The Sparrows of Edward Street

by Elizabeth Stead

  ‘It’s the soft rhythm of the words probably. He stops rocking when I read poetry.’

  ‘Any particular poet?’ It was just a question to be polite, an automatic response. My mind was elsewhere, taking an hour off. A mind vague and dreamy the way Hanora’s was when the pills began to take effect.

  ‘It depends on the sound of the words. He still enjoys the sound of Dylan Thomas. Just the sound, I think: he never speaks about the poetry. Maybe it sinks in somehow. But it’s starting to get chilly out there in the afternoon. I don’t think I’ll be able to read to him when it gets really cold. Are you all right, Aria? You’re miles away.’

  ‘I’m a bit tired, that’s all. I’ve been working hard. Does Mr Gardiner still shout at people if he thinks they’re too close to the pit?’

  ‘They mostly keep away from him, now – the children have stopped making an extra misery of his life. When I’m there, anyway. I think he might be getting better, love. I read “In the Beginning” yesterday. Do you know it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘In the beginning was the three-pointed star, One smile of light across the empty face . . .’

  ‘It no doubt would have been beautiful when you read it. No wonder he loves it, Hanora. You read very well.’

  I thought Tom Gardiner was lucky to have Hanora – no one else seemed to bother with him. Just as well, I expect. A few days before, one of the local riff-raff had crept up behind him and let off a firework! It set him back for a long time.

  There is a mean, vicious streak in humans. It’s hard to know why. Maybe they just need to hate themselves as much as they think everyone else hates them.

  ‘I’d love to read to you, Aria. I used to when you were a baby.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘There’s something on your mind, Aria. I can tell.’

  ‘Everyone and everything has things on their minds.’

  But I knew what she meant. All the inmates in their iron cells and the iron walls of the cells in every hut had things on their minds.

  On my mind were two incidents on my latest parade job for the American leisure-wear company. I had been disturbed by them.

  While the fashion parade in Newcastle had been a great success, the car trip, chauffeured by one of the company’s reps, with their latest range in the boot, had not.

  This first incident was extraordinary to me. The other two girls were well known, and one of them had been asked to go to Hollywood for screen tests, but I had never met them, and had been looking forward to it.

  They chain-smoked cigarettes in the car during the whole trip, which was a bit sickening for me, but I kept my thoughts to myself. At one point on the highway we overtook a truck loaded with drums of gasoline, and one of the girls threw her lighted cigarette onto the bed of the lorry among the drums. They both thought it was a great joke. I told her she was mad. Our driver was silent, staring straight ahead, and sped on, and I was told I was a pain in the neck and no fun at all.

  ‘And I think you’re bloody idiots! You could have caused the most awful accident. You could have killed that driver!’

  ‘Well, I don’t think we did. Did you hear a bang? Did we hear an explosion?’ they said to each other, and laughed. The driver sat like a robot, with his foot hard on the accelerator. I thought they were all bloody idiots, including the driver, and after I said so we were silent for the rest of the trip.

  The second incident was truly surprising, and a huge disappointment. The department store’s dressing room was also a store room for stock. Even before the parade, the two models I had been so looking forward to meeting began to open cupboards and drawers and stuff their bags with swimsuits, underwear and anything else they could find. They threw clothing to me like scavengers at a tip.

  ‘Here! Take some – these! And these!’

  ‘I don’t want to!’

  ‘What’s the matter with you? They won’t miss them!’ And they threw bras and pants and tops and bottoms and one-piece costumes to me, and I let them all fall to the floor. ‘What’s the matter with you? They expect this to happen.’

  ‘They expect us to steal? How do you know?’

  ‘They just do! Everybody does it.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m not a thief!’

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t tell me we’ve got a bloody Pollyanna with us,’ said one.

  ‘You must be a ton of fun at a party,’ said the other.

  What’s the matter with me? I don’t know – I don’t know. I’m supposed to be so tough. The nerveless, Devil-may-care Aria Sparrow. I’m supposed to be the girl with the screwdriver, ready to do anything – the one who’d do practically anything to get something. What’s the matter with me? I don’t know! And here were crumbs by the armful being tossed at my feet, and not one of them did this sparrow peck.

  I have never stolen, and I have never tried to murder a truck driver. I’d never experienced anything like this before. My air of boldness was looking a bit limp, more like silk than hide. I could feel it cringing to the back of my mind, caught out, like the discovery of a lie. Maybe toughness was one of my pretences; I don’t know. But the image in my mind of two ‘real models’ – two perfect ‘coathangers’ for Christian Dior and Paris and Rome – had suddenly become nothing but a couple of exquisite sewer rats scrabbling for turds.

  What’s the matter with me? I don’t know. I wish I did. I am so confused.

  I am a hybrid.

  And I suppose I’ll just have to put up with it.

  The Camp

  The day Mr Biddle committed suicide was a cold, wet autumn Wednesday, and I was naturally at work. So was Mr Biddle’s wife, Nancy, who’d found a job in the local laundry and dry cleaners at the beginning of the year. Nancy had come back to their hut and found Mr Biddle hanging from a bedsheet tied to a roof beam. The doctor had been called, and the doctor had called the police and an ambulance, and everyone else congregated outside the Biddles’ and then went to the laundry to lament.

  It was the next day that Mrs Biddle hobbled on her weak legs to 19B Edward and Hanora, on the pretext of returning borrowed books, and howled her eyes out.

  Somehow I wondered how a bedsheet tied to a cheap Housing Commission beam could have killed Mr Biddle. I imagined he would have floated about like a mobile in a breeze – he was very thin and very light. There was nothing to him. I had seen him on the bus that very morning, trying to be invisible as usual, with his head buried in a book. He must have caught the return bus to the Camp. He made up his mind, or what was left of it, in the bus from the Camp to the station and back again, with not one soul suspecting he’d planned his death as soon as he was in his hut. Oh, but it’s so hard to imagine the agony of his mind.

  ‘He – he – caught the – usual – morning bus,’ sobbed poor Nancy. ‘He had – his – his – briefcase and – his – book.’

  ‘Can you remember which book it was?’

  ‘Aria!’

  ‘It could be significant.’ I was reminded of Father Beale’s warning.

  ‘For goodness sakes!’ said Rosy.

  ‘I brought it back. It’s yours. It was in his brief – case – mar – marked.’ She handed it to Hanora, who immediately gave it to me.

  It was The Importance of House Maintenance, with a chapter marked by a torn piece of newspaper: ‘The Importance of Being Prepared before Painting’. Not a book I would have thought likely to encourage a death-wish by beam and bedsheet. The book had been written by EL Hassam, and loosely translated from Arabic. A lot had been lost in the process but I saw nothing ominous in that, either.

  ‘But – but – maybe he thought he’d never have one.’

  ‘One what?’

  ‘A house to strip and paint.’

  ‘Oh, well, that could have triggered something.’ No doubt Father Beale would find some terrible message there.

  ‘Aria! You sound like a cheap detective. Don’t be so cold about it,’ said Rosy. ‘Poor Nancy. How will she cope
?’

  ‘Ooooo, my dear Lord . . . ooooooo!’ moaned poor Nancy.

  I have always been fascinated by suicide. The most unlikely people, in many cases, end their lives tragically and unexpectedly. Leon once told me that a cousin of his, who was the life of every party, healthy, wealthy and wise and cheerful at all times, and a man people trusted with their problems, drank a bottle of weed killer and died in a most painful way.

  ‘That must have been absolutely terrible,’ I’d said at the time. ‘Why would he want to do it with so much pain? I mainly picture suicides hurling themselves off bridges and cliffs, into rivers or oceans.’

  ‘I don’t think he could swim,’ Leon said.

  But in the case of Mr Biddle? In a way I could understand his desperation. I could understand the desperation of any number of inmates imprisoned in the Camp, and I have to admit that of the lot of them I would have expected Tom Gardiner to throw in the towel first. Perhaps Mr Gardiner had seen salvation in Hanora’s poetry readings. Perhaps Hanora could have saved Mr Biddle if she had read to him.

  Hanora and Rosy were comforting Nancy Biddle in their way.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Nancy, dear,’ said Hanora.

  ‘You must try to be strong, Mrs Biddle,’ said Rosy, who was not famous for strength.

  ‘But I don’t know what to do now,’ sobbed Mrs Biddle. ‘I don’t know – who to go to.’

  ‘Aria will think of something – won’t you, love?’

  It was interesting, I thought. I wondered how many ordinary people – the people in the station bus for example – had considered at one stage or another ending their lives. Once, when I was much younger, and terribly love-struck, I was desperate when a boy I had dated named Alwyn dropped me. I took a whole handful of Aspros, lay down with a flower on my breast, and waited for a peaceful end, but all that came of it was nausea, cramps and a toothache. No male is worth that, I decided, and when I thought back, he had awful acne, and I don’t think he cleaned his teeth very often. But people think of ending their lives for the strangest reasons. Poor Mr Biddle, for example, after reading a chapter on house maintenance, when he didn’t have a house to maintain, ran for a bedsheet.

  I can’t speak for other suicides in the Camp. I’d been told about them, and I’d thought briefly of keeping a record of births, deaths and miseries for the Ministry of Housing. I thought of presenting it to them as a tragedy played between the hard black covers of an album, with names and dates and portraits that would be impossible to erase. It would have been quite different from the album of photographs Mrs Glass had presented during the Royal Visit, with its false portraits of happy inmates. But I’d abandoned the idea. Such an intrusion into the privacy of Camp lives, so full of sorrows, new lives and old deaths, was too cruel to seriously contemplate.

  ‘I can’t – afford a funeral, you see,’ sniffed Nancy Biddle.

  ‘You’re Catholic, aren’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t worry, then: Father Beale will pay for it.’

  ‘But – it’s a mortal sin – what Sammy did. Father Beale wouldn’t help. And they don’t pay for funerals, anyway. The church won’t have anything to do with us now. They won’t forgive him.’

  ‘Good grief! Your husband can’t very well go to confession, can he?’

  ‘But there’s the rites, you see. He hasn’t had the last rites or anything.’ Mrs Biddle was standing in a puddle of her salty tears. ‘He’ll be on his way to hell by now!’ And she howled again. ‘Or in that terrible place halfway, being judged.’

  ‘I’ll talk to dear old Father Beale – don’t you worry, Mrs Biddle. We might just have to go over his head.’

  ‘And what does that mean, may I ask?’ said Rosy.

  ‘I’m very fond of the idea of the Vatican taking care of its own. And we could have a whip-around in the laundry.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, love.’

  ‘Don’t make trouble with the priest,’ said Mrs Biddle. ‘He might stop me from Mass.’

  ‘Well, we can’t have that, can we? You must be allowed to thank your Lord for everything he’s done – doing to – sorry, I mean for you.’

  ‘Aria!’

  ‘I’m not sorry!’

  *

  I put a notice up on the laundry wall, but had to wait until the following Saturday to speak to Father Beale during his rounds, or rather, roundup, of human stragglers in the camp.

  ‘Good morning, Father Beale.’

  ‘Good morning, Aria.’ Only one side of his mouth smiled, and I’m sure I detected a miserable sigh. ‘I’m sure you must know about poor Mr Biddle. Is that what you want to talk about?’

  ‘Nancy Biddle can’t afford a funeral . . . and I thought . . .’

  ‘Taking one’s life creates so many problems . . .’

  ‘Why? It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘It is a violation of God’s law. And of course it had something to do with me, Aria. Mr Biddle was a member of my church.’

  ‘Mrs Biddle is worried that you won’t let her go to Mass. That’s not true, is it?’

  ‘Of course she can come to Mass! What on earth gave her that idea? But there are difficulties with suicides. Of course, some churches have more liberal approaches to the problem than my own.’

  ‘But you like things the old, tidy way, Father Beale. Is that right?’

  ‘I expect I do adhere as closely as I can to the Pope’s rulings. Yes. I do prefer it. My people know exactly where they are. They know right from wrong without question.’

  ‘I doubt that Mr Biddle was thinking along those lines when he tied the sheet around his neck.’

  ‘Aria Sparrow! I have a lot to do today.’

  ‘Why is suicide a mortal sin?’

  ‘I have already told you. It is a violation of God’s law. And by the way, Aria, every man’s sin is a mortal sin. If only Mr Biddle had come to me,’ said Father Beale by way of an answer. ‘If only I could have saved him – Oh, Lord forgive me.’

  ‘Why is Mr Biddle a mortal sinner?’

  ‘You do realise that he was reading one of your books that morning? I’m not of course suggesting . . .’

  ‘I certainly hope not! The book he read in the bus that morning was about home maintenance, did you know that? The marked chapter was about the importance of preparation before painting.’

  ‘Oh, I was not aware of the book’s contents. Hardly a subject to destroy a man, I suppose.’

  ‘It just could have been a trigger, if the man did not have a house to sand and paint, and never would have, in his mind. It might be enough to turn his thoughts to death. But tell me, why is suicide a mortal sin?’

  ‘The Lord giveth and it is the Lord who must taketh away, and blessed be His word. These are God’s holy laws.’

  ‘She can’t afford a funeral.’

  ‘And you want me to bill the Vatican again?’

  ‘I don’t care how you do it, Father Beale, but you Roman Catholics should look after your own. We look out for each other in the Camp, no matter what they are.’

  ‘The Lord looks after his own, Aria, even you.’

  ‘In that case I think your Lord was doing a bloody awful job, Biddle-wise. You should tell the Pope to tell the Lord to pull his socks up!’

  ‘I will pray for you, Aria.’

  ‘Don’t waste your time praying for me, Father Beale. Pray for all the poor homeless bloody Catholics hanging from bedsheets and who can’t afford a funeral! Shame on the lot of you!’

  *

  The next entry in my album for the Ministry of Housing would probably have been Elsa Bentwick’s husband, who was dying of lung cancer. And with winter coming to blow winds cold enough to freeze a chop through the iron cracks, I did not think he’d last too long.

  ‘How is he?’ I asked Elsa. The laundry was buzzing with news, opinions and advice on what to do for poor Nancy Biddle, and they all knew Elsa’s Bruce was not doing too well on the radiation.

  ‘He’
s sick, what else can I say? He’s all aches and pains and he vomits a lot. What can I add to that? I think he’s dying of treatment.’

  Elsa Bentwick was a strong woman. I’d always admired the strength she showed through bad times. Elsa was one of Hanora’s most avid book borrowers. She’d become a very keen reader. She rarely complained about her life, and I will always remember her as a washerwoman of immense wisdom and presence. Tall and wide, with red cheeks and good strong teeth and wearing an outsized pinny with a pocket for the pegs. I liked Elsa Bentwick.

  ‘What will you do, Elsa? I mean when Bruce . . .’

  ‘You mean when he dies? I’ll just stay on the pension, plead for a flat – again! – away from here and be ignored by my kids as usual.’

  ‘They’re all married, aren’t they?’

  ‘Married, divorced, kids, no kids. They all live as far away from us and the Camp as they can. They’ve always been ashamed of their father and me having no money. Nothing in it for them, if you know what I mean. Our daughter sends a few quid now and then to clear her conscience, but that’s all.’

  ‘Well, bugger them, I say.’

  ‘Ditto, Aria. Well said.’ But the expression in her eyes suddenly betrayed her. I thought she might cry for the first time since I’d known her. ‘I’m just tired, darling, just very, very tired.’

  ‘Hanora bought some new old books yesterday.’

  ‘Good. I’ll come around and look through them.’

  So far the laundry had not heard of my visit to the Minister. So far. I did not look forward to having to talk about it. I did not want them to think that I had sneaked in, ripped my clothes off, and thrown myself at the Minister’s feet just for the sake of the Sparrows, with not a thought for any of the others. It would be important for them to know that I’d had everyone else in my thoughts.

  ‘What do you think about a whip-around for the Biddles . . . I mean Nancy?’