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
Mother’s teeth began to loosen. Brian suffered torture from gumboils. His first teeth had been good but he had several large cavities in his second ones, caused, perhaps, by the large amount of white bread in his diet. His wizened face would swell up and he would cry hour after hour, until finally the abscess would burst and the pain would be reduced. On one occasion his weeping was heard as far away as the basement of the house; and Mrs Hicks, prodded by her out-of-work, bricklayer husband, made the long journey up the stairs, to inquire what was the matter.
‘He’s got a bad tooth,’ I explained. ‘He can’t go to school today, because it hurts too much.’
‘Well, poor luv!’ she exclaimed, her double chin, with its little crown of spiky hairs, wobbling sympathetically. ‘Na, then, I got some oil of cloves. Come daanstairs with me, luv,’ she called to Brian, who was hovering nervously in the background. ‘Ah got somethin’ as will help yer. Come on, na.’
Brian allowed himself to be beguiled downstairs, where he spent the afternoon lying on Mrs Hicks’s horsehair sofa in front of her blazing fire, having hot cloths put on his cheeks and quantities of bitter oil of cloves dabbed into his cavities.
Nobody had ever made such a fuss of him, and, despite the pain and the foul taste of oil of cloves, he loved it. He loved also the warmth, the cosiness and the old tin teapot keeping its contents warm on the hob.
Mr Hicks called him a brave lad, and, when he was feeling better, and was ready to return to our cold, clammy apartment, Mrs Hicks invited him to come down again on a day when his teeth were not hurting, and have a cup of tea and a homemade scone with them.
He came back full of glee, in spite of his swollen face, and remained Mr and Mrs Hicks’s devoted friend and message-runner for years.
The Hickses had so little, and yet they managed to make their dark basement so cosy. Mrs Hicks must have been an excellent housekeeper and, unlike many of her neighbours, she understood the nutritional value of many cheap foods like herrings and lentils, and she pointed out to me that brown bread was better than white. My mother, like many middle-class English people at that time, knew very little about the need for a well-balanced diet.
Another good cook was the Spanish lady who had given us the Chariot. I found she had a Spanish husband, who was a warehouseman in one of the fruit warehouses near the Fruit Exchange, and he kept her well supplied with oranges, apples and other delicacies in season. He was, she confided to me as we sat on the steps in the sun, a man of choleric temper and colossal jealousy. But, ah me, what a man!
I smiled sympathetically, and bounced Edward up and down on my knee, to his great delight.
She pulled her black, knitted shawl tightly round her shoulders, and looked at me coquettishly.
‘You not understand yet, I think. But you learn.’
‘I expect so,’ I replied guardedly, not at all sure what I would learn but sensing it would be something interesting.
She cooed in Spanish to Edward.
He could crawl a little now, but he was not a pretty baby. His head, which looked too big, was covered with scurf, and his stomach stuck out grotesquely. His smile, however, was sweet as he responded to the Spanish words.
‘My last boy, Peter, he go to school with your Tony. Say your Tony very clever – can read well and do his arithmetic.’
This was news to me, there being no contact between home and school. My father, eternally busy at being unemployed, had given no consideration to his children’s progress. My mother, after the brimstone and treacle season came to an end, about the end of May, kept trying unsuccessfully for other work, and long walks to see prospective employers took up much of her time. She was now well, in the sense that she had recovered from Edward’s birth and her subsequent major operation, but she was nearly starving and was still walking the razor’s edge between mental health and nervous breakdown. She was a mere wreckage of the lovely woman she had been a short eighteen months previously.
The Spanish lady was speaking again.
‘What your Dadda work at?’
‘He is registered as a bookkeeper-clerk.’
I felt reticent. I did not want to tell our story to anyone who asked, and I parried all further questions.
Frequently, I walked down the avenue to Princes Park and, seated on the sun-warmed bench in the rose garden, had long conversations with the old gentleman who had defended us against the parkkeeper.
‘I was never rich,’ he once volunteered in his precise English. ‘I have always worked as an interpreter – and I still do sometimes interpret for Arab and Chinese seamen in the magistrate’s court.’
‘Were you born in China, sir?’ I ventured.
‘No. I was born in Lebanon. My father was a German and, as I think I told you once, Mother was an Arab. So I had three languages – German, Arabic and French, which is widely spoken in Lebanon. Father was an engineer by profession and I had the chance to learn Chinese and English while he was working in Singapore, then Spanish in Mexico and Portuguese in Brazil. I taught myself Italian.’ He paused for breath, and then went on, ‘Now I study Greek and Hebrew, so that I can study the Scriptures in more detail.’
I was awed by such a catalogue of learning.
‘You must have been able to live quite comfortably,’ I hazarded.
‘I had sufficient. But, you must know, child, that scholarship does not often bring one money – one can earn, yes – but it is the enrichment of the mind rather than of the pocket which it gives.’ He laughed softly. ‘I was rich in friends, a good wife, three sons …’ His voice broke, and he stopped.
‘Do your boys live with you?’ I inquired, wondering that he had not mentioned them before.
He looked at me absently.
‘My boys – my wonderful boys – all died in the war. My dear wife followed them three years ago. Soon I shall join them.’ He snapped his little book shut as if to show how suddenly he would finish.
I was ashamed at having pried into his affairs. Adult suffering had a way of springing upon one from unexpected sources, and I had yet to learn how heavy a burden the adult world carried at times.
‘I’m truly sorry to have been so impertinent,’ I mumbled.
I hoped passionately that he would not die. He was the only clean, civilized person I knew in Liverpool; and he was as wise as my grandmother, who lived so far away, a whole twopence away, in the Wirral. That my parents were civilized did not occur to me. They always seemed to be so far away from me.
The old gentleman shook his depression away, realized I was distressed and comforted me.
‘When you are eighty-one years old, you look forward to being once more with your loved ones,’ he said.
We sat quietly together. I tended to agree with him that death was something to look forward to.
‘Do you believe in God – and Heaven?’ I asked timidly.
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘My mother was a Mohamedan and my father was a Lutheran, and neither impressed a religion upon me. They both explained their beliefs to me, but they made me study and search for God.’
‘We are Church of England,’ I said. ‘That is …’ I hesitated. ‘That is, when we are clean and rich we are Church of England. I suppose at present we are nothing.’ I laughed a little guiltily. ‘I have never been inside a church in Liverpool. When we were at home, the minister called from time to time – but he does not do so here. I suppose we are too wicked.’
He sat contemplating the placid lake for a minute, and then asked, ‘Has nobody from your Church been to see you?’
‘Yes. When we first came, a very kind priest in a long black robe brought us some food. He was very nice. I do not think our present house is in his parish.’
‘You