Twopence to Cross the Mersey. Helen Forrester

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СКАЧАТЬ and he left it to me brother and me. We must be almost the only people left round here as owns their own house.’

      She turned round and surveyed Mother, weighing her up quite accurately, as it transpired. She observed the fashionable hat, the dirty dress, the beautifully cut tweed coat, the white hands and, finally, the dead, grey face.

      ‘Been real ill, haven’t yer, luv?’

      ‘I have, rather.’

      ‘And you want a place for you ’n’ the kids?’

      ‘And my husband.’

      ‘Oh, I thought mebbe he’d left you.’

      ‘No.’

      Mrs Foster silently considered this information while she assembled a tray of fine, rose-patterned crockery from a corner cupboard and made the tea.

      She poured Mother a cup of tea, ladling a generous amount of sugar into it, and then sat down herself, stirring her own tea with slow, thoughtful turning of the battered spoon.

      ‘I’ve got two rooms and an attic at the top of the house,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t had in mind to have kids in them.’ She paused and ran her tongue round her ill-fitting, artificial teeth. ‘I had three kids there before, but they was little horrors, if you know what I mean. I don’t suppose yours will be that bad.’

      ‘They are fairly well-mannered,’ Mother assured her hopefully. She sipped her over-sweet tea and its scalding heat began to revive her.

      ‘I got two married couples and two single ladies in the rooms underneath. The married ones is at work all day, so they won’t hear the noise, and the ladies – well, there’s plenty like them, if they don’t like it.’ She put her spoon into the saucer with a decisive smack, her mind made up. ‘You can have the rooms for twenty-seven shillings a week – in advance, mind you. There’s a gas meter and gaslight in the kitchen-living-room.’

      Mother was too thankful at having found a place for us to live in, to realize that the rent was exorbitant for such accommodation.

      ‘Is it furnished?’ Mother asked.

      ‘Yes. There’s enough furniture – and you can add a bit of your own, no doubt.’

      Mother put down her cup.

      ‘I wonder if I may see it?’

      ‘Certainly, if you feel OK now.’

      Laboriously, Mother climbed thirty-two more stairs; they were covered in ancient linoleum in which the holes threatened to trip her up from time to time.

      There was a kitchen-living-room with a small bedroom fireplace. It contained a wooden table, two straight chairs, a cupboard with odds and ends of crockery and a couple of saucepans in it, a rickety, bamboo bookcase filled with dusty books and a horse-hair sofa exhibiting its intestines.

      The bedroom held a black metal double bed, covered with a lumpy, stained mattress, and an ancient wardrobe with a broken door and no mirror. A further small staircase led to an attic which held another double bed. This bed lacked a leg and one corner was held up by a pile of bricks. Two trunks lay in a corner, and an old door was propped against one wall. A forgotten candlestick lay on the floor by the bed. All the floors had some linoleum on them, with dirty, wooden floor showing through in places, and all the windows were shrouded in lace curtains, grey and ragged with age.

      Mother looked around her in despair.

      ‘Nobody’d take seven children nowadays,’ puffed Mrs Foster, as they descended the stairs once more.

      Mother knew this to be true and, since the accommodation represented at least a roof under which to shelter, she said, ‘I appreciate that, and I will take the rooms.’

      They went back to Mrs Foster’s room, a rent book was carefully made out and Mother paid over a week’s rent. She was informed that she could hang clothes out to dry in the tiny, overgrown back garden, but the children could not play there because, to quote Mrs Foster: ‘Me brother faces out back and he can’t stand noise – he’s a professional pianist. He used to play reelly well in a cinema.’

      Mother sighed. She must have been sickened by the squalor of the place. She asked how to reach our present rooms by bus and found that a tram went from a nearby corner.

      The trams were open at the front and back and the driver in a shabby uniform augmented by a huge scarf round his neck stood exposed to wind and rain, his foot for ever on his clanging bell. The conductor, not quite so well armoured against the elements, heaved young and old on and off, crammed the vehicle with loud admonitions to ‘Move farther daan t’ back there and make some room for them as comes atter yer’, and collected the fares into his leather pouch with jingling efficiency, as he shoved and pushed his way between his close-packed passengers.

      As she sat swaying in the noisy vehicle, Mother watched them work and realized that Mrs Foster had not asked if Father was employed or not; we discovered later that she had taken it for granted that he was not.

      Darkness had long since fallen when Mother at last staggered into our living-room and collapsed on to the settee.

       Seven

      Half an hour after moving into our new abode on the following Monday, we began to appreciate some of the difficulties of living there.

      Our coal was to be kept in a cupboard by the back door of the basement, where a series of old pantries had been converted for this purpose. This meant that every bucketful had to be carried up sixty-four stairs. We were to share the bathroom on the first floor with eleven other residents, and this meant innumerable trips for me up and down thirty-two stairs, since Brian, Tony and Avril were far too scared of the dark staircase and crypt-like, filthy bathroom to go down alone, and they needed help to manage in such a dirty place. I was getting resigned to disgusting bathrooms – they seemed to be part of the way of life in Liverpool, as I saw it.

      The gas for the light in the living-room, and for a gas stove if we had had one to put in, came through a slot meter which ate pennies at an alarming rate. We did not know that such subsidiary meters were installed and set by landlords at the highest rate they thought they could squeeze out of their tenants. The landlords emptied these meters. They had only to pay the gas company the amount calculated on the reading of the main house meter in the basement, and they pocketed quite a substantial profit on this transaction, in addition to their rent. A more worldly-wise person than my mother would have inserted a penny and run the gas, to see how long a penny lasted, before accepting the tenancy.

      Father went out and stopped a passing coal-cart, and the man brought in a sack of coal. He then went to buy cigarettes at a tiny corner store. Both he and Mother had been heavy smokers and found their enforced abstinence hard to bear.

      We had brought with us on our tram journey a little oatmeal, a few potatoes, sugar and tea. There was still some baby food for Edward, and, since it was late afternoon by the time we arrived and Edward was whimpering, I made a bottle of formula and then some porridge for the other children. Alan had managed to get a smoky fire going, having lugged a handleless bucket full of coal upstairs by hugging it to his chest. His shirt, already dirty from a week’s wear, was now streaked with coal dust.

      Although СКАЧАТЬ