Birmingham Friends (9 page)

Usually she is sitting in the drawing room. She hasn’t been well these last weeks. She seems exhausted and her face is white.

‘What bad luck to be off colour while the weather’s so good,’ Daddy jokes. ‘Poor old girl. At least you’ve got Olivia home to keep you company.’

Dawson eyes her knowingly. Later I realize you can never fool Dawson.

I come skipping down Chantry Road from my piano lesson at Mrs Weiss’s cosy house, wearing my little leather sandals and a silk frock. I’ve had a lovely afternoon and I want to tell Mummy about it. I run inside, leaving Dawson to pull the door closed by its cold iron knob.

‘Mummy? Mummy?’

My feet thud up the stairs and Dawson looks up at me from the hall with her dark, handsome eyes. ‘You should leave her to sleep, Olivia,’ she calls, but there’s a smile in her voice. Along the dark corridor, shadowy after the brilliant day outside and the more so because their bedroom door is closed. My feet slip on the red carpet.

‘Mummy?’ I knock. There is silence. Softly I turn the handle and push the door open. I stand in the doorway unable to move.

The bed has turned red. Even her hair is soaked almost to the roots as she lies askew across the covers, her eyes closed. Her face is chalk white, the cheeks drawn in tight. She still has a satin slipper on one foot.

I cross the room. By her feet is the deep blue and white chamber pot, full to overflowing with blood. Next to it on the floor something long and sharp, streaked red.

I find my voice. ‘Dawson!’ I scream. ‘Dawson!’

It was only when my mother went secretly to a doctor that she realized how much an abortion would cost. She had no money – none of her own. Without asking my father for the price she could not even contemplate it. Rich as we were, her choice was as limited as so many others in her position and she resorted to the same thing: a sixpenny knitting needle.

If I had not been at home she would have died.

*  *  *

Within a fortnight of her visit to our house, Elizabeth Kemp suddenly became gravely ill. I could get almost nothing out of Olivia.

‘She’s in a private nursing home,’ was all she’d tell me. She sat, pale and tight-lipped in one of the cream chairs in the Kemps’ beautiful drawing room.

‘Can I come and see her?’

‘No, I told you. She’s very ill. She can’t have visitors.’

‘Well, when will she be better?’

‘I don’t know.’ Olivia put her hands over her face and burst into tears. ‘I wish I knew. I just want her back home.’

‘Your father must be able to see her, surely?’

Olivia looked guarded suddenly, as if afraid. ‘Yes. Sometimes.’

When Alec Kemp came home later that afternoon his face was grey and exhausted.

If Granny Munro had any idea of what was happening in the Kemp household she chose to keep silent. She was blunt, but not brutal. And she was in the same position in the house as a child: an eavesdropper, not a person responsible enough to be automatically party to information, though she was shrewd enough to guess most of it.

By the autumn of 1936 she had settled in much better. She was keeping her clothes on and she and my mother had reached an uneasy truce.

One Saturday William and I were talking to her while she tidied her room – or at least I was in there and William had to come barging in as well.

‘Goodness, Granny,’ William said. ‘What a mess.’

‘I think it looks rather nice,’ I said loyally, staring round at the tottering staircases of drawers she had removed from the chest, the rush-seated chairs tilted over on the bed amid the letters and diaries, the full skirts of dresses in sea blue and grey and her tweeds, the tangles of pearls and heavy amber and jade beads, all of which she was evidently trying to sort into piles. William blushed at the sight of some of her more personal items of underwear: huge brassières and corsets and bloomers strewn across the bed.

‘Ah, spotted my dreadnoughts have you?’ she laughed. ‘Poor William. I tell you what, you go down and fetch us up a nice cup of tea and Katie and I will have them stowed away by the time you get back.’

With relief, William squeezed out of the door.

‘The poor lad, I shouldn’t tease him so,’ Granny said, winking at me over her glasses. ‘But he is a bit of a stiff fellow, isn’t he? Very like his father, I’m afraid, and his before him.’ She sighed, folding an enormous pair of pink bloomers. ‘You don’t really remember your grandpa Robert, do you? He was a good man. Truly good. You can’t argue with that sort of goodness – it wouldn’t be fair.’ Her face wore a wistful expression. ‘But oh, I did long to let up occasionally and do something really wild and
bad
. I’d have to go for a good stump along the beach or a bracing swim to get it out of my system and then I’d feel better. Until the next time, anyway.’ She smoothed down the bloomers and picked up another pair. ‘You know, Katie, you can spend all your life keeping your feelings packed tightly away. I’m not sure it’s always the best thing. Trouble is, after years of doing it you don’t have much practice at showing how you do feel.’ She peered at me with her watery eyes, looking suddenly sad and vulnerable. ‘I know I rather overdid it when I first came here.’

I went and flung my arms round her. She smelt of camphor and rose water. ‘Granny – it’s been absolutely lovely since you came. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened!’

And she laughed tearfully and hugged me back.

In the evening when Daddy went to look in on her there was clearly something wrong. She was lying at an angle across the bed in silent distress. She had spent most of the day seeing to her room and it was immaculate.

‘Win,’ Daddy shouted. ‘It’s Mother.’

I came running immediately. ‘What? Granny, what’s wrong?’

I knelt down and took her hand. It felt cool and clammy, like the feet of those birds Olivia used to have. She was trying to speak, but nothing came out that made sense. ‘Granny, Granny!’ I sobbed, leaning my head against her fulsome body, feeling the stiff corset under my ear through the silky stuff of her dress. ‘Don’t be poorly, Granny, please.’

All I had from her in reply was a low, frightened whimper.

It was agreed that we’d care for her at home. We could see in her eyes that she’d prefer it. Her stroke had in fact been a mild one, and within days her speech began to unfurl into something we could recognize. The left side of her body slowly began to tingle back into life.

‘I’m not done yet,’ she said defiantly, one corner of her mouth lurching up unasked. ‘I’ll be out in the breakers.’ But just then she couldn’t even get out to the bathroom.

My mother rose to the occasion and nursed her with a kind of objective professionalism. She was brisk and detached and left me to provide the other components of nursing: company and affection. As soon as I came home from school I spent every moment I could sitting in the easy chair next to Granny’s bed.

‘You’ve got to get better – please, please,’ I kept saying to her. ‘Please try, Granny.’

With huge effort she’d manage the words, ‘You’re not nagging me – are you?’

Granny’s illness pushed everything else to the back of my mind. Olivia was away at school and normally I missed her every single day. We wrote long letters full of details of our days and jokes and anecdotes about school. I wrote to her still, but the letters were shorter and full of my worries about Granny. I had almost forgotten that unseen, at home, Elizabeth Kemp was dragging herself very slowly, painfully back to health. But that was something shut away from my understanding then. Olivia never even hinted to me what had happened. She tried to preserve her parents, present them to me perfect as seahorses on a bed of wax. I had no idea just how much she needed me.

Angus often came to see Granny after she fell ill. They had an affinity with each other. She liked him to read to her and I’d often go into her room and find Angus’s dark head bent over Wilkie Collins or Edgar Allan Poe. (‘Anything with a really good story,’ Granny would say.)

One wet winter afternoon I sat listening as Angus finished off a chapter from
The Woman in White
. After a few minutes Granny coughed gently and interrupted him. ‘It’s all right. You stop now Katie’s here. You’re a good reader, Angus Harvey, I’ll say that.’

‘I suppose you’d like tea?’ I asked.

‘Of course. What other pleasures do I have left in life now apart from my food? Well, and your company of course.’

Simmons had a kettle on the hob downstairs. I carried a tray up and we settled down by the fire. She left the light off so the room was lit only by the flames. Rain flung itself at the window. Granny sipped her tea carefully from one side of her mouth, some of it spilling into the saucer which she held underneath. She tutted with frustration until she saw Angus and me watching her anxiously. She smiled lopsidedly at us. Tiny flames danced in the lenses of her specs.

‘Don’t you worry about me.’ I heard a mischievous twinkle in her voice. ‘I must say it’s lovely seeing the two of you together. You make a lovely pair. Or am I embarrassing you?’

It was too dark for me to see if Angus blushed as I did. He was still smiling affectionately at Granny.

I jumped up, anxious to find some activity to hide behind. ‘Yes you are. Now – shall I do your hair for you?’

She shuffled over a little so I could sit on the edge of the bed and I pulled the pins gently from her long grey hair. It reached half way down her back, thick and soft. I felt Angus’s eyes on me, watching the two of us together.

‘Tell me,’ Granny said to him. Patiently he waited for her to manage the words. ‘What is it you want to do with your life, Angus?’

After a moment’s thought he said, ‘What I’d really like is to invent something. A machine or tool that would be very important to people. Make their lives better or make it easier to build something else. Or create something really beautiful that people could enjoy looking at.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t think I’m brainy enough to go for anything really academic like William.’

Granny waved her good arm dismissively. ‘Never mind William. I wasn’t talking about him. William will do whatever William does. I’m interested in you. Are you saying you plan to be an engineer?’

He looked into the fire, his thin face serious. ‘I think what I’d like most is to learn the basics of something really well. Get an apprenticeship somewhere.’

‘What about the university?’

‘Perhaps later. I want to work in the real world a bit first.’ He seemed embarrassed to be talking about himself like this.

‘You’re good at Meccano,’ I said eagerly.

Angus laughed. ‘That’s a start, I suppose.’

I realized with surprise that for all the years Angus and I had grown up and played together we had barely ever had a conversation without the others around, when of course there was a lot of ragging and we were always intent on cricket or some other game. We didn’t have serious conversations. Self-conscious suddenly, I concentrated on the soft feel of Granny’s hair sliding between my fingers. I hoped Angus would think the pink of my cheeks was only from the fire.

‘What will you do after school, Katie?’ he asked.

‘I think I’d like to be a nurse.’

‘You’ve made up your mind then?’ Granny said.

‘Only just this minute.’ I laughed. ‘But I’ve really known that’s what I want to do for ages. I want to look after people. It seems the obvious thing.’

I felt Angus watching me again. I knew there were new feelings between us.

‘You’ve always been good at looking after people,’ he said. ‘Your grandmother, Olivia . . .’

‘Olivia?’ I was startled. ‘What d’you mean? Why does Livy need looking after?’

‘It’s always looked to me a bit as if that’s how it is, that’s all. Sorry. Perhaps I’ve had it all wrong.’

‘Livy’s all right!’

‘Well anyway, I think you’d make a very fine nurse.’

‘What’s this,’ Granny interrupted, ‘the mutual appreciation society?’ She was smiling, her face cock-eyed and rather comical-looking. ‘You two want to look out.’

Seeing she’d embarrassed us again, she added, ‘I think I need a doze now. And you must need a rest from me. Thank you for your company, Angus. I’m most grateful.’

She was already sinking into sleep as we left the room’s cosy light and went downstairs. William was studying in his bedroom.

‘I suppose I should be going,’ Angus whispered. ‘William’s putting me to shame.’

But he stood with me in our big family room at the back of the house where there were old easy chairs, a Welsh dresser and a piano. He seemed reluctant to leave, and I found I didn’t want him to. I perched on the arm of a chair, woollen skirt pulled tight across my knees, a compromise between remaining standing and committing myself to sitting down in the chair.

‘She’s a fine person, your granny,’ Angus said.

‘Everything changed when she came,’ I told him. ‘I love having her here.’

Cautiously Angus said, ‘I suppose your parents aren’t always the easiest people to talk to?’

‘No.’ I felt grateful that he’d noticed. His own family were freer, more scatty. ‘They’re certainly not. But with Granny – it’s hard to explain. I know she did some peculiar things when she first came. She was so used to being in charge of her house and everything, going down to the beach for a swim, even in winter if she wanted. And suddenly she was expected to come and settle down here with everyone telling her what to do. But she’s just so different from everyone else . . .’

The tears came suddenly, streaming down my face with so little warning that I couldn’t control them.

‘I just can’t bear the thought of her dying.’ I felt silly blubbing like that in front of Angus, I who had always been so much one of the boys, their games from which you didn’t run off in tears. I took my specs off and put my hands over my face.

‘Katie, don’t – ’ His voice was gentle. He took one of my hands gently away from my cheek and drew me to my feet. ‘She’s doing well, isn’t she?’ He looked anxiously into my face. ‘She’ll be all right.’

‘But you can’t just say that,’ I retorted. ‘She’s old and sick. People
do
die. Daddy’s patients are always dying.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shrugging awkwardly. ‘It was a stupid thing to say. I just wanted to make you feel better, that’s all.’