Read Online Birmingham Friends by Annie Murray - Free Book Online Page A

Daddy was a sacrifice about which she had never ceased to feel bitter.
    Daddy pushed back his chair, ignoring this remark as he tended to blank out all such expressions of emotion. ‘I’ll be leaving in ten minutes.’

    I sat in the passenger seat next to Daddy, nervous at being alone with him. We turned into the Alcester Road, the Austin shuddering on cobbles and tramlines, swooping downhill from the fresher air of Moseley towards the lower-lying, smoky atmosphere of Balsall Heath, two miles from the middle of Birmingham. Daddy’s surgery was on the inner edge of this area, in St Joseph’s parish, with its hotch-potch of dilapidated back-to-back houses, and workshops and factories all squeezed in together, its life altogether louder and more public than in our suburban street. What would it be like to live here? I wondered. I was seeing everything with new eyes today, alert suddenly to these differences. Both my father and Alec Kemp moved daily between these two contrasting areas, both able to afford houses in prosperous, tree-lined Moseley. The surgery was in the Birch Street area, only streets away from Kemp’s Foundry Supplies.
    I eyed Daddy’s profile, his neatly trimmed dark hair, the little moustache and tired blue eyes, every line of him dutiful and serious.
    He cleared his throat. ‘I gather you managed to settle your grandmother down yesterday,’ he said in the objective voice he always used when speaking of her, sounding as if he was discussing one of his patients.
    ‘She took all her clothes off in the drawing room again.’ I saw him flush slightly and wondered if I’d said the wrong thing. I couldn’t always work out what I was supposed to say to my parents. One minute they were talking about patients and illnesses and bits of bodies, some of which I knew you didn’t refer to, even in Latin, in polite company. Then at other times if you mentioned something, especially if it was to do with the family, they’d go all stiff and embarrassed. It was very confusing.
    ‘Why did Granny come and live with us? She could have managed on her own, couldn’t she?’
    ‘It seemed the most practical thing, after your grandpa Robert died. North Berwick’s a long way off and it made sense for her to be near her family.’
    ‘But we’re not her only family.’
    ‘We were the ones who were able to have her. The others have commitments which made it impractical for them.’
    ‘But I don’t think she’s very happy. And she and Mummy can’t stand one another.’
    Daddy was silent for a moment. I looked out as we passed the ornate red-brick bathhouse on the Moseley Road.
    ‘It always takes families time to adjust to new arrangements – particularly people who are above a certain age. Three months is not a very long time in that situation.’
    What situation? I wondered. We were talking about Granny, not some situation. I sat in silence. Whatever the reasons she was here I thanked God she had arrived, like a bracing gust of wind from north of the border.
    We turned into a side street and parked outside the surgery. I squinted myopically at the brass plaques. Dr. W. Munro , and underneath, Dr. J. Williamson . I hoped I shouldn’t see sour, bad-tempered Dr Williamson.
    ‘It needs a polish,’ I said.
    ‘Well, there’s a little job for you then.’
    A line of people were already waiting outside by the step. Daddy raised his hat and greeted them. One of the women, tight-faced, held a silent baby. An elderly man was coughing, bent over by it, his lungs sounding drenched.
    The waiting-room was dark, the walls painted brown. There were wooden benches against three of the walls and in one corner stood a small table and two chairs. In the fourth wall a door, through which Daddy disappeared, led out to the two consulting rooms at the back, and there was a little trapdoor for the dispenser.
    I was just settling myself down at the table when my father reappeared, hurrying across the waiting-room.
    ‘Dr Williamson is