Read Online September Starlings by Ruth Hamilton - Free Book Online

small fortune in this country, God knows how much abroad. He cannot write a cheque. He cannot write his name. He toiled, he saved, he prospered, he got confused.
    ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been indelicate,’ she says.
    At last, I can smile properly. ‘Ruth, you always wereabout as delicate as an elephant in clog-irons. Will you stay for a bite of brunch?’
    ‘No, I’m roasting pork. Les can’t even butter a scone, you know. As a New Man, poor old Les is hopeless.’
    ‘Trade him in.’
    She shakes her head. ‘Can’t. I’m the sort that gets used to toothache after a while. Take care.’
    After she has disappeared down the path, I hang out more of Ben’s washing. The birds are still quarrelling, chattering over a few scraps. He doesn’t hear them, even though his chair is near the window. I want to enter his mind, share the terror, hold his hand through dark days. There is nothing I can do and the knowledge of my uselessness is strangling me.
    The stairs are like Everest, there to be conquered. But I push myself, throw open his door, place myself at his feet. ‘Ben! Where are you? Look at me, please.’ I hold his face in my hands, watch closely as his eyes fail to focus. ‘Tell me about it. Speak to me.’ Oh God, I am shaking a sick man!
    ‘No matter,’ he says. ‘No matter. He will come for us.’
    ‘Who? Ben, who will come for us?’
    He sniffs, licks dry lips, blinks rapidly. ‘Have you found it yet, Laura?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right, Ben. I’m Laura, your wife. Where have you been while I have needed you? I was ill and you didn’t visit me. I went out of my mind after my body was mended and you still didn’t come. Where are you? Where the hell are you?’
    He is humming, and his deafness of tone has not improved.
    ‘Ben. What do you think about? Tell me. Tell me about what frightened you all those years ago. Who are you? Where did you come from and why? Ben.’
    The tuneless noise stops. ‘I burned my arm.’
    ‘Yes.’ I lift the sleeve and look at the old purple scar. ‘How did that happen?’
    ‘It is all written down.’
    ‘Ben—’
    ‘I don’t like frozen peas. They don’t listen, you know. I said several times that I eat only fresh vegetables.’
    My heart pounds. He is talking about the here and now, about the nursing home. ‘Are the meals terrible? What do you have for breakfast?’
    He nods sagely. ‘It is all written down. Strawberry yoghurt.’
    I have failed again. He sleeps, moans, snores softly. Even his snoring has lost heart. Somewhere inside this figure is my husband. And I can’t find him. I can touch him, see him, hear him. But he is no longer of this world.
    After lunch, Ruth’s husband arrives to carry Ben downstairs, bundles him into an armchair that I have covered in plastic sheeting. The sweat drips from Les’s hair, runs down his face like tears. ‘He’s still putting weight on. Mind, I suppose he feels heavier with being so limp.’ He straightens, pushes a wet and stringy length of hair from his damp face. ‘I’ll come back this afternoon and carry him upstairs again.’
    Ben studies us with eyes that are untypically alert. ‘I can walk,’ he says, the tone imperious. He stands, stumbles over the dropped car rug, rights himself slowly. The legs are uncertain, jellyish. A large paunch throws him off-balance again, and he sinks into the chair. ‘ Rien ne va plus ,’ he mutters, the voice conveying acceptance rather than hopelessness.
    ‘Sounds like a bloody Monte Carlo croupier,’ remarks Les, his face half-hidden by a handkerchief. He emerges, less moist but still hot. ‘Is he a gambler?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ That is the truth. Ben came, went, came home again. Sometimes, he phoned or wrote to say when he would be home. Occasionally, an operator would talk to me, the English broken and brushed with foreign tones. I don’t know. When we were together, I didn’t think about where Ben had been, always understood that I should not ask. During