“Three falling stars?” he queried.
She stopped and looked at him, her smile wavering momentarily into puzzlement.
“Three stars? Did I say that? Goodness me, I must be more tired than I thought. It’s just an old lady’s mind wandering because of the late hour,” she dismissed. “Now you really must go. And don’t forget, you have promised to come again to finish your story for me.”
“Yes, Aunt Gwendoline, I will. And thanks again.” He wanted to give her a bear-hug out of love and gratitude for her, but he satisfied himself with a gentle embrace.
She closed the front door after him, secured it for the night and then stood a moment looking at her oak-cased clock. Just six feet tall it called out the quarter hours and stood an unsleeping sentry in her front hallway. It had been her dad’s clock, the one he had given Mother on their wedding day, and it was not difficult for her to see within its dial the face of the man who had brought it home so proudly to his bride.
“You were a dashing blade,” she murmured to it. “No wonder Mother fell for you. You scrubbed up very handsome, with the sweet smell of pipe tobacco in your waistcoat replacing the sour dampness of the mine in your working clothes.”
Mother had been forever proud of the clock too. She had kept it spotlessly polished and dusted while he tickled its workings with a feather of light oil and wound it every eight days for all of their lives together. That was except for the four years of the Great War when he was away and Mother had kept it wound and tickled all on her own. It was still polished and dusted after he died, although it stood silent until she, Gwen, had rescued it and wound it once more and gave it back its voice and a home at the end of Mother’s life. She looked up at it through her tiredness.
“You were a good man all your life, our dad, in spite of all that life, and at times Mother too, dished out to you. For all her odd ways, she always loved you and was never less than proud of you. But I’m sure you knew that. And our Gerard is a good ’un too. There’s a lot of you in him, our dad. He’s not short of fight if he needs it, but he is in trouble. Help me bring him home, our dad. Help me catch his star.”
She walked slowly back into her sitting room, deeply pensive.
“Why did I say that about three stars?” she asked herself. “Why did I say there were three stars falling when at last count there were five?”
She looked hard at the aspidistra sitting in its decorated pot.
“What is it you are trying to tell me, Mother? I think you rather enjoy making things difficult for me, don’t you?” She got no answer. She switched off the two table lights and closed the door on the darkness, and left the room to watch over the spent tea tray with its dirty cups and cold teapot until morning.
“Come along, Rani,” she called. “We will get you your supper and then we can go to bed. It has been an exhausting day and I am so very, very tired.”
Chapter 20
Her sleep was not to be undisturbed. The burning Zeppelin kept forcing its way into her dreams. Sometimes she was on the doorstep of their home in Low Felderby, being jiggled in Mother’s arms and looking up at the great blazing beast with sister Alice dancing around her in bare feet and teeth chattering because of the cold.
“Skyfire, skyfire,” piped Alice.
“Alice, go and put some clothes on. You’ll catch your death.”
The maternal command was ignored and together they watched the silver skin of the monster blister in the inferno of its burning, and the great black crosses that marked it crackled and twisted into shards of glowing taper that dropped from it all over the valley until its skeleton roared and broke.
“It’s coming down, our mam. It’s coming down!”
Five five-pointed stars fell from it, flailing and waving and making a noise like the accident siren from Felderby Pit.
At other times she was being jostled on Mother’s shoulder, being carried past the three black ponds at the top of Low Felderby on the high path alongside the allotments, hearing the creaking in Mother’s chest and the sobbing in her throat as she splashed desperately forward in the river of fear that buffeted them all in the darkness, desperate to gain the safety of the dugouts in the hillside ahead.
“They’re rotten devils my little bairn, rotten devils. Alice, Alice where are you? Keep hold now. Hold on tight or I’ll tell your dad.” And then more quietly the prayer, “when he comes home. Please, God, let him come home. Look after the family for me our Gwen. Keep them together. Please, God, let him come home.”
She buried her face deeper into Mother’s shoulder and held hard around her neck, sensing the fear that was around her but not knowing what it was.
And at yet other times she was nowhere except flying midway between the land and the sky, looking down on the glows from the furnaces of Felderby Iron Works and on the darkened two and a half rows of works terraces that were the homes of the men who mined the ores that fed them. On the back of her head she could feel the heat from the Zeppelin blazing above them while her feet froze in the east wind that whipped in from the sea. Turning around she felt the fire warm her face as she looked up at it, burning and snapping like the pine cones that were thrown in with the coal to stretch it and give an extra cheeriness to the flames in the fireplace at home. And like the flying sparks from the pine cones and the pieces of burnt taper that fell into the hearth when our dad lit his pipe, there were always stars falling, falling, falling from the skyfire.
“They’re rotten devils, they are. Rotten, rotten.”
“But they are men, our mam. Men.”
Five of them falling to their death like the sixth that had already fallen and was gone, and she reached out her child’s hand to catch one that was left and save it and ease its hurt on its way down to its death. But it slipped through her fingers.
“Hush, my bairn. Don’t cry, don’t fret. We’re nearly there.”
Mother didn’t understand. They were not stars, they were men, and she reached out again and again as they continued falling towards the dark shapes of the Iron Works buildings on the horizon across the valley. Then as she watched the three leading stars separated from their companions and began to flare more brightly in the night sky. They blazed so fiercely she could almost feel the extra heat of them.
“They’re rotten devils, my bairn. Rotten to the core, and they deserve no better. We’re nearly there. Not far to go now.”
She hesitated to put her hand out to them. They were so bright she knew they would burn her if she caught one. They were too hot. But she pushed back her fear and forced her hand out again towards them. She had to save one. She almost reached them but again Mother stumbled in her striding and her hand was pulled away.
An explosion of gas broke the back of the Zeppelin and she flinched as debris was sent scattering across the valley. Momentarily dazzled, she lost sight of the three brightest stars against the fire and flames of the dying skyfire, and when she found them again it was to see them falling, fanned to incandescence and disappearing in a final flash of extinction. Burnt out to nothing they continued their fall to earth unseen against the blackness of the sky. She let out a cry. A watery cheer went up from the struggling adults pushing their way forward to the shelter of the dugouts. As the roof closed over her she looked up. The three stars were gone, but there were still two others still falling. They dropped more slowly and they were not so bright, but they were still burning and five-pointed and shrieking like the siren at Felderby Pit when there was an accident.
Chapter 21
She woke with a start, her hand grasping at the darkness that surrounded her.
“Oh, my goodness,” she gasped.
She struggled to gather sufficient thoughts to find the switch on her bedside light. The muted glow that half lit the bedside space illuminated Rani, standing looking up at her and trembling uncertainly, whimpering with anxiety.
“Yes, I’m all right, Rani,” she panted. “Just give me a moment and I will be all right.”
She collapsed
back on her mountain of pillows and let her hand drop to be comforted by the dog.
She stroked the silk of her companion’s ears as her strength regathered itself, her heartbeat gradually regained it synchrony with the ticking of her oak-cased clock and the tightness in her chest eased with her more regular breathing.
“Oh, my goodness me,” she eventually sighed. “Now I wonder what all that was about. It really does not do an old woman like me much good to have her heart pounding away like that in her sleep, does it, Rani? I really will have to be more careful. I only had one small lamb chop for dinner with a few fresh peas, and only one glass of sherry beforehand.”
But in spite of her words, she knew the source of her dreams and the knowledge did not improve her temper.
“Come along, Rani,” she said at last, pushing back the tangled bedclothes and reaching for her dressing gown. “I know it is one o’clock in the morning but I really do feel I need a cup of tea. I need something to settle me down after all the fuss and bother that has gone on. A cup of Jasmine tea should be just right, and I am quite sure we will be able to find a small morsel of something for a very understanding dog who has eaten all her greens today and is not likely to get fat. Come along, and let’s see what we can find.”
She made only the slightest pause at the closed door to her sitting room as she passed it, glaring through it with impatience before moving on to the kitchen. In no time at all the tea was made and she was sitting at her kitchen table savouring its steam, and starting the process of forcing her thoughts back into order.
“There were six stars to start with,” she began. “And then there were five, and now the five have divided themselves into three and two. And the three have become particularly bright and have burnt themselves out in a violent burst of flame and disappeared into nothingness before they can reach the ground. Now what do you suppose can we make of all that?”
She sipped the tea and broke another piece of biscuit for Rani.
“If the first star that was lost was for Janet Brinsley,” she mused, “then that would leave us with five stars which is correct. We will accept a single star for Janet Brinsley even though she was six weeks pregnant at the time she was murdered.”
She felt that was right. To Mother and most other women of her time pregnancy was a threat to life and family. It was to be feared. And Mother had particular reason not to count an unborn child among her stars, but that was another story.
“So, we are left with five stars,” she confirmed.
She was still annoyed at being woken in such a state at so early an hour but she stamped on her anger and refocussed her thoughts.
“So now, three of the remaining five stars are burning out before their time. That has to be correct because I said as much to our Gerard as he was leaving this evening, and that was before I dreamed it. So why did I say that? Who are the three stars for, and why are they burning out so suddenly?”
She slapped the table top in desperation.
“Mother!” she cried out, “I cannot save them all. I am an old woman with very little influence in life. I do not have the resources or the strength to catch them all. I can only do what I can for our Gerard. You cannot ask me to look after the others as well.”
She dropped her head into her hands and trembled. It was mostly tiredness but in the middle of it there was also the ice blade of fear digging deeply into her heart. She fought her conclusion, but in the end could not get past it.
“There is only one trio in our Gerard’s story, isn’t there, Mother? The threesome of Gerard, his lady friend Susan and his friend Mark Brinsley. Is that what you are trying to tell me? Are they our three stars that are going to burn out before their time?”
She left her head resting in her hands and closed her eyes.
“I don’t know that I can make any other sense of it. I do hope, I really do, that it is just an old woman’s mind playing tricks on her in her old age and none of it means anything at all. I do hope so. Because if it does mean anything then I can only worry that our dear Gerard is in the middle of something considerably more dangerous than digging up pottery in bandit country in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Please let it be nothing more than my mind wandering and being silly in my old age.”
She lifted her head and sighed. The aspidistra remained obstinately unhelpful. She could not convince herself that her dreams were benign, and Rani had sensed something too and was sitting at her feet looking up at her and swishing her tail stump in encouragement and agreement. She let her thoughts speak their conclusion.
“When we left our Gerard’s story earlier this evening, the two criminals, Billy and George Crater, were alive and well and had just got away with a most terrible murder. That would account for the last two stars, wouldn’t it? And the fact that their stars too are falling would at least indicate they will eventually get their comeuppance, which is something to be grateful for, although perhaps not for some time. But in the meantime, our Gerard, Miss Susan and Mark Brinsley are in trouble, although how Miss Susan smashing our sister Alice’s vase is going to help I really don’t understand.”
That said, her thoughts were exhausted.
“Time for bed again,” she smiled down at Rani. “However, we do know who is responsible for disturbing our sleep, don’t we? And that we can do something about.”
She strode to the door of her sitting room as determinedly as her years would allow, threw it open and switched on the light. She glared at the aspidistra but said nothing. She walked directly to the tray of dirty china left over from her after-dinner tea with Gerard, marched it out to the kitchen and washed it all up.
“There,” she announced defiantly as she returned to the sitting room to switch off the light again. “The room is tidy, just as you always insisted it had to be before we went to bed. Now, Mother, perhaps you will let me have the rest of the night for sleep.”
She sent the aspidistra a final glare and closed the door solidly behind her.
“Goodnight, our dad,” she nodded to her oak-cased clock at the foot of the stairs. “Help me bring our Gerard home. I don’t think I can do it on my own.”
She climbed the stairs and settled back into bed. Rani turned three turns round her blanket before flopping down on it, then the light went out and the darkness closed in around them and restful, dreamless sleep embraced them both for the rest of the night until the milkman delivered to the doorstep the milk for their early morning cup of English breakfast tea.
Chapter 22
“My dear boy you worry too much. Of course, it is all right,” Aunt Gwendoline answered her telephone. “Why don’t you come for tea as usual and then stay for dinner again? I have some fish fillets and I can always do more potatoes.”
It was no surprise to her to receive his call. She had been out shopping in anticipation of it that very morning.
Gerard, in contrast, was not so certain as he walked down the quiet street to his great-aunt’s house. He still felt ashamed of himself for unloading the full, brutal details of Janet Brinsley’s murder on to her during his last visit. He rationalised that she was, like his Chatterwood vase, only apparently frail but in reality strong enough to survive two world wars and a lot else besides. But he also acknowledged that, like the vase, she was old. It had not been right to keep her up so late piling his anxieties on to her fine china constitution, and it had not been right to call her two days later and invite himself around to see her, even though he was worried about her. He occasionally wondered what devastating blow would eventually finish her off. He hoped that, when it did come, he would not be responsible for it and that it would be as unheralded and instantaneous as his golf club going through the porcelain of his late great-aunt Alice’s vase. But he did not want to think about it. So, in spite of initiating his present invitation to dinner he resolved not to mention anything more about Janet and Mark Brinsley and simply enjoy an afternoon and evening chatting over irrelevancies with his most treasured of relatives.
His re
solution was short lived. Dainty tomato and cucumber sandwiches, Earl Grey tea and rich fruit cake greeted him when he arrived, and as the fragrant brew was poured the ambiance of Aunt Gwendoline’s sitting room embraced him as it always did. He relaxed and felt himself at home again. He looked up to thank her as she passed him his cup and instantly her steady, blue eyes told him she was not interested in any introductory chat. She was waiting to hear the rest of his story, just as he suddenly found he was anxious to tell it. It seemed that even Rani was eager to hear what he had to say. He smiled and organised his thoughts.
“Mark and I tried to find out why the case against Billy and George Crater had folded so dramatically,” he began. "Sergeant Chak told us the Craters’ barristers had found a legal technicality which had resulted in all the evidence against them being declared inadmissible in court. With no admissible evidence to consider there was no case for them to answer, and so that was the verdict. It wasn’t much of an explanation and it was scarcely believable, but it was all we got. Billy and George Crater walked out of court free men, to have their photos taken later on that evening in one of their nightclubs, surrounded by scantily clad women, disco lights, coloured streamers and bottles of champagne. The pictures were spread all over the pages of the tabloid press the next day.
"Mark was shattered. He had held himself together quite well during the months between the Craters’ arrests and their trial, believing absolutely that some justice would be delivered for the way in which his Janet’s life had been ended. Now, he was lost. It was not that the Crater brothers had been declared not guilty. Although that would have been against all logic, he could probably have dealt with it as a denial of justice. It was more that all the evidence of what they had done to Janet during the hours over which they had abused and eventually killed her was never going to be seen in the light of day, and that without a public airing of that evidence then all she had suffered and endured counted for nothing. I followed him as he left the court.
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