Birmingham Friends (41 page)

But I could tell from her tone and from the look of her that Don and she were far happier together than Douglas and I.

‘Lisa,’ I told her, ‘it’s unbelievably good to see you.’

I would have liked a longer journey home. As the bus ground its slow way along the Alcester Road towards Kings Heath I sat with you, warm and sleepy on my lap. I wished I could just stay there and follow the route right out of the city to anywhere, in order to sit there and have some peace.

The week before there had been a scene with Douglas. After I came home from hospital I had, as promised, sent a line to Roland Mantel. He had been kind and interested that time on the train, and I hoped he’d pass on the news to Marjorie.

Roland arrived one afternoon when Olivia was out shopping. I was taken aback by the rush of pleasure I felt at seeing him.

‘Got the opportunity of a little bit of time off,’ he said in apologetic tones from the doormat. He rotated the brim of an old panama hat nervously between his fingers, his round face looking red and moist. ‘I expect you’re busy. Am I an awful bother?’

‘Not at all, Roland.’ I found I was smiling broadly. ‘I’ve just put the baby out in the garden. Do come through and have a drink, won’t you?’

‘Well, if that’s really all right.’ He followed me down the hall, every gesture of his body self-effacing. He made admiring noises about the house. ‘You’ve got it looking so nice, haven’t you? I’m afraid I’ve been rather lazy with mine – the people before left it in reasonable repair and I’ve done next to nothing on it. Not one of my skills in any case.’ He laughed.

In the garden he said, ‘I thought I must come and see the baby before she’s off to school – you know how the time goes!’ He gave another little chuckle and I waited for him to relax. His nervous nature could make him sound so silly. Once relaxed out of that, the kind, sympathetic person could emerge.

He beamed with pleasure bending over to look into the pram. You were asleep, your face round and relaxed, arms flung out beside your head, hands clenched into plump fists. ‘Oh, isn’t she a poppet!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, Katie, I do envy you, you know. There’s nothing I’d like more than a family of my own.’

I smiled gratefully at him. ‘I’m sure you will have one one day. And you’ll make a lovely, devoted father.’

He sat with me for a while. He declined beer, so I fetched tea and an ashtray and he sat, his short legs encased in grey flannel, smoking and chatting to me, gradually losing his twitchy demeanour. Marjorie was expecting her first child and sent her love. We spent an unruffled half hour, refreshing to me for its lack of angles or tension.

‘I’d love to come again,’ Roland said. He lingered by the pram before leaving. ‘And perhaps she’ll be awake next time?’ I assured him of a welcome.

Douglas found the ashtray, forgotten between the chairs in the garden, when he came home from work. He went outside for a smoke in the summer evening air and came crashing back in again, holding the ashtray away from him like a half-decayed bird.

‘Who’s been here?’ he demanded, in the self-righteous voice that I was coming to loathe.

Olivia sat very still watching us, the baby on her lap.

‘Oh, just Roland,’ I said casually. I was shelling peas in the kitchen, refusing to be ruffled by this ridiculousness.

‘Roland? That’s him, isn’t it – the one I saw you with at the station?’

He advanced into the kitchen, his face ugly, and slung the glass ashtray down on the draining board, pettishly and too hard.

‘D’you mind?’ I protested. I dried my hands on my apron, preparing to walk away before I really let rip with my temper and announced that Roland had been the most pleasant and normal company I had had for weeks.

‘Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?’

I clenched my teeth. ‘Because I didn’t know. He was just on his way from somewhere I think. I didn’t ask.’

‘How many times has he been here before?’ He leaned up against the sink, menacingly close to me. It was so silly and alienating. I felt impatience choking me.

Just controlling my voice, I said, ‘That was the first time. And I don’t really see it’s any business of yours. He was passing and he wanted to see Anna. Some men actually like babies,’ I finished bitterly.

‘It is my business.’ He pushed his face too close to mine and the expression in his eyes was very cold. ‘This is my house and you are my wife. I won’t have you entertaining other men under my roof.’

I always felt at my most strong and perverse when he was like this. I knew I didn’t have the attitude of subservience apparently expected of a ‘good’ wife. Even trying to have it would have suffocated me. I could hear Granny Munro saying, ‘Don’t let anyone take your life away from you. It’s not worth it in the end. It’s only convention.’

I stared Douglas in the face and said something that I am still ashamed of now for its cruelty. ‘You’re useless to me, Douglas. Completely useless.’

He picked up the pan into which I had been shelling peas and smashed it as hard as he could through the kitchen window, peas and all. Glass tinkled down on to the flower pots outside. I heard you, Anna, begin howling in the adjoining room, startled by the noise. At the time I felt most annoyed about the peas going out after I’d spent all that time shelling them.

Douglas stood for a second looking stunned and foolish. Then, as if it was his masterstroke, he brought out the announcement, ‘What I came home to tell you is that I’ve got the job. We’re leaving for London.’

He went out of the house then, leaving this ultimatum dumped like a tin trunk in the middle of the front room. Olivia came to me and we managed somehow to put our arms round each other, you pink and distraught between us.

Sitting on the bus that afternoon, I thought about Douglas and about how he always seemed to get it wrong. How he could never see that my feelings for my child and for Olivia were far more of a threat to him than Roland Mantel or anyone else was. I knew already that my going to London with him was inconceivable. I dared myself to imagine, for a second, what it would be like without him at home: just me and Anna and Olivia. I knew that part of this breakdown between us was my fault. But I also knew that I was inextricably tied both to this place and to Olivia.

I walked slowly along the road back to our house. Though still small, you felt heavy in my arms and were beginning to clamour for a feed. I took in the smell of flowers on the warm air, the sensation of milk aching in my breasts. I walked faster. Inside, I expected to find the house quiet, Douglas sheltering behind his newspapers, Olivia busy with her knitting or napping.

But he was upon me before I’d even shut the door. ‘She’s got to go!’ At first I thought he was angry, but it was something a few degrees away from that. He was distraught.

‘Whatever’s happened? Look, I’ll have to feed Anna or I can’t hear you.’ I unfastened my dress and Douglas waited impatiently until the room grew quiet. ‘Where’s Olivia?’

‘Out. I sent her out. Kate, she’s got to leave here as soon as possible. Tell her to go – tonight.’

I stared at him, feeling mutinous already. Douglas turned round, looking into the fireplace as he spoke to me. ‘She started on me this afternoon.’

I couldn’t take this in. ‘What are you talking about?’

With injured dignity he said, ‘She tried to seduce me.’

I fought back a wild desire to laugh. The first words which rushed into my mind were, ‘Well, that must have been a disappointment for her.’ Fortunately, instead I managed to say, ‘Heavens, how dreadful!’ Then I added, ‘Are you all right?’ before realizing what an absurd question that was. The awfulness of the situation began to sink in.

‘Of course I’m all right,’ he snapped, pacing up and down. ‘But we can’t very well carry on having her here. She’s outstayed her welcome by a long time as it is. And she’s not right, is she?’ He turned to face me. ‘Don’t you mind that she’s tried it on with me?’

‘I can’t quite take it in.’

Douglas came and sat down beside me, suddenly vulnerable. ‘The thing was – it wasn’t so much that she tried it on that worried me. I mean I know she’s always been a bit, well – fast like that. I could have laughed about it, or told her to leave off. But it was her look. She was like a snake, and the things she was saying, it was frightening. I felt what she really wanted to do was to torture me. That was how she looked, absolutely intent and venomous, as if she ought to have had a red-hot poker in one hand.’

I listened, chilled. That thread of something corrupt in Olivia which kept lashing out like a poisoned tongue.

In the end I said, ‘I’m truly sorry, Douglas. That’s unforgivable, of course. It’s just – where’s she going to go? If you could just put up with her a while longer . . .’

There was a silence before he said, ‘She’ll have to leave anyway when we go to London.’

I couldn’t tackle that one. Not now.

‘It won’t happen again,’ I said. ‘Not now she’s tried it once.’

I didn’t confront Olivia. I found myself unexpectedly embarrassed by the thought of it. I had been lulled, since giving birth, by her apparent steadiness, her adoration of my baby, my need of her when I would otherwise have felt so low and alone. Now, though, I was bristling and alert, on guard once more. The evening Douglas had sent her out of the house she stayed out all night again and came back with the same air of repletion and triumph. I didn’t even speak to her when she came in next morning.

‘Aren’t you dying to know where I’ve been?’ she goaded me. ‘I do hope you haven’t been waiting up?’

‘I was up anyway,’ I said curtly. ‘Anna’s been restless with this cold.’ I was still pacing up and down with you fretting in my arms. By that time I was tired enough to be almost beyond feeling.

‘Here, give her to me,’ Olivia said, reaching out to take you. ‘I’ll get her settled down.’

‘We’re getting on all right, thank you,’ I said shortly. ‘She’s been like this for hours, on and off.’

Olivia held out her arms again, commandingly. ‘Then you need a rest. Come on, hand her over to Auntie Livy.’

‘No. She’s my child, not yours – especially not the state you’re in. She wants her mother.’

Olivia’s arms dropped to her sides. She said nothing and turned to go out of the room. As she did so she twirled round and whipped her skirt up high, showing her suspenders. On one leg the stocking was held up by only one fastening. The others were broken and the stocking was laddered down the back of her leg. With a terrible smile on her face she said, ‘They can’t resist me.’

We couldn’t be normal with each other now. I found myself thinking of ways to get her out. I couldn’t send her back to the Kemps. At that point I wouldn’t have been so cruel. I still wanted to do it kindly, to ease her out, with our move to London as the excuse. My thoughts of staying here with her now seemed grotesque. But I couldn’t think of anywhere she could go. I even considered asking my mother if Olivia could lodge with her, but I knew instinctively that this would be a disaster. Besides, my mother had held herself at such a distance from us over the months that I couldn’t even have asked. Olivia was just going to have to find digs for herself.

I didn’t want her looking after you any more, Anna. Before, I had pushed away any feelings of resentment at her swamping possessiveness of you. I had thought her feelings for you would help her heal, her holding you like that, staring into your face so long that sometimes I had almost to fight her to make her hand you over to me. At times I had wanted to shout, ‘Give her to me – she’s my baby, not yours!’ like a child with a toy. I had been ashamed then. But now I allowed myself those feelings: a new instinct of protectiveness in me, a premonition that I did not yet understand.

Neither she nor Douglas ever told me directly how far her attempts to seduce him had gone, but that final week Olivia started making remarks, taunting me deliberately, eyes wide and brazen, and I realized it had gone further than Douglas had felt able to admit. Far enough for her to learn of his inadequacy.

‘Are you sure Anna is Douglas’s?’ she giggled to me one evening when we were alone. She was on the gin. ‘I’m surprised he could keep going long enough to hit the target!’

I no longer knew what to do with her. I could feel far more sympathy now for the Kemps and what they’d been through. All the warmth had gone. Mostly I ignored her, moving round her as if she wasn’t there, preparing myself to eject her. As a last resort I knew I should have to call a doctor, and the thought played on my conscience.

Then, that one morning, I gave in to her. I felt so harassed. Your cold was no better and you were almost constantly in my arms, since I could find no other way of pacifying you. I had a huge pile of washing to do and a host of other jobs. And Livy seemed calmer that day.

‘I just can’t get on with anything,’ I cried, tearful with frustration. ‘If only she’d settle. I’m doing all the things I used to advise my mothers not to do!’

‘Let me take her,’ Olivia said. She spoke so smoothly, her face soft and smiling. ‘We’ve hardly seen each other this week, have we, darling?’ This last word was said in just the tones Elizabeth used with her.

Livy was wearing a cornflower-blue frock that morning. She was looking very beautiful and I relented, almost wanting to kiss her. When I handed you to her, a soft cotton sheet wrapped round you, she stood for a moment with you clasped in her arms like a madonna, her face radiant and smiling.

She turned the smile on me. I’ve never been able to forget the look of worship for you in her face. ‘Come on, little Anna,’ she said. ‘We’ll just go and have a play upstairs and let Katie get on with all her chores.’ She left the room, humming lightly as she climbed the stairs.

I was seized with the urgency I always felt when you were sleeping or taken off my hands. I already had all the clothes heaped on the kitchen floor, napkins soaking in a pail. I spent some time sorting them, dividing whites from coloureds while the wide sink filled slowly. When I’d finished with the clothes, it still wasn’t ready and I sprinkled Hudson’s into the water, impatiently turning on the tap as far as it would go. The water had slowed to a trickle and I tutted in exasperation, staring at the dull metal of the tap, willing it to force out more water. Before the sink was even full I pushed in a bundle of clothes and began pummelling at it, trying to wet everything in the inadequate depth of water. Suddenly the water came on again with a rush. I frowned, turning the tap down again. Bubbles rose softly round my wrists.