Birmingham Friends

by Annie Murray

  ‘Who’s been here?’ he demanded, in the self-righteous voice that I was coming to loathe.

  Olivia sat very still watching us, the baby on her lap.

  ‘Oh, just Roland,’ I said casually. I was shelling peas in the kitchen, refusing to be ruffled by this ridiculousness.

  ‘Roland? That’s him, isn’t it – the one I saw you with at the station?’

  He advanced into the kitchen, his face ugly, and slung the glass ashtray down on the draining board, pettishly and too hard.

  ‘D’you mind?’ I protested. I dried my hands on my apron, preparing to walk away before I really let rip with my temper and announced that Roland had been the most pleasant and normal company I had had for weeks.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?’

  I clenched my teeth. ‘Because I didn’t know. He was just on his way from somewhere I think. I didn’t ask.’

  ‘How many times has he been here before?’ He leaned up against the sink, menacingly close to me. It was so silly and alienating. I felt impatience choking me.

  Just controlling my voice, I said, ‘That was the first time. And I don’t really see it’s any business of yours. He was passing and he wanted to see Anna. Some men actually like babies,’ I finished bitterly.

  ‘It is my business.’ He pushed his face too close to mine and the expression in his eyes was very cold. ‘This is my house and you are my wife. I won’t have you entertaining other men under my roof.’

  I always felt at my most strong and perverse when he was like this. I knew I didn’t have the attitude of subservience apparently expected of a ‘good’ wife. Even trying to have it would have suffocated me. I could hear Granny Munro saying, ‘Don’t let anyone take your life away from you. It’s not worth it in the end. It’s only convention.’

  I stared Douglas in the face and said something that I am still ashamed of now for its cruelty. ‘You’re useless to me, Douglas. Completely useless.’

  He picked up the pan into which I had been shelling peas and smashed it as hard as he could through the kitchen window, peas and all. Glass tinkled down on to the flower pots outside. I heard you, Anna, begin howling in the adjoining room, startled by the noise. At the time I felt most annoyed about the peas going out after I’d spent all that time shelling them.

  Douglas stood for a second looking stunned and foolish. Then, as if it was his masterstroke, he brought out the announcement, ‘What I came home to tell you is that I’ve got the job. We’re leaving for London.’

  He went out of the house then, leaving this ultimatum dumped like a tin trunk in the middle of the front room. Olivia came to me and we managed somehow to put our arms round each other, you pink and distraught between us.

  Sitting on the bus that afternoon, I thought about Douglas and about how he always seemed to get it wrong. How he could never see that my feelings for my child and for Olivia were far more of a threat to him than Roland Mantel or anyone else was. I knew already that my going to London with him was inconceivable. I dared myself to imagine, for a second, what it would be like without him at home: just me and Anna and Olivia. I knew that part of this breakdown between us was my fault. But I also knew that I was inextricably tied both to this place and to Olivia.

  I walked slowly along the road back to our house. Though still small, you felt heavy in my arms and were beginning to clamour for a feed. I took in the smell of flowers on the warm air, the sensation of milk aching in my breasts. I walked faster. Inside, I expected to find the house quiet, Douglas sheltering behind his newspapers, Olivia busy with her knitting or napping.

  But he was upon me before I’d even shut the door. ‘She’s got to go!’ At first I thought he was angry, but it was something a few degrees away from that. He was distraught.

  ‘Whatever’s happened? Look, I’ll have to feed Anna or I can’t hear you.’ I unfastened my dress and Douglas waited impatiently until the room grew quiet. ‘Where’s Olivia?’

  ‘Out. I sent her out. Kate, she’s got to leave here as soon as possible. Tell her to go – tonight.’

  I stared at him, feeling mutinous already. Douglas turned round, looking into the fireplace as he spoke to me. ‘She started on me this afternoon.’

  I couldn’t take this in. ‘What are you talking about?’

  With injured dignity he said, ‘She tried to seduce me.’

  I fought back a wild desire to laugh. The first words which rushed into my mind were, ‘Well, that must have been a disappointment for her.’ Fortunately, instead I managed to say, ‘Heavens, how dreadful!’ Then I added, ‘Are you all right?’ before realizing what an absurd question that was. The awfulness of the situation began to sink in.

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ he snapped, pacing up and down. ‘But we can’t very well carry on having her here. She’s outstayed her welcome by a long time as it is. And she’s not right, is she?’ He turned to face me. ‘Don’t you mind that she’s tried it on with me?’

  ‘I can’t quite take it in.’

  Douglas came and sat down beside me, suddenly vulnerable. ‘The thing was – it wasn’t so much that she tried it on that worried me. I mean I know she’s always been a bit, well – fast like that. I could have laughed about it, or told her to leave off. But it was her look. She was like a snake, and the things she was saying, it was frightening. I felt what she really wanted to do was to torture me. That was how she looked, absolutely intent and venomous, as if she ought to have had a red-hot poker in one hand.’

  I listened, chilled. That thread of something corrupt in Olivia which kept lashing out like a poisoned tongue.

  In the end I said, ‘I’m truly sorry, Douglas. That’s unforgivable, of course. It’s just – where’s she going to go? If you could just put up with her a while longer . . .’

  There was a silence before he said, ‘She’ll have to leave anyway when we go to London.’

  I couldn’t tackle that one. Not now.

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ I said. ‘Not now she’s tried it once.’

  I didn’t confront Olivia. I found myself unexpectedly embarrassed by the thought of it. I had been lulled, since giving birth, by her apparent steadiness, her adoration of my baby, my need of her when I would otherwise have felt so low and alone. Now, though, I was bristling and alert, on guard once more. The evening Douglas had sent her out of the house she stayed out all night again and came back with the same air of repletion and triumph. I didn’t even speak to her when she came in next morning.

  ‘Aren’t you dying to know where I’ve been?’ she goaded me. ‘I do hope you haven’t been waiting up?’

  ‘I was up anyway,’ I said curtly. ‘Anna’s been restless with this cold.’ I was still pacing up and down with you fretting in my arms. By that time I was tired enough to be almost beyond feeling.

  ‘Here, give her to me,’ Olivia said, reaching out to take you. ‘I’ll get her settled down.’

  ‘We’re getting on all right, thank you,’ I said shortly. ‘She’s been like this for hours, on and off.’

  Olivia held out her arms again, commandingly. ‘Then you need a rest. Come on, hand her over to Auntie Livy.’

  ‘No. She’s my child, not yours – especially not the state you’re in. She wants her mother.’

  Olivia’s arms dropped to her sides. She said nothing and turned to go out of the room. As she did so she twirled round and whipped her skirt up high, showing her suspenders. On one leg the stocking was held up by only one fastening. The others were broken and the stocking was laddered down the back of her leg. With a terrible smile on her face she said, ‘They can’t resist me.’

  We couldn’t be normal with each other now. I found myself thinking of ways to get her out. I couldn’t send her back to the Kemps. At that point I wouldn’t have been so cruel. I still wanted to do it kindly, to ease her out, with our move to London as the excuse. My thoughts of staying here with her now seemed grotesque. But I couldn’t think of anywhere she could go. I even considered aski
ng my mother if Olivia could lodge with her, but I knew instinctively that this would be a disaster. Besides, my mother had held herself at such a distance from us over the months that I couldn’t even have asked. Olivia was just going to have to find digs for herself.

  I didn’t want her looking after you any more, Anna. Before, I had pushed away any feelings of resentment at her swamping possessiveness of you. I had thought her feelings for you would help her heal, her holding you like that, staring into your face so long that sometimes I had almost to fight her to make her hand you over to me. At times I had wanted to shout, ‘Give her to me – she’s my baby, not yours!’ like a child with a toy. I had been ashamed then. But now I allowed myself those feelings: a new instinct of protectiveness in me, a premonition that I did not yet understand.

  Neither she nor Douglas ever told me directly how far her attempts to seduce him had gone, but that final week Olivia started making remarks, taunting me deliberately, eyes wide and brazen, and I realized it had gone further than Douglas had felt able to admit. Far enough for her to learn of his inadequacy.

  ‘Are you sure Anna is Douglas’s?’ she giggled to me one evening when we were alone. She was on the gin. ‘I’m surprised he could keep going long enough to hit the target!’

  I no longer knew what to do with her. I could feel far more sympathy now for the Kemps and what they’d been through. All the warmth had gone. Mostly I ignored her, moving round her as if she wasn’t there, preparing myself to eject her. As a last resort I knew I should have to call a doctor, and the thought played on my conscience.

  Then, that one morning, I gave in to her. I felt so harassed. Your cold was no better and you were almost constantly in my arms, since I could find no other way of pacifying you. I had a huge pile of washing to do and a host of other jobs. And Livy seemed calmer that day.

  ‘I just can’t get on with anything,’ I cried, tearful with frustration. ‘If only she’d settle. I’m doing all the things I used to advise my mothers not to do!’

  ‘Let me take her,’ Olivia said. She spoke so smoothly, her face soft and smiling. ‘We’ve hardly seen each other this week, have we, darling?’ This last word was said in just the tones Elizabeth used with her.

  Livy was wearing a cornflower-blue frock that morning. She was looking very beautiful and I relented, almost wanting to kiss her. When I handed you to her, a soft cotton sheet wrapped round you, she stood for a moment with you clasped in her arms like a madonna, her face radiant and smiling.

  She turned the smile on me. I’ve never been able to forget the look of worship for you in her face. ‘Come on, little Anna,’ she said. ‘We’ll just go and have a play upstairs and let Katie get on with all her chores.’ She left the room, humming lightly as she climbed the stairs.

  I was seized with the urgency I always felt when you were sleeping or taken off my hands. I already had all the clothes heaped on the kitchen floor, napkins soaking in a pail. I spent some time sorting them, dividing whites from coloureds while the wide sink filled slowly. When I’d finished with the clothes, it still wasn’t ready and I sprinkled Hudson’s into the water, impatiently turning on the tap as far as it would go. The water had slowed to a trickle and I tutted in exasperation, staring at the dull metal of the tap, willing it to force out more water. Before the sink was even full I pushed in a bundle of clothes and began pummelling at it, trying to wet everything in the inadequate depth of water. Suddenly the water came on again with a rush. I frowned, turning the tap down again. Bubbles rose softly round my wrists.

  A few moments later I remembered our nightclothes and ran upstairs for my nightdress and Douglas’s pyjamas. On my way down, I paused at the top of the stairs. It was very quiet up there, except for a sound, a tiny sound I couldn’t place but which alerted me. Puzzled, I looked into Olivia’s room. I thought perhaps she might be lying on the bed, trying to settle you down beside her.

  She was standing with her back to me, the blue frock vivid in front of our dark furniture. My mind struggled – for such a long, slow time it seemed – to make sense of this. The chest of drawers in front of her had been cleared, the toilet mirror now standing at a queer angle on the bed, along with her perfume, powder, lotions. I could see each end of the enamel baby bath, its bright, bluish white; Olivia’s elbows looking creamy against it. Her arms were held straight, taut. And there was silence. Then a movement of water. A tiny splash in the quiet. It was this sound, its restrained smallness which I had registered as odd and which now sliced across my mind.

  You were never silent in the bath: you gurgled or screamed.

  I was there in a second, my body tight and violent. Half turning, Olivia glared at me with a hard, determined expression. One of her hands was spread over your face, pushing you under the water, the other holding your body down. She had filled the bath deep. Your arms and legs were moving madly, but barely managing to agitate the water’s surface.

  I grabbed Olivia by the neck and flung her across the room with all my strength. She fell and hit her head on the bedside cabinet, and I was pulling my baby up into my arms, completely possessed by panic, water saturating the front of my dress. I held you upside down, banging on your back, and a small gush of water came from your nose and mouth, then your choking, anguished cries reaching higher and higher. As I held you you thrust your head back, so beside yourself that there were seconds of silence between each cry, your spine bowing, rigid. I snatched up the little sheet and wrapped you in it and held you close to me, hearing distressed, animal sounds of comfort coming from me as I rocked you.

  After a moment, hands shaking, I unfastened my dress and tried to let you suck to calm you, gulping and trembling as I did so, and your little body twitched convulsively as you began to latch on to me, too agitated to do so at first. I was oblivious to Olivia. I didn’t care if I’d killed her.

  It was only as I was beginning to come to my senses that I realized she was laughing. Sitting on the floor rubbing her head and giving off high peals of laughter. Too stunned to think, I sat staring at her, still crying, stroking my little Anna again and again.

  Olivia got to her feet. ‘Sorry, old girl. I’ve not had much practice bathing babies. Never even got to bath my own.’

  She walked over to the window, standing with her back to me, a scrawny silhouette against the light. She lit a cigarette and stood smoking it in silence.

  Then she said, ‘You want me to leave.’ There was amusement in her voice, as if she found me ridiculous.

  I didn’t answer, couldn’t.

  She blew out a trail of smoke. ‘By the way, there’s one more thing I haven’t told you.’ The voice floated over to me, to wherever I was.

  ‘I’d have spared you this, but truth does have a way of finding us, doesn’t it?’

  I waited. There was nothing worse she could do.

  ‘That child of mine. My baby. I did know who the father was, you know.’

  Indifferent to this information, I sat in silence.

  ‘I was in London – that January – for the Wrens. Pretty beastly it was too. Then who should I run into, fresh back from embarkation leave, but an old friend from home . . .’

  I was on my feet. ‘No. No!’

  ‘Dents your image rather, doesn’t it? Pure, loyal old Angus. Actually, he was in a bit of a state, I thought. Terrified about the posting. And of course by the end of the night he was worse. Full of remorse, disloyal to you and all that. Katie his love, how could he have . . .’ She mocked me. ‘Of course I said he must think of it as something that meant nothing. I expect he wrote to you, didn’t he? “Ran into Olivia. We had such a nice cosy chat.” ’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I knew it was his, Katie. I was unusually busy that month. Very little time to spare for any hanky-panky . . .’

  ‘You’re lying to me!’ I screamed at her, so that you released me and started yelling as well, Anna. ‘Angus would never have done something like that.’ The words fell awkwardly from my mouth. ‘As a ma
tter of fact he didn’t even like you all that much.’

  Olivia laughed again, head flung back. ‘Oh, darling – they don’t have to like you!’

  ‘You’re lying.’ I could hardly breathe, was growing incoherent. ‘Why are you doing this? I’ve done everything for you . . . Tell me it’s a lie, just a story.’

  But she was silent, turned to watch me, the cigarette held at a jaunty angle in her hand, her face exultant.

  We stood like that in silence for a few seconds before I found my voice again. ‘Get out of my house. I want you out by midday. Otherwise you’ll be back in Arden tonight.’

  I left her, holding you close to my body. I couldn’t let go of you. I wrapped you up and walked to the park, carrying you round and round in the strong sunshine, hardly knowing what I was doing. When finally I returned home, the house was empty.

  Chapter 28

  It was Lisa I turned to, then. I was in a terrible state. I couldn’t bear to be parted from my baby for a second out of fear something would happen. Night after night I woke sweating, my hands grasping for you, sometimes screaming. I moved out of my bed with Douglas so that I could sleep with you, guard you. It was as if the odour of Olivia had not passed from the house and she could still harm you. And in my fear of losing you I couldn’t bear to try and imagine how Olivia must have felt in parting with her child. It was too much – such thoughts sent my emotions into too great a conflict. I pushed them out of my mind.

  Douglas was very impatient and thought me hysterical. ‘She’s all right – none the worse for it.’ At least it had meant me getting shot of Olivia. That’s what he was bothered about. But I couldn’t have cared less about him. You were the only person who mattered to me, Anna. I saw everyone else close to me as a source of betrayal and I curled in on myself. I had a wall round me. I suppose now they would say I was traumatized and depressed.