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 TWENTY-TWO

      Encouraged by the friendly old gentleman on the park bench, I continued to read. When I explained to him that I ought to be in school, he said firmly and wisely that it was my parents’ responsibility. He pointed out that, in studying by myself, I was following in the footsteps of many great Lancastrians, who, though doomed to poverty because they were weavers and caught up in the industrial revolution, found means to study and outshine their better-educated contemporaries. He cited the examples of John Butterworth, the mathematician from Haggate, who never earned more than fifteen shillings a week and learned to read and write at the age of twenty. Such was his love of learning that he became one of the finest geometricians of his day; and James Crowther and Richard Buxton, the Manchester botanists, both self-taught, both always poor, both famous.

      I sighed. There was no help there. I wanted to eat and be warm every day of my life.

      Avril and I had discovered one beautifully warm spot in Liverpool, although it was rather a long way from home. Sefton Park had a fine glass palm-house, which was kept at tropical temperatures to encourage the growth of the palms and similar plants inside. Avril, Edward and I used to go into it often and crawl under the great creepers to get warm, emerging later with our bottoms covered with earth, damper but warmer.

      Once we were discovered by two earnest young men carrying notebooks and pencils. They were wreathed around with long scarves in the colours of the university, and when they found us they were at first puzzled and then amused.

      Avril and I stared at them like a pair of scared rabbits.

      ‘Hide and seek?’ one young man inquired.

      I nodded assent, and, like fellow conspirators, they rearranged the foliage over us and tiptoed away. A gardener on another occasion was not so kind.

      ‘We don’t want no dirty ragamuffins in here,’ he shouted, and sent us packing.

      Crestfallen, we stalked out of the glass house with what dignity we could muster, and I pushed the Chariot homeward, passing through a working-class shopping street on the way.

      Halfway up the street, I came to a large, red brick building surrounded by a matching brick wall. It was an elementary school, silent and deserted because it was Saturday. I was about to pass it without much interest, when the remains of a poster flapping in the wind caught my attention. It announced the opening of evening school the previous September. Courses in commercial arithmetic, bookkeeping, English, shorthand and several other subjects were offered.

      I stopped.

      I had never heard of evening school and I could hardly believe that one could go to school outside the normal hours. I could have skipped for joy.

      I wondered if one could enroll at times other than September. Perhaps there would be someone on the premises who could tell me about it. I wheeled the Chariot through the gate leading to the school yard and was hesitantly moving round the building searching for a door, when a hoarse voice shouted, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

      The voice came from an upper window, where a bald man in shirt sleeves, holding a duster he had apparently been shaking, was looking down at me. His expression was hostile, and I wilted.

      ‘I – I was looking for someone to ask about evening school,’ I stuttered.

      My questioner looked pained.

      ‘There’s not likely to be night school on Saturday afternoon, now is there? You’ll have to come on Monday night’ And he started to lower the window.

      I did not move. I wanted to ask what time I should come.

      He threw the window up again impatiently.

      ‘Now get outta here! We don’t want the likes of you hanging around. Get out!’

      I got out, and stood in the street quivering with mortification.

      Avril, looking like a pocket-sized thundercloud, stamped her foot and said, ‘Nasty old man! I don’t like him.’

      I laughed a little weakly, and looked again at the poster. It said the classes were from 7.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.

      My mind made up, I went home determined not to be put off by nasty old men.

      Father was sitting by the empty fireplace, reading War and Peace. Without preamble, I mentioned the evening school to him.

      He hardly seemed to hear me, and I busied myself making a bit of fire to boil a panful of water for tea.

      ‘Daddy?’ I queried again.

      At last he said, ‘You cannot go to evening school.’

      ‘But, Daddy, why not?’ I protested. ‘Fiona and you could watch Avril, and I could put Edward to bed before I went. Tony and Brian will go to bed whenever you or Mother tell them.’

      His face was wooden, though at the same time sad.

      ‘If you go to evening school, my dear, it will be necessary to state your age and other details. You are not yet fourteen and the school inspectors would order you back to day school.’

      ‘Well, I can’t see why I can’t go to either day school or evening school,’ I said with all the irritating belligerence of a thirteen-year-old. ‘Why can’t Mother look after Edward and Avril, while I go to school? She’s much better now.’

      ‘Mother still isn’t fit, you know that. She is doing her very best.’ He stopped. The marriage had been far from happy; yet they had stayed together and his anxiety about Mother was based on genuine respect for her. ‘Your mother is just able to manage if she goes out into the fresh air or works among adults,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know what might happen to her if she was confined with a whining baby.’

      ‘He doesn’t whine,’ I exclaimed angrily. ‘And I nearly go mad trying to make this beastly fire and buy us enough to eat, and … and … ’ I burst into loud crying.

      That was the beginning of a tremendous family row, in which everyone joined.

      Alan tried to soothe me. ‘You could go back to school when Edward’s bigger,’ he said hopefully.

      ‘Once I am fourteen the school won’t take me back,’ I screamed in an abandonment of rage.

      ‘Stop making an exhibition of yourself,’ said Father. ‘When I get a job, you will be able to go to finishing school.’

      I looked at him scornfully. French finishing schools were expensive and seemed far removed from the realities of life in Liverpool.

      Fiona СКАЧАТЬ