Liverpool Miss

by Helen Forrester

  I backed away from her, snatched up my night school books from the mantelpiece, and tried not to scream back, as I said, ‘I don’t care. I’m going to work on Monday. Otherwise, I am going to Granny’s – so you won’t have my help anyway.’

  Mother had been a very beautiful woman. Convulsed with rage, she looked like an infuriated witch, and I was terrified.

  ‘Go!’ she yelled at me. ‘All right. Go to work! You will soon discover that the world is a very cruel place and you will long to be at home again. Get out of my sight.’

  By this time all the children were bellowing like frightened cows. Fiona and Avril clung to Mother, crying, ‘Don’t, Mummy, don’t.’ Brian, Tony and Edward were all in noisy tears. Only Alan sat tearless; he yelled, ‘I don’t know why everybody had to make such a row!’

  I backed through the door. Then turned and followed Father into the night.

  Mother did not need to tell me that the world outside was a cruel place. I knew that already. But faintly, faintly on the horizon it had its rays of hope.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Mr Ellis,’ I whispered shyly, ‘I am the new telephone girl.’

  Four other girls in the room paused in their work to stare at me, while Mr Ellis put down his pen carefully on his desk and looked up at me. He frowned at what he saw.

  ‘Humph. You are?’ He took out his handkerchief and held it to his nose. I heard a girl giggle.

  I lowered my eyes. I knew I looked awful. Joan’s skirt and blouse hung on me. My rough-cut hair could have served as a mop. Both feet throbbed with the pain of blisters rubbed on tender chilblains, and I was biting my lips as I endured the misery of it. Over me lay the smell of poverty, of a body poorly washed, clothes unaired, foul breath and fatigue.

  The man before me was thin and dark-visaged, with the same air of nervous tension as Father had. He called to a girl sitting in front of the telephone switchboard.

  ‘Miss Finch, show t’ girl what to do.’

  He gestured towards the switchboard with his pen, as he picked it up, so I silently went over to Miss Finch. While I stood awkwardly beside her, I could see out of the corner of my eye, two other girls sniggering behind their hands as they watched.

  Miss Finch answered the telephone in a thick Liverpool accent. In between calls, without preamble, she explained to me that people wishing to apply to the Charity for help entered through the basement, where there was a waiting room. A girl took their names and telephoned them up to the room we were in. The switchboard operator wrote them down and handed the slips of paper to the filing clerks. The applicant’s file, if any, was then sent down to the Interviewing Floor directly below us, where there was another waiting room.

  The applicant was then sent upstairs, past the Tea Blending Company on the main floor, to be united with his file. At this point, a senior staff member inquired what he had come about, and he was then seated in the second waiting room. He was finally interviewed in a side room. It was a long, slow process for the applicants.

  Miss Finch was a black-haired, rosy-cheeked girl, who seemed to resent me very much. She told me she was the office girl and was filling in on the switchboard until I could take over. I presumed that she had not won promotion to the job of telephonist because of her bad accent.

  ‘Names beginning A to J go to Dorothy Evans; K to Z to Phyllis over there.’ She got up and handed me the phone. ‘You take the next call from the basement.’

  Gingerly, I lifted the receiver to my ear, while Miss Finch moved the appropriate switches. A garbled rattle came through the receiver. I could not interpret it. In a panic, I handed the instrument back to Miss Finch, who hastily jotted down a name on her pad.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked impatiently, as she handed me the slip. ‘Give this to Phyllis Barker.’ When I hesitated uncertainly, she hissed, ‘Over there. Be quick.’

  Phyllis snatched the slip out of my hand, quickly jumped up and vanished down her aisle of files. Her high-heeled patent leather shoes flashed, as she moved.

  ‘How do you answer the phone and deliver the names to the filing clerks at the same time?’ I whispered to Miss Finch.

  Miss Finch made a wry face. ‘You run,’ she whispered back. ‘Everybody runs.’

  She was right. The filing clerks, the telephonists, the disembodied voice in the basement, the whimpering nervous girl who served in the Cash Department next door, Miss Finch herself as she made tea and delivered letters, all ran. Like convicts, at the double, they scuttled upstairs and downstairs, scurrying in and out of offices to look for files or deliver messages, running, running, running. Sometimes, I almost expected them to take wing, like one does in nightmares. They were not allowed to use the lift, because the charity was short of money and it was necessary to keep the electricity bill to a minimum.

  Miss Finch left me to manage the telephone alone for a few minutes. She had to sort some letters into a round for hand delivery and did this at another table. In seconds, the awesome Presence who had interviewed me and had given me the job, shuffled out of her room, to inquire of Miss Danson, her secretary, why she had found herself speaking to her own basement when she wanted to speak to the Public Assistance Committee two miles away.

  Miss Danson murmured about the new girl just starting and eased her back into her room, while Mr Ellis barked at both Miss Finch and me to be more careful.

  It was a dreadful morning, during which I managed to create telephonic chaos. I could hardly hear what was said. I had no idea of the names of the other staff or where they were to be found. I had no list of commonly required outside numbers and had to look each of them up in the telephone book. And, quickly enough, I realised from Miss Finch’s manner that she did not feel it was in her interest to help me to make a success of the job.

  I was left alone, while Miss Finch went to make the office’s morning tea, and I called almost tearfully to Phyllis to come to help me sort the switchboard out.

  ‘Not Phyllis, Miss Forrester,’ roared Mr Ellis, behind me, ‘Miss Barker, if you please.’ He paused, while I sat paralysed with fright, and then said, ‘Can’t you speak quieter? I can’t stand that la-dee-da accent.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I whispered, as Phyllis Barker kindly came to my aid.

  I realised suddenly that, except for Mr Ellis, everyone in the room whispered. And nobody laughed. Not one girl, except Miss Barker, had even smiled at me yet. The constant tattoo of the typewriter of the Presence’s secretary, the buzz of the telephone switchboard, the flutter of paper and the steady hiss of whispers made up the noises in the room.

  Miss Finch told me my lunch hour would be from one-thirty to two-thirty, and the morning seemed endless. She dumped a cup of tea in front of me with a biscuit tucked in the saucer, and I ate and drank eagerly. In a quiet moment Miss Barker found me a list of commonly-used telephone numbers and I tried to master it. The names and figures danced in front of me. I needed badly a list of the names of the staff and their numbers on the switchboard, so that I could connect incoming calls to the correct extension; and when Miss Finch returned to assist me, I asked her for this.

  She shrugged and said I did not need a list. I would soon learn the names. In the meantime, outraged voices on every extension phone sibilantly rebuked me. It was a nightmare.

  At twelve o’clock, the basement waiting room closed and there were no more names to write down and deliver to the filing clerks. This gave me more time to deal with other calls and contemplate more quietly the hateful, buzzing board.

  Just before lunch time, a thin waif of a girl wearing large horn-rimmed glasses came out of a door on the other side of the room.

  With an apprehensive glance at Mr Ellis, she crept over to me and said in an almost inaudible voice, ‘The Cashier would like to see you during your lunch hour.’ She sniffed, and I saw that she had been crying. Her nose was red and her eyes heavy with tears. It looked as if she had been in even more trouble than I had.

  ‘The Cash Department is over there,’ she ad
ded, pointing to the room from which she had come.

  I smiled up at her. ‘Thanks. I’ll come.’

  She managed a glimmer of a smile back and then fled across the room and through the door she had pointed out to me.

  Fear of what lay in wait in the Cash Department was added to my fear of the telephone.

  I knocked at the Cash Department door and a female voice snapped, ‘Come in.’

  I entered. The room was partly divided by a frosted-glass screen and at first appeared to be empty. I paused.

  ‘Well?’ snapped the same voice again, from behind the glass screen.

  I approached cautiously.

  Behind the screen, at a littered desk, sat a small, grey-haired woman. She looked at me almost belligerently. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You sent for me, Madam. I am Helen Forrester.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She looked me up and down, and her nose wrinkled in distaste.

  She turned round and took two folded blue garments from a shelf behind her. These she almost threw into my arms.

  ‘Your overalls. You will wear them at all times in the office and will keep them clean.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘You will be paid on Friday afternoons. Such a nuisance to have to pay a single member of the staff on a weekly basis. What is your full name and address? And age?’

  I told her.

  ‘Very well. You can go.’ She turned back to her desk, and I tiptoed out, past two empty desks where presumably the weepy girl and another person worked.

  The general office was empty, except for an elderly lady in a pretty grey dress who was manning the telephone. She nodded to me as I went out.

  I went up to the cloakroom on the top floor of the building. This had been shown to me when I arrived, by a hurrying lady in a green overall whom I had met on the stairs. I laid the two blue overalls on the floor under the hook where I had hung my coat, and wondered what to do. There was nobody about and the silence seemed unearthly. I began to cry, my head pressed against my coat.

  I had no money to buy lunch, and there had been no bread left after breakfast to bring with me. Both parents had left me severely alone, to get myself ready for work and Edward ready to go to Alice’s. Feeling like a pariah, I had taken the cheerful little boy to his new friend’s and he had stayed with her without a murmur, and then I had walked to work.

  There was no doubt in my mind that my parents were united in their attitude that I should find going to work so difficult that I would eventually be thankful to return to housekeeping.

  At the memory of their stony faces, I felt suddenly weak. I moved to the wash basin and clung to it, as my legs began to give under me. Wild colours flashed before my eyes and I felt myself sinking into oblivion. I knew from experience that I rarely passed out completely, so I clung to the wash basin until the world stopped swimming about.

  I cupped my hand under the cold tap and drank some water, slurping it up and splashing my face. Greatly daring, I decided to have a wash. My face was soaped as it had never been soaped in the past three years. I rinsed and rinsed in gorgeous hot water, then dried myself on the spotlessly clean roller towel.

  The light was poor, but in the mirror I could see green eyes with black rings round them, peering out of a face dead white, except where it was blotched with acne. Short eyelashes hardly showed on the reddened eyelids. Smooth eyebrows looked very black below a rough fringe of brown hair. I grinned ruefully at myself. The teeth thus exposed looked good – the cavities at the back did not show.

  The wash had done me good and, as nobody disturbed me, I washed my glasses, dried them on the towel and put them on. The face in the mirror came into sharper focus, and I could see again how defeatingly plain I was. How I longed for a perfectly straight nose, like Fiona’s, instead of the high-bridged, haughty-looking Forrester nose.

  Without a watch I did not know the time. Meanwhile, I needed to sit down, and there was no chair in the cloakroom.

  Hesitantly, I looked along the line of blue overalls hung neatly on their owners’ hooks, and saw beyond them a door leading off the cloakroom.

  Very quietly, I approached the door and opened it.

  I was in a small passage. To my left, an open door revealed a neat kitchenette. It had a big window and was bright with light. Another closed door faced me. When I turned its handle, it gave a sharp click.

  ‘Hello. Come in,’ said a soft feminine voice very cheerfully.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Embarrassed that I had disturbed someone, I swung the door wide and stood dithering on the threshold of a small room that seemed packed with furniture bathed in dazzling sunlight. Light from a skylight poured down onto the burnished brown head of a thin woman, about twenty-five years of age, who was seated facing me behind one of the three typists’ desks crowding the room. She had an open paperback in one hand and was eating a sandwich. As she looked up at me from her book, her long, narrow face radiated good humour. She had a beautiful pink and white skin, delicately accentuated by good make-up, and light, almost catlike brown eyes gazed at me through very large horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Hello, come in,’ she said, as she put her book down on top of her typewriter. ‘What brings you here? You must be the new telephonist.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I am sorry to intrude. I was looking for somewhere to sit down.’

  ‘Oh, take Miss Short’s chair for a while. She won’t mind.’ She pointed to a swivel chair by another typist’s desk. ‘Like a sandwich?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I willed myself not to snatch from the proffered square of greaseproof paper. Carefully, I took the tiny triangle and made myself eat it in several delicate, polite bites, when I really longed to bolt it down. It was a cucumber sandwich and reminded me poignantly of long ago afternoon teas. The other girl ate the two remaining sandwiches and tossed the empty wrapping into the wastepaper basket. She insisted on my sharing a small piece of fruit cake with her.

  I smiled at her, as I ate the cake, and asked, ‘Are you somebody’s secretary?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed. ‘I’m just one of the also-rans. I do any typing jobs they want.’

  ‘Could I ask your name?’ I queried. ‘I don’t know the names of any of the staff, except some of the filing clerks, and it is terribly difficult when answering the phone.’

  ‘Well, I’m Miriam Enns. And Miss Short and Miss Brown work up here. Miss Short is the Head Typist. Then Miss Danson in the Filing Department is the secretary to Miss MacAdam, who runs the place. You probably saw her when you applied for the job.’

  ‘I did.’ Then I added, without thinking, ‘The Presence.’

  ‘The what?’ Miriam chuckled delightedly. ‘That’s lovely.’

  I blushed, and smiled nervously. Then I said, ‘Well, she seemed like a Presence.’

  ‘You are right. She’s a great lady and she works very hard, though she is so frail.’ She swung round on her chair, took a piece of paper out of her stationery stand and put it into her typewriter. ‘I’ll make you a list of the staff – it won’t take a minute. I don’t know the numbers of their phones on the switchboard, but I can tell you which floor they are on.’

  She rattled away on the machine, while I sat quietly watching her. She seemed to me the nicest person I had met for a very long time, and as I watched her long, slender fingers flash over the keyboard, a new emotion welled up in me, a great desire to give and receive friendship.

  ‘That Ellis man should have seen that you got a list like this,’ she said irritably, as she whipped the paper from the roller and handed it to me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said happily, as I carefully folded the paper up. ‘Is he the only man on the staff?’

  ‘No, there is one more. But I think Ellis finds it hard in a sea of women.’

  I did not venture a comment. I was a bit afraid of Mr Ellis, who did not approve of la-dee-da accents.

  ‘Have you got an overall yet?’ asked Miriam. She took a packet of cigarettes out of h
er own blue overall pocket, struck a match from a box on her desk and lit up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Better put it on. We lowly types wear blue ones. Senior staff – the social workers – wear green ones.’

  I nodded agreement.

  There was the sound of the cloakroom door being opened and slammed, and running feet.

  Miriam glanced at her wrist watch. ‘It’s twenty-five past,’ she said. ‘Better put on your overall and go downstairs – or Ellis will be after your blood.’

  I jumped up. I felt a lot better.

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ I said warmly, looking down at the pixie face of my new friend.

  Miriam had the same type of wide, red-lipped mouth as Fiona had, and she smiled broadly up at me. ‘When you get desperate, come up here,’ she advised. Her smile became a yawn and she took off her glasses and rubbed her merry, brown eyes with her knuckles.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I assured her enthusiastically.

  ‘Shut the door as you go out. Miss Short doesn’t like it left open.’

  Obediently I closed the door after me. I paused in the passage outside, my hand still on the door knob, feeling again the warm friendliness of the girl in the typing room. For the first time since arriving in Liverpool, I had talked with someone fairly young, who spoke as I did and treated me as an equal.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The aim of the organisation in which I found myself was to make the poor aware of the many charities available to help them; to counsel; to provide a little legal aid given voluntarily by a few city lawyers; and to disburse, in the most constructive way, funds donated to the organisation itself. The senior staff provided a friendly ear for sorrows to be poured into, and sympathetic visitors to the sick and other house-bound people; they tried also to aid the elderly and the many despairing mothers who, under impossible circumstances, struggled to make ends meet. Though they were not well paid, all the staff had shining neatly combed hair, clear skins and well-fed bodies. Their clothes were fresh looking and everything matched, as was the fashion. I was thankful to be shrouded in an overall.