Authors: Helen Forrester
At best, the years between the ages of fourteen and seventeen are not very balanced ones. Children tend to query and test the prevailing social mores, even when they have been blessed with a stable, comfortable life. Like a window pane through which a stone had been thrown, our family’s life had splintered in every direction, leaving a gaping hole. Almost nothing that I had been taught as a child by Edith or by Grandma seemed to have any relevance in slums where fighting and drunkenness were everyday occurrences, where women stood in dark corners with men, fumbling with each other in a manner I was sure was wrong, though I had no inkling of what they were actually doing; a place where theft was considered smart and children openly showed the goods they had shoplifted;
where hunchbacks and cripples of every kind got along as best they could with very little medical care; where language was so full of obscenity that for a long time I did not understand the meaning.
Even in my parents’ light-hearted group, ideas had been discussed, theories of existence expounded, the war knowledgeably refought in the light of history. The availability of music, paintings and fine architecture had been taken for granted. Dress, deportment, manners, education, politics, were all taken seriously.
The comparison was so hopeless that I sometimes laughed. But beneath the laughter, I seethed with suppressed rage and apprehension that even if the rest of the family managed to crawl out of their present sorry state, I would be left behind.
Like water held behind a dam shaken by an earthquake, this anger burst through my natural diffidence, one wet February afternoon, when a plainly dressed lady called at our home. Her hair was hidden by a navy blue coif, such as our Nanny used to wear; and her glasses were perched on a nose reddened by the chilly weather. She wore no makeup, and her navy blue mackintosh reached down to ankles covered in grey woollen stockings. Her black shoes, flat and frumpy, shone despite the rain. I did not recognise my fairy godmother.
When I opened the door a fraction, afraid of yet another creditor, she blinked at me in a friendly way and asked if Mother was at home.
‘No,’ I said cautiously, shifting Edward in my arm so that he could peep round the door, too, without my dropping him.
‘And you are –?’
‘I’m Helen,’ I said. ‘Mother will be at home this evening, if you would like to call again then.’
The wind drove a patter of rain down the street and I heard the click of the front door of the next house as it was opened; the unemployed man next door liked to lean against his own door jamb and listen to my battles with creditors. He would stand and laugh as if he were watching a variety show, and then when it was over, would spit on to our doorstep and go indoors again.
Our visitor’s eyes flickered towards the other door. Then she said, ‘I wonder if I might come in for a moment. I am sure I can explain to you what I have come about.’
Reluctantly, I opened the door wider so that she could step into the muddy hallway. I heard the next door snap shut.
I ushered her into our front room. She paused on the threshold and looked round the room in obvious surprise, as she took off her gloves. The
comparison between Edward’s and my threadbare appearance and the pleasantly furnished room must have struck her immediately. The bugs in the walls gave it an unpleasant smell, but in the hope that they had not yet penetrated the pristine easy chairs, I invited her to sit down.
She sat down gingerly on the edge of one of the chairs, while I stood in front of her holding Edward. I did not want to put him down because his feet were bare and very cold.
She said she had come from the church to which the children’s school was attached, and I nodded, though it seemed to me to be remarkable; during the two and a half years that the children had been attending the school no one from the church had called on us, and we, being so shabby, had never attempted to attend it. In fact, I had forgotten that the church existed.
Edward sucked his thumb and laid his head in the curve of my neck, so that throughout the conversation I could hear the placid slush-slush of his little tongue.
The visitor said in a bright, brittle voice that she had heard from Brian’s and Tony’s teachers that their singing voices were good enough for them to sing in the church choir. She had come to inquire if my parents and the boys would be agreeable to
this. She knew that Mother worked part-time and she had hoped to catch her at home.
It was never possible for me to forecast what reaction my parents might have to any new situation, so I thanked her cautiously and said that Mother would be home at five o’clock.
She smiled gently up at me, but she did not get up to leave. Instead, she sighed and looked at Edward’s blue bare feet.
There was an uneasy silence, and then she said in a much softer voice, ‘Did you attend our school?’
‘No.’
‘Or the church? Have you been confirmed?’
I cleared my throat nervously and replied again, ‘No.’ Then, since my replies seemed abrupt, I added, ‘I go to night school. I’m in Second Year Commerce.’
‘Where did you go to school?’
Her face was so kind and her interest seemed genuine, so I told her about my four years in a variety of private schools up and down the country, and said rather sadly, ‘I didn’t learn very much. I think, if Grandma had not taught me to read and my aunt to write, I would be illiterate.’
Very slowly, while I rocked a sleepy Edward in my arms, she drew out of me the story of my struggle to go to night school, the fact that I had
no clothing to speak of and the other children very little. And with a catch of self-pity in my voice, I finished up, ‘There doesn’t seem to be much hope for anything better for me, unless I can be free to go to work. But there is nobody to look after little Edward, if I do go.’
‘But things seem to be getting better,’ she comforted me. ‘This room is very nicely furnished.’
‘I’d rather Edward had some shoes and socks,’ I retorted suddenly. ‘And you should see the other rooms.’
The dam burst. ‘Come and see,’ I almost ordered her, and strode to the open door. ‘Come and have a look.’
Without a word, her face very serious now, she got up and followed me.
Up the stairs she trudged after me, to the icy, fetid bedrooms, to inspect three iron beds with thin, old-fashioned felt mattresses on them, the urine stains uncovered by any sheet. I had tidied up the bits of blanket and old coats which we used to cover us, and some of the pillows had grubby, white pillow-cases on them.
She looked, aghast, at the door on which I slept. It was balanced on four bricks, one at each corner, and had wads of old newspaper piled on it, instead of a mattress, with a grey piece of sheeting to tuck
over them. There was no other furniture, and, of course, there was no bathroom.
In a passion, I swept her downstairs again, to look at the living room, with its bare deal table, assorted straight chairs and upturned paint cans helping out as seats. The only sign of comfort was an old, wooden rocking chair and a very ancient, greasy-looking easy chair, in which was curled a stray cat which Brian had earlier brought in from the rain. On the tiled floor lay a piece of coconut matting, filled with dust. In the old-fashioned iron fireplace I had laid the fire, ready for the children’s return home.
The kitchen looked quite large because there was so little in it. A small table flanked the gas stove, and there was a built-in soapstone sink in one corner. The opposite corner was taken up by a brick copper, with a tiny fireplace under it, for boiling washing. Our single bucket stood under the sink; our only wash basin caught the steady drip from the house’s cold water tap.
Long lines of shelves ran down one side of the kitchen. They held a motley assortment of rough, white dishes and cups, two saucepans and a dripping tin. A kettle sat on the gas stove beside a tin teapot. A small wooden table held our bits of food, a packet of tea and a blue-bagged pound of
sugar, some margarine in a saucer and a new loaf.
I was shivering with cold and with emotion, and my visitor turned pitying, gentle eyes upon me. ‘Don’t you have a fire?’ she asked. They were the first words she had spoken during our lightning tour.
‘Edward and I manage during the day. I light the fire for the children coming home at lunch time, and then I re-light it for tea time.’
I realised, as I said this, that Edward and I were just as vulnerable to cold as the others were, but we remained in the frigid house while everyone else spent the day in warm buildings. No wonder my joints hurt when I moved. No wonder Edward sometimes cried because of the cold.
‘Where do you keep your food?’ she asked.
‘On the table here,’ I said. ‘I buy it every day.’
She bit her lips, as she pondered over the bread and margarine, and I said a little defensively, ‘Avril or Tony will fetch a pint of milk from the dairy when they come in.’
Edward had gone to sleep, so I led the way back into the living room and laid him down in the easy chair, after pushing off the cat. He stirred, but slept on, his tiny legs spread-eagled. ‘I’ll get something to cover him,’ I told the lady, and flashed up the stairs to get a coat.
When I came back she was still standing where I had left her, and I hastily tucked Edward up before I turned again to face her. My hysterical outburst had spent itself and I felt exhausted and ashamed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I should not have bothered you with all this. And I’m sorry it is not very clean – but I have nothing but a broom and cold water with which to clean – it’s just impossible.’
She seemed wrapped in thought, almost as if she had not heard me. Then she smiled at me and very sweetly. ‘I’m glad you did show me,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I can understand better the struggle you are having. Don’t be discouraged – things have a way of getting better.’
I tried to smile back. I did not believe her.
‘I’ll come again this evening to see your mother,’ she continued, a briskness in her voice.
As I let her out of the house, she turned again to me. ‘Now remember. No getting discouraged.’
I nodded, then she smiled and went out into the rain; her coif was wet before I had closed the door.
She came, as promised, and then again and again. She was a deaconess, and mother seemed to like her because she was a gentle, cultivated woman. First Brian and, later, Tony joined the choir, their white
surplices saving them from the embarrassment of their shabby clothes. Later on, Tony became an altar boy, and the faith he acquired whilst kneeling in the richly decorated sanctuary never left him. He has always been an active member of the Church of England. The experience must also have helped mischievous, highly-strung Brian because, if nothing else, he learned music by many of the great composers in a bright and beautiful church. Both boys were allowed to retain the one shilling and eightpence per month paid to them for their services.
Apparently, the deaconess did not tell Mother of her tour of our house. She did, however, become an earnest advocate on my behalf. Not all fairy godmothers carry wands.
Father sometimes bought a
Liverpool Echo
to read on the tram while coming home from work. A day or two later, before using the newspaper to start the fire, I would read it, as I knelt on the coconut matting in front of the big, black, living-room fireplace.
I loved news of Royalty. Love of the royal family is still quite strong, but in those days, particularly amongst women, it was close to a passion. All our princes were officially handsome, and the courtship of Princess Marina of Greece by Prince George, Duke of Kent, was a romance about which many a girl like myself dreamed wistfully. I followed developments from day to day with eager anticipation.
I also began to read the advertisements, including the ones offering jobs. Once or twice I stole a
piece of Mother’s notepaper and wrote replies. I was not a very good writer but I had been taught in night school how to formulate a letter of application, which was a help. I said I had been privately educated. This was true and absolved me from having to say how few years I had been in school. It also accounted for my not having matriculated, because some girls in private schools did not attempt matriculation; they went on to finishing schools in France or Switzerland. I imagined my childhood friend, Joan, was currently attending such a school.
I told the advertisers that my appearance was neat, which was far from true, and that I was honest and hardworking and was attending evening school. With the letters wrapped in a piece of newspaper to keep them clean, I then wheeled Edward down the long hill to Victoria Street in the centre of the town and hopefully slipped the letters in the box provided by the
Liverpool Echo
for replies.
Nothing happened.
Then one day I received a reply, in handwriting far worse than my own, from a sweet shop near St Luke’s Church. They wanted an assistant and asked me to come to see them the following day, a Saturday. I was dazzled at the prospect.
I hummed all day, as I waited for the evening and the return of my parents. The children found me unusually cheerful at midday, as I gave them their main meal, a half-pound of stewed, minced beef between the six of them, and mashed, boiled potatoes. They had tea to drink. Because they had a little meat, the food was an improvement over their fare during the first two years of our sojourn in Liverpool. It was also easier for me to cook it. An old gas stove was already in the house when we rented it and it worked, as long as I had the necessary penny to put in the meter. In the apartment we had first rented, I had had to cook on a bedroom fireplace, on a fire frequently kept going with scraps of rubbish culled from the streets.
Mother and Father ate their lunches in cafes or took a sandwich with them. My lunch was boiled potato. This, with the occasional addition of carrots, onions or cabbage, was my staple meal for a number of years, and it is doubtful if my parents fared much better.
Lack of nourishing food added to my parents’ irritation. Mother had always had an uncontrollable temper, terrifying to maids, children and shell-shocked husband alike, and these towering tantrums reached almost insane levels during the years in which we suffered so much poverty. So I
approached my parents on the subject of the letter with the care of a cat stalking a mouse.
To no purpose.
Father, at times, seemed to live in a never-never land of illusion. He looked at me over his gold-rimmed spectacles, while he sipped a last cup of tea, and said firmly that I could not be spared to go to work at present. Who would look after Edward and the children’s dinner if I were absent? Perhaps, later on, he added cheerfully, I could be sent to a teachers’ training college and become a school mistress. But a shop assistant? Never! That would be absurd.
I almost laughed at him. ‘Which training college would consider a girl with only four years of schooling?’
His reply was drowned out by Mother’s musical contralto saying firmly, ‘Your place is at home. Helen. It’s the most sensible arrangement. In a few years you will marry and by then Edward will be old enough to look after himself.’
I was aghast. ‘But you’ve always said – everybody’s always said – that I am so plain. How can I get married if I’m so ugly? I’ll be stuck here for ever.’ I began to cry, with hot, angry sobs.
I knew I looked terrible. I had seen myself once in a shop mirror. There was no greater ragamuffin
in all Liverpool than me. So when Father and Mother suddenly started to talk about my getting married, I became almost hysterical. I had read fairy tales where princes materialised from all kinds of unexpected places – but the princesses were always beautiful. No prince was going to come riding by to collect a sinful, ugly hoyden like me. I had shed many bitter tears already over this fact, so successfully hammered into me by a thoughtless mother and impatient servants. I classed myself with cripples who could hope only for attractive souls, appealing to God alone.
In a paroxysm of rage all the frustration came pouring out. I raved helplessly at them, and they raved back.
I was ungrateful, thoughtless, utterly selfish. Father and Mother worked all day to maintain the family. The least I could do was to keep house. And, anyway, no matter what happened, I could not become a shop assistant. It was beneath our station.
Beside myself with fury, I ranted that Mother was working in shops. Why could not I?
The boys, with long-suffering looks, went out to play with their friends. Avril burst into tears and howled nearly as loudly as me. At such times she would go so red that even her scalp under the fine golden hair and thick scurf would flush, and she
would look as if she might at any moment drop dead from apoplexy.
Fiona snatched up her ancient doll and fled upstairs.
It was night school time, but still the argument raged. Finally, I could think of no more reasons why I should go to work and I sat on a paint can, buried my face in my hands and wept uncontrollably.
Mother angrily seized some of the dishes off the table and took them into the kitchen. Father folded up the newspaper into a neat small square, a habit he had. Suddenly the room was quiet, except for miserable sobs from Avril, sitting on the floor in a corner, sturdy small legs spread in front of her. Occasionally, she would kick the tiles with her heels, as if to emphasise her misery. My own sobs were almost silent; I had long ago learned to cry without drawing attention to myself.
Mother returned from the kitchen and Father said rather carefully to her, ‘Perhaps if Helen went to this shop for the interview and saw how much work a place like that would expect from her, she might realise that she is better off at home. Small places like that usually squeeze the very life blood out of their people.’ He ran one finger along the newspaper’s folds to neaten it, while I looked up quickly at Mother.
I swallowed a sob. Here was a tiny opening. I was sure I could do any amount of work. I conveniently ignored the fact that my physical condition was so poor that quite small exertions could make me dizzy, and each month I had to face a day of almost unbearable pain.
Between sniffs, I begged Mother in watery, meek tones, to let me do as Father suggested.
Mother had wearied herself with her tirade. She sat down suddenly and was quiet. Then she said resignedly that she had no work for the next day, so she supposed she might as well take me to see the shop. Fiona could look after Edward, since the following day was Saturday.
I had not considered that Mother might accompany me, and I had expected to have to face the interview alone. This had worried me, because I had no idea how one should behave or what one should say in such a situation, particularly as I did not want to give any indication of the kind of life we led. I felt instinctively that I would stand a better chance of getting work if it appeared that I came from a stable working class or lower middle class home, with less well-born parents than I had. What kind of an impact on a small businessman would Mother have, a lady who spoke ‘with ollies in her mouth?’
I sighed, but made no objection to her coming. I said instead, ‘I’d have to make myself look respectable, somehow.’
I looked at Mother hopefully. She was still dressed in her black business frock, though she had taken off her shoes and stockings and wore father’s old bedroom slippers on her feet. Her face looked haggard under her make-up and her hair, which I had waved the night before, was ruffled and untidy.
Mother returned my look. ‘Yes, you would,’ she replied, so sharply that it sounded like an implied threat and made me jump apprehensively.
I was as tall as Mother, though with a much slighter frame, and after surveying me for a moment, she said I could borrow the dress she was wearing. Since it would be Saturday the following day, I could also borrow Fiona’s black woollen stockings and black, flat-heeled shoes; Fiona was not consulted, and was very grumpy when she discovered what had been agreed. ‘You’ll tread them out,’ she complained, ‘Your feet are too big.’
‘I’ll be very careful,’ I promised, as I recklessly washed my hair and then the rest of me in a quart of hot water in the tin basin, and used up the last sliver of soap we possessed. There would be a row with the boys in the morning about the lack of soap, but it could be endured.
I borrowed from Mother the only pair of scissors we had. She carried them in her handbag, so that they could not be misused, but even so, they were blunt and the nails on my right hand had to be finished off by biting them. Toenails were always left to grow until they broke off, and sometimes they looked like cruel, yellow claws before they finally cracked off.
The scissors were too small to cut hair, so I combed my unkempt locks with the family comb, also normally carried in Mother’s handbag, and hoped it would stay off my face until the interview was over. When I received some wages, I promised myself, I would ask Mother if I could buy some hair clips.
Even after these efforts, I must have looked very odd in a black dress too long and too loose for me and without an overcoat, though it was late February and the weather was damp and chilly.
Full of hope, though shivering with cold, I trotted along beside Mother through the misty morning, past the Rialto Cinema and Dance Hall with its tawdry posters, and the dim outline of the cathedral, to the sweetshop.
It was a very little shop, in a shabby block of other small shops and offices. Its window, however, sparkled with polishing despite the overcast day.
Through the gleaming glass I could dimly see rows of large bottles of sweets and in front of them an arrangement of chocolate boxes, all of them free of dust. Beneath the window, a sign in faded gold lettering advertised Fry’s Chocolate.
Mother, who had not spoken to me during the walk, paused in front of the shop and frowned. Then she swung open the glass-paned door and stalked in. I followed her, my heart going pit-a-pat, in unison with the click of Fiona’s shoes on the highly polished, though worn, linoleum within.
An old-fashioned bell hung on a spring attached to the door was still tinkling softly when a stout, middle-aged woman with a beaming smile on her round face emerged through a lace-draped door leading to an inner room.
‘Yes, luv?’ she inquired cheerfully.
‘I understand that you wrote to my daughter about a post in your shop?’ Mother’s voice was perfectly civil, but the word ‘post’ instead of ‘job’ sounded sarcastic.
The smile was swept from the woman’s face. She looked us both up and down uncertainly, while I agonised over what Mother might say next.
‘Helen?’ the woman asked, running a stubby finger along her lower lip.
‘Helen Forrester,’ replied Mother icily.
‘Ah did.’ The voice had all the inflections of a born Liverpudlian. She looked past Mother, at me standing forlornly behind her. Her thoughtful expression cleared, and she smiled slightly at me. I smiled shyly back.
I felt her kindness like an aura round her and sensed that I would enjoy being with her, even if she did expect a lot of work from me.
‘Have you ever worked before, luv?’ she asked me, running fingers on which a wedding ring gleamed through hair which was improbably golden.
I nodded negatively. Then cleared my throat and said, ‘Only at home.’
‘What work would Helen be expected to do?’ asked Mother, her clear voice cutting between the woman and me like a yacht in a fast wind. She had also the grace of a yacht in the wind; but the sweet-shop owner was obviously finding her more trying than graceful and answered uncertainly, ‘Well, now, I hadn’t exactly thought. I need a bit o’ help, that’s all. ’Course she’d have to wash the floor and polish it, like, every day. And clean the window and dust the stock. And when I knowed her a bit she could probably help me with serving, like. I get proper busy at weekends – and in summer the ice cream trade brings in a lot o’ kids, and you have to have eyes in the
back o’ your head or they’ll steal the pants off you.’
Mother sniffed at this unseemly mention of underwear, and then nodded.
‘And what would the salary be?’
I groaned inwardly. I was sure that in a little shop like this one earned wages not a salary.
The beginning of a smile twitched at the woman’s lips, but she answered Mother gravely.
‘Well, I’d start her on five shillings, and if she was any good I’d raise it.’
Even in those days, five shillings was not much. The woman seemed to realise this, because she added, ‘And o’ course, she can eat as many sweets as she likes. But no taking any out of the shop.’