Liverpool Miss

by Helen Forrester

  I told him, and, while I sipped my tea, he asked where I came from and whether I was still at school. Each question came out in such a breezy, cheerful manner that I was soon relaxed and laughing with him. He told me that he and his brother owned two big drapery shops in North Wales, that he himself had had a heart attack at the beginning of the year, so he had come to Kent’s Bank for a holiday. He had prevailed upon his bachelor brother to come with him, and they had left the business to the tender mercies of managers.

  The teacups were removed, and still we gossiped. For the first time for many years, I was among people who knew nothing about me and judged me by what they saw. Gwyn brought the lady in green over to us. She proved to be a school teacher, who had already been at Kent’s Bank for a week. Emrys looked at a heavy gold pocket watch which he took out of his top pocket, suggested that we all go for a stroll in the grounds and then eat dinner at the same table. So, much to the amusement of the older people, I spent a happy half hour running about among the trees, trying to get close to one of the many squirrels, and arrived at the dinner table glowing with the fresh air and the happy anticipation of an adequate meal.

  The staff who served the meal seemed to be accustomed to very hungry people, and I ate my way through three plates of meat and vegetables and two of pudding. Emrys, who had to keep his weight down, he said, leaned back in his chair and watched me speculatively, while Gwyn and Margaret, the school teacher, chipped me about how such a small person could find room for so much food.

  Having lived so much with Grandma, I felt quite at home with older people. I lost my nervousness completely, my usual gauche manners gave way to the good conduct instilled in me as a child, and I felt so happy I thought I would explode. Emrys had a way of sitting quietly and giving complete and careful attention to what was said to him. He would run his tobacco-stained fingers through his thick, grey hair, worn rather longer than was then the fashion, and smile, and comment or argue carefully on any subject discussed with me, as if I was an adult whose ideas were important to him. I was unused to anyone giving me their full attention and if I had been less innocent, I might have been troubled at such affability. But as I responded to his good-humoured teasing I knew only a great gaiety and lightness of heart. A liveliness I did not know I had began to emerge.

  The first two days of the holiday were taken up with long, organised walks in the countryside, broken in the middle by a picnic lunch. The guests were divided into two groups, those who could take very long walks and those who preferred easier ones. Since both Emrys and I had been ill, we chose the easier walks and Gwyn and his school teacher came along with us.

  I now shared the bedroom with five mill girls from Rochdale. All of them had been ill and said frankly that they, too, were enjoying free holidays. They all had several changes of clothing and enough money to buy tickets for the bus trips, later in the week, and to purchase endless sweets and ice cream cones from the village shop. They ignored me, and kept up a raucous conversation amongst themselves. Though I had often heard foul language in the streets of Liverpool, I had never lived with people who used it, and I was frequently shocked and sickened by them. They also came on the easy walks, but fortunately stayed within their own group.

  I danced along beside Emrys, through forest glades dappled with sunshine or along the sides of fields waving silvery green with growing oats. Occasionally, Gwyn would make us stop, while Emrys sat down to rest. He carried a piece of macintosh in his pocket and when a convenient wall or bench did not present itself, he spread the macintosh on the ground and sat on that. While he regained his breath, I would cast around, picking wild flowers or small sprays of fresh green foliage, which one of the staff would put in a vase on the dining table for me. Emrys did not know the names of many of the plants, but I had learned their names from Edith and was able to identify them for him.

  Though I had handed to Mother three weeks’ salary paid in advance, she had not seen fit to give me any money. I had only a few pennies in my purse, because I had spent most of the three weekly shillings on stockings. This made it impossible for me to buy tickets for the coach tour arranged for the third day.

  Emrys and Gwyn had not yet come down to breakfast, so I ate the meal rather soberly in the company of Margaret and another middle-aged lady. Margaret was herself convalescing after a dose of influenza and we compared our respective illnesses and then talked about books.

  ‘See you later,’ she said gaily, and I nodded. I went up to the empty bedroom and wondered how to employ the day. I heard the arrival of the motor coach and the bustle of departure, as I sat with a copy of Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii in my lap. I had already read the story twice and this seemed to hold true of all the books in the lounge downstairs. Finally, I tossed it aside. I would have a bath. I had tried several times since my arrival to do this, but the bathroom had invariably been occupied. Today, however, all the other guests had gone out so I could take my time about it.

  The bath was a huge, Victorian tub, left over from the time when the house had been a private home. I turned on its great brass taps and let the water thunder in until it was quite deep. There was a large, used tablet of soap in a wire basket stretched across the bath. Quickly I stripped off and stepped in.

  This was the first bath I had had for four years and the water rippling across my stomach felt odd. I looked down at long, slender legs wavering beneath the water, at a stomach which stuck out too much like that of a hungry child, at surprisingly prominent young breasts, at arms so thin they looked like sticks. The skin was a dull yellow, almost bronze in places. I had not looked at myself properly since I was a child, in that long ago world which we had left so precipitously. As I soaked in the hot water, I remembered how Father had told his biggest creditor to sell up his house and its contents, and how he had walked out of it, allowing us to take nothing with us, except the clothing we were wearing and a blanket to cover his sick wife and newest child. He knew nothing of his rights to clothes and bedding, to the minima of existence. With this one quixotic gesture, he had deprived the family of all that even the most hopeless debtor was legally entitled to. His last money had been spent on train tickets to Liverpool, his home city, which did not want him.

  I kneeled up in the water, dipped my head in and then soaped it thoroughly. Three times the brown locks were soaped and rinsed. Then the thin body was soaped until it looked like a snowman. The water was covered with grey soap suds.

  Like a dripping muskrat, I climbed out, emptied the bath and began to refill it.

  The door burst open and a young, male member of the staff rushed in, pulling off his apron as he came. He was well into the huge bathroom, before he realised that I was standing there naked, one hand on the brass tap.

  He stopped, his startled face registering shock. Then he blushed hotly.

  ‘I say, I am sorry!’ he exclaimed, and turned and fled.

  I was so used to being intruded upon by my brothers in a house where all washing had to be done in the kitchen that I was undisturbed. But I did for a moment wonder why he should be so flabbergasted. A girl in her skin was nothing special as far as I could see.

  I repeated the scrubbing and, when I finally emerged from the bathroom, hair wrapped in a towel like a turban, I was scarlet from head to heel.

  I drew back the net curtains and sat down by the window to dry my hair in the breeze. Such quietness enfolded me as I had not known before. Leisurely I combed the wet hair over my shoulders, and watched the sun glancing on the sea. I could smell the salt and, closer to hand, the pine trees in the garden. For the first time for years I had nothing to do. It was as if every nerve slowly loosened and relaxed. Three nights of deep, warm sleep and two days of stacks of food had helped to heal both mind and body.

  I sat on the hard bedroom chair for a long time, the two rows of carelessly made beds behind me, the fine view framed by the window in front of me. My mind was empty. There was no past, no nagging family, nothing. No future, except the happy anticipatio
n of welcoming Emrys Hughes and the other kindly guests when they returned, and then eating and eating and eating.

  A train arriving at the nearby station roused me. I got up and went to the spotty mirror to arrange my hair in a bun again.

  I peered short-sightedly at the image in the mirror and was surprised at what I saw. The hair, usually so straight because of its greasy coating, now waved softly down each side of the thin cheeks; its mousy brown carrying in it a rich red burnish. Surprised, I coaxed it into deeper waves.

  From under smooth black brows, large green eyes, no longer bloodshot, stared sadly back at me. A few lumpy spots marred a complexion which was surprisingly white. I smiled cautiously at myself. The teeth were not straight and were tinged with yellow. I had scrubbed them well but I had no toothpaste. With newly awakened vanity, I decided I had a nice smile. I wondered if make-up would cover the spots, and then sighed because there was no money for such luxuries. Telling myself to stop playing Narcissus, I put my hair up, taking care, however, not to draw it back too tightly and spoil the waves.

  Lunch was not served in the holiday home to guests, so I went without. It was probably as well, as it gave an over-taxed digestive system time to recuperate. I spent the rest of the day washing my spare blouse and panties and ironing them dry with an iron borrowed from the kitchen. Then I went for a long walk.

  The lanes had all the bright greenery of June, but last year’s leaves lay sodden at the bottom of puddles formed by overnight rain. They reminded me of winter.

  I dreaded the winter. Another year of cold, sopping wet feet, of piercing wind, of long stone staircases to be climbed, of shivering in a freezing bed. Another winter, too, of incredible loneliness.

  Fiona is growing up, I comforted myself. She will be company. Yet instinct told me that Fiona would never really communicate with me; she was too crushed, too determined never to be caught out of character, as a passive, pliable, inoffensive, obliging person, guaranteed not to answer back. The steel which I felt lay deep within her would be used for her own self-defence. She would crouch behind it, hiding any real feeling lest someone take offence. Just as I had been cast as a maiden aunt, she had been cast by my parents as a lovely girl who would make a good marriage which would help to raise the family again to its former stature. And yet, sometimes, I thought that Fiona might surprise my parents more than I ever could. As with the rest of the children, I could give Fiona love, but she was incapable of giving me friendship.

  After my walk I tidied my windblown hair and then went down to the lounge. There was a number of women’s magazines in a magazine rack and I curled up on a settee with these in excited anticipation.

  Except for Peg’s Paper which Edith had allowed me to read when I was small, I had not seen any women’s magazines, and I soon was engrossed in enthralling stories in which the heroine was always blonde and invariably won the hero over the machinations of a dark sultry villainess. The kisses were passionate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The bus disgorging a noisy crowd of returning guests put an end to my quiet day. I reluctantly uncurled myself from the settee and put down the magazine I had been reading. Emrys came puffing into the lounge, grey raincoat flying behind him, pipe aglow like a watchman’s stove. He was followed more slowly by his brother, Gwyn.

  ‘Why didn’t you come?’ he asked. ‘We missed you, didn’t we Gwyn?’

  Gwyn smiled kindly down at me. ‘Yes, we did,’ he assured me.

  I went pink with embarrassment, and said, ‘I thought I’d have a quiet day. Did you enjoy the trip?’

  ‘I’d have enjoyed it a lot more if you had been there,’ Emrys replied roundly, and playfully pinched my cheek.

  Now I was blushing at the compliment. He evidently saw it, as he struggled out of his coat, and laughed.

  ‘Well, I’ve made sure you come on the other trips. Gwyn and I have bought tickets for all of ’em for you. Now you have to come.’ He gusted with laughter, and Gwyn chuckled and said, ‘Well, we hope you will.’

  ‘That’s immensely kind of you both,’ I told them, laughing myself, because I could not help it.

  While Gwyn helped Margaret off with her coat, Emrys stood in front of me, sturdy legs apart, while he struck matches to relight his pipe. He had told me that he was not supposed to smoke, but he could not give it up. As he gossiped about the lakes they had seen, I wondered what he would think if he saw my poverty-stricken home. Both brothers were obviously prosperous; both had gone to the prayer meeting held in the lounge each evening and both had joined earnestly in the prayers that were offered; kindness and thoughtfulness in small things were obvious in every move they made. They were very different from anybody I had ever met before. I could well imagine them behind their drapery shop counters, cheerfully and patiently dispensing everything from two pennyworth of buttons to forty yards of damask for curtains.

  As the fortnight progressed, my friendship with Emrys deepened. I began to feel a real affection for the man, but such was my innocence that I never considered what he might be feeling. He was so much older than me.

  Once, when he held my hand during a bus trip, some of the ladies saw it. They teased me and said I had made a conquest. This embarrassed me, because I felt that anybody could see I was incapable of conquering any man; I was too plain.

  He never overstepped the bounds of propriety, however, and I never felt frightened with him. A couple of days before the holiday was due to end, he wrote out his home address for me, and said he hoped I would come to see him.

  ‘My wife died three years ago,’ he said simply. ‘Gwyn and I keep house together in a flat over one of the shops. But my sister lives nearby, and you could stay with her.’

  I doubted in my mind that I would ever manage to travel as far as North Wales, but the idea gave me much pleasure, and I said with genuine enthusiasm, ‘I would love that.’

  He looked at me very soberly for a moment, and then said, ‘Would you?’

  I nodded.

  He grinned at me. ‘Then we’ll arrange it.’

  On the last day of the holiday, we all went to see Cartmel Priory, and were ambling round the old church, behind our guide, when Emrys stopped suddenly and began to gasp for breath. He clutched his chest and turned and stumbled into a pew to sit down. The rest of the party had moved on ahead a little.

  I leaned over the side of the pew and put my arm round his shoulder. ‘What is it, Emrys?’ But I knew what it was. I had seen it happen to Father when he was a young man. ‘I’ll get Gwyn. Just keep sitting.’

  I ran over to Gwyn, and whispered to him. He spun round, at the same time taking a small bottle out of his jacket pocket. He fumbled in his top pocket as he ran back and produced a worn, tin spoon.

  He pushed into the pew, and asked me to support Emrys’s head, while he poured out a colourless liquid and forced it into the gasping man’s mouth. Some dribbled down Emrys’s chin, but most went in. Then, after he had put the cork back into the bottle, he stuck it down on a pew shelf, while he rolled up his raincoat and made a pillow.

  We laid Emrys along the pew seat, while the other guests, suddenly aware that something was wrong, came thronging anxiously over to us.

  Slowly, Emrys’s face lost some of its agony, the breathing became more normal. I crouched in the narrow space beside him and chafed his hands anxiously. Someone lent a coat to put over him. The verger was asked to telephone the guest house and arrange for a doctor to be called.

  Emrys’s eyes had been tight closed, but as he relaxed he opened them and looked at me. ‘Helen.’

  As soon as he felt he could bear to be moved, two men in the party made a seat with crossed hands and carried him into the bus and laid him down on the back seat. Gwyn cradled his head, and I knelt by him and held him, so that he did not fall off. He lay quietly.

  The bus driver manoeuvred the bus very carefully over the narrow lanes, and as soon as we reached the guest house, two of the staff came running out with a wooden chair with arms. Emrys w
as lifted from the bus into the chair, despite mild protests that he thought he could walk. He was not a heavy man and the two young men made short work of carrying him up the stairs and into his room. He was closely followed by a doctor carrying a black bag and by his anxious brother. I stood forlornly at the bottom of the stairs, and then reluctantly went to my room to wash before dinner.

  Everybody in the dining room seemed to be talking about the fatal heart attacks they had witnessed, and I was very cast down, though Margaret did her best to cheer me up.

  Gwyn did not come down to the meal, so when we had finished Margaret and I went into the hall and, after a moment’s uncertainty on Margaret’s part, went to the office to inquire if they had news.

  We were told that while we were at dinner an ambulance had come and Mr Hughes and his brother had gone to a hospital in a nearby town. Margaret and I looked at each other, and then in silent consent went to the prayer meeting.

  I did not sleep much. I was filled with a strange emotion such as I had not experienced before, a fear of the loss of a loved one.

  The next morning, before breakfast, I plucked up enough courage to go myself to the office to inquire if they had news of Emrys. They had not, but the manager allowed me to use the telephone to inquire from the hospital how he was.

  Mr Hughes was resting comfortably, I was told primly. He was not yet allowed visitors.

  At breakfast I passed this information to Margaret. Despite my depression, I ate a huge breakfast and while still at table, said good-bye to Margaret, because she had to leave immediately in order to catch her train home. I went up to the bedroom and silently put my few belongings back into their paper bag, while the turmoil of the packing being done by the five mill girls went on around me. There was a strong smell of dirty washing and violet perfume, and I was glad to escape.