Birmingham Friends (22 page)

‘I expect she hoped you’d bring a bloke,’ Brenda said in a low voice, ‘since they’re probably in short supply. I expect you’ll find half your school here.’

‘God forbid,’ I murmured. ‘I must say I did get the impression we were asked to make up numbers . . .’

We must have been almost the last to arrive. The room was well filled by a throng of people all talking loudly, and it felt very warm. A shout of laughter met us from one corner as we walked in. There were plenty of men there, too – a few in uniform, most not.

‘Yanks, a lot of them,’ Brenda observed. ‘Seem to look bigger than our lot, don’t they?’ Brenda, who wasn’t much interested in men, often talked about them as if they were some queer breed of squirrel.

The two of us stood looking round the room, at a loss.

One man – small, English – peeled away from the crowd. ‘Hello, you look lost,’ he said amiably. He had a thatch of dark hair like Marjorie’s and a chubby pink face. ‘I’m Roly, Marjorie’s brother. Come and have some punch? It’s fearfully good. Made by her own fair hands. In fact there’s homemade wine, too. We’re disreputable soaks in the Mantel family, I’m afraid. Make it out of anything that’s going. This is a brew from back in ’38. Those fair, halcyon days . . .’

For a moment I thought he was going to break into poetry. More usefully he poured us some of the fruit cup.

‘The fruit’s a bit limited, of course. Nearly all apples and pears from the garden.’

‘It’s very nice,’ I said politely. ‘Marjorie said you’re both home on leave?’

‘Yes, bang on. I’m army and she’s a WAAF. Marvellous spot of luck being able to take leave at the same time. Not often we coincide. I’m due to be posted soon, so I’m making the most of home.’

Looking at Roly’s face, I realized he was much younger than he seemed. His manner was already so middle-aged.

‘I say – it’s Katie, isn’t it? Kate Munro?’

A face swam towards me which I recognized instantly. The sight of her brought back the classrooms, the very smell of school.

‘Celia Oakley!’

As I stood reminiscing with Celia, Marjorie appeared and pounced on Brenda, saying there was someone she ‘must meet’.

‘And what’s happened to Olivia Kemp?’ Celia wanted to know. She had a very pale face and almost white blond hair and lashes. ‘You were always such friends. I found her a bit, well, odd myself. Rather stand-offish. I always presumed it was because she got fed up with people carrying on about her father. It surprised us all when you two teamed up.’

‘Livy’s in the Wrens,’ I said. Celia made impressed sounds. ‘I haven’t seen much of her, of course, though she was home for a stint of sick leave – ages ago now – end of ’41 it must have been. Went down with pneumonia. I think she’s quite taken to service life apart from that.’

‘She always did look delicate,’ Celia said. ‘Though as I say, I didn’t have a great deal to do with her. Kept out of her way really.’

‘Now everyone!’ Marjorie hooted suddenly in her huge voice. ‘Shall we have some music? Does anyone fancy a dance?’

‘Let’s have a singsong,’ someone called out. ‘Cheer us all up. And then we can carry on drinking!’

There was a flutter of agreement round the room. ‘Come on, Marj – play us a song!’

‘She’s very staunch, isn’t she?’ Celia said, mouth near my ear. ‘You know the other brother’s missing?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Oh yes – air force. They’re all worried stiff, poor things. But Marjorie’s got such guts – look at her. You’d never guess.’

Marjorie advanced on the piano, looking serene.

As people began to move towards the edge of the room to claim chairs, I suddenly saw someone sitting in the corner next to the mantelpiece, who had been hidden before by all the chattering bodies. I squinted, pushing my specs further up my nose to see more clearly.

‘Excuse me,’ I said distractedly to Celia.

As I walked across he looked up at me. That face with the prominent cheekbones, vivid eyes, a scar worming down his left cheek.

‘Douglas Craven?’

He frowned, taking his cigarette from his mouth. ‘Yes, officer?’ Looking at me more closely, his face broke into a smile which seemed to take it by surprise, pulling the pink scar tissue tight across his cheek.

‘Florence?’ he called out loudly. Marjorie had started playing ‘Hands, knees and Boomps-a-Daisy’ with heavy-handed enthusiasm, and a group were bottom-bumping in the middle of the room.

‘Kate,’ I corrected him. ‘Florence Nightingale is dead. As is Queen Victoria.’ Already, before we’d exchanged more than a few words, I felt the same combination of prickliness and attraction towards him that I had when we first met.

He smiled cautiously. ‘Are you always so tart with everyone?’

‘Not everyone.’

‘So it’s my fault. Listen – take a seat. Forgive me for not getting up.’ He spoke with the odd, ironic tone which I remembered.

I looked round at him, using an examination of the healed wound as an excuse to take in his appearance now his face was free of dressings. He had wiry-looking blond hair, long compared with the clipped styles of the servicemen which we were growing used to. His eyes were less blue than I remembered in the soft light from the candles above his head. The scar curved round from one high cheekbone towards his fair moustache. He obviously found the candour of my gaze disconcerting and looked down. I thought he was blushing.

‘It’s healed well. You’re jolly lucky it missed your eye.’

‘Yes,’ he said sardonically. ‘Jolly.’ He turned and grinned at me suddenly, looking into my eyes so that it was I who felt compelled to look away.

‘Not in a dancing mood?’ I was glad to see Brenda across the room jigging about and laughing with a woman I didn’t know. This was more her cup of tea than polite chit-chat over glasses of punch.

‘Dancing?’ Douglas said. ‘No, most definitely not.’

Marjorie started on ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, her hands kneading at the keys, and most people were joining in singing the lines they knew.

‘Have you known Marjorie long?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know her at all. I came with Pete over there to swell the numbers, of course.’

‘We had the definite impression that we were padding as well.’

‘What you’re too polite to ask, of course,’ Douglas said, his tone oddly aggressive, ‘is why I’m not fighting with the boys in blue, khaki or any other colour? What a young male is doing here unable to make the claim that he is “on leave” from defending the nation.’

‘I was wondering.’

‘Of course you were.’

Awkwardly he pulled himself to his feet. I realized that I had never seen him other than lying or sitting before. His right leg was skewed at the hip, the knee bending inwards so that he had to bear its weight on the ball of his foot.

He sat down again abruptly and looked at me very directly, as if challenging me for a reaction.

‘Cripple, you see. Born like it. I can get around on it like the clappers as a matter of fact, but I’m not seen as being up to the old one-two, one-two, which apparently is what matters in the services. Not that I didn’t try. The army recruiting wallahs looked at me as if I was mad. Of course I only imagined they might sit me at a desk somewhere, but apparently that wasn’t on either. So it was decided that since newspapers are nourishment for the nation I should be allowed to lurch around the
Mail
offices doing my job – or what we’re allowed to print nowadays – as usual.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. At a time when young men felt they were proving themselves all over the country, Douglas apparently felt himself stuck like a frustrated Rumpelstiltskin, one foot trapped in the floorboards.

‘Oh, don’t be.’ He sank back in the chair. ‘After all, I have a war wound to show for my intrepid reportage.’

‘D’you always talk like that? So sarcastically?’

‘You’re very direct. Yes, often. It’s a defence I’ve established. If there’s something amiss with your body you have to learn to keep your end up somehow, don’t you? After all, it’s not everyone I allow to see me howling because I’ve got a lump of Christ knows what sticking out of the side of my face.’

‘You don’t even need to think of that. It’s my job.’

He looked into my face with his disturbing gaze. ‘You were wonderful, I have to say. Especially coming back to see me like that.’

I felt myself blushing. I was alarmed by the unexpected impulse I felt to put my arms round him. His eyes were extraordinary: appealing, penetrating. For a second it would have felt natural to rest my head on his shoulder. I looked away, ashamed.

But Douglas seemed to relax suddenly, as if he trusted my acceptance of him, and I found myself talking to him, animated in a way I had not been for months. He asked about my work and how I knew Marjorie and we laughed together. Then I felt caught out, laughing like that. Confused, I turned my attention to the music, thoughts churning in my head. How would I ever know if Angus was alive somewhere? Our last night together seemed such an age away. I ached to see him, for us to hold one another, yet at the same time, if that was never going to be possible, I needed to know that too. Would we have to wait until the war was over, and even then would we know for certain? And here was I, enjoying myself at a party and wishing that this man beside me, who I barely knew, would take me in his arms.

A group was standing round Marjorie, who had her back to us at the piano, all well into the swing of singing.

‘I’ll never smile again, until I smile at you,’ they belted out with incongruous jollity. The song cut through me. Should I never smile again? Had I to wait for a homecoming that might or might not happen? And how could I feel so damn sorry for myself just having to wait when for all I knew Angus might be going through the most appalling suffering? A lump grew in my throat. It all felt so hopeless, all these months of waiting and praying when I knew in my heart that Angus was dead.

‘Grim little number, isn’t it?’ Douglas leaned forward and spoke gently. ‘I say – you’re not crying, are you?’

‘No, I’m not,’ I said in a determined voice.

‘You are – nearly, aren’t you?’ he persisted with ungentlemanly intrusiveness. ‘Is it that – fiancé of yours?’

Dry-eyed now, I told Douglas about our correspondence with the Red Cross.

‘The open grave,’ he said. ‘You poor girl.’

‘Don’t be nice, I really shall start, else.’

‘I shouldn’t mind.’ His tone was kind.

‘But I should. This is supposed to be a party.’

Fortunately Marjorie decided to move on to the ENSA tune, ‘Let the People Sing’, at this point, which got some of them dancing again.

‘Good job it wasn’t “We’ll meet again”,’ Douglas said. ‘Or the floodgates would have opened.’

I laughed. ‘You’re terrible.’

‘Am I?’ He directed an uncertain smile at me.

‘Actually, no. In a funny way you’ve cheered me up.’

‘The feeling is mutual. Most girls, once they’ve found out about my gammy leg, start treating me like some sort of damned invalid with only half a brain.’

He sounded so bitter that without thinking I laid my hand on his arm as I would have done with a patient, then quickly withdrew it.

We spent most of the evening talking and I found myself forgetting about everything else in a way that I only normally did when we were exceptionally busy at work. Again I found that Douglas was more ready to ask questions and learn about me than he was to disclose anything about himself. The shreds I managed to glean from him were that he had a fierce satisfaction in his job and that he was an only child whose parents lived near Gloucester.

Towards the end of the evening, Marjorie came breezing over and said to me, ‘Ah, Katie, darling – I see you’ve been looking after poor Douglas.’

‘Oh yes,’ Douglas said in a mock pitiful voice. ‘She’s a proper little Florence Nightingale.’

Marjorie couldn’t work out what we were both laughing about.

As we were leaving I moved towards the door with Douglas. I could tell he was painfully conscious that I was seeing his rocking, distorted walk for the first time. With an effort, and taking refuge in his tone of self-mockery, he said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider seeing me again?’

I knew I couldn’t hold back from saying yes and giving my address for his sake. But I knew I was doing it as much for my own. As we parted, shaking hands, our eyes met and Douglas smiled, his face transformed from the sad, rather uncertain expression to one that was warm and hopeful.

After I’d thanked Marjorie I said, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your brother.’

She reddened, her only hint of emotion. ‘These things are sent to try us, I suppose.’

Brenda joined me outside, glowing from the warmth of the room and her dancing. ‘That Susan’s a good laugh – we’re going to Ivy Benson’s tea dance next week if my duty hours fit in with it.’ She did a little twirl on the pavement. ‘That was the best evening I’ve had in ages,’ she said as we made our way carefully along the blacked-out street.

‘Yes,’ I said, surprising myself. ‘Me too.’

Birmingham, 1944

‘Dr Williamson?’

I can’t say I’d have been pleased to see him at the best of times, and his presence on our doorstep in the early evening foretold trouble. He walked in brusquely with barely a glance at me, saying, ‘Is your mother in?’

I showed him into the front room. Mummy was at the back with Gladys Peck and the children. Gladys, a young mother with skin the colour of curdled milk, had come to us from South London to escape the flying bombs.

‘Winifred,’ Dr Williamson said, stroking his little moustache uneasily, ‘you’d better sit down.’

Mummy wasn’t keen on Dr Williamson either. ‘I don’t wish to sit down,’ she said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

‘Very bad news, I’m afraid. It’s Bill. He collapsed at the surgery – his heart.’ He paused, looking down at the floor. ‘I’m afraid he died in the ambulance. I got here as soon as I could.’ My first thought was how much better Daddy would have handled this, his gift with his patients.

My mother stood rigid. She said nothing. Her knees buckled and I helped her to a chair.

Dr Williamson looked monstrously uncomfortable. ‘Is there anything I can do?’