Birmingham Friends (37 page)

He gave me his charming smile, gesturing with his hand back towards the alley. There was no sign of the woman Dolly. ‘For goodness’ sake, Katie. That didn’t mean anything.’

‘So what does mean something to you? Does anything mean more than getting a seat at the next election?’ I took a step closer to him. ‘Do I really have to spell this out? Your daughter is in a lunatic asylum. You creep around the streets at night to have – relations – with your employees and you have at least one illegitimate child to show for it.’

He was silent. I saw shock freeze into his face.

‘I’m well acquainted with both Joyce Salter and Jackie Flint who – God alone knows why – have been remarkably loyal to you up until now.’ I paused for a moment, watching his expression. ‘I’ll go to anyone I have to, you know. My husband knows all the right people to tell.’

Alec gave a kind of laugh, containing no mirth, merely an enormous tiredness. ‘Oh, I see. I see.’ He leaned his head back, looking to the sky for a moment, then his eyes met mine, direct again, and prepared. ‘What do you want? D’you want money like all of them? How much do I have to pay you to keep you quiet?’

‘Money?’ I was enraged, the sensation coming as a relief. ‘Is that always the first thing that enters your head?’

‘What then?’

‘What the hell d’you think? I want Olivia. You’re the only person who can get her out. You can say the word, and – ’ I snapped my fingers.

‘She’s not well. You’ve seen it – the way she talks . . . I can’t tell them to let her loose. I won’t take responsibility for her. She’s not my Olivia any more.’

‘She’s not well because you snatched her baby away from her against her wishes.’ I was having to hold on tight to myself so as not to become incoherent. ‘It’s enough to make anyone ill. Can’t you see she’s sick with grief? But no. All you care about is what people will think – your career at the expense of everything else.’

He put his hands over his face, slightly bent forward as if I’d kicked him in the stomach. He was distraught. ‘She told you. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. She was my girl. Mine.’

Words spilled out of my mouth like thick green slime, cleansing me. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to her between you. You had a beautiful, talented daughter and together you’ve crushed and warped her and you’re too much of a cowardly bastard even to go to her and see with your eyes what you’ve done. You sicken me, Alec. You’re despicable.’ I stopped, finding I was shaking.

Lowering his hands, Alec stared at me. ‘I never thought I’d hear you talk like that, Katie. You used to be so innocent. So charming.’

Tears blurred my eyes. I felt the sadness of his words.

‘Look,’ he said quietly. ‘I know what you think – how this looks to you. I can’t – ’ He took in a long, shuddering breath. ‘I can’t bear it that she’s in there. It’s killing me. I can’t stand to see it. But she is ill, Kate. You didn’t live with her. For weeks after she came home it was unbearable, the way she was. It was like a bad dream. We didn’t feel we could leave her . . . her moods. And then I found out she was . . . was . . .’ He shook his head, unable to go on.

‘Going with all those men?’

He expelled his breath with a sound that was half sigh, half sob. I stood with my arms straight down by my sides, clenching my fists. He put his hand into his coat and pulled out a handkerchief. ‘We’ve been at our wits’ end.’

After recovering himself for a moment, he said, ‘You’d do all this for her?’

I nodded, somehow unable to look into his eyes. ‘I want her out. I’ll take her. I’ll look after her.’

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he said.

‘You do that. You’ve got two days.’

He turned from me and began to walk off down the street.

‘I’ll be round!’ I called after him.

Walking back to Lisa’s house I felt not in the least jubilant. I was heavy-hearted and disgusted with myself at what I had felt forced to do.

When I went in I was startled to find four women waiting for me, their eyes darting in my direction as soon as I appeared. Lisa and Jackie, but also Joyce Salter and another woman I’d never seen before with red hair.

‘This is Sarah,’ Jackie said. ‘She works at Kemp’s.’ A thick blush spread across the woman’s pale skin.

They were waiting.

‘Well,’ I said flatly, ‘I’ve done it.’

They must have seen the shamed lines of my face, and I didn’t see in them any of the triumph I had expected: raucous, perhaps a little sadistic. Instead there was sadness, and shame in them, too. They had egged each other on, brazenly, to the idea of revenge, women drawing together against the vile seducer, all bravado. But now, seeing their faces, I knew it was not just for money that they had kept faith with Alec Kemp. He had aroused feelings in each of them which, whatever the cost to themselves, had bound them to their silence with a kind of tenderness.

*  *  *

OLIVIA

Once the WRNS have released me, six months pregnant, with my little suitcase, and once Daddy has stopped shouting and abusing me, he tells me, all sorrowful, ‘The only thing that matters is that no one finds out.’ He says, ‘My girl, my little girl. How could you? You’re spoilt now. There’s no going back.’

They keep me inside for nearly three months. Sometimes in the evenings I walk in the garden at dusk, feeling the new weight of my body.

They polish up my story about pneumonia and, fortunately, at the right time, when they are ready to let me out, my chest is bad. Mummy, of course, manages to believe the story at least half.

I am so afraid. I say to her, ‘What will it be like? What will happen to me?’ And, ‘I’m frightened Mummy, the baby’s getting so big. It’ll never come out, I’m so small.’

She fusses about me. ‘Darling, you must rest. Have a cushion. Eat this liver, drink that milk.’ She pours concern over me like cream, but cannot be with me in the place where I am. The word baby barely escapes through her lips. They keep me there, almost motionless, in the dark like a white puffball, feeding me, waiting for me to spill my terrible seed. Threads of feeling string themselves between the three of us, always tangling and knotted, never direct and spoken. Had they pulled straight they would have snapped, spraying blood metallic red.

They buy me a new piano. I refuse to play it. I sit staring at the world outside, forbidden me. More than anything I want Katie to comfort me.

They call Dr Penn when my pains begin and Mummy leaves the house as he enters it. I am terrified and there are no women at my delivery to lead or hold me. Dr Penn strolls in and out, often leaving me on my damp sheets, the pain crushing me.

‘I’m too small,’ I cry to him. ‘I’ll bleed to death.’

‘Your pelvis is perfectly adequate,’ he tells me over his spectacles. He is not unkind, but he’s a man and he doesn’t know.

After twelve hours he is born, my son. Daddy weeps when he sees him. He has always wanted a son for the business. My body is drenched and stretched and when I look down I don’t recognize it.

Dr Penn washes him and instructs me how to feed him. They leave my baby in a drawer by my bed with a thin pillow lining the base and soft squares of blanket. There is no cradle, of course, because this is not to be his home.

Before he hurries away I hear Dr Penn’s murmur beyond my door, ‘I’ll be round tomorrow – early.’

Mummy does not come home all night.

He lies in the drawer that evening, like the poor babies do. Daddy brings me food and is soft-spoken and kind which makes me cry. He holds me and strokes me. I sit in sheets which were once those of childhood.

When he has gone I don’t sleep as he tells me to. I keep the light on, just a small sidelight, like I’ve always done. I see the little bedclothes twitching up and down. Then he works one arm loose, although I’ve wrapped him well. There is his hand, so small, jerking back and forth. I watch. I can’t stop looking at him. He’s getting ready to cry. Then his voice, a high, sad sound, all alone in there after the warmth of me. I pick him up and put him to one breast then the other, he pulling sharply on me, full of astonishing, separate life. I keep him beside me all night though they told me I wasn’t to. The house is so quiet around us. Sometimes he opens his eyes for a few seconds and looks at me. I know he sees me.

I unwrap him and take in every part of his body, every shadow of his bone and muscle, the delicate, puckered skin. He has a long strong back and a birth mark like a wild strawberry at the bottom of his spine. I feel each bit of him, arms, legs, each rib, ears, cheeks, his soft skull. I hold his head against my cheek. By the morning I know him. I want my life to be his. And they take him away, then, at first light.

*  *  *

I was watching out for her. The ambulance arrived on a December day threatening snow, and against the grey clouds it looked very white and clean. Turning into Springfield Road it seemed to be moving in slow motion, stopping outside our door with a final shudder of the engine.

‘She’s here!’ I cried. Aflutter with nerves, I forgot I was alone in the house, calling out only to myself.

A man wearing a blue cap jumped down from the driver’s seat and scuttled round to the back of the vehicle. He opened the door at the back and I saw him reach out a hand.

Olivia was dressed in a black sable coat and black boots. Elizabeth must have seen to that. She was carrying a small overnight bag. I saw immediately that they had already removed the plaster cast from her arm. As she stepped out of the ambulance she hesitated, her face screwing up as if in pain after the darkness inside, even though it was not a bright day. She looked down for a moment, chopped hair falling forward round her cheeks, in a gesture of surrender. It was only once they had stepped inside the gate that she looked up again in bewilderment, taking in our new house, part of a long red-brick terrace, with Russian vine spiralling up the drainpipe, the green front door and wide bay window in which I stood with my hand raised to greet her. She stared at me without responding, as if she could make no sense of who I was. Her face looked so white, so haggard.

‘Here you are,’ the young man said as I opened the door. He handed Olivia over to me as if she were a bolt of cloth, and he was gone, striding back along the short path.

I closed the door and stood leaning against it long enough to let out a long, long sigh. I felt I hadn’t been able to breathe like that for months. She was here, safe, with me.

She was still standing where I had taken her in the front room, not having moved except to stand the little case beside her on the floor. I burst into tears and went and took her in my arms. ‘Livy, Livy . . .’ I could say nothing but her name, over and over, holding on to her so tightly.

She stood quite still, impassively letting me hold her and cry over her. But I did hear her whisper, very quietly, ‘Thank you.’

When Douglas had finally decided to move us out of my mother’s house, she treated the situation with indifference, whether real or not was impossible to say. What with the hospital, the church and the British Housewives League she was scarcely in anyway. Douglas seemed to think it would be the answer to everything. He was still pursuing some abstract ideal of ‘family life’ which, among other things, involved having your own home. I think he hoped he would have more control over me.

In fact this short, sweetish time was the best in our marriage. A lull, when I saw glimpses of the Douglas who had charmed me into believing I loved him.

That day Douglas had seen me with Roland we had rowed terribly. Once we’d travelled home, mute with fury, we attacked each other across our bedroom with words whose viciousness frightened both of us. I was already overwrought about Olivia, and Douglas held me guilty of wild, bizarre things, the unreasonableness of which shocked me more than the accusations themselves. He’d got it into his head that I was having an affair with the new doctor at the clinic, when I’d barely even got a grasp on the man’s name. He called me filthy things, turning on me all his icy verbal power.

‘You’re not a real woman at all are you? You can’t just stay at home where you should be. You have to be working like a man or gadding about with your friends and heaven only knows who else.’ His eyes bored into me. ‘You don’t even respond to me properly in bed. It’s like making love to a bloody corpse.’

At this I finally burst into tears, overcome by the injustice of it. ‘I can’t respond to you in bed,’ I wailed, ‘because you’re so hopeless at it. You don’t make me feel anything at all. It’s humiliating. Can’t you see that?’

The first time we’d ever broached the subject and it had to come out so harshly. Douglas was silenced. I saw the pain in his face.

‘Can’t you see,’ I went on, ‘that you’re making my life miserable, spying on me and not trusting me? I don’t want another man. Coping with you is too much already. I can’t stand much more of it, Douglas. I’d almost rather be alone.’

‘Don’t say that.’ He crumpled then, sinking on to the bed, his shoulders shaking. I sat beside him. He put his hands over his face. ‘I can’t help it. All I need is for you to want just me.’

‘I do want you,’ I said. I tried to believe it.

He began to kiss me, laid me back on the bed, his eyes watching my face anxiously as he jerked my clothes off.

‘I do want you,’ I repeated softly.

He came to me then and made love quickly, desperately, in much the way he had always done. I felt nothing except resignation. At the time I was exhausted enough not to mind.

Strangely, the new extremes to which this row had taken us cleared something from the air between us for a time. We had been trying harder with each other since then. I had given in to Douglas and told him I’d give up my job at the end of November. And the house was a symbol of our new carefulness.

It was a three-storey terrace, reaching back from the road with rooms off a corridor from front to back and quite dark inside, but with a strip of garden ending in a row of poplars. The bedrooms let in a little more light than downstairs. I decorated one as a nursery, painting it pale yellow. I hung curtains sprigged with flowers. Douglas wanted a boy. I hoped my child was a girl.