Read Online A Child's Voice Calling by Maggie Bennett - Free Book Online Page B

Knowles’s medicinefrom a teaspoon, bribing him with promises of sugary drinks, rubbing embrocation on his chest and back, and wrapping him in flannel for the winter. His constant coughing and whining got on Jack’s nerves, and Mabel had to comfort her mother when her son’s illness and husband’s ill temper reduced her to tears.
    Mimi Court began to visit Sorrel Street more often than formerly, bringing extra food and comforts, though she had few encouraging smiles for her grandchildren. She stood over Walter and shook her head gloomily – and rolled her eyes upwards at the prospect of yet another child. This time she had said nothing to her daughter-in-law: it was Jack who had been taken aside and scolded so severely that he’d quailed before her, and for a time appeared to turn over a new leaf, which is to say that he spent more time buying food for the family and handing over the greater part of his earnings into Annie’s keeping.
    But Walter’s condition steadily declined and he lay passively in his mother’s or Mabel’s arms, his hollow eyes pleading as if for help that none of them could give. It was heart-rending, and Dr Knowles worried about Mabel as the inevitable end approached. She had not been to school for a month and her piano lessons had lapsed. Her fair hair hung in rat’s tails and the dark smudges under her eyes told of disturbed nights; she wore a perpetual anxious frown and even snapped at Albert when he tried to tease a smile from her. He shrugged and slammed out of the house, returning later with a Cadbury’s chocolate bar for her, which so touched her that she did not ask where he’d got it.
    The doctor eventually took Jack Court aside and spoke seriously to him. ‘The boy’s dying, Court, and it can only be a matter of days. If it’s any consolationto you, I don’t think he’d have grown up to be a normal child.’
    ‘What d’yer mean – that he’d’ve been an idiot?’ asked Jack gloomily.
    ‘Well, let’s say a bit on the slow side. My impression is that his brain’s damaged, possibly at birth, or there may have been a fault in development. Be grateful for what you have, Court, the rest of your children are healthy and sound – and you have a real treasure in Mabel.’
    ‘Yeah, we don’t want
her
to go down with anythin’,’ said Jack wearily. ‘She’s the only one of ’em with any bloody sense.’
    Knowles turned away from him in despair and tried to have a word with the grandmother; but when he met her on one of her visits to Sorrel Street he distrusted her on sight. She nodded graciously to him, raising her eyes heavenward to indicate both Walter’s destination and the unsatisfactory household at number 12. She wiped her eyes on a lace-edged handkerchief, but the doctor suspected that she felt no real grief for her grandson. Something about her repelled him, though he could not say exactly what.
    The end came a few days later, on a raw November day. Mabel and her mother had had a terrible night with the little invalid who had alternately burned with fever and shivered with cold. His face took on a pinched appearance like a shrunken, wizened old man, and Annie had held him against her breasts until she had fallen into an exhausted sleep and Mabel had taken him from her.
    Now it was afternoon and Mabel sat by the living-room fire nursing Walter on her lap, wrapped in a blanket and mercifully asleep at last. Annie was inher bed, completely worn out, and George was quietly playing on the hearthrug with a bundle of kindling sticks that did duty as soldiers. As the room darkened in the winter dusk, Mabel’s head began to droop.
    She was roused by the banging of the front door and the clatter of Albert’s and Alice’s boots in the hallway. They had returned from school and Mabel was at once alert.
    ‘Hey, Mabel, d’yer know what?’ shouted Albert. ‘Yer friend Maudie’s been caught thievin’, an’ the coppers’ve taken ’er away!’
    ‘Oh,
no
, poor