Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  ‘But why did you go?’

  ‘That’s the thing.’ He seemed relieved now to be talking. ‘She has this way with her. You can’t refuse her. If her father hadn’t come in like that I don’t know where it would have ended. She just took me over.’ William looked away towards the window. ‘She kept touching me, and I couldn’t . . . You always feel with Olivia as if, if you disagree with her or refuse her, she’ll crack. She always seems fragile.’

  I found my mind following this remark like a dog after a stick. It was true. Olivia had this quality that made you want to care for her, to succumb to her. I remembered Angus’s comment ‘You look after Livy.’ I felt sick inside now with my longing to care for her, to rescue her from her father. My brother meant nothing to me. I could think only of her.

  William suddenly burst out, ‘No one ever talks about it, do they?’ I dragged my thoughts back to him. ‘Dad, Mum. I’m eighteen and I’ve never kissed a girl before and I couldn’t even think straight. And girls aren’t supposed to do that, are they? My mind was telling me one thing and my body wanted to do another. And Olivia wanted me to, that was the thing. It was she who took her dress off, not me. You must believe me, Katie. But now she’s in such trouble and I feel it’s all my fault. I should have stopped her, been stronger.’

  ‘Yes, you damn well should,’ I said heartlessly.

  ‘What if they tell Dad?’

  ‘Oh, they won’t do that. Think about it.’ I tried to be more sympathetic. ‘Look, don’t worry. I’m sure nothing will happen to you. In fact I don’t suppose they’re thinking about you at all.’

  He kept Olivia locked in her room for nearly four days. Nothing was supposed to pass her lips except water. Elizabeth Kemp was under strict instructions not to let her out, and she was too afraid to defy her husband.

  I was frantic. Granny was the only one who knew. I paced restlessly up and down by her chair in the garden. Nowadays she did very little but sit. Her speech was reasonably distinct, but slow. We were patient waiting for her words, like listening for the voice of an oracle.

  ‘There’s not much you can do, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But they’re starving her.’

  ‘Oh, I expect you’ll find someone’s feeding her something on the quiet. After all, Mr Kemp can hardly do nothing but sit at home like a guard dog. He has a business to run. All you can do is to be as staunch a friend as you can when she comes out. Whatever’s wrong in that family, you can be sure it didn’t begin yesterday.’

  I tried to see Olivia. Elizabeth Kemp’s spidery fingers twitched along the collar of her blouse as she stood at the door. ‘Alec says I musn’t let anyone in.’

  I felt complete contempt for Elizabeth Kemp at that time. Even in my fury with Alec I wondered whether he was owed sympathy. Was he married to a woman so cold, so selfish that she wouldn’t even let him touch her? Had her illness, secret and undefined, been simply a ploy to gain his attention and keep him physically at a distance? Warmed by my own new relationship with Angus I found it hard to imagine feeling so negative. It was clear to me, though, that this woman in front of me was frightened.

  ‘Will you tell Livy I’m here?’ I asked. ‘Please? Perhaps she could just come to the window?’

  Elizabeth glanced wide-eyed down towards the road as if fearful that Alec might appear at any moment. Then she nodded. ‘Be quick though, please.’

  As I started walking round the back of the house towards Olivia’s window, Elizabeth called out in a high, childlike voice, ‘It’s not his fault, you know.’

  I didn’t bother to reply. I didn’t care about them any more. I cared only about Olivia.

  She appeared at the window still wearing her nightie, sleeveless, in white organdie. We stared at each other in silence for a moment.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Her face looked different: naked, like a statue from which rain has washed the dust. I could tell she had spent hours crying, though her eyes were not red. They were wide and sad, yet I could see in them something else, hints of other submerged emotions. I thought I detected a kind of exultation about her which disturbed me because it was so incongruous.

  She nodded at me.

  ‘Are you on your own all the time?’

  ‘No.’ She spoke so quietly I could barely hear her, as if she was afraid of being overheard. ‘Mummy slips up and keeps me company. And she sends Dawson up with food although she’s not supposed to. I’m supposed to fast like Joan of Arc. The servants think it’s mad of course, and who can blame them?’

  ‘But for goodness’ sake,’ I exploded, ‘when’s he going to stop all this nonsense? He’s got you imprisoned up there – and William’s feeling awful.’

  She pressed a finger urgently to her lips. ‘Shh – please. Sometimes he comes home to check . . .’ She smiled suddenly, an odd, amused smile. I felt she was removed from me, untouchable. ‘Please tell William I’m sorry. He won’t get into any trouble, I promise.’

  ‘Why on earth did you do it, Livy?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said dismissively. ‘I had to know I could, that’s all.’ She wavered for a moment. ‘I don’t know really . . .’

  ‘Was it because of me and Angus?’

  ‘Oh no. No – I’m very happy for you,’ she said smoothly.

  I heard light sounds to my left, and saw Elizabeth Kemp tiptoeing round the house towards me.

  ‘What are you supposed to do to get out?’ I asked quickly. ‘What are the terms?’

  ‘Oh, I have to apologize, and give up any notion of a life of my own, and promise I’ll never go near another boy again and be Daddy’s little girl for ever and ever until they find the right man for me to marry. Not much really.’

  ‘You must go,’ Elizabeth said to me. ‘Please. Don’t keep coming. It’ll make things worse.’

  I looked into her pale face, lined now round the mouth and eyes and taut with fright. I wanted to take hold of her and shake her and tell her she was weak and pathetic. Instead, all I could say, contemptuously, was, ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘Katie!’ Olivia appealed to me as I was about to move away. ‘We didn’t want you to know any of this. You know Daddy’s a good man really. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

  I stared up at her. ‘No,’ I said in the end. ‘I won’t tell anyone. But for your sake, not his.’

  When Olivia finally came out of her room she looked even thinner. Her manner was taut and she was sardonic and hard to reach.

  ‘Did you apologize?’ I asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she quipped. ‘I just told him I’d spend my days up there writing up his story for the News of the World. He soon let me out then.’

  * * *

  OLIVIA

  Katie was so lonely when we first became friends. She needed me. And oh, yes, I needed her. She was the only one I ever came near telling about home. But I didn’t want to spoil it. I wanted her to love me. I wanted her admiration, her worship of us, of Daddy. It meant that I could pretend, and believe in it all sometimes too, like I did when I was a little girl, and for Mummy’s sake no one should know. Katie was so innocent. Sometimes she saw things but I glossed over them. I became closed by habit and could not open myself again.

  Katie gave me herself. No one took much notice of her at home, and I made her flower, I know I did. But then people kept taking her away. That grandmother of hers. She was barmy but Katie had to love her of course. That was the difference between us: she could love people properly. Before, she talked only to me. And then Angus. I could see it coming long before either of them. The way he looked at her secretly. I couldn’t endure it.

  What she never understood (how could she?) was that I, Olivia Kemp, had to be the one, not her. The one that men wanted. I was the pretty one. I knew what my body had to do. If my existence taught me anything it was that the way to get anywhere is to give them what they want and plenty of it and they can’t resist you. You’ve got them caught like flies in honey. Mummy couldn’t do it. It wasn’t her fault, I kn
ow that. I know she spent every waking moment trying to compensate Daddy for her inability to service him. But I was going to please them, to have them. I had to be the one.

  Poor stupid William. Quite handsome in an obvious sort of way, but so middling and happy with himself. As soon as I touched him I knew my power.

  ‘Come on,’ I whispered in the garden. ‘Come with me. I’ll show you how to enjoy yourself.’ When I saw the look in his eyes my body was turning inside. I fancied I had a thick scent coming out from me like an orchid. I wanted scarlet silk wound about me.

  He was so easy. I made him shudder trying to hold himself in.

  ‘Oh Olivia,’ he kept muttering in the stupid way they all do. ‘Oh God, Olivia.’

  I had no intention of letting him enter me, oh no. I let him kiss me, and when I undid the top of my dress – his face! His eyes were almost bulging in his head. I spread my legs to let him imagine things, let him put his hand up my skirt.

  I moved my hand over his pleaser, all hard and tight. If they hadn’t all come crashing in like that I would have unfastened him. Taken him in my hand – mouth even – made him lose control of himself.

  Poor Daddy. His princess dethroned, if not deflowered. But he was a hypocrite locking me up like that. I couldn’t forgive him. And I told them about him. I let some of it out. I didn’t want to – to spoil things like I did. It was seeing them all there at the bottom of the steps – Kate and Angus all close and united of course – looking so shocked and righteous. I wanted to tear through that, to smash it all up. I’m a bad, bad woman.

  But the days when he had me locked away up there, he came to me on his knees, weeping, begging me, ‘I love you. I worship you. Say you’ll never never ever . . .’ One day he knelt with his arms around my back, face pressed against my belly like a child, his tears wetting the light cloth of my nightdress. I stood stiff as a tree, not touching him, just looking at the dark curls on top of his head. In that moment I knew I could do anything.

  * * *

  Part Two

  Chapter 9

  Birmingham, 1939

  ‘Katie – darling!’ Olivia gave a discreet wave, arm half extended as I panted across the polished floor of the Ranelagh Room in Lewis’s department store.

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t rush. I haven’t been here long.’ She raised herself from the chair smiling broadly and leaned across to press her face against mine. Her lips brushed my cheek. ‘Oh, sorry – I’ve left lipstick on you. Where’s my hanky?’

  ‘Not to worry. I’ve got one.’ I wiped my cheek, handing my coat to the waiter, stowed my gas mask under my chair, then sat beaming at Olivia. ‘It’s so lovely to see you.’

  For a moment we were silent, looking at each other as if unsure where to begin, and finally both burst into laughter at our awkwardness.

  ‘You’re all aglow,’ Livy said, once we’d settled into being with each other. ‘Still in love with nursing then?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ I pulled the comfortable chair in closer to the table. ‘Yes, it’s marvellous, especially now they’ve let us loose on the patients. The classroom part’s a real slog, but it’s worth it once you get out there on the wards.’ I had been nursing now for over a year and I knew I had made the right choice. I was being sucked into the rigours and rituals of the General Hospital which took us young and unformed and bent us to its demands, its disciplines.

  ‘I’m sure you’re terrific at it,’ Olivia said. It was typical of her to have such implicit faith in me.

  ‘I just can’t imagine wanting to do anything else.’ I smiled back at her, taking in her appearance. ‘I say, Livy – you look marvellous. So glamorous.’

  She was wearing a perfectly tailored suit in royal blue and her hair was pinned stylishly, swept back from her forehead. Beside her on the table lay a wide-brimmed blue hat and leather gloves. She was made up, lips a rich scarlet, and she looked stunning.

  Of the four of us she seemed suddenly the most grown up. William had taken to Oxford with apparent ease, his conversation when he came home full of rugger and student pranks. Angus was enjoying his training at Vittoria Street. But both of them seemed comparatively unchanged, except that they had moved on to something new. Whereas Olivia dressed now with sophistication, made her face up routinely in a way I never did and seemed suddenly adult.

  ‘You’ll have to take me in hand,’ I teased as we sipped our white wine. ‘There’s you looking like something out of Harper’s and me in my frumpy old uniform . . .’

  Olivia grimaced and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘There’ve got to be some compensations, I suppose.’ She picked up the menu and laid it in front of her but didn’t read it. The band was playing ‘Blue Moon’. A shaft of autumn sunlight fell into a warm rectangle across our table.

  ‘The job’s not getting any better then?’

  ‘I hate, hate, hate it!’ Suddenly she was storming at me. Olivia had not been given a choice. The Kemps decreed that she should do a year’s secretarial training, something useful, not these airy-fairy notions about study and music. She was to become versed in Pitman and commerce. As well as the proverbial ‘something to fall back on’ (which I’m sure in their hearts they never thought she’d need) it was to be her entrée to a suitable marriage. She would rise through a prominent company and marry well, preferably the boss. She had worked now for six weeks at Leggett and Martin, an insurance company which occupied prestigious offices in Colmore Row.

  The smile had dropped from her lips. ‘It’s so tedious and arid. I can’t bear it.’ She looked into my eyes. ‘I know I may not be brilliant at music or anything else – ’

  ‘You’re exceptionally good, though,’ I interrupted fiercely. I felt frustrated on her behalf. It wasn’t as if the Kemps were short of money. They could have allowed her more freedom to choose.

  ‘It’s what I really wanted. Was that so wrong of me?’

  I reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘Of course not. Look, they’re far too protective. They’re trying to run your whole life for you.’

  I had spent much less time at the Kemps’ house over the months since Alec found William and Olivia together. That summer of 1938 had felt like the end of our childhood, changing all of us. Alec and Elizabeth were civil enough to me still – more than civil in Alec’s case. He was clearly very embarrassed and went out of his way to win me over. But I was on my guard now and couldn’t trust him as I had before. I avoided the Kemps as much as possible.

  Although I’d tried to talk to Livy about what happened after it was over I couldn’t get her to open up on the subject. I knew she was aware of my stinging censure of her parents. When we met now it was nearly always somewhere away from either of our houses. It was sad. Both of us knew we had lost something.

  The waiter approached our table and hovered discreetly. Olivia forced her attention to the menu. When he had taken our order and departed with dignity Olivia leaned closer and whispered across the sugar bowl, ‘I’ve got to get away. It’s suffocating me. I’ve got to do something.’ She seemed frantic.

  ‘Gracious, Livy – ’

  ‘I’ve thought about it over and over. I was going to try and find a job in London. But now with the war everything’s changed. It seems so trivial and selfish to think about it. After all, we could all soon be dead . . .’ She pressed one hand over her eyes, trying to hold back tears. Her nails were the same colour as the lipstick.

  I reached out again and took her other cold hand across the table. ‘Livy, darling – don’t. I do wish there was something I could do for you. Can’t you ask your mother? No, I suppose she wouldn’t put her oar in for you.’

  Wiping her face, Olivia said, ‘Don’t be too hard on Mummy. It’s not her fault. Not really.’

  ‘She said it wasn’t his fault,’ I said, more harshly than I’d intended.

  Olivia looked me in the eyes. ‘I wish I could hate them. I wish it so much.’

  ‘Livy – can’t you tell me what’s so wrong at home? Is it – what you said
that day – about your father?’

  She rearranged her cutlery with nervous movements, half looking up at me, a fierce blush rising in her cheeks. ‘No. I can’t talk about it. I’m sorry, Katie.’ She tried to sound brisk. ‘I really shouldn’t have said anything that day. I must have given you quite the wrong impression. Please forget I said it. Mummy and Daddy are just a bit over-protective. That’s all.’

  Our food was served: roast chicken and vegetables. Livy was treating me.

  ‘This is so nice,’ I said to her as the waiter spooned potatoes on to our plates. ‘Thank you for it – very much.’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad to.’ Her smile was warm again now. It was such a reflex with her, being able to rally herself and change the subject. ‘What are best friends for?’

  We sat talking and laughing over our meal, and I enjoyed watching her pretty face across the table, thinking how the war was beginning to bring things like this into focus, things we had taken for granted.

  ‘How’s dear Angus?’ she asked.

  She often called him ‘dear Angus’, with a shading of irony in her voice.

  ‘He’s thriving. Loving the training. Of course I don’t see very much of him – we’re both so busy. And now, who knows what’s going to happen?’ In those early days of the war we were all galvanized by the expectation of being bombed or invaded any moment. ‘Do you think it’s all going to be over soon? Daddy’s taking a very pessimistic line: Fascism is the dark force of evil in our time and won’t be easily overthrown, and so on.’ I imitated my father’s sober Scots voice and Olivia grinned. ‘Feels so normal sitting here like this though, doesn’t it?’