Birmingham Friends (8 page)

The young mother was pacing the cold bricks with bare feet, the baby in her arms. His eyes were half open and he was breathing in quick, panting breaths.

Daddy gently opened the child’s mouth. In a voice that was low but urgent he said, ‘Kate – outside. Now.’

I watched from the doorway with the other girls, whose eyes moved enviously over my dress.

‘You were right Mrs Smith,’ Daddy told her. ‘It is diphtheria. Little Tom is very ill. We’ll need to get him to the fever hospital.’

He spoke further of the child needing a hole in his windpipe to help him breathe, and of arranging transport, a blue-windowed diphtheria van. When we left I had even more trouble keeping up with him. He strode down the street, lips pressed tightly together. I wondered once more whether I’d done something wrong.

In the end I asked timidly, ‘That baby was very ill, wasn’t it?’

‘We ought to be able to do something.’ The words burst out of him. ‘We ought to be able to prevent children from getting terrible diseases like that. It’s a scourge – it’s dreadful. I can’t bear to see it.’

I’d never seen this grief in him before. I felt like crying myself, and could only trot along silently beside him.

He looked down at my miserable face and suddenly smiled. ‘Hey now. Don’t you go worrying, Katie. It’s not your fault.’ He laid his hand on my shoulder for a moment. ‘Come on. We’ve one more call to make.’

I waited downstairs in a filthy room in one of the back-houses, facing out over a yard strung across with washing. The room was very dark and stuffy and on the table were the remains of what looked like several days’ worth of meals. The old oilcloth was soaked with spilled tea and the remains of some kind of stew. There were plates covered with congealed gravy, several jam jars with a crust of dried tea-leaves at the bottom and an old heel of bread. The floor was strewn with food remains and dirty clothes from which rose a rank, sweaty smell. And there was another terrible odour about the house which I couldn’t identify but which turned my stomach.

Across the table from me a scrawny girl who I thought was about thirteen sat picking her nose and sniffing, her brown hair in two rat’s-taily plaits. Round her feet a baby crawled on the floor, its nappy hanging heavily round its bottom and stinking of faeces. The child’s face and limbs were streaked with filth. I found myself bearing in mind one of Mummy’s nursing sayings: ‘Always breathe through your mouth.’

‘What’s the matter with your mother?’ I asked her.

‘She’s took bad after the babby,’ the girl said matter-of-factly. ‘Can’t get out of bed no more.’

‘This baby?’ I pointed at the infant who was now sitting down, having found an old scrap of bread to chew off the floor. Shiny worms of snot trailed from his nose.

‘No, the littl’un – she ’ad ’im last week.’

As we spoke I became aware that the sound I could hear of a small baby crying was coming from upstairs.

‘Have you got any other brothers and sisters?’ I asked. I supposed the girl must think me awfully nosy, but she didn’t seem put out by my asking.

‘Ar – there’m six of us. Three older ’uns, me, and then me dad buggered off, an’ then Bob moved in an’ she ’ad the two babbies.’

‘Oh,’ I said, barely able to imagine such a household. ‘So is Bob out at work?’

‘Nah. ’E’s buggered off an’ all.’

We heard Daddy’s tread on the bare boards of the stairs.

‘Now Lisa,’ he said carefully to the girl. She had a certain spark to her and was evidently taking everything in. ‘You know your mother is very poorly?’

Lisa nodded.

‘She’s got childbed fever and I’m afraid she’s so sick that we’re going to have to take her into the infirmary. She says you’ve been helping her a great deal, but she’s fretting about you missing work and about little Sid here.’ He glanced at the youngster by his feet who was staring up at him with enormous blue eyes. ‘She said your neighbour Babs Keenan would look after you both but she’s not well at present. So what I’d like you to do now is to clean Sid here up a bit. A new napkin at least, eh? This afternoon I’ll come back and take him on a little journey in my car. You’ll have him ready, won’t you, Lisa?’ Looking at me he said, ‘He’s coming home with us for a few days. Just until Mrs Keenan’s herself again.’

At the surgery I heard him explaining to Dr Williamson. ‘Puerperal fever, poor woman. In a shocking state – she should have been in days ago by the stench of her. The child didn’t look too hopeful either.’

When we drove home in the car with baby Sid Blakeley, he wasn’t looking in a much better condition than he had been that morning. Lisa had evidently tried to give his face a wipe over because the dirt was smudged and differently distributed. She had changed his nappy but this one was now nearly as full as the last, and the ammonia smell of it filled the car. I held the child beside me on the back seat.

‘Hello, little fellow.’ I smiled at him. The boy turned his pasty, snub-nosed face towards me with interest. He had not seemed disturbed by being taken away from home. I pushed my little finger into his palm and he gripped it tight. I giggled at him, leaned my face close, and he reached up and tried to snatch at my specs.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ I laughed, pulling my head back. ‘I like him, Daddy!’ There were no young relatives in our family so babies were a new experience. I liked Sid’s little fat wrists and soft, dirty feet. ‘How old is he?’

‘About a year.’

‘His sister – she’s younger than me, isn’t she?’

‘Oh no – couple of years older. She’s been out at work for a time now.’

As we drove back up into Moseley I asked, ‘Daddy, why did you become a doctor?’

‘I suppose for the reason anyone does. Because I wanted to help people who were sick to get better.’

‘Do you like people?’

I couldn’t see his face but heard the rare smile in his voice. ‘I suppose I do.’

‘Does Mummy like people?’

‘I would think she does, yes.’

‘She doesn’t always seem to.’

‘Now, now.’ He stopped the car outside our house.

The questions I hadn’t asked him were, how long is the baby staying for and, above all, won’t Mummy be
furious
with you?

I carried the smelly child into the house and went nervously upstairs to find her. This was the greatest moment of surprise of the whole day.

She took one look at the little boy and launched herself straight back into her element. ‘Right. The first thing that child needs is a jolly good bath. Go and get it running, Kate. I don’t have the baby bath any more, but at least he can sit up by himself. Not too hot – dip your elbow in. And a new bar of Sunlight. Here, give him to me.’

She took Sid to her with no sign of hesitation, filthy as he was. ‘Hello, young man.’ She looked intently into his eyes as I watched in astonishment, seeing a new softness in her thin face I had barely remembered her capable of. ‘What you need,’ she went on, ‘is a wash and a good big bowl of something to eat. Do you like porridge, eh?’ Seeing me in front of her still, she said impatiently, ‘Go on. Stop dithering. This child needs looking after. And when you’ve run the bath, go down and ask Mrs Drysdale to put some porridge on for him.’

Sid appeared later with a face of a quite different and more wholesome shade, and bolted down a dishful of sweet porridge. My mother settled him down to sleep in William’s and my old cot. To my surprise she had pulled out from various recesses in the house almost all the paraphernalia needed for looking after a baby: cot, sheets, blankets, bottles, terry nappies and toys.

‘Why on earth did you keep it all?’ I asked.

‘Well, as you can see,’ Mummy said stiffly, ‘you never know when it might come in handy.’ Of course she couldn’t express the fact that she simply couldn’t bear to part with these things.

I went to Granny’s room to tell her the news. ‘I’ve had a simply marvellous day!’ I was glowing with it all. I plonked myself on a chair beside her. Her cheek was pushed out by a sweet she was eating.

I told her about the surgery and the visits to the houses.

‘It was all so interesting, seeing all those people. And Daddy was so different from how he is at home.’ Granny was listening attentively. ‘D’you think I could do something like that when I grow up?’

‘With a family like yours,’ she said serenely, holding out a little white paper bag, ‘I should think it would be almost a foregone conclusion. Bullseye?’

Sid Blakeley stayed in our house for only four days before Babs Keenan called at the surgery to say she was ready to take him home. But for a short time he turned our house upside down. Though he couldn’t speak, he was able to express himself, his needs and his joy with a directness of which no one else in the house was any longer capable. His small body and nose-wrinkling grin softened the lines of my mother’s face and pulled unusual smiles from my father. I even found William now and then chasing him about the room, both of them on their hands and knees. As for me, I was besotted. And I took secret pleasure in reciting to myself the new words I’d learned out on the rounds that day: diphtheria, puerperal, buggered.

Birmingham, 1936

A humid night in August. There was no breeze to stir the curtains at my open window, and I was lying restless, under a sheet. The sound of the front doorbell startled me out of my half sleep. It sounded twice, long and hard. For a few seconds I lay listening, trying to guess the time. It was already dark and felt like the middle of the night. A door opened downstairs. Daddy and Mummy must still be up.

Out on the landing I saw my mother moving quickly down the stairs, still dressed but with her hair pinned up for bed. The old wooden cased clock on the shelves by the stairs said ten past eleven. I peeped round the banisters into the hall.

They opened the door to Elizabeth Kemp, her face very white, eyes like huge dark wounds against her skin. She had on a cotton dress with a white shawl half covering it. Her pale hair was loose at her shoulders like a young girl’s and in her agitation she had evidently not thought to put on a hat. I watched, absolutely still.

‘I’m sorry. You’ve got to help me.’ Her voice was low and hoarse. ‘I shouldn’t have come here. I know you’re not my doctor, but I don’t know where else to turn.’

She started to cry, weak, tired-sounding sobs. My mother steered her into the study and Daddy went in behind, shutting the door.

‘What’s going on?’ William was standing sleepily at my shoulder with only his pyjama trousers on. ‘Did I hear some sort of rumpus down there?’

‘It’s Elizabeth Kemp – crying her eyes out,’ I whispered.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know. Can’t hear now anyway. Ssh – let’s go down and listen.’

‘Kate, we shouldn’t . . .’ That was William for you. Rather stodgy.

But he followed me part of the way down the stairs. I stood at the bottom, listening so intently that even my own breathing felt like an interruption.

For a time the three adults in the study talked in low voices. There were questions, answers, short exchanges, but I could only hear the tone of their voices and not the words. But suddenly there came an anguished outburst from Elizabeth that sent William and me haring back to the top of the staircase.

‘I can’t. I can’t do it. I just couldn’t bear it!’ And the sobbing began again.

‘Whatever’s the matter with the woman?’ William asked. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it.’

For a second I felt annoyed at his superior tone, his implying that Elizabeth was making an unnecessary fuss about something. Of course our own mother behaving in this way was quite unimaginable, but I felt churned up inside by the sounds of such terrible unhappiness downstairs, even though I had no idea what the matter was.

After more quiet talking the door opened. We squatted down, one at each side of the top step, hidden by the carved wood of the banister. I was astonished to see that Mummy had her arm round Elizabeth’s shoulders.

In an exhausted but formal voice Elizabeth Kemp said, ‘Thank you for your advice. I’m sorry to have put you in such a difficult position.’ She glanced distractedly at a half sheet of paper she was holding. ‘I’ll do something as soon as I can. Next week.’

With a strange gentleness my parents closed the door behind her and Mummy turned and leaned wearily against it. She looked unusually vulnerable, standing there like that in those hairpins, her emotion all clenched up inside.

In a high voice she said, ‘Heavens above.’

My father shook his head sadly. ‘Sometimes I wonder if the middle classes don’t have it worse. All this business of keeping up appearances.’

‘Thank goodness we’ve not had that to contend with.’ Mummy sounded close to tears. Daddy went over to her and took her in his arms and she leaned against him, both of them standing in silence.

Unused to witnessing such intimacy, William and I avoided looking at each other. As our parents moved apart, the two of us shot into our bedrooms.

*  *  *

OLIVIA

Before she had me, Mummy gave birth to her first baby at home. I know because she told me, early on sometime. Though she very seldom spoke to me of her feelings, there was no one else she could confide in, only her little girl. Who was too young. She couldn’t seem to let things out gently. Her words were like shards of glass coughed up from her throat. She was in labour for five days, and the baby, who would have been my elder brother, was born blue and without breath. They had to stitch her up inside, tight like a hessian sack.

So when she was expecting me she chose to go to hospital. She waited for me, settled on stiff white sheets. Although I was small I wouldn’t come out. She lay on her labour bed for four days with her feet up in leather stirrups while the doctors tried to decide what to do. The pains were mild at first. Then her body pressed down tighter and tighter and she was in agony back and front but they wouldn’t let her move. She cried out, ‘My baby’s dead.’ One of the nurses slapped her and said, ‘Pull yourself together.’ They wouldn’t let her eat.

On the third day when they unstrapped her legs she tried to jump out of a window. The next day they cut me out by Caesarean section and by a miracle I was still alive. They told her one of my hands was tightly gripping the umbilical cord. They instructed her not to have ‘relations’ with Daddy for four months after. She swore never to let him touch her again. She didn’t quite manage that.