Birmingham Friends by Annie Murray Page B

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