Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  Her tears still coming, she folded her arms across the front of her wet denim jacket and turned away. The place had made her feel jumpy, nerves stretched taut, ready to run on hearing the slightest sound. But there was only rain falling from the low, grey sky.

  Wiping her face with her hands, she headed for the drive. For a moment she turned and walked backwards watching the hospital recede, then hurried to the taxi and sat shivering on the rear seat.

  ‘Must be out of your flaming mind,’ the driver commented without turning round. His bald patch was round and pale like a peppermint. The radio was on, an over-bright voice beating from it.

  They drove back through the Warwickshire countryside without speaking. Anna stared out through the streaks of water on the window, badly wanting to smoke, but a large sign in the back of the cab forbade it. She watched trees and hedges passing. Some of the corn had been flattened by the rain. Arden faded behind them like a mirage.

  Chapter 30

  The night after the funeral, Anna hadn’t been to bed until well gone four. Apart from Richard’s phone call she didn’t speak to anyone. She cut slices of bread and cheese to eat with Patak’s pickles and sat on Kate’s velour sofa, feet up, reading and reaching for cigarettes. Every hour or two she pulled herself up and stretched, shivering a little, made coffee and ate Dairy Milk until it was all gone. Once she went to the back window and saw a bright sheet of moonlight across the golf course behind the house.

  When finally she put Kate’s pages of writing down and went upstairs to bed, her eyes felt dry and sore, her head tight inside. But it took her a very long time to sleep, her nerves jangling from the caffeine, images from what she had just read swirling in her mind.

  Late the next afternoon, as promised, she drove their dusty blue car to Coventry and let herself into their terraced house off the Kenilworth Road.

  ‘Richard?’

  How silly. Of course he wouldn’t be there. It was very quiet, the air in the house stuffy, plants drooping on windowsills. A fly droned round the kitchen like a distant bomber and the tap with the dodgy washer was dripping into the quiet, down the side of the washing-up bowl. The bin smelled in the heat.

  Richard had evidently worked his way through their supply of crockery for each meal without washing up any of it. Mugs waited on the draining board rimed with coffee. There were cereal bowls encrusted with muesli and two plates with grains of basmati rice congealed in grease. Saucepans with various dribbles down their sides were stacked drunkenly against the tiled wall. Richard’s ideals of intellectuals taking their turn at menial work never had quite translated into cleaning up after himself.

  Anna automatically started to do what she had always done: restore order. She pulled the overflowing black bag out of the bin and tied the top. The yellow washing-up bowl was almost full of water ringed with orange grease. She tipped it away, cutlery crashing across the bottom of the bowl, and turned on the tap to run hot, staring at the bright thread of water. Then she thought, sod it, turned it off and went out to the tiny garden, to sit on the rickety bench with a bottle of beer from the fridge and a cigarette.

  The house was squeezed into the long curve of the terrace, its window frames a muddy green, the built-on bathroom jutting out into the garden. The sight of it made her feel sad. She had spent too much time in there feeling low. It had been only days away from Christmas when she lost the baby. She was alone of course. Term was over for her, but Richard still had to work. The miscarriage had seemed such a violent thing: pain, blood, panic. Eighteen weeks pregnant and she had thought it was safe, established. Since then she had hardly let herself think about the child as it might have been. But now, suddenly, there was a pram in front of her on the baked paving stones, old fashioned and not the sort she would actually have had. She saw it moving, jerked by vigorous kicks from inside, tiny feet bare in the heat. And herself leaning over, lifting, holding warm flesh, a small head with hair moist in the heat. Tears stung her eyes. The house should not have been silent this summer. She thought of Olivia, what she must have felt.

  After six, when she was already angry, the phone rang.

  ‘Anns? It’s me. Look, sorry, but I’m going to be late. We’ve got a problem here.’ He had on his harassed work voice. ‘Look, I know I said I’d cook and everything, but could you maybe get something going? Otherwise it’ll be midnight when we eat.’

  ‘No, it won’t, actually. I shan’t be here at midnight. The last train goes before then.’

  ‘Tonight? But I thought you were back now. Staying, I mean? Come on, at least stay the night?’ Anna pictured him hunched over his desk, hand running through the wild brown hair, intense frown on his face.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh – ’ He sounded very put out. ‘Well, look, I’ll be home within a couple of hours – definitely.’

  ‘Sure.’ She put the phone down, trembling with fury.

  Kate had never openly criticized Richard. They had got on civilly enough, even had things in common. But Anna remembered her once saying, ‘It’s no good. He’ll burn out carrying on the way he does. His work’s very worthwhile, of course, but you have to keep it in perspective.’

  Thinking back, Anna saw that Kate had known their relationship was at odds long before she had herself. It wasn’t that she’d said anything. It was more what she hadn’t said: none of those encouraging signals of hope for it to last. When the two of them had moved in together four years ago, Kate had been helpful but not exactly over the moon about it.

  ‘We’re not thinking of getting married – at the moment anyway,’ Anna had confided, wondering what the reaction would be. ‘To tell you the truth, Richard’s not too sure about marriage – as an institution I mean.’

  ‘I think you’re very wise,’ Kate said unexpectedly. ‘Being tangled up in buying property together is enough of a complication without rushing into marriage as well.’

  She had, back then, fallen for something Richard represented as much as for himself. After she met him, her life before seemed to have been spent in slumber, wasted in some way. She had drifted from college to teaching, unsure what else to do, had barely examined what she believed about anything. And there was Richard, fresh from his degree, embarked as a mature student in sociology and politics. Old as she was, she had been impressed by someone who could bandy terms around as if they owned them: the jargon of sociology. And Richard’s ideals, which he could lay out for her like a pack of cards. But of late she had begun to notice other things: all the friends she had somehow not seen for a long time because Richard had condemned them as bourgeois or just plain boring. Friends she had once valued, who’d seen her through other times, college and teaching. And she had mistaken Richard’s openness about his own feelings for sensitivity to hers.

  She decided to face the rest of the house. In their room the duvet lay in a strangled twist across the pine-framed bed. There were underpants and socks and shirts left lying all over the coconut matting (Richard didn’t like carpet).

  She sat on the side of the bed holding a photograph in a wooden frame from the dressing table. A close up of her and Richard, both grinning foolishly at the camera. It was taken a few months after they got together. She had her hair even longer then and Richard said she looked like Mary Hopkin. She had been clowning, singing, ‘Those were the days my friend – la la la la la la . . .’ Richard had a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, a lazy half smile, arm crooked round Anna’s neck and smoke threading up through her hair. His shirt was a loud check, hair curling down into his neck and chunky sideburns.

  Anna put the photo back and looked round at the bed. All the nights there with Richard, his intensity even in sleep. But the more recent memory was of being alone there after the miscarriage, empty and distressed. Richard had no idea of her need for him to be there. She had wanted to keep the news from Kate, until one day, unable to bear the loneliness any longer, she phoned her, and Kate came immediately, full of comfort and understanding.

  Their lives h
ad always been dictated by Richard’s timing. ‘I’m-so-busy-so-much-work-this-will-really-make-a-difference.’ Never there when she needed him, in her own crises at work, or when the bleeding began and she had to call an ambulance, or through her mother’s death.

  She thought of Douglas, of Kate’s strength in ending her marriage. Turning to the photo again, she stroked dust from the film of plastic covering Richard’s face, as if in order to speak to him. ‘No,’ she said, her voice sounding loud after the hours of silence. ‘No more.’

  At eight-thirty the phone rang again. She ambled across to answer it. ‘Look, Anns – sorry. Meeting’s running on a bit. Bit of an emergency. It’ll be another hour, then that’s it – definite. OK?’

  ‘As you like.’

  Upstairs she packed an old suitcase which had been Kate’s. Richard always used a rucksack to go away, suitcases, like carpet, apparently representing something too staid. Folding clothes into the deep expandable case, Anna felt calm, peaceful almost. These few days away from Richard had allowed parts of her, long submerged, to bob to the surface like corks.

  She took only what she needed most immediately, nothing like books or cassettes. This could not be finished now. There was the joint ownership of the house to deal with for a start.

  She called a taxi to take her to the station. While she was waiting, she went to the kitchen and rummaged round in the store cupboard for a tin of baked beans and left it standing out on the side, the tin-opener resting on top.

  Without looking round any further she went outside with her case and sat down beside it in the coppery evening light.

  The next morning she went on impulse to a hairdresser’s in Kings Heath and had her hair cut very short. Her head felt strangely light and she could feel the air on her neck. In the mirror her eyes seemed bigger, the cheekbones more prominent. She looked different.

  When Richard phoned she didn’t tell him she’d left home for good. After her decisiveness in Coventry she found she couldn’t face talking to him about it, especially not over the telephone. She found herself in a period of limbo, strung between an old life which she had to finish and a new one she barely knew how to begin.

  ‘The thing is, I’ve got so much to do here,’ she told him. ‘All the house to clear. And there’s lots of the holiday left. I shan’t be around for a while . . .’

  Roland Mantel lived a street away from Kate’s house, in a similar style of twenties semi. Its rectangle of front lawn was boxed in by trim privet hedges, the front door sky blue, slightly chipped and the windows huge clean panes of double-glazing with their chunky white frames.

  It was a few moments before he came to the door. He was dressed in fawn cotton trousers with mud stains at the knee and gardening gloves clasped in one hand.

  ‘Anna, my dear – how lovely!’ His face lifted into a cherubic smile. ‘Called in on you yesterday, but no joy.’

  ‘Yes, I was – out,’ she replied vaguely, unsure how to explain her day visiting Arden.

  ‘I say, I do like the hair.’

  ‘Thank you. I wanted a change.’

  Reaching up, she kissed his cheek, soft and broken-veined and familiar. ‘I’m very sorry it’s taken me so long to get round here.’ She gave a shrug, ashamed of letting the week go past since the funeral. ‘Uncle Roland, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘To me? I’d be honoured. I’ve missed our chats since you’ve been in Coventry. Come on through – I’ve got the kettle on. You’re in luck because I’ve got some digestives in. Can’t beat a McVitie’s, can you?’

  ‘I know I’ll always get fed well when I come to see you.’ Anna smiled, following Roland’s plump figure into the kitchen at the back of the house, across the hall’s worn brown carpet. The house had always been bare and functional, and kept in the methodical way of someone once in the armed forces. The only splashes of exuberance had been handed down from his parents’ house; the standard lamp in the living-room with its huge tasselled shade, a vase shaped in deep blue glass. And the tablecloth embroidered with a riot of wild flowers which was always spread on the table when they used to come for teas of crumpets and Eccles cakes – an iced bun for Anna – all produced out of white bakery bags.

  In the kitchen there were still the old wooden cupboards with blue handles which Anna knew she had run to pull open and explore when he had first moved in, some time within the memory of her childhood. He had a red and white sixties cooker with metal racks beside the grill for warming plates, an ancient Russell Hobbs kettle and a cupboard full of mismatched crockery. Coming back here after this long gap, Anna saw now only the simplicity of the house. He could have had so much more, but chose not to.

  The sun was slanting through the french windows, etching a rectangle on the grey lino. Roland’s cat, black and white and very hairy, was spread across its bright heat.

  ‘Hello Maisie, old lady.’ Anna squatted down and ran her hand across the inert body which just raised the energy to give a half-hearted purr.

  Roland was fishing teaspoons out of a drawer, frowning with concentration. ‘Yes, I suppose she’ll be leaving me soon too.’

  Anna looked up startled, suddenly ashamed. Roland’s reserve and gentlemanly tact had kept her from appreciating how deeply he felt about her mother’s death.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Roland. You’ll miss Mummy a lot, won’t you?’

  He paused, not meeting her eyes, a jar of Nescafé poised in one hand. ‘I don’t think I can quite imagine how much yet.’

  Anna wanted to go to him, give him a hug, but she held back, wondering whether she wouldn’t just be piling her own emotions on him. And there was an odd feeling now, the two of them alone without Kate who had always been there.

  ‘You were such a good friend to her – to us both.’

  Roland gave her a watery smile, determinedly cheerful. He handed her a mug patterned with ears of wheat. Biscuit packet in his other hand, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go out. Much too good a day to be in.’

  There was a covered verandah at the back of the house, where they sat on old canvas chairs, looking out over the vivid summer green of the lawn. Roland was cultivating a vine up the two supports of the verandah, its tendrils just beginning to reach across the wooden slatted roof. It was very peaceful, quiet enough to hear birds, insects even. Anna thought of the little yard at the back of the house in Coventry with its dusty slabs and tubs of bolting geraniums.

  Roland sat back with a wistful sigh. ‘Biscuit? Go on. Look as if you need it.’

  Anna smiled, taking one. Roland always made the smallest things seem a treat, should have had a host of grandchildren to spoil. She could tell he was waiting for her to speak, clearing his throat now and then as if to do so himself but unable.

  ‘It’s so lovely just to sit still,’ Anna said. ‘I feel as if there are whole aspects of life I’ve forgotten – as if I’ve been underwater for a long time.’

  ‘That’s what Kate said. Work, work, work all these years. She said when she retired she was going to make time to stand and stare.’

  Anna chuckled. ‘That’s not how it sounded to me. She was so full of plans and projects.’

  ‘Ah well – I expect she didn’t want you to worry or think she was going to vegetate.’

  ‘It never occurred to me she would.’ Always some campaign with Kate, even in Anna’s earliest memories. Getting people to see that the National Health Service was for them. ‘All these women, so prolapsed that their insides were sleeping beside them on the bed. “Go and get yourself fixed up,” I’d tell them. That’s what it’s for.’ And sex education: working in schools, determined there should be openness, trying to combat the ignorance of young women. Recalling Kate’s energetic, no-nonsense style, how much she loved people, Anna felt tears rise in her eyes.

  ‘Roland,’ she began. ‘There were a lot of things Mummy didn’t talk to me about, weren’t there?’

  Roland made a slight grimace and attended to brushing biscuit crumbs from the front of his shirt. ‘I’m
not sure about that, my dear. You mean your father?’

  ‘No – not really.’ Anna sat forward in her chair, reaching for the end of her hair, her habit of playing with a strand between her fingers, but it was gone – shorn and strange. ‘She talked about him a bit. Enough so that I’ve never needed to be too curious about him. I always knew who he was. And she told me enough when I was younger – not in great detail of course – to make me understand why they were divorced.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Roland corrected her quickly. ‘They were never divorced. Not formally.’

  ‘They must have been!’ She sat up straight again. ‘I mean it’s so long ago.’ Roland was shaking his head. ‘I’m sure she told me . . .’

  His gaze fixed on the far side of the garden, Roland said stiffly, ‘Her name was still Craven, remember. If they had applied for a divorce I can only assume they would have been granted one after a certain time. But of course you don’t have to be legally divorced if you are living apart unless you want to remarry. Presumably Douglas Craven never wanted to do so.’

  Anna had the words ‘And Mummy?’ on her tongue, but bit them back, seeing how Roland suddenly turned very brisk, sipping his coffee, twisting the top of the biscuit wrapper to seal it up.

  ‘D’you mind me asking you things?’ she wondered anxiously. ‘If you’d rather I didn’t . . .’

  ‘Of course you have questions, Anna,’ he said, his tone gentler again. ‘But I don’t know that I’m going to be much help. I never met your father properly, you see. Really I saw very little of your mother while she was married. It was only afterwards we spent more time together.’

  ‘Did you meet Angus Harvey?’

  Roland startled her by suddenly closing his eyes and putting his head back for a second, giving out a long, tired-sounding sigh. ‘No. I never met Angus. The first time I remember seeing your mother was after he had been reported missing.’ He looked at Anna with sad eyes. ‘The war. If it had not been for the damn war . . . Messed up so many of our lives. Only one who did reasonably well out of the war was my sister Marjorie, strangely enough. Never looked back. Five children, running all sorts of naval wives’ do’s down there.’ He sounded amused.