Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  A year earlier such a remark would have stung me into a quarrel. Now, I was better able to keep control of myself, and I said as gently as I could, "I'm trying very hard. Mummy, not to ask for anything, to pay for everything, so that you have one less person to worry about. "

  Mother slapped down the newspaper and got up. "You seem to be doing very well. You seem to have money for everything." Her whole stance was unexpectedly filled with boiling resentment, as she shuffled over to the fire and poked the coals crossly.

  I began to tremble at the sudden change in attitude. To gain time, I took the iron off the fire and wiped the soot off it with a piece of rag. I was clumsy and managed to sear my thumb against it. I winced, dropped the rag and popped my stinging thumb into my mouth.

  I wanted to shriek at Mother that every penny spent for fares, every threepenny-bit for a bowl of soup at lunch time was painstakingly considered. I wanted to remind her bitterly that the last ninepenny pair of rayon stockings that I had bought had been taken from under my mattress and worn out by her. In consequence, I had had to appear at work with long black lines on my stockings where I had mended run after run. I was still smarting from the giggles of the other girls and Mr. Ellis' tart inquiry, "Where d' yer buy stockings like them from?"

  I bowed my head over the ironing again. "Well, sometimes I do better—when I have a shorthand student."

  "Humph. "

  She put down the poker and moved slowly around the room, picking up and putting into a pile odds and ends left around by the children. I looked at her back with pure hatred for a moment. Her legs were grievously lined with bulging blue varicose welns and her shoulders were hunched like^those of an old woman. Too much starch in her diet was beginning to make her fat around her waist. The anger in me gave way to pity.

  Perhaps, better than all her children, I understood what had happened to Mother. I could remember her in the heyday of her beauty, when, at every function, she was surrounded by admirers. The sight of her now easily moved me to compassion. It

  was, however, like being compassionate toward an angry wasp.

  As I began to get a grip on myself again, I wondered what she was thinking about, as she trailed around the grubby, ill-lighted room.

  The silence lengthened between us, till I felt the tension relax a little. Then I asked, "Could I get my overcoat out? And the dress with the gold spots that I made?"

  "I'll give you the ticket for the coat—it's in a bundle by itself. That dress is not suitable.'

  "I don't know what else to wear. "

  "There's a blue wool dress in one bundle. I intended to wear it for work—it came in a parcel from Mrs. Walsingham some time back. You could borrow it. It fits me, so it will fit you." She spoke in a weary, dull voice, and she did not look at me.

  So the bargain was struck. I could borrow the dress once, for the price of its retrieval. I could have my coat back if I had the money to pay the pawnbroker.

  I thanked her humbly.

  Sylvia had on a well-fitting, gray pin-striped suit. Her golden curls peeped out from a tan-colored sailor hat. Her immaculate shoes, gloves, and handbag matched the wide-brimmed hat. The heels of her shoes gave her height, and she looked charming.

  I was agonizedly aware of my old overcoat and lack of gloves. I wore the hat that Mother had had on when we arrived in Liverpool, a battered beige cloche. The coat was still badly creased from its sojourn with the pawnbroker, despite my frantic efforts with a hot iron. Underneath it, Mrs. Walsingham's dress hung on my slight frame; I consoled myself with the thought that it was a very good dress, excellently cut from a soft blue wool. I had had more success in ironing it than I had had with the coat.

  We walked soberly for an hour along silent Sunday streets. Occasionally, we met a young couple, dressed in Sunday clothes, strolling arm in arm, or pushing a pram with a befrilled baby in it.

  Finally we arrived at a row house, similar to the one in which I lived. There was, however, a great difference in its aspect. The paneled front door had no dust on it; the windowsills were likewise clear of dust. The front step had been swept and washed.

  Sylvia took her key out of her handbag and let us both into the

  gloomy hall. The house smelled sweet, I noticed, as I took off my crumpled coat and gave it to Sylvia to hang up on a peg in the hall.

  She ushered me into a living room, smaller and darker than ours. It was stuffed with furniture, but its general air of coziness reminded me of pictures on Christmas cards. All it lacked was a row of brightly colored children's stockings hanging along the high mantel shelf, in expectation of Father Christmas. Instead, in front of the old-fashioned fireplace with its big cooking oven, stood a little stout lady in a navy-blue dress with a tiny pattern on it. Her gray hair was combed softly back into a bun. Her complexion was rosy enough to suggest high blood pressure. Her hands were clasped in front of her, and her wedding ring was deeply imbedded in a finger swollen slightly, perhaps from years of washing with a scrubbing board. She seemed to me the epitome of all that was kind and motherly.

  And mother me she did. I was plied with tea and bread and butter and jam and homemade cake. I was warmed by the fire, and in a quiet, shy manner made to feel very welcome. I had talked without stopping to Sylvia during our walk; but now I felt shy, and Mrs. Poole had to help me out with a question or two to keep the conversation going.

  At one point, Mr. Poole rushed in from another room. He was in shirt sleeves and waistcoat, his scant hair rumpled, his glasses slipping down his nose. How was he going to finish preparing his sermon when there was no more paper to write on? he demanded.

  My presence was pointed out to him, and he was introduced hastily, but his mind was not on visitors, and he shook my hand absently. As soon as more paper was produced from a drawer, he vanished immediately.

  Mrs. Poole told me that her husband was a lay preacher, in addition to his normal work as a city electrician. I did not know exactly what a lay preacher was, but was too shy to ask to have it explained to me. She added that there was one other member of the family, Sylvia's elder brother, who was out for the afternoon. She sighed and indicated that she was in some way worried about him. As she talked, I began to realize that I knew him.

  During those six weeks before my fourteenth birthday, when I attended school, Sylvia's brother had been a pupil in the same

  class. There were forty-five or more pupils, and discipline was, of necessity, rigid. I remembered Chris Poole vividly, because he was a target for the sarcasm of every teacher who entered the room, and yet he did not seem to be particularly naughty. If there was talking on the boys' side of the room, it was invariably he who was reprimanded, though he might be one of several offenders. If a pencil was not returned to the teacher, he was the first to be checked for its disappearance. If the class fidgeted or something was noisily dropped on the floor, it was he who had to stand in front of the class as punishment. And the class was so conditioned that they took his guilt for granted, and laughed at his discomfiture.

  I recognized a fellow scapegoat and felt a sneaking sympathy for him.

  I was never in trouble during that period of schooling. I was thankful for the orderly lessons and was happy to put in a phenomenal amount of work. But Chris, with all the exuberance of a thirteen-year old, obviously hated the inflexible confinement to a desk, hour lifter tedious hour.

  If anything went wrong at home, it could be guaranteed that I would be the first person blamed; in the classroom this happened to Chris. In Germany it was happening to the Jews. I had just begun to realize that majority groups will always find convenient scapegoats for their own shortcomings, and the scapegoat is usually a small minority. In families it can be a minority of one.

  So I understood Mrs. Poole's general anxiety about her son better than she realized and could feel sympathetic about it. And by many small threads of congeniality a friendship grew up between Mrs. Poole and me that was nearly as deep as that between her daughter and me.

  I felt
so enriched that I walked home from their house in a dream, feeling as if I was floating a foot off" the ground.

  He was a short man, padded with layers of hard fat under his well-tailored gray suit, a man with a chin always blue, however well shaved. He stood silently staring at the ceiling of the elevator while I took him up to the Committee Room, and I marveled at the announcement that the Presence had that morning made regarding him. He had never spoken to me. How could such a rich

  man understand a verv' great need of the small person who politely opened and shut the elevator gates for him? A need for entertainment. As he climbed the final staircase up to the Committee Room, I stared at his broad back with awed amazement.

  "He's Greek," said Dorothy disparagingly.

  "He's in shipping, ' Phyllis told me. "He made a fortune. "

  And I thought very humbly. He's remembered how empty of fun life can be, if you have principles and no money.

  "Sylvia, " I whispered behind the files, "he's giving us three shillings and sixpence each. The cashier is going to give it to us."

  Sylvia's brow wrinkled up in doubtful surprise.

  "It's true. It's a present to all the staff, so that we can go to the theater. It's supposed to be the price of the very best seat anywhere. The senior staff members are going to get more."

  Sylvia pushed a cardboard folder into the file, while she considered this information.

  "You know, it's only sixpence to go to the Playhouse, " she said thoughtfully.

  "Really?" I breathed.

  "Yes. You queue up at the side of the theater—you can't book reserved seats."

  "I used to do that at home, " I said, without thinking. "At the matinees. "

  "Home?"

  I giggled sheepishly, and did not answer. Liverpool was home, wasn't it?

  The slip was revealing. Was I still waiting to go back home to the small southern town from which we had come? To a house now occupied by others? To a nanny who must have long since married and gone to live in the sixteenth-century farmhouse her fiance owned?

  Sylvia was waiting for an answer, another file held ready to push into the stack.

  "Oh, I used to go by myself to the theater—when I was about ten. Mother sometimes allowed me to go to the cinema if there was a suitable film—but I never went." I laughed at the recollection, and added, "There was a theater in the town which had all kinds of shows—traveling ones—and I used to go there. I sat right up at the top of the topmost balcony."

  Sylvia laughed, and said she wished she had been there, too.

  Mr. Ellis heard the unseemly laughter, and reprimanded us. But later on I told her about Mother's lovely singing voice and how she had always belonged to amateur operatic or dramatic groups. When Brian was born and the servants had complained about the workload. Mother had formed the habit of taking me with her to rehearsals.

  At first I sat and fidgeted in the frighteningly empty theater and did not understand what was happening. I watched while adults walked about the stage with books in their hands and talked in loud, artificial voices. A gentleman seated in the front row sometimes shouted at them, and someone else occasionally rushed onto the stage and rearranged the players and told them how to behave. But gradually I became fascinated as a story began to evolve in front of my eyes. There was nothing very experimental in the plays they performed and a child could understand them. Once I discovered the existence of dress rehearsals, I used to look forward to them very much. Sometimes, as I grew older. Father took me to the opening night. He always had a formal bouquet of flowers to be presented to Mother at the end of the performance when the bows were taken; in fact, sometimes the stage looked like a garden because of the number of bouquets presented to the principals.

  Father also arranged each year for me to go to the pantomime—a fairy-tale extravaganza, traditional at Christmastime— whenever one was within reasonable journeying distance. And what pantomimes they were, filled with singing and dancing, magical illusions, uproarious Dames whose red and white striped pants always fell down below their skirts, and, of course, noble Principal Boys like Dick Whittington and lovely Princesses in silver gowns. A magic world, a paradise for children.

  Since the kindly Greek had intended that his gift should be spent at the theater, Sylvia and I decided that we would spread the money as far as it would go. By sitting "up in the gods," as the gallery was called, we could see seven plays at the Liverpool Playhouse.

  Probably no one would have appreciated our solemn efforts more than the benevolent donor. We queued patiently, leaning against the side of the building. We always hoped to see the actors

  and actresses arriving at the stage door, but we never did. Instead, we were entertained by a tattered crew of mouth-organ players, concertina players, clumsy tumblers, and even an elderly tramp who would slowly put a brick down on the muddy street, lay his head on it and gradually raise his legs until he was standing on his head. He would remain poised uncertainly on the brick while a beguiling small boy ran up and down the queue with a cap held out hopefully. It was some years before Sylvia or I could afford to give him anything.

  When the gallery door was opened, we would pay our sixpence and make the long, long climb up the stairs to the top of the building. Crouched on a bench, with our knees knocking the heads of the people in the next row, we waited for the curtain to rise. Coffee could be purchased at the back of the gallery, and I was torn with doubt as to whether our Greek shipowner would mind if I spent some of his money on a cup. I finally decided that it would not be honest to do so, and sometimes I used my soup money for coffee instead. One could become very cold and wet while waiting in the queue, and if I did not warm up quickly, my treacherous throat would begin to swell and the pain in my legs intensify.

  But the excitement, the magic, was a tonic to a starveling like myself. Neither Sylvia nor I realized that we were watching the early efforts of some of Britain's greatest actors and actresses, who were being nursed along by a famous director, William Armstrong. Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Geoffrey Toone and Lloyd Pearson, peopled the shabby theater with kings and queens and princes, and I fell hopelessly in love with each handsome face, as cloaks were swept over shoulders and swords were flourished.

  I told my parents I had been given tickets for the theater. I did not dare to say that I had been given money; it would inevitably have been squeezed out of me, by reminders that there was nothing in the house for breakfast or that baby Edward had no socks; and I would have felt so guilty that I would have handed it over like a lamb. I kept the money from my occasional teaching earnings, and the extra half-a-crown that the Presence paid me, in a bag around my neck. But often the need was so great at home that I would have to give part of it for some necessity, and go without lunch or some other small luxury. Since my illness, it had been a grim necessity to hold on to sufficient money for tram fares; it was over a year before I was strong enough to walk to and from work again.

  Minerva, sitting on top of the town-hall dome, smiled particularly on the Liverpool theaters of those days, as if to encourage especially her actors to create for two young girls a world of wonder which helped to make endurable the soot-blackened city outside the theater walls. In those precious hours in the stuffy Playhouse gallery, tucked up comfortably beside Sylvia, I was happy as I had never before been happy in Liverpool.

  Starting with a sixpenny seat in one of her theaters, Minerva gave me, as the years went by, many wonderful things; wise friends, interesting work, and a deep love of her fine, old city. She was finally able to fill my famished stomach and to fiarnish my hungering mind, bless her.

  Thank you, dear Minerva, thank you for all the sweet content that came to me at last. I knew you'd help me.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Helen Forrester is the author of several novels and has written numerous book reviews for newspapers and magazines. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where she was honored with the Alberta Achievement Award for Literature.

 

 

  Helen Forrester, Minerva's Stepchild