Free Birmingham Friends by Annie Murray

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