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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СКАЧАТЬ had enough desks, made to accommodate two pupils each, to swallow about fifty children; four electric lights hanging from the ceiling failed to illuminate it adequately; the bare wooden floor was grey from years of tramping boots. Facing the pupils’ desks was a high, single desk for the teacher and near it stood a black-board on an easel. The air smelled of chalk dust and damp woollens. A dingy, uninspiring room it was, but it was made more lively by the buzz of conversation among the pupils.

      As I came through the door, the teacher looked up, and a pall of silence fell upon the gathering. The mouths of the neatly clad, well-scrubbed young people fell open. Then a well-curled blonde began to giggle. She hastily stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, while a derisive grin spread through the class.

      The dim electric lights became blurred, as tears of realization welled up. I must have been a horrible sight, with hair draggling round my shoulders, its greasiness combed through with my fingers; septic acne sores all over my face; hands with dirty, broken nails, sticking out from an ancient cardigan with huge holes in its elbows, no blouse, and a gym slip shiny with accumulated grime. Red blotches of bug bites were clearly visible on my naked legs and thighs, our new house being equally as verminous as our old one, and my toes stuck out of the holes in the laceless gym shoes on my feet.

      I fought back my tears. I was made of better stuff than the children before me. My family had been fighting England’s battles while theirs were still serfs fit only to keep pigs. I would show them.

      Lifting my ugly hooked nose into the air I stared calmly back at them. Gradually, the grins were replaced by uneasy looks and they began self-consciously to talk to each other again.

      There ought to be a special medal for understanding teachers. I do not know what prompted the small, perfumed occupant of the teacher’s podium to come down from her perch, put her arm around my shoulders, regardless of the fact that I was obviously verminous, and say sweetly, ‘Do you want to take bookkeeping, too, my dear?’

      She was taken aback visibly when I answered her in my clearest English – she must have expected a strong Liverpool accent

      ‘I had hoped to learn arithmetic, ma’am. Do you teach it?’

      She recovered herself and guided me to an unoccupied double desk at the front of the class, as she replied.

      ‘No. This school has only commercial courses – it is assumed that you will have done the necessary arithmetic already in day-school.’

      The other children were again staring at me, and she turned to them and said sharply, ‘Please fill in the forms I have given to you. I will take them in in a few minutes.’ She turned back to me. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘what kind of arithmetic do you want to learn?’

      I explained my lack of algebra, that my academic training had come to an end at a chapter called ‘Compound Interest’, and that was as much as I knew.

      She sat casually on the desk in front of me and looked me over thoughtfully.

      ‘When did you leave school?’ she asked.

      I explained about leaving school when I was twelve and the subsequent glorious six weeks I had enjoyed just before my fourteenth birthday, and about Edward and Avril and the family.

      ‘I see,’ she said, drawing her pale blue cardigan more tightly around her. ‘Do you want to train for any particular occupation?’

      An occupation seemed so far away, so unattainable, that I said hastily, ‘I have not thought of anything special – except that I would like to be able to help the hungry, unemployed people round me.’

      She smiled at this and suggested, after some consideration, that I should take the standard commercial course, in which she taught bookkeeping. In addition, she would guide me through a basic course in arithmetic and algebra, which I could do as part of my homework.

      ‘If you take the commercial course, it will form a basis for several different ways of earning a living,’ she said practically.

      I agreed because it seemed that I had no choice and, at least, she had opened a tiny door of hope for me. Yesterday there had been no hope; today there was a faint gleam.

      She lent me her pen and I filled in the form she gave me, while the other members of the class handed theirs in, had them checked and were told to report back two nights later to commence their instruction.

      When the classroom had emptied, I went to the teacher’s desk and handed in my form.

      ‘Fine,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Now, that will be half a crown; and here is a list of books you will need. They will cost about ten and sixpence.’

      I was stunned. My tiny hope door slammed shut. I managed to gasp out, ‘I did not know there was a fee for evening school – I thought it was like elementary day-school – provided by the city – so – so I haven’t brought any money.’

      The amounts were so small; but they might just as well have been hundreds of pounds, because I did not have them.

      The teacher was collecting her papers, and she replied, without looking up, ‘Well, never mind. Ask your mother to give you the fee for next time – and you can get the books from any bookshop sometime during the week. Now, be here on Thursday at 7.30, remember.’

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said heavily. ‘Good night – and thank you.’

      I turned and marched out.

      As soon as I was outside the school, I rushed to a corner behind a buttress of the building where the street lamps’ rays did not penetrate, and, putting my face against the damp, red bricks of the wall, I cried hopelessly and helplessly until not another tear would come. I cried from the frightful pent-up tension of yesterday and the disappointment and humiliation of today. I cried because I was drifting helplessly on a sea of life for which I had not been prepared and which I did not understand. I cried for the perfect peace and safe refuge of my grandmother’s house by the sea. I cried because I could not cross the Mersey to reach the green fields and wild seashores I loved.

      Frozen and exhausted, I stuffed my blue hands into my cardigan pockets and turned towards home.

      I took two steps and stopped. In my pocket was a hard little card. Mother’s library card!

      Books! Perhaps the library had the books I needed. If they had, I could keep on reborrowing them, I argued. If it was not yet nine o’clock, I could run to the library and look.

      I tore through the streets, taking shortcuts through every alleyway I could, regardless of danger. Dogs barked and cats and rats scampered away at the sound of my thudding feet.

      I squeezed into the library’s muggy warmth five minutes before closing-time, the list of books clutched in one hand.

      Feverishly, I sought through the index. Had they got them? Had they?

      They had.

      A few minutes later, I emerged, equipped with text-books.

      At home I poured out my adventures to Alan and Fiona. It was a long time since I had had such a conversation with any of the family, and they were jubilant about the enrolment and the books. Alan offered to lend me his pen each evening.

      ‘If you don’t remind them, perhaps they’ll forget that you owe them half a crown,’ СКАЧАТЬ