will always be your home. I think you know that.’
Our Stella.
Grandma Willoughby will not have washed her hands of Our Stella. Not like she washed them of Our Muriel.
But Stella hasn’t heard from her grandmother in seven years. No replies to any letters. Some had even come back ‘not known at this address’. Stella had received no Christmas wishes and no Many Happy Returns. But it will all be different when Grandma Willoughby sees Stella – when she sees Our Stella. When she sees her in the flesh, the past will melt away as if it had never happened. All that will be forgotten. Forgiven and forgotten. Because Grandma Willoughby is not one for bearing grudges. That’s what she always says: ‘Blood’s thicker than water.’ Yes, that’s what she’d said when Stella was sent to that convalescent place and then to that children’s home. ‘Blood’s thicker than water.’ That’s what she’d said as the weeks turned into months and still Stella couldn’t speak, couldn’t get a single word out by way of reply. Grandma Willoughby had been there, in the background. But she didn’t often visit. Not after the first few times. After a while it no longer seemed important, and the doctors said that it’s probably for the best.
Now, it’s going to be different. This time it’s going to be alright. A long time has passed. Seven years. And blood is thicker than water. It’s going to be like old times, like Stella never went away.
The bus is crawling along Shields Road, stopping at every traffic light, taking forever. The street is desolate, the shops all closed and their mesh shutters pulled down and padlocked. A streetlamp that’s lost its yellow covering flickers in the rain. The air is foggy with coal smoke. The bus stops outside the Apollo and an old couple gets off. Gone with the Wind is on. Muriel loved that film. She said Clark Gable was the perfect man and the spit of Stella’s dad.
‘Where’s my dad?’ Only once had Stella suddenly dared to ask the forbidden question. The words had blurted themselves out of her mouth before Stella had time to stop and think. There’d surely be ructions. Even now, Stella feels herself shrink at the memory of it. Muriel had hesitated before she replied. To Stella’s surprise, Muriel hadn’t gone off the deep end. Muriel had just shrugged. She said nothing, but Stella saw that her mother’s eyes had gone blank. Muriel’s eyes could go blank and stay blank, like she’d gone off far away and somewhere else, and couldn’t or wouldn’t come back. Stella resolved never to ask that question again. A silent pact had been made between mother and daughter, and it would never be broken. As if in recognition of Stella’s respect and compliance, Muriel had crouched down in front of her and, holding tight to the tops of her arms, had planted a loud kiss on Stella’s forehead.
‘I love you, Stella Moon,’ she said, ‘I always have and I always will, so don’t you ever forget that.’ Then the strangeness had passed and everything went back to normal and life was full of all the ordinary sounds again – Grandma Willoughby banging about in the scullery, Baby Keating screaming his lungs out, Frank Fanshaw lurking in the passageway before clumping away up the stairs.
The bus turns left into Chillingham Road. At last. At long last, she’s nearly there. Stella just wants to get to the boarding house, get to Grandma Willoughby and back where she belongs. She can’t wait to see Grandma Willoughby! What a surprise she’ll have when she opens the door and sees Stella standing there! Our Stella. Home again after more than seven years.
By the time Stella gets off the bus, it’s raining good and proper and she’s dying for the toilet. She gets drenched walking the fifty yards from the bus stop. She covers her head with the little blue suitcase but needn’t have bothered. There’s a wind and it’s blowing the wet everywhere. Stella walks as quickly as the kitten heels will allow, the thin dress clinging to her bare wet legs, rain running down the back of her neck, stinging at her eyes. Nearly there, Stella turns the corner, looks up to cross the road, and cannot, cannot, cannot believe what she sees in front of her.
Only a few seconds ago Stella had been tempted to sod the shoes and run the last bit right to her grandmother’s door. But now she stops dead on the far side of the road. Grandma Willoughby’s house is boarded up, deserted, derelict, condemned.
Chapter Three
Stella can hardly bear to look at the house. Wooden boards have been hammered over every window. The garden – once Grandma Willoughby’s pride and joy – is spewing tangled weeds and brambles, broken beer bottles, crisp packets and soggy newspapers. She looks up at the top of the house, at the little attic flat where Stella lived with Muriel, the little flat that was home to the two of them in the days before Stella was old enough to know anything different, too young to know anything was wrong, the days before Grandpa Worthy passed away, before Baby Keating was even born, before he disappeared, b
efore Muriel was banished from the house altogether. Nobody’s bothered to board the window up and the glass is smashed, the soaking tattered curtains flap-flap-flapping in the rain.
Home. Look at it. Abandoned. Derelict. Grandma Willoughby’s house has been left to rot. Stella should have listened to Marcia, she shouldn’t have come back here; she should have made proper plans. But it’s hard to plan anything when the future is just a great, gaping hole.
Grandma Willoughby’s hostility, yes, Stella might have expected. Her rejection even, Stella could understand. But this, this nothingness, this terrible dereliction – this is something Stella never imagined would be waiting. Where is her grandmother? How long has the house been like this? Stella should have done like she promised Marcia, done things properly, made proper plans. It’s late. It’s dark. It’s cold and it’s wet. She hasn’t got a coat, she’s already soaked and she’s nowhere to go. And she’s completely worn out. Stella stares across at the boarded-up house and it sinks in how utterly worn out and exhausted she is. Marcia and everything that matters, a whole world away.
Stella’s been foolish. You can’t just go back to a place and expect everything to be the same as it was before. Things move on, even if you don’t. Mistakes once made are made forever. You can’t undo them. If you could turn the clock back – God knows, Stella would have done that long ago. She’d have done it the instant Muriel died. She would never have pushed her.
You’ve paid for that, Stella. You’ve paid your dues.
Without checking for traffic, the rain in her face, the wet dress clinging to her body, Stella wanders out into the road. Oh, to disappear, this moment, to dissolve into the smell of wet pavements, into the wafts of coal smoke from a thousand-thousand chimneys, to dissolve into the sound of tyres on tarmac, of water rushing along gutters, gushing down drains. Oh, to dissolve with the rain.
Come on, Stella. You have to keep going. There are no other choices to be made. Do it for Marcia.
Don’t wander in the road. There’s traffic. Get onto the pavement. At least get onto the pavement.
You’ve come this far. You have to keep going. You promised Marcia. You promised her.
She’s got money, Stella’s got money – at least she’s got some money, they give you money when you come out, to last you till you get signed on. And Marcia, bless her, had given Stella three quid out of her wages. Stella puts a hand up to her chest. Still there, three pound notes, folded up, tucked safe in her bra. Marcia told her the Probation will sort accommodation – that’s their job, they do it for you. But she’s missed her chance now. It’s far too late to go to the Probation. She’ll have to stay in the house. She’ll have to break in.
The front gate is rotting off its hinges and it’s padlocked. Stella puts the little blue suitcase over first, then hitches up her dress and climbs over, scraping the inside of her thigh as her foot slips on the wet wood. She catches the dress on a nail as she lowers herself down the other side. The old silk tears as she wrenches it free. Stella hears the tear. Over the sounds of the city, the noise of the traffic and the beating of the rain, Stella hears the cloth tear and she cries and cries as though her own flesh had been torn. She cries and she doesn’t know what she is crying about.
Stella sits down on the top step and fumbles to light a Number Six with wet hands and a damp box of matches. The matches are almost all gone before she can get the cigarette lit. But she manages, she smokes it quickly, and lights a second before flicking the dump over the gate and into the road. Be logical. Be practical. Tomorrow she’ll find out what’s happened to her grandmother. There’s nothing she can do about that tonight. There’s nothing she can do about anything tonight. Stella lights a third cigarette and registers that her hands are shaking. It’s probably just the cold. She’ll smoke just one more.
Ruby Willoughby had been like a mother to Stella, effectively brought her up, what with Muriel always so unreliable – unfit’s the word, Ruby always said, make no bones about it, unfit is the only word. Muriel was headstrong, unpredictable, had no regard for others, gallivanting off God knows where. Muriel, away with the pigeons, away with the fairies, selfish through and through – that was Muriel. The boarders all loved Ruby, of course they did: her homely eccentricities called forth a kind of loyalty that made them all feel special, made them feel – sad, lonely misfits that they were – that they belonged. On Ruby’s cue they too shunned Muriel – ‘Poor Muriel,’ they called her, imagining their fear of her was safely concealed, their dread nicely hidden behind a façade of concern. To call her ‘Poor Muriel’ gave their hatred a benign edge. But they didn’t feel sorry for Muriel, not one little bit. No, their eyes looked at her with fear and with longing, not concern or pity. Poor Muriel had a strange charisma nobody could stand or cared to understand.
The atmosphere in the house when Muriel was around filled little Stella with a terrible dread. She didn’t know where it came from or what it meant. Everyone was on their guard and trying not to show it. Blank smiles, empty eyes, tip-toe politeness, watchful concern. And all that sly snickering as soon as Poor Muriel’s back was turned. Always the bleak expectation that Ruby Willoughby would ‘do something about it’ – she was the landlady and the wretched Muriel’s mother, after all. But if Ruby Willoughby was going to do anything about anything, she’d do it in her own time and in her own way. Stella, forever watchful, would feel their eyes penetrating her, judging her as they judged Muriel. A child, aware of the distrust and disgust of others, their silent condemnation, as though she, Stella, should be held to account for Muriel’s imagined misdeeds, as though Stella too were tainted with some unfathomable curse.
Muriel came and went at the boarding house seemingly as the mood took her. Every time she showed up, Ruby was at pains to act normal. Ruby set great store by Normal, and there was always a chance that things had somehow righted themselves – might still right themselves – if nobody meddled, if nobody aggravated Muriel. The trouble was, nobody – especially Ruby – knew how not to aggravate Muriel. And once Muriel was on her high horse, well, Ruby could no longer turn a blind eye. The veneer of normality would collapse as Ruby bustled, lifting things up and banging them down in exaggerated motions, her eyes quick and averted, her mouth set. In the end she’d speak through clenched teeth, she’d tell Muriel to go and be quick about it. But Muriel was every bit as stubborn as Ruby. She wouldn’t leave on command, not without a fight. Ruby would end up threatening legal action.
‘Just go,’ she’d insist. ‘And no, our Stella’s not going with you. Over my dead body. Stella’s staying put. Here with me.’ And when still Muriel didn’t leave, Ruby would start yelling and screaming. ‘I’ll go back to the solicitor, I’ll take it to the High Court. I’m warning you, don’t you force my hand, our Muriel.’ That final threat was the one that always made Muriel go. Till the next time.
It hadn’t been so bad when Grandpa Worthy was alive, but things got worse after he died. Then, when baby Keating was abducted, that was the last straw. Ruby told Muriel to keep away from the boarding house, or else. After that, Stella saw little of her mother and was never allowed to go away with her, not even to the Beach Hut, though Muriel tried many times to take her. Stella found Court papers stuffed behind the doilies at the back of the sideboard drawer. But Stella did see her mother on some Wednesdays, when Muriel was permitted to collect her from the dancing class. Back at the boarding house, Ruby Willoughby had better things to do: Wednesdays she conducted her weekly Sittings – her fixed appointments with the dead.
Those Wednesdays, trouble always brewed and Stella didn’t always get to the dancing class as a result. She would sit on the back step, the cat on her lap, her hands buried deep in his warming fur, pretending not to listen. She never quite made sense of why it was her name the two of them spat back and forth. Sometimes the cat would jump down and make off, his ears back and Stella would sit there, staring at her shoes. She could lick her finger and rub imaginary sp
ots off the patent leather shoes Muriel had brought, which were causing the latest ructions. Or she could recite psalms backwards under her breath. She knew backwards was the devil’s work and she shouldn’t be doing it, but she didn’t care. She also knew the longer she kept it up, the sooner the parting would happen – Muriel turning tail, swearing and slamming and spitting on the floor, Grandmother Willoughby cursing in a language Stella couldn’t understand. Then, when the house had gone quiet, Grandma Willoughby would sit in her chair by the fire in the back kitchen, her eyes closed and her chest heaving, the herb-cupboard door gaping open.
Stella finishes her cigarette and flicks the dump into the front garden in among the brambles. She’s stopped crying and wipes her nose on the cardigan and her wet face with the back of her hand. She gets to her feet. Muriel is dead. Seven years, and she hasn’t got used to Muriel being dead, not really. Grandma Willoughby is probably dead as well. And what about Frank Fanshaw? What if there’s nobody left?
There is no point in speculation. Marcia talking. Deal with the here and now. Do what has to be done. Action.
Then when the time comes to make sense of it all, write it down.
Stella looks down at her soaking clothes and nips together the faded green silk where the dress is torn. How can a dress be sad?
Chapter Four
Stella pushes at the front door, knowing full well as she does that it’s locked. The big bay window is boarded up with plywood. Someone’s sprayed it with graffiti – a big jumble of colours and strangely shaped letters Stella can’t read.
Tomorrow she’ll knock at the dentist across the way and find out what’s going on. Mr Cohen will know: he always makes it his business to know what’s what. Or there’s Mrs Carson, if she’s still there. Probably not a good idea to knock on the Carsons, though – it’s unlikely they’d talk to Stella, not after what she’s done. Mrs Carson is – or was – a religious woman. Chapel, one of the brigade who’d written to Stella when she first went to prison, making their feelings known. Mrs Carson’s was not a friendly letter: she was one of those who thought Stella had gotten off too lightly. Should have got life, evil little madam, a hanging is too good for the likes of her. Bad lot, others had chimed, those Willoughbys, they’re as queer as they come. But Oh Dear God, think of it, think of that poor Muriel – as bad as she was, she didn’t deserve to die. No, not a good idea to knock on the Carsons. Stella picks up the little blue suitcase and walks round into the back lane. She has to find somewhere to pee or she’s going to wet herself any moment. She’s going to have to climb in.
