Birmingham Friends by Annie Murray Page A

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