Liverpool Miss. Helen Forrester

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      Mother returned my look. ‘Yes, you would,’ she replied, so sharply that it sounded like an implied threat and made me jump apprehensively.

      I was as tall as Mother, though with a much slighter frame, and after surveying me for a moment, she said I could borrow the dress she was wearing. Since it would be Saturday the following day, I could also borrow Fiona’s black woollen stockings and black, flat-heeled shoes; Fiona was not consulted, and was very grumpy when she discovered what had been agreed. ‘You’ll tread them out,’ she complained. ‘Your feet are too big.’

      ‘I’ll be very careful,’ I promised, as I recklessly washed my hair and then the rest of me in a quart of hot water in the tin basin, and used up the last sliver of soap we possessed. There would be a row with the boys in the morning about the lack of soap, but it could be endured.

      I borrowed from Mother the only pair of scissors we had. She carried them in her handbag, so that they could not be misused, but even so, they were blunt and the nails on my right hand had to be finished off by biting them. Toenails were always left to grow until they broke off, and sometimes they looked like cruel, yellow claws before they finally cracked off.

      The scissors were too small to cut hair, so I combed my unkempt locks with the family comb, also normally carried in Mother’s handbag, and hoped they would stay off my face until the interview was over. When I received some wages, I promised myself, I would ask Mother if I could buy some hair clips.

      Even after these efforts, I must have looked very odd in a black dress too long and too looose for me and without an overcoat, though it was late February and the weather was damp and chilly.

      Full of hope, though shivering with cold, I trotted along beside Mother through the misty morning, past the Rialto Cinema and Dance Hall with its tawdry posters, and the dim outline of the cathedral, to the sweetshop.

      It was a very little shop, in a shabby block of other small shops and offices. Its window, however, sparkled with polishing despite the overcast day. Through the gleaming glass I could dimly see rows of large bottles of sweets and in front of them an arrangement of chocolate boxes, all of them free of dust. Beneath the window, a sign in faded gold lettering advertised Fry’s Chocolate.

      Mother, who had not spoken to me during the walk, paused in front of the shop and frowned. Then she swung open the glass-paned door and stalked in. I followed her, my heart going pit-a-pat, in unison with the click of Fiona’s shoes on the highly polished, though worn, linoleum within.

      An old-fashioned bell hung on a spring attached to the door was still tinkling softly when a stout, middle-aged woman with a beaming smile on her round face emerged through a lace-draped door leading to an inner room.

      ‘Yes, luv?’ she inquired cheerfully.

      ‘I understand that you wrote to my daughter about a post in your shop?’ Mother’s voice was perfectly civil, but the word ‘post’ instead of ‘job’ sounded sarcastic.

      The smile was swept from the woman’s face. She looked us both up and down uncertainly, while I agonised over what Mother might say next.

      ‘Helen?’ the woman asked, running a stubby finger along her lower lip.

      ‘Helen Forrester,’ replied Mother icily.

      ‘Ah did.’ The voice had all the inflections of a born Liverpudlian. She looked past Mother, at me standing forlornly behind her. Her thoughtful expression cleared, and she smiled slightly at me. I smiled shyly back.

      I felt her kindness like an aura round her and sensed that I would enjoy being with her, even if she did expect a lot of work from me.

      ‘Have you ever worked before, luv?’ she asked me, running fingers on which a wedding ring gleamed through hair which was improbably golden.

      I nodded negatively. Then cleared my throat and said, ‘Only at home.’

      ‘What work would Helen be expected to do?’ asked Mother, her clear voice cutting between the woman and me like a yacht in a fast wind. She had also the grace of a yacht in the wind; but the sweet-shop owner was obviously finding her more trying than graceful and answered uncertainly, ‘Well, now, I hadn’t exactly thought. I need a bit o’ help, that’s all. ’Course she’d have to wash the floor and polish it, like, every day. And clean the window and dust the stock. And when I knowed her a bit she could probably help me with serving, like. I get proper busy at weekends – and in summer the ice cream trade brings in a lot o’ kids, and you have to have eyes in the back o’ your head or they’ll steal the pants off you.’

      Mother sniffed at this unseemly mention of underwear, and then nodded.

      ‘And what would the salary be?’

      I groaned inwardly. I was sure that in a little shop like this one earned wages not a salary.

      The beginning of a smile twitched at the woman’s lips, but she answered Mother gravely.

      ‘Well, I’d start her on five shillings, and if she was any good I’d raise it.’

      Even in those days, five shillings was not much. The woman seemed to realise this, because she added, ‘And o’ course, she can eat as many sweets as she likes. But no taking any out of the shop.’

      I could imagine that this was not as generous as it sounded. After a week of eating too many sweets, the desire for them would be killed and few people would want them any more.

      Mother inquired stiffly, ‘And how many hours a week would she work for that?’

      ‘Well, I open up at half past seven in the morning to catch the morning trade, you understand. And I close up at nine in the evening.’ She paused a moment and then said, ‘But I wouldn’t need her after about seven o’clock. Me husband’s home by then, and he helps me after he’s had his tea. And I close Wednesday atternoons, so she’d have the atternoon off after she’d tidied up, like. Me husband helps me Sundays, too, so I wouldn’t want her then either.’

      I wanted the job so badly that I did not care how many hours I worked, how often I scrubbed the floor. The shop seemed so lovely and warm, after our house, and I sensed that in a rough way the woman would be kind to me. I tried to will the woman to agree to take me.

      A little boy burst through the shop door, leaving the bell tinging madly after him. He pushed past us and leaned against the corner of the counter.

      ‘Ah coom for me Dad’s ciggies,’ he announced, turning a pinched, grubby face up towards the sweet-shop owner.

      ‘Have you got the money?’

      ‘Oh, aye. He wants ten Woodbines.’ A small hand was unclenched to show four large copper pennies.

      The cigarettes were handed over and the pennies dropped into the wooden till.

      ‘Now don’t be smoking them yourself,’ admonished the woman, with a laugh.

      The boy grinned at her and bounced back to the door, his bare feet thudding. As he went through the door, he turned and gestured as if he were smoking.

      ‘Aye, you little gint!’ she said.

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