The Complete Helen Forrester 4-Book Memoir: Twopence to Cross the Mersey, Liverpool Miss, By the Waters of Liverpool, Lime Street at Two. Helen Forrester

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       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      Mother went to town on a shopping expedition the following morning, while Edward, Avril and I went to the pawnbroker’s to redeem my overcoat.

      The pawnbroker hailed his blue-eyed duck with pleasure, when, trembling with apprehension at my unaccustomed task, I entered the dark, back part of his shop, pawn-ticket in hand.

      He smiled at us both, his dark face gleaming in the poor light like a portrait by Frans Hals.

      ‘Sit the little girl up on the counter, while I deal with these ladies,’ he told me cheerfully.

      I lifted Avril on to the high counter.

      The counter was divided up into three by means of partitions, so as to give people a little privacy in their transactions, and in the next cubicle were a couple of Irish women in black shawls and white aprons. They had each brought their husband’s best suit to pawn, since both men had got ships and gone to sea.

      The pawnbroker pulled down his waistcoat over his bursting waistline.

      ‘Now, ladies?’

      ‘Himself sailed last night, and a bloody good riddance to him, I say.’

      A bundled-up suit was pushed over the counter.

      ‘Will you get an allotment?’ asked the pawnbroker, as he inspected the seams of the jacket for wear.

      ‘Och, for sure. Not much though – himself will see to that’

      ‘I won’t be seeing you for a while then, once that starts to come in.’

      ‘And will it be breaking your heart?’ She dug a stout elbow into her friend’s ribs, and they both chortled.

      ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to live without you.’

      And so on, bickering about how much the suits were worth – worth more than shiftless husbands, I gathered – until finally they swayed out of the shop, their layers of black skirts giving out an unbelievable stench as they moved.

      Mother had given me three shillings, which I handed to the pawnbroker with his receipt for the coat. He gave it to his gangling young assistant, who disappeared up a ladder into the loft. A bundle wrapped in a piece of cloth was tossed down and neatly caught by the pawnbroker.

      ‘There you are. When you bring it back, wrap it in the cloth again,’ he said kindly. ‘Everything has to be wrapped up in a bundle.’ He pushed the tightly wrapped package over the counter to me. ‘You should undo it and check it.’

      I did this and my hopelessly crushed coat was revealed.

      ‘Would threepence buy an iron?’ I asked, emboldened by his amiable manner.

      His black eyebrows shot up and his sharp brown eyes looked at me shrewdly, when he heard me speak. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

      ‘Not from me,’ he replied. ‘You might get one from the junk-yard at the back.’

      He turned, and shouted up the shute to the store-room above, ‘George! Mind shop! I’m going out back a minute.’

      George came tumbling down the ladder, and I lifted Avril off the counter, where she had been contentedly kicking her heels and watching the proceedings.

      We went out through the back door, and through the pawnbroker’s yard. The yard was paved with brick, and neat flower-beds filled with daffodils lined the high walls. A hut next to the back gate presumably held a lavatory. He opened the gate and we crossed the narrow alley separating the two lines of business properties, and went into a yard piled high with rusting iron – all the domestic debris of the neighbourhood, from old bedsteads to hip baths.

      ‘Hey, Joe! Where are ye? Got any old flat irons?’

      An aged, hunch-backed gnome emerged from under a lean-to. He peered at us from under a greasy, black cap, with the bright perky look of a blackbird. I had often heard him calling through the streets as he pushed his hand-cart along, ‘Any rags, bottles or bones? Any old rags today?’ His cry would bring the children rushing to him, armed with jamjars or rags to trade for a windmill or some other small toy.

      ‘Humph,’ he grunted. ‘Ah might ’ave.’

      He rooted through a collection of old kitchen pails, washboards and dollies lying under an ancient wooden mangle, and finally came up with a small, rusty iron, which he agreed to part with for threepence.

      Back in the pawnbroker’s shop, I was made to wait while George was instructed to find a piece of sandpaper and rub the iron clean for me.

      Gold teeth flashing amid tobacco-stained white ones, the pawnbroker finally presented me with quite a respectable-looking iron.

      ‘There ye are, luv,’ he said.

      ‘Thank you very, very much,’ I said, and swept out, iron in hand, my coat with its attendant bit of cloth over my arm, and a protesting Avril held firmly by the other hand.

      ‘I want to stay here,’ she yelled. ‘I like it here.’

      I had not forgotten the awful scarecrow I had seen in the Bold Street shop window, however, and I took Edward and her straight home, because I was determined to make a fire with some of the coal the regimental grant had enabled us to buy, heat water and wash myself.

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