Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  ‘Were you woken by the thunder last night?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. But it was nice to lie awake and think and take in the news.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’ Sometimes he asked questions in a disconcertingly clinical way.

  ‘Oh, just the rest of my life.’ I tried to speak lightly.

  ‘Freedom!’ Douglas said exultantly. ‘A chance to move on at last. Get on to one of the nationals.’ He was silent for a moment, hands in his pockets, looking down at the ground. ‘That’s if I stand a chance, competing with all our heroes returning from the front.’ I felt sorry for him, for his bitter sense of separateness, of not measuring up.

  ‘Look.’ He turned to me, speaking fast and awkwardly. ‘I can’t carry on like this – not telling you how I feel about you.’

  I pulled the front door closed behind me and stood against it.

  ‘I need to know whether you could ever feel anything for me. Sometimes it seems you do, and then . . .’ He hesitated. ‘You’ve got to face it, Katie. He’s not going to come back.’

  A lump rose in my throat and for a moment I couldn’t speak. Douglas read his own meaning into this. With a frustrated sound he turned away from me. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. He jerked loose from me fiercely. ‘Don’t, for God’s sake.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Feel bloody sorry for me.’

  ‘I don’t feel sorry for you,’ I said. ‘Actually I was feeling quite sorry for myself. Why do you have to take it that anyone who shows you any sort of affection must be feeling sorry for you?’

  ‘Well, why else do you keep on seeing me?’ he burst out. ‘You’re clearly still in love with – him. There’s nothing I can do about that.’ He looked into my eyes and I was rocked by the strength of emotion in his. ‘I feel helpless. That’s what drives me mad. I’ve spent months watching you mourn for someone else, feeling I should keep my distance from you, when it’s all I can do to hold myself back from touching you. Because I don’t want you to think I’m . . .’ He made another frustrated gesture.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m a crass idiot coming crashing in when you see me as nothing more than a second-best companion.’

  ‘That’s not how I see you.’ I looked away, down at the brick floor of the porch. In a flat voice I said, ‘I can’t tell you I didn’t – don’t – love Angus. And in some ways that hasn’t been finished properly. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings for you. I’m just so afraid – ’

  He waited for me to finish. I couldn’t look at him as I spoke.

  ‘I’m afraid of him coming back. And I’m afraid of him not coming back. It’s utterly unfair on you, I know. And you’ve been so good to me. I’m very grateful.’

  ‘He’s not going to come back, Katie,’ he repeated gently.

  ‘I know that really. In fact today, when I was in town, I really saw properly that I have to try and put it all behind me.’ I moved closer and laid my hands on Douglas’s shoulders.

  ‘Katie – ’ He sounded wretched. ‘Please don’t do this if you don’t really mean it.’

  ‘I do.’ I wanted to mean it, wanted things to be resolved and clear. I reached up and stroked his face. ‘Thank you for being so patient.’

  He pulled me hard into his arms. ‘Katie. Katie . . .’ His lips pressed hard on mine. I felt firstly the comfort of being held. As I kissed him back, the desire for him I had fought against for so long lit at his touch.

  On a beautiful, tranquil Sunday in July we sat together on the grass at the far end of our garden, beyond the vegetable patch and bean-sticks. Douglas often spent part of the weekend at our house now, rather than in his spartan digs, the garden of which had space for nothing but vegetables. My mother was civil to him, if not exactly warm, but he apparently saw no lack in her then, and even seemed to be quite fond of her.

  Douglas was sitting up with a newspaper spread over his legs. He usually read a whole range of papers at the weekend: Times, Express, Daily Worker, some of them several days old. Work: always work. I lay back contentedly with my head on my bent arm. All I could see was the branches of our apple tree and the pale blue sky.

  ‘It’s so quiet without Eric and Lizzie,’ I said. Gladys had departed tearfully soon after the war ended, begging us to keep in touch. ‘Mummy really misses Gladys, I think. She’s invited them to come back for holidays if they want to.’

  Douglas looked up. ‘That’s good. She’s a staunch character, isn’t she?’

  I watched a tiny curl of cloud unfold itself slowly across the sky. Only now it was over, the images of the war seemed to bombard me, a delayed realization of what we had all been through. ‘Even now I keep expecting something to appear – I’m always looking out for planes.’

  Douglas folded his newspaper untidily and flung it on the grass, then lay back beside me. ‘You don’t throw off habits like that in five minutes. I dreamt the other night that there was an air raid on, and I was all set to get out of bed and down to the shelter.’

  I laughed, and we lay together looking up into the blue. Though I was happy, I had an odd feeling of disconnectedness now we had peace. It was as if we could not pick up the threads of our life before the war, that we were cut off at the roots. And now the war was not our main preoccupation I found myself missing Olivia far more acutely. She belonged to the peace. She should be here. I also missed my father.

  I rolled over and looked down at Douglas. ‘What about your family? Don’t you think you should contact them?’

  Douglas had mentioned to me only recently that his mother wrote to him without fail every week and had done all through the war. ‘She knows I’m all right,’ he said in the dismissive tone he always used when talking of his parents. ‘I’ve dropped her a line here and there.’

  ‘But shouldn’t you go and see them?’

  ‘What you should do is not always the question, is it?’ he said, surprising me with his harshness. ‘And besides, I don’t think we’ve got a lot to say to each other.’ He sat up and held the camera to his face, altering the focus. ‘Lie still.’ I waited patiently as he took yet another photograph.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. ‘What is it about your parents that’s so terrible?’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about them.’ He moved closer and we sat leaning against the high garden wall, Douglas putting his arm round me. I saw his pale, flecked lashes. As we began to kiss, sitting side by side, I ran one hand over his strong hair, then down his back, stroking the raised muscles each side of his spine. He kissed me strongly, hungrily, arms tight around me. I was beginning to respond to him, when suddenly his hand was on my breast, grasping me clumsily and hard. I gasped, drawing back. Douglas snatched his hand away again.

  ‘Darling,’ I said gently. ‘You’ve never touched a woman much before, have you?’

  His face turned red. He was twenty-five, a year older than me, and innocent. ‘No,’ he said very quietly, as if ashamed. ‘Never had the courage – or the chance much. Not many girls go for cripples, you see.’

  ‘And men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses,’ I said, trying to joke him out of his embarrassment. But he was solemn and unsure of himself.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He couldn’t look me in the eyes. ‘You’re different, Katie. You’re so very special. I love you.’

  I leaned to him and kissed him again. I longed to show him the joy of it, to let him touch me. It would be all right here, where it was so secluded. He began to unfasten my blouse, fumbling with the top button. He looked me in the eyes as if waiting for permission.

  ‘You don’t mind? I’ve never – I’d like to see you . . .’

  When he had undone the buttons and slowly parted the two sides of white cotton, he slid his fingers inside the lacy edge of my bra. As he touched me I let out a slight sound, wanting him to continue. I could hear his breath coming fast and his hands were not steady.

  When my clothes were undone he
stared, childlike suddenly. ‘Oh, Kate – they’re so beautiful.’

  I waited for him to touch me, eyes closed and crying out with the pleasure of it as his hands reached my flesh. His breathing was fast and excited. A sudden sound startled me, a whisper of foliage, and I sat back from Douglas in time to pull the front of my blouse together as my mother advanced on us down the garden, her hands gigantic in gardening gloves. We sat feeling utterly foolish, but to her credit she gave us as wide a berth as possible and kept her eyes fixed on the vegetable patch beyond us. Passing back in front of us moments later with a garden fork she’d come to retrieve she said casually, ‘By the way, there’s tea . . .’

  Douglas’s cheeks were burning red. Silently I buttoned my blouse.

  ‘Look,’ Douglas said eventually, ‘if we really care for one another, we ought to be able to wait for all that, don’t you think? As a mark of respect. It should really be for after marriage, shouldn’t it?’

  I kept my gaze turned away from his, blushing now myself as I realized Douglas assumed I was innocent.

  He misinterpreted my heightened colour. ‘And I should be very happy if we didn’t have to wait very long.’

  Olivia didn’t come home until shortly before the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

  ‘My darling, darling!’ I cried, when she first arrived to see us, all my niggles about her letters forgotten. I held her tight, tears on my face. ‘It feels like a lifetime since I’ve seen you.’

  ‘To me too,’ she said, returning my embrace.

  She smiled and kissed me, but even in my happiness I could hardly conceal my shock. She was skin and bone, her hair limp and straggly and her eyes dull.

  ‘Livy – you look so ill,’ I said gently to her, feeling I had to cajole her. She seemed so knotted up in herself.

  ‘Well, you don’t exactly look like Doris Day yourself,’ she replied, evasive and teasing.

  It was true. Like so many other women we were shrunken and worn down by the war. I assumed that the exacting hours the Wrens had demanded from her had taken their toll, compounded by her bout of pneumonia. But I couldn’t imagine what they had done to her emotions.

  One evening I went round to Park Hill to spend some time with her. I felt slightly nervous as I walked down under the trees. She was so unpredictable nowadays.

  Alec and Elizabeth were evidently frantic about the state of her. They trod around her as if she might detonate at any second, while being on the other hand ferociously jolly towards me in an attempt to pretend that all was well, that ‘poor Olivia’ was just a little worn down after all her war work.

  ‘What she needs is a good holiday,’ Alec said. He was leaning against the polished surface of a grand piano which I dimly remembered seeing in the house on my last visit. He was leaner, his forehead lined and grey hair showing at his temples. Hearing his voice, I remembered my encounter in the fog with my bicycle, and I knew for sure that it had been him.

  When Livy and I were left alone, I said, ‘That’s a really beautiful piano,’ I hesitated. ‘Look, I’ve barely played through the war and I’m fearfully rusty, but would you like to have a go at some duets?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she replied languidly. She seemed to find it almost too much effort to speak. She sat smoking, drawing hard on the cigarette so that her cheeks were sucked in. There was an ashtray on the little table beside her with several stubs in. ‘I haven’t played for months either. I don’t suppose I shall. Can’t think what he bought the wretched thing for.’

  ‘But you were so good at it,’ I protested. ‘You mustn’t just let it all go.’

  She ground her cigarette stub into the ashtray. Her next words sent a chill through me, they were spoken with such flat indifference. ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Livy – ’ I went to her and knelt down carefully beside her chair and took her bony hand in mine. It felt like a starved bird. ‘My dearest Livy – what’s wrong? You look so thin and unwell.’

  She looked into my eyes then, really stared, as if she was searching for something. But in hers I saw a kind of hard blankness so unlike the vivaciousness of the young Livy that it made me want to cry.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked softly.

  She stared at me in silence and I thought she was making up her mind to say something. Then she put her head back, resting it against the chair, and closed her eyes.

  ‘Livy?’

  ‘I’m all right, Katie. Don’t fuss. I’m just tired. I’m always so tired. It’s been an exhausting war. Not just the work, you know – so much else going on.’ She rallied suddenly, switching into another gear. She sat up straight, eyes open. And she was off on her old track of how marvellous the Wrens had been, the parties, all the men, the team spirit, the romance . . . She talked very fast in a high, slightly childlike voice.

  ‘I was just the belle of so many navy do’s,’ she giggled. She began to rock the upper part of her body back and forth. I found myself shrinking back from her. ‘And when they discovered how well I could play’ – she held her hand out, indicating the piano – ‘well, of course I was in constant demand.’

  ‘But I thought you said you hadn’t played?’

  She waved a hand at me as if I was a half-wit. ‘This was earlier. And I was always top of the men’s lists for dances. There were fights over me you know. One poor fellow was knocked out cold outside the Naafi one night over me. I thought it was simply terrific. So romantic!’ Her laughter came out exaggerated, as if she’d been drinking.

  ‘Livy.’ I found myself speaking in a measured voice of the sort we used for patients who were confused or agitated. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it all. But it’s over now, isn’t it? You need to rest and settle down again. Get well properly. And you’ll have to think what you’re going to do. You never wanted to come back and live at home, did you?’

  She sank back in the chair, suddenly limp. ‘Daddy didn’t get elected, did he?’ She gave a malicious laugh. ‘Missed the boat. He jumps on the bandwagon thinking he’ll get a seat because of all dear Mr Churchill’s done, and then they go and elect the Labour wallahs instead. Isn’t that a joke? Don’t you think it’s a scream?’

  ‘Livy – don’t. Look, think about yourself. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. What a nag you’re being, Katie!’ She threw herself up out of the chair and went to the piano. She lit another cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head. She sat perched on the piano stool, pulling in the smoke hard.

  ‘I suppose I’ll get some tedious little job in a tedious little company somewhere. I’ll have to find a way of livening it up somehow, won’t I?’ Suddenly an odd, gleeful smile spread across her face. ‘Come here, Katie.’ She beckoned me urgently. ‘I’ll tell you a secret, shall I? You must promise not to tell.’

  Encouraged, I walked over to her. Putting her lips close to my ear she said, ‘They think they’ve got me here now, all locked away. But I still do it. I do. Every week at least I do it with a man. Anywhere I can. Even once in the gazebo – like when you found me and William. I told that one he had to be a very good boy. Nice and quiet, no shouting out. A lot of them shout you see, the things I do to them. Poor fellows can’t control themselves.’

  I drew my head back as if from a hornet. Of course I wasn’t a total innocent, but it had dawned on me only gradually as she spoke that she meant sexual intercourse. Her face wore a terrible, smug smile.

  ‘You’ll keep this all under wraps of course, won’t you, Katie?’

  I felt sick. I took her in my arms. ‘Olivia. Oh my sweet one – whatever has happened to you?’

  Chapter 19

  Soon after VJ Day Douglas and I announced to our families that we were planning to marry. My mother digested this piece of information almost entirely without comment, other than to suggest that, to start with, we live with her.

  ‘There are hardly any houses to be had and there’s plenty of room here. You’d have no need to fear for your privacy.’ She spoke stiffly, perhaps afraid we’d rej
ect her.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘I don’t entirely relish the thought of living on my own. I should have to think about selling the house. And in any case,’ she announced, ‘I shan’t be around bothering you. From the new year I shall be very busy – I’ve accepted a post on a children’s ward at Selly Oak Hospital.’

  ‘Mummy, that’s terrific!’ I said. ‘Whyever didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I just have told you,’ she said, stalking off with an armful of dried washing.

  Though my inclination was not to accept her offer I knew it made sense, and Douglas was delighted. ‘It’s such a beautiful home,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we’d be in some poky little place. It’s very good of her to ask us.’

  Douglas received a formal, tetchy note from his father, to the effect that he was glad to be informed that ‘my boy’ was planning to settle down, but that it was very bad form that they hadn’t even been allowed the privilege of meeting his intended. It also rebuked him sharply for not visiting home. His mother had been distraught with worry. Douglas was to travel to Gloucester immediately.

  ‘We really must go,’ I insisted to an enraged Douglas. I was shaken by the impersonal tone of the letter, but also by its description of Mrs Craven’s distress. ‘You can hardly blame them, can you? You’ve barely contacted them at all and your mother’s written so faithfully to you.’

  ‘Oh yes – she’s very good at giving completely the wrong impression,’ Douglas snapped.

  I was taken aback by his tone. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He got up from his chair in our back room and went to the window. ‘I’m not going to be summoned to Gloucester like that. I’m sorry, Katie, but I’ve got away from them and away is where I’m going to stay. Once you’ve cut ties it’s better to keep it that way. That’s my view of things.’

  ‘You can be very cold.’ I was upset, not wanting to begin married life with us so much on the wrong side of my in-laws. ‘Look, why don’t I go and see them on my own if that’s how you feel?’