by Annie Murray
‘Well, now that’s a lovely thing!’ Miss Nolan said, fingering the edge of the clean white cotton. ‘It’s not often you see a sheet in these rotten little houses, I can tell you – let alone one so clean and new!’
‘I sell them,’ Gladys said, dignified in the face of such rudeness. ‘On the market. Make them up myself. Or I did before the war, any road.’
‘Oh, I see – well, it’s lovely and I’m sure you do well, Mrs er . . . . Here we are – now where’s our little Tommy then?’
Rachel lay him on it, still wrapped in his blanket.
‘Well, hello, Tommy!’ Miss Nolan unwrapped him and tickled his tummy. Tommy made a little squirming motion and his left arm shot out stiffly from his side. Rachel thought she saw the shadow of a frown pass over Miss Nolan’s brow. But she said nothing. ‘There’s a lovely little boy now, aren’t you? Let’s be having a look at you.’
Rachel and Gladys stood side by side as Miss Nolan’s plump, capable hands felt round Tommy’s head and body. A look passed between them, as if to say, She seems to know what she’s doing. She bent each of his legs and arms. Then she did it all again. She had gone quiet, Rachel thought – or was she imagining it? She picked Tommy up and gently held him up in front of her, looking up and down his little body. His legs hung stiffly, slightly crossed, as Rachel usually saw them do.
‘He feels very different from my daughter,’ she said, hoping to place her sense of unease within a cheerful conversation which would banish any of her fears.
Miss Nolan laid Tommy very gently back on the table and he gave a small whimper but nothing more.
‘Have you any problems?’ she asked.
‘He’s not feeding well like Melly did, is he, Rach?’ Gladys said.
To her annoyance Rachel felt tears rising in her eyes. She saw Miss Nolan register this. ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ the health visitor asked carefully.
‘He just can’t seem to suck very strongly. I mean, Melly – she used to guzzle away but Tommy, he tries but it takes him an age – as if he’s weak. And he sicks a lot of it up again. He cries when he’s hungry but then he only manages a bit and then he stops. Sometimes he just falls asleep – and then a bit later he’ll wake and start all over again. It takes such a long time to get anything down him. I just don’t think he can be eating enough.’ Her anxieties and tears spilled out together.
‘Oh dear, now – I see.’ Miss Nolan was looking very thoughtful. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re doing all right, dear – he doesn’t seem too thin. Every baby’s different, you know.’ This was what Dolly kept telling her as well. ‘Let’s take a look at his weight . . .’
She hung Tommy in a white sling from her spring balance and peered at the markings on it.
‘Well,’ she said hesitantly. ‘His weight is down a little but he’s all right. I do just wonder . . .’ Again she looked grave and thoughtful and seemed to be weighing up what to say. Whatever it was that she wondered, she did not announce it. She put the spring balance away in her bag and turned to Rachel.
‘Look, he’s very young. We’ll keep an eye on him, see how he grows and so on.’ She shut up her bag and gave Rachel a pat on the arm. Going over to the window, bag in hand, she looked out and said, with a smile in her voice, ‘You’re doing well – look at that healthy little girl you’ve got running about out here. I’ll just take a look at her on my way past. But she looks as fit as a fiddle.’ At the door she said, ‘There are babies coming thick and fast but I’ll call and see you again as soon as I can.’
Rachel felt herself relax a little, as if a load had been lifted from her. ‘He’s all right? There’s nothing wrong with him?’
‘I’d say he’s a grand little feller. But I’ll be back to see you both as soon as I can, all right? Now – there’s another baby just born in this yard, so I gather? A Mrs Sutton?’
‘There – at number four,’ Gladys said, pointing through the open door. ‘You want to try and talk some sense into her.’
Miss Nolan turned. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘All I’ll say is –’ Gladys folded her arms contemptuously – ‘she wanted a lad and she got another girl.’
‘I see,’ Miss Nolan said, not sounding especially as if she did. Her shoes tapped their way across to Irene’s front door.
‘And she could try keeping her house up an’ all,’ Gladys muttered. She, Dolly and Rachel had all lent a hand trying to clean the Suttons’ house and get some order into it after Evie was born. They had barely received a thank-you for their trouble either.
Gladys stood watching, a dark expression on her face. Everyone else in the yard was appalled by the way the Suttons went on but it seemed to enrage Gladys especially. Irene was full of resentment towards the baby for not being a boy – the son that Ray had achieved with his mistress. Even so, Ray had shown no signs whatsoever of disappearing and was still there, day or night, drunk or sober, playing one woman off against the other. But instead of blaming him, Irene took all her anger out on the baby, Evie as she now seemed to be called. She was careless and sulky with her, acting as if Evie was a burden and nothing else.
‘It’s wicked, that it is,’ Gladys said, shutting the door again. ‘Wicked and unnatural. The child might be too young to notice now – but one day she won’t be. There’s some women don’t know they’re born. And as for that useless bugger she’s married to – they ought to’ve thrown him in the army, not have him sitting about pouring drink down his throat!’
Thirty-Five
April 1944
By the time Tommy was seven months old he was showing no signs of being able to sit up. On Rachel’s visits to her mother with the children, Peggy was starting to remark on it and Cissy kept asking when Tommy was going to come and play. His feeding was still very difficult. She had started him on solid food, slops of soaked bread, but Tommy’s tongue forced itself out whenever she put a spoon in his mouth and it only ever seemed by luck that he managed to swallow anything.
Dolly took a motherly interest and kept saying that things would get better. ‘Don’t you worry – he’s a brave little lad. And you want to look after yourself, bab – you’re thin as a rake.’
Miss Nolan called round every so often, as she had said she would. Rachel could tell she was keeping an eye on Tommy, though as yet she had not said anything much. But on her latest visit, after she had looked him over, she straightened up and said carefully, ‘I think the time has come to have the little man looked at by the doctor.’
‘Why?’ Rachel said, all her dread rushing to the surface. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘Oh, let’s hope it’s nothing – just a precaution,’ was all the health visitor said. ‘But he is a little behind. Just take him along and see what they say.’
Later, though she trusted Miss Nolan, she cursed her for a coward, for not warning her and saying what she had obviously guessed. She passed the job into the lap of someone else.
She left the pram outside the surgery. Everything was brown in the waiting room: the floor, the chairs, the walls. And there was a stale smell of damp wool overlaid with disinfectant and people coughing and groaning. It did nothing to lift the spirits.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ a grey-haired lady sitting beside Rachel asked her. Rachel bridled for a second, as if her words were meant as criticism. But Tommy, wrapped in a blanket and sitting gazing around, looked perfectly normal. She realized the woman was just being motherly.
‘He’s got a bad chest,’ she lied. She did not realize then that this would be one of many, many times that she would be asked this question and that there would never be a time when it didn’t hurt.
‘Poor little devil,’ the woman said. She suddenly began coughing herself, hunching over and laying her hand on her chest. Her lungs sounded like a drenched engine trying to start up. Eventually, wiping her eyes she said, ‘’E’s not the only one, bab!’
When her name was called Rachel carried Tommy to the doctors’ rooms at the back, feeling as if ever
yone was watching her. Holding him close, her heart hammering, she went to the second of the rooms as instructed. A little wooden bracket on the door had a groove just wide enough for a narrow slice of wood to slot into it. On it, in white letters, it said, Dr R. J. Evans.
‘Come!’ a peremptory voice barked at her timid knock. This room, also brown, smelt of stale cigarette smoke accompanied by a sweaty, masculine odour. Dr Evans was middle-aged, with a grey complexion, dark brown oily hair combed flat across a bald patch, and heavy horn-rimmed spectacles. Rachel looked at him with dread. She was not familiar with any of the doctors as she and the rest of the family were usually quite healthy. What she saw did not make her feel confident.
‘Yes?’ He looked up from his desk, pebbly eyes peering over the spectacle frames.
‘I . . .’ She heard her voice go faint with nerves. ‘The lady from the welfare told me to come and see you. To bring the babby, that is . . .’
The doctor pushed his chair back briskly. ‘I see. What’s the matter? Cough? Chest?’
‘No, it’s not . . . He’s not poorly.’
‘Not poorly?’ he said impatiently.
‘She wanted you to look at him.’ All she felt like now was running away. She did not want Tommy poked about by this strange, smelly man with his forbidding look. ‘It’s just – he’s not sitting up, and . . .’
He looked back at her for a moment and she saw herself through his eyes: young, scrawny, ignorant. But what was required of him seemed to be sinking in. ‘The health visitor, you mean? All right – bring him over here.’ There was a flat, hard bed at the side of the room. As she obeyed he snapped, ‘Age? When was he born?’
‘September the eighteenth.’ Only such a few months ago – it felt like a lifetime.
‘Unwrap him then.’ He stood with his hands on his hips, like a threatening bird about to take off. ‘Right – let me see then.’
Cowed by his manner, she stepped back towards the door. Dr Evans did all the things she had seen Miss Nolan do, though some of them with more force. He flexed Tommy’s arms and legs in and out until the little boy started to whimper and then cry. Even his cry sounded weak. Dr Evans held him up under the arms like a rag doll, his own arms outstretched, so that his cuffs popped out of his jacket sleeves. He stared at Tommy, then put him down again. He tried to sit him up. Tommy flopped back, falling sideways. Dr Evans caught him and laid him down again.
‘Feeding all right? He’s thin.’
‘It takes him ages,’ she murmured, feeling accused.
‘What? Speak up!’
‘He has trouble feeding.’ She was close to tears now. ‘It takes him a long time to get any and I don’t know if he’s getting enough. His tongue keeps pushing it out of his mouth. I’ve been telling her . . .’ She trailed off helplessly.
The doctor made no further comment. He felt around Tommy’s body some more as the child cried.
‘Difficult birth, was it?’ he asked suddenly.
‘It was . . .’ She didn’t know what to say. ‘No. I don’t know.’
‘Hmmm.’ The doctor straightened up and stood looking down at Tommy. At last, he said, ‘Right – wrap him up again.’
She obeyed and stood holding her snivelling little boy pressed close to her, rocking him to try and quiet him. The doctor fished in the drawer of his desk and brought out a packet of Player’s. He fiddled with the packet for a few seconds with his left hand, staring down at his notepad. At last he threw the cigarettes down on the desk as if in irritation before finally looking at her across the top of his glasses.
‘The child is certainly diplegic – probably tetraplegic, though there is some hope for the right arm I’d say. That’s why he’s so stiff, can’t support himself sitting up and so on. Most likely never will.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Rachel said. A glow of desperate anger lit somewhere in her belly. At the same time she felt helpless and pathetic. Don’t cry! she ordered herself. She pinched the flesh of her own arm. Don’t cry in front of him. How dare he talk to her in riddles, like some sodding encyclopedia, trying to make her feel stupid? She tried to keep her voice calm, though it came out high and thin. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means . . .’ He sounded as if patience cost him effort. His hand strayed to the cigarette packet again and closed over it. ‘That he’ll be a cripple. He’ll never walk. Possibly never speak. The muscle of his tongue is compromised – that’s why his eating is poor. You’ll just have to keep doing the best you can with that. There’s nothing that can be done.’ Still grasping the cigarette packet he got up and went to the window which overlooked an alley, a slimy wall only feet away. Loudly, over Tommy’s cries, he said, ‘There is some treatment – a bit. Not very effective and it costs more than you could afford, I’m quite sure. All I can suggest is that you try massage, though I don’t suppose that’ll have any deep effect. My advice would be hang onto him for a bit. There are places he can go when he’s a bit older.’
She was trembling. The explosion of rage and upset was swelling in her to bursting point.
‘Places?’ she managed to say.
Dr Evans swivelled round to face her. ‘The city has several institutions for crippled and imbecile children. It’s the best thing, very often. You’ll be able to get on with your life – forget about it. He’ll be looked after – out of sight.’
Rachel could not speak. Clutching Tommy so tightly that she made him cry all the more, she hurried out of the room. She did not even see the other people in the waiting room. She had just tucked Tommy back into the pram outside when a voice shrilled at her from the steps, ‘Excuse me!’ The receptionist sounded very annoyed. ‘That’ll be half a crown!’
‘Sod you – and sod your half-crown,’ Rachel muttered. She did not look up and set off, storming along the street. Running footsteps followed and the woman was officiously at her side.
‘You owe—’ she began.
‘Here’s your money.’ Rachel pushed it into her hand without ever looking up.
Once the woman had hurried away and she was alone, she pushed the pram up against the side of a house and leaned over it, her tears flowing at last, unable to stop her anguish pouring out in the street.
Head down, she hurried along the entry into their yard, praying that no one would be about. She didn’t want any questions, however kindly meant. No one was in the house as Gladys had taken Melanie to the shops with her. All she wanted was to be alone with her son, to try and take in the doctor’s harsh words.
She took Tommy upstairs and lay on the bed with him beside her. The ride home in the pram had sent him off to sleep and now he lay there drowsily, eyes opening and closing. While Melly looked so like Danny, she knew that Tommy favoured her. From the moment he was born there had been something about him she’d recognized, something beyond his shape or eye colour, that she could not put into words. He was kin in some deep, blood way. She moved her face close to him, taking in the fine, fresh texture of his skin, the tiny mauve veins at the corners of his eyes. Very lightly she laid her fingers on his chest, feeling the breath flicker in and out.
He’ll be a cripple . . . The doctor’s indifferent tones rang through her mind. How could he be so cold and detached? Tommy would never walk. He might not talk. It was impossible now, to take in, to know what it might mean, except that it felt as if Dr Evans had cursed her. It was like looking up at a cliff that she had to scale, that she could not see the top of as it loomed above her. And no one else could do it except her. All she could see was that her life would never be free of care. She searched her mind for anyone she knew with a child the same. She had seen one or two children wearing calipers on their legs. And a little boy in Floodgate Street who had had a lurching, ungainly walk. A cripple. Some of the other children had teased him, shamed him. What would they do to a boy who could not walk at all?
Another of the doctor’s phrases threw itself at her: You’ll be able to get on with your life . . . He’ll be looked after – out of sight.
<
br /> She imagined wheeling Tommy to some unknown place, a big, brick monstrosity of a building, no doubt. A heavy door would open, a strange face and strange hands would grasp her son and take him away forever, leaving her free . . . She felt a longing for this freedom course through her. She was eighteen years old, too young for all this. What if someone could just take Tommy and give him a life? But even more powerful was the terror of someone taking him away from her, the dread and shame.
‘Oh, Tommy . . .’ The tears came then, from deep inside her, sobs which shook her, heartbroken for him and for herself. ‘My poor, poor little Tommy-babby. I won’t let them take you away – I won’t.’
Laying her head beside him on the rough blanket, she wept for a long time, full of sadness, for him and for herself, and feeling fiercely protective of him. Her sobbing died and she fell asleep next to him. The next thing she knew was the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
‘Rachel?’ Gladys came into the room, her face stony with concern. ‘You all right? What’s going on?’
Rachel pushed herself up and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. She felt utterly stunned, as if something heavy had knocked her down.
‘What did they say?’ Gladys sat on the bed beside her.
‘Oh, Auntie!’ Rachel burst into tears all over again. ‘He was horrible, the doctor! He said Tommy’s going to be a cripple. He said things I didn’t understand. But he said his legs don’t work and his left arm – and his tongue. And then he said I should put him away in a home and forget all about him!’
She heard Gladys’s intake of breath. She waited for her to say something brisk and dismissive, that the doctor was wrong, that they should not take any notice and just wait and see. She wanted her to say it wasn’t like that.
Into Gladys’s silence she cried, ‘And what’s my mother going to say? She’ll most likely be the same as the doctor!’
Gladys laced her fingers together in her lap and looked down at them. It was a long time before she said anything. Rachel found herself waiting. It was another of those moments when she looked at Gladys afresh, and found her utterly mysterious. She could not guess what was going on inside Gladys’s head. But at last, gently, she said, ‘Tommy’s your son. Yours and Danny’s. And he’s my nephew. He’s ours – our blood. God knows, we’ve lost enough of our family . . .’ She stopped, hesitating. ‘I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I don’t want to sentence you to . . .’ she began, then stopped again. At last she said, ‘Your mother’s not the one who’ll be seeing to him day after day, looking after him.’