Birmingham Friends (48 page)

Anna, watching Sean, was startled by Jake saying suddenly, ‘Have you seen Olivia’s batiks? Look – come and see this one.’

She found he had taken her hand and was leading her down towards the batik of the village at the other end of the room. His hand felt very big and warm, the skin rough.

‘I have looked . . .’ she began to protest.

As they turned to face the picture he said suddenly in an urgent whisper, ‘Come to the shop – tomorrow?’

Finding this very strange, she said cautiously, ‘Well – I’ll come some time. I’m not sure about tomorrow.’

He leaned slightly closer to her. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way. Look – this is going to sound amazingly presumptuous of me but I’m going to say it anyway. You’ve been going through a difficult time recently – don’t get drawn in by Olivia.’

Astonished and angry, she looked up into his eyes but they were steady, concerned. ‘We should talk,’ he said.

She was jolted by his seriousness, and trusted his sincerity. ‘Yes, of course then. If you think . . .’

His face broke into a grin suddenly. ‘Plus I’d like an excuse to show you my shop.’

‘That’d be great,’ she said, more reassured.

Olivia and Krish were clearing things off the table. Jake thanked them and, with a final glance at Anna, left.

‘Call a taxi for Anna, will you darling?’ Olivia said to Krishna. As he went out to the telephone in the hall, Anna began to join in the work of clearing the table.

‘I see those other bad boys have slunk off,’ Olivia said. The two of them stacked plates and dishes next to the sink. In the big, old-fashioned kitchen Olivia chatted about practical things. ‘The chicken can all go together in this dish – yes,
lassi
in the fridge, please. I’ll just put a plate over this rice . . .’

She turned suddenly from the table, the rice giving off a whiff of cardamom, and gave Anna a cold, appraising look.

‘You’re different from her, aren’t you?’

Completely taken aback, Anna said, ‘Am I?’

But there was no follow-up remark. Olivia turned back to cover her rice as if the exchange hadn’t happened.

‘It’s here!’ Krish’s voice came from the hall.

‘Ah, go now!’ Olivia said, apparently all charm again. ‘Don’t keep it waiting – they charge so much nowadays.’ There was a sudden sense of hurry now the taxi had arrived.

‘Do come again soon. Please.’

‘I’ve got to pick up my car tomorrow,’ Anna pointed out.

‘Of course. Good.’ In the hall they kissed each other, briefly, and Anna watched her glide away, the plait a slice of black down her back as the harsh blue of the sari disappeared into the long room.

Krishna was out at the front. As Anna came out he stepped over to her, took her by the shoulders and kissed her clumsily on the mouth, his lips taut and painful on hers.

He gave a foolish grin. ‘Sorry. I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here. But it’s lovely to see you.’ And he was gone.

As the taxi took her through the dark streets she felt more and more uneasy. The odd, cold look Olivia had given her, Jake’s warning, Krishna’s drunken kiss – these were the things which now stood out from the evening. Caution, Kate had warned. Yet she had been so quickly beguiled. She must in future be more on her guard, even if she had no real idea against what.

On Kate’s inner doormat she found a roughly folded sheet of pink paper: a note scrawled on the back of a flyer advertising cheap carpets.

‘Came over to see you as you won’t answer the bloody phone. What the hell are you playing at?
Call
me. Richard.’

Olivia’s house was quiet next morning. Sean let her in and she waited with him in the kitchen where he carried on working his way through last night’s washing up, his back to her and thin elbows stuck out at angry angles.

‘Have you been left to do it all?’ Anna exclaimed. ‘Here, let me give you a hand.’

He was turning to speak when the voice cut across from the doorway. ‘No. Leave him. Sean’s quite happy to do some work for me this morning, aren’t you, darling?’ Sean plunged a pile of bowls into the water with the force of someone trying to drown a puppy.

Turning to greet Olivia, Anna actually let out a gasp. Her hard, calculating tone accompanied another transformation so startling that she took a few seconds to manage the words ‘Good morning.’

Gone were the sari, the bare feet and soft, understated make-up. Her suit was emerald green, cut in straight, sophisticated lines, the shoulders padded, the effect angular as a box, and she wore high, pointed court shoes in a matching shade. Instead of the loose plait, her hair was caught up into a perfect pleat, face immaculately made up, her lips a glistening plum red.

‘Anna.’ She offered a smile, but it seemed brittle and forced. Anna felt her breathing turn more shallow. Thank God she’d already decided to be more wary of this woman. ‘We must spend some more time together, alone.’ Olivia’s heels clicked across the kitchen tiles. She leaned to touch Anna’s cheek with her own and again there came a waft of perfume, this time something costly. ‘I so wanted you to meet everyone last night – Krishna especially, of course. What did you think of him?’

Honesty lurked in Anna’s mind: I thought he was pretty obnoxious. ‘He’s lovely,’ she said. ‘A credit to you.’

‘He’s my life,’ Olivia breathed. Sean rattled cutlery loudly behind them and Anna stood feeling very uneasy. They were stepping too near the well of emotion. Everything was at odds this morning and she just wanted to get away from this place, back to Kate’s house, and sink into a warm bath.

‘I’m teaching today,’ Olivia said. Her voice was clipped and precise, no trace of the rise-and-fall accent she had put on the night before. ‘I like to dress up for the piano. It makes me feel professional. I really wanted to be a musician, you see. My father wouldn’t hear of it until it was really too late.’

‘Yes – my mother told me.’

‘Did she?’ There was a coldness in Olivia’s eyes which brought Anna’s flesh up in goosepimples. ‘Come for tea,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’ve no pupils after four o’clock. We must talk. I presume you came to talk?’

The words were flung out like a challenge. Anna felt angry, suddenly, as if she was being played with, and at Olivia’s assumption that she had nothing else to do but be called upon at her command.

‘Yes, I came to talk,’ she said stiffly. ‘I presume that’s what you wanted. You did write to her after all.’

The bell sounded in the hall. Sean left the sink immediately to answer, and to Anna’s relief they heard Jake’s voice down the hall.

‘Morning.’ He smiled across at her from the doorway, so tall his head nearly reached the frame, hands in his pockets. ‘Come to pick up the van. Thanks for last night, Olivia. It was a great meal.’

‘Krishna’s still in bed,’ Olivia snapped. Anna watched her anxiously. There were stings in everything Olivia said this morning.

But Jake appeared not to notice. ‘As I say, I’ve only come for the van. Got to get back to open up. I was wondering – ’ He looked at Anna. ‘Since I’m going back, d’you want a lift over, to see the place?’

‘It’d suit me better to come later – elevenish? I could do with coffee and a bath first.’

Jake was flustered suddenly. ‘Look – don’t come if it’s a bother.’

‘I want to.’

‘Great.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’ll see you later, then. And Olivia – if Krish wants to drop in this afternoon, that’s fine by me.’

Olivia nodded, grudgingly. ‘I’ll tell him.’

Anna left as soon as she could after Jake.

‘Don’t forget,’ Olivia said. ‘I’ll be waiting for you this afternoon. And you can stay. I like a full house.’

It was more than a request, it was a command. Anna didn’t take too easily to being ordered around.

‘That should be all right,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ll be round at four.’

Then came the smile, Olivia’s disarming warmth. ‘I’ll so look forward to it.’

At Kate’s house she lay in a deep bath and watched a silvery moth flap against the white ceiling, unable to get Olivia out of her mind. She pictured Olivia’s face, its baffling flashes of light and darkness like cloud shadows racing across a valley. She thought of the glinting malevolence she had seen in her eyes, and felt her innards turn. She imagined Olivia as she had seen her dressed that morning, malign mannequin, waiting by the bath, her hand coming down over Anna’s face, the nails red and sharp, pushing her down and down.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Stop. Please.’ She lay in the warm water, trembling and sobbing, irrationally afraid for a time even to lie back and soak her hair.

I should go away and not get involved with her, she thought, as she dried herself. I don’t need this, on top of everything else.

‘What d’you want me to do, Mom?’ She felt foolish talking to herself in the bathroom like that. The emptying bath inflated her words with an echo but provided no answer.

She put on clean, washed-out jeans and a white shirt and walked quickly round to Roland’s house.

‘Come in!’ he greeted her joyfully, secateurs in hand. ‘I could do with a break.’

‘Roland, sorry – I can’t today. I’ve promised to meet someone at eleven.’

‘Ah. Anyone nice?’ he asked, with childlike hopefulness.

‘Nice?’ Anna teased him. ‘Yes, I think you could say nice. I just wanted to check you hadn’t been round and wondered where I was.’

‘No, I haven’t as a matter of fact. Been to see friends then? Good for you. You don’t want to be in that house alone too much, I’m sure.’

‘I might be staying over in Moseley tonight. I didn’t want you to worry.’ She gave him the address. ‘It’s off Anderton Park Road.’

‘Right-o,’ Roland said with his implacable cheerfulness.

‘Can I pop in for a coffee tomorrow?’ she asked, guilty.

‘Nothing I’d like more.’

‘Great. I’ll see you then.’

‘Anna?’

She turned back.

‘Spare a kiss?’

‘More than.’ Hugging him tight, she gave him a big kiss on each cheek and Roland chuckled delightedly.

He stood watching her as she walked off quickly down the street amid the song of birds.

The banner across Jake’s shopfront was a deep green with gold letters which read,
Jake’s Pine
.

‘I was looking out for you.’ He appeared in the doorway, an old cloth in one hand, and came to join her in the sunshine, looking up appraisingly at the building. ‘So, d’you like it? I’ve just cleaned the windows.’

She saw the pavement was wet and felt touched. Had he wanted her to see it at its best? The windows were still drying and behind them she could see the furniture: on one side a round table and chairs, a vase of dried teasels on the table, on the other a sturdy chest of drawers topped by a swing mirror, a rocking chair beside it.

‘It looks really impressive. And I like the name. I expected something more twee.’

‘Yes. Easy trap to fall into with this sort of stuff. Not really me, though.’ He talked fast and she saw he was nervous, more than she was. After all, he had asked her to come here.

‘Trouble is, people keep coming in and asking me if it’s getting better.’

She frowned. ‘What?’

He thickened his Brummy accent. ‘The pine.’

Anna exploded into laughter. Jake’s dry humour confirmed why she had come. Talking to him had made her happy and uplifted after the past gloomy weeks. Such a relief after Richard.

‘Come in. I’ll show you round.’ He stood back to let her through, his huge hands holding the door. It felt strange being suddenly alone with him, but there was a gentleness about him, about those hands, which made her trust him.

The shop was surprisingly big inside and extended up to the second floor. She followed him round, their shoes sounding on the bare boards. The downstairs was arranged carefully, without preciousness, so that items could be seen at their best. Painted wooden cats sprawled over some of the surfaces, and there were vases and stacks of wooden picture frames. Anna walked slowly among the dressers and cupboards, bedframes and chairs, touching smooth wood and admiring.

‘D’you do it all up yourself?’ she asked.

‘A lot of it needs attention of some sort,’ he said. ‘Most of them are painted when I get them. Look at this – this one was in a right state when I got it.’

He showed her an elegant wardrobe with carved patterns on the doors. ‘Look at the texture in that.’ He stroked the smooth surface. ‘It’s like bringing something to life again. This was covered in brown paint, would you believe – I mean imagine painting wood like that brown . . .’

She followed him up to the second floor. ‘The top’s my flat, well, hardly more than a bedsit really, but it does me fine. There’s space for Elly when she comes. This floor’s more for storage.’

The rooms up there were crammed full of chests of drawers, bedframes packed tightly together in rows, stacked chairs, their legs in the air. A large table was roped upside down to hooks on the ceiling.

‘It looks as if you’re torturing it,’ she said.

Jake laughed. ‘I get a bit carried away with the buying. But people often choose stuff from up here. I think they enjoy it being a bit chaotic. I don’t follow them around or anything.’

Downstairs, he showed her his little office which opened into a small yard at the back and had once been the kitchen. On the desk in the middle of the room were an old Adler typewriter, piles of duplicate books, a calculator and all sorts of bits and pieces, tins and nails, rubber bands and wooden drawer knobs.

‘How did you get into doing this?’ she asked him.

‘Took a degree in philosophy.’

She wasn’t certain for a second if he was serious. ‘I’ve got a degree in history so I’m a history teacher. Bit predictable in comparison, I suppose.’

‘Thing is – what do you do with a degree in philosophy? I started off selling a few oddments out of a van. Did it from home. I got hooked on it really and it grew from there. Before that,’ he added lightly, ‘I had a successful career selling insurance.’

‘Oh, yeah? I can really imagine you doing that!’

‘I see you don’t believe me.’

Anna perched herself on the corner of his desk. ‘Does that kettle work?’