HELEN FORRESTER
Liverpool Miss

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

The News Building

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

This edition published by Harper 2016

Copyright © the estate of Jamunadevi Bhatia 1985

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover photograph © Picture Post/Hulton Getty

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Helen Forrester asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008180959

Ebook Edition © Dec 2016 ISBN: 9780007369317

Version 2016-11-08

Dedication

To my family and friends who helped me to remember

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

Read the First Chapter of By the Waters of Liverpool

About the Author

By Helen Forrester

About the Publisher

One

It had begun to rain and I was shivering, as I manoeuvered the squeaking Chariot over the road to the corner of Castle Street. Avril was red in the face with rage. She stormed at me because I would not take her out of the pram and let her walk amid the busy lunchtime crowd. At the other end of the pram, beneath the leaking hood, Baby Edward grizzled miserably for the same reason.

Since the October day was too cold for us to walk in the park, I had brought them into the city, thinking that it would be more sheltered and that we could amuse ourselves looking in the shop windows. And now we had wandered into the business district.

Pretty secretaries, rushing back from lunch, and smart businessmen, carrying umbrellas and briefcases, glanced impatiently at the intruding pram with two grubby urchins in noisy protest. It belonged away in the slums, like the tatterdemalion who pushed it.

I did not care. I was resigned to people staring at my long, wind-chapped, bare legs, at my toes sticking through a pair of old plimsolls, at an outgrown gym slip worn without a blouse, a ragged cardigan covering part of my nakedness.

Through the increasing rain, I pushed the pram dreamily amongst them. In my mind I was not walking in black, depressing Liverpool; I was in the countryside and then in the fine, old southern town from which I had been unceremoniously plucked two years before. It was market day, and Father and I were looking at the horses brought in for sale. As we moved about, the ploughmen, the shepherds and the farmers would touch their forelocks to the distinguished-looking gentleman, strolling around with a little daughter in the uniform of a good private school.

‘Echo! Liverpool Echo. Read all about it!’ shouted a man in a cloth cap, thrusting a paper towards the hurrying throng. I blinked, and hurriedly swerved to avoid him.

Would we always have to stay in Liverpool, I wondered depressedly. Would we always be cold and hungry?

‘Oh, shut up, Avril,’ I scolded crossly, and stopped the pram while I tucked an old overcoat round Baby Edward’s knees and then pushed the edges of it up over her lap. ‘Look, love. See up there – on the top of the town hall. There’s Minerva. She’s looking at you.’

Avril turned her woebegone face upwards towards the dome I had pointed out.

‘See,’ I said. ‘She’s smiling at you. Hasn’t she got a lovely golden face? But I think she’s got smuts on her nose, just like you.’ I touched Avril’s damp, little nose with a playful finger, and she sniffed and stopped crying.

Baby Edward could not see what I had pointed out; but, when I touched his nose and laughed at him, he saw hope of a game and tried to reach forward to touch my hooked nose. Tiny fingers grasped at my horn-rimmed glasses. I backed away hastily before they fell off.

Laughing at each other, we continued along the street.

Many people thought it was Britannia who sat looking down at Liverpool, but Father had told me it was Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom, Invention and Handicrafts. He assured me that she also took care of dramatic poets and actors.

There were plenty of craftsmen in Liverpool of whom she might have been proud, even some actors and a poet or two, but most of them queued at the Labour Exchanges, their abilities unused. They stood idly round the dock gates, where ships lay in every stage of decay. They hung around outside the gaily lit public houses. Her sailors, skilled men, sat hungry in their cold kitchens, while their despairing wives nagged and their children went barefoot.

Amongst the defeated men in the queues at the Labour Exchange, Father had stood for over two years. Ruined by the Depression and, in part, by his own extravagances, he had brought us back to his native city in the hope of finding work. But, in the Liverpool wet, he had seemed like a lost butterfly, with wings beaten useless by the rain. He had watched, helpless, as Mother struggled, without medical aid, to recuperate from a major operation and a mental breakdown. Though the wartime marriage had not been a happy one, her degeneration into a haggard virago must have broken his heart.

To look at his seven children was almost too much for him. We were a hungry, ragged and increasingly unruly crew, disoriented by our parents’ disasters, seven small sparrows with our beaks open, loudly demanding to be fed.

Because Mother was at first so ill, I suddenly had thrust upon me, as the eldest child, the task of caring for her and for my brothers and sisters. The Public Assistance Committee gave Father forty-three shillings a week, out of which we paid twenty-seven shillings a week for three unheated attic rooms. The remaining sixteen shillings had to cover every need of nine people; and for a time it seemed certain that Baby Edward would die for lack of milk, and I often looked with terror at our empty food shelf.

Liverpool slum 1920’s/1930’s

Recently, a little hope had entered our lives. Father had obtained a small clerical job with the Liverpool Corporation. He earned only a few shillings more than the Public Assistance allowance and the extra money was swallowed up by his expenses. But it was a new beginning for him.

About the same time, we obtained a bug-ridden terrace house at a few shillings less rent than our rooms. I no longer had to face the irate complaints of the tenants in the rooms beneath us, about the noise the children made. The bugs bit unmercifully and they made a horrible smell, but the children did not complain.

I had high hopes, when Father started work, that I would be allowed to go to school and then to work, and that Mother would become the housekeeper. But Mother had obtained part-time employment as a demonstrator in various department stores, and she announced that she would be continuing this work.

‘Why can’t you stay at home, like other mothers do?’ I implored.

‘The doctor said I should work – remember?’

‘Yes. But that was when you were convalescent. He wanted you to walk about in the fresh air to get strong again. But you are quite well now.’

‘Oh, don’t be stupid, Helen. Stop arguing. We need the money.’

‘But must I always stay at home, Mummy? I’m over fourteen now. I should be at work – like other girls are. Couldn’t we find someone to help out at home?’

‘Really, Helen. Be sensible. How could we afford to pay anyone?’

We did need the money, it was true, and we never paid anybody we could avoid paying but I had all the adolescent’s doubts about my elders, and I distrusted Mother’s motives. There had never been much love between us. I had always been taken care of by servants; in fact, Mother had never had to take complete care of any of her children. I sensed angrily that she found it easier to go out to work than to stay at home and face the care of seven noisy children. I found coping with six brothers and sisters, who daily became less disciplined, very hard indeed.

So, as I walked through the rain along Castle Street and absent-mindedly played with Baby Edward, and diverted Avril’s attention to Minerva and then to a warehouse cat stalking solemnly across the street, I was bitterly unhappy.

We had to stop, while a desk was carried across the pavement from a furniture van into an office building; and I looked again up at Minerva.

She seemed almost to float in the misty rain, and I wondered suddenly if something more than a statue was really there, some hidden power of ancient gods that we do not understand, and I said impulsively, ‘Hey, Minerva. Help me – please.’

The big man in a sacking apron, who was supervising the transfer of the desk, turned round and asked, not unkindly, ‘Wot yer say, luv?’

I blushed with embarrassment. I must be going mad with all the strain. I’m crazy.

‘Nothing,’ I said hastily. ‘I was just amusing the baby.’

‘Oh, aye,’ he replied, smiling down at Edward, while the desk disappeared through a fine oak doorway. ‘You can get by now, luv.’

Two

I was twelve when we first came to Liverpool, and my parents were able to keep me at home because the Liverpool Education Committee did not know of my existence. I had come from another town and did not appear in any of their records. Six weeks before my fourteenth birthday my presence in Liverpool was reported by my sister, Fiona’s, school teacher. And much to my parents’ annoyance, I had to attend school for those six weeks.

Now I was over fourteen, my parents had no further legal obligations in respect of my education. So, at home I stayed, simmering with all the fury of a caged cat.

I had had an aunt, a spinster, kept at home all her life to be company to my grandmother, who lived on the other side of the River Mersey. This aunt seemed to have no real life of her own, and I dreaded being like her, at the beck and call of my relations, a useful unpaid servant, without the rights of a servant. She was such a shadow of a person that I never ever thought that she might help me.

I raged to myself that I was always the last to be provided with food and clothing. I did not even think about the lack of pocket money or other small pleasures – they were beyond my ken.

In our hard-pressed family, shoes and clothing were given first to those who had to look neat for work, and then to those who went to school. I could always manage because I did not have to go out, I was told sharply.

As housekeeper, I had to apportion the food. I fed Baby Edward first, then Avril, who was nearly five, then the two little boys, Brian and Tony. After them, frail, lovely Fiona and cheery Alan. I would then serve Father, who never complained about the small amount on his plate. What was left was shared between Mother and me. Sometimes there were no vegetables left for us, and frequently no meat, so we had a slice of bread each, with margarine, washed down with tea lacking both sugar and milk.

Mother still looked so dreadfully haggard that I would sometimes say, with a lump in my throat, that I was not hungry and would press the last remaining bits of meat and vegetable upon her. All my life I had been afraid of her tremendous temper, but such fear had long been overridden by a greater fear that she might die.

In response to my frequent complaints at not being allowed to go to work, Mother often said absently, ‘Later on, you will marry. Staying at home is good practice for it.’

But I had always been assured by Mother and the servants that Fiona had the necessary beauty to be married; and I – well, I did have brains.

‘You can’t help your looks,’ our nanny, Edith, used to say, as she scrubbed my face. ‘Maybe your yellow complexion is from being ill so much. It might improve as you get older.’ She used to seize a brush and scrape back my straight, mousy hair into a confining ribbon bow on the top of my head; but she spent ages curling Fiona’s soft waves into ringlets.

‘Why do you have to be so disobedient? You’re nothing but a little vixen, you are. Nobody’s going to marry a faggot like you when you grow up,’ she would shout exasperatedly. ‘Get those muddy shoes off, before I clout you.’

In a desperate effort to save myself from spinsterhood, I learned to obey a raised voice like a circus dog. But it did not do me much good. I was still sallow and plain, sickly and irritable.

After Father found a job, I fought a great battle with my parents for permission to attend night school three evenings a week. It became the single joy of my life. There was order and purpose in the musty, badly-lit classrooms with their double wooden desks in which, for most classes, sat more than forty pupils. The bare board floors, the faded green paint and chipped varnish were much more pleasant and clean than my home.

For the first two winters of my attendance, nobody would sit by me, because I was so blatantly dirty and I stank. Only the teachers spoke to me. In some subjects I was so behind that I needed dedicated helpers. And the teachers gave me that help.

The bookkeeping teacher taught me the simple arithmetic which I had forgotten through long absence from school. The English teachers gave me essays to write, in addition to the business letters they demanded from their other pupils. They drew my attention to poems and to essays I should read. Later, I took German and French, and again the teacher drummed additional grammar into me, and introduced me to the translated works of foreign authors. Shorthand, a possible gateway to employment, was largely a matter of practice, and I practised zealously.

I dreamed of becoming the treasured secretary of some great man of affairs, like Sir Montague Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, to whom I had once been introduced. He had given the silent, small girl by Father’s side a new shilling, and I had curled up in an agony of shyness and refused to say thank you, much to Father’s embarrassment. But, of course, when I became a secretary, I would always be ready with the correct, polite remark and flawlessly typed letters ready to be signed.

During the day, as I walked little Edward in the squeaky Chariot and, particularly after my more trying charge, Avril, had joined her brothers and sister at school, I read books balanced on the pram’s raincover. I discovered Trevelyan’s histories and read all those that the library had. The librarian suggested histories of other countries, so I read, not only the histories of France and Germany, but those of China and Japan, of the United States and of the countries of South America.

The heroines of some of the Victorian novels I read studied philosophy in their spare time, so I plodded through the works of several German philosophers far too difficult for me.

‘Don’t know what they are talking about,’ I told Edward crossly.

I found a book by Sigmund Freud and decided that he did not understand females at all. And what was it that people were supposed to be repressing all the time? Men behaved like men and women behaved like women. How could they behave any other way other than by being natural?

I tied myself up in mental knots, considering Freud, and never associated his work with the strange spasms and longings in my own maturing body. To my mind, Freud did not seem to do so well at interpreting dreams as Joseph in the Bible did.

Beneath this rabid desire for an education, for knowledge, simmered a mixture of fear and rage: I felt my parents did not really care what happened to me, as long as I continued to serve them.

Three

Despite our big family, I suffered great loneliness. When Father was not too tired he would sometimes talk to me about his wartime experiences in Russia or we would discuss eighteenth-century France, of which he had a considerable knowledge. Mother ordered; she did not discuss. Without pen, ink, paper or stamps, I could not write to the school friends I had left behind in my earlier life. In fact, at first my parents refused obdurately to allow me to write.

‘Why not?’ I demanded crossly.

‘Because it costs money, and there may be some creditors who still want to trace your Father.’

They also forbade me to write to my grandmother, Father’s mother, with whom I had always spent several months of each year. Grandma, Father said, had been most unreasonable and he had quarrelled with her. I suspected that she had finally grown tired of the scandals of the gay life my parents had led before the Depression, and then of helping to pay their debts.

When I went to the local shops, I saw only older, married women, or children sent on messages, and, to me, some of the girls who lived in neighbouring streets seemed hardly human. On Saturdays and Sundays they went about in twos and threes, dressed in cheap finery. They gawked and giggled and shrieked at the gangling youths hanging uneasily about the street corners. Because their labour was very cheap, these girls had work in stores and factories. Once they were sixteen years old they usually joined their unemployed brothers.

Sometimes, when I passed a group of them as I pushed Edward along in the Chariot, they stared and laughed at me behind their hands. Garbed in the tattered remnants of my school uniform, occasionally with no knickers under the short skirt, I had to walk very uprightly lest a bare bottom be revealed to them. Once or twice they shouted at the idling boys to inquire which of them had ‘caught’ me. It was a long time before I realised that it was generally assumed that Edward was my illegitimate child. When I did discover it, I cried with mortification, because I knew that to have a baby out of wedlock was very wicked.

I was very vague about the origins of babies. I did not think about it very much. Dimly, uncertainly, I imagined that they came from the same place as foals and lambs and calves did. But I had never actually seen a birth and how this could be was beyond my imagining. I never equated men with stallions, rams or bulls. But, to be respectable, a child had to have a visible father or a substitute, like a gravestone, to account for his absence – that I knew. Once, when I was small, Mother dismissed our parlourmaid without a moment’s notice, and I knew from the maids’ gossip that she was expecting a baby – and she was not married.

Occasionally, when Edith was angry she would hiss savage remarks about my parents’ lack of feeling, and quote this incident as an example of it. The housemaid left us shortly afterwards, in protest, according to Edith. Edith herself stayed with us until we left the district, because she was engaged to a young farmer nearby; and I clung to her as a mother substitute. She was a plump, comfortable country girl with rosy cheeks and fluffy, long brown hair, and was downright in her speech. I never doubted anything she said.

I had only two close contacts to assuage this sense of isolation. One was a very old interpreter, who sometimes sat in Princes Park to sun himself. We talked a lot about the Middle East and about other languages, as I sat and supervised the children’s play. One day he was missing from his usual seat and never came again. I presumed he had died and had gone to join his wife and two sons. The boys had been killed in the war and he grieved for them.

The other friend was a Spanish woman named Cristina. She and her husband, Alonzo, lived in the basement of the house next door to that in which we had originally rented an attic. Her children were all grown up and had left home. She was extraordinarily kind to Edward and me, and it was she who had given us the Chariot in which I wheeled Edward and Avril around.

In my position as surrogate mother, I had neither time nor opportunity to play. As the children became rougher and, in order to survive, became more like the other boys and girls in the district, the gulf widened between us and there seemed to be no close communication. Even Alan, so close to me in age, was to me a child; I did not worry him with details of our empty pantry.

Because I did not have a shopping bag, the greengrocer used to wrap up potatoes and other vegetables in newspaper for me, and when I arrived home I used to read these papers. There were descriptions of local tennis tournaments amongst young people, and stories of balls and receptions. I would stand dreaming with the muddy paper in my hands, imagining myself scampering about a tennis court delivering serves that raised cheers from the onlookers; or I would think how lovely it would be to skim around a ballroom in a billowing net dress. And how good it would be to go to the theatre again. In me were the stirrings of womanhood, though I did not understand them, and I had an instinctive desire to be clean, to be prettily dressed, to hide as much as possible the ugliness which I had been assured was mine.

When I thought about it, I became so afraid of the friendless, empty future, that sometimes my legs would begin to give under me, and I would have to stop walking and cling to the pram handle until the sense of blind panic passed.

Four

Mother worked on short contracts in the bigger city department stores. She demonstrated new products, like kitchen gadgets, or was engaged especially to sell slow-moving goods that might deteriorate if kept in stock too long. She slowly gained a good reputation, and stores would pass her from one to another, to get rid of piles of baby baths in unpopular colours, baby clothes that threatened to harbour moths, cameras and photographic supplies left over from the summer season, and the newest wringer washers and gas stoves.

She became an excellent saleswoman, and it used to amuse me to carry Edward into a shop and watch her demonstrate the use of a gadget. It fascinated me to observe how she could beguile housewives into impulsive purchases.

One day, Avril and I stood at a discreet distance behind her in a baby-wear department. I held Edward in my arms and, though he must have known he was watching his mother, he placidly sucked his thumb and did not call out. She was selling violently pink rubber baths.

She tenderly picked up a rubber doll and plunged it into imaginary water, talking all the time, first to the doll as if it were a baby and then to her audience, who, quite amused, slowly gathered round her. She dried the doll and dusted it with baby powder and put on its nappy. Young mothers and obviously expectant mothers were her targets, and they soon found themselves hooked into friendly conversation. Mother seemed to be able to make them feel that their baby was her only interest in life; and if they already had a baby bath, she would skilfully pass them to one of the shop assistants, whose battle for a sale of baby clothes was, of course, already half won.

Before Father went bankrupt, she had for years been a member of Operatic and Dramatic Societies, and she knew enough of stagecraft to use her voice and manner to the best effect. She was never paid enough for her ability.

She looked very attractive, despite her thinness, in a black dress and black shoes purchased from a second-hand shop. I used to cut her hair for her with Father’s cut-throat razor and then curl it each morning with a pair of curling tongs, bought for a penny from the pawnbroker’s oddments table set up outside his shop.

Of course, I never approached her while she was working; and Avril understood that she must be quiet and tiptoe away at an appropriate moment. I doubt if she noticed that we were there, because she never mentioned seeing us.

Avril’s and my great enemies were the shopwalkers. Sometimes when we were cold, we would go into a big shop and skulk around the different departments until we became warm again. And then the shopwalker would pounce.

Shopwalkers always looked very imposing. They were usually elderly gentlemen dressed in stiff, white, Victorian wing collars and black suits. They perambulated stiffly up and down the aisles of the shops, hands clasped behind their backs. They glared ferociously at the young girls and boys who served behind the counters. Then, with a slight bow, they would lend a courteous ear to customer inquiries, the whispered remarks almost drowned by the loud rings of the containers, holding payments or change, shooting along wires above their heads on their way from the counter to the cash office.

I never argued with shopwalkers.

‘What do you want?’ they would snarl.

‘I’m just looking,’ I would say loftily, exactly as I had heard people round me say.

The usual reply was, ‘You can look in the windows.’

Then they would stride crossly to the nearest door and fling it open, and Edward, Avril and I would slink out like lost puppies.

One October day, we went into a shop in which Mother was working, to get warm. Mother was selling photograph albums. Her voice penetrated clearly through the murmur of shoppers as she extolled the advantages of having an album for each particular type of photograph. Avril, Edward and I settled down to watch.

I had not been feeling well for two days. My back ached, as did my head. I had got very wet in a rain storm earlier in the week, and I shrugged off the low level discomfort as being due to this. As I watched, however, the pain in my back began to feel as if an iron belt had been suddenly clasped round my waist. Pains shot down the sides of my stomach.

I gasped to Avril that we had to go home quickly, and dragged her back to the pram, parked in the shop doorway. She protested in a loud whine as I plunked her into the pram with Edward. Panting with pain, I began the long ascent up Renshaw Street, Hardman Street and Leece Street.

The pain came in ever increasing waves. Sweat beaded my forehead and I leaned on the pram handle for support, as I almost ran for home.

In St Catherine’s Street, opposite the Women’s Hospital, I stopped to lean against a brick wall as a particularly agonising pain ripped down the side of my stomach. Though I stared at the hospital with glazed eyes, it did not occur to me to seek succour there. To a child, in those days, hospitals were usually where old people went to die. Fiona had once gone to hospital and her lurid tales of her experiences had been enough to frighten all of the children. So the hospital was just another impersonal red brick building to stumble past on my way home.

Avril was whining and snatching at the twig with which Edward was playing. Mercifully, they both seemed unaware that anything was wrong.

I ran the pram up to the front step of our house, and tugged at the string sticking through the letterbox. The string pulled back the lock, the door swung open and I almost threw first Edward and then Avril into the narrow hall.

The pain was again surging in my stomach.

Frightened to death, I slammed the front door, snatched up Edward and carried him through to our back yard, leaving an angry Avril howling in the hall. Perhaps if I went to the lavatory I would feel better.

I left the lavatory door ajar, so that I could watch Edward, while I snatched down my knickers.

The torn, grey garment was covered with blood.

I thought I would faint with sheer terror.

Was it appendicitis?

Again the waves of pain. I dropped down on to the seat, clasping my stomach. When the pain eased slightly, I hitched up the soaked knickers and took Edward back into the house. I had to lie down.

Avril was sitting on an upturned paint can, nursing a stray cat which had wandered in a day or two before. She had been crying and when she saw me, she let out a fresh bellow. Normally, I would have comforted her, but this time I dumped Edward unceremoniously down beside her.

‘Watch Edward,’ I ordered.

Where should I lie?

My bed upstairs was a door set on four bricks and I could lie on it. But Edward might follow me up the stairs and then fall down again.

Better to go into the nicely furnished front room, a place I normally did not enter because Edward was usually with me – and he always had grubby hands and was not yet reliably watertight.

Edward did follow me in, and I hastily gave him the new, unused bronze fire irons to play with. A resentful Avril stayed with the cat.

My parents, with their usual blithe inconsequence, had furnished the front room very well on the hire purchase system, regardless of the fact that the children still slept three to a bed under a motley collection of old coats and bits of blanket; and I did not even have a bed.

I was thankful enough that day, however, to curl up on the green leatherette settee. In the foetal position the pain lessened, though during the next surge I fainted.

I sobbed to myself and prayed that Mother would come home soon. Then the scarifying spasms retreated slightly and I fell into a doze.

Father shook me gently to awaken me and asked anxiously, ‘Are you all right, dear? You look very white.’

My stomach and back were tight knots of pain, increasing and decreasing like waves on a seashore. I was also shivering with cold from the unheated room. I hardly dared to move, as I whimpered out the story of the torment I was enduring.

‘My underneaths are bleeding, Daddy. Do you think I’ve got appendicitis?’

Bent over me, he listened. Then his eyes began to twinkle, his lips to twitch. A loud guffaw burst from him.

I was horrified at such a reaction to my story.

‘Daddy!’ I reproached him, and then broke into a moan as the pain increased.

Father straightened up and, still smiling, let out a slow sigh of relief.

‘Didn’t your mother explain this to you?’

‘What?’

‘This – this bleeding?’

‘No. Was she expecting it?’ I was totally bewildered, and I sobbed as the pain hit new heights.

‘Well, of course. She must have been. You’re a girl.’

‘Of course, I’m a girl,’ I gasped. ‘What difference does that make? Daddy, could you get the doctor? The pain’s getting worse.’ I was deeply upset at his laconic attitude.

He hesitated for a moment. Then he said, ‘You just stay where you are for the moment, until Mother comes home. Fiona’s making the tea. I’ll ask her to bring you a cup. She peeked in here and thought you were sleeping, so she has laid the table for you and cut the bread and butter. I will make the fire in the kitchen for the children.’ His voice was kind.

With eyes screwed tight to help me bear the raging pain, I put my head down again on the inhospitable green leatherette. I heard him open the door, pause a moment and then say, ‘Don’t be afraid, old lady. This is nothing to be frightened about. You don’t need a doctor.’

I did not answer him, because I did not believe him. I could not understand how anyone could be in such pain and not need a doctor. ‘Mummy, come soon,’ I sobbed. Cold, indifferent Mother seemed to be the key to it all.

The door clicked again and I opened my eyes. Fiona entered, carefully balancing a coarse china cup on a saucer which did not match. Despite her care, the tea slopped as she put the cup and saucer into my hand. She looked at me anxiously from beneath a roughly cut fringe of nut-brown hair.

‘Daddy said to drink the tea while it is very hot. What’s the matter, Helen? You look awful.’

I was shaking so much that, as I raised myself a little, I slopped the tea on to the new settee. ‘I don’t know, Fi,’ I answered, as I tried to sip the scalding liquid. ‘Daddy says it’s nothing – but, oh, Fi, I’ve got such a terrible pain in my back and tummy – and I’m bleeding underneath.’

Fiona’s pink cheeks blenched. ‘Bleeding?’

I nodded affirmatively. The tea was comforting and I drank it eagerly, though it was hot enough to burn my tongue.

‘Oh, Helen!’ she whispered.

‘Daddy said to stay here till Mummy came. Can you manage?’

‘Yes, of course. Daddy’s making the fire and Alan is fetching the coal for him. You rest. Mummy will come soon.’ She was trying hard not to panic herself.

‘Where’s Edward?’ I asked.

‘He’s in the kitchen. He’s fine.’

I could feel a warm trickle between my thighs and I took deep breaths to avoid screaming in fright.

‘Go and have your own tea,’ I told her in a strained whisper, and she went, stopping at the door to look back at me with fearful violet-blue eyes.

‘Don’t be afraid, Fi,’ I panted and tried to muster a smile for her sake. ‘I’ll be all right.’

She smiled back with sudden relief and shut the door quietly after her.

I was sure, as I sank back on to the settee, that I was on my death bed. And Father did not care!

Five

Mother sat down on the green leatherette easy chair opposite to me, and took off her hat. She looked tired and irritable.

‘Oh, Mummy,’ I wailed. ‘I’ve got such a terrible pain – and I’m bleeding.’

‘Oh, stop crying, Helen,’ Mother snapped wearily. ‘There’s nothing the matter with you. This is what I told you about years ago. All girls bleed every month.’

I looked at her with wide-eyed horror, while I pressed my hands into my raging stomach. ‘I don’t remember your telling me.’

‘Of course, I did – when you were about nine.’

If she had told me, the information must have been given so obliquely that it did not then register on my childish mind.

My teeth were chattering, as I asked incredulously, ‘Every month – and pain like this?’

‘Of course not. It doesn’t hurt at all. You have just worked yourself into a panic, and that has caused the pain. It will go away quite soon. We’ll try to get some aspirins, before it is due next time.’

Mother smoothed her hair, ruffled from her hat, and got up briskly. ‘I’ll put a kettle on and when it is boiled, you can come into the kitchen to wash yourself. I’ll get a piece of cloth and show you how to keep yourself dry.’

‘Will it be like this ever again?’ I asked between dry sobs.

‘I doubt it, if you don’t have hysterics.’

Twenty minutes later, I was seated by the kitchen fire, washed and tidied, drinking another cup of hot tea. The heat from the fire helped and gradually the pain receded, as Mother had promised.

The boys stared at me because they had been told that I had had hysterics over a perfectly normal tummy ache; and they went away, Alan to night school, Brian and Tony to play bus on the stairs.

It had been a terrifying promotion to womanhood. I felt humiliated and stupid, and blamed myself for my pain. I had been aware of changes in my body, but I was so undernourished that the changes were slight and they had come slowly enough not to scare me.

Three weeks later, I collapsed with pain in night school. The English teacher made me swallow two aspirins, told me I would be all right in an hour and sent me home. Mother said the same thing and sent me up to bed, where I groaned and moaned my way through the next eight hours or so. In the early hours of the morning I fell asleep, ex- hausted.

From month to month the pain persisted, and Mother became more concerned. She bought dried mint and made a tea for me to drink at the onset of the first ache. It did not help. Cristina, my Spanish friend, recommended a thick paste made with ginger spice and hot water, to be licked off a spoon. Trustingly I downed this horrible concoction, but the pain continued. Cristina laughed, and said all the pain would cease either on marriage or after having a baby.

I knew I was too bad-tempered and too plain to hope for marriage; and I was certain in my mind that, however babies came, I was not going to have one outside marriage. So I smiled dimly at her and did not reply.

All the well-meaning adults in my life assured me that menstruation was just part of growing up and that some girls had more difficulty with it than others did. Nobody suggested that I should see a doctor. Since doctors cost money, and I rarely thought of acquiring anything that required payment, it did not occur to me either.

For a week or two, I would forget the pain in the bustle of caring for the children’s endless needs, and running off to night school through misty streets, where strange, shadowy women lurked; and then apprehension would begin to creep over me. I would ask Mother for some of her aspirins and store them behind the alarm clock on the kitchen mantelpiece. I learned that heat was comforting and when I saw a pile of new bricks lying on a building site, I begged two cracked ones from the bricklayer and brought them home. I heated them in the oven beside the kitchen fire, and when the onslaught began I wrapped them in newspaper and lay on the green leatherette settee, clutching them close to me. Edward began to think it was a new game and wanted a brick for himself. He thought it was a great joke to cuddle up close with the bricks between us. Since he must often have been cold, the heat was probably comforting to him, too.

One freezing winter day, I fainted in the butcher’s shop. When I came round I was in an easy chair beside a fire, in the living quarters behind his little shop. His wife was forcing brandy down my throat. She must have succeeded in getting me to swallow quite a lot, because the pain did dull slightly and I felt exhilarated and yet sleepy. Edward had been propped in a matching chair on the other side of the fireplace. White rivulets down either grubby cheek marked the passage of tears. He had, however, a cheering ring of red jam round his mouth and in one hand was holding the crumbling remains of a tart.

The tiny, stuffy room was packed with furniture, and the blaze in the hearth glanced off a gilded china shepherdess on a shining sideboard opposite to me. It danced off the glass dome covering a pair of stuffed birds and made the glasses of my hostess flash.

The butcher’s wife was a tiny woman dressed in the greyish, washed-out skirt, blouse and cardigan which seemed to be the uniform of women in Liverpool. Wisps of hair had escaped from her bun and draggled round a careworn face.

‘Are ye feeling better?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I said. I blinked at her rather hazy face through spectacles that had slipped down my nose. ‘In fact, I feel fine.’

‘Aye, that’s good brandy, that is. You gave me husband a real fright when you keeled over.’

‘I am sorry. I get a pain each month,’ I faltered shyly.

She smiled. ‘Oh, that was it, was it? Oh, aye. Brandy was the best thing to give you then. Does a lot for a woman at such times.’

‘It seems to,’ I said blithely.

Then I remembered the children’s lunch, yet to be made. ‘I must go home,’ I said hastily. ‘My brothers and sisters will be coming from school.’

‘Think you’ll be all right? You only live down the road, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

I got to my feet. They did not feel very certain as to where the floor was; but I managed to stagger over to Edward and to pick him up. He put his arms round my neck, and sent a shower of pastry crumbs over the threadbare carpet.

Reeling slightly, I again thanked the butcher’s wife.

She laughed.

‘It’s nothing. Aye, brandy’s gone to your head, hasn’t it?’

‘It has,’ I giggled. ‘But the pain is less.’ I wanted to kiss her, but decided I could not aim straight. So I said effusively, ‘Thank you very, very much,’ and staggered, still giggling, through the lace-draped door to the shop, which she held open for me. She smiled broadly at me, as I passed.

Though sometimes the pain would rise above the effects of the brandy, and I had to stop walking and grip the handle of the old pram until the wave passed over, I hummed most of the way home. I was merrily drunk for the first time.

I rolled round the icy living room and the kitchen as I boiled and thickened the minced meat I had bought; it was as well that it was ground, otherwise it would have been unchewable. I peeled the potatoes and boiled them to a mush, before the penny in the gas meter ran out and the gas stove refused to deliver any more heat. I spread clean newspaper on the table, and laid it. Seated on a wooden chair, I waited, at first happily, for the children to come in. But as the effects of the brandy began to seep out, the chill of the dirty, comfortless room began to invade – and the pain was once more paramount.

Edward, too, was chilled and hungry and began to whimper. I took him up on my knee and wrapped us both in the old coat I used to cover him in the pram. It smelled of urine and long use. We warmed each other a little. He sucked his thumb and dozed, while I wept silently on to his scurfy little head.

I wished I had some more brandy or anything else which would stop the grinding misery within me. As I waited, I saw suddenly the expression of pain which frequently lay on my father’s face – and in a burst of warm understanding I realised why he needed to drink sometimes. The burden of bereavement from the loss of most of his friends, in a war which, though it seemed a long time ago to me, was probably still quite close to him. The terror of the long, threatening winters he had spent in tiny block houses or in peasants’ huts during the Russian campaign, while the Revolution surged around the tiny force, so that one did not know who was friend and who was foe – what must it have done to a delicate refined man unused to any hardship? And then to lose his fortune, his occupation, his home? He sometimes told us stories of his experiences both during the war and after it, and he made us laugh. But if one analysed those stories, they were filled with horrors.

Poor Father. I laid my head against Baby Edward’s and wept not only for my own suffering, but for my father’s distress as well.

Getting drunk can leave one very low afterwards, I discovered.

Six

There was a silent conspiracy between Father, Mother and me, to keep from the other children as many of our troubles as possible.

We had as many creditors in Liverpool as Father had had in wealthier days. Now, instead of the tailor, the dressmaker, the grocer and wine merchant, I faced the owner of the local tobacco and newspaper shop trying to collect for the cigarettes he had supplied, the club man demanding the weekly payment for cheques issued to my parents by finance companies, for purchase of clothing at specific shops; the agent of our aristocratic landlord threatening to throw us into the street; the heavy-jowled hire purchase man growling threats to repossess our well-chosen sitting-room furniture.

Ominous clouds of danger seemed to encompass me and sometimes, after getting rid of a desperate bullying man, I would lean against the inside of the front door and cry with pure fright.

In our other life in another world, I had often heard Mother say to the parlourmaid that she was not at home to anybody, and she thus evaded personal confrontation with creditors, whose bills and threatening letters lay in the wickerwork wastepaper basket.

Here in Liverpool I had to answer the door myself. No frilly-aproned, sniggering parlourmaid stood between me and outraged men whose own livelihood was precarious. Occasionally, when I felt defeated, I would prevail on Fiona to answer the heavy bangs on the front door. She looked much younger than her age and had an expression of an- gelic innocence. She would say with convincing firmness, ‘Everybody is out except me.’

The creditor would leave, grumbling under his breath, to mount his bicycle parked at the pavement’s edge. They never shouted at her, as they did at me.

I was never given a fixed sum from which to do the housekeeping. A shilling or two was slung on to the kitchen table with instructions to buy a list of groceries for which the money was almost invariably inadequate. Consequently, Edward and I tramped for miles to save a halfpenny on a loaf of bread, or to go to a shop which would cut a twopenny, half-pound pack of margarine into quarter pounds, so that we could buy one. Stores which did this kind of splitting up of goods could, with patience, make a lot more than those which did not. A sixpenny one-pound pot of jam, sold by the ounce at a penny an ounce, assured an excellent profit. Such shops were filled with black-shawled, unwashed women and skinny, barefoot children.

We had two lots of wages coming into the house; yet no housekeeping priorities were ever established. Mother sometimes made long lists of proposed expenditures and debt repayments, but they always ended up being tossed into the fireplace. Creditors who shouted the loudest and threatened most got paid eventually; those that did not received nothing. Cajoling credit out of shopkeepers who respected an Oxford accent was reduced to a fine art by my parents.

I can remember one pay day Mother coming triumphantly home with a box of cream cakes, when we lacked meat, milk, shoes and soap. The children, of course, thought the cakes were wonderful, and I began dimly to understand why our rough, largely Irish, neighbours spent so outrageously on weddings and funerals, cinemas and drink, whenever they got the chance. Life seemed so hopeless that they snatched at any treat, as if they had only the present and there was no future.

There was, however, a number of families nearby with less money than we had, but whose kitchen grate always seemed to have a fire in it, though it might be of slowly collected driftwood rather than of coal. Their children, friends of Fiona, Brian and Tony, were neat and clean; they ate regularly, though I cannot remember a single fat child amongst them. Their mothers obviously mended and washed frequently and could often be seen sweeping the dust out of their front doors, across the pavement and into the gutter. I often heard the sharp snap of rugs being shaken in the back yards, and saw them kneeling on the front pavement as they scrubbed and donkey-stoned their single front step. Some of them even scrubbed the pavement itself as far as the street. The menfolk were usually craftsmen or seamen, skilled with their hands. Some of them, for a couple of shillings, rented a small allotment garden from the City. These gardens were often close to railway embankments or at the edge of the city, and good crops of fruit and vegetables were raised on them during the otherwise empty summer days.

Neither of my parents had been trained to manage money. Grandpa died when Father was six. Father was sent to an excellent public school when he was ten, a school famous for the Shakespearean plays its boys enacted. He acquired a deep understanding of French and English history, and his mathematical abilities were of university level. But nobody taught him how to keep a budget or to manage a family.

Mother was equally ill-prepared for life. She was an orphan, brought up in a convent. She learned how to embroider fine altar cloths and copes; she acquired a smattering of French and other social graces, and a great love of reading. She had a fine singing voice and she learned to sing very well, though not to professional level – that would have been vulgar. The nuns who taught her hammered in the need for virtue in women, but not the basic knowledge which would make a good housewife. Since all their charges were segregated from the opposite sex, except for the skirted priests, the girls appeared to have had a wild curiosity about men and to have forgotten their lessons on virtue. Some of the girls went home to a normal family life during their holidays. But Mother’s guardian was a bachelor, so she stayed at school, to spend summer holidays taking walks with the nuns and other homeless girls, and Christmases and Easters largely in church.

Unlike most of her contemporaries, Mother had had some business experience. Her guardian was the owner of a string of libraries, and when Mother became fifteen he removed her from the convent and taught her his own business. A few years later, he married. Mother was jealous of the new wife and she ran away to North Wales, where she found a post as librarian. There, she met my father during the First World War and married him.

Now we were all suffering dreadfully as a result of their frivolous, irresponsible life after the war. Even hunger, cold, sickness and pain failed to teach them to manage any better.

Poor diet produces rotting teeth, and all of us at times had to endure severe toothache. To alleviate this, we painted the offending tooth with a pennyworth of oil of cloves. Though this did sometimes ease the pain, it did not stop the tooth from deteriorating further. Then abscesses formed. Brian and Avril often sat weeping, while I applied hot poultices to their faces until the abscesses swelled and burst. Father already had false teeth when we arrived in Liverpool. But Mother’s excellent teeth began to loosen from gum disease. When one became too loose, she would wiggle it with her tongue until she could pull it out with her fingers. This must have hurt her and, of course, the gaps in her mouth did not improve her looks, which must have hurt even more. Mouths full of poor teeth were, however, very common in Liverpool, and it was not unusual, particularly in respect of women, to have lost all one’s teeth by the age of twenty-five.

During the second winter of attendance at night school, I found I could not see very well. I had lost some sight and my glasses needed to be replaced. I had also grown, so that the frames were too small for me and my already plain face was made to look even more out of proportion.

A further affliction was an annoying disease called pink eye. At different times all the family caught it. It is an acute inflammation of the eye which causes a heavy discharge, so that the eyes are sealed tight during sleep and in the daytime are flushed a sickly pink. The chemist sold me tiny packets of boracic acid which we made into a solution with hot water, and it helped when we bathed our eyes with it.

But my eyes were always sore, from too much reading through wrong glasses in a bad light. Frequently we lacked pennies to push into the gas meter for the light in the living room, so I read by candlelight or, if we had no candles, I would do my homework leaning against a lamp post, to take advantage of its dim rays. The streets were lit by gas in those days, and the lamplighter would dash on his bicycle from one cast-iron lamp post to the next to pull the chain that lit the lamp. In the early part of the night school term, it was frequently warm enough for me to do my homework in the park, sitting on a bench watching the children, or there was sometimes sufficient daylight to enable me to do it at home. But the deep winter was a time to be dreaded.

I came to my studies hopelessly tired, and always hungry. The quiet order of the school, however, helped my mind to focus; and I made such a violent effort that at the end of the first year I was awarded a very small scholarship to cover the cost of books and fees for the following year. At the end of the second year, if I passed the examinations, I was to move on to a Senior Evening Institute. There the cost of books would be greater; and I had moments of panic while I waited for the results of the examinations, wondering what I would do if I did not win a scholarship this time. And even worse, what would be my fate if I failed the examination itself? My only hope would be gone.

With the exception of Baby Edward, who was still too young, the children had been sent to a local church school as soon as they reached the proper age. They attended with reasonable regularity. If I was ill, Fiona was kept at home to help, but the boys never were. I resented this blatant discrimination. Why, I often argued, was so little attention given to Fiona’s and my future? A lot of anxious talk went on about careers – never jobs – for the boys. Could not girls have careers? My parents thought such remarks were funny, and they laughed. Girls got married, they said.

At night school, the other girls were talking hopefully of getting jobs as shorthand typists or as bookkeepers, and some of them were already at work in shops and offices. They did not seem to be counting on having a husband to keep them, and yet they were all much prettier than me.

I used to watch them as they filed into class, usually dressed in hand-knitted jumpers and dark skirts, rayon stockings and high-heeled court shoes. Their hair was always neatly cut and sometimes Marcel waved. They used powder and lipstick generously and some of them, I noted wistfully, had necklaces, bracelets or rings.

I knew that unless a miracle occurred, I would never manage to look as nice as they did. What chance would I have of employment, even if my parents allowed me to apply for jobs? Just to get rid of the vermin on me would be a heavy task for a Fairy Godmother.

Seven

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 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.

Eight

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 they 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 looose 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.’

I could imagine that this was not as generous as it sounded. After a week of eating too many sweets, the desire for them would be killed and few people would want them any more.

Mother inquired stiffly, ‘And how many hours a week would she work for that?’

‘Well, I open up at half past seven in the morning to catch the morning trade, you understand. And I close up at nine in the evening.’ She paused a moment and then said, ‘But I wouldn’t need her after about seven o’clock. Me husband’s home by then, and he helps me after he’s had his tea. And I close Wednesday atternoons, so she’d have the atternoon off after she’d tidied up, like. Me husband helps me Sundays, too, so I wouldn’t want her then either.’

I wanted the job so badly that I did not care how many hours I worked, how often I scrubbed the floor. The shop seemed so lovely and warm, after our house, and I sensed that in a rough way the woman would be kind to me. I tried to will the woman to agree to take me.

A little boy burst through the shop door, leaving the bell tinging madly after him. He pushed past us and leaned against the corner of the counter.

‘Ah coom for me Dad’s ciggies,’ he announced, turning a pinched, grubby face up towards the sweet-shop owner.

‘Have you got the money?’

‘Oh, aye. He wants ten Woodbines.’ A small hand was unclenched to show four large copper pennies.

The cigarettes were handed over and the pennies dropped into the wooden till.

‘Now don’t be smoking them yourself,’ admonished the woman, with a laugh.

The boy grinned at her and bounced back to the door, his bare feet thudding. As he went through the door, he turned and gestured as if he were smoking.

‘Aye, you little gint!’ she said.

The interruption had given Mother time to make a rapid calculation. As the woman turned back to her, she said sharply, ‘There is a law about how many hours a minor can work – and, incidentally a law about selling cigarettes to minors. I am sure that over sixty hours a week – at less than a penny an hour – are far more hours than are allowed.’

The woman shrugged huffily; her eyes narrowed, giving her a cunning expression.

‘I’m sure I don’t know about that,’ she replied tartly. ‘If she doesn’t want the job she doesn’t have to take it. There’s others as will be grateful for it.’ She sniffed, and looked at me disparagingly. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t take her. The sores on her face would put the customers off. I got to have a clean looking girl.’

I looked at her appalled, hurt to the quick. In front of our broken piece of mirror, I had carefully squeezed each pimple on my face, so that the acne was temporarily reduced to raised red blotches with a fresh, golden scab on each. I had no make-up to cover the results. But I had hoped that I looked clean.

Mother’s face flooded with angry colour. For a moment she looked like Avril in a tantrum. She cast a scornful glance at the shopkeeper, who stared back at her with her chin thrust upwards, quite unabashed.

‘Good afternoon,’ Mother snapped, as she swung round and opened the street door. The little bell tinkled crossly at being so forcibly disturbed.

‘Helen, this way.’

It was an order, and I slouched out through the doorway, closely followed by my wrathful mother.

Nine

Mother scolded sibilantly all the way home, and blamed me for wasting her time. I was too crushed and disappointed to respond.

Back I went to the kitchen and little Edward, who trotted patiently by my side, while I fumed miserably. In saner moments, I acknowledged that Mother had saved me from savage exploitation. But her motives in doing so were, to me, suspect. And as the years went by I felt that my increasing efficiency at home was daily making more certain that I stay there. Probably a few pennies of pocket money or a modicum of praise would have done much to soothe me. But everything I did was taken for granted. Failures were bitingly criticised. There was no one to turn to for consolation, except, occasionally, to Fiona.

And yet I yearned to love my parents and be loved in return, to have with them the tender relationship I had had with Grandma during the long months I had frequently spent with her during my childhood. But Grandma had vanished with the rest of my friends. In my innocence, I did not understand that my parents’ fast and extravagant life in the post-World War years had alienated every relation they had. Father’s widowed mother – the last to desert them – had left her son to learn the hard way the teachings she had failed to inculcate in him when young. She probably had no conception of the depth of our sufferings.

There is no doubt that Mother never forgave her friends for deserting her after Father went bankrupt; it was as if she declared a silent, ruthless war against her own class. The depth of her bitterness was immeasurable.

I remembered well the doll-like creatures who used to frequent our drawing room and dining room. In short, beige georgette dresses, their Marcel-waved hair covered by deep cloche hats, they teetered on high heels in and out of our old home in considerable numbers. Afternoon tea or dinner were served by a parlour maid in black and white uniform. Sometimes well-tailored young men, who also had time to waste, came to drink a cocktail or have a cup of tea.

Several times, a man vanished from the usual circle. One of the ladies would say, between puffs on a cigarette held in a long holder, ‘Gas, dahling – his lungs couldn’t stand it,’ or ‘He was loaded with shrapnel – a piece moved round to his heart. Too utterly devastating.’

I was allowed to attend the tea parties. Edith would dress me in my best frock, usually shantung silk, long white socks and brown lace-up shoes, and I would sit and nibble a piece of cake and watch the prettily dressed visitors. I soon learned that most of the men were unemployed, ex-army officers; they usually had some private means left them by more enterprising forefathers, but as prices rose their money shrank. They had no special qualifications and sought jobs as car salesmen or vacuum cleaner salesmen. One of them regularly allowed me to reach up and touch the silver plate the doctors had implanted to replace the top of his skull; another had an artificial leg which creaked when he walked. Father himself had trouble with his hands, which had been frost-bitten during his service in Russia. He also got chest pains, forerunners of the heart attacks to come.

So, perhaps my parents’ friends, bereaved, disillusioned, wounded in a war of frightful, unnecessary suffering, had so many troubles of their own that they were unable to help one of their number who had failed largely through his own inadequacies.

I was born after the war, so it was only history to me. Had I realised, when I got so cross with my parents’ ineptitude, how close it still was to them, how they had already gone through the shock of seeing the kind of life they understood crumble, I would have been much more compassionate.

One windy March evening, when the children’s need of clothing seemed particularly dire, Mother decided to write to some of her old acquaintances to ask for second-hand clothing. After all, she said bitterly to Father, the most she could lose was a three-halfpenny stamp, since she appeared to have lost any friendship there was.

When the children had gone to bed, she sat at one end of the living-room table and wrote three letters, while I sat at the other end and did my homework.

Three days later, a scented letter dropped through our letter box. As far as I could remember, it was the first letter, other than a bill, which we had received since coming to Liverpool.

Opening it was a ceremony, carried out under the eager eyes of the entire family.

‘It’s from Katie,’ said Mother, naming a gay, childless married friend, as she slit the envelope with the kitchen knife.

It contained a single sheet of notepaper wrapped round a five-pound note. Katie was sorry about us and sent the enclosed with love. Mother had found a technique for adding to our income.

Until she had exhausted every possible person she could think of, Mother wrote at least one begging letter a week. She rarely got money out of the same person twice. But she had had an enormous circle of acquaintances, and when she ran out of these she wrote to the parents of the children’s friends and also moving letters to their teachers. After that, she wrote to people whose names she had picked out of library reference books.

She learned to write eloquently of the children’s woes and her own efforts to find work. She did not mention Father in letters to strangers, perhaps to give the impression, without actually saying so, that she was widowed. She frequently passed her efforts over to me to read – one of the few times when she took me into her confidence. I had never heard of confidence tricksters and I read them admiringly, believing them to be a perfectly honourable way of earning money. After all, Grandma had always said that charity was a great virtue, and we were certainly in need.

There were many professional begging-letter writers in Liverpool at that time. Earnest gentlemen sat in their tiny bed-sitting rooms and wrote passionate appeals for help to any monied person who came to their attention. They invented whole families of starving children, aged parents in need of shoes, wives dying of tuberculosis, and so on. And they made a steady living at it. In contrast, Mother could say honestly that her children were in dreadful need, even if bad management was part of the cause of it.

Some well-to-do people, including Royalty, who were bedevilled by begging-letter writers, would send the letters to a charitable organisation in the city, with the request that they investigate the need; it was remarkable how generous people were when the need was found to be genuine. I do not recollect, however, anyone coming to investigate us as a result of one of Mother’s letters.

Thanks to the kindness of many people unknown to me, a few comforts began to trickle into the house, amongst them a second-hand iron bed for me. It was hollowed out like a hammock and it was a number of years before I acquired a mattress. I shared it for a while with Edward, but it represented my first personal gain at home since we had arrived in Liverpool. It was at least another five years before I got proper blankets and sheets for it; and lying chilled to the marrow through endless winter nights was one of the greater hardships for all the children.

Sometimes parcels of clothing or bedding arrived in response to the letters. Clothing for the younger children was almost invariably given to them and it helped to keep them tidy for school. Sometimes there was clothing which fitted Mother; men’s clothing was rarely sent, perhaps because of the difficulty of fitting. The bedding was usually bundled up with some of the clothing, ready for pawning.

Seared by disappointment, I would take the cloth-wrapped parcel to the crowded pawnbroker’s shop with its three golden balls hanging in front of it, and, after much good-natured haggling with the pawnbroker, I would receive four or five shillings, and a ticket so that I could later redeem the parcel.

The parcel was whisked away from the high, black counter and thrown up a chute to the pawnbroker’s assistant in the store room above. After a year, if the goods had not been redeemed or interest paid on the loan, the parcel would be torn open and the contents sold. So many goods were for sale that the pawnbroker’s was an excellent place to buy almost anything, from clothing and boots to an engagement ring or a bedspread or a concertina; and there were always women wrapped in shawls or in long, draggling men’s overcoats, picking through the merchandise on the bargain tables set out in front of the store on fine days.

The money raised from the pawnbroker might be used for a little extra food or, more frequently, to pacify a creditor who had threatened court procedure. Cigarettes were almost always one of the first things bought with it, and sometimes Mother would go to the cinema. She often remarked angrily that if Father could afford a drink, she could afford a cinema seat.

The local newspaper-shop proprietor, after a fierce row with me because Father owed him a whole pound for cigarettes, obtained a Court Order against us. This meant that the bill had to be paid by regular instalments set by the Court, on threat of the bailiffs selling us up if we failed to pay. This added enormously to my fears, because I had stood and watched while whole houses of furniture were sold by the bailiffs for a few shillings to settle a ridiculously small debt. Mother once bought for sixpence a superb hand-made rocking chair when there were no other bids for it.

I never knew where my parents might run up another bill or who might pounce on me, as the hapless housekeeper who had to answer the door. I had always been afraid of people who shouted, and I would stand shivering with my shoulder against the inside of the door, while someone hammered and shouted on the outside.

Once or twice I considered running away, but in those days there was no support from welfare organisations for such a runaway. And who would employ someone like me?

I once threatened to go to Grandma, but my Father said grimly that she would probably turn me away, that I should be thankful for what I had. Things would get better one of these days.

Grandma had become a loving, distant dream to me, and I was shocked beyond measure at the idea that she no longer cared. Yet I believed what Father said.

Ten

Spring had come at last. The trees lining Princes Avenue were stickily in bud; the privet hedges behind the low, confining front walls of the houses were already bursting into leaf, and the sparrows and pigeons were a-bustle with the need to mate.

I wheeled Edward down Parliament Street to the small Carnegie library in Windsor Street. A playful wind flipped dust and pieces of paper round its railings, against which women leaned, shopping bags on arm, to gossip in the pale sunshine. The soot-covered library was a handsome little building with high, arched windows which made it pleasantly light inside. Its battered books passed through my hands at the rate of about half a dozen a week and helped me to forget hunger, cold and humiliation. The librarians knew me and sometimes recommended a new book which had come in. In those days, librarians seemed to be great readers and both Father and I enjoyed discussions with them about books we had read.

I parked the Chariot close to the iron railings at the front. Edward was a patient child who would sit and watch the passers-by while I hastened to find something new to read.

As usual, I went directly to the section devoted to travel books. A new travel book was a great treat to me, I learned all I know of geography from them. I would carefully follow on the maps in the books journeys through countries as diverse as Tibet and Bermuda, examining myopically photographs which ranged from very fuzzy to very clear. I was always annoyed when there was no map in the book because I did not have an atlas, and poor photography was also a great disappointment. Later, more affluent generations would travel by hitchhiking the routes my fingers traced so longingly on maps.

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 book-lined 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.’

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