Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  ‘I know,’ I told her gently. ‘Don’t worry – I believe you. I haven’t come here to judge you, Joyce. But I would like you to tell me one more thing. D’you know when I’m likely to find him around here?’

  Chapter 23

  Silence began to take root between Douglas and me. Silence which I began to imagine might never be broken. There were days when almost the only times we spoke were in response to my mother. That was when Douglas was there at all. He worked every possible hour, late into the evenings. Isolation and work were familiar havens for him.

  I began to panic. I was being punished and I felt I deserved no punishment. I imagined bringing up a child in this silence.

  In October it was Douglas’s birthday.

  ‘Will you be free tomorrow night?’ I asked the morning before. We were both dressing, Douglas careful and immaculate as ever. ‘I thought I’d book a table at the Midland. It’d be nice to celebrate properly.’

  I’d caught Douglas’s morning mood, brisk, already with the aura of the newsroom about him, not welcoming intimacy. ‘I can be. I’ll check.’ He fastened his tie. ‘Good idea of yours.’

  I moved forward to embrace him but he kept me at a distance, allowing only a light kiss on the cheek. ‘Breakfast. I need to be off.’

  The next evening I put on the soft wool dress I had worn after our wedding. I wanted Douglas to remember it; the dress, the day. He was late arriving, but not enough for me to have become edgy. I waited in the bar, self-consciously a woman alone. When he finally came limping across the smooth carpet I met his eyes and smiled. We had spent too many days avoiding each other’s glance. Douglas could see I was making a special effort, and with an intensity of relief which surprised me, I realized he was going to respond.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ He returned my smile and kissed my cheek. There was a glow about him, some pent-up excitement. ‘Just fetch a drink. Another for you?’

  We sat in the bar for a time, Douglas smoking and talking over the day with what felt like exaggerated courtesy. Once we had settled in the softly lit dining room and ordered some food, Douglas sat back, looking into my face. ‘I’ve got some news.’ I had not imagined the excitement. ‘I was talking to a chap on the Express today – ’

  ‘The Daily?’

  He nodded, lighting another cigarette. ‘He said there’s nothing doing so far as jobs are concerned at the moment. Too many demobbed and would-be journalists. But he said he knew I’d been on the job all through the war and he’s read some of my pieces – he liked the bits I did on the blitz. So he said I can send stuff in on a freelance basis, and as soon as there’s a job going, he’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Douglas, how marvellous for you!’ I cried. ‘Well done – you thoroughly deserve it.’

  Douglas leaned back and took a satisfied drag on the cigarette. ‘So, we’ll be heading for the big city. Not before time, I’d say. I mean Birmingham’s all right, but it just doesn’t have London’s – ’ he waved his arms expansively, ‘atmosphere, excitement. Does it? Even the Hun couldn’t knock the stuffing out of London.’

  I watched him, trying to keep my own feelings at bay. I couldn’t leave here now. Birmingham was home. I didn’t want to go to a strange place to have my baby, and above all, there was Olivia.

  ‘How long d’you think you’ll have to wait?’ I asked, forcing myself to sound bright and enthusiastic.

  ‘Anyone’s guess. Weeks, months, who knows, darling. But the main thing is’ – he gave a gleeful smile – ‘I feel sure I’ll be in there before long.’

  This was not the moment to argue. Douglas, of course, took it for granted that I would do whatever suited him. After our food had been laid in front of us, I raised my glass. ‘Happy birthday, darling. And I hope it turns out to be a very successful year for you.’

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. Douglas’s cigarette sent up a thin thread of smoke from the ashtray.

  ‘I wanted to try and clear the air a bit,’ I said eventually. ‘Things have been so awkward between us recently, and – Douglas, we shouldn’t be like this with each other. It’s no good, especially with the baby coming. It’s wretched, it really is.’

  ‘Oh, look, I’m sorry.’ Douglas reached for my hand across the table. ‘I know I’ve seemed rather preoccupied the last few days. It’s just my way of . . . Sometimes I find it difficult. Things don’t feel quite right. Not how I think they should be.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ For a moment I was encouraged. I shared this feeling. I wanted to take apart the whole puzzle of our marriage, to examine and restore it. But there were areas of it we could never reach with words. What happened between us in bed was something we could never even begin to discuss, even if this had been the place to do it. It was too fraught, too embarrassing. And the fact that I was now pregnant had apparently convinced Douglas that all was well in that department. But there were all the other uneasinesses between us. I hoped that Douglas, too, wanted to face and alter them.

  ‘Well, for one thing,’ he began, ‘I think we should move out of your mother’s house.’

  I was taken aback. ‘But you were the one who wanted to live there!’ Having chafed at our living there when we were first married, I was now resigned to it. I was looking forward to our baby being there too, to her growing up in the ample space, the garden . . .

  But he was already slamming something else at me. ‘And really, Kate, it’s time you stopped working.’

  ‘I am going to stop. I’ve only a few months to go!’

  ‘So why not give up now? I don’t like the idea of my wife working. And all those slummy houses around St Joseph’s. A married woman shouldn’t be out doing things like that. You should be at home, not out hobnobbing with all those rough women. I’m sure it can’t be good for the baby. Heaven knows what you might pick up there.’

  I could feel a harsh outburst of temper rising. I did have feelings of guilt about being out at work, because most married women I knew were at home. My mother had already taken me to task several times on the subject. I resented this pressure to give up a job I enjoyed so much. But I knew I must keep my temper under control. If I lashed out at him now for his pompous preoccupation with his own needs the conversation would be scuppered.

  ‘I can’t see that a few more months will make any difference.’ I spoke softly, squeezing his hand. ‘And then the baby’ll be here, and I’ll be at home just how you want.’

  ‘Then why can’t you give up now?’

  ‘I’ve agreed to work until February.’

  ‘They’ll find someone else. Please, my darling.’ He looked imploringly at me. I saw his cheek twitch slightly. ‘All I’ve ever wanted was a proper family. Mother at home, children. Coming home to you at the end of the day. Doing what families are supposed to do, not like mine. More like yours.’

  ‘Mine? A father who we hardly ever saw, a mother who was mostly bored stiff, resenting every moment her talents were being wasted, and a brother and sister who despise each other? It’s true that we held together and my parents respected, probably loved, each other. But that was the truth of it. The only person I could ever really communicate with in my family was my grandmother.’

  I took a mouthful of wine, felt it fingering warm down into my stomach. Douglas examined my face closely in silence as if trying to find something there.

  ‘You know, sometimes I wonder who on earth you really are, Kate.’

  A wave of exhaustion swept through me. Sometimes I felt Douglas was trying to wring me dry. It was as if he could bear me to have no private thoughts: he needed total possession of me to feel safe.

  There was a silence. Then he said, ‘It is my child?’

  I could have hit him. ‘What else do I have to say to you?’ I said wearily. ‘Yes. It’s your child.’

  As we finished our meal in silence, I reflected over fruit tart and coffee that I would never have believed it possible to be married and to feel so utterly lonely.

  The next Sunday when I went to visit
Olivia it already felt like winter. The sun barely seemed to rise and mist hung thick over the fields, merging with the grey clouds. The train moved like a needle of light through this shadowy landscape, windows running with damp, the lights still on in the compartments even at midday.

  My thoughts that morning were no less sombre than the view outside. When Douglas and I had returned home after our meal he made love to me with cold self-absorption. He was no longer apologetic about his inadequacies in bed. He just took what he wanted. I had to get used to preparing myself the way he wanted me; ready for him, on my back. He liked to test himself, leave it until the last moment. He knelt between my legs playing with my breasts like someone tuning a wireless, touching me until he was fully aroused (I wasn’t to touch him), then came into me hurriedly.

  I watched him that night. His heavy body lay along mine, the lion-coloured hair in childlike disarray. For a long time he didn’t look into my face. I felt I might just as well not have been there. But suddenly he glanced up and saw me watching him. I don’t know whether he expected my eyes to be closed. I was just lying there, looking. He brought his hand up and slapped me across the face, hard, so that I cried out, the tears stinging my eyes. Then he took his pleasure. Though his orgasm was soon over it affected him like an acute pain, his body convulsing, face puckered. He lay still, recovering. Afterwards he needed comfort. Afterwards, so did I.

  During that week he had also announced from behind his newspaper, ‘I’m looking for a house to rent. Somewhere we can have more privacy.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. ‘One minute you say we’re going to London, and the next you want a new house here.’

  He lowered the paper and looked coldly at me. ‘Why do you have to question everything I decide? I think it’s time we moved away from your mother and got a place of our own. She can take in lodgers if she needs to and listen in on their conversations instead.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’ I felt unsually defensive of her. In her way she had been good to us. Though I wasn’t quite sure that she didn’t sometimes stand on the stairs trying to hear what we were saying. ‘Anyway, she’s hardly here now she’s working again.’

  But Douglas wasn’t going to put up with me disagreeing. ‘There are a couple of houses I’ve seen up for rent in Kings Heath and it’s no good waiting around. I’m going to see them today.’

  He came back that evening saying he’d taken out the lease on one of them. I felt disappointed for myself and my mother. She was looking forward to a baby in the house. And, though I could barely admit it to myself, I was afraid of being completely alone with Douglas. With my mother there at least we had to speak.

  I took a small flask of coffee from my bag, and poured it carefully against the motion of the train. It tasted nastily of the Thermos, but after it I felt a little restored. My thoughts returned to Olivia. I dreaded what I was going to find. I wanted to give her some reassurance that I could help her.

  Joyce Salter had told me that though Alec Kemp did not come to see her very regularly, when he did it was always on a Tuesday evening. Lisa confirmed for me that this had also been the case with Jackie Flint.

  ‘I’m going to have to come here on Tuesdays,’ I said to Lisa. I had no clear idea in my mind of how I was going to find Alec Kemp even, let alone confront him. But it had to be there. I wanted as strong a hold on him as possible: first Olivia, and now this.

  ‘It’s like something out of the pictures, isn’t it?’ Lisa giggled, suddenly girlish, even with Daisy in her arms. Then she frowned. ‘You can come when you like, you know that. But you know where ’e lives. Why don’t you just go up to the ’ouse if you’ve got summat to say to ’im?’

  ‘Because he could say anything then, couldn’t he? He’d laugh and tell me the girls are making it all up. I need to be here – to see him here.’

  ‘Catch ’im with ’is trousers down, you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps not literally.’ I laughed, holding out my arms to take Daisy. ‘Come on, my lovely.’ The little girl came to my arms, gripping me with her strong fingers.

  ‘Jackie Flint was ever so bad after losing that babby. Couldn’t go out to work or nothing for weeks. She’s ’opping mad with ’im. Come to think of it, she’s got bits of family all over the place round ’ere who could keep an eye out. I’ll ’ave a word if you like, Kate.’

  ‘Would you? That would be terrific!’

  Lisa stood my me, buckling one of Daisy’s little boots. ‘What you need is one of them private detectives.’

  I smiled. ‘I seem to be fast turning into one myself!’

  Three Tuesdays had passed and I’d had no luck, and none of this was helping Olivia. Although I tried to sound certain about what I was doing in front of Lisa, I was in an agony of doubt all through those weeks. Would this work, and even if it did, was I actually doing the right thing for Olivia? When I did see her, I felt I would do anything to get her out of there, away from the horror of those electric shocks. And how could I face her month after month if I was achieving nothing?

  As my taxi drove away from Leamington, once more between sodden fields and bushes hanging with glassy drops of water, my nervousness grew and the sense of dread on approaching the hospital was even stronger than usual. We wound our way along the drive and Arden’s angular outline cleared through the mist. The barred upper windows were dark, though I could see some lights on downstairs. Outside it was very quiet once the car engine was switched off. I could hear not a voice or a bird. I pulled my coat round me in the freezing air, trying to imagine how cold it must be inside there, and walked up the steps and through the ornate doorway.

  I waited for her for longer than usual, in the weak light from the hall’s high windows and the faint smell of polish. Those long radiators could not have been working, as I could see my breath on the air. I heard occasional footsteps echoing on the stone floors outside and, once or twice, the rattle of keys in the inner door. Eventually there came the sound of the door being unlocked again, the key being turned and hurried footsteps.

  They came quickly into the hall, Olivia on the arm of the young nurse with the fringe who had brought her in the last time. She seemed agitated, bundling Olivia through the door at a pace with which Livy could hardly keep up. Part of my mind registered that as the nurse came in she turned to take a last anxious glance down the corridor. But my attention turned immediately to Olivia, to the ghastly whiteness of her face, her eyes enormous against the sunken cheeks, to her short hair straggly and unbrushed, and to her right arm which was bent at a protective angle across her body and encased in a fresh white plaster cast.

  I was beside her in an instant. ‘What’s happened? What have they done?’

  Automatically I found myself addressing the nurse. Olivia looked so absent. The nurse was apparently suffering such anxiety that she was unable to keep still and kept up a shuffling movement with her feet. ‘There may not be very much time,’ she whispered. ‘I think we’d better sit down.’

  I was already feeling so overwrought that for a second I thought she was telling me Livy was dying. ‘What d’you mean?’ My breathing had gone jagged. ‘Why’s her arm in plaster?’

  The nurse positioned Olivia in a chair, manipulating her like a doll, then turned to face me. Her features had a certain sweetness that I remembered. ‘It happened during the treatment. It does sometimes. When they give them the electric shock it makes the body seize up. All the muscles go into a kind of spasm – like a fit. They have to be restrained to stop them hurting themselves.’

  I sat down. I felt as if my lungs were constricting. ‘You hold them down?’

  She nodded silently. I took in several deep breaths. ‘Can’t it be stopped? The treatment, I mean?’

  The nurse made a helpless gesture. ‘The doctors . . .’

  ‘Livy?’ I stood up and approached her, feeling an irrational wariness as if she were charged and I might be electrocuted if I touched her.

  ‘She’s at the end of the treatment now,’
the nurse was saying. ‘She’s had two courses. There won’t be any more – not for a while.’ Her eyes flickered back and forth to the door.

  I drew up a chair and placed it next to Olivia’s. She sat staring ahead of her with no expression, looking completely exhausted. I reached out and took her undamaged hand. ‘Darling? It’s Katie.’

  I felt I could not reach her. She looked so strange, so impassive and resigned. They could do to her what they wished.

  ‘You do know who I am, don’t you?’ I asked, frightened.

  She gave a very slight nod.

  ‘She’s ever so tired,’ the nurse said. ‘She’ll get better. It can affect their memory for a little while.’ I knew the nurse had a special bond with Olivia and felt protective towards her. She gave me a sudden smile, sympathetic and wistful.

  ‘Livy,’ I implored, almost sobbing. ‘What is all this about? It’s been so long now – can’t you tell me why you’re so sad?’

  I thought there was going to be no response. She was shivering in the huge, echoing room, wearing the gingham dress again, and so far as I could see she had no other garments. I embraced her bony shoulders. ‘Oh Livy, I love you.’ Helplessly I sat and cried, and she remained like stone in my arms.

  But she turned to me then, gave me that strange, searching look of hers and said, ‘The baby.’ And went limp as if the words had been a rod in her spine. She folded her arms across her and began to rock, her voice tiny and plaintive.

  ‘My baby, my baby. My little baby.’ She was cradling the plaster cast as if it was a child, and this looked such a classic pose of madness that for a moment I wanted to seize hold of her and make her sit still. I glanced anxiously at the nurse. She met my eyes for a second, then moved her gaze deliberately to the high windows, light falling on her face.