The Complete Helen Forrester 4-Book Memoir: Twopence to Cross the Mersey, Liverpool Miss, By the Waters of Liverpool, Lime Street at Two. Helen Forrester
widowed, had been married to a businessman who never failed, and who had come from a long line of ironmasters and merchants who always seemed to have done very well for themselves – she just would not understand.
The way home seemed incredibly long, and I paused at the bottom of Bold Street, to stand for a moment in the warmth of a shop doorway before continuing. A shopwalker behind the glass door frowned at me as I hauled the Chariot close in. The shoppers were thinning out rapidly and I watched them hurrying to their cars, parked at the kerb, or into Central Station. And there she was!
Joan! My own best friend!
She was sauntering down the pavement in her neat school uniform, her mother beside her, presumably here on one of her visits to her grandmother. I had not seen her since leaving my old home and, presumably, she knew nothing of my recent adventures – one day I had attended school with her; the next day I had been whisked away to Liverpool.
I started forward.
‘Joan!’ I cried, my heart so full of gladness I thought that I would burst with sheer joy. ‘Oh, Joan!’
The mother stopped, as did Joan. The smiles which had begun to curve on their lips died half born. Without a word, they both wheeled towards the road, crossed it and disappeared into Central Station.
I stared after them dumbly. They had recognized me. I knew they had. Then why had they not stopped and spoken to me?
A gentleman told me irritably to get out of the way and I became aware that the Chariot and I were blocking the pavement. Still dumbfounded, I turned the pram homeward and slowly pushed it up the hill, gazing vacantly before me.
Coming towards me, amid the well-dressed shoppers, was an apparition. A very thin thing draped in an indescribably dirty woollen garment which flapped hopelessly, hair which hung in rat’s tails over a wraithlike grey face, thin legs partially encased in black stockings torn at the knees and gaping at the thighs, flapping, broken canvas covering the feet. This thing was attached to another one which rolled drunkenly along on four bent wheels; it had a torn hood through which metal ribs poked rakishly.
I slowed down nervously, and then stared with dawning horror.
I was looking at myself in a dress-shop window.
It was a moment of terrifying revelation and I started to run away from myself, pushing the pram recklessly through groups of irate pedestrians, nearly running down a neatly gaitered bishop. Every instinct demanded that I run away and hide, and for a few minutes my feet were winged. Halfway up the hill, back in the shadow of St Luke’s, however, under-nourishment had its say, and I sank exhausted on the church steps, while Avril giggled contentedly in the pram after her rapid transit up the street
I was disgusted with myself. I felt I could have done more. I was old enough to know that I should wash myself; at least cold water was available. And if I could wash garments through for the children, I could have put some of my own through the same water. I realized, with some astonishment, that I had always been told what to do. The lives of all the children had until recently been strictly regulated by a whole heirachy of domestics, some of them very heavy-handed, and a father who had, at times, used a cane with sharp effect. I washed when told to wash, went to school when told to go, however irksome it seemed, got out my playthings when permission was given. Disobedience was a crime and to query or object to adult orders, which were given without any supporting explanation or reason for them, was quite unthinkable. I don’t think that I had ever had an original thought until I had been plunged into this queer life in Liverpool, where I had been given the job of looking after my brothers and sisters.
Now, sitting on the blackened stone steps of the soaring Gothic church, I realized that neither Father nor Mother nor Grandmother nor servant was particularly interested in me. With all the bitterness and unreasonableness of a budding teenager, I saw myself as a convenient tool of my parents, my only reason for existence that I could take the care of the children off them.
I fastened the two remaining buttons of my cardigan, got up and wheeled the Chariot slowly up Upper Duke Street, skirting St James Cemetery with some trepidation in the gathering gloom. For the first time, I tried to think constructively, to devise ways in which the family might get out of the morass in which it was floundering; but my experience was too limited and my mind too dulled by lack of use, my body by lack of food, for me to be able to come up with a possible solution. Greater minds than mine were having trouble with the same problem. We were but one family amid millions of others.
I cried openly as I trudged along, my glasses sliding slowly down my nose, the tears making white rivers in my grey face.
When my parents came in that evening, I again brought up the question of my going to school. I was always very nervous when trying to communicate with them and probably I mentioned the subject too diffidently, because when I suggested that I would have to complete my education before I could hope to go to work in the future, Mother simply dismissed me by saying, ‘Don’t be absurd. Go and put Avril to bed.’ Father laughed and added, ‘I hope no daughter of mine will ever have to go to work.’
Father’s kindly meant remark startled me. Even a young girl like myself knew that times were changing and more and more women were entering the labour force. Lancashire had, in addition, a long tradition of women working, and the only future I could visualize as holding an iota of happiness for myself was one which contained a career.
‘But …’ I began.
‘That is enough, Helen. Do as you are told.’
And Helen, being a coward, did as she was told.
With the exception of a weekly visit from an officer of the public assistance committee, which consisted of a quick counting of heads and a few questions snapped at my parents, we had no visitors. I was, therefore, surprised when I arrived home from one of my visits to the Pier Head to find a well-dressed gentleman standing at the door, asking Miss Sinford where he could find my father.
I waved at Alan, who was shepherding the other children along the road, and went up the steps backwards pulling the Chariot up with me. The gentleman retreated a couple of feet from me.
Miss Sinford noted the movement and said promptly, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not. Child, take this gentleman to your father,’ and did her usual vanishing trick into her room next to the front door.
The gentleman regarded me with obvious repulsion, but insisted on helping me up the stairs with the Chariot, which meant that Edward sailed up still sleeping and Avril had a wonderful ride.
Father was at home, reading one of the books from the small battered bookcase which formed part of the furniture of the apartment. He immediately offered his chair to the strange gentleman, who sat down reluctantly as he surveyed the smelly room. His rubicund face, plump figure and well-tailored clothes suggested a successful businessman of some kind.
He cleared his throat, rubbed his well-shaven chin, and said hesitantly, ‘I – er – we served in the same regiment – you wrote to our commanding officer. I was asked to call on you.’
Hope lit up my father’s face.
The gentleman again cleared his throat, as we stood, tense and silent round him.
‘I am authorized to make you a grant of five pounds from our regimental fund, if conditions seem to warrant it.’
He looked round again at the empty fireplace and the ragged, gaunt children watching him breathlessly, and sighed heavily.
Father nodded.
‘Could you show me your discharge papers?’
‘Yes, indeed I can.’
He took an old business envelope from the top of the bookcase and, from among a pile of birth certificates, finally extracted the precious papers, and handed them to our visitor.