Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  Another day was spent walking to the offices of the public-assistance committee, Tony's "Mr. Parish." Here he stood in a long queue again, soaked by rain or frozen in the winter wind, and received his precious forty-three shillings a week. He then walked home. On the other three mornings a week, he went to the public library, scanned the advertisements in the newspapers in the reading room, and wrote replies to those oflFering work. Then he walked all the way into the center of town to deliver his replies to the offices of the Liverpool Echo, because we had no money for stamps—in those days three-halfpence for a letter.

  His shoes wore through at the soles, and he stuffed them with cardboard begged from the comer grocery shop, until the holes were so big that the cardboard would not stay in place. Without tools he could not hope to mend them himself, so one week we very nearly starved completely while we paid the shoemaker. He had not had a haircut or a clean shirt for a month, though he had managed to wash himself. His socks had very little left from the ankle down, and I remember his blue, frozen feet sticking out of them when he removed his soaking wet shoes on his return in the evenings. I think it was rubbing his feet with my hands which truly brought home to me our desperate position. I would rub until I had the circulation going again, and he would whistle under his breath with the pain of it, and each time it happened my heart broke anew.

  For a month or more, he never spoke to anyone outside the family, except the city and government clerks. One morning, however, Father was drawn into sympathetic conversation with

  his fellow sufferers. They were, for the most part, respectable working men, whose jobs were dependent upon the ships which went in and out of the port of Liverpool in normal times. They were curious about my father, because he spoke like an educated man. They could not imagine that anyone highly educated could be unemployed; they assumed, and Father did not disillusion them, that he had been a senior clerk in one of the shipping companies. They were friendly, and as Father met them again and again, they began to fill him in on how to stay alive under almost impossible circumstances.

  Many of them had wives who went out cleaning private homes or worked in stores to augment their parish relief; though these earnings should have been declared to the public-assistance committee, they were not, and they made all the difference between starvation and dying more slowly of malnutrition.

  "If you can live long enough, there just might be a job for you one morning," a leather-faced old warehouseman told him jokingly.

  There were agencies in the town, he was told, which would provide the odd pair of shoes or an old blanket for a child. There were regimental fimds willing to provide a little help to old soldiers. He gathered other scraps of information, which were revelations to a man who had never had to think twice about the basic necessities of life. An open fire, he was assured, could be kept going almost all day from the refuse of the streets—old shoes, scraps of paper, twigs, wooden boxes, potato peelings. If one was very ill or had a broken bone, the outpatients departments of most of the local hospitals would give some medical care. Pawnbrokers would take almost anything salable, and one could buy secondhand clothing from them. Junkyards would sometimes yield a much needed pram wheel or a piece for an old bike. One could travel from Liverpool to London by tramcar, if one knew the route, and it was much cheaper than going by train.

  By far the greatest proportion of the Liverpool work force was casual labor, dependent upon the erratic comings and goings of ships in the river, and most men were accustomed to being unemployed from time to time. Their pattern of life reflected this. They could never make a proper domestic budget, because they never knew from one week to the next what their earnings would be. Between jobs they "made do."

  Father thanked them gratefiilly and came home very thoughtful, marvehng at their sheer resihence and good nature in such adversity. But he could never manage to be as philosophical and optimistic as they were. He feared not only for himself but for his children's fiiture.

  All of us had colds, including the baby, and lacked even handkerchiefs, though we did our best by using newspaper culled from the grocer, who wrapped our small purchases of potatoes in it. Father began to realize that unless help came quickly the younger children would probably die from the first germ that infected them. The death rate in Liverpool, at that time, was one of the highest in the country and the infant mortality rate was correspondingly horrifying. He knew that we were worse oflp than most of the people who stood in the endless queues with him, since we did not draw the Liverpool level of relief, nor were we eligible for help with clothing which "Mr. Parish " sometimes gave out. No one, in all his conversations, happened to tell him that he was paying three times the rent that most people paid, and that this was largely what was crippling us.

  In those days there were no midday meals or drinks of milk at school to help children along. One good lady, who suggested that the skimmed milk thrown down the drain by one of the city's bigger dairies might be given free to children in the elementary schools, was soundly snubbed for her socialistic ideas.

  Father swallowed what little pride he had left. He sat down at our greasy table and wrote to the headquarters of his old regiment.

  Mother came home white with weariness and irritable with frustration, having tried unsuccessfrilly against about thirty other applicants for a job as a saleswoman.

  "They looked like a flock of crows," she remarked of the applicants. "They all wore black dresses, stockings and shoes— just little white collars to relieve the dreariness."

  "I thought that was what salesgirls always wore, " replied Father.

  "I suppose so, " Mother said. "And the hours one was expected to work—nine until nine on Saturdays!"

  "What wages were they offering?"

  "Fifteen shillings a week."

  Father whistled. "That's not a living wage," he said.

  "They don't care," replied Mother wearily. "All the women there were anxious to get the job."

  Each day my mother went out to try to get work and spent most of the morning and afternoon in a fruitless round of offices and shops. Before leaving, she would give me a shilling to buy the day's food. This I laid out to the best of my ability on bread, potatoes, rice, tea, sugar, pennyworths of bacon scraps or margarine and that dire necessity, a pint of milk for Edward, which cost twopence.

  At first, Edward used to cry with hunger, but as he grew a little older, he would lie lethargically in the Chariot, making no sound most of the time. The other children also grew apathetic, and the smaller ones tried to take bits of bread when I was not looking. We never heard fi*om the school about their progress nor did my father inquire.

  One morning my parents went out quite early, before Edward had been fed. After the children had been given a meager bowl of cereal each and had been sent to school, there was no food left in the house. I was desperate with hunger. And the usual pint of milk would, I knew, not be enough to last Edward for twenty-four hours. However, clutching the shilling, I wrapped Edward up in his stinking blanket, put on my woolen cardigan, my coat being still in pawn, and went downstairs to buy milk fi-om the first passing milkman.

  Standing on the doorstep were two pint bottles of milk, presumably delivered for Miss Sinford, the religious old lady on the ground floor, and Mrs. Hicks, who lived with her unemployed husband in the bowels of the basement. The other tenants patronized a milkman who came later.

  I looked at the bottles and then up and down the apparently empty street. There was no sign of the milkman, however, and Edward began to whimper. I looked down longingly at the milk bottles. Then, like a fleeing cat, I tore up the stairs, Edward bobbing up and down in my arms. I laid him down gently in the Chariot, took our two cracked cups, filled one with water in the bathroom, then ran silently down to the front door.

  I glanced quickly up and down the street. Empty.

  Quickly I took the lids ofi'the botdes, filled the empty cup with a little milk from each bottle, topped up the bottles with water,

 
carefully replaced the lids, and then crept upstairs again with my precious prize.

  I fed Edward contentedly, knowing that I could make the pint of milk I would buy stretch Rirther for him. I had no qualms of conscience about my theft, and I was mercifully unaware that the policeman on the beat had quietly watched the whole operation.

  It was late February, with days of pouring rain interspersed with weak sunshine. The neighborhood children ran in and out of the traffic, cursing and tumbling each other about, gray with dirt and dust, their noses dribbling, their bare legs chapped, septic sores on their knees. Little girls would play endless games of skipping and hopscotch, each with its appropriate song.

  "I am a girl guide dressed in blue, These are the actions I must do. Salute to the King, bow to the Queen And turn my back to the people. Pepper!"

  And at the word "pepper" they would turn the skipping rope with feverish speed to see how many fast skips they could do before being tripped up. Sometimes, I would long wistfully to join in, but I had always to watch Avril and Edward, and I was mortally afraid of something happening to them in this strange world.

  Another pleasure was to stand in front of the grocery and contemplate the neat pyramids of oranges, apples, lemons, and tomatoes. Mentally, I ate my way through the piles from top to bottom. I lacked the courage and initiative of the little street arabs, who would sometimes snatch a piece of fruit and fly like jets down the narrow back alleys, there to consume it with much ribaldry at the expense of the outraged grocer. A cry of "Bobby" or "Cop" would send them speeding off again.

  With Edward full of Miss Sinford's and Mrs. Hicks's milk and sleeping quietly in the Chariot, Avril and I went on the usual shopping round. At the grocer's I stood and dithered. If I bought rice, Mother would say that I should have bought potatoes; if potatoes, then she would say rice. I could not win. Mother was getting better, and her increasing irritability was a sign of it.

  The policeman on his beat stopped and chucked Edward under his chin. Edward opened his eyes and managed a small smile. I looked up and smiled too, my morning peccadillo completely forgotten.

  "Nice baby you've got," he said. He beamed at me from under his helmet. "What's his name?"

  "Edward, " I said. He was a nice-looking young man, neat and clean, despite the acne spots all over his face.

  "And what's your name?"

  "Helen," I replied promptly.

  He looked down at the baby again.

  "No Mummy?"

  "Yes, she's looking for work. So's Daddy."

  He looked surprised, apparently at my clear English, so different from that of the other children around here. It was better English than he spoke himself.

  "Having a hard time? Got any other brothers and sisters?"

  "Yes, ' I said simply, in answer to the first question. "We are seven. The others are all at school."

  The wind was getting up, and it was beginning to rain. My teeth started to chatter, and I wrapped my cardigan closer around me.

  The policeman stared at me with calm blue eyes and said, "Humph. ' He adjusted the collar of his cape. I became aware that the grocer was peering at us through his window.

  "Good-bye," I said to the policeman and pushed the pram a bit farther along the street. The policeman, after a moment's hesitation, went into the grocer's shop.

  The following morning a pint of milk was delivered to the top landing of our staircase. When I ran downstairs to return the bottle, the milkman insisted that it was for Edward and was sent by a friend. For two long intolerable years the milkman stolidly climbed the stairs and deposited a pint of milk on our top step. It probably saved Edward's life.

  Many years later, the grocer told my mother about the young policeman who had inquired about us and had then gone around to the dairy and ordered a daily pint of milk to be delivered for Edward, and had paid for it out of his own meager wages.

  FIVE

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  One of the advantages of being very poor is that one has time. Since we had no clothes except those on our backs, there was no pile of washing to be dealt with each Monday. When there is little food, there is little cooking, and since we possessed no bed linen, towels, cleaning materials or tools, most other domestic jobs either were nonexistent or could not be carried out. As the weather improved, therefore, I began to take a walk each day, pushing Edward and Avril in the Chariot.

  For me, these were voyages of discovery into a world I had never dreamed of before. Some of the houses had the flagstone across their front door scrubbed and neatly whitened, bordered with a strip of well-shone brass; their painted windowsills were carefully polished and their garish chintz curtains starched. Others were like our house: dull windows veiled in gray webs of lace, windowpanes missing and filled in with cardboard, old orange-peel and cigarette ends littering their fi-ontage.

  The local pawnbroker's shop, with its dusty sign of three golden balls and its outside table piled high with secondhand clothing, made for me a fascinating treat. I loved to gaze in the windows at the rows of rings for sale, the war medals, violins, blankets, china ornaments, and sailors' lucky gold charms.

  The pawnbroker himself was part of the scene. He stood in his doorway puSing at a cigarette, shirt-sleeves rolled up, tight black curls receding fi*om his forehead, a magnificent watch-chain with dangling seals draped across a comfortable paunch.

  "Come on, me little blue-eyed duck!" he would call to Avril, and occasionally he would feel around in his waistcoat pocket and dig out a grubby sweet for her. She loved him and would howl dismally on the days when we did not walk that way. For me, he would have a polite nod and a brief "Aitemoon. Nice day."

  One mild March afternoon, I circled the cathedral and listened to the ring of the stonemasons' tools on its great sandstone

  walls. It rose like a graceful queen above slums that put Christianity to shame. I stared up the beautiful sweep of entrance steps, wondering if I dare go in, but I was too afraid. I had not seen myself in a mirror since coming to Liverpool, but I knew I was both dirty and shabby. My hat and shoes had been passed to Fiona, who was obliged to go out to school. The shoes had been replaced by a pair of secondhand gym shoes with holes in the toes; my hair straggled in an unruly mass down my neck, rarely combed and never washed.

  Still pushing aimlessly, I wandered along a lovely street of well-kept Georgian houses, the homes of Liverpool's more eminent doctors. I turned down Leece Street, past the employment exchange where Father spent so many unhappy hours, past tall, black St. Luke's Church and into Bold Street, the most elegant shopping center in Liverpool. I pushed past women in fur coats and pretty hats, who stared at me in disgust, to look in windows which held a single dress or fur or a few discreet bottles of perfume. A delicious odor of roasting coffee permeated the place.

  Onward I went, through the packed shopping area where trams, nose to tail, clanged their way amid horsedrawn drays, delivery vans, and private cars, and newspaper men shouted to me to "read all about it." The cry of ''Echo, Echo, Liverpool Echo, sir'still comes wafting to me down the years.

  "I know where we'll go, " I said to Avril.

  "Where?"

  "We'll go down to the Pier Head!"

  The Pier Head, overlooking the Mersey, was a central point in Liverpool. Here, the graceful transatlantic passenger liners docked, and the ferryboats disgorged their hurrying passengers anxious to catch the trams waiting near the entrance.

  I knew this part of the town, because I had been in it on many occasions with my grandmother. I pushed the Chariot purposefully through a district of shipping offices with noble names upon their doors: Cunard, White Star, Union Castle, Pacific & Orient. Then under the overhead railway, which took the dockers to work, and a last wild run across the Pier Head, dodging trams and taxis, and we were at the entrance to the floating dock.

  At last I had found it!

  The river scintillated in the sunshine; a row of ships wasr />
  coming in on the tide; a ferryboat and a pilotboat tethered to the landing-stage rocked rhythmically; screeching gulls circled overhead. A cold sea wind tore at my cardigan, jostUng and buffeting my skinny frame. I put up the hood of the Chariot to shield Avril and Edward.

  The shore hands were casting off the ferry, and I looked wistfully out across the water at the opposite shore. Mentally I followed the railway with all its dear familiar station names along the coast to West Kirby. On that railway-line lived Grandma, who was so angry with Father that she never wrote to us. There was a middle-class world, where people could still wash every day in clean bathrooms. Perhaps, if I could see Grandma and describe to her my mother's terrible suffering and my father's despair, she would forgive them and help them.

  I longed to push the Chariot up the ramp of the ferryboat and escape—from smelly rooms, from hunger and cold.

  "The ferry costs twopence," I reminded myseff, "and you haven't got twopence."

  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. I watched the shoppers hurrying to their cars, or into Central Station. And suddenly there she was!

  Joan! My own best friend!

  She was sauntering down the pavement in her neat school uniform, her mother beside her. I had not seen her since leaving my old home.

  I started forward. "Joan!" I cried, my heart so frill of gladness I thought I would burst. "Oh! Joan!"

  The mother stopped, as did Joan. The smiles which had begun to curve on thier lips died half bom. Without a word, they both wheeled toward the road, crossed it, and disappeared into Central Station.