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
for her. ‘Your mother is just able to manage if she goes out into the fresh air or works among adults,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know what might happen to her if she was confined with a whining baby.’
‘He doesn’t whine,’ I exclaimed angrily. ‘And I nearly go mad trying to make this beastly fire and buy us enough to eat, and … and … ’ I burst into loud crying.
That was the beginning of a tremendous family row, in which everyone joined.
Alan tried to soothe me. ‘You could go back to school when Edward’s bigger,’ he said hopefully.
‘Once I am fourteen the school won’t take me back,’ I screamed in an abandonment of rage.
‘Stop making an exhibition of yourself,’ said Father. ‘When I get a job, you will be able to go to finishing school.’
I looked at him scornfully. French finishing schools were expensive and seemed far removed from the realities of life in Liverpool.
Fiona began to cry. ‘Don’t be cross with Helen, Daddy.’
‘Oh, shut up, Fiona,’ I snarled.
‘I want my tea,’ demanded Avril.
I slapped her.
She immediately began to bellow like a lovesick moose.
This brought Tony hotly to her defence and a smart rebuke to me from Father.
Into the uproar came Mother, weary and hungry.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked, putting down her battered handbag.
‘Helen wants to go to evening school and I have told her that it is impractical, because the school inspectors would pick her up as being young enough for day school.’
‘Well, why can’t I go to day school?’
Mother’s lips began to tremble. ‘You are needed at home, dear.’
‘No, I am not. You can very well look after the children.’
‘I have to go to work. The doctor recommended it. And I am the most likely one to get work.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. Thirteen-year-olds can be very cruel.
‘The general welfare of the family demands that you stay home.’
‘I won’t!’
Mother suddenly started to cry hysterically, shrieking that it was too much and I was a hard-hearted, thankless daughter.
‘I have nothing to be thankful for,’ I retorted bitterly.
‘Helen, Helen, don’t!’ Fiona whispered, her eyes wide and terrified, as she clutched my arm. Alan, from across the room, implored me silently.
The fight went out of me. I turned to Fiona and let her lead me back to our newspaper bed. There, crouched together with my head on her shoulder, I wept myself to exhaustion. I had lost my Waterloo.
By mid-May, Fiona seemed well enough to go back to school. She was by nature placid to the point of apathy, and her gentle pliability made her popular at school. At home, she received no attention and, without playthings, she began to get bored and to ask to be allowed to return to the more lively world of school. My parents had not mentioned school to her. They went out on their various rounds of employment agencies, libraries, etc., and seemed to have forgotten her. I, therefore, prepared her for school one morning as best I could.
At the last moment she balked.
‘I feel shy,’ she said, standing uneasily in the dark hall and rubbing one foot against the other. ‘And I haven’t got twopence for the fee. Alan should have waited for me.’
Impatiently I thrust twopence into her hand from the daily shilling I received to buy food. But still she would not move and stood biting her nails and staring anxiously through the glass door at the busy street.
‘Come with me,’ she demanded.
In a home as empty as ours, there was little for me to do, so I put Edward and Avril into the Chariot and together we walked the four blocks to school.
The school was a fine, stone building, matching architecturally the adjoining church and presbytery. A high, iron railing surrounded the playground, and we paused by the gate to see if we could find one of Fiona’s playmates, so that she would not feel so lonely when going into school.
A pretty lady teacher came hurrying towards the gate. When she saw Fiona she smiled at her through the veil of her smart, little hat.
‘Good morning, Fiona. I am glad to see you back. Are you feeling quite well again now? Alan told me that you were in hospital.’
She ran her eyes over Fiona’s thin, underclothed body and returned Fiona’s angelic, worshipping smile. Then she looked at me in a puzzled fashion. A question trembled on her lips.
Fiona had been brought up properly and she immediately said politely, ‘Miss Brough, may I introduce my elder sister, Helen, and this is Avril and this is my baby brother, Edward.’
Miss Brough’s brow cleared.
She said, ‘How do you do.’
I murmured, ‘Very well, thank you.’
‘I don’t remember you going through our school, my dear,’ she remarked to me. ‘You must have left before I came – I have only been here three years.’ She chucked Edward under the chin with a finger clothed in good brown leather. Then she looked at me again, more sharply. ‘But that is not possible – you are quite young.’ She laughed. ‘You must have gone to school somewhere else.’
My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth and I could not answer.
Fiona said brightly, ‘She used to go to our old school. She has never been to school in Liverpool.’
‘Haven’t you, my dear?’
‘No, Miss Brough.’
I was nearly tongue-tied with fear of what my parents would say if they found out about this conversation.
She was looking at me keenly now, and must have seen the stark fright in my eyes. She pursed her delicately painted lips, and said, ‘Well, never mind. Fiona, hurry up or you will be late.’
The school bell began to ring and she smiled reassuringly at me and said, ‘Goodbye. Goodbye, Avril and Edward.’
‘Goodbye,’ I muttered through clenched teeth.
My legs were shaking so much that I could not start the pram. I watched her disappear through the school’s ornately carved doorway before, at last, I could make my feet move.
I said nothing to my parents.
A week later a school attendance officer called upon my parents while I was out. How they evaded being prosecuted and sent to prison for my long truancy I will never know. Perhaps their calm authoritative manners made even school attendance officers quail. My immediate attendance was, however, ordered.
I faced two outraged parents every day for the next six weeks until my fourteenth birthday. The day after that, I was back home again looking after Edward.
I had never been to an elementary school, and I found myself far ahead of the other children in the class in everything except mathematics. It was, however, bliss to hold a pencil in my unaccustomed fingers and to try my wits against the work put before me.
This school had a new and enthusiastic drawing-master. He had to teach children who, for the most part, hardly knew that artists created pictures, and he had only pencils, paper and pastel crayons with which to work, but at my first lesson he did his utmost to explain perspective to the disinterested class.
‘Any questions?’ he asked.
While the rest of the class stared at him glumly, I put up my hand.
‘Could