Birmingham Friends (36 page)

Her voice was strained thin as broth. ‘I’ve asked him – I’ve begged him. I don’t know what else to do. He says we have to wait for them to make her better.’

‘Is Tuesday the only night he always goes out?’

She made as if to think about it, smoothing her hand round the pleat of her hair. ‘He does have a regular social arrangement on a Tuesday. They meet for a drink – business, you know.’

‘Oh yes?’ I kept my voice neutral.

Elizabeth looked at me very directly. ‘Yes. It’s been a long-standing arrangement.’

‘Hasn’t it just?’

Without changing her expression, she said, ‘Please leave my house.’

‘I thought you wanted my help.’

Abruptly she turned her back to me and leaned on the mantelpiece in a cringing pose. ‘I don’t want it at the expense of . . . of everything else.’

I was silent for a moment. ‘You know just where he goes most Tuesdays, don’t you?’

She lowered her head as if I was whipping her. When she spoke I heard the break in her voice. ‘He is whatever I have made him.’

When I got home that evening I felt weighed down and filled with a kind of disgust at myself. Everything felt so strange, at odds. Even this house of mine would not be so for much longer. In each room there were packing cases, some already full for our move in a few days’ time.

Douglas was out, working as usual. I sat for a long time in front of my dressing table, staring at my face.

I had felt like a torturer with Elizabeth Kemp. I remembered how I used to stare so often at my reflection, wishing I looked different; like Olivia. My face was thin now, severe, with my hair pinned up at the back, my oval, steel-rimmed specs. As a girl I had looked so much sweeter. Then I had dreamed of Alec Kemp, kissed my reflection in the glass, fancying it was him. I had wanted to look beautiful and alluring. I gave myself an ironic smile. Twenty years on, nearly, and I was still being goaded by the thought of Alec Kemp. Except that now my pursuit was driven by revenge; for Olivia but also – though I could barely admit it – for myself, for the bitter person I felt that night.

Now I knew about Olivia’s baby I was certain in a way I had not been up until now that she was being wronged by her confinement in Arden. Through the summer I had been beset by doubts, waiting for some improvement in her that might give me hope: a grain of light through the black screen of her depression. An explanation. Instead it had grown worse until she was almost unreachable and I no longer knew who or what to believe.

But now I had reasons for the changes in her: grief, loss, anger. And now, by waiting, I had more to hold against Alec Kemp. Soon, very soon, I was going to catch him at his most vulnerable.

*  *  *

OLIVIA

I have only one thing left and I keep it in my head, calling upon it like a rosary or a lucky stone. It’s real and not real. That is, it never happened exactly like this. It’s a summing up, a kind of poem. I call it up at night when I am once more lying awake and often in the day. It makes me ache with happiness and sometimes I cry. It’s my only doorway to feeling, even if it is an illusion.

I am five years old. I live in our beautiful house in Moseley. It is a smooth, pure house, for I do not yet know its drawers and cupboards are full of squirming secrets. As the years pass the drawers are topped up until the pressure becomes unbearable.

But I am five. I am playing in the garden on velvet grass, the sun like warm hands on my face, and I am wearing a pretty white frock. Mummy likes me to wear white. I have a hoop which I am using for skipping. I twirl the smooth wood round over my head and down for my feet to jump over as it passes at the right moment in perfect rhythm. Step, twirl, step, twirl.

Suddenly I stop. I am happy, full of a deep, thrumming joy, but there is one thing missing. What I need to fill me right up to the top is indoors. I like to see my feet moving neatly one in front of the other. My white sandals clack on the path as I trot into the blue shadow of the house. Through the glass door, along the hall, clack clack still on the grey, white, orange tiles.

I know that all I need is here. Searching, I go to the back room, our refuge with its bulging sofa, for the family only. He is sitting with white shirtsleeves rolled in the heat, his strong, dark hands gripping the newspaper, legs stretched out and comfortable.

‘Daddy!’ Running to his arms. ‘Daddy!’

The newspaper is laid down immediately. The arms are always open, as hungry for me as I for him.

‘Angel! Hello there, princess!’ His lips are on my cheek and I am in his smell, the best in life: crisp shirt, whiff of sweat, tobacco, man.

I lie against his body, warm, overflowing, tearful with contentment.

*  *  *

My chance with Alec came in November, the week after Douglas and I moved house. The night I found Alec Kemp was also the first time I saw Jackie Flint and one of his other women.

‘Lisa!’ We heard Jackie hammering at the door. It was about eight o’clock on a Tuesday evening. Don was at the pub, Douglas, as usual, at a meeting. When Jackie came in from the darkness, panting, I started to wonder whether Kemp’s employees were selected purely on looks. She was lovely; a soft, rounded figure, long fair hair, big blue eyes and square, widely spaced teeth. In one hand she had a cigarette. Catching sight of me, she said, startled, ‘Oh, it’s you! I remember you from when Doris ’ad ’er babby.’

I had no recollection of her, but held out my hand to introduce myself. She ignored it, taking a puff on the cigarette. ‘ ’E’s ’ere again. Me sister just saw him – up Catherine Street. ’E’s after some kid at number twenty-eight. You’ll ’ave to get a move on. They won’t be stopping up there long.’

I was all of a dither, heart going like mad and suddenly no idea what I was doing.

‘Where do I go?’ I asked, breathlessly.

‘After ’im of course,’ Lisa said, poised as if to throw me bodily out of the door.

‘Round the back of Kemp’s,’ Jackie told me. I could tell she was enjoying this, being in the know, and the prospect of revenge. ‘That’s where ’e takes ’em. We’ll come with you.’

‘No!’ I was trying to pull on my coat, arm catching in the sleeve. ‘It’ll mean waiting around. I’ll need to be absolutely quiet.’

‘She’s right, you know,’ Lisa said. ‘Be like a cowing ’en ’ouse with us tagging along.’

‘Right,’ I said, trying to sound as if I had any idea what I was going to do. ‘I’ll be back later – I hope.’

‘Bring us ’is ’ead back!’ Lisa called.

‘Or summat else!’ Jackie shouted brazenly, and their ragged trail of laughter followed me out through the door into the smoky air.

I turned into Catherine Street and began to walk up the sloping brick pavement. I was so wound up that every sound – a dog barking, the slam of a front door – made me jump. There weren’t many people about and I certainly couldn’t see Alec Kemp. Nearing number 28, a house fronting on to the street near the top of the road, I stopped. I could hardly hang about here: I might run straight into them.

A short distance away was an entry to one of the back courts, so I slipped just inside and waited, moving from one foot to the other, unable to keep still for nerves.

It was a freezing night and very still, a half moon shining clear-edged in the sky. Children were playing out despite the cold. The entry was dark, smelled of urine, and the high walls muffled sounds so that I was constantly straining my ears to hear voices or footsteps.

They went past so quickly that I only glimpsed them and for a few seconds I was paralysed and couldn’t think what to do. Then I rushed after them, seeming to fly down the dimly lit slope of Catherine Street. A gaggle of children were shivering round the steps of the Catherine Arms, and as I passed there came a waft of warm, beer-fed air and a wave of noise from inside the cosily lit windows, voices singing above the talk. Otherwise the street was quiet.

They went right down to the bottom, towards Kemp’s, and I slowed down, frightened that they might turn and see me. At the corner they turned down into Vaughan Street and I hurried to keep them in view.

The two figures in front of me were walking side by side but not touching. I knew the man was Alec Kemp by the height, his walk. The woman beside him looked small and slight. Now and then they appeared to exchange a word, but they were brisk and purposeful. He seemed to be urging her on. Once I saw her stop and turn to look up at him, saying something. Alec appeared to speak softly, touching her shoulder for a second. I froze, seeing him glance back up the street. I should have kept walking, looked more normal. But he can’t have seen me. I saw he had his hat pulled down well over his face. They walked on.

As we neared Kemp’s, I realized the factory was still running. I had not given any thought to whether Kemp’s worked a night shift and had imagined him going to a place closed and deserted. Instead there were lights on, the front gates open, the hum of machines inside.

Surely to God he can’t be taking her in, I thought. Round the back, Jackie had said, but so far as I could see there was only the main gate. They were going past it. There must be another entrance behind.

Walking on the opposite side of the road from the factory, they skirted it and turned swiftly into the next street. I saw Alec putting his arm round behind her, urging her on.

Looks as if this is it, I thought. My heart was going like the clappers.

But when I turned the corner, they’d vanished. Damn and blast it! I stopped.

The street was a short one, linking Vaughan Street to the main road at the bottom. At a glance it appeared to present a uniform frontage of two-storey houses, but a short way down there was a break, a narrow alley barely wider than the entries to the back courts. The alley was pitch black and I didn’t much like the look of it but I didn’t see there was anywhere else they could have gone. I couldn’t miss this opportunity now. I stepped into the black slit between the houses.

The first part was very dark, hemmed in by the walls of the houses on each side. I couldn’t see the moon in the ribbon of sky, though I sensed the blackness thinning out ahead of me and becoming less intense. I felt my way along, moving my hands over the rough bricks, trying to tread absolutely silently. I heard a slight crunch as my foot pressed on broken glass. I stopped immediately and waited, taking in a deep breath and straining my ears to interpret the small sounds around me: the murmur of conversation from inside the houses, a distant rumble from Kemp’s and, surely, a faint voice from along the alley in front of me.

I reached the end of the houses and the walls of their yards on each side and I could see fractionally better, as if hands had been lifted from over my eyes. The moon gave my surroundings a dim outline. The ground underfoot was rough and unpaved and I felt my way carefully into each step. On the right I could make out that there was now an iron fence, but not low enough to see over; behind it a silent warehouse. I realized I was soon going to be level with the back of Kemp’s to my left. The high wall tapered down roughly level with my head, and over it came a faint glow of light. The yard of Kemp’s was quiet, but I wondered just what sort of thrill it gave Alec Kemp to be in this particular place with a woman, so close to his daily role as grand panjandrum overseeing his laboratory and the works below it.

I heard his voice before I could see them and stood absolutely still. His tone was soft, persuasive, and they were closer than I’d realized. They were standing against the back wall of Kemp’s. I made out their shapes, sensed them by the sound of their voices.

In a tiny voice, the girl said, ‘Oh, Mr Kemp – it’s so dark.’

‘It’s all right, Dolly.’ That voice came back so soothingly. ‘I’m sorry it has to be like this, but it’s only for now. I’ll find somewhere better for us to go. If I hadn’t wanted you so badly . . . You can see I’m in a very difficult position, can’t you?’

I heard nothing. The woman must have nodded.

‘That’s my girl. You’ve no idea how I feel about you, have you? How long I’ve wanted to – to touch you like this. It’s just – ’ There was a pause. ‘Sometimes I get very lonely, you see. My wife’s not – well, she’s not like you. She won’t let me touch her, and . . .’ Another pause, as if he was taking in a long breath. ‘I can’t live without this. Without having someone to hold.’

My eyes widened in the darkness. As he began speaking I had readied myself to hear the line being spun, the Kemp magnetism knowingly at work. What I was not prepared for was the sincerity of his distress. I felt shame wash through me at being here, hearing this.

‘When you first came to work for me I saw something special in you immediately. I saw you were someone I could trust, who might give me a bit of . . . loving.’

The girl made a small ‘oohh’ sound, of tenderness and arousal. He’d got her well and truly. Had he spoken those words to me, my arms would have been round him as well. Clenching my teeth, I dragged an image of Olivia into my mind. I could see the faintest outline of Alec and the girl fastened together by a kiss.

I let out a cough, loud and deliberate. The sound broke into that black, tense space with all the force of an explosion.

‘Who the – ? What the bloody hell d’you think you’re doing?’ The panic was plain in his voice. ‘Come back here!’

I started to run. He was soon right behind me, grabbing at my back. I had no intention of trying to escape him completely but I wanted to get to the street so that he could see me and I could face him properly, see the look in his eyes.

‘Stop right now or I’ll call the police!’ he shouted irrationally.

In a few seconds we were out on Vaughan Street. His hand came down hard on my shoulder.

‘Don’t touch me, Mr Kemp.’

He released me more in surprise than anything, standing back to look at me. ‘Kate? Little Katie? What on earth?’

I suppose he was relieved for a moment when he saw me. His voice was soft again, full of that persuasiveness. I gritted my teeth against it, the way that tone could even at this moment make me want to run into his arms.

‘A few things have happened since you called me Little Katie.’ I injected venom into my voice.