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 THREE

      A stout, untidy blonde opened the door to us. A suffocating odour of unwashed bodies, old cooking and cats rolled over us. The woman beamed at us, however, and welcomed Father like an old friend. She helped him assist Mother into a room so shabby and so dirty that I could honestly say that I had never seen anything like it before. Next to it was a bedroom with two double beds crammed into it. There were no sheets or pillow-cases, just greasy pillows and grey blankets.

      Mother sank on to a broken settee, while our landlady looked us over.

      ‘You can keep coal out back and use t’ kitchen and bathroom. There’s eight other tenants upstairs and me and me sons on the top floor, so keep as quiet as yer can.’ Her battered face showed pity. ‘Ah’ll give yer enough coal to start a fire. Coalman’ll be along the street this afternoon and you can get some then.’

      The room was very cold and Mother looked round it disdainfully, but she said. ‘Thank you’ in response to this offer of fuel.

      ‘Come on, luv,’ the landlady addressed me. ‘There’s a booket in that cupboard. We’ll fill it and you can bring it back.’

      After a trip through linoleumed passages and a littered, stinking kitchen to a coal-house by the back door, I staggered back with a bucket of coal, some wood chips and a newspaper. After much anxious effort, Father got a fire going. It was the first time he had ever made a fire.

      Tony and Brian, usually the best of friends, had been bickering irritably for some time, and they now turned on Alan, who was himself fretful with hunger. Furiously, he cuffed the younger boys and made them cry.

      Father snapped at him to stop.

      Alan, usually so cheerful, stopped, and said heavily, ‘When shall we be able to have something to eat?’

      ‘How much money have you?’ asked Mother. She had sat silently staring into space, while we had divested ourselves of our coats and Father had lit the fire.

      Father went through his pockets, and laid the results of his search on the settee, so that we could see the small pile of coins in the light of the bare electric bulb hanging from the ceiling.

      ‘Two and ninepence,’ he announced helplessly.

      Thirty-three precious pennies would buy quite a lot in those days, though they would not last long in a family the size of ours.

      In a dull monotone, Mother upbraided him bitterly about the mess he had got us all into, and Father snarled back that she had never been any help to him. Finally, Edward’s wailing drew his attention to more immediate concerns, and he said, ‘There is a little corner shop down the road. We could at least get some milk for Edward.’

      ‘And for me,’ said Avril, thrusting her small chin aggressively forward.

      ‘Be quiet, Avril,’ I hissed, afraid that my parents would start to quarrel again.

      ‘Won’t,’ replied Avril defiantly, but she did keep quiet thereafter.

      Finally, it was decided that since Father was already wet through he might as well get a bit more wet by going out to the shop and buying all the food he could for the money he had.

      When he had departed, the children crouched around the miserable fire, and Mother managed to change Edward’s nappy. We had only three nappies with us, and the baby had not been changed since we had set out that morning. He was, therefore, in a disgusting condition. Mother gave me the nappy she had removed, told me to find the bathroom, wash the dirty garment and bring it back to dry by the fire. I wandered off, sick and dejected, and did the best I could with cold water and no soap in a Victorian bathroom which stank of half a century of neglect.

      Afterwards, Alan and I went to the kitchen, where a few dust-covered dishes were strewn along open shelves. We collected them and washed them under the only tap and, with frozen fingers, carried them back to our room. With nervous and uncertain gestures, we laid them on the table, which was covered with torn, stained oilcloth. We also had hopefully brought with us a saucepan and a frying-pan, since there was no stove in the kitchen on which to cook.

      Our spirits rose when Father returned with milk, two loaves of bread, margarine, tea, sugar and a small packet of sausages. He had also brought a twopenny packet of Woodbines. With cigarettes in their mouths, our parents became a little more civil to each other.

      Under Mother’s instructions, I made a feed for Edward and then fed him: he was ravenous and took the whole small bottle full. Father cooked sausages on the smoking fire, found a knife in the kitchen and cut the bread and spread it with margarine. We sat around on whatever we could find and ate a sausage apiece in our fingers. He managed to boil a pan of water and make tea in it Mother drank much and ate little, refusing a sausage which was happily snatched up by Avril. Father finally ate, and only afterwards I realized that he had not had a sausage, and I felt a crushing sense of guilt about it

      Our landlady called down the stairs to say that she could hear the coalman coming, and my father looked aghast The coal donated by our landlady was already nearly consumed and we had exactly a penny left We could do nothing, and sat hopelessly silent, as the shout of ‘Coal, coal, one and nine a hundredweight’ faded down the street

      That was the first of many years of nights I spent tossing СКАЧАТЬ