The Starling
Maggie looked down at Wilbur’s hand. She gave it a little reassuring pat. ‘I think it’s incredible, to see you now. Doing so well. It’s brave, you know. It feels brave just to live sometimes.’
‘I know what you mean. But I don’t feel brave.’
‘Well, just imagine you are. What would you do right now if you had no fear?’
Wilbur studied her a moment. Then, without thinking, he blurted out an honest answer. ‘I’d ask for your phone number.’
She sat back and laughed.
Wilbur felt the prickle of embarrassment rise through his body and settle as heat in his cheeks. He pushed through it. ‘It’s just sometimes it would be good to talk to someone who understands … you know … what it’s like.’ He gestured to his brother’s grave.
Maggie gave an understanding smile. ‘Sure. My dad always answers. Are you all right talking to my dad?’
‘Aye. Sure.’
‘He’s suspicious of lads. Well, he’s all right with Edward now. My boyfriend. We’ve been on and off, but we’re on at the moment.’
The Ghost watched Wilbur trying to mask his crushing disappointment. Maybe Maggie noted it too.
‘Ah. Your man. What’s he like? What does he do?’
‘He’s an architect. Well, studying to be one. Seven-year course at the uni. He wants to build cities in the sky. Into all those new Sheffield tower blocks. He takes me on dates to the Park Hill estate just to look at the lifts. He’s a nice lad and my mam would like him because he speaks proper and went to a posh boarding schooldown south, and Mam was superficial, bless her. In fact that was one of the arguments I had with her grave. After we last broke up.’
‘Why did you break up?’ he asked, as flatly as he could manage.
Maggie shifted nervously and cast her eyes to the ground. ‘I’d like to say there was something wrong with him but there wasn’t really. I mean, he eyed up Claudette a couple of times but Claudette’s beautiful and it can’t be helped.’
The Ghost watched Wilbur say nothing, and remembered how much he wanted to tell her just how beautifulshewas and that she should never doubt it.
‘And he talks down to people without realising it sometimes.’ She gave a guilty look. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just my own insecurity over not knowing much about Le Corbusier. He’s a good person, really. He cares about me.’
Wilbur nodded slowly, his response stuck in the air and never quite spoken. She seemed a little disappointed in him at that moment, as if wanting some kind of reaction.
‘But what is happening in your world, Wilbur? What have you got to tell me?’
‘I don’t know. I’m a proper professional. I’ve just been made the manager of Bagdale’s, now that Mr Bagdale is taking a back seat.’
‘Oh wow. That’s brilliant, Wilbur!’
‘If you come in I’ll recommend something just for you.’ He blushed, realising that might have sounded a bit forward. ‘Or your dad.’
‘He can hardly read. Left school at fourteen. Mam was the clever one.’
‘Ah, well, we have some Dr Seuss.’
She laughed. ‘Not funny.’
‘Not being funny. He’s a clever man. A doctor, after all.Green Eggs and Hamis a surrealist masterpiece.’
She reached across and pulled out a pen from Wilbur’s shirt pocket. The Ghost watched his awkward smile as she went intoher handbag and got out a leaflet she’d been given that read:Day of Education Reform and International Solidarity Against the Slaughter in Vietnam. Sheffield College of Art. October 15th 1969.
She wrote her number across it.
‘And you should come to the protest.’
‘I have work that day. I need to pay my mam’s rent. She’s behind by quite a bit. And I have to work. I’m working a lot. I’m a bore. But I’ll see if I can come down afterwards.’
