Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  Krish’s first questions now were, ‘How is she? What’s she saying? Is she blaming me?’

  It was only recently though that he had started to talk at all. At first he had remained in a paralysed state, almost completely dumb except for whispered replies to the most basic questions regarding his needs. Anna and Jake visited every other day and Krish sat in inscrutable silence. He had been assigned a psychotherapist, and stonewalled him for hours at a time. No one could detect any maliciousness in this, but simply a need to withdraw, to be out of things. He had refused absolutely, and was still refusing, to see his mother. The hospital staff deemed it right to keep them apart.

  After three weeks he had gradually begun talking to Steven, the psychotherapist. Then to Theo. Then Anna and Jake. One day when they approached him, Anna carrying a box of Rose’s chocolates, Krish looked up and, very softly, said, ‘Hello.’ He looked exhausted, his face drawn, black shadows under his eyes. He told them he wasn’t sleeping. He talked in sudden jerks about his life with Olivia, sitting childlike in pastel green pyjamas, his voice so quiet they had to concentrate hard to hear.

  ‘I’ve hated her so much.’ He was weeping into his hands. He shook his head from side to side as if to dislodge the thought of her. ‘I do love her – but she makes my life impossible.’ He looked up at them through his fingers. ‘God, what the hell are we going to do?’

  He held his hands out in front of him, palms down in a despairing gesture, watching their slight tremor. ‘Look at me. I can’t do anything any more. I can’t even make a cup of coffee by myself.’

  Afterwards, gloomily, they drove away from the hospital in the van. Finally Anna said, ‘Well – at least he’s speaking.’

  The last time they saw Olivia was in mid-October. Anna took flowers to her that day: a bunch of vivid blooms, blue, yellow, pink, deliberately chosen to shout at the pallid walls of the hospital. This outcry of colour was in part an expression of her own guilt, her protest against helplessness, despite the reassurance of Dr O’Connor and the other staff that they had done the right thing. The only thing.

  Olivia looked old. Older than Anna had ever seen her, the skin of her face flaccid as if something in her very being had collapsed. She was brushing her hair. Brushing and brushing. It was newly washed, long and wild looking.

  ‘It’s so grey,’ she said, giving Anna and Jake no other greeting as they sat down. ‘So terribly faded. I’d be grateful if you’d buy a rinse for me, Anna. Something subtle of course. I don’t want to look cheap.’

  In her mind there seemed to be only a small circle of illumination left, kept alight to pick out practical details. Everything else was off stage, out of sight.

  ‘Did Ben pay his rent before he left?’ she asked. She raised the brush over her head and strands of her hair lifted with it, crackling with static electricity. Her thoughts jabbed at Ben’s rent book. Then at the tap in the upstairs toilet. Could Jake be a darling and fix it? Because she was sure it was leaking, and it was the hot one: such a drain on the tank . . .

  ‘And Anna, I don’t seem to have my Access card here and I’m sure to need it. Could you check in my handbag when you get back to the house? It’s in the little cupboard at the side of my bed.’

  These enquiries were low key, the drugs keeping her just a fraction away from calm. She didn’t mention Krish.

  Two days after that, Olivia walked out of the hospital. Whether by luck or canniness on her part she chose a time during the morning when the ward was unlocked, the staff busy and there was a general air of bustle in the corridors. She may have followed an instinct which told her her only mistake would be to hesitate.

  She must have made her way, unchallenged, right down the drive of the hospital, wearing her blue dressing gown and sheepskin slippers. From there she was walking along the bypass, a busy, fast-moving artery feeding the M5. Who would challenge a woman in a blue dressing gown and slippers on the A38 bypass?

  Just over a mile and what must have been half an hour later, she walked on to the nearside platform of the railway station at Longbridge. Within five minutes an Intercity train, moving at shrieking speed past the back of the Rover car works, dashed into a body clad in a cornflower-blue dressing gown, which was lying with a neat sense of purpose across the track.

  Chapter 40

  December, 1981

  ‘Off somewhere nice?’

  Anna put her bag down and watched Roland’s rotund figure advancing towards her along the street, obviously anxious not to miss her.

  ‘A day out – with Jake and Elly. Sort of winter picnic. I’m sure you’ll tell us we’re mad.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s a marvellous day. You’ll be all right well wrapped up.’

  They stood outside Kate’s house. It was a dazzling morning, water droplets on the grass catching the light as last night’s hard frost was beginning to melt. At one corner of the drive a freshly painted white post had been driven into the ground, topped by a ‘For Sale’ sign.

  ‘Any offers yet?’

  ‘It only went up yesterday,’ Anna protested. ‘Give them time.’

  ‘And have you started looking for a new place?’ Roland’s attempt to sound detached and cheerful failed miserably.

  ‘I’m not looking far away – just a little further into town, but still Kings Heath. I’d like something a bit older.’

  Roland chuckled, his face reddening. Since Kate’s death his emotions seemed to come upon him even more overwhelmingly.

  ‘Look, you’re the only family I’ve got,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to lose you – if you can put up with me, that is!’

  Roland laughed delightedly. ‘I’m very relieved you’re not planning to take off and leave me again.’ He frowned. ‘What are you going to do, actually? Look for a new teaching job?’

  Anna stared at the house opposite, giving an absentminded wave to a woman stepping out with a shopping bag. ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do at the moment – and I’m rather enjoying not being sure.’ She took in a satisfied breath of the icy air. ‘I feel as if I can start again. Use some of my earnings I never had time to spend. I think Jake’s infected me with his travel bug.’ She turned to Roland. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh – I shall potter along no doubt.’ Without self-pity, he added, ‘Nothing will be the same now she’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, Roland,’ Anna said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She went to him, and was taken up into one of his bear hugs.

  She felt his breath on her hair as he spoke. ‘But my dear, nothing could make me happier now than knowing you’re going to be just up the road.’

  Jake’s van grumbled along the curving roads out into the Warwickshire countryside. Bare branches spiked black against the untouched blue sky, the fields ploughed or left to pasture. Bright, low-angled sunlight gave the furrows and tree-trunks a hard edge of shadow so that the landscape looked vivid and assured.

  Between Anna and Jake, strapped to the seat with her plump legs stretched out straight, sat Elly. She was wearing a little denim skirt with woolly red tights and a blue coat with a red lining, squeezed over layers of jumpers. Her round face was edged by a mesh of fine blond hair.

  ‘Daddy, where are we going? We’ve been driving for such a long time.’

  ‘Soon be there,’ Jake told her. ‘Just another mile or two, and then we can have our picnic.’

  Elly turned to Anna and gave her a mischievous, trying-it-on smile which showed a deep dimple to the left of her mouth. ‘I want some of that chocolate.’

  Anna grinned back at her. She’d taken to Elly immediately and already they’d had a couple of outings together. ‘Don’t worry. I expect we’ll leave you a little bit.’

  ‘Not just a bit!’ Elly was outraged. ‘I want lots. I want this much.’ She held out her arms wide, red mittens dangling on strings from her coatsleeves.

  ‘Sandwiches first though,’ Jake told her firmly. ‘Let’s hope we’re not going to freeze.’ He looked away from the road at Anna for a second, giving a s
mile which she returned. Happiness surged through her, made her feel like singing. She had woken that morning in his bed, held by him, their eyes meeting each other’s, and seeing she was loved.

  They rounded the bend beneath the rise, from where she knew she had glimpsed Arden out of the taxi. She saw trees snagging at the blue, but between them a sudden shock: where the crouching shape of the hospital had stood before, there was nothing now but the naked sky.

  ‘It’s gone!’ she cried. ‘They’ve already done it!’

  ‘What’s gone?’ Elly peered through the windscreen.

  ‘There was a building there – on the hill.’ Anna pointed. Still hardly believing it, she went on, ‘And now it’s not there.’

  ‘Why?’ Elly frowned. ‘Did somebody steal it? A stranger?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘Several strangers, I should think. And some machines.’ She felt desolate. It had felt important to come back here. ‘Oh, well. Can’t show you now then, can I?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Jake said. ‘I’ll have to try and imagine.’

  The stone arch at the entrance to Arden was, however, still standing, a large green and white sign next to it announcing the name of the demolition company. The arch was too narrow for the bulldozers and they had cleared a way in through the boundary fence, leaving a gash of crushed bushes and white, snapped twigs. Their tracks had mashed deep ruts along the drive, the surface churned aside and now frozen hard, still white with ice behind the broken shadows of the trees.

  They left the van just inside the entrance and jumped down. Anna was disorientated. ‘I was here four months ago,’ she calculated as they reached into the back of the van for the picnic bags. ‘I suppose it was obvious they were going to do it soon, but I still can’t believe it’s just gone completely. I thought it would take them longer.’

  ‘Not once they get going,’ Jake said.

  They picked their way along the rough path, Anna and Jake each carrying a bag and Jake with a rug draped over one shoulder. ‘Mind how you go,’ he called to Elly, who was skipping ahead in blue wellies. ‘Hold my hand or you could twist your ankle. It’s rough here.’

  ‘I want to hold Anna’s hand,’ she said. Anna felt the woolly fingers grasp hers and was flattered to be chosen. Elly looked up at her, eyes huge and grey like Jake’s. ‘You’re Daddy’s girlfriend, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said solemnly. ‘Is that all right with you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Elly said. ‘I think that’s all right – so far.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Anna said. She and Jake laughed together, their breath misting the air.

  ‘You look like dragons,’ Elly said, puffing a breath out herself and laughing too. Jake came and put his free arm round Anna’s shoulders.

  As they walked round the final bend of the drive Anna found herself feeling nervous, as she had the first time she was there. She had expected something to remain: bricks, plastic tape, skips: something of the paraphernalia of demolition. But there was nothing. The site had been cleared with great thoroughness, the rubble carted away, the ground bulldozed and flattened, so that the only thing now visible was the long area of earth frozen iron hard.

  Anna walked on to it. There was almost no sound. She could feel the rays of the sun on her face. Elly loosed her hand and danced off over the inviting space.

  ‘It was very big.’ Anna pointed, swinging her arms to try and explain it. ‘All across here. That wing over there had been burnt, but there was a lot of the front left – here. And it was beautiful – the façade of it, anyway – like a Victorian stately home. And there was a water tower about here. Square thing, all black . . .’ She picked out as best she could the places where she thought there had been airing courts, wards, filling in the shape. They walked round in silence for a few minutes, turning, staring, trying to imagine.

  As she did so Anna saw something incongruous trapped in the earth at her feet. Pale blue, icy, pressed down and half hidden. She fished a knife from her picnic bag and prised it out of the ground: a round, plastic bead, its hole for stringing blocked with a brown thread of soil. She turned it round in her fingers, cleaning the outside until it felt warm and smooth. Olivia’s voice came to her: ‘I wish I had something to hold on to: a bead, a stone, a strand of hair, anything to call mine.’ She slipped the bead into the pocket of her jeans.

  She walked slowly over to Jake and saw him watching her, taking in the sight of her as she came to him.

  ‘After I’d seen this place I knew I couldn’t condemn her,’ she said.

  Jake nodded, put his hand on her shoulder, and she turned, reaching up to kiss him.

  But then Elly was pulling her arm, impatient. ‘Come on. Let’s do something.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Anna said. ‘Let’s get the picnic going.’

  They found a spot on the grass not far away and put the rug down, laying on it French bread and cheeses, crisps and samosas, fruit and a Thermos of coffee. Wrapped in their coats and scarves, they sat looking across the countryside, at the gentle swell of the land and brown, scoured fields, oblong farmhouses like Lego pieces, dots of bushes. Elly was quiet, eating crisps with sudden concentration.

  Anna sat back, feet stretched out, the wind ruffling her hair. She had bitten into a samosa, delicious spiced potato, plump peas.

  Even up here there was very little for them to say about Kate and Olivia that they had not said many times already. There had had to be an inquest after Olivia’s death. At the funeral Anna had been startled by the intensity of her own grief for Olivia. And for Krish struggling with his guilt, his new sense of release. She thought of him now almost as a brother to whom she owed protection.

  There came to her a feeling of peace, of standing outside time, as if she could walk along the ridge of Krish’s life from up here and see that he would live through this, would surface again.

  ‘He’s going to be OK,’ she said to Jake. ‘I think.’

  ‘Yes.’ He unscrewed the lid of the Thermos, steam billowing out. ‘Eventually.’

  After their meal they shared the chocolate. Elly took her squares, relishing them slowly. She delighted in the huge flat area laid out there for her to run around on, and was soon skipping up and down in delight, her mouth ringed like a clown’s with chocolate.

  ‘Don’t choke!’ Jake warned her. ‘Here – the Frisbee!’

  He spun the thin yellow disc towards her and it lifted and arced on the breeze, Elly following as it hit the ground and wheeled away down the incline.

  ‘Daddy, Mummy,’ she cried, ‘I’m flying!’

  Anna laughed and turned to Jake, flinging her arms round him, feeling his tight round her. She settled, leaning against the padded shoulder of his jacket. ‘She’s lovely, Jake. A great kid.’

  ‘She’s coming on,’ he agreed. There was pleasure in his voice. ‘She’s really taken to you.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’ She twisted her head to look up at him. ‘In a strange way I’m glad about everything.’

  He looked down into her eyes, his long face serious. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Very, very, very. Come here.’ She pecked his nose, teasing, then found his lips with hers, trying to show him with a kiss. After a moment he drew back and looked at her again.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t want to lose this, Anna. It’s just – we haven’t said anything, actually said what we feel.’

  ‘Didn’t I show you last night?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked down. ‘You did. I know.’

  She took his face in her hands, pulling him close to her so that her breath was warm on his ear. ‘I love you. Thank you for making me so happy.’

  He laughed and they sat for a long time side by side, watching Elly flying after the Frisbee as it curved and bucked in the air. Her cheeks were winter-pink and she chatted to herself in a constant stream, calling out to them, happy so long as they were watching.

  Anna’s eyes followed her, smiling. Her thoughts drifted from image to image, splinters of m
elancholy and joy all gathered in this place. She conjured up Arden as it had been: the handcarts, the long, sealed corridors, all the people whose lives had faded into shadows glimpsed on its walls. She watched the skipping rhythm of Elly’s feet, her child’s absorption and happiness. And brought before her two other children skipping there, one blond with heavy, black-rimmed glasses, the other fragile, waif-like, long hair curling, both laughing as they reached for each other’s sun-warm hands.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ Elly’s voice floated across to them. ‘It’s lovely here. Can we stay? I want to stay here for ever!’

  She ran and gave a leap of pure joy, her body rising, arms flung high, and the bright, gauzy hair lifting to catch the light.

  Birmingham Friends

  ANNIE MURRAY was born in Berkshire and read English at St John’s College, Oxford. Her first Birmingham novel, Birmingham Rose, hit The Times bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently written thirteen other successful novels, including, most recently, A Hopscotch Summer and Soldier Girl. Annie Murray has four children and lives in Reading.

  ALSO BY ANNIE MURRAY

  Birmingham Rose

  Birmingham Blitz

  Orphan of Angel Street

  Poppy Day

  The Narrowboat Girl

  Chocolate Girls

  Water Gypsies

  Miss Purdy’s Class

  Family of Women

  Where Earth Meets Sky

  The Bells of Bournville Green

  A Hopscotch Summer

  Soldier Girl

  For Peta, with thanks

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I should like to express my warmest gratitude to the following:

  For particular help with the research for this novel by generously giving their time and conversation: Mrs Iris Deathridge, Mr Terry Leek and Dr Marcellino Smythe.

  My agent Darley Anderson for his galvanizing encouragement, faith and friendship.

  My editor Peta Nightingale for her sharpness and dedication and for keeping going with it in testing circumstances.