Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  Perhaps that was the first time Alec noticed Douglas’s size and strength instead of only seeing his leg. After staring at him for a few seconds, he turned silently and walked back to the front door.

  Before Elizabeth could disappear I caught her arm. ‘It’s not been long,’ I said. ‘She’s not ready yet.’ Elizabeth nodded, face half covered by a lace handkerchief. I moved closer and whispered, ‘Come on your own another day.’ She gave a tiny nod before following her husband out into the flurry of flakes.

  Douglas slammed the door behind them. ‘What a complete bastard,’ he said. He turned to me, embarrassed, needing my approval. ‘Sorry.’

  I went and put my arms round him. ‘Nothing to be sorry for. That just about sums him up. Thank you for what you did.’ We kissed, briefly. Then I pulled away from him. ‘I’d better go and see what state she’s in.’

  The tears which followed this went on for days, and I could give her no comfort. It had punctured the great reservoir of feeling in her and she cried and cried, clinging to me in a storm of grief, ‘Katie, oh Katie . . .’ her body racked with it. She wept when alone, and when I saw her afterwards her face was puffy and distorted. Sometimes when I looked in on her when she was sleeping there were tears slipping out from beneath her closed lids, rolling down the angle of her cheek towards her hair and the pillow. She couldn’t eat. She cried herself sick.

  At first I was relieved by this outbreak of emotion. Then I began to panic. I didn’t know who to turn to. I wondered if her weakened body could stand such an onslaught of pain. Alone with her, the silence of the snow around us, I feared she might die and I would be responsible for having kept her here without looking for help. I held her tightly, sometimes for an hour or more, making soothing sounds, caressing her and pouring my own emotion into her.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ she cried to me. ‘My baby. My tiny, tiny boy. I feel as if they’ve torn my heart out of me.’

  Sometimes she took a pillow in her arms and rocked it with her body, trying to find some comfort. I couldn’t bear to see it. I could feel the movements of my own child so clearly now. Sometimes I cried with her.

  After the thaw came her tears slowed, then stopped. She began to talk. I realize now just how little she really talked about. She had schooled into herself an inability to confide about her home life and her parents. She talked instead, on and on, about her lost baby.

  We ventured out at last, walking slowly round the sodden ground of the parks. I revelled in the sensation of the cold air on my face, of using my limbs, feeling I was convalescing after a winter illness. As the days passed, bulbs pushed up through the ground, bursting colour into our grey, sad world. It felt a long time that I had been confined with Olivia. My feelings had been so exhaustingly twisted up with hers. And because of the weather I had seen scarcely anyone else, neither my mother nor Lisa. I longed suddenly to see Lisa, or someone like Brenda Forbes, someone with whom I could have a good, careless laugh. I reflected that the months of my pregnancy had been sad ones, and hoped my child would not be downcast as a result.

  One day we were standing by the pond in the middle of Highbury Park, the water flooding over the lip of its normal bed after the thaw. A woman walked past us with three children, two of whom ran boisterously on ahead. The last and youngest, a little girl with straight, brown hair, sidled past us slowly, her eyes never leaving our faces until her mother called her, a sharp note of impatience in her voice.

  Watching her, Olivia said, ‘You know, by now he must be running around like her – talking – everything. He would be calling me Mummy, wouldn’t he?’

  I nodded, helplessly. Olivia turned and stared at the ducks, skirmishing on the unusually wide expanse of water. The collar of her black fur coat covered the lower part of her face. I wondered how this wound would ever heal. She had talked endlessly of his birth, every detail of what she remembered of her first and only night with him.

  Standing now on the mush of leaves by the bright water, she said, ‘I wonder what they’ve called him?’

  ‘What was your name for him?’

  ‘James. James Robert.’

  ‘Good names,’ I said. ‘You know Angus’s second name was James?’

  For a second a smile touched her lips as she stared ahead. ‘I remember.’

  Those early months of 1947 come to my memory so poignantly. As the spring came, my body blossomed with the season. Douglas was admiring and careful. He understood it was his role to make fewer demands on me in bed and this was a relief.

  Olivia’s mood shifted gradually. After her time of intense preoccupation with the baby she stopped talking about him. I tried to encourage her to discuss other things: her family, the Wrens, but she was reticent about both. She grew quieter again, calmer, I thought. She did like to talk about our childhood. My mother allowed us to have the piano from her house and Olivia began to work on her music again. Her hair and skin began to show signs of life. She even encouraged Douglas and me to go out together.

  ‘You’ve had a hard winter, what with the weather and looking after poor old me.’ She tried to make it into a joke. ‘You should go out together, before the baby comes.’

  When she suggested it, it seemed very appealing. Douglas and I decided to go and see a show, eating out beforehand.

  ‘I do feel rather guilty about leaving her on her own,’ I said to him as we were getting ready. ‘After all, she’s had the hardest time of us all this year.’

  ‘It was her idea, though,’ Douglas said. ‘And we have had next to no time together.’

  Brushing out my hair, I said, ‘You’ve been so patient, darling. Thank you for that.’ My voice sounded very polite. I often seemed to find myself being studiously polite to Douglas.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Well, it won’t be for too much longer now, will it?’

  I stopped brushing and spoke to his image in the long glass. ‘Have you heard more from London?’

  ‘Nothing definite yet.’ He was knotting his tie. ‘But it won’t be long I don’t think. And then we’ll be on our own again, won’t we?’

  I tried to sound lighthearted. ‘There will be the small matter of a baby!’ But I felt desolate at the thought of being alone with Douglas, in a place where I knew no one, and with no Olivia.

  Life without her here was becoming unimaginable. Sometimes, when Douglas came in from work, he would find us sitting together having already prepared a meal. Livy might be playing the piano while I rested or sat stitching frocks and coatees for the baby in soft white cotton. Now and then I’d look up at her back, loving the sight of her, absorbed in the music, her hair now gradually inching its way back to its original length and curling a little at the ends.

  ‘Your hair’s growing fast,’ I’d tell her sometimes, and she’d just shake her head, sending it frisking across her shoulders. She didn’t seem to care whether it was or not. I felt a warm, filling happiness at our being together there like that. Other times we sat on the couch talking or reading, Olivia resting her head on my shoulder, her hair soft against my cheek, our feet stretched across the rug towards the fire. And Douglas, walking into this scene, carrying the evening paper, hanging his coat while I fetched him a drink, would say, ‘Hello, girls. What sort of day’ve you had?’

  And while he drank down a glass of Scotch, he’d tell us how his had been, bringing some of the outside world in to us. And I knew that in this routine, his finding me always here like this, he felt safe. He had me in the place where he wanted me: an ordered household, female and domestic.

  That evening, as we left to go out together, Olivia was cooking poached eggs for herself.

  ‘I’ll eat by the fire,’ she said lightly. ‘It’ll be cosy.’ She turned, as if inspecting us, and came to straighten the neckline of my frock as if I were a schoolgirl. I kissed her.

  Douglas and I stood arm in arm. My coat was tight at the front, but did cover me. ‘I shan’t be able to do it up soon.’ I laughed. Douglas put his arm round me in a show of protectiven
ess. And I felt very aware of us as a couple, how we must look an exclusive unit, shutting Olivia out. Her face became closed suddenly. She looked at us with a strange, frozen expression.

  ‘Livy?’ I stepped aside from Douglas, concerned. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ I almost felt compelled to call it off, say I’d stay. But she forced a wan smile to her face. ‘Yes, of course. Go along now, do. Have a lovely evening, won’t you?’

  I didn’t have a lovely evening. Though I tried to pretend otherwise to Douglas, I felt very uneasy. There was the strangeness of being alone with him, of feeling we had so little to say. And I was worried. That look of Olivia’s, something in it hard and realized, which lingered in my mind. By the time we arrived home I was taut with anxiety. I rushed through the house as fast as I could manage in my condition. There was no sign of her downstairs. I climbed the stairs and stood panting at her bedroom door, feeling so foolish when I found her settled in bed. She was sleeping with the little lamp still on, her face severe. I knew that tonight was a warning, though small, that all was not yet well, despite the warm moments with her when I might be lulled into thinking her recovered.

  Chapter 26

  ‘What d’you think?’

  Olivia burst into our sitting-room which was full of April sunshine and curving tulips. She stood in front of me twirling this way and that.

  ‘What on earth?’ I gaped in astonishment at the silky, sea-green material, the close-fitting bodice and abundant, flowing skirt. The dress was everything we had longed for during the scrimping years of the war. Most of us were still longing.

  ‘Isn’t it a dream?’ Olivia said, still turning in front of me so I could see its effect from all angles. ‘A real Dior dress – it’s the New Look. I just couldn’t resist something with a bit of go in it.’ On her feet were a pair of matching green shoes with high, slim heels.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, lolling back wearily in my chair. The sight of her looking so thin and elegant made me feel ungainly. The baby was due in three weeks and I was huge and sluggish. ‘Are you going anywhere in particular?’

  She was jittery with excitement. ‘Not yet. But I was thinking, it’s about time I started putting myself about a bit more.’ She twitched at the skirt, taking a fold between finger and thumb to pull it wide, and dancing round on our worn square of carpet, singing ‘I’m gonna meet, a certain party at the station . . .’ She danced too long and hard and stumbled, nearly falling, so that she had to save herself by grasping on to the other armchair.

  I watched uneasily, trying to smile at her delight. There was that brittleness, the over-excitement I had seen in her in the weeks before Arden. I was not comfortable examining each of her moves for signs of unbalance, like her warder, but I was worried. Things had begun to niggle at me. I had been concentrating so hard on the thought that if she could grieve for her baby she could find a degree of healing and calm. But now the other memories, which had been pushed out during our time of intense closeness when Livy was childlike, dependent solely on me, needled my mind. Some of the difficult aspects of her behaviour even before the war forced themselves on me.

  I could feel things sliding. We had been so close, so tranquil for a few weeks. Unknown to us, we had been inching along a balance, and now the ground was beginning to tilt under us.

  Livy had started seeing more of her mother.

  ‘Darling!’ Elizabeth would say when she flurried into our house, putting on her sparkling social face and a relentless cheerfulness with Livy. ‘Look what I’ve brought you,’ she’d cry. She came with new clothes, money, flowers, even sweets, as if pacifying an infant. Elizabeth showed more vivacity than I had seen in her for years. Sometimes the two of them went out shopping together.

  On the previous visit, though, it had been damp outside, and they sat in with me. The house felt cosy, smudged light coming from outside through steamed-up windows. I made tea and sat listening to them, taking refuge in knitting to avoid being drawn into the conversation.

  ‘So how are you, darling?’ Elizabeth gushed over Livy. She sat close to her, fondling her hand. ‘You look so much better,’ she went on without giving Olivia time to reply. ‘Quite my girl again. Dear Katie must be looking after you so well.’ She darted a smile in my direction, her face immaculately masked by powder and lipstick. ‘We owe you such a debt, Katie.’

  I managed a smile. I didn’t want Olivia to know what had passed between me and her parents while she was in Arden, or quite what it had taken to get her out.

  ‘Katie’s so marvellous,’ Olivia said. Her voice had gone small again: that of a six-year-old. ‘I’m really feeling much much better.’ I thought of her dreams, the tremor of her body, most nights still.

  Elizabeth reached down for a parcel which she had been carrying when she arrived. ‘Look, darling – I’ve brought you something to give you a bit of a lift. Nothing like something new to raise your spirits, is there?’

  Olivia took the gift and unwrapped it, sliding out from the layers of paper a handbag in soft brown calfskin. She gave her mother a brilliant smile and leaned over to kiss her cheek, giggling a little breathlessly as she did so.

  ‘It’s gorgeous, Mummy, thank you. A lovely thing to have.’

  Elizabeth took it from her and unfastened the catch. ‘I thought these would come in handy too.’ Inside she had put three Arden lipsticks, missing the irony of this completely. She could at least have chosen Helena Rubenstein.

  The two of them tittered away together, trying the rich, waxy shades on the backs of their hands.

  ‘That one’s more your colour, Mummy,’ Olivia said, handing her one of them. ‘It’s a bit pale for me. Why don’t you have it?’

  ‘Oh no, darling!’ Elizabeth pronounced the ‘darling’ each time in an exaggerated, caressing way. ‘I bought it for you. It’ll look lovely. And listen, I thought after the time you’ve had’ – this her only reference during the visit to the state Livy was in – ‘you could do with a nice smart outfit for the spring. We’ll go out again and I’ll treat you, shall I?’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ Olivia said, though perhaps in a flatter voice than Elizabeth had hoped.

  Elizabeth kissed her again. ‘I’m so glad.’ She glanced at me. ‘I don’t know if Katie would like to come? I suppose now is not the time for you to be laying out money on new clothes for yourself, is it? It’ll be all matinée coats and napkins for a time . . . all such a bother at that stage.’ She gave a tinkly laugh, smoothing down her crisp fawn skirt. ‘Believe me, you’ll be glad to have your body back to yourself.’

  She took her leave finally, giving me, as she did so, a look of strange coyness as if it were I, not Olivia, who was off-centre and needed humouring. Then she brought out the smile with which she had learned to embellish so many occasions of her married life.

  ‘She does look so much better, doesn’t she?’ she hissed at me. ‘Marvellous, really. And Katie – ’ The face was carefully arranged now in lines of solemn gratitude. ‘It’s you we have to thank.’

  I watched her walk down the path to the wet pavement, so elegant and fragile. That woman, I thought, skates round the edges of her life and never dares to reach into the middle of it.

  *

  When Olivia stayed out all night for the first time, I sat up in bed through the small hours, taut with worry. It was a week before my baby was due to be born.

  ‘This is absurd!’ Douglas raged beside me, after both of us had tried and failed to sleep. It was two o’clock in the morning. ‘She shouldn’t be depriving you of your rest like this, thoughtless little minx.’

  ‘She’s not thoughtless,’ I said. ‘She’s off balance. She doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going – like grass in the wind. I really don’t think she can help it.’

  ‘Why d’you always defend her?’ Douglas flung back the bedclothes and went for the umpteenth time to the window. He peered each way up and down the street, then gave a loud, impatient sigh. ‘No sign. Look, shouldn’t we get the po
lice or something?’

  ‘No!’ I cried out so vigorously that I felt a kick of protest from the baby inside me. ‘I don’t want anyone getting hold of her like that. They’d have her back in there . . .’

  Douglas limped back over to the bed. ‘You think there are grounds, then?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘She’s not – well – normal, is she?’

  ‘She just needs time.’ It was my turn to pull myself out of bed and hold back the curtain. ‘Oh, Livy, where are you?’ I stood there for a long time, willing her to appear along the road. ‘At least it’s not as cold as it was.’

  ‘Come back to bed,’ Douglas ordered. ‘You’re not responsible for her. She’s an adult.’

  ‘But I am. I feel I am, at the moment. That’s the trouble.’

  Douglas lay beside me, eyes narrowed. ‘Where d’you think she is?’

  I hesitated, hardly even wanting to admit it to myself. ‘With a man, most probably.’

  ‘But who?’

  I sighed. ‘I’ve absolutely no idea.’

  ‘I don’t think we can put up with much more of her.’

  ‘Don’t start,’ I said, trying to find a comfortable position for myself. ‘Not now.’

  The night crawled past. I made watery cocoa at three. Douglas brewed tea at four-thirty. We lay dozing uneasily. I was sleeping badly at that time anyway because of the pregnancy. I dreamt repeatedly of Olivia, and once I was so certain that she was banging on the front door that I went down to open it and saw only moonlight whitening the houses opposite. By the time morning came, we were exhausted and full of nervous irritability.

  At ten o’clock, long after Douglas had left, she came sailing in, wearing an expression of smug satisfaction, of victory almost. There was mud on her coat and her stockings were laddered. She also seemed more than slightly drunk. I felt like strangling her.