Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  Krish stumbled along between them. As they reached the van he was still laughing, crumpling between them, tears running down his face. Alongside the road was a small park, open space behind a low railing. They stepped over, Krish catching his foot on the rail and making them sprawl on to the grass together, him between them. A rat scuttered away nearby. They sat Krish up between them. His head was in his hands, the bottle standing between his knees. More music blared from a house opposite.

  ‘I’m going to end up like her!’ His voice was high. ‘I know I will. She’s going to make me like her.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Anna tried to soothe him. ‘You’re not a bit like her.’

  ‘But you said it last night. “You’re all mad.” You said so.’

  ‘I was just angry. I’m sorry.’

  Krish was silent for a moment. ‘I can’t be what she wants all the time.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Anna asked him. Jake sat listening quietly, an arm round Krish’s shoulders.

  Krish shook his head helplessly. ‘Sometimes I think she wants me to be my father.’ He paused as a motorbike roared past on the road. ‘Or she wants me to be a baby for her for ever or . . . I don’t know. She justs wants me to be everything . . . that she needs.’

  ‘But that’s not reasonable, is it?’ Anna said. ‘No mother should ask that of a child.’

  ‘She’s not just any mother, though, is she?’ Krish took more mouthfuls from the bottle. ‘Thing is – I’ve realized gradually that she’s not like other mothers. But I’ve always thought, well, maybe she’s not that bad. No one else thinks there’s anything odd about her. I’ve tried to kid myself she wasn’t so different from anyone else – what happens with some of the lodgers . . . That she was just broad-minded, a free spirit or something. She’s coped, after all. She’s not got a psychiatric record – she must be OK really. So that meant I’d be all right too. But she’s not all right, is she? She’s even been in one of those places . . .’

  ‘A long time ago,’ Anna said. ‘And for a good reason.’

  Krish was barely listening to her. ‘She’ll drive me mad herself. She’ll be the one. I can’t do anything without her being part of it. I can’t go out, can’t have friends, can’t see women. If I even get near a woman it all gets fouled up because I feel as if she’s watching. I don’t even want to do this bloody degree. I don’t know what to do . . .’ He was really crying now, taking deep gulps. ‘I can’t even talk about her normally because I feel such a shit if I do . . . And I’m scared. I’m so scared of being ill – in my head. Sometimes I think I’m not right. No one should think things like I do.’

  Anna also put her arm round him. ‘Krish, Krish . . .’ The three of them sat close in the darkening evening. Anna felt Jake stroke her arm with the back of his fingers, behind Krish’s back. She looked round at him and their eyes met, sadly, but with warmth in them.

  ‘Let’s get back,’ Jake said. Krish was sagging between them now. ‘He’s past any more conversation.’ He lifted the bottle of wine and held it up in the fading light. ‘God, he’s nearly drunk the lot.’

  ‘We can’t take him back there!’ Anna said.

  ‘He can come to mine. I’ll drop you off first.’

  ‘I’ll come round tomorrow – first thing.’

  They had to half drag Krish into the van. He sat slumped in the middle seat, silent now and unreachable.

  ‘I didn’t even tell him all of it,’ Anna said to Jake, still outside.

  ‘He’s certainly heard enough for now, though.’ Jake stopped by the door of the van. In the shadows his face looked longer, and thin, his expression anxious. He glanced in at Krish and shook his head. ‘D’you think I was wrong?’

  ‘No. I’d have had to tell him. He was going to keep asking me.’

  They drove back in silence, Krish pressed against Anna’s shoulder. He was asleep, but uneasily so, and kept stirring and giving long, groaning sighs. The silence between herself and Jake was not neutral either. She knew there was a pressure of emotion between them, of need and attraction. That each of them was waiting to see if the other would move forward first. Anna felt very alert, her emotions heightened, as if she could go on effortlessly all night with no sleep.

  ‘He looks so vulnerable, doesn’t he?’ she said eventually, and the remark seemed to jar into the charged silence, a distraction from their thoughts.

  Jake nodded. ‘What you said about coming round tomorrow – that’d be really good.’

  Anna smiled in the blue night light, hoping, knowing he did not just want her there because of Krish. ‘I’ll be round about nine-thirty,’ she said.

  When they stopped outside Kate’s house, Jake jumped quickly out of the van and came round to open her side. He waited as she climbed down. Krish slumped further, half lying across the seat.

  ‘Thanks for this evening,’ Jake said, sounding uncertain now.

  She jumped to the pavement and stood looking up at him. Each of them waited, taking courage to look into each other’s face. Even in the dim light she could see the emotion in Jake’s eyes, his searching her for a response. But she was afraid. It was too soon and the feelings too serious to hurry.

  She looked away. ‘Goodnight, then. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘OK,’ he said quietly. He leaned forward and gave her a brief, awkward hug. She was taken by surprise and had barely registered the feeling of him against her when he had let her go and was striding round to the other door of the van. The door slammed, the engine started up.

  She stood waving as he drove away, seeing the white van recede down the street, feeling excited yet regretful.

  ‘And who the hell was that?’ a voice said behind her.

  Things registered all at once. The car parked a little further along the street, the old blue Saab. The self-righteous voice. She turned to see his angry eyes behind her. Richard.

  Chapter 37

  He slammed Kate’s front door behind them with such violence that the house shuddered. The force of it jarred Anna’s nerves, set off her temper.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she snapped, switching on the hall light, then the kitchen. ‘It isn’t your house.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Richard followed her into the kitchen, laughing sarcastically. ‘ “It isn’t your house,” ’ he mimicked. ‘Just listen to you.’

  Richard looked incongruous in Kate’s suburban kitchen in his faded, loose-fitting trousers, grey shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, the rumpled, wavy hair, hand reaching up to pass through it, a restless habit of his. She used to find his anger frightening. She wasn’t used to male emotion, had once regarded it as something more valid and powerful than her own. She’d always been the one to try and stay in control and appease him; hold things together. Now she no longer cared.

  ‘Don’t imitate me.’ She faced him, her tone very cold. ‘I didn’t ask you to come here.’

  He stared at her. ‘What’s happened to your hair?’

  ‘I got it caught in some heavy industrial machinery.’

  Richard ignored this, already on to the next thing, pacing the floor. ‘You go off one night with no explanation. You never answer the phone. I come over and you’re always out . . . Anna, this is ridiculous. You’ve been here a month and you said it’d be a few days . . .’

  ‘And you said you’d be home that night I came, and you weren’t. I’ve had enough of that.’

  ‘Look – ’ Richard paced up and down the kitchen, palm outstretched as if explaining something really-very-simple to a perverse child. ‘It was one of those things. We’d had a case conference – all sorts of added complications – one of the key social workers was delayed. It was a very unusual situation.’ His rubber-soled shoes gave off a squeak as he spun round on the lino. ‘It’s just the way it is, Anna. I can’t drop everything and come home just because you’ve got a meal ready, can I? There are wider concerns, and sometimes they have to come first, that’s all.’

  ‘Fine.’ She could feel an ecstatic anger
rising in her, her body tensing with the force of it.

  ‘So what’s going on? Why aren’t you answering the phone? You must have finished packing up here by now. I thought it’d take a week, max. I’ll give you a hand with the last things, if there’s more to do. Take a carload to Oxfam or whoever first thing in the morning, and we can get back home.’

  ‘And then what?’ she asked, controlling her voice.

  ‘Well – we can just get on with life again.’

  After a silence, she said, ‘I’m not coming home. I don’t want to live with you any more. I don’t love you. I want to be on my own.’

  Richard stopped pacing, was actually listening. ‘But you’ve got to be back at school any day now.’

  ‘I’ve given up my job.’

  He walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. She felt herself shrinking from him. Her life with him now felt like something from which she had woken – a trance in which she had lost consciousness.

  His voice was soft and persuasive, eyes fixed on hers in a practised look of concern. ‘Anna? You can’t be serious? Look, I know it’s been a bad month. Your mum and everything. But you can’t let all this take over your life. You have to keep things in perspective. God knows, I see enough of the consequences of people letting things get to them too much. And you’re too intelligent to let that happen.’

  She let him have the full force of her fist on his nose, punching so hard she jarred her elbow. His eyes snapped shut instantly in pain, hands jerking up to his face. He held them out again, seeing them stained red. Blood fell in long strokes down the grey shirt.

  ‘Jesus.’ The hurt tone turned to fury. ‘What is the matter with you?’ He groped at the box of multi-coloured tissues on the worktop.

  ‘We lost our baby,’ she heard herself shrieking at him. ‘And it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my life and you didn’t say anything. Not one fucking thing. And my mother’s dead and you couldn’t even be bothered to come with me to the funeral. All the hours I’ve spent listening to you about your bloody job and you’ve never listened to me when I needed you to. I don’t want to talk to you now – ’ her voice grew quieter – ‘I’ve got things to do. I’ve found Olivia and she lost her baby too and I want . . . I want . . .’

  Incoherent, she found herself sobbing, bent over next to the sink, breathless with it, a pool of pain inside her draining out.

  ‘Oh God,’ she cried after a few moments. ‘It’s all so sad. Why is life so sad?’

  Richard stood watching her warily, a pad of tissues pressed to his nose, blood on his chin.

  ‘You didn’t want us to have a child, did you?’ She spoke with her back to him. ‘It didn’t mean anything to you.’

  ‘I don’t know. It was so sudden. It’s not as if we planned it.’

  ‘Planned it.’ She turned, scornful. ‘You can’t just plan everything.’

  ‘It was different for you. Maybe you were ready for it and I wasn’t. And you could feel it. It wasn’t real to me.’

  ‘But you said you felt it – felt it flutter under your hand.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘Something I’m not very good at, I suppose. It’s a long time ago now.’

  ‘Eight months!’ she flared at him again. ‘What’s eight bloody months? Some things stay with people for the rest of their lives, Richard, they don’t just disappear all finished with. You can’t just organize them away. How can you work with people like you do when you know nothing, you understand nothing?’

  ‘My job’s about practical decisions,’ Richard said sternly. ‘Not emotions.’

  Anna turned away. ‘I don’t want to talk about your job. Not again.’

  For a moment the only sound was Kate’s clock, ticking across the kitchen.

  ‘Look – ’ He approached her again, though his voice sounded ridiculous because his hand was still clamping a pink tissue over his nose. ‘You need some space, that’s all. A rest. Come home and take it easy, even if you’re not working. You can take your time, look for another job. We’ll talk . . .’

  ‘Richard.’ She looked strongly into his eyes, her own red and still full of tears. ‘I’m not coming back to Coventry. I can’t live with you any more. You and I are not good for each other.’

  ‘Who was that I saw you with outside?’ Richard’s voice was even, but Anna could hear the suspicion in it. ‘Is this to do with him?’

  ‘The day I left home – not that you apparently noticed – was the day after the funeral. I’d never even met him then. I left home for myself.’

  ‘But now it’s to do with him, isn’t it?’

  She looked down at the floor, seeing spots of Richard’s blood. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Someone I met through Olivia.’

  Richard tutted, exasperated. ‘And who the hell is Olivia?’

  ‘Someone Mom knew.’

  ‘Has he touched you?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so bloody predictable.’

  ‘Has he, though?’

  She thought of that night in the flat. Jake’s gentle hands. Touched, but not in the way Richard meant. ‘No.’ She felt humiliated having to answer these questions.

  Richard stared at her, trying to decide whether to believe her. ‘Five years we’ve been together,’ he said finally. ‘And now you want to go, just like that.’

  ‘Not just like that. It’s finished, Richard. I want my life to change.’

  She found bedding for him and he slept in the front bedroom while Anna was in Kate’s at the back. They parted for the night in morose silence. Anna lay in Kate’s floral room aching with sadness, but too tired for more tears.

  The next morning they were civil and distant, like acquaintances made the day before. They ate breakfast, discussed the Coventry house.

  ‘We should sell it,’ Anna said.

  ‘You might want to come back.’

  ‘I shan’t come back. Anyway, I thought being a property owner made you feel uncomfortable.’

  Richard frowned at a half-eaten slice of toast, trying to take in her decision, her strength. ‘I could rent again, I suppose.’

  ‘Or buy somewhere smaller.’

  ‘You can’t buy anywhere much smaller. Except a flat.’ He looked across at her, appealing. ‘Anna, this is horrible.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  All the time she was holding on tight to her determination. Being alone there with him again it would have been so easy to slide back, not fight it, to go with him and settle into the old routine, the stifling habits. She felt she was holding her breath.

  ‘You’re not going to stay here, are you?’

  The tone of ridicule in his voice riled her, brought back all her resolve. ‘Probably not. I’ll decide when I’m ready. I might move nearer the middle of town.’

  ‘What about your job?’

  ‘I’ve resigned.’

  ‘Will you find another school?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  He put his head on one side. ‘You loved that job.’

  ‘I didn’t. I put up with it. Felt I couldn’t give up. I liked the kids – some of them. But I want a change.’

  Richard looked concerned. ‘Anna, who’s behind all this? What’s going on?’

  Calmly she looked at him. ‘I’m going on.’

  He didn’t stay long after breakfast. They spent some of the time in silence, some talking.

  ‘I’ll come over and collect more things,’ she said vaguely. ‘Don’t know when. I’ll ring you.’

  She stood out by the old blue Saab in the bright morning as he prepared to go. She felt strong now, and certain, but Richard was suddenly emotional.

  ‘Come with me – please? Give us another go, can’t you?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, Richard.’ And she was.

  ‘I can’t believe this.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘If you change your mind . . .?’ He held out his arms. ‘Is a hug too much for you?’

&
nbsp; She accepted, kissed him sadly. ‘Thank you,’ she was saying, and then there came the sound of the loud engine, revving through the Saturday morning calm and braking outside the house.

  She saw Jake’s long legs emerge first below the door, then he appeared, his face white and tense, hair tied back in a short ponytail. He saw the two of them together and stopped, embarrassed.

  ‘What?’ Anna cried. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘There’s trouble.’ Jake made an apologetic gesture with his long hands. ‘Look – sorry to interrupt. I think you’d better come.’

  Jake’s driving was jerky.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Anna’s heart was pounding, her head still thick from a night of broken sleep. She sat tensed on the slippery black seat.

  ‘Ben phoned. It’s Sean – he started a fire. I think they’ve sorted that, but he sounded awful. And Krish’s only just functioning after last night, of course. I’d have left him to get some more sleep, but he made me drop him off home on the way.’ Jake glanced at her anxiously. ‘I wouldn’t have come if – I mean, I haven’t got your number. I feel a right clumsy idiot for barging in on you like that.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Anna said. ‘Richard was just leaving. Actually I was relieved to see you. What’s sparked all this off?’

  ‘From what Ben said Sean and Olivia have been arguing half the night and no one’s had any sleep. I don’t know what goes on between them – some terrible version of teasing on her part, I suppose. But she’s obviously pushed him too far this time. Olivia’s asking for you, by the way.’

  ‘For me?’ She felt her heartbeat quicken further. ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. I thought in the circumstances I’d just do what she and Krish wanted.’

  When they reached the house Ben was walking up and down, hands on his hips, elbows at an outraged angle.

  ‘About bloody time!’ he exploded as they leapt from the van. ‘I shouldn’t be left with all this,’ he added petulantly. ‘He’s come down again now, too. I was all for calling the police, but Krish wouldn’t let me. Sean’s a fucking maniac.’ Ben was quivering, babbling on as they stood by the van.