Birmingham Rose (3 page)

‘Was Marj all right then?’ she asked. ‘Did you make sure she’s taking the raspberry leaf? Which reminds me . . .’ Dora got up and went to the kettle to prepare her own dose of the brew. Rose thought it smelt horrible, all sour. But Dora had an almost religious faith in herbs and drank it through every pregnancy.

She didn’t tell Dora that Marj had said in her most petulant voice, ‘She needn’t think I’m drinking this muck,’ and had thrown the leaves out straight away.

‘She’s showing a lot,’ Rose said. ‘She says she’s already sick of carrying that belly around.’

‘Huh,’ Dora said. ‘She’s only just bloomin’ started. Wait till she’s at it with a crowd of other babbies running round her. Then she’ll find out what it’s all about.’

As soon as they’d eaten their bread with a scraping of jam and Sid had shuffled off across the yard to the Catherine Arms, Dora rounded on Rose. ‘Right,’ she said, emptying the pile of tiny silver safety pins on to the worn American cloth. ‘Where’ve you been all afternoon? Where d’you get that dress from? And where’s my bowl?’

‘It’s upstairs.’ In her hurry she’d left it on the bed with her dress. ‘I’ll get it.’ She stood up to go to the stairs.

‘Oh no you don’t.’ Dora grabbed her arm. ‘Sit down. Come on, let’s hear it. You go off with a bowl of custard and come swanning back in a new dress. What’s been going on?’

Rose sat down again. ‘I had a soaking,’ she explained. ‘Right to the skin. And the wind was so strong I nearly went flat on my face. You saw what it were like! This lady saw me from her house and took me in to dry out. She put the dress on me and she said I could keep it.’

‘What lady? Where’ve you been wandering off to this time?’ Dora tapped her finger hard on the table. ‘Where was this house? Up Sparkbrook?’

‘It might’ve been Sparkbrook,’ Rose said, reluctant to give away even the vaguest details. ‘Or it might’ve been a bit further out.’

‘And you don’t know where of course?’

‘I was ever so wet,’ Rose said, staring hard at the pins on the table.

Dora couldn’t help smiling at her daughter, knowing she wasn’t going to get the full story. ‘You’re the bleedin’ end sometimes, Rose, you really are,’ she said. ‘Come on – get cracking on these or we’ll be here all night.’

They sat pushing the thin wire of the pins through their cards. Dora was still feeling sick, even having eaten the small amount of food. She looked across at Rose’s dark hair, the same wavy black as her father’s, bent over the pile of pins next to Grace, whose hair was a lighter brown, more like Dora’s own.

Her pregnancy with Rose had been the third after the war. First there had been the twins – remembering now sent a sharp twisting pain through her. They were born too early. The little mites, only the size of kittens, had barely snuffled their way into life before dying within hours of each other: two boys, Sid and Percy. Next there’d been Sam, a huge, healthy baby who she’d thought would split her right apart as his head forced out of her.

And then Rose. All her babies had been born at home except Rose. Always was a wanderer, Dora thought.

She had been working in that big house in Sparkhill. Albert and Marjorie were ten and eight then and at school so she had to leave Sam with a neighbour.

That morning as she set out to walk to work the sky was low and grey over the rooftops and the ground coated with frost. It looked as if it was going to snow and Dora pulled her coat round her belly as well as she could. She’d felt very down in the mouth that morning, which made her think the baby wouldn’t come for a few days yet. Usually, right at the end she felt a mysterious surge of energy and well-being, even when she was quite run down in herself.

Maybe I just can’t feel lively any more, she thought. Too many things have happened to us. P’raps I’m just too old.

At twenty-eight sometimes she felt aged and slow, as if everything had been torn and sucked out of her. Today the lower part of her body felt taut and heavy as she walked.

She went down the Ladypool Road, where the smell of fresh bread mingled with the usual road smell of horse manure. People were just coming out on to the streets to walk to work or give shop windows a polish. A delivery boy from the baker’s shop whisked past on his bicycle, pushing down hard with his legs on the pedals.

Even now, five years after Sid had come home, she could feel tears suddenly in her eyes at the sight of a young man doing so carelessly all the things her husband was no longer capable of. It reminded her with a deep ache of the whole young man, full of dreams of what he was going to achieve, whom she had kissed goodbye and cried for early in 1915.

Sid had not come back to the home he left before the war. Instead he had returned to find his wife living in one of the courts of back-to-back houses which sprawled in a ring round the centre of Birmingham. He came back to a woman who had struggled to keep herself and her children on whatever the shortages of the war would allow, who had worked in factories churning out munitions to fuel the war and who had, with hardly a break, been working in factories ever since. He had watched her age, get thinner, lose her teeth. She snapped more and swore more and her laughter – once loud, generous laughter – came harder now and more rarely.

That change of address on Dora’s letters had not prepared Sid Lucas for the losses he had to face on every side when he came home – of not only his limbs, but his livelihood, his dignity and of the way he and Dora had been together before. Before.

Sometimes, when she was at her lowest, when Sid had been silent for days or sweated and sobbed in her arms at night, she wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if the mud and water of Passchendaele hadn’t buried him completely instead of leaving her with half a person.

Work that morning turned out to be even heavier than usual. Dora did all the routine dusting and polishing with Mrs Stubbs, the elderly woman who worked mornings there.

Then Mrs Stubbs said, ‘Right, I’d best go and do that silver she’s on about in the pantry. You can go out and shake the rugs.’

Dora looked at Mrs Stubbs’ plain, rather stupid face and wondered whether she was being spiteful. She decided she was just thoughtless, but the advanced state of Dora’s pregnancy should have been obvious to anyone.

‘Couldn’t we do them together?’ she suggested.

‘I’ll come and give you a hand if it gets too much for you,’ Mrs Stubbs said serenely and limped off to polish the silver.

Dora dragged the two large rugs through the hall to the bricked area out behind the house which faced on to a large garden. It was beautiful in the summer. The brewhouse was tucked in at right angles to one end of the building and she and Mrs Stubbs heated the water for the wash there each Monday. The bread oven was in there too, so it was often a warm place to be. Dora was glad that the small building jutting out protected her from the main stab of the cold wind.

She picked up one end of the first rug, unrolled it and started to shake so it rippled heavily along the blue bricks of the terrace, giving off great wafts of dust. Dora’s arms immediately felt exhausted, as if the carpet was made of lead. She rested between the vigorous shakes, her heart thumping harder and harder. She grew hot and faint.

The pains began suddenly and very strongly. After the first couple of harsh, breathtaking contractions she stood bending forward, her hands pressing on her knees, taking in gasps of air.

My God, she thought. How’m I ever going to get back? I’ve got to get home!

It felt so urgent, so far advanced, that she knew already that she’d never make it back – not on foot.

She waited for a lull and then stepped over to the brewhouse. It was a bit warmer inside and rather dark. There was nothing to sit on except the scrubbed quarry tiles. Dora squatted down with her back to the stone sink. It was very quiet apart from the faint scratch of winter jasmine and rose thorns against the window. Dora knew she should get help, that she needed a midwife, but between the contractions she had no strength and couldn’t raise the energy to move again.

‘Please God,’ she prayed. ‘Don’t let anything be wrong with this babby – not with me all on my own. Just help me – please, please!’

She loosened her clothes and took off her bloomers. They were wet like her legs and the back of her dress, where the warm force of her waters breaking had soaked her. A couple of times she had to pull herself up to vomit into the greyish yellow basin. Her face was shiny with sweat.

‘God,’ she cried, the words coming out hoarsely. ‘Oh God, God!’

She knew the baby was not long from being born. As she sobbed and panted through the next contraction she heard Mrs Stubbs’ voice outside, ‘Dora? Dora? Where are you? I thought you was getting started out here at least.’

In a moment her head poked round the brewhouse door and she saw Dora kneeling, her eyes stretched wide with pain.

‘Gorblimey – Dora!’ she shrieked. ‘You can’t have a babby in here. This is where we bake the bread!’

And then, seeing Dora’s wet face, her hair hanging in lank brown strings and her clothes all undone, she came closer and said, ‘You poor little sod. There ain’t time to get a midwife now. It’s all right, I’ll help you. I’ve had a few myself in my time.’

She went to the door saying, ‘It’s all right, I’m not going to leave you. Back in a tick.’ A moment later she reappeared with a ball of string, the big kitchen scissors and a towel. She knelt down and pulled one of Dora’s arms over her shoulder. ‘Go on – you’re all right, you’re all right,’ she kept saying as the young woman writhed and screamed beside her. And then: ‘Sssh – keep it down a bit for God’s sake.’

Soon the little girl’s head bulbed out from her body as Dora cried out for the last time. The pink slithery body followed, and Mrs Stubbs tied the cord and they wrapped her in the old strip of clean towel. Finally, Mrs Stubbs went off to fetch help.

‘I’m going to call her Rose,’ Dora said when the midwife arrived. ‘I mean, if I’d been any further outside I’d’ve been in the blooming garden, wouldn’t I!’

As they sat carding the pins in the unsteady light, Dora suddenly said, ‘You’re a funny kid you know. Go on – get off to bed. That’s enough for tonight.’

Grace was already asleep when Rose lay down beside her in bed that night, listening to the soft rain against the windows. Something scuttled across the floor in the corner of the room.

She thought about Diana and her house and of how one day she wanted to have carpets and comfortable beds and shelves and shelves of books.

During the night she half woke, hearing sounds from the bedroom below, the painful, incoherent cries that her father made sometimes in his sleep. The shouts grew louder, until she heard him cry out, ‘No. NO – over here!’ and some more words she couldn’t hear. Then her mother’s voice over his, comforting him until his sounds stopped with hers and they could all sleep.

Her first thought when she woke the next morning was Diana. How soon could she go back there? After all, they had asked her – twice. Rose was just resolving to go as soon as possible when she realized she must have woken extra early in her excitement.

Usually on school days Mom called up the stairs, ‘Come on – get yourselves down here. No messing about. You’ll be eating your breakfast on the way, else!’ But even George was still half asleep. Rose could hear voices outside and she pushed the blanket back and went to the window, pushing it open a crack.

The sun was shining, lighting up one corner of the yard, and the ground was still very wet. Smells of sodden dirt and rotting vegetable peelings wafted through the window, though they didn’t overcome the stink of the pee bucket. Rose had a quick peep behind the chest of drawers to check that yes, the elephant was still there and she hadn’t dreamed it.

It was wash day. When Rose and the others got downstairs, Dora was hurriedly bundling up all her washing, though she looked pale and was bent over with nausea. She pointed at the table with her free arm. ‘There’s tea and you’ll have to take your slice with you.’

Rose, Sam and Grace hurriedly drank down some stewed tea and left the house. George was standing rather forlornly by the washhouse with his slice, watching Gladys Pye rocking on to each of her bowed legs in turn as she pulled out the heavy mangle. Rose, feeling suddenly sorry for George, went and gave him a cuddle. The little boy’s face shone with delight.

They called for Geraldine Donaghue and her brother Jo and the five of them set out, walking to the church school along the sunny street still littered with the debris of the storm.

‘Our dad says the roof’s gone off Woodgates,’ Jo said.

Rose wasn’t listening. She was picturing herself one day walking to the school as a teacher who’d stand up grandly in front of the class. She’d wear clothes just like Miss Whiteley’s, a straight grey skirt and a white blouse with a frill down the front, and a little fob watch like hers pinned on to it. She’d be very calm, she’d know ever such a lot and all the children would love her.

‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ she asked Geraldine, trying to sound like Diana.

Geraldine peered at her, bemused. ‘You all right?’ she asked. ‘What’s the big idea?’

‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ Sam mimicked her. ‘Getting big ideas, Rose? It’ll be the factory or the big house for us. What else is there?’ Sam scuffed his already well-worn shoes along the pavement. ‘We’re not exactly going to be King and Queen of England, are we?’

‘I want to be a teacher,’ Rose said.

Sam snorted with laughter and Geraldine looked horrified.

‘You don’t want to be like Miss Smart, do you?’ she asked. Miss Smart was a sour woman, given to almost savage outbursts of temper. It was whispered that she’d been jilted on the eve of her wedding a few years before.

‘No,’ Rose said. ‘But Miss Whiteley’s nice, isn’t she? And she knows about ever such a lot of things.’

Geraldine looked puzzled. ‘What d’you want to do that for? I’d never do that. I’d like to be a singer or one of them dancers they have on at the Hip.’ She preened and posed in her skimpy dress along the pavement as if it was the stage of the Hippodrome.