Birmingham Friends by Annie Murray Page A

and lack of certainty about what to do next inhibiting us completely. We sat for a time, the palms of our hands growing sticky from being pressed together.
    In the end I slowly withdrew mine. ‘Shall we go back now?’

    ‘Where were you this morning?’ Olivia demanded, marching across our lawn towards me. ‘I came round looking for you and your mother said you’d gone out with Angus.’
    ‘I did. He came and asked me to go for a walk with him in the park. I’m sorry.’ Immediately I resented feeling obliged to apologize.
    ‘Did William go too?’
    I shook my head. Olivia looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘You could have waited for me. I spent the morning on my own.’
    ‘I’m sorry – I wasn’t expecting it. He just came over and asked me. Look, sit down and I’ll go and fetch something to drink.’
    But she couldn’t leave the subject alone. ‘Well,’ she demanded harshly when I returned to the garden with a jug of lemonade and biscuits. ‘Did he kiss you?’
    I flushed, annoyed now instead of apologetic. It really was none of Olivia’s business, but I tried to keep calm.
    ‘No, I told you, we just went for a walk, that’s all.’
    ‘But he’s obviously sweet on you.’ She looked shrewishly at me. ‘Do tell me what he said.’
    I remembered the awkwardness of that part of the morning when Angus had held my hand. ‘Really, nothing very much,’ I said, selecting a biscuit as casually as I could. ‘We talked about the League of Nations if you must know.’
    Olivia brought out a mirthless laugh. ‘Really? How dull of you!’
    ‘Well if my walk with Angus was so dull, why are we discussing it?’ I retorted. We teetered on the edge of a serious quarrel. But I couldn’t bear to fight with Livy.
    Eventually I persuaded her to go inside with me and play the Chopin waltz she’d been practising. The piano was a fine one, from James Harvey’s works. Absorbed in the music, Olivia’s mood softened. I watched her, my anger dying. I loved it when Livy played. I was always moved by the sight of her, taken up by it, her body no longer deliberately poised as it usually was, coy yet somehow closed. She was more fully herself than at any other time when she played for me. I’d seen her play for her father’s guests and I knew she found it a torture. Then she was formal, mean with the music, giving nothing of herself. But now she was playing without a score in front of her, and at times she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her long hair reaching down her back against her sea-green frock. She finished the Chopin and, not heeding my applause – ‘That was wonderful, Livy’ – moved straight into a Beethoven adagio which was one of my favourites. This she knew very well so she had no need to look at all. I watched and listened to the notes flowing from the piano. Olivia’s eyes fluttered closed and her body swayed, taut and sensual.
    She was oblivious to the fact that as she was reaching the concluding bars of the piece the boys slipped into the room, William, Angus and John, all lured by the sound of the music as they came in from cricket. They sat quietly, wiping their hands on their thighs, foreheads beaded with sweat, and waited for the end.
    Olivia played the final chords and lifted her hands, wrists leading, from the keys. When she opened her eyes she leapt to her feet as if boiling water had landed in her lap.
    ‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘How could you? How could you?’ She rushed from the room, out into the garden.
    ‘What on earth have we done?’ William asked, laughing in total bafflement. ‘Honestly, she gets more peculiar by the day, she really does.’
    ‘Don’t laugh at her,’ I snapped. ‘You probably just made her jump. I’ll go and see.’
    I found Olivia sitting curled on the slabs by the edge of the pond, her head resting on her bent up knees.
    ‘How could you?’ she said again as I knelt down beside her. She reached for her hanky, her face already pink from crying.