Birmingham Friends (4 page)

Wiping a spot of my mess from my shiny black shoe on to the grass, I walked from behind the leaves, standing up very straight.

Kate was big-eyed. ‘Here, drink this.’ She handed me her glass of ginger beer.

‘Been over-eating, Olivia?’ Daddy teased softly. He loomed over us both, immaculate in his evening dress. Kate beamed up at him. ‘Come on now, they want to hear you play.’

The piano was my passion. I knew I was good, brilliant perhaps. It was something I was sure of, deep in me. But my music was precious, intimate. I liked playing for myself, and for Kate, not for strangers. But I had to do it to make him happy.

A semi-circle of them were sitting, polite and expectant, in the drawing room, skirts carefully arranged, on chairs and on the sofa, some of the men standing and smoking, wafting the smell of it round the room. As I walked in and the talk lowered I could hear the ladies exclaiming to each other how pretty I looked, what a darling child.

I tried to pretend they weren’t there. I walked to the piano and sat down, closing my eyes for a second. But when I opened them I saw Kate had slipped into the room and was standing blushing by the door. I remember feeling aggravated by that. They weren’t looking at her, so why was she all tomato red?

‘Tell us what you’re going to play, Olivia,’ Daddy prompted me.

I looked up. They were all smiling. Lipstick lips, moustaches, rows of teeth. I knew I looked sweet and pretty and small. I was too short to reach the pedals.

‘M-Mozart,’ I said. The stammer was deliberate of course.

I chose something easy and rattled it off, badly. Three sonatas played perfunctorily. I kept my face down, my heart pounding. The music did nothing for me. I wasn’t lost in it. I was outside it and hating those people. Hating them all.

Of course they all clapped. They had to. I boiled inside. Clapping something bad. Hypocrites.

‘Bravo!’ a voice boomed.

‘What a lovely child.’

‘Credit to you, Alec!’

My feet took me across the cream Persian rug and out of there, running up the stairs to my room and my sleeping birds. Kate followed me. Moments later I was sobbing, held in her round, comforting arms.

Devon, July 1935

‘Livy? I love you.’

‘You shouldn’t say that.’ Olivia sat up abruptly in her bed across the room. ‘Girls aren’t supposed to love girls. Not like that.’

‘Not like anything,’ I protested. ‘Why d’you have to twist things? I just love you. You’re my best friend.’

Olivia relented and rolled sleepily across the bed again, grinning through strands of hair. ‘Funny old thing. I love you too.’

I lay back on the firm pillow. I was so happy. On holiday with the Kemps – in a hotel! I stretched and wiggled my toes, the dry grains of sand scratchy between them. The cotton sheet felt delicious against my bare legs. I couldn’t see anything clearly because my specs lay on the chair next to the bed. The light in the room was a blurry green, filtered through curtains which wafted by the open window, through which we could hear the waves.

Our first full day there and everything about it felt right. The sun was shining and only tiny puffs of cloud shifted slowly across the sky. We had swum and climbed on the rocks all morning while Elizabeth Kemp lay back in a chair on the sand and Alec had taken a boat out. We were now resting to let our lunch go down before swimming again. And the best thing of all was that we’d talked and laughed together all the morning, just her and me as close as close.

Before lunch we walked up the steep path from the beach to the cliff top, our legs scratched by gorse as we climbed the path of compacted mud, small stones rattling away from our pumps. We found a place to sit on the wiry grass which topped the headland, and looked out over the hazy blue of the estuary, tiny white sails in the distance.

Olivia sat leaning back on her hands, her legs stretched out in front, the warm wind blowing her hair back from her face.

‘I found a piano in that back sitting room in the hotel,’ she said. ‘So we shan’t have to do without playing after all.’

‘No music.’

‘But we’ll remember it, won’t we?’

When she said we I knew she really just meant herself. She sat for hours at a time in front of the piano at home, whereas I was forever looking for excuses to get out of practising, and Mummy didn’t pay too much attention to whether I did or not.

‘It’ll be something to do after dinner,’ Olivia said. ‘If we’re not already done in from all this fresh air.’

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. I could see the shape of her eyes moving restlessly under the lids. I sat watching her. Both of us had changed in appearance since we first became friends, but we had spent so much of our time together that I barely noticed Olivia’s looks alter any more than I did my own. Since she had been away at school in Staffordshire and I didn’t see her for weeks on end, though, I’d begun to notice things. Livy’s voice, which was deep and strong, had become even more forthright with a confidence that the school had given her, its Birmingham intonation fading. Her hair was thicker and glossier. She was thinner, had a waist suddenly, and breasts. Curiously I looked down at my own body. I’d certainly not been short-changed on that front. Just like my Granny Munro. My legs looked much pinker and rounder than Olivia’s slim ones.

‘I wish they hadn’t sent you away to that school.’ It was far from the first time I’d made this complaint. ‘It’s not the same without you around.’

I was waiting for Olivia to agree and say how much she missed me during the term time and how there was no one else at school who was half such a good friend. This familiar conversation was like a ritual seal on our friendship.

But this time Olivia said, without even opening her eyes, ‘Well, it could be worse. Gets me away from them at least.’

‘Who?’

‘Mummy and Daddy, of course.’

‘But they’re marvellous, your parents!’

Olivia started laughing, sitting up hugging her knees, her body shaking.

‘What? What did I say?’

‘Oh, Katie. You’re so innocent, aren’t you?’

I felt cross suddenly. Olivia was putting on that superior tone she sometimes used, as if the fact that she was a mere six months older let her into all sorts of adult secrets.

‘I’m not,’ I said sulkily. ‘Granny Munro tells me all sorts of things.’

Olivia laughed again. ‘How is your mad granny?’

‘She’s not mad,’ I protested, with a reluctant grin. ‘She does it all on purpose.’

Granny Munro, Daddy’s mother, had come from Scotland to live with us only three months ago, after my grandfather died. She had made up a little bit for Livy not being around. Already she had appeared at the breakfast table with no clothes on, told the local grocer’s that she needed biscuits and cheese on tick because we wouldn’t give her any money and set up a trestle table at the front of the house in Chantry Road in order to hold her own jumble sale because she had brought too many possessions to Birmingham with her. She was driving Mummy nearly demented.

‘It’s been really fun having her living with us,’ I said. ‘She tells me all sorts of things Mummy would never dream of saying.’

Olivia had lain back suddenly, head among the blades of grass, her eyes closed. ‘Lucky old you,’ she said in a bored voice. I felt rather hurt and didn’t bother telling her any more.

She’d never explained what she meant about her parents, I thought, lying on the warm bed. Perhaps it wasn’t anything. Maybe it was just one of those Olivia things to say, making a drama out of nothing much.

‘Livy?’ I lifted my head, resting it sideways on my tanned arm.

‘Mmm?’

‘Let’s take the boat out later?’

Olivia nodded, eyes closed.

I took a deep, contented breath, enjoying the smells of the little hotel: floor polish and cabbage and Rinso on the sheets. I’d have liked Angus to see the place. In fact I was feeling so well disposed towards everyone that I’d almost have liked William to be there.

I knew Olivia’s parents were having a rest in the next room. They had the very end room along the corridor facing the sea, and ours was next to it. A touch ashamed of myself I tried to imagine Alec and Elizabeth Kemp lying together on the bed which I’d glimpsed that morning through their door. Elizabeth would have unpinned her soft, fair hair. Perhaps she would have changed into a loose gown for taking a rest. My imagination skated quickly over Elizabeth’s slight body. Beside her I pictured Alec’s darker, more robust one. His handsome face with those brown dancing eyes would be close to Elizabeth’s. Was he leaning over her? I wondered. I thought I could hear their voices through the wall. Was he about to kiss her? Would he then do
that
to her? What Granny Munro had told me about that I knew my parents could not bring themselves to mention?

For a moment I allowed myself to imagine Alec Kemp leaning over me, his lips moving closer to mine . . . Of course Alec was my best friend’s father and I was a rather lumpish fourteen-year-old with thick spectacles. But he was also the prince in every story. Kiss any frog, I thought, and it would transform instantly into Alec Kemp.

I heard a door open, close again. Growing sleepy I followed the faded pattern of dog roses and convolvulus on the wallpaper, hearing the rustle of the sea. As my eyes closed and I began to drift into sleep I heard noises from next door and was suddenly awake again. The sounds were soon unmistakable. I held my body absolutely still, listening, me heart starting to beat very fast. The sound of weeping was so desolate, so intense, and it could only be coming from Elizabeth Kemp. At first her crying was quiet and muffled. I waited, expecting to hear Alec’s voice comforting her, but there was nothing except these terrible broken cries. For a few moments Elizabeth sobbed loudly and uncontrollably before the sounds died down. Then there was silence.

When I woke, Olivia had already gone.

I stood by the window, enjoying the salty air and looking for her. From below came the sounds of children shouting, a dog barking, a boat’s engine in the distance somewhere. The hotel was sited in the angle of a narrow bay with only a few cottages for company and a narrow road passing through. Round the headland was a small holiday town, which could be reached by the road or a short ferry ride.

The tide was out and shadows from the cliffs were already beginning to edge across the sand. Everything had turned the richer colours of late afternoon and children were busy digging on the wide shiny platter which was now the lower half of the beach.

The memory of Elizabeth Kemp’s crying shifted uneasily round my mind. I had always liked Elizabeth. She was very gentle, a timid person who I had scarcely heard utter an angry word since I’d known her. She wasn’t a vibrant woman. She was unsure of herself and she provided a counterbalance to Alec, his restlessness and drive. But there was a sweetness about her and she always gave me a warm welcome. Above all she obviously loved and admired her successful husband with wholehearted devotion. So what could have brought on such broken-sounding grief? I tried to persuade myself that I’d been mistaken and the noise had been coming from somewhere else.

The boat was drawing closer. It was the ferry. The red paint on the hull became visible, the engine droned louder as it advanced on the low stone jetty, pulling in with a churn of reversing engines.

As the passengers climbed out, a movement caught my eye, something known, familiar. Alec Kemp walking the tapering jetty among them, jumping down athletically. He was dressed in navy trousers and a white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and already his arms and face had lost their city pallor. He looked tanned and healthy. He held a cigarette in one hand; on his face was a look of satisfaction, amusement even. When he reached the hotel he stood, facing the beach, to finish smoking. I knew instinctively that there was something wrong in his being there. I drew my head in quickly, closed the window and waited a few more minutes before going down to find Olivia. By then he’d gone.

Olivia was down near the sea, scraping wet sand out of the blue rowing boat,
Serenade
, which Alec had hired for the week. The breeze puffed out the yellow blouse she was wearing over her swimming costume. She was not alone. Three boys were standing round her, and as I drew closer I saw that they were much our age, perhaps older, locals by the look of them, who were watching Olivia, giving unwanted advice, bantering with her. Olivia had let her hair loose in a wavy curtain down her back. Uncertain, I went and stood by them, wishing they’d go away.

‘Need a bit of help pushing her off?’ one of the boys said in his curvy Devonshire accent.

‘We’ll give you a push off all right!’ another said, and they all sniggered. ‘Want us to come along with you?’

To my surprise, Olivia, instead of telling them to get lost, was smiling impishly at them. ‘I don’t think you’d better come in the boat,’ she said, ‘but we could do with a bit of help getting going.’

‘Getting going!’ the third lad echoed, and they all laughed raucously as if she’d said something funny or dirty.

‘This your friend is she?’ one of them asked, eyeing me up and down. ‘Shouldn’t think you’d need much of a hand with her to help you.’

I scowled at them. I didn’t like being compared unfavourably with Olivia. I stood there awkwardly, dressed in an ungainly old pair of William’s shorts.

‘Ooh – she don’t like us!’

To my fury, Olivia carried on smiling and humouring the boys long enough to let them help us drag the boat the final few yards to the sea. The bow slid into the water, rising and dropping suddenly as the force of each wave broke over it, and we clambered in.

‘Right, here you go,’ the boys shouted, standing thigh deep in the water, the edges of their shorts wafting with the water’s movement. The boat was already well afloat, but they pushed us off, cheering and waving exaggeratedly as Olivia started to row. She stopped and waved back. I kept my hands by my sides, frowning.

‘We didn’t need those idiots!’ I exploded furiously as soon as we were a distance from them. ‘Why did you let them?’