My Daughter, My Mother by Annie Murray Read Free Book Online Page A

adored Tommy: he was her hero. She loved going to the wharf with him – or anywhere that he would let her tag along.
    She must have been hungry, though she wasn’t thinking about that until the door slowly opened and there was Mom, bent over, clinging to the door, a loaf under her arm. Catching a whiff of the fresh bread made the saliva gather in her mouth. Mom had her coat on, even though the morning was quite warm, and it hung on her, far too loose now.
    Mom was scarcely more than a skeleton. Before she fell ill she had appeared careworn, older than her years. Now, at forty-two, Alice Winters looked like an old woman. She had been left a widow with three children, Margaret’s half-sister and half-brothers, Elsie, Edwin and Cyril, and had worked her fingers to the bone in factories, cleaning, taking in washing, anything to keep them out of the clutches of the parish. Those years had drained away her youthful looks.
    Alice had never moved far, either. Born in Cregoe Street – an old district packed with factories and jerry-built houses, edged by wharves and railway tracks, and a stone’s throw from the middle of Birmingham – she’d ended up just round the corner in Upper Ridley Street. After those years struggling alone, Ted Winters, dark-eyed and stocky, had come along and wooed her. Ted was a widower with a son killed in the Great War, or so he said. Alice had had two more children with him in the 1930s: Tommy and Margaret. Hoping for rescue, for someone to share the load, Alice had found herself a man who looked sturdy and competent, who could turn on the charm all right, but who was in fact an idle boozer. He was out of work as much as in, and never lifted a finger to help her, even in her dying weeks.
    ‘Alice?’ Margaret heard a concerned voice from the yard. ‘Oh, bab, you shouldn’t be up and about like this! Oh my Lord, just look at the state of yer.’
    It was Mrs Jennings from next door, a soft, rounded woman, swathed in a stained pinner, her pale-brown hair plaited and caught up roughly at the back and secured with kirby grips. She took Alice’s arm.
    ‘What on earth’ve you been doing? Have you been down the shops?’ Dora Jennings sounded appalled. ‘Come on – let’s get you in and looked after.’
    Margaret watched. Mom seemed unable to move. She was bent over, air passing in and out of her in shallow gasps, the skin stretched over her knuckles as she clung to the door. She didn’t look the same any more. Her face was so pinched that her eyes and nose seemed to have grown and her cheekbones jutted, while the rest of her face had sunken in.
    ‘I can’t.’ Alice’s voice had gone high and reedy and it was almost a sob. ‘Give us a minute. Just leave me . . .’
    ‘Give me the bread – come on, take my arm.’ In a moment Dora Jennings managed to steer the sick woman inside. The downstairs of these houses, which opened onto a yard and backed onto another row of dwellings facing the street, consisted of only one room and a minute scullery. The range and the table took up most of the space, so it was only a couple of steps to get the poor woman, now a bag of bones, onto a chair. Alice sank down with a moan, her head in her hands, having to give all her strength to drawing breath.
    ‘I’ll make yer a cuppa tea: you need summat inside yer.’ Dora Jennings sounded severe because she was in a panic. ‘My goodness me, look at yer – and where’s that husband of yours? He wants stringing up, that he does!’ The sight of Alice Winters was a disturbing one. Her neighbour hurried out to the tap with the kettle and came back to stoke the range. ‘Where’ve you been, Alice, in heaven’s name?’
    Mrs Jennings hadn’t noticed Margaret sitting there. Margaret watched as she pulled another chair close to her mother and gently clasped her bony hand.
    Alice, lifting her head, managed to speak in between pauses for breath. ‘I had to go to Auntie’s – get summat for the little’uns. I took