Birmingham Rose by Annie Murray Page B

do,’ she said, leaning her head back against the wall so the tendons stood out in her scrawny neck. ‘I always know, by the end.’
    Rose suddenly felt shy, helping her mother with something so intimate. Before, she’d always been whisked off out of the way like the younger ones, and Old Lady Gooch or Gladys Pye called in to help.
    Dora watched her daughter’s brisk, practical movements and her serious face as she tucked the paper in neatly round the mattress. She knew Rose had recently started to come on of a month and had therefore become a woman.
    ‘D’you want to stay and help with this one?’ she asked. ‘I think you’re old enough. And Mrs Freeman’ll need someone to give her a hand.’
    Rose nodded. ‘All right then.’
    The labour progressed swiftly. Old Joan, who was not in fact very old but enormously fat, puffed and panted around almost as much as Dora. She pushed Sam off downstairs saying, ‘This ain’t no place for a lad. Go and make us all a cuppa tea, eh?’
    ‘Just help yourself, won’t you?’ Dora said sarcastically. She knew she needed this woman, and she didn’t want to fork out for the doctor as well. But the midwife was notorious for being lazy and sponging off people. She also laid out the dead on occasion and it was rumoured that things had gone missing from the rooms where the bodies were lying.
    Rose at first found the sound of her mother’s cries frightening. She started to sweat and she felt sick. She had only heard this from at least one floor away before. But between each bout of grunting and moaning Dora got back to normal and said, ‘It’s all right Rose. The babby’ll not be long now.’
    Rose ran up and down with water and cloths and alternated between her horrified fascination with the shadowy glimpses she kept getting of her mother’s private parts and with the great coils of fat embedded round Joan Freeman’s neck and arms and waist. Every inch of her looked as if she was padded with lard.
    Joan seemed completely unmoved by what Dora was going through. She sat down on the edge of the boys’ bed, her huge lap spreading across much of it. She drew her knitting out of her bag and sat in the candlelight with her head resting on her chins, pulling the brown wool round her stubby fingers.
    ‘Ain’t you got any more light than this?’ she said to Rose. ‘I can hardly see what I’m doing.’
    Rose swallowed down her retort that she wasn’t being paid to sit and do her knitting and went downstairs to find the small paraffin lamp that they hardly ever used.
    ‘How’s she getting on?’ Grace whispered. She was very pale with circles under her eyes. Violet had fallen asleep on her lap.
    ‘All right,’ Rose said, feeling a bit superior. ‘Shouldn’t be long now.’
    When she was half-way up to the attic she wished more than ever that she could retreat back down again. She heard her mother’s cries, louder and more anguished than they had been so far. She had to force herself to climb the rest of the stairs.
    ‘Please don’t let me ever, ever have to do that,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I’ll work as hard as I can, I’ll get the best job I can. But don’t let me have to have babbies!’
    When she reached the top the light showed her Dora kneeling now on the bed on all fours like a dog. Her head was hanging down between her shoulders and she was panting and gasping. When she heard Rose she lifted her head. Her face was soaked with sweat. Joan was still knitting complacently on the other bed.
    ‘There’s something wrong,’ Dora moaned.
    Rose hung the lamp on a hook on the wall and went to bathe Dora’s face, her hands trembling. Her mother’s nightshirt had ridden right up at the back so her behind and legs were on view and she could see her great swollen belly and her breasts dangling beneath her as she knelt on the bed. Rose felt sweat break out all over her again as well.
    ‘The babby – should be – coming down, but he’s not – budging,’ Dora