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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      Two hours later, a petrified Brian came rushing up the stairs and into our living-room, where I was rocking Edward to sleep in his Chariot He buried his face in my shoulder.

      ‘Daddy’s been arrested,’ he cried.

      I jumped up in alarm and Edward cried out as the rocking ceased.

      ‘Oh, Heavens! Whatever did he do?’

      Brian continued to sob in my arms in sheer fright.

      ‘Tell me, Brian. What did he do? Did he steal some cigarettes?’

      I felt Brian nod negatively.

      ‘Well, he must have done something!’

      ‘He didn’t do anything.’

      I knelt down and hugged Brian close.

      ‘Well, tell me what happened. Come on, love, tell me.’

      Brian’s sobs reduced to sniffs and with all the maddening long-windedness of children, he said, ‘Well, we walked down into the town and we looked in Cooper’s and MacSymon’s windows at all the lovely food – they had peaches in brandy in Cooper’s. And then we looked in the furniture stores and Daddy showed me a jade idol in Bunney’s, at the corner of Whitechapel. Then we walked up Lord Street – opposite Frisby Dykes – and looked at the tailors’ shops in North John Street.’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ I said impatiently.

      ‘Well, then Daddy wanted to look at the gentlemen’s shops in the arcade in Cook Street – and it was at the corner of Cook Street that we saw this strange man.’

      ‘What kind of a strange man?’

      ‘Well, he was big and nicely dressed with lovely polished boots. Daddy said he was a plain-clothes policeman – and we were both a bit scared – but Daddy said to keep on walking as if there was nothing wrong.’ Brian wiped his nose on the cuff of his jersey. ‘So we did – and we looked at all the pipes and tobacco and suits and things and this man started to walk up behind us.’

      ‘What did you do?’

      ‘We started to walk faster and faster and when we got to Castle Street and turned the corner, we ran like anything and the man ran after us. Daddy pushed me into a doorway by a pillar and told me to stay there, and he went on running. When the policeman had passed me by, I peeped out – and the policeman had his hand on Daddy’s shoulder like they do in books.’ Brian burst into tears again. ‘So I doubled back down Cook Street and came home.’ he wailed.

      ‘Never mind, Brian. I am sure Daddy will be all right. It is probably a mistake. We’ll tell Mummy about it. You just wait here a minute.’

      Mother was taking a little nap in the bedroom and I was very afraid that if I woke her with Brian’s story she would have one of her periodic outbursts of temper, or perhaps have hysterics; but she sat on the edge of the old mattress while she considered it, and then said quite sensibly, ‘I don’t think we can do anything except wait We don’t know which police station he is in. I expect they will let us know what he is charged with.’

      Her calmness calmed Brian and me, and he went off to play with Tony, while I went back to my book. I could not read, however. I realized suddenly how much officialdom Father coped with on our behalf. Without him, we were defenceless against those who would put us in the workhouse.

      I began to shake with fear, fear for my father and terror at the inhumanity of the workhouse.

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

      Edward had been put to bed, and Mother and I sat on our two chairs staring out of the window, united by our worry over Father. Occasionally, there was a steady clang-clang and flashes of electricity from behind the houses opposite as tram cars a couple of streets away swayed around a corner. The irate ‘whip-whip-whip’ of a naval vessel making its way upriver competed with the noise of the trams, and, in the far distance, the shunting yard at Edge Hill lent a background of clanking to the other sounds. No cars passed – the district was too poor for anything more ambitious than a horsedrawn milk cart. A boy came by on a bicycle and two giggling girls paused to gossip under the gaslight outside.

      A car drew up outside our house so quietly that we were at first unaware of its presence. Someone got out.

      ‘Good night, and – thank you very much.’

      It was Father. His voice was unmistakable.

      We jumped up as the front door slammed in the distance. We could hear Father’s laborious step on the stairs. He was whistling ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’.

      Never had the old tune sounded so welcome. If he could whistle, things were not that bad. We ran to the top of the stairs, six small grey ghosts and one adult, and peered over the banisters.

      ‘Hello, children. Is Brian safely home?’

      ‘Yes,’ we chorused. ‘What happened to you?’

      Father emerged from the darkness of the stair-well. He was smiling broadly and his step was jaunty.

      ‘It’s a long story. Come in and I’ll tell you.’

      He even smiled at his wife, I noticed, and I could see in the small light from the street the sudden, unreasoned hope spring in Mother’s eyes when she saw Father’s cheerful expression.

      ‘Come in. I have lots to tell you, and you are all old enough to hear it’

      He led us, like the Pied Piper, into the living-room.

      ‘Tell us,’ we implored, hunger, filth, misery forgotten.

      Father made the most of his moment. He settled himself in a chair and took Avril on his knee. He was still beaming.

      He cleared his throat.

      ‘I expect Brian told you about our walk.’

      ‘Yes,’ we said impatiently.

      ‘What happened when the policeman caught you?’ asked Brian.

      ‘He wanted to see my tie.’

      ‘Your tie?’ exclaimed Mother.

      ‘Yes, my old All Saints tie. I thought he was mad, but I was afraid to do anything else but pull it out and show it to him.’

      Avril shoved herself around on Father’s lap and pulled out the sad remains of his old school tie. It looked the same as usual.

      ‘When he saw it, he opened his own overcoat at the neck, and he was wearing the same tie – I mean a nice, new version of it.’

      Alan whistled.

      ‘He asked me how I came to be down and out.

      ‘“It is a long story,” I told him. Suddenly, my legs began to give under me – we had walked a very СКАЧАТЬ