WE ARE RUNNING
We are running, the note and I.
The note is not written down, although she can write, my mother Vera, and read too, because she has to learn scripts for acting plays. The note is in my head because there was no time to write. I had to get out of the boarding house quick.
‘Fetch the doctor, Charley, fast as you can.’
On the bare floorboards – no carpet in these digs – our two bags, still unpacked – with our few clothes – mine and my sister’s, our mother’s, and our Dad’s, who is working down at the theatre, getting in the show. No time to fetch him back, nor any phone in the house to call for an ambulance. It’s all down to me. So I start running.
I think I was here before, was it one or two years ago? So many towns, black chimneys, sooty streets, fog, ships. This one is called Liverpool. I am eight. I can read the street names, but how do I find a doctor? Our landlady was out when my sister took bad. My eyes keep the picture flashing up before me as I run – Vi’s little face blue as cold milk, eyelids purple like plums, hair all tangled, with green velvet ribbon from yesterday drooping by her ear. My ma can nurse, doctor, dose, wrap us up warm, make a sugar butty, sing a lullaby, make the pain go away. Only not this time.
A shop, a corner shop! One light still on. Please be open. I push the door and a bell jangles. A fierce man bars my way,
‘We’re closed.’
I blurt out my note. He changes. His face a mirror of the fear in mine. He talks fast, stroking his chin.
‘Lerrus think… there’s Doctor Phillips, but he’s a fair step from here – the hospital, you could take the tram, no, still too far – the baby clinic on Sefton Park Road. Are you a good runner, laddy?
None of us had cars then. Nor phones. In my pocket, a farthing and a trouser button, not enough even to get a tram. The light is fading, but the street lamps are still unlit. I am out the door while his pointing finger is still fresh in my head, first right, second left, left again – no, right, no – oh God! I’ve forgotten! The sound of Vi’s choking cough is deafening me, I can’t get my thoughts straight in my head.
‘Why, here’s a little lad crying, what’s up?’ Two ladies, late going home, laden with oilcloth shopping bags, one smoking a Woodbine. I weep out my note, wiping my nose on my sleeve, and they come with me to the corner and point again – that way, run, it’s not far, they could still be open, you can do it…
The baby clinic is cold and the walls are painted shiny green. There are no babies there. A nurse is sitting on a metal chair writing in a big book.
‘Please…my sister… a doctor… now…’
She pulls a wooden box towards her and begins looking through hundreds of little cards, frowning.
‘Name? Your sister’s name? ‘
‘Vi – Violet Edwards.’
‘When was she registered with us?’
‘No, please, Miss, just let the doctor come now, my mother will explain, we’re theatre people, we don’t live here – ‘
The nurse makes a sour face with her lips.
‘Even theatre people have to obey the rules – ‘
I am desperate, like a hunted cat in a circus. I see a door and I bang on it, shouting my note and she gets up and pins my arms behind my back, pinching them to the bone.
‘The doctor is busy – ‘
‘Nurse, I’ll take care of this.’
Thank Jesus, he is kind! Whiskers,, grey hair, older than my Dad, with a white coat and a metal thing to listen to Vi’s chest already round his neck. He gets his bag. He needs a stick to walk. All the time asking me questions, but gentle. He puts on a black coat and a muffler scarf.
‘Is it raining?’
‘Yes –no – I don’t know – please, Mister, can we go –
‘Well, you look wet enough – ‘
He finds his brown trilby hat. I know it is a trilby because there was a play called Trilby my mother was in and she explained about the hat.
He has a car. He makes a sign to me to get in. The car starts.
‘Now, what’s your address?’
Black darkness spills into my head like a blot of ink, spreading, drowning my wits. The address. Think, Charley, look lively, remember it!
We’d only just arrived from Manchester toLime Street station. We’d walked to the digs as it grew dark.A street like hundreds of others, a house in a terrace, jammed tight as accordion keys, like as peas in a pod. The digs. Address. Did Ma say it? Did she tell me? Her face like an angry bird, eyes staring, wishing me gone, and Vi letting go holding my finger, eyes drooping… I’m biting my lip not to cry. I have to say something now, it all depends on me. Anything is better than staying here outside the baby clinic, sitting in the car with the doctor who could be saving Vi’s life.
‘You go down here, then there by the street lamp, now down this road, and that road – and the house is – I think it has a blue door with a bush in the garden…’
And by some miracle we are there and the door isn’t blue, it is green, but it is our digs. The doctor takes up his little black leather bag and goes inside. His leather soles and the walking stick sound like an old pony clopping up the wooden stairs. I don’t go with him. I think I want to, but my mother might be angry. I wait outside and now it is raining hard. I think about my Dad, who won’t be home until the show is got into the theatre and all the staff are paid off.
The green front door opens. The doctor comes out. He is looking down at the path. He sees me. He is trying to find some words. He puts out his hand. I put out mine, He shakes my hand, as if I was my Dad, or as if we were already at a funeral.
He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. Nods to me. Gets in his car and drives away.
I go upstairs. The gas lamps are lit in the room. My mother is sitting in the one armchair, a red plush chair, holding Vi in her arms. Everything is dead quiet. I don’t know what to do. I look at my ma, but she is not looking at me, she is looking down at Vi, who is wrapped in a yellow shawl. I can see a bit of her ringlets showing, that is all. On the floor are her new shoes, her pretty shoes,. She only wore them the once. We bought them inWidnes market and she chose the colour. They were too big, but Ma said she would soon grow into them. Now I think of it, they were her birthday present. She was two last week.
My mother looks up and sees me. I am too small for her sadness. I want to go to her but she holds the baby between us like a shield. I have done something wrong. I haven’t saved Vi’s life.
‘I ran as fast as I could – ‘
She waves my words away as if they were flies. She is shaking her head. Does she not believe me?
I drop down on the floor and pick up one of Vi’s shoes.
‘Don’t! don’t you touch those!’ she whispers, but it is enough to make me freeze, with a choking in my throat like the one that killed my sister, a hotness and hardness I cannot cough away.
‘Ma, I did my best.’
She looks at me then, really looks at me.
‘You did your best.’
But she says it without love, cold like a stone.
‘I tried, I ran as fast as I could.’
‘You tried.’
‘I didn’t know the way. ‘
‘Not fast enough, son. You didn’t try hard enough. Here she is.’ And she opens the shawl and I see Vi’s little head flopping on her arm, her eyes closed, not choking or blue any more, but peaceful.
‘Now take those shoes and wrap them in paper and put them in my bag. They were her best shoes. Pitty shoes, she called them. Vi’s pitty shoes.’
©Frances Kay
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