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
home and stared dumbly at her second daughter. It was as if she could not let any more troubles in upon herself; she seemed numbed, unable to accept any more. Her unkempt hair had escaped from her hat and hung in straggling oily tails down to her shoulders. Her hands were swollen with chilblains, in spite of Mrs Hicks’s gloves, and she stood awkwardly, because the heels of her shoes were worn down so badly that she walked almost as if she was bandy-legged.
‘We must keep her covered,’ she said at last
It was difficult to see in the reflected light from the street lamp, and Father said worriedly, ‘I don’t know how the doctor is going to be able to see to examine her – if he comes.’
‘Couldn’t we borrow a shilling to put in the electric meter?’ I asked.
‘Brian went down and tried the couple below; they didn’t have one. I can’t ask Mrs Foster – we still owe her a week’s rent – and I can’t ask Mrs Hicks because I haven’t yet paid her back the last shilling I borrowed.’
This was the first intimation I had had of his borrowing from the other tenants; it accounted for a general coldness towards us recently.
Without a watch it was difficult to tell the time, but both house and street were quiet when the front door bell rang. Hopefully, Brian pounded down the stairs to open the door.
A firm voice said, ‘We can’t afford to fall down this black pit – I’ll put my flashlight on.’
Brian laughed shrilly and called, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Helen! The doctor has come!’
The bedroom door opened and the light of a torch blinded me momentarily. The doctor must have had long experience of the straits of poverty to carry such a powerful torch.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Father, his voice filled with relief.
I stood up respectfully as the doctor put down his bag.
‘Now, what have we here?’ he asked as he got out his stethoscope, and then took Fiona’s wrist in long, capable fingers.
Father explained the symptoms and I nearly stopped breathing as the doctor listened to his patient’s labouring lungs and frequent coughing.
‘Pleurisy, I think,’ he said. ‘She must have hospital treatment immediately. I will go and telephone the Children’s Sanatorium, and arrange for an ambulance.’
Father whispered, ‘It isn’t tuberculosis, is it?’ In those days, tuberculosis was still a major killer.
‘I doubt it. The hospital will take X-rays.’ He stood looking down at Fiona’s face by the light of the torch. ‘Does she have a mother?’
‘Yes,’ Father replied. ‘You kindly took some stitches out for her after an abdominal operation some time ago.’
‘Oh, did I,’ he said absently, and then rather more alertly, ‘Yes, I remember. How is she?’
Father looked uneasily at me, and then plunged in. ‘Her physical health has improved – as far as it can in our circumstances.’ He paused, and then added, ‘She isn’t herself, though.’
The doctor nodded understandingly. He did not offer any more help. He would deal with our emergency; he could not do more. He had to treat first those patients who could pay. In the torchlight I could see the frayed cuffs of his overcoat and I guessed that he had very little himself.
The doctor asked to see Mother, who had been up in the attic room dealing with Tony. Tony had had a nightmare and had woken up screaming.
When she came, he instructed her to get Fiona ready for hospital.
Mother said in a flat tone of voice, ‘There is nothing to do. She must go as she is. She has no other garments than those she has on – and I cannot wash her in cold water in her present state.’
So Fiona went to a huge hospital on the farther outskirts of the city, without benefit of bath, tooth-brush or nightgown, and my poor, crushed mother suffered the indignity of seeing her almost unconscious child stripped of her clothes and plunged into a disinfecting bath, her head rolling on her neck as the probationers washed her crawling hair. The tattered clothes were rolled into a bundle and handed to Mother, with the curt information that she could wait.
Mother was used to waiting – she spent her days in office and shop waiting-rooms as she applied for job after job with hordes of other applicants. Finally, about three in the morning a night nurse remembered that she was still there and told her she could go.
‘I want to know what is the matter with the child and I want to see her, now she is in bed.’
‘You will have to come on visiting days. Your doctor will be informed regarding her illness, and he will tell you.’
My mother lifted her hand to slap this inhuman automaton, but she was afraid of what might happen to Fiona if she made a fuss of any kind, so she turned slowly into the long, brown corridor to the front door.
She had come to the hospital with Fiona in the ambulance. Nobody had considered how she was to get home again. Outside was the dark and bitter cold of a February night.
She paused on the step, shaken by the knowledge that the only way to get home was to walk the seven miles to our part of the city. She was not even sure of the route.
The city was completely quiet and, emboldened by this, she set out, following the tram lines which glimmered in the gaslight. The freezing wind cut into her and, after a couple of miles, she was so cold that she was staggering in a ragged line along the pavement.
A dim light at a corner attracted her attention. It was a telephone box, and she quickened her step and sought refuge inside it.
Paralysed with cold, she stood there looking dully at the receiver on its hook, the telephone book hanging below it, and at two buttons marked ‘A’ and ‘B’. Idly, she read the instructions for making a call.
‘Insert two pennies. When the telephone is answered press Button A If no reply, press button B for the return of the twopence.’
Return of the twopence!
She hopefully pressed Button B.
Nothing happened, so, after a few minutes, she started again on her long hike homewards. An early tram rumbled past her, its lights flashing as it pitched and tossed its way along the lines.
When she reached the next public telephone box, she entered it and, without much hope, pressed Button B, and was immediately rewarded by the happy rattle of two falling pennies. She snatched them up and took the next tram home.
Father and I had waited up for her and were frantic with anxiety. Our anxiety turned to fury when we heard of the discourteous treatment she had received, and we did our best to comfort her before managing to get her to go to bed.
Our visits to the sanatorium were strictly regulated by whether we could find a telephone box where someone had forgotten to press Button B for the return of their twopence – and it was remarkable how many we found.
Though Fiona’s illness was long and our public assistance was reduced by the amount given for her maintenance, we were not altogether sorry. She was at least fed in hospital – great hunks of bread and margarine, bowls of sugarless porridge, meat stews, boiled puddings and steamed fish. Patients were expected to augment the hospital’s food by supplying their own sugar, jam, cake and fruit. We had nothing to bring Fiona. The diet was, however, so much better than she had received for many a month that, once the pleurisy was drained, she began to look much stronger.
She was sorely troubled by bugs in the hospital bed. Father complained, and was told roughly that she must have brought them in with her.
‘She was stripped and bathed when she came in,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the bed could be stoved.’
A ferocious female, who looked as if she had been put through a starch solution with her uniform, said cruelly, ‘Of course, it will be stoved – after your child is discharged.’