Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  The Presence was drawing off her leather gloves. She glanced up at Mother, who had risen from her chair. "I would enjoy one very much. Thank you."

  That got rid of Mother for a few minutes, which I had an instinctive feeling the Presence wanted to do. She smoothed her wrinkled gloves between absent-minded fingers, as she looked around the room. I noticed that her thin face had fine, premature lines around the eyes and at each side of the firm mouth. She wore no powder or lipstick, and she had the quiet, deft movements of a nun.

  "This is a pleasant place for you to sit, isn't it? I am happy that your family seems to be getting on its feet again."

  I wanted to lean forward and put my head into her tweed-covered lap and bellow tearfully that, on the contrary, the whole room was an outrage to reason. Instead, I whispered, "Yes, it is a nice room."

  "You have been with us for two years, now," she said with sudden briskness. It was a statement, not a question.

  I nodded, and she sighed as if the fact was cause for woe.

  "We need an extra girl in the Registry Office, to look after the index cards and to help with the filing. Such a girl would have to relieve the telephone operator at lunch time. I understand that you can now manage the switchboard; and it has been decided to give the new position to you. Er—Mr. Ellis is agreeable to this." She looked at me expectantly, a suggestion of a twinkle in her eyes.

  The sense of overwhelming relief I felt was so great that, at first, I could not speak. I opened my mouth, and no words came. A promotion! No more making tea or having to go out in the snow, and less running up and down stairs.

  "Oh, thank you," I finally gasped, with such sincerity that she really smiled this time.

  "Your salary would be twelve shillings and sixpence, payable monthly."

  I was in ecstasy. "That would be splendid," I whispered. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, dance in the street. Life was beginning to move forward at last.

  "You can tell your parents about it yourself," she added, in a tone of voice which hinted something that I did not at first grasp. Then, as I heard the rattle of teacups in the back room, I realized that she was being very forbearing. In a period when children of the middle classes remained children until they were twenty-one, it wmdd have been quite possible for her to discuss this promotion with Mother before telling me—particularly as she herself belonged to a still earlier generation. She had, however, left me the choice of telling my parents about the salary increase, or not. Did she, I wondered, understand something of the misery I was going through?

  "You are very kind," I said warmly.

  Because our crockery was chipped and ugly and we lacked

  many essentials like milk jugs, Mother brought the Presence a cup of tea with milk already in it, and proffered the cheap, glass sugar basin with its tin spoon.

  The tea was graciously accepted and consumed, the bad weather discussed, and good wishes expressed for my early recovery. "We will see if we can arrange another holiday this summer," the Presence promised, as Mother took her cup from her.

  Mother made no comment. Her smile was thin and polite. With a jolt, I wondered if she would try to keep me at home again, on the excuse of chronic ill health. Perhaps I would never return to the office. Perhaps she was just willing to accept the payment of my salary as long as the organization was prepared to pay it.

  I must have gone even whiter at the idea, because the Presence said suddenly, "Helen is exhausted. I must go."

  Hands were shaken, and Mother showed my kind visitor out. I thankfully lay down on the settee.

  If Mother and Father could buy over a hundred pounds' worth of sitting-room furniture, I meditated bitterly, then they did not need the extra half-a-crown a week I would be earning. I desperately needed to be able to buy soup for lunch each day, instead of once a week. I needed shoes and secondhand woolens to keep me warm. The money I was already giving to Mother was more than adequate for the small amount of food I received, for the coal and gas I shared, and for a small contribution to the rent. I determined that Mother should have the next raise in pay I received, but not this one.

  "And if you think I am going to stay at home, you can think again," I muttered to myself acidly.

  Mother had been quite patient while nursing me, but from sad experience I doubted that patience would extend past the day I managed to walk about.

  TWENTY-THREE

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  The doctor feared that the infection of my ears would cause a loss of hearing, and he insisted that I should see a specialist. So, a few days before Christmas, Mother managed to bundle me onto a tram, and we went to the Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital.

  Since I was very weak, we arrived early, in the hope of being seen without much delay by the specialist, who donated his services to the hospital.

  When I looked up at the building, it seemed to touch the pale blue sky. Its tall, narrow windows, the stonework beautifully carved by long-dead masons, seemed to be slender fingers pointing upward. Mother propped me against the wall, as close as she could get to the pollution-blackened doorway, where a shabby crowd awaited the opening of the Outpatients' Department. A cold wind fluttered the stained raincoats of the men and the bundly overcoats of the women, some of whom hugged beshawled children. The wind pierced my own mackintosh and Mother's woolen cardigan which I was wearing beneath it, and I shivered convulsively. Mother had on a secondhand leather coat, which she had bought to keep her warm during a short spell as a door-to-door vacuum saleswoman.

  Every so often I would feel faint and would start to reel, and Mother would pin me against the building's wall so that I did not fall. After we had waited about half an hour, just when I felt I could endure no more, the door was opened by a probationer, and the motley crowd poured in, elbowing each other in an effort to be first.

  We found ourselves in a large waiting room with lines of wooden benches, and we sat down, not sure what we were supposed to do next.

  I fainted against Mother's shoulder, and when I came around, I heard an angry rumbling from the waiting crowd. Apparently, Mother had asked a passing nurse for a glass of water.

  and the girl had said coldly that it was not necessary, that I would come around quickly enough.

  This indifference had riled the outpatients, and they spent some time talking to each other and to Mother, in furious whispers, about other hospitals where they felt they had been equally ill-treated.

  We sat for a long time, and nothing happened, until a nurse came and sat at a desk in front of us. Mother left me in the care of an elderly lady, and went to inquire when we might be seen.

  "The specialist usually arrives about eleven," the nurse said. "You will just have to wait."

  "Could my daughter lie down somewhere?"

  "Ask the patients if they will move up, so that she can lie on the bench."

  But the room was packed, so I leaned against Mother in a lethargy, which passed occasionally into complete oblivion. I was so bony that it was also very painful to sit on a wooden bench for such along time.

  Finally a young physician and a nurse arrived and began to sift through the patients, to discover their reasons for attending the hospital. Our kind neighbor held me again, while Mother went to the desk to explain our presence. By this time I was so exhausted I did not care whether I saw a doctor or not. All I wanted to do was lie down—on the floor, if there was no other place.

  "You should not have to wait much longer," the nurse told Mother. "Doctor arrived a few minutes ago."

  At about twelve (we had left home before eight o'clock), we were finally ushered into a lofty, poorly-lighted office. A thin, gray-haired man in a white coat, a man with the gentlest voice and the kindest manner I ever remember, was seated on a little stool, scribbling on a note board held across his knee. Since I had come about my throat and ears, his elderly nurse took my coat from me and sat me down in a straight-backed chair.

  The
doctor, a famous surgeon, smiled at Mother, when she handed him a note from our physician, opened the envelope, and read the description of my illness.

  He put the note down on a nearby table, and while he looked at my face, he asked Mother a few questions about the duration of

  the infection. I sat with eyes cast down, hoping I would not fall off the chair.

  "Well," he said, as he picked up a flashlight. "Let me have a look."

  He peered very earnestly down my throat and then with another instrument down my ears. I winced as the ears were stretched slightly by the insertion of the cold appliance. He then felt carefully around my neck.

  Mother volunteered the information that I had been subject to ear infection ever since I had had the measles at the age of five. His expression as he turned to Mother was a bit puzzled; perhaps the exquisitely enunciated words from such a battered-looking woman surprised him.

  He turned back to me and said gently, "Helen, I would like to examine your chest. Nurse will take your blouse from you and help you with your underwear."

  I nodded, and unbuttoned the heavy, cotton blouse, to expose the naked, bony chest beneath. I handed the blouse to the waiting nurse.

  Both doctor and nurse gasped. The doctor glanced at Mother in a puzzled way, as if to include her in their shock. I was suddenly afraid that the doctor had spotted some deadly disease.

  "Nurse, bring a gown," ordered the doctor sharply. "I think I had better take a look at Helen generally. Help her slip off the rest of her clothes." He looked at me and smiled. I must have appeared to him to be scared beyond measure, because he said soothingly, "There's nothing to be afraid of, my dear."

  Mother had not expected that I would have to strip, and I saw her flush slightly, as I dropped my skirt oflP, leaving me garbed in a pair of worn, off-white panties held up by a pin and a pair of rayon stockings supported by rubber bands.

  Almost tenderly, the nurse slipped the stiff white gown around my shoulders, and her carefulness frightened me more.

  The nurse laid me on an examination table, and the specialist checked me over, part by part. I must have looked ugly to him, with only a slight rise of young breasts above ribs that stuck out, a distended stomach with a fluff of pubic hair at its base, legs that seemed all bone. I could not see my own buttocks, but I knew that there was little fat on them. He pinched me in several places very

  gently. Then he wrapped the gown around me, and the nurse helped me to sit up.

  The specialist turned to Mother, and in a voice which indicated a rage ill-controlled, he asked her, "Mrs. Forrester, what has happened to this child? An illness such as your physician describes could not have reduced her weight to this extent."

  Mother said uneasily, "She does not have a very good appetite."

  "She is half starved." He was furiously angry, and his voice rose. "You will lose her unless you find some means of getting food into her. No child should have to suffer like this. Is your husband on public assistance?"

  "No," muttered Mother. "He works for the City."

  "And Helen?" He turned to me. "Have you got work, child?"

  I told him the name of the organization that employed me. The nurse had put me into a chair, and I sat staring at him, aghast.

  Hunger was painful at times, but most of the time I felt lethargic and weak. I thought I was lazy, and I was always pushing myself to complete the work I had to do.

  "I can't understand it, Mrs. Forrester. You are, I imagine, an educated woman, and should understand something about nutrition. Your physician has expressed to me his anxiety for her general condition, though he sent her to me, of course, because of the ear and throat infections. But unless she can eat more and put on some weight, she will be subject to all kinds of illness. Her ears will heal—your doctor will explain that to you. Even in this city, however, it is some time since I saw such a shocking case of malnutrition. Did your doctor recommend a special diet?"

  During this diatribe Mother had stared at him with an expression of blank disbelief Now she flared up suddenly.

  "Yes," she snapped. "And I have done my best to give it to her—but she doesn't eat it. "

  In an instinctive defense of Mother, I interjected, "I haven't been able to eat very much, doctor. My throat hurt and so did my ears when I swallowed. "

  He looked at me almost contritely, as if ashamed of his outburst, and said to the nurse, "Take Helen into the other room—there's an easy chair there. You can help her dress in there, while I talk to Mrs. Forrester."

  The nurse picked up my clothes and wrapped the white gown around me. She put a hand under my elbow to help support me as we went toward the door. At the entrance, I paused, reluctant to leave someone who cared so much that I was thin and hungry.

  "Thank you, doctor," I said, forcing back tears of weakness.

  I never saw him again.

  As the nurse helped to dress me and told me what a wonderful doctor my newfound friend was, an outburst of words rumbled through the closed door. I could not hear what he was saying, but when Mother joined me, she was weeping unrestrainedly, and this distressed me. I took her arm, to comfort her, while the nurse said briskly, "Doctor will be writing to your G.P. You should go to see him in a few days' time."

  Without a word, the two of us went very slowly back through the hall and out into the street to catch a tram.

  "Mummy, I'm so sorry. Please don't cry. What did he say?"

  No matter what battles we had fought. Mother had suffered so much herself since we arrived in Liverpool that I could not bear to see her reduced to tears by a stranger. The careworn woman, whose arm I leaned upon, was totally different from the pretty, fashionable lady I had known as a child. I wanted passionately to erase whatever bitter words the specialist had used.

  Mother did not answer me at first, but heaved me up the steps of a tram. She handed the conductor two pennies and received our tickets, before she finally spoke.

  "He's going to write to our doctor," she said finally, with a trembling sigh. "He will make some recommendations. You have nothing to fear. You have no disease. "

  And that was all the information I could extract from her.

  A few days later, I managed to walk the short distance to our own doctor's house, and spent a happy hour reading all the old magazines in his waiting room, and talking in labored German to two German patients waiting to see him. They told me such horrifying tales of what was going on in Germany under Hitler that I felt my own suffering to be very small.

  The doctor checked my ears, throat, and chest again. The specialist's report, he said, had been optimistic about my hearing, and he hoped I would not have much hearing loss. Afterward, he sat down at his desk, and said very earnestly, "Helen, you must

  eat as much plain food as you can obtain. Don't spend your pocket money on sweets—buy an orange or an apple. Clean up your plate at meal times." He grinned cheerfully at me.

  "Yes," I agreed. How could I tell him that I had had no sweets during the four years I had been in Liverpool, except one or two which had been given to me? How could I tell him how empty my dinner plate had been for so long?

  "And I want you to go to bed early and rest as much as you can during the next few weeks."

  Rest? With so many children pestering me with their constant needs? And I was now terribly behind in night school—my only hope for a better future; I would have to catch up somehow. Then I remembered the new job—that would be easier. So I nodded agreement again.

  "And during the weekends you should walk in the park whenever it is sunny, to get fresh air. Perhaps go to New Brighton sometimes and walk there—that would be nice, wouldn't it? "

  Poor, benighted man. Didn't he realize that the ferryboat to New Brighton cost twopence? Princes Park was there, however, and I often took baby Edward and Avril for walks in it. So again I agreed.

  As he scribbled on his prescription pad, he said, "I wish your mother had come with you. I would have liked to discuss your diet in detail with her.
Tell her what I have said, and come to see me again next week." He handed me a prescription. "Have this tonic made up and take it regularly."

  I thanked him and went out and walked slowly down the steps. After such long confinement, Liverpool seemed a beautiful place in which to walk. My eyes ran appreciatively along the fine symmetry of the big terrace houses which lined the street. Father said they had been built from money gained from the slave trade with America, but they were still beautiful to me. Even the stolidness of the brick Home for Incurables seemed lighter, more cheerful, than usual. The whole district was bathed in a midafter-noon hush, that pause which occurs before the homeward rush from the city. The only other person I saw was a woman on her knees scrubbing the marble steps of the Rialto Cinema, and I paused on the other side of the road to watch her. Perhaps, I thought wistfully, now I have a raise in pay I could go to the cinema. It doesn't cost anything to have dreams.

  274

  Many years later, Alan told me that one day, while I was out, some people came from the child-welfare authority and threatened to take us all into care. He cannot remember the date of this, but I think it must have been during my convalescence, perhaps while I was at the doctor's surgery. It is hardly likely that our doctor or the outraged specialist would have left such a case of malnutrition unreported. It is also possible that my astute employer may have goaded officialdom into action. Brian's skinny condition had quite likely been noted during his stay in hospital. So several complaints were probably made.

  Whenever it was, my parents must have talked their way out of it. In those days, few people would believe that neglect or ill-treatment of children occurred in any but working-class homes, and once my parents' original social status had been established, there would be a tendency to believe anything they said. From the day on which we saw the specialist, however, Mother saw that I received the same amount of food as the other children, and it was obvious that she gave priority to the buying of food over other needs.