by Annie Murray
Em nodded, although every time she swallowed it hurt and her head was bumping. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her seeing Mom! She was very excited, yet also full of nervous dread. Surely she could persuade Mom to come back home with them? Even having her at home and feeling poorly was better than the bereft awfulness of her not being there at all. And surely Dad would feel the same? In any case, Mom must be feeling better by now, mustn’t she?
Dot led her between the tall buildings of Birmingham to the tram stop. Em liked the smells, the whiff of men’s pipe tobacco, or of perfume worn by the posh ladies with their expensive clothes and shining shoes with thin, delicate heels, women who wore lipstick every day and carried leather handbags. And she liked the delicious whiffs from the hot potato and chestnut stalls and wondered if they might have enough pennies left to buy some on the way home. It was a rare treat to come into town, but she knew today there was no time to mooch round the Bull Ring and the Rag Market. They had more serious things to do. The tram came along, sparking from its wires, and they glided their way to Kings Heath. Dot seemed to know where Auntie Olive lived, because she didn’t have to ask.
It was a side road called Bank Street, off the Alcester Road. Em saw a little curving road of terraced houses, their red bricks dusted with soot, like face powder, and soon they were knocking on the door of a house down on the left. They stepped back, looking up at the windows. After several attempts to get an answer, the door still didn’t open.
‘Well, that’s odd,’ Dot said, sounding put out. Here, in this unfamiliar street, she seemed diminished to Em, not like when she was Queen Bee in her own house. Em saw how thin and fragile she was, despite the impression she gave of wiriness. Her rather protruding teeth and angular way of holding herself seemed to stand out more here. At home, she was just Dot. ‘I wonder if Cynthia’s in and not answering. I s’pect Olive’s gone down the shops.’
She knocked once again, calling up at the windows. ‘Cynth? Cynthia – it’s Dot. I’ve got Em with me! Are you in there? Open up, will yer?’
Em saw the nets twitching in the next house and a woman’s face peering out, but she didn’t open her door. The house stayed silent and no one came.
Dot frowned, chewing on the end of her thumb. ‘Where the hell can she be?’ She looked at Em kindly. ‘P’rhaps your mother’s feeling better and they’ve gone out somewhere. Tell yer what – it’s a nice day. Let’s go for a walk round the block and see if we meet them. Or she might be in when we get back. I flaming hope so – I could do with a cuppa off her, I can tell yer!’
Cheered by Dot’s optimism, Em walked beside her up along Kings Heath High Street, peering in the shop windows, and along as far as the park. There was a cool wind but the sun stayed out, with moments of deep shade as clouds passed over it. Em kept going hot and cold but she was too interested in being in a new place to take much notice.
‘It’d be nice to live out ’ere, wouldn’it?’ Dot said wistfully as they passed the side streets of neat terraces. Everything looked much cleaner and more respectable than in their district. ‘Fat chance of that ever happening, though,’ she added, sounding more bitter than Em had ever heard her before. Em looked up at her, round-eyed.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Dot said hastily. ‘I’m content with my lot, me. I’ll be glad when your mother’s back, though.’
They took their time, strolling along the Alcester Road, which was busy with cycles, horses and carts and jostling shoppers, until they were back at Bank Street. Dot tried knocking on the door again and once more there was no reply, but then she saw a figure turn in at the end of the street.
‘Ah, now who’s this?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Is this her?’
Her heart picking up speed, Em turned, thinking to see her mother. Instead, a tall, gaunt woman was coming towards them pushing a pram. Em had never seen the pram before and she had only seen her auntie Olive on a very few occasions, but she felt sure this was her.
‘I think so,’ she said. Violet must be in the pram and she longed to see her and kiss her warm cheeks. But where was Mom?
As the woman drew closer and saw the two of them waiting outside her house, her bony face pulled into a frown.
‘Yes, what d’you want?’ she demanded. She had dark eyes like Cynthia, but did not resemble her in any other way.
‘Are you Olive Harker?’ Em could see Dot wondering how this severe beanpole of a woman could be her friend’s sister.
‘Mrs Harker to you. Yes. Who’re you?’
Dot indicated Em beside her. ‘This is Em, your niece. Don’t you recognize her? I’m Dorothy Wiggins – a friend of Cynthia’s. I’ve brought Em to see her.’
Em had nipped round to look in the pram. It was a much smarter one than the old pram at home. She smiled, reassured at seeing her baby sister’s round face above the covers. Her eyes were closed and she looked pink and well and had grown quite a lot bigger.
‘Well, she’s not here, I’m afraid,’ Olive said dismis-sively. ‘You’ve come on the wrong day.’ She went to open the door of her house, but Dot, who was not going to stand any nonsense, stood in her way.
‘Excuse me!’ Olive exclaimed, scandalized. ‘Get out of my way, if you please, and let me go into my own house.’
Em straightened up, startled. She had not expected a quarrel.
‘I’d like to see my friend,’ Dot said, still maintaining a veneer of politeness, but Em could hear that her patience was wearing out fast. ‘So could you tell me where she is, please? Last time I saw her she wasn’t very well and in no state to be out. So I wonder where it is, exactly, she’s gone.’
‘That,’ Olive said unpleasantly, ‘is none of your business. Now get out of my way!’
Em found her hands gripping the handle of the pram. She wasn’t going to let Violet go back any too easily.
‘Just tell me where Cynthia is,’ Dot said. ‘If she’s inside I’d like to see her. I ain’t traipsed all the way over ’ere to be fobbed of by the likes of you, yer know.’
‘The likes of me!’ Olive’s face creased into a sneer. ‘I’m not dealing with some slum dweller like you. You get back to where you belong and let me get into my house.’
‘Look, love,’ Dot said, all pretence of politeness vanishing. Em watched, at once excited and scared. She knew Dot was not someone to tangle with when she was in a temper! ‘We can stay out ’ere all morning, if yer like. But I want to know where Cynthia is and how she is, and until you tell me what’s going on I ain’t moving from ’ere.’
‘I’ll call the police!’
‘You can do what the hell you like, love.’ Dot folded her arms. ‘You call ’em and I’ll ask them to persuade you to tell us what we want to know, if yer want. It’d be a hell of a lot easier if you just let us in to see her. You don’t want to deprive a young child of her mother, now do yer?’
A few seconds passed as the two women stood locked in each other’s loathing gaze. Olive looked away, glancing at the pram. She could obviously see that it was going to be impossible to get both herself and the baby in through the door while Dot was camped there and there were eyes watching from the nearby houses. With her face soured with anger and distaste she snapped, ‘Very well – you’d better come in for a minute.’
Resentment in every line of her body, she opened the front door and led them into the front room, pulling the pram in furiously behind them. Em looked round in astonishment. It was like she imagined living in a doll’s house would be – all flouncy curtains with pelmets and carpet on the floor, a little table with a lacy cloth and rows of dolls in strange costumes and other ornaments all along the shelves of the dresser. The back room into which she led them was less ornamental but still a great deal more fancy and expensively furnished than her sister’s poor Nechells house.
‘I’m not going to ask you to sit down,’ Olive said. For a moment they all just stood there.
‘Well?’ Dot said. ‘Where is she, then?’
‘Not here. She’s gone.’
<
br /> Em felt her chest tighten. What did Auntie Olive mean? Surely Mom wasn’t gone forever, wasn’t dead? Was that what she meant?
‘Where?’ Dot demanded, her patience gone. ‘Come on, spit it out.’
‘I couldn’t—’ Olive put a hand over her face for a moment, and her sour, closed face seemed about to crack. ‘I couldn’t have her here any more. She was too far gone. I can’t tell you what it was like.’
Dot’s face had gone pale. ‘Where is she?’ she whispered.
Defiantly, Olive squared her chin. ‘In the only place fit for her in that state. I had to put her in the . . . in the hospital. The asylum.’
Dot gasped as if she’d been slapped. ‘You bitch! You mean you—? When? Does Bob know?’
Shamed, Olive looked down at the grey linoleum. ‘No. It was only three days ago. I was at my wits’ end.’ She looked up again, angrily. ‘I had to. They came for her and took her to Hollymoor. They could see I was in the right. I was frightened of what she’d do. I thought she was going to—’ Her sentence trailed off as her gaze fell on Violet. ‘I didn’t know what she might do.’
Twenty-Seven
Em wept all the way home. Her bitter disappointment at not being able to see her mother and her bewilderment at what her aunt had done spilled out and she couldn’t stop. What was the asylum? Mom had been sent away to a place that Em didn’t understand anything about, except that everyone talked about it in hushed, fearful tones. She knew Dot was upset and outraged as well, and Em was heartbroken at parting from Violet again. She had pleaded and pleaded with both of them to let her bring the baby back home, but she had had to leave her little sister behind after holding her just once.
‘She misses me,’ Em had insisted, cuddling her close in her arms. Violet was heavier than she remembered. ‘She wants me, I know she does!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous; she can’t go back to that,’ Olive had decreed, condemning everything about her sister’s household out of hand. ‘I’m not letting you take the child when she’s well settled here. She’s not going anywhere! My sister entrusted her to me and that’s how it’s going to stay.’
Dot had to agree, reluctantly. She was quite surprised that Olive Harker was so eager to keep the child, with all the work and effort looking after her would entail. Dot would have fought her tooth and nail if she could not see for herself how impossible it would be to bring a baby back into the Brown household, the way things were. And surely, tart and mean as she seemed, as Cynthia’s sister, the woman must be trustworthy? Violet seemed very well on it so far.
‘Think how it’d be,’ Dot had pointed out gently to Em. ‘You’d have to look after the babby as well as the others, and you’d never be able to go to school.’ She’d looked defiantly at Mrs Harker. ‘She’s been a marvel the way she’s looked after things while Cynthia’s been bad. But Em, love – you’d never manage with a babby as well.’
Em had looked up at her in anguish, but in her heart she’d known Dot was right. Everything was such a struggle as it was. Sid had howled with pain that morning when he had to force his scalded feet into socks and boots for school. How could she manage a baby as well? She’d had to be almost torn away from Violet, though, as if the child’s warmth was the closest thing she could find to her mother and she could hardly bear to let go.
‘Don’t fret, your little Violet’ll be all right,’ Dot said, when they were back sitting side by side on the tram. Then she looked more carefully at Em, realizing that the child’s flushed face was not just because of her tears. ‘Eh, bab – you’re burning up, ain’t yer?’
Em nodded miserably, more tears coming at the sight of Dot’s kind eyes. ‘I’ve got a sore throat,’ she said huskily. She had felt more and more unwell as the day went by and now her neck felt thicker than usual, her head was throbbing and the blood banging in her ears. The feverishness magnified all her feelings. The whole day had come to feel like a nightmare.
‘I thought there was summat.’ Suddenly Dot reached out and put her arm round Em as if she was one of her own and cuddled her close. Em, so hungry for a mother’s love, leaned against her, comforted.
‘When we get back, you can have a lie-down,’ Dot promised. ‘And later, when yer dad gets home, I’ll tell ’im everything that’s happened. All right?’
Em nodded her head against Dot’s scratchy sleeve, before her eyes closed and she fell into a feverish sleep.
She sat on the chair in the front room, her cheeks burning and everything seeming to swim around her, distant and unreal. Sid and Joyce were standing in the doorway through to the back because no one had thought to tell them not to listen. Bob was leaning on the mantelshelf, his back to everyone. Dot stood just inside the front door, her face very grave.
Bob turned to face her, after the shocked silence while the news sank in. ‘You mean that woman’s just packed her off, without asking me, or anyone? Just like that?’
‘That’s what she told me,’ Dot said grimly. ‘Cynth weren’t there, only the babby. She’d got that bad, summat had to be done. That’s what she said.’
‘But for Christ’s sake!’ His voice rose, clamouring against Em’s ears. ‘Not a word to anyone! How could she just—?’ He made a helpless gesture. ‘You’d think that’d be the last thing . . . Her own sister! The cruel bitch, she was s’posed to be looking after her!’ He sank down into his chair in shock and put his head in his hands. For a moment he looked as if he was going to weep. Even in his distress, he knew he had not been able to manage Cynthia either. ‘My poor girl, in one of them places.’ He looked up, distraught, at Dot. ‘I can’t stand the thought of it. I don’t know what to do. Why can’t she just be ’ere and be all right?’
Dot looked down, trying to hide the tears in her own eyes. ‘I dunno, Bob,’ she said, shaking her head. She controlled herself, and looked up. ‘But that woman should never’ve done it – not without coming to you. It weren’t up to her. She seems a scheming sort, I’d say.’
‘There was never any love lost.’ Bob got to his feet, anger rising in him. ‘I’m not going to stand for it. That ruddy heartless cow – interfering in my family . . .’ He went to the door, but Dot was standing in the way, arms folded.
‘And where d’yer think you’re going, Bob?’
‘I dunno – anywhere.’ He paced back and forth. ‘I’ve got to get my head straight.’ He clutched it as if he was physically hurting. ‘I need a drink . . .’
‘So yer off down the boozer again. And does drowning yer sorrows make any difference? Does it bring her back? And what about them?’ She nodded at the three children, all waiting silent and scared. ‘You’ve got kids, in case you ain’t noticed. They ain’t mine to bring up, yer know. When’re you going to stop piling it all on Em’s shoulders? It’s a disgrace the way you treat her, that it is. They need their mom but you’re all they’ve got, and what’re you going to do about it, eh?’
Cowed by Dot’s fierceness, Bob swayed in front of her as if he already had several pints inside him.
‘What do I do?’ he asked, and his voice cut through Em because he sounded so lost, as if he was only a child himself.
‘Be a man. Look after your family,’ Dot said, more gently now. ‘I know what it’s like doing it on your own, remember? And I know it’s punishing hard, but it has to be done. Look, you’ve been good to me over the years, you and Cynth. You’ve been real neighbours to me. I’m only saying this for your own good.’
‘I will, Dot. Soon as I can, I will. But—’ He looked round despairingly at his children. ‘Please, Dot . . . I can’t – not tonight. You have ’em . . .’
‘Tonight, and what about all the other nights?’ Dot flared again, her chin jutting. ‘And when’re you going to hand over some money for all the times I’ve fed ’em and looked after ’em?’
To Em, Dot looked magnificent in her anger, and awesome, but Bob found her provoking.
‘Just get out of my way, woman!’ He went to push past her. ‘You can stop ordering me about in my own
house – I’ve had enough. I’m going out and that’s that – I’ve got to clear my head!’
He seized Dot’s arm and pulled her aside, slamming out through the front door. Enraged, she opened it again.
‘That’s it – just run away again, yer useless bugger!’ she screamed after him along the street. ‘You’re all the bloody same!’
Banging the door shut, Dot stood furious and panting in the middle of the room before taking in the three desperate little faces in front of her. She went to Bob’s chair and beckoned them to her, sitting Joyce on her lap. Em stood giddily. Her throat felt as if it had been scraped with broken glass.
‘Where’s our mom gone?’ Sid asked with a dreadfully solemn face. He was old enough to have understood some of what had been said.
‘She’s gone to a place where they want to try and make her feel better,’ Dot said, suppressing a shudder at the thought of the dark asylum walls.
‘When’s ’er coming back?’ he asked, wide-eyed.
‘I can’t tell yer, bab, and that’s the truth,’ Dot said, tears welling in her eyes again at the sight of the bereft children. ‘But I hope it’s soon, that’s all I can say.’
As she spoke, Em toppled to the floor. Her illness and the strain of the day had all been too much and she lay in a dead faint.
Twenty-Eight
The next Saturday afternoon, Bob Brown, a small parcel tucked under his arm, stepped in through the gates onto the long drive of Hollymoor Hospital.
The journey had seemed endless. The asylum had been built on farmland to the south of the city, to give its inmates space and fresh air and the farm to provide much of their food. To Bob, who had always lived in the cramped streets of the city’s heart, it already felt as if he was in a foreign land. His nerves were all a-jangle, the more so at his first sight of the forbidding hospital buildings, and he drew in a deep breath and let it out raggedly. A strange sense of familiarity and safety was mixed with a dread so strong that he nearly turned round and ran back out to the road. The building aroused dark memories of the Boys’ Home. He was grateful to them for the start they’d given him, but the hospital brought back all the feelings of being shut in, trapped inside an institution, of being completely in the control of others. He thought he had left all that behind. His wife was in here, his sweet Cynthia. No, it couldn’t be. Panic rose up and almost suffocated him.
