Birmingham Friends (35 page)

‘Nurse Tucker deliberately flouted my instructions,’ the other woman’s voice boomed from the door.

I was so shocked I didn’t even have the wits to kiss Olivia goodbye before Nurse Tucker pulled her to her feet by her good arm and led her away. Olivia went without protest. But as they left, the young nurse turned to me a last time, her eyes expressing both sorrow and a kind of appeal.

‘Thank you,’ I mouthed at her before they disappeared.

I sat down again, listening to them, the older nurse haranguing the other in the corridor, the noises of keys, lock, door. A slam, then all but the faintest of sounds was gone. I would have liked to sit there. Just sit and try to pull my thoughts together, but I felt compelled to go out to the taxi.

Outside the clouds had not thinned and a fine rain was falling. As I stepped out of the front entrance of Arden I saw the handcarts. They were moving closer, very slowly, from across the field to my right. Three heavy wooden carts joined together by ropes. As they came closer I could see the carts were piled high with weeds and grass. At the front, two long thick ropes extended forward pulled by lines of men. There were about fifty of them, I calculated, all dressed in dark overcoats, some far too long, others obviously too tight, sleeves ending somewhere between elbow and wrist, and most of them had their collars turned up against the wet. They shambled along over the hummocky grass, stumbling in their boots and pulling on the ropes, the lines ragged and uncoordinated. They were of a wide variety of height and build but somehow all the same, the cropped hair taking a segment of identity. Some moved with an unnatural slow stiffness, others quicker, more jerky. They trudged along in silence except for someone near the back giving out panting sounds, almost sobs, as they moved across in front of me. Their breath left unearthly-looking sworls of mist behind them.

*  *  *

OLIVIA

The nurses who have been giving insulin therapy can be seen afterwards on the ward with a white silt of glucose down the front of their blue uniforms. Their charges are pushed down into the flabby-walled darkness of coma and then, at the given time, hauled back up through its narrow neck.

When Nurse Tucker has been helping administer ECT her eyes are wide and her hands tremble. This is her very first job and she is in shock herself. She has not been in the army or the mines. She has too much will and imagination left for this.

I believe my treatment is twice a week, but the days are so thin-edged I may be mistaken. The fear of it seeps into every moment of the week.

The treatment is performed in the basement where there are tiny cells along the dark corridor. At one end are the isolation cells, but the doors are iron-clad and so thick that any sounds from inside are tiny and muffled.

We are herded, unfed, down the steps, about thirty of us, where we meet with an icy draft of air when we are already frozen with dread. The walls have a lick of ancient whitewash and above our heads snake the metallic intestines of the hospital, pipes stretching off into the gloom of the passage. There are no windows down here. We are alive, but already entombed under the soundproof earth, in the smell of rubber and urine and the sour stench of fear.

We stand in a line hearing the animal distress of those who go before us. I am already mute with fear. What we feel does not matter to them and I have learned it is not worth protesting. Once I appealed to the doctor, put on my best voice: ‘I’m afraid of what it’ll do to my mind.’

He gave a half smile, actually sincere. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t suppose you’ll be needing it.’

In the cell I lie on a trolley. Their faces are a ring round me, quiet, as if they’re waiting for a seance to begin. Then one jokes into the silence. ‘We’ll break our record this morning,’ he says, rushing the machine to my head. I wish I had something to hold on to: a bead, a stone, a strand of hair, anything to call mine.

In seconds I taste rubber, still saliva-coated from the last mouth. The gag is thick and hard and punctured with holes for our sharp breaths to hiss through. There is cold jelly on my temples and immediately they are across my body, three of them lying on me as the current is applied and everything of me is seized by it, burns and blackens and I am no longer conscious to know of the wet coursing from my body adding to the vapour of urine in the room.

Return to the seeping grey light is a process of despair, in a recovery room filling with thirty bodies writhing in the incalculable dread of consciousness.

Will this be my life now, waiting for this to be done to me?

It is during the second course of treatment, while my body is in spasm, that they break my arm forcing me down.

*  *  *

By the time I climbed into a compartment of the train at Leamington Spa after my visit to Arden, I felt completely wrung out. My legs were weak and I was unsteady with shock at what Olivia had told me. It was as if a window had opened on a whirlwind. I understood. A baby. Olivia had had a baby. Finally I knew what it was the Kemps had kept strapped down tight all this time. A tiny, new person, the explanation for all this.

I took off my damp hat, sat down and closed my eyes. Even in my state of shock I realized that part of my shakiness was hunger and I was longing for a drink. If I had taken the time to buy one I would have missed the train, and to keep the peace I had told Douglas very specifically what time I would be home.

As the whistle blew outside, there was a flurry of movement beside me. The compartment door slid across and there was a sound of a bag being rather frantically pulled inside. For a moment I resented anyone else’s presence and then, contrarily, was grateful for the diversion. I opened my eyes to see a short man reaching up to stow his case on the luggage rack. He made a to-do of shaking water from his hat and gloves and took off his overcoat.

‘So sorry,’ he said, turning to me. ‘I hope I didn’t give you a shower?’

I shook my head. We looked closely at each other.

‘I do know you, don’t I – from somewhere?’ he said. I shared the feeling of recognition.

He snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it. You’re a friend of Marjorie’s, aren’t you?’

I managed a smile. Of course. ‘Roland Mantel. Yes, I’m Kate – Munro before I was married.’

Roland darted across and shook my hand with enthusiasm, still clutching his gloves in his other hand. ‘I remember you well now. How are you?’

We exchanged pleasantries and I felt myself relaxing through the sheer obligation to behave normally and make conversation. Marjorie had married a wartime sweetheart and was happily settled in Portsmouth. Roland seemed genuinely pleased to see me, and to have found a companion for the journey. I couldn’t help warming to him, once I’d grown used to the quaint elderliness of his manner.

‘Have a sandwich?’ he offered suddenly. ‘You look all in.’

‘I’d absolutely love one.’ I felt an absurd impulse to burst into tears and realized it was caused by hunger.

Roland stood up again. He was wearing a pair of crumpled tweed plus-fours and a jacket. I smiled to myself, watching him.

‘Been anywhere nice?’ he asked.

‘Just visiting a friend.’

‘I’ve just been to stay with my Auntie Sylvia out at Turnham’s Farm,’ Roland said, reaching up to fumble in his bag. ‘She always feeds me up like a turkey cock, the old dear.’ He gave a grunt of exertion. ‘Where are they? Ah, here we are.’ He brought down a package, firmly wrapped in layers of greaseproof and a final covering of what looked like a page from an artist’s sketchpad. He sat down beside me. ‘Now, these are ham, and I believe she said there’s some pheasant in these. I’ve a flask of tea, too, and some plum cake.’ He looked up and saw tears in my eyes. ‘Gracious, are you all right? You’re not against killing fowls and all that, are you?’

I laughed then, at the sight of his good-natured, anxious face, laughed and laughed so that he looked rather alarmed. ‘It’s all right,’ I gasped, trying to control myself. ‘I’m just very hungry. It takes me that way sometimes. I’m expecting a baby, you see.’

‘Oh,’ he cried, pink cheeks bunching into a smile. ‘How simply marvellous! So you’re – Is it . . .? Who’s . . .?’ He stopped, all confused. ‘I’m sorry. I remember. When we saw you at the party, your – intended was missing, wasn’t he? Did he . . .?’

I looked down at my lap. The pain of Angus’s death sliced through me so suddenly, so overwhelmingly sometimes. For a moment I could barely speak. Then I managed to say, ‘No. I’m married to someone else. Douglas Craven. He was at your party too.’

Roland frowned.

‘Journalist. The one with the gammy leg.’

‘Ah yes. I think I recall. I didn’t know him at all actually, but one couldn’t help noticing. But he can work all right?’

‘On the
Mail
.’

‘Marvellous. Well, congratulations all round then. Here, tuck in – do.’

He poured tea into the Thermos cup, and I found something reassuring, comforting even, about the way he lifted the flask, the cups – one big, one smaller – so carefully with his immaculate, white-nailed fingers. ‘You go first.’

After a few sips I handed it back. ‘Roland, your brother was missing too, wasn’t he?’

The chubby face folded immediately into lines of misery. It was like watching a clown, except the emotion was real.

‘We lost Edward as well, I’m afraid. He was RAF, of course. We’re still not sure precisely what happened. It was all during the fiasco in Singapore. Don’t suppose we ever shall know exactly now.’

‘It was the same with Angus,’ I said. ‘They think he was shot down over the sea near Sumatra. That’s the most information we ever had. His mother pursued it for months.’ I watched Roland. He seemed so bereft that I touched his hand for a second. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s absolutely awful, isn’t it?’

Roland nodded silently.

‘When Angus was missing I felt as if everything ought to stop. That I couldn’t go on until I knew for sure. But you just had to go on, didn’t you? No choice in the matter. It was very brave of you both to have that party then. I admired you for that.’

‘Did you?’ He turned to look directly at me. ‘It was the last blasted thing I felt like doing, I can tell you. Excuse me, Kate.’ I waved aside the apology. ‘My family is very that way you know, stiff upper lip, keep the home fires burning and all that. Edward was as well. Not me I’m afraid. Never been very good at it.’ He gave a half smile. ‘I adored Edward. He was five years older than me and I knew from when I was a tiny child that I could never possibly be like him. He was all the things I’d have liked to be. But he was very good to me – sort of looked out for me.’ He stopped. ‘I’m boring you, or worse, embarrassing you?’

‘Not at all. Please go on.’

‘No one talks any more, I find. Not about things like that. I suppose it’s their way of putting it behind them.’

‘I feel the same. And I can hardly bring it up now, not while I’m married to someone else.’

‘Quite, I see that. You poor girl.’

Roland didn’t question my need or see it as disloyal to Douglas. We shared his refreshments and talked all the way to Birmingham about Edward, Angus and our lives now.

‘I’m with PEL,’ Roland told me. ‘Practical Equipment Ltd. Furniture design, though I’m more on the admin side. It’s all quite exciting. Fashions are changing fast, of course, and we need new designs, a change of direction. There’s a great deal to do.’ He spoke of his work with infectious enthusiasm. As the train slowed, clanking into the great arching space of New Street, he took my hand suddenly. ‘It’s been marvellous meeting you again, Kate. You’ve so cheered me up.’

‘Probably not as much as you have me.’ I laughed. ‘And thank you for the much needed food.’

‘Ah – thank Auntie Sylvia for that,’ Roland said, gathering up his things.

As we walked out from the platform together I explained that we were still living with my mother.

‘You won’t be going my way then,’ Roland said. ‘I’ve a little place in Edgbaston now.’ He produced an address card. ‘Keep in touch, won’t you?’

‘I will.’ I looked into his sympathetic face and reached out to touch his shoulder. He leaned forward and quickly kissed me on the cheek. ‘Goodbye then, Katie.’

Smiling, I watched him walk away out of the station. The smile locked on my face when I saw that standing a few yards away, watching me with a terrible expression in his eyes, was Douglas.

I walked slowly over, trying to turn the smile on him. ‘It was very good of you to come and meet me.’

‘Was it?’ His voice was hard with fury, the emotion barely controlled. After only a few seconds he burst out, ‘I knew it. Was that him then?’

‘Who?’

‘The father of that – ’ He pointed towards my stomach. ‘That baby.’

I lost my cool completely then, not caring who could hear us. ‘For God’s sake, Douglas,’ I shouted. ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous.’

I went to Elizabeth Kemp. I wasn’t going to let on that I knew about Olivia’s baby. I was saving that for the right moment. But I wanted to confirm the information I had about Alec. I also wanted to goad her. My anger with Elizabeth now was like something chiselled thin and hard. We stood, a few feet apart. She watched me warily, her face cold, aloof.

‘What evenings does Alec go out regularly?’

‘And what business is that of yours?’

‘Tuesdays. Does he go out on Tuesdays?’

‘Quite often.’

‘Any other night?’

‘This is extraordinary – coming here and interrogating me.’

‘When did you last see Olivia?’

She couldn’t meet my eye. ‘Three weeks ago.’

‘Not since?’

‘I thought it might be better if I kept away. She looked so ill. She barely responded to me at all.’

‘If she stays in there much longer I’m not sure she’ll be able to tolerate it.’

Elizabeth raised her eyes with a closed, defensive expression. ‘Surely you’re exaggerating?’

‘Do you know about the treatment they’re giving her?’ I experienced my habitual feeling with Elizabeth of wanting to go and shake her with enormous force. I didn’t know whether electric shock treatment was effective or not, but something in my very being revolted at the idea of it. ‘What are you doing to get her out of there?’