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
yer lousy bitch.’
The shawl woman heaved herself to her feet, panting. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. When she saw blood on it, she screamed in mixed rage and terror.
‘I’ll get yer for this!’ she shrieked, at the same time putting a little distance between herself and her opponent.
Two of the dockers jumped the prostitute suddenly from behind, caught her arm and twisted it behind her back. While one held her, the other extracted a piece of razor blade from under one of her long nails and held it up for the crowd to see.
There was a threatening murmur.
‘Let me go,’ she shouted, her voice full of fear.
The men released her and she ran up the steps, her carpet slippers, still on her feet, flapping as they hit the stone.
We became aware of another heated altercation on the edge of the crowd. The pub had closed and its patrons were coming home, among them a huge, bull-necked man who was bellowing, ‘Ah’11 teach ’er to make a row in t’ street, ah will!’
His friends pulled anxiously at his shabby jacket sleeve and murmured, ‘Na, then, Bill. Na, then.’
With a sigh of delightful anticipation, the crowd opened to make way for the bull-necked man, while the prostitute vanished into the House of Sin and the sound of a bolt being shot on the inside of the door came clearly across the street
The bull-necked man charged through the expectant crowd, undoing his trouser belt as he came. His seamed face was red with rage and the muscles and veins of his neck bulged above the neck-band of his union shirt. With a smart pull, he whipped his belt out and, swinging it by its buckle, he advanced on the shawl woman, who came towards him, her shawl again draped across her back, but her huge bosom almost bare. She threw back her shoulders to exhibit her ample charm and swayed her hips seductively. Blood still trickled down her cheek but she smiled slyly at the newcomer.
‘Na, then, our Mary Ann. What yer think yer doing? I won’t stand for it, d’ yer hear me!’
She stuck her chin in the air and spat an epithet at him.
Infuriated, he shot out a huge red fist, tore at her bun, took a firm hold on the tumbling plaits and twisted her by her hair till her back was towards him. Then, lifting his belt he brought it down hard on her buttocks. She screamed, and her shawl fell off again, revealing her fat, naked shoulders already scratched in the fight. A second time the belt whistled through the air and a red welt appeared across the buxom shoulders.
I started up with a cry of horror, but one of the women who lived in our house pushed me sharply down on to the step again.
‘Let him be,’ she hissed. ‘She loves it’
‘Loves it?’ I hissed back. ‘But she’s being hurt!’ And I winced as the belt cracked down again, and the woman screamed.
The crowd was silent now, tense with the same tenseness of dogs sitting in front of a house where there is a bitch in heat I felt sick.
The woman from our house said kindly, ‘You go inside and leave the likes of them to themselves.’
Alan and I, both frightened, ran into the hall of our house, from which vantage point we continued to watch.
Beating her steadily, while the shawl woman alternately screamed and cursed, the man was gradually dragging the woman through the crowd and over the cross-road to a smaller house than ours farther down the street, where apparently they lived. He flung her against the closed door and she stood with her back against it, sobbing wildly. The man threw himself against her, and the crowd whooped.
‘Go it, Bill,’ they shouted.
Bill reached behind his wife and turned the door knob of his home, put his hand on the woman’s naked breast and pushed her, so that she seemed to fly backwards into the narrow hall. He followed, and slammed the door after him.
Regretfully, the crowd slowly broke up and departed. Alan and I, both shaking with nervous tension, went slowly up to our apartment
Fiona was sitting by the window having watched the same scene from a better vantage point. She had evidently been much impressed by the prostitute.
‘Wasn’t it exciting, Helen? Wasn’t the little woman opposite brave to fight that big, fat shawl woman? What were they fighting about?’
‘I am not sure,’ I said untruthfully.
Fiona said, ‘You should draw a picture of it, Helen.’
I laughed.
‘I don’t think Mummy or Daddy would like me to draw pictures of things like that Come along, I think you had better go to bed.’
Alan was wandering about the dark room and he came, finally, and stood by us, hands in pockets, looking down at the street which was now practically empty, except for one or two jolly-looking sailors rolling unsteadily up the steps of the House of Sin.
‘Why didn’t you go to art school, Helen?’ Alan asked unexpectedly.
I turned and asked in surprise, ‘Art school? What do you mean?’
The response was truly brotherly.
‘Art school, stupid. What do you think I meant? You know, when you got the scholarship. I always meant to ask you, but there never seems to be much peace for conversations.’
‘Scholarship? I have never won a scholarship, you know that’
‘Heavens, you are dumb! Don’t you remember – you sat for it when you got caught and had to go back to school.’
Alan looked at me as if I had lost my reason.
‘Oh, that I didn’t get it. I never heard anything about it, after Mr Piper entered my name for it.’
‘But – but –’ stammered Alan, ‘Mr Browning – the headmaster – asked me only the other day how you were getting on, and I meant to ask you what happened. If you got it, why didn’t you go to art school? It would have been wonderful for you.’
The episode in the street had left me rather trembly and I sat down suddenly as a horrible suspicion went through my head.
Had I indeed won the scholarship? If I had, my parents would have been informed of it. Had they refused it on my behalf? They were perfectly entitled to do so – schooling was not compulsory after the age of fourteen.
This idea was so repulsive to me that at first I could not accept it Surely, my parents would realize that it was a wonderful opportunity for me. Surely, they would have my interests at heart. It must be a mistake – I could not have won.
Yet if Alan’s headmaster said I had won, won I had. He would not forget that one of the few scholarships available at that time had been awarded to his school.
‘If I won,’ I said through clenched teeth, ‘I was never told about it.’
‘How queer,’ said Alan, and Fiona’s enormous eyes widened even farther as she, too, considered the matter. ‘You’d better ask Mummy or Daddy.’
Such a rush of pain went through my skimpy body that I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned my head nearly down to my knees. In little gasps, I said, ‘I don’t think I want to ask them. I don’t think I can bear to.’
‘I’ll ask,’ said Alan stoutly. ‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Oh no, Alan,’ I said. ‘You will only be told that it’s none of your business – and the whole family will be upset.’
He knew I was right and was silent.
I was almost certain in my mind that my parents had just not told me because my attendance at school for a prolonged period would have compounded their difficulties; they would have lost their baby-sitter and housekeeper – and they would have had to pay a substitute.
I rocked myself backwards and