Beyond the Stars

by Sarah Webb

  Thank you very, very much.

  27 THE AVENUE

  HIGH STREET

  TOWN

  Dear Lorcan,

  You are most welcome.

  Please tell your grandda that the work on his heating will start on Tuesday. The men have already packed up the spare van with tools and pipes and radiators and rabbit-flavoured doggy treats.

  Yours truly,

  Dear Mr Lee,

  I’ve just got back from Grandda’s place. The heating is already working, and he says you’re going to pay for all the heating oil he needs. That’s super generous of you. Grandda’s house was baking hot and we all had to sit in our T-shirts. Psycho was sweating like a pig.

  Thank you so, so, so, so much.

  27 THE AVENUE

  HIGH STREET

  TOWN

  Dear Lorcan,

  You are most welcome. It has been a pleasure dealing with your family. Your parents are fine people, your grandfather is an … interesting man, and Psycho isn’t all that scary – once you get to know him.

  I am glad everything has been sorted out. I confess I will miss your letters.

  Yours,

  Dear John,

  My teacher, Mr Jordan, has asked everyone in our class to write a letter to someone they admire, and I chose you.

  I admire you because you are kind and funny and thoughtful and you have changed my family’s life for ever.

  Love from your very good friend,

  Eoin Colfer is best known for the Artemis Fowl series, which has topped the bestseller lists around the world and won numerous awards. He has also written the WARP series and the Legends series for younger readers, as well as crime books for adults. He lives in Wexford, Ireland, with his wife Jackie, his sons Finn and Seán and an overactive imagination. Eoin is currently the Irish Children’s Laureate, Laureate na nÓg.

  Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick is an author and illustrator. Her publications include the picture books There, The Sleeping Giant, I’m a Tiger Too! and I Am I, and the novels Timecatcher, Dark Warning and Hagwitch. Her work has won the CBI Book of the Year Award four times. Marie-Louise lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.

  I am writing this down because Dick is such a pain in the neck. Everything has to be his way or go back to where you came from. He would break the sky if he could, and throw back the waves from the black rocks below our hut. He is what we call stubborn as a bent nail, with a look in his eyes that would scare cows. And cows are generally too stupid to be scared even on their way to the slaughterhouse. Dick says write it down. So I am.

  Americans love the poor Irish bit, says Dick. And your pathetic story has all the ingredients for a Hollywood movie. An orphan farmed out to a crazy old man. Gold dust. Also when you are occupied scribbling in that notebook I can listen to The Archers in peace.

  Not that I am an orphan, technically. But my father is gone, and my mother might as well be, for all the good she’s done me.

  I wanted to put this story down in order, but Dick says no. Start with a bang and fill in the past through flashbacks. People will be so impressed with the first episode that they’ll be willing to sit through the boring bits.

  I asked Dick when he became such an expert on literature, and he shot me one of his cow-scaring looks.

  So I am going to begin with the robbery of the post office in the village of Lock or I will not get any supper. I want you to imagine that it is a cold January morning. People are just starting to queue up with their pension books, and across the street in our stolen Morris Minor, Mammy is loading her Webley revolver.

  Lock. South-East Ireland. 1955.

  That day was my birthday. Fourteen years old. And to celebrate, Mammy was bringing me along on a job. Her first post-office robbery.

  “I’m only doing this because I love you, my Winter baby,” she said, slotting another bullet into the Webley revolver’s chamber. “Some mothers would leave their little boys at home, but I want us to do things together.

  “You are to be my blue-eyed lookout,” Mammy continued, licking her fingers to smooth my hair. “If you see a fat sergeant waddling down the street, you beep the horn. Then I can be ready for him inside the door.”

  I didn’t want to be in a criminal gang, but I didn’t want to see Mammy dragged off to lady prison because I kept my smart ideas to myself either, so I said:

  “One beep could be any old horn. Why don’t I sound three beeps?”

  Mammy leaned her forehead against mine, her blonde wig tickling my nose.

  “Three beeps then, my little genius.”

  She tucked a few red curls under the wig, finishing the outfit with movie-star sunglasses.

  I caught her hand before she could leave.

  “Mammy. Don’t hurt any people. Just one shot into the ceiling if any of the farmers get cocky. Promise?”

  Mammy hid the pistol inside a deep pocket. “No hurting. I promise. Ceiling shots only. My present to you, my darling Charley.”

  I wanted to say something important. Something clever that could change our lives.

  “Mammy. This is not a movie. Being shot hurts.”

  At fourteen of course I knew the difference between real life and the movies, but I don’t think my mother did. She propped the sunglasses on her forehead for a moment. There was a tear in one eye, hanging there like a speck of ice. This was one of my mother’s favourite looks and she could summon a tear instantly. There were plenty of sad memories to draw on. “Of course this is a movie, baby. It’s all a movie. We’ll be happy ever after in the end. I promise.”

  Then she kissed her finger and rubbed it on my nose. A straight kiss on the nose would ruin her lipstick, and Mammy didn’t like that. She even wore make-up to bed, in case the guards came for her.

  I watched her cross the main street. Wrapped up in wartime tweed and dreams of Hollywood. Mammy once told me that she played movie soundtracks in her head when life wasn’t interesting enough. I heard her hum fade as she drifted away from me.

  I slid across into the driver’s seat, laying my hand on the horn. Gently though. A false alarm would be a disaster. I had often played the lookout before. Outside petrol stations and chemist shops. Easy pickings, Mammy called them. The attendants never remembered anything except the movie-star smile, and maybe the revolver tickling their noses. The papers had even given Mammy a nickname: Sal Capone, they called her. Mammy liked that. She even kept the newspaper clippings in the lining of her suitcase with our stash of pound notes.

  A post office.

  We were sticking up a post office.

  Petrol stations were one thing but some post offices had wires running straight to the police station. One fast hand on the alarm button and five minutes later they would be dragging Mammy down the street, her high heels cutting tracks in the morning frost. It would not be like a movie. It would be like life in Ireland: cold and hard and with no happy ending. She would be thrown into a grey prison where the women’s hands were raw and skinned from scrubbing, and their backs bent from hard labour.

  No more powder puffs. No blood-red lipstick.

  My mother was not strong enough for prison. Keeping me safe from my father had used up all her strength.

  My father: a devil with knuckles like walnuts and a gold tooth that he stole from a dead man’s mouth.

  He was on our trail and the only way my mother could keep going was to turn our lives into a movie with a happy ending.

  But there were no happy endings.

  Even a fourteen-year-old boy knew that.

  I pulled up my knees and sat hunkered on the driver’s seat trying to concentrate on my job.

  I was a lookout, I told myself, that was all.

  That possibly wasn’t even a sin. Being a lookout probably did not even require a visit to confession. Lookouts were more or less innocent bystanders in unusual circumstances.

  I did not believe it for a second. Neither would the law. I often woke from tangle-sheet dreams where the judge I stood below in the dock would lo
ok like Mammy’s favourite actor Charles Laughton, and he would bang his gavel as he laughed and laughed.

  Mammy joined the tail end of a small queue trickling into the post office. The door closed behind her with the tinkle of a latch bell and the sound flitted across the street’s cold still air like a winter bird.

  I should not have been thinking of winter birds. I had a serious job to do.

  The road: watch it for fat sergeants.

  I focused on the road as though concentration beams would burst from my eyes and seek out any danger to my mother.

  Danger to my mother?

  She was the one with the revolver. Now that I thought about it, hadn’t there been a child in that post-office line, swinging from her father’s hand, hanging on to a single finger?

  There were cold bullets in that gun. Mammy shot a bottle of Mercurochrome in an Offaly chemist last month. It was only a matter of time before she hit a person with real blood inside them, not crimson antiseptic.

  The road. Watch it.

  And I did.

  Lock was not much more than a one-street town. The road was packed dirt, hardened by the cold, slick with frost. There was a village school at the far end with jostling bunches of students gathering at the gate. They were no danger to Mammy and I did not wish to think on school any more as I missed it too much. But now the memories were bobbing to the surface.

  School. Mr Doran with his tin whistle and crooked smile. Calm settled over my heart like a warm blanket. Multiplication was so easy when you took it slowly. That was all you had to do. Mr Doran was funny too with all his farmer jokes.

  I banged the steering wheel with my hand, driving away the memories of school.

  I was a lookout now. School Charley was another person from another life.

  Back to the road. I was Lookout Charley now.

  The street was so still that it might have been a photograph. There was no wind and the Irish flag hung limply from a flagpole atop the village guesthouse. Anyone moving determinedly this way would stand out like a sore thumb, but I doubted that anyone moved with determination in this sleepy town, especially a fat sergeant with his endless cups of tea and comfortable boots.

  I willed the post-office door to open and incredibly it did, but only to release two young ladies into the street. They were wrapped up against the cold, apart from their legs which flashed pale as they hurried back along the street, heads almost touching as they chatted excitedly.

  Mammy had not made her move yet. And I knew why. My mother would not want young girls in the room when she pulled the Webley from her pocket. She was Sal Capone. If things went wrong Mammy would not want pretty girls getting their photographs in the paper. She was the pretty one. Mammy was the beautiful one.

  Oh, Mammy. What are we going to do? Can there be a happy ending?

  The door opened again and the little girl and her daddy emerged. The man was unhappy about something and stalked down the street muttering, forcing his daughter to chase behind.

  Safe.

  The little girl was safe at least. And the coast was still clear. I allowed myself a sigh. Maybe … Just maybe, today was not the day it all came to an end.

  Someone rapped on the motor-car window and I believe I actually cried out in surprise.

  “Are you the driver of the vehicle, sir?” said a voice muted by the glass and I turned my head to see a guard’s tunic with a set of strong fingers interlaced in front of it.

  He had come from a side lane, emerging from the shadows without a sound.

  I had seen fingers like that before. Blanched by sea water and criss-crossed with scars. A fisherman’s hands. The face above was just the right side of gaunt with cheekbones that would have had Mammy swooning. The eyes were sky blue and surrounded with wrinkles and lines carved there by Irish winters.

  This was no fat sergeant. This was a wiry, fifty-something man of the sea who had taken up the uniform to keep the wolf from the door. Of course I was guessing about his hands. Perhaps he soaked his fingers in white vinegar to toughen them for picking guitar strings.

  “Are you the driver of this vehicle?” said the guard again.

  He was joking. I knew because I could see his teeth, or perhaps he planned to eat me.

  I wound the window’s stiff handle. “No, guard. I’m not the driver. I’m waiting for my mother.”

  “I won’t have to arrest you then,” said the guard, definitely smiling. “Just don’t knock off that handbrake with your knee.”

  “Don’t worry, Guard, I won’t.”

  I was amazed he hadn’t arrested me already. Guilt must have shown on my face.

  Something showed anyway, because the policeman frowned, changing the crinkle pattern round his eyes.

  He leaned his elbows on the door-frame. “Are you all right there, young fella? You look like you just took a whiff of sour milk.”

  I thought fast, something I had learned to do from being on the road with mother. You never knew when a quick and believable lie would keep you out of the courts.

  “I have a bit of that tummy thing that’s doing the rounds. That’s why I’m out of school today. Mammy is running to the chemist’s for some liver salts.”

  Mammy always says that a good lie takes care of the question that has been asked and the one to follow.

  The guard’s smile had a twist of sympathy in it. “Don’t talk to me about that tummy yoke. I had a wrestle with that myself a few weeks ago.” He winked. “Stay in a ventilated area, that’s my advice.”

  I smiled back ruefully, like an ill boy might. “I’ll leave the window open, Guard.”

  The man saluted. “That’s the spirit, soldier.” And he was gone, trotting briskly across the road towards the post office.

  Soldier? An ex-army man maybe.

  Towards the post office!

  I leaned on the horn, but it bleated once and died, frozen by a night spent near the river. This had happened before, why had I not remembered?

  Perhaps the guard would veer off, continue on his rounds down the street.

  Perhaps my blunder would not be a fatal one.

  But no. Straight in he went, calling a greeting as he entered the building.

  I pressed hard on the horn once more, grinding the heel of my hand into the pad but when one beep refused to sound, to expect three was idiotic.

  What should I do?

  Was there anything to be done?

  My mother’s outlaw days were over. Mine too. Where would we be sent?

  Australia.

  The continent’s name popped into my mind, as though prisoners were still shipped down under.

  No. There would be no sunny beachside detention for us. There would be the harsh granite and cold bars of Irish prisons.

  I was out of the car and halfway across the street before my legs knew what orders they were following.

  So I was going to the post office, was I? Graduating from lookout to full-blown accomplice. I was a minor, but the judicial system could easily decide to toss me into an adult prison, especially since I was racing to involve myself in the holding up of a government building.

  But it was my mother and we loved each other so what choice did I have?

  I lurched across the road, limbs tense, anticipating a gunshot. But there was no crack but the cracking of morning ice under my feet, announcing my arrival.

  What could I do? Where were my brilliant ideas now? Three beeps on a frozen horn. This was my fault.

  A shameful voice rose in my head. Craven and selfish.

  Run. Take the pound notes from the suitcase and board the ferry to England.

  But I was not low enough for that path, or perhaps I was too much of a coward. So I shouldered the post-office door and stumbled inside.

  It was bad.

  But there was no blood so far as I could see. Customers were lined up along the walls, their eyes glued to the strange sight of a rural guard pinning a city girl to a wall, both of her small hands easily contained by one of his fisherm
an’s mitts. The guard seemed relaxed as though he had done this kind of thing many times before but the easy smile of minutes ago had been wiped away by the whole business.

  My mother’s wig was askew and her lipstick smeared along the wall, like an extension of her mouth. She had her brave face on.

  “What are you up to?” the guard was asking my mother, as though he had caught his daughter filching a shilling. “Are times so hard?”

  One of the customers, a young man wearing boots too big for his feet, clapped his hands once, trapping a memory.

  “That’s her. From the newspaper. Sal Capone.” He fluttered his fingers at the post mistress. “You have a picture of her on the board, Brigit.”

  It was true. There she was. My mother. Pinned to a notice board between a second-hand bicycle and a missing greyhound.

  Mammy was horrified. “That is not a good picture. Look at me, for heaven’s sake.”

  But they looked at the notice board. All except me. I was gazing at the counter-top upon which sat a Webley revolver, put out of mother’s reach by the guard. It had spun on the surface, the cylinder scratching circles in the wood like a skate on ice.

  Out of mother’s reach but not out of mine.

  No one was looking.

  I grabbed the gun and its weight was not a shock to me. Mother had made me practise many times in foggy dawn forests.

  “Let her go,” I said, not loudly enough because not a single person turned.

  So I forced some volume into it the next time.

  “I said let her go!”

  The guard’s eyes swept across the counter-top and onwards to me, and he put the whole thing together in a second. I suppose it didn’t take a genius.

  “Feeling better, are you, boy?”

  “No,” I said miserably. And it was true. I felt considerably worse.

  The guard held my mother in place expertly, almost casually. I suppose she was about as much trouble as a sparrow compared to the rowdy weekend deep-sea fishermen he no doubt regularly subdued.