Free Birmingham Friends by Annie Murray Page B

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.

Chapter 6
    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