Birmingham Friends (15 page)

After we had talked over coffee and it grew late, they left us alone.

‘I know you’ll be thinking of Angus and praying for him as much as we shall,’ Ruth said to me before she retired.

‘Of course.’ I smiled at her.

She laid her hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes, and I saw Angus’s eyes in hers. ‘It’s a great support to us to know that, Katie.’

Peter Harvey gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘If we don’t see you again before you go back to work, come round when you can, won’t you?’

They were as tactful and generous as it was possible to be. If I had stayed there all night with Angus I felt they would have passed no comment. They were open-minded people, and in any case, the war changed so many things.

‘Are you scared?’

‘Not scared, I don’t think. Just nervous. A bit excited in a way.’

We lay side by side on the plump green eiderdown on Angus’s bed. His arm was round my shoulders and I rested my head on his chest.

‘I hate the idea of you doing something so dangerous. Couldn’t you have chosen something a bit less heroic?’

‘Well, that’d make a change for me, wouldn’t it?’ His tone was ironic, almost bitter.

‘What d’you mean?’ I half sat up and looked at him. ‘I don’t understand why you seem to feel – well, whatever it is you do feel – not very able physically, or a coward or something. It’s just not true. Is it because of William, because he’s always trying to put you down?’

Angus shrugged. ‘There are things everyone feels they have to prove, I suppose. I need to be able to know I can do this. It’s a challenge. And I’ve always wanted to learn to fly.’

‘Yes, I’d almost forgotten.’ I looked round the softly lit room. Like the rest of the house it was cluttered. There were old models, childhood preoccupations: a de Havilland DH–4 bomber, Bristol fighter, planes from the last war settled like moths on Angus’s bookshelf, fuselages resting on school exercise books, volumes of poetry, encyclopaedias.

‘D’you think Livy will really join up?’ I asked him.

‘She sounded serious enough.’

‘I can’t really imagine it. Though God knows, she needs to get away from those two.’

‘Is Kemp’s going over to the war effort?’

‘I imagine so. I’m sure the war will increase dear Alec’s sales figures enormously. Couldn’t be better for him and his reputation, could it?’ I added almost automatically, ‘Poor old Livy.’

Angus pulled me closer to him. ‘Livy, Livy, Livy. You can’t take on her life for her, you know. If anyone’s going to rescue her from her stifling parents it’s going to have to be herself. After all, she can do a job now and earn her own money. It won’t be long before she’s twenty-one.’

‘I know, but the hold they have on her. They’re so over-protective.’

He leaned over and kissed me to stop me talking. His lips tasted faintly of coffee.

‘Let’s leave Livy out of it for tonight,’ he said, looking into my eyes.

Slowly he undid the buttons down the front of my dress, removed my specs and unfastened the front of his shirt, and we lay holding each other, in the shadows from the little bedside lamp, warm skin touching. The house was silent. From the garden we heard an owl.

Angus ran one finger along the strap of my bra. I sat up. ‘I’ll take it off.’ He helped me pull it away, releasing my breasts, full and heavy. I felt the heat of him against my back as he sat up behind me, his hands reaching round to touch and stroke me.

‘There’s so much of you.’

‘You mean you don’t get many of those to the pound!’

‘No – you’re wonderful. Like touching life.’

We seldom allowed ourselves to go this far. Opportunities were few in any case, and it was hard to draw back, not to take it further. He kissed my neck, lowered his hands so they were round my waist.

Holding me, he said, ‘Katie, what I’d really like to do now is to ask you to marry me. But it doesn’t feel right with the war on and everything feeling so uncertain. So I’m not actually going to ask you, but I wanted you to know that I’d like to.’

I turned my head and pulled him close so our cheeks touched. ‘Well, if you had asked me, I’ll just tell you that I’d have said yes, but since you haven’t, I haven’t!’

We laughed, lying down in each other’s arms. ‘Kate, I do love you. But I don’t want to make you a war widow.’

I felt chilled. ‘Don’t say that, please.’

Angus pulled me on top of him, his hands stroking my body. ‘I love the feel of you. You’re so beautiful.’

We kissed each other hungrily and I felt him move under me, his hands pressing into my back.

After a time he said, ‘Katie, I’m sorry, you’ll have to get off.’ He looked at me shyly. ‘It’s just – if we carry on like this I’ll go too far.’

I moved beside him again and he sat up, sighing, running his hands through his dark hair. ‘I’ve been longing to have you – completely – for such a long time.’ He looked away from me, embarrassed.

‘Darling – ’ I sat beside him and kissed his face. ‘I want it too.’

‘Do you? Don’t you think it’s wrong – outside marriage and all that?’

‘Probably. But that doesn’t stop me wanting it.’

Angus laughed delightedly. ‘I love the way you’re so honest. D’you mean you’d really . . .?’

‘Yes. Especially now you’re going away. If it wasn’t for the war it would be different. Only I’m not sure about in your parents’ house.’

‘I can’t think of anywhere better. Trouble is – I don’t have anything in the way of protection. I certainly don’t want to go and leave you pregnant.’

Hesitantly, I said, ‘It’s all right – as long as you don’t actually come into me, isn’t it?’

I moved my hand down and touched him, hearing him take a sharp intake of breath.

‘You don’t mind – if I touch you?’

I guided his hand to my body. We unfastened our clothes, timid, then bolder, learning each other, lost in it. We lay together for a long time.

Much later I let myself out into the starry darkness of the January night.

It was a month of partings. William left shortly afterwards for the army. After a restrained farewell to Mummy and Daddy, he kissed me goodbye stiffly, suddenly garbed in adulthood and self-importance in a way that I found mildly ridiculous. He’d grown a little moustache which had gingery lights in it.

‘Take care of yourself, Kate.’ The whiskers prickled against my face. ‘Keep an eye on the parents, won’t you?’

‘I will,’ I promised, absolving him, as required, of any guilt on that front. ‘Good luck, William.’

A week or two later Olivia came to see me at the hospital. I’d just knocked off from my shift and had invited another of the nurses to my room for a cup of tea. Brenda Forbes had a room close to mine in the nurses’ home and we spent quite a bit of time together. She was a sturdy down-to-earth girl from a family of nine children. Her father owned a hardware shop in Alum Rock on the east side of the city. I found there was no side to Brenda and I enjoyed her sense of humour.

‘Been up and down like a fiddler’s elbow all afternoon,’ she groaned as we walked along the corridor to our rooms. ‘My feet are killing me. Don’t half stink after work, don’t they?’

‘Yes – since you put it so delicately, I must say washing my feet is the first thing I want to do after a shift.’

Brenda pulled the starched cap off her long dark hair. ‘One of these days I’m going to get myself a glamorous job.’

Laughing together, we burst into my room. And there was Olivia. She sat on my one hard wooden chair, her hat still on, face all made up, her smart suit looking incongruous in my austere little room. I felt strangely deflated at the sight of her.

‘Oh,’ Brenda said rather curtly. ‘You’ve already got company. I’ll see you later then, shall I?’

‘No – Brenda, do come in. I’ll make us all a cuppa.’ I was embarrassed that Brenda should feel she had to leave.

‘You’re all right,’ Brenda said. ‘You talk to your friend. I’ll get back and sort out my washing. See you later, Katie.’

I was relieved. Trying to juggle Olivia and Brenda together would have been pretty taxing. Olivia’s eyes followed Brenda from the room, bemused.

‘Gracious,’ she said, eyeing me up and down.

I pointed out the landmarks on my apron. ‘That’s sputum, that one’s vomit, and this wet patch, you’ll be relieved to know, is only water.’

She took in my sudden tired irritation. ‘Sorry, you must be exhausted. And missing dear Angus.’ I chose to ignore the arch tone in her voice.

Tears filled my eyes. ‘I am. I feel so worried, and I don’t even know what there is to worry about yet.’ A sense of foreboding that I could barely put into words had weighed me down ever since Angus left. I missed him with an intensity I hadn’t expected. Now he was gone I knew just how much I loved him, and that feeling was private and couldn’t be shared with anyone else. Not even Olivia. I had had a note from him, though, saying he was settling in and learning a great deal. Apparently he was in Cornwall.

‘Poor Katie,’ Olivia said. Carefully she lifted off her bright cherry-coloured hat and laid it on my table. ‘Come here – ’ She held out her arms to me, then withdrew them again. ‘How about taking that apron off?’

I unbuckled my belt and lifted the apron off and then we hugged each other and I felt her soft hair against my cheek. She felt like someone from a different world, beautiful and sweet-smelling: Givenchy perfume, her favourite.

I held her at arm’s length, smiling. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’ Then I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve got news to tell you. I’ve got to tell someone or I’ll burst.’

I stared at her. ‘You haven’t?’

Her face broke into a delighted grin. ‘I have. I had a letter today.’ She held it out for me to read.

‘On behalf of the Naval Ministry I should like to invite you . . .’

‘I’ve been accepted by the Wrens!’

‘Oh no, Livy – not you as well!’ I said without thinking. ‘I’m sorry, I suppose I ought to be congratulating you. I’m happy for you if that’s what you want. But what on earth have your parents said?’

‘They don’t know. I’m not going to tell them until the last minute.’

‘D’you think that’s wise?’

Olivia nodded emphatically. ‘Oh yes. They’ll be hopping mad when they hear.’

I handed her a cup of tea. ‘It’s been difficult at home, hasn’t it?’

‘Difficult?’ Olivia shrugged as if she couldn’t find the words. ‘I’ll say.’

‘I don’t understand your parents, I can’t pretend I do. I know there must be things you’re not telling me and I don’t want to pry.’

She didn’t meet my eyes. ‘It’s not your problem. You’ve made that very clear.’

I was stung both by the injustice of this and the bitterness in her voice, but before I had time to respond she had done one of her quick changes and was on to something else.

‘You’re nearly done aren’t you – qualified, I mean?’

‘Yes, in the summer. I can’t wait.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Depends a bit on the war. I want to get out of the hospital. I’ll go for the Health Visitor’s training if I qualify. There’ll be a stint of midwifery first of course. But I’m set on that. “Prevention is better than cure” as they say. And I could do with getting away from all the petty rules in here. Matron saw me with a bit of my hair hanging loose from my cap the other day and I thought she was going to send me to the gallows!’

We sat talking for a long time. I felt like hanging on to her, delaying her leaving because I knew I was unlikely to see her again for a good while.

‘It’s going to be awful not having you around,’ I said. ‘You will write to me, won’t you?’

‘Of course I shall. After all, whether we’ve got men in our lives or not, we’re still best friends, aren’t we?’

I reassured her. I knew she felt pushed out because of Angus. ‘Of course we are.’

But as she left, I knew, sadly, that there were more and more things in our lives that we were unable to talk about. I couldn’t automatically confide everything to her now that Angus was gone. Our lives were increasingly separate and we couldn’t hold on to the absolute closeness of childhood.

‘For goodness’ sake Katie, find something useful to do,’ Mummy said, though in a less acerbic voice than she was capable of. She was almost smiling.

I couldn’t settle to anything. I was home after my exams and Angus was about to arrive on leave to ‘await further instructions’. Now all I could do was to wait. Restlessly I kept going to the window and pulling back the nets to look out along Chantry Road, willing him to be there against the bright flowers of the gardens.

‘There are endless things need doing in the garden,’ Mummy went on. ‘The lettuces are going to seed already – oh, and my blue dress needs rinsing through. You could peg that out for me.’

Dreamily I stood and washed out the faded blue dress in the scullery’s deep white basin, silver bubbles of water tickling up round my hands, my thoughts far away. It seemed so long since I’d seen Angus.

‘I’ve passed!’ I had written to him ten days before. ‘It seems like a miracle. After all, this has hardly been the ideal time for performing in exams.’

Everything was heaped against us that summer of 1940. The Dutch had fallen, the Belgians capitulated, then Dunkirk and the advance into France. And the Italians took against us as well. The Channel saved us, and all those young men in their tiny planes. But at the time I wrote to Angus in July, the Battle of Britain was still beyond the horizon.

‘How small our personal concerns seem in the face of all this. But I miss you so much, my darling. Life here has been very busy, and I’m glad of it. It’s in the quiet moments that I long to see you and feel very low at the thought of how little we can be together. Brenda came in and found me actually hopping up and down with excitement when I got your letter about your leave next week! I’m certain she thought I was quite cuckoo. But I can’t wait to see you, my love.’

Angus had been moved from Cornwall to Cambridge.

‘I never thought I’d end up attending lectures at Clare College,’ he’d joked in his first letter from there. ‘That’s much more William’s sort of territory. But at least it’s taken some of the mystique out of it for me.’