The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

Author:Emma Donoghue
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2020-07-22T23:00:00+00:00

In the alley I found my cycle locked safely. I drew up the sides of my skirt in preparation, knotting the tapes for safety.

Light blinded me. A high-pitched call: All right there?

Two of the Women’s Patrol shone their beams all the way to the back wall. To ensure my protection or, put another way, to check if I was reeling drunk or up to no good with a soldier.

I snapped, Perfectly all right.

Very well, carry on.

I wheeled my cycle up the alley, towards the street.

A bell sounded in the factory ahead. Munitionettes began spilling out, calling to each other, their fingers dyed so yellow I could see it by streetlight; were these women from Ita Noonan’s Canary Crew? One of them coughed whoopingly, laughed, coughed again as I pedaled past.

At the top of my lane, boys skittered by in motley gear—a bright scarf around a forehead, a checkered tie worn over the nose, men’s jackets on backwards, the smallest boy wearing the paper face of a ghost. I only wished they had shoes on their knobbly feet. It surprised me that they’d been let out to go house to house at such a time; I’d have thought all doors would be shut. I tried to remember what it was the old ones used to sprinkle on us children at Halloween in the part of the country where Tim and I had grown up.

A tall boy blared at me. His bugle was dented, scarred with solder, plating all worn away at the mouthpiece. Was his father a returned veteran, perhaps? Or a dead one, of course, his bugle sent home in his place. Or perhaps I was being sentimental, and the boy had won it off another in a bet.

The younger lads clashed saucepan lids. Apples and nuts, missus!

The miniature ghost cried, Go on, would you ever have an old apple or a nut for the party?

He sounded drunk to me. (Quite plausible, since many people believed alcohol could keep the flu at bay.) I dug into my purse for a halfpenny even though he’d called me missus instead of miss.

He blew me a phantom kiss over his shoulder.

Clearly to a child I looked well past thirty. I thought of Delia Garrett calling me spinster. Nursing was like being under a spell: you went in very young and came out older than any span of years could make you.

I asked myself whether I minded about tomorrow’s birthday. The real question was whether I was going to regret it if I never got married. But how could I possibly know for sure until it was too late? Which wasn’t reason enough to do it, to throw myself headlong at every half-viable prospect the way some women did. Regret seemed all too likely either way.

When I let myself into the narrow terraced house, it smelled cold. Candle stubs burnt in jam jars.

My brother was scratching his magpie’s glossy head at the table.

I thought of the old rhyme for counting magpies. One for sorrow, two for joy.

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