Liverpool Miss

by Helen Forrester

  I pushed my straggling hair back behind my ears and took off my faulty glasses to peer closer at the shelves; sometimes I could see better without the glasses than I could with them.

  ‘Helen Forrester, isn’t it?’ inquired a voice from behind me.

  I turned slowly, surprised that anyone should know me by name.

  It was the deaconess from the church, to whom in a rage I had shown our house. It was no wonder that I had not recognised her voice. During our previous encounter, she had said so little while I had said so much. I blushed at the memory of my unpardonable outburst.

  I murmured shyly that I was Helen. She looked very sweet in her coif and frumpy clothes.

  ‘I was about to come to see you,’ she announced unexpectedly. Then she glanced round the booklined room. ‘Perhaps we could talk here, though. Let’s go over there.’ She took my elbow and guided me into a corner of the Fiction section.

  ‘I wanted to ask you, my dear, if you would like a job as a telephonist. A charity I know of needs a girl, and I immediately thought of you, because you have such a pleasant voice.’

  I gaped at her, struck dumb by the unexpectedness of the offer. Then I gasped, ‘Oh, yes.’

  She smiled at me, and continued, ‘The salary is not much – about twelve and sixpence a week. Would you like me to arrange an interview for you?’

  Twelve shillings and sixpence a week seemed a huge sum to me. All the wonderful things it would buy danced before me, mixed with a terrible apprehension that I would not get the job because I was so dirty and had no clothes except the grubby, ragged collection I was wearing.

  The deaconess was talking. ‘I thought I would ask you first, before speaking to your mother.’

  At the mention of Mother, I remembered the sweet shop episode.

  ‘My parents will never agree to it,’ I said hopelessly. ‘I have to look after Edward.’

  ‘I’ve already thought of that,’ she responded eagerly. ‘Alice Davis lives a few doors away from you. She has an invalid mother who cannot be left alone and she badly needs to earn a few shillings. I am sure she would take care of Edward during the day – and she wouldn’t charge much.’

  A fairy godmother in a blue coif! A true fairy godmother. A wave of gratitude surged through me, but I did not know how to express it. ‘Would she, really – would she do it?’ I whispered.

  ‘I’m sure she would, if I ask her.’

  I was acquainted with Alice. She belonged to the Salvation Army. I said ‘good morning’ to her most Sundays, as she strode along the street pushing her mother’s wheelchair down to the Citadel. Her mother would be bundled up in rough grey blankets, regardless of whether it was winter or summer; and Alice wore a navy-blue uniform, with a matching Victorian bonnet trimmed with a red ribbon proclaiming ‘Salvation Army’ across the front. Her sturdy legs were clad in sensible black stockings and the shine on her black shoes equalled that on the shoes of our local police constable. Her cheerful face shone like her shoes. Occasionally, the Salvation Army band played at the end of our street, and Alice would rush down to them, clutching her cymbals, ready to join in while they were so close to her home. Alice was rough, but Edward would be safe with her.

  Please, Lord, please let it happen, I prayed silently. Aloud, I said, ‘Thank you very, very much. I would love the job if you think I can do it.’

  She smiled. ‘Of course you can do it. Shall I call on Mrs Forrester tonight? You might like to talk to both your father and your mother first.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, though I had no real hope. Perhaps, however, with an advocate like this respectable lady, just perhaps, they could be persuaded.

  ‘I’ll come this evening, then?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I mumbled.

  In a daze, I wheeled Edward home, pushing the pram unseeingly through the usual crowds of black, white and yellow men idling at the corners. Some of them murmured resentfully as the pram brushed carelessly past them.

  How on earth was I to approach Mother and Father about this offer? I worried. A chance of freedom at last, a tiny flame of hope in a very bleak world.

  The whole routine of the family would have to be altered. Alan and Fiona would have to shoulder some of my work. And Alice would have to be paid. Some clothes would have to be redeemed from the pawnbroker – or obtained from somewhere else. Where would Mother find the money?

  At home, I poked up the fire and began to make toast for the children’s tea, while I thought once again of running away. Could I live on twelve shillings and sixpence? Boys sometimes ran away to the south, where there was more work than in financially ruined Liverpool. Occasionally, girls did, too. I had, however, read in the newspaper about the flourishing white slave traffic into which girls were sold. I was not clear what happened to white slaves, except that they were kept in bondage and abused by ruthless men until they died. I imagined them being misused like American black slaves, and I had no wish to die a dramatic death like Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I had wept over this tragedy as a small girl and did not wish for a similar fate.

  I did some careful arithmetic. A small, unheated housekeeping room could be found for about seven shillings and sixpence a week; food, say, four shillings, firing in winter would take the other shilling, leaving nothing for clothing. I did not consider that I might need tram fares – I had been walking, now, for the past three years all over south Liverpool; make-up was beyond my experience, and pocket money an idle dream, anyway.

  The children drifted in for tea and I dealt with their squabbles and their hunger as best I could.

  Father and Mother returned from work soon after the children. Inside five minutes, they were quarrelling violently. I cannot remember what triggered the trouble. It did not matter, because the underlying animosity smouldered all the time and needed very little to make it flare up. As usual, they drew each child into the argument in an effort to make them take sides, and this frequently reduced Avril and Brian to hysterics as they agonised between the parents. Fiona and Alan were old enough to retreat to friends’ homes if they got desperate enough, but poor Avril, Tony and Brian had no such refuges. Tony usually managed to stay a little calmer, though he was always upset, and Edward just stuck firmly in whichever lap he happened to be cradled when hostilities broke out.

  Even when I was very small, I wondered why my parents stayed together. I knew a girl whose mother was divorced, and I quite envied her. But I had been fortunate in having Edith to take care of me and there were the long absences from home when I stayed with Grandma. In their conversations about the people they knew, they taught me that not all families were riven by warfare. Now, as the fight raged over the tea table, I wished passionately I could run to Grandma for help.

  Alan had piled into the fight with some furious, rude remark and was sharply slapped by his father. He shot out of the kitchen door into the back yard, raging nearly as incoherently as Father was.

  Fiona wept helplessly, her head on the table. Brian and Tony stonily munched their toast, their movements nervous and uncoordinated; they did not answer the passionate appeals of Mother and Father to take their side. Avril stood behind Mother’s chair, holding on to it and shaking it, as she shouted hopelessly, ‘Stop, everybody. Why can’t you stop?’

  Neither protagonist would give way.

  I was silent with despair. I hardly heard the words hurled around me or addressed to me. What was I going to do when the church lady arrived? Mother seized a cup and saucer from the table and hurled them into a corner. Through her screams of rage, I heard a knock on the front door.

  The other children had also heard the sharp rat-tat. When they instinctively turned their heads towards the front of the house, Mother stopped in mid-scream.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Father, his lips turned back in a snarl.

  ‘Someone is at the door,’ I said, too much in anguish to move.

  ‘Well, get a move on, girl. Answer it. Say we are not at home.’

  Reluctantly I obeyed, feet dr
agging. I shut the living-room door behind me.

  As I turned the lock on the front door, I wished, for the first time, that it was only a creditor. The moment I swung back the door, she was in the muddy hall and pulling off her gloves, as the wind gusted behind her.

  ‘It’s quite cold this evening,’ the deaconess said cheerfully. ‘Well, have you asked them, my dear?’

  ‘I haven’t had an opportunity yet,’ I apologised.

  Her smile faded, and she sighed. ‘Never mind. I’ll ask for you.’

  ‘They said they are not at home tonight.’

  From behind the closed door came the sound of renewed strife, though the level seemed more subdued. The interruption had broken the continuity of the argument. The lady laughed and looked at me conspiratorially. The living room was suddenly quiet. The feminine chuckle must have penetrated to the family.

  The deaconess tucked her gloves into her handbag and said briskly, ‘I imagine your mother would be at home to me. We know each other well enough to call occasionally without warning, don’t we?’

  I tried to smile at her as I heard the living-room door open behind me. ‘Will you come into the front room?’ I asked hastily. ‘I’ll inquire if they are at home.’ These were phrases I had often heard May, our parlourmaid, use, and they came automatically to mind in such a difficult situation.

  I opened the door to the front room and ushered the blue-clad lady into it, just as Avril stumped out of the other room, her eyes tearful, her mouth surrounded by black toast crumbs. She marched into the sitting room after the visitor, and stood staring at her.

  I heard the deaconess speaking softly to the frightened little girl, as nervously I announced our visitor to Mother and Father. Both parents were standing motionless, like alerted hares, as they tried to judge who the visitor was.

  Mother, her face and neck still red from combat, pushed past me and went into the front room. Father gave a great sigh and flopped into a chair. His hands were trembling as they always did when he was upset.

  Fiona had ceased to weep and gazed up at me with great pansy eyes still dewdropped. Brian and Tony asked Father’s permission to leave the table.

  ‘Yes,’ he said peevishly.

  They scrambled down from their chairs and I heard the back door slam, as they went out to play in the last of the evening light.

  Father turned back to me. He gestured with his head towards the front room. ‘What does she want?’ he asked. I think he was always nervous that his wife had done something outrageous which he did not know about.

  I knelt down on one knee and began to pick up the bits of cup and saucer that Mother had shattered. Through my draggling hair, I hesitantly answered him.

  ‘She has come about me.’

  He sat up straight and looked at me. ‘About you? What have you done?’

  I stood up and faced him. ‘I haven’t done anything. She’s got a job for me. And she’s keen that I should take it.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ He sniffed, and then added angrily, ‘I wish she would mind her own business.’

  ‘She means well, Daddy.’

  ‘She should hie her back to her nunnery and stay there. She has no right to interfere with my family.’ He thumped the arm of his chair. ‘She has no right to put ideas into your head.’

  I stood irresolutely before him, the broken dishes in my hand. I wanted to put my arms round him and beg him to intercede for me. When I was small and he was not too busy, we had been able to talk to each other. But this ease between us had got lost in the maelstrom of trouble which had engulfed us. So I hesitated, and the opportunity was lost.

  ‘Where is the newspaper?’ he demanded irritably.

  I put down the broken china and picked up the paper from the floor, where it had been thrown down during the quarrel. He shook out the pages and vanished behind them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Washing greasy dishes in cold water without soap is not easy. The grease impregnates the hands and forms an oily ring round the basin. I had two saucepans left over from lunchtime to wash, and their exteriors were covered with soot from the fire. To save the gas, I had put the pans on the living-room fire to finish the cooking of the children’s midday dinner. Now the soot floated revoltingly amid the grease. I did not dare to put a kettle of water on the fire as I was afraid of irritating Father further by pushing past him. I let the water from the single cold water tap cascade into our tin wash basin to sweep out some of the soot, and stood gazing at the backs of my hands in the light of the candle I had just lit.

  My hands were small and well-formed. The skin was ingrained with dirt and round the quicks the nails were almost black. The nail tips were long and uneven and filled with grime. Sometimes I tried to clean my nails with a sliver of wood, but without plenty of soap it was a hopeless task. I remembered the scathing remark of the sweet-shop lady, and, with a stomach clenched with apprehension, I realised that to make myself thoroughly clean and neat for work would be very difficult.

  In a painfully sweet voice, Mother suddenly called me from the front room, and I was jolted back from depressing contemplation to frightening reality.

  I wiped my hands on the family’s solitary towel which hung on a hook on the back door. The towel was nearly black from use by nine people and it invariably stank. I added a streak of soot to it.

  Father had joined Mother and the deaconess, Miss Ferguson, in the front room, and was perched uncomfortably on the edge of one of the easy chairs. I could feel the blood draining from my face; and, as I gave Miss Ferguson a nervous smile, I wanted to faint.

  ‘Miss Ferguson insists on hearing from you personally that you do not want to go to work,’ announced Mother frigidly, and Miss Ferguson shifted uncomfortably around in her chair. ‘I understand she spoke to you in the library this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, she did,’ I whispered, in answer to the second statement.

  Miss Ferguson took a large breath, as if the effort to speak was going to be too much for her. Then she turned her worried-looking face towards me, and said very carefully, ‘I have been trying to persuade Mr and Mrs Forrester that it would be greatly to your advantage if you could go to work and be trained for some worthy occupation, and that it would be possible for them to spare you from the house to do this. I tentatively made an appointment for you for tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock.’

  Father made a wry face, and I had the feeling he wished he was a hundred miles away.

  Mother interjected, ‘Helen will not be keeping the appointment, I am sure.’

  Undeterred, Miss Ferguson pressed on. ‘I have assured your mother that you will be working with nice women, all from good families, and I am sure you will be well trained.’ She turned to Father and said very earnestly, ‘She would be quite safe there,’ as if any other place of work was probably a cesspool of immorality.

  Father was embarrassed. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he muttered, and looked across at Mother.

  I looked down at my hands resting on the back of the easy chair, and burst into tears. It was easy to see that my parents were boiling with suppressed anger at the intrepid little deaconess’s foray into our affairs. They would raise hell when she was gone. I put my head down on my hands and cried until the tears ran through the fingers on to the shiny green leatherette of the chair.

  Avril, who had been sitting on a matching poof, sucking her thumb and watching the proceedings very quietly, suddenly started to cry as well, and was immediately whisked into the hall and the door shut on her. I could hear her wailing in the dark.

  ‘Don’t cry, Helen,’ said Father ineffectually.

  Mother turned to Miss Ferguson, as she shut the door after Avril.

  ‘Helen is obviously very upset, Miss Ferguson. Perhaps we should discuss the matter with her and let you know in a day or two what has been decided.’

  I was not just upset; I was nearly out of my mind with despair. But the tears came with such tremendous force that I could do nothing to stop Miss Ferguson being
quickly, though politely, eased out of the house.

  When I heard the latch on the front door click shut, I flung myself wildly on to the settee and continued to sob. What was the use of a day or two, when the appointment was for tomorrow?

  It was fortunate that Father and Mother had already exhausted themselves with one quarrel that evening, and Mother, therefore, contented herself with ordering me to control myself, while Father asked how they could talk to me when I was making such a racket.

  I made a violent effort, sat up and dried my face with the backs of my hands.

  Mother looked so terribly exhausted, when finally I lifted my eyes to look at her, that I felt an overwhelming guilt and said, ‘I’m sorry, I really am.’

  Mother had been dreadfully ill just before we arrived in Liverpool. She had had no real care since then, so that she was soon drained of strength. I truly did not want to add to her hardships; yet I could not bear my present miseries much longer.

  ‘Have you been talking to Miss Ferguson or to the Fathers at the church, behind our backs, Helen?’ asked Mother. There was an implied threat in the question. Family affairs, we had been taught from infancy, were not discussed with servants or outsiders. Childish revelations, whenever discovered, had been dealt with by a sharp spanking or, sometimes, caning.

  I was too upset to care or remember about Miss Ferguson’s tour of our house, so I said indignantly that I had not. I took off my glasses and wiped them down the front of my gym slip, while I tried to think how my going to work could be managed.

  ‘You know, Daddy,’ I said, approaching the weaker partner, ‘the salary offered is quite good. It would mean three salaries coming into the house.’