Birmingham Friends (28 page)

‘You always did prefer him to me, didn’t you?’ I said to her sadly, the night before the wedding.

She had taken to wearing little pince-nez for reading and close work, and she peered up at me over them, fingers still busy stitching the hem of her dress.

‘It’s not a matter of preference,’ she said, apparently scandalized by the idea.

‘What then?’ I was feeling emotional, and in need of support and reassurance.

She stopped sewing for a moment, the needle poised. ‘Boys are so much easier somehow. Their lives are more direct. And William’s always been so clever. Not that you’re not,’ she said unexpectedly, shooting a glance at me. ‘It’s just that normally, with boys, their lives go in a straighter line. The war’s made a difference to that, of course. But I knew I shouldn’t have to watch William grow up, get an education and then throw himself away on a man.’

I gasped. I knew she had found aspects of her marriage frustrating, however good a man Daddy had been. I’d had no idea her thoughts were so bleak.

‘Health Visitors can still work when they’re married,’ I ventured. ‘They started allowing it during the war.’

Mummy looked severely at me. ‘You think you’ve got all the answers, don’t you? Well, you just wait. It’s never how you think. You’ll find you’re expecting and you’ll have all that on your plate. And who d’you think’ll be doing all the work and worrying about the children and the house? It won’t be Douglas, take that from me, whether you’re in a job or out of it. Once you’re married it’s curtains to any ideas you might have for yourself.’

Accompanied by these cheering words I faced my wedding day.

Olivia looked stunning the next day in her dress of rich blue. She was well made up so her face wore a healthier colour. I had chosen roses for our bouquets as I loved their scent of summer and childhood – mine yellow, Olivia’s white. They were hard to come by and expensive because of the time of year.

‘Good luck, darling,’ Livy whispered, smoothing the shoulders of my dress before I stepped into the church on William’s arm. How I missed Daddy then! And I found my legs shaking unexpectedly. But I was collected enough to be able to take in whose faces were turned to watch me arrive. My mother in sky blue with white flowers on her hat, peering anxiously along the aisle at me; Lisa holding Daisy up to get a better view, the little girl’s hair scraped up into tiny bunches, and Don’s freckled face beside them. Just as I was taking in how smart Douglas looked waiting at the front of the church, I noticed the couple standing opposite Mummy, and realized with a shock that they must be Douglas’s parents.

I had felt very uneasy in the weeks before the wedding about the fact that we hadn’t been down to visit them, partly because it seemed so odd but also because I was afraid of offending them and of their having a bad opinion of me. Now, though, I felt a new sense of foreboding. If the sight of Douglas’s parents was so strange and puzzling, what did this say about how much I knew of Douglas and where he came from?

His description of his mother as a plaster saint could not have been more inaccurate. I assumed this had been his ironic sense of humour. Julia Craven was a small, very curvaceous woman, dressed today in a suit of shimmering candyfloss-coloured silk. Her hair was a more vivid blond than Douglas’s, and I could see from where he had inherited his eyes, his full lips and high cheekbones. She was extraordinary rather than beautiful. As I passed her, her gaze fixed frankly on me. I noticed a pungently perfumed smell.

The incongruity of her husband beside her almost made me turn my head to stare back at them. He towered over her, hugely tall and bony with wide, stooped shoulders giving him the look of a bird of prey. He fitted the part of a crusty schoolmaster: the chalky-skinned, lined face, heavy spectacles, the dull tweed suit. His mouth had a bitter slant to it and I felt immediately that I should find him hard to like.

We were married standing as it was difficult for Douglas to kneel. For the first hymn we had chosen ‘My Song is Love Unknown’. Singing the beautiful melody I tried to calm my mind. The sight of Douglas’s people had really thrown me. I panicked, suddenly breathless, and had to stop singing. I was glad to be facing the front so that no one except Mr Hughes could see my face as my mind raced through a whole assortment of questions.

Who was this man beside me, and what did I really feel for him? Were those feelings strong enough to bind myself to him for the rest of my life?

‘Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be,’ they sang behind me. The words pierced me. Was it pity after all that I felt for Douglas? A powerful combination of pity and desire? What about the kind of love I had felt for Angus, a steadiness between friendship and passion. That knowledge that I could not conceive of the future spent without him. Yet this was precisely what I had been forced to face up to. And now I was giving that future to Douglas.

It’s too late now, I said in my thoughts. Please forgive me, Angus.

‘Are you all right?’ Mr Hughes whispered. I saw Douglas glance anxiously at me.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Thank you.’

I began singing again: ‘Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine . . .’

Yet suddenly I had an ominous feeling that ours was not a marriage made in heaven.

After our reception at a modest hotel, we travelled by train to Malvern, having decided that mid-January was no time to head for the coast. I had changed into a new wool dress in a soft mulberry colour and packed warm clothes, imagining wind sweeping the pointed hills and log fires in the hotel. The railway carriage still had its wartime feel of dinginess and lack of attention, and stank of stale smoke. My seat cover was torn and the floor was dirty. By late afternoon a fine rain had begun to fall, obscuring the first, uplifting sight of the Malvern Hills and leaving outside little to see but a grey murk.

Instead of the new relaxation into certainty I had expected once the nerves of the ceremony were over and the marriage an irrevocable thing, I found my mind jittering around, alive with troubling images.

My mother’s ambivalent expression as I finally said goodbye to her: was that simply a mother’s mixed feelings at her daughter’s wedding? Or was she thinking of her own marriage, or of my father’s death, his absence at this occasion? I knew she would never explain such a commotion of feelings to me, but I felt a perplexed need to understand.

When I managed to banish these thoughts from my mind, Olivia slid into it instead. Trotting out after William in the vivid blue shantung dress from a side corridor of the hotel, he walking with urgent speed, slipping between other guests as if trying to throw her off. She wore a tense, fixed smile. There was the exaggerated way she embraced Douglas, throwing her body close against his until he protested, ‘Steady on, old girl – I’m not as firm on my feet as I might be, you know.’ Even when standing still, performing in ordinary conversation, I noticed the way she held her body in the close-fitting dress. She looked posed, self-conscious, like someone fearful of being startled by a camera at any time.

From her, my mind flitted to Douglas’s parents. Having no alternative, he had introduced them to Mummy and me as we arrived at the reception on the Hagley Road. Mummy, I have to say, rose to the occasion and was charming, conveying just the right balance of warmth, welcome and regret at their not having made each other’s acquaintance before. In a quiet moment afterwards she murmured to me, with a subtle nod in the Cravens’ direction, ‘What a very odd couple. I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.’

When I met her properly, Douglas’s cameo of his mother as a ‘plaster saint’ did not seem quite so wild after all. Close up, the age difference between the two of them was hugely evident. Bernard Craven must have been at least twenty years his wife’s senior. His hair, once presumably black like his eyebrows, was storm-cloud grey, his face lined, eyes deep-set behind the thick glasses and his manner unapproachable.

I shook his hand, saying, ‘I’m so glad to meet you at last,’ and received in reply a nod and a slightly absent-minded ‘How do you do,’ like an acquaintance in a baker’s shop, while his wife watched him with wide eyes as if willing him to expand on it.

Seeing her face close up, I realized it was at odds with the over-bright, predatory-looking clothes she was wearing. She had, like Douglas, a sensuous face, but there was more sweetness to it, and she looked as young for her years as her husband appeared old for his.

‘Katie, my dear – ’ She reached up to kiss me. Her skin was flawless. I had expected a heavy, brassy voice, but instead it was small and hesitant. She kept glancing anxiously at her husband as if inviting his permission to open her mouth.

‘We’re so delighted. We’ve worried so about Douglas – we have, darling.’ She took his arm playfully and kissed him, standing on tiptoe. Douglas, who up until now had been smiling and affable with all the other guests, was now blushing and obviously uncomfortable, but didn’t resist her kiss. ‘He’s such a naughty boy about keeping in touch, but we’re terribly proud of him. And we’re so happy to be here and meet you – aren’t we, Bernard?’

Bernard Craven coughed and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Douglas stared at the ground. I saw Julia Craven watching her husband as if gauging whether he was about to speak, in which case she would desist from doing so, his words counting for more than hers. As he didn’t, she continued, trying to draw both husband and son into the conversation. I sensed this was an old pattern. She addressed first one, then the other and drew so little response from them that she was left to turn to me in desperation. In her childlike way she appealed, ‘I do hope we shall be able to see something of you both?’

‘I hope so too,’ I said. I found that I meant it.

That evening we ate beef and drank wine in the pale coffee-coloured dining room of our hotel, one of many elegant buildings in the spa town which straggled its way across the smoke-grey hills.

‘Douglas,’ I said. ‘Tell me about your parents – properly, I mean.’ Their strangeness made me feel unsure of him.

‘Why? What do they matter?’ he asked flippantly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous – of course they matter. They’re who you come from – and you haven’t managed to prevent me meeting them. But I’d at least like to know why you tried so hard to keep them away.’

At last he told me more, words spilling fast from his lips as if he had them all prepared.

‘My father was a postmaster’s son in a small town outside Gloucester. He was bright and he became a schoolmaster, even though I’m not at all sure he liked children very much. They met when she was sixteen and he was already thirty-eight. All rather a cliché really: the shy, graceless schoolmaster sinking into bachelorhood – no one interested in him. He wasn’t handsome. He’s the kind of man no one normally notices very much. But she noticed him – she’s like that . . .’ His voice softened. ‘She sees things in people that others miss and brings them out. She’s very compassionate, would do anything for people.’ He paused and looked across the room as if stopped by a painful thought. ‘She was lovely to look at then, perfect really. Pretty, innocent, very vivacious. You can see it all in the photographs. He was forever having portraits done of her. He was completely taken over by her. I suppose his life began again when he met her. She saved him, and he knows it. But she adored him as well. She was an only child, and I think her parents were reasonable enough people, but she had a great store of affection to give away. They married two years later. When she was nineteen, the next year, reality crashed in on them. I arrived, wonky leg and all. Imperfect. A disappointment. She was very good to me, of course – defensive of me. But she was so protective, she wouldn’t let me breathe – give me a chance to get out and cope.

‘She’s always been dominated totally by my father. It was his age, his manner, and I think she felt guilty for not giving him a proper son. It was he who ruled they must have no more children because the first pot was cracked, so to speak.’ Douglas gave a self-mocking laugh. ‘If this one’s like this, think what the next one might be like, was his attitude. He’s an arrogant man, and cold. I suppose their courtship was the one aberration in his life. And she still loves him. Heaven knows why. She was so young when she married him and in some ways she still is. Didn’t she strike you as girlish?’

‘In a way.’ I thought of her letter to me. ‘She must be strong, though.’

The cheeseboard arrived at our table and we cut slices of Leicester and Wensleydale to eat with water biscuits, luxurious in this austere time.

‘Your father looks so bitter,’ I said, thinking back to the man’s sour features. ‘Why would that be? Not because of you, surely? He ought to be proud of all you’ve achieved.’

‘Things built up over the years,’ Douglas said evasively. He reached out and took one of my hands in his. ‘Can we change the subject now? I’d really prefer to leave them out of tonight.’

My curiosity was still unsatisfied, but I agreed.

‘You must miss your father,’ Douglas said kindly. ‘Especially today. It seems tragic to die so near the end of the war.’

I nodded slowly. ‘He was a pacifist – I expect I’ve told you. When the war ended and those pictures of Bergen-Belsen and the other camps were all coming out, it was the only time my mother allowed me to see her cry for him. She was crying partly about the terrible things in the pictures, of course, but she said to me, “Thank God your father didn’t live to see this.” And I understood exactly what she meant. Although he had worked with so many people in all walks of life, and seen some awful things, he still had such strong beliefs in the sanctity of people. There was a kind of innocence about him.’

Douglas squeezed my hand. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t meet him.’

We sat talking over our coffee, well fed, warmed by the cosy room and suddenly intimate. I relaxed, unburdened of the painful thoughts that had marred the train journey. We ordered more coffee, delaying the moment of going upstairs, luxuriating in the sense of anticipation.

As soon as we were in our room our hands were pulling at each other’s clothes. Our lips opened up to each other’s, and I pulled his body in close to mine. He seemed startled at my passionate response to him, drew back and looked at me, and I could see the urgency in his eyes.