Lime Street at Two. Helen Forrester
could be ruined by such a catastrophe; every stitch in the house could be torn, impregnated by glass or ruined by spouting water-pipes and thick dust. Everything had to be replaced – and Bootle was poor, terribly poor.
One frosty morning, as I hastened up the street, I saw that the office had again lost its windows during the night. My exhausted colleague had succumbed to influenza, and I wondered who I should talk to in the Town Hall in order to get a fast replacement of the glass.
As I unlocked the front door I heard the sound of voices. At first I thought it was the women who ran another charity on the ground floor, but then I realised with alarm that it was men’s voices I was listening to.
The door of the clothing room was ajar, and I ran forward and flung it wide.
A sheet had been spread over the centre of the floor and two men and a woman were tossing clothing on to it.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ I asked indignantly.
One man paused and looked up at me. He was burly, in shirt sleeves, with huge muscular arms covered with black hairs. A docker, I guessed.
‘You get out of here,’ he growled. ‘And mind your own business.’
‘This is my business.’ My voice rose in anger. ‘You don’t belong here. Get out yourself before I call the police.’
The three dropped the clothing they were holding, and looked uncertainly at each other. They did not move.
‘OK. I’ll call them.’ I moved towards the door.
‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ Both men advanced on me, their feet tangling in the pile of clothing lying on the sheet.
I quickly pulled the door shut in their path. The lock was broken, but it might hold them up for a second or two.
Light and fleet, I sped up the stairs, thrust the key into the lock of our office, slipped inside and locked it from the inside. I seized the telephone and thankfully asked the operator, ‘Police, quick.’
After a solid night of bombing, the police number was engaged. The men were pounding on the door and shouting threats. ‘Call the ARP. There are probably more people there,’ I told her.
Though she had been afraid of interrupting a police telephone conversation, the operator unhesitatingly broke into the conversation on the ARP phone, and asked for help.
The men outside must have heard the relief in my voice, as I said, ‘Thanks very much.’ By the time two volunteer wardens pounded up the stairs, the looters had fled.
I was still trembling when the first volunteer member of our staff arrived. I asked her to re-sort and hang up the clothing again, and a little later on, presumably as a result of the wardens’ report, our windows were boarded up by workmen, who arrived unbidden by me.
We had some funds which could be lent to men who had lost their tools in a raid or to replace smashed spectacles, and alleviate similar woes, which were not covered by any governmental source. Ready cash was kept in an old-fashioned cash box, locked in a cupboard overnight. On a bleak November day, while my superior was still sick, I put the cash box out, ready, on the desk, and went to the waiting-room to check the number of people there.
A boy passed the waiting-room door. I presumed he had brought a message from his family; it was a common occurrence, and I went back to deal with him.
The boy had flitted silently out, taking the cash box with him.
I was appalled, and immediately sent for the police.
Two plain clothes men, they sat and warmed themselves by our dim electric fire, and sighed and rubbed their hands.
‘Normally we could pick ’im up as quick as light,’ one of them said. ‘Anybody with that much money to spend sticks out like a sore toe. But now …’ he shrugged, ‘with all the high wages … well.’
The thief was never traced. It was a sore loss to our small organisation.
During my harsh days of mourning, I learned a lot of sad truths. It was a revelation to me that the poor would steal from the poor. Working-class solidarity had been preached to me consistently by Communists working in the main office; the poor stood shoulder to shoulder against the wicked, exploiting upper classes. But, in truth, they prey on each other, with a ruthlessness which was, and still is, hard to swallow. Who has not seen decent city-built housing, built specifically to help those who could not afford much rent, stripped bare as a skeleton, of tiles, fittings, lead for the roof, by people who must have been close neighbours, to know even that the house was not yet occupied?
There is a saying in Liverpool, ‘If it isn’t nailed down, sit on it.’ I now understood what it meant, and I became very careful.
Particularly during the war, great targets for thieves were the gas and electric meters in the cellars of damaged houses in the poorer areas. These meters had to be fed either by pennies or shillings, and their cash boxes were temptingly full of money. In peacetime, they were often rifled at night. A slender youth would lift the manhole in front of the street door, normally used for the delivery of coal directly into the cellar, and slide through the opening. He soon prised open the drawer in which the money was collected, and was then hauled quietly out by an accomplice.
Though our house was not damaged at the time it happened, we twice had our meters broken into, and found, to our sorrow, that we had to pay the gas and electricity companies all over again.
One exasperated old man near us had had to pay a huge gas bill because thieves had robbed his meter. Afterwards, he carefully tied a ship’s bell to the underpart of the manhole cover.
One early morning, as I was washing myself in the kitchen, I heard the sonorous ding-dong of the bell, and about half a minute later, shrieks and curses in the street. The old man had caught a youth and was giving him a sound beating with a broomstick, a far more effective punishment than a lecture from a magistrate.
It was October, and nearly five months since I had bid Harry a hasty goodbye, when he embarked on his last voyage. I still felt very forlorn and terribly alone, despite a large family. I had spent this Saturday afternoon walking over to see the pawnbroker, to retrieve a cotton-wrapped bundle containing two of my dresses, a skirt and cardigan, which Mother had pawned. My return journey took me past the house in which we had rented two freezing attic rooms, when we first came to Liverpool.
Seated on the stone steps which led down from the pavement to her basement home was Mrs Hicks. Bundled up in a series of woollen cardigans, she was enjoying the late October sunshine.
She was an old friend, and when she saw me, she got up from the steps and dusted her black skirt with her hands.
‘’Allo, luv,’ she greeted me in surprise. ‘’Ow are yer? Come in. Haven’t seen you in ages.’ She pulled open the cast-iron gate which protected the steps.
I smiled at her and carefully eased myself past the gate and on to the narrow steps, to follow her down and through the heavy door under the sweep of steps that led up to the main entrance of the house.
The basement rooms in which she lived had originally been the kitchens of the house. Thick, vertical iron bars still guarded the windows, and the interior still smelled of damp and much scrubbing with pine disinfectant.
The sun did not penetrate her home, and in the gloom, she beamed at me, every wrinkle and crease of her face suggesting battles won or lost, patience learned. She had been very kind to all of us in the bitter days when, up in the attic, we had nearly starved.
Brian had been her particular friend, and she asked after him, as she shut the outer door. I told her he was well and had work.
‘Sit down, now. We’ll have a cuppa tea. See, the kettle’s on the boil,’ and she pointed to an iron kettle on the hob, belching steam