Twopence to Cross the Mersey. Helen Forrester

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 restlessly, napping, waking, unable to settle because of cold or gnawing hunger. Four of us, still dressed in our underwear, were packed somehow into one bed, and Father, Alan and Brian were to manage in the other bed. Mother stayed on the settee with the baby. For a long time I lay and listened to my parents quarrelling with each other, while the baby whimpered and Fiona, her head against my shoulder, chattered inconsequently in her own uneasy sleep, her doll clasped tightly to her. I fell into a doze, from which I was awakened by Mother calling me in the early morning. I was glad to leave the bed, which smelled of urine, put on my gym-slip and blouse and go to her.

      It had been decided, she said, that Father should enrol Alan, Fiona, Brian and Tony at an elementary school he had noticed on his way to the corner shop the previous night. I was to stay at home and help with the baby. My loud protest that I would get behind with my schooling was sharply hushed. I was to see the children washed and tidied for school and was to divide the remaining bread and margarine between them for breakfast. All this I did, whilst shivering with cold. Brian and Tony were also shivering and were scared of going to school; Fiona and Alan were frankly relieved at the thought of something normal creeping back into their lives.

      A breakfastless Father was gone with them for an hour and came back to report the children safely ensconced. He had put into his pocket, when leaving home, an old-fashioned cut-throat razor, and he now did his best to shave with it, in cold water, without soap. The result was not very good, and his clothing, still wet from yesterday’s soaking, looked crumpled and old. He then departed for the employment exchange, a three-mile walk.

      Mother, Avril and I sat almost silent in the icy room. Occasionally, we would feed the baby a little of the remaining milk. We warmed it slightly by putting the bottle next to Mother’s skin down the front of her dress, and we wrapped the baby in Mother’s coat, which had not got much wetted the previous day. I then tucked our two precious blankets round both mother and child. I longed to get out of the fetid room, even if it was only to stand at the front door, but I was too afraid of my mother in her present state to ask permission to do so.

      The other children came home for lunch, but there was no lunch, and they departed again for school, cold, hungry and in tears, even brave Alan’s lips quivering. Mother, Avril and I, like Father, had neither eaten nor drunk.

      The afternoon dragged on and the children returned, except for Fiona.

      ‘Fiona’s ill,’ explained Alan anxiously. ‘A teacher is going to bring her home in a little while, when she feels better.’

      I suppose my mother was past caring, for she said nothing, but, to the griping hunger pains in my stomach, was added a tightening pain of apprehension for Fiona, the frailest of us all. I tried, however, to be cheerful while I helped the boys off with their coats and then put them on again immediately, because they said they were so cold.

      The front door bell clanged sonorously through the house. I expected to hear the clatter of our landlady coming down the stairs to open it, but there was no sound from the upper regions of the house, so very diffidently I rose and answered it.

      At the door, stood an enormously tall man in long, black skirts. In his arms he carried Fiona.

       Four

      I quailed before the apparition on the doorstep – it reminded me of an outsize bat and my overstimulated imagination suggested that it might be a vampire; in the chaotic mess that our world had become, anything was possible. The voice that issued from the apparition’s bearded face was, however, gentle and melodious, and asked to see my mother.

      Nervously, I invited him (it was obviously male, despite the long, black dress) into the hall, and he slid a whey-faced Fiona to the floor, while I went to see Mother. She told me to bring the gentleman into our room, and, for the first time since our arrival, a slight animation was apparent in her face.

      He entered, leading Fiona by the hand, and immediately my mother assumed the gracious manner which had, in the past, contributed to her reputation as an accomplished hostess.

      ‘Father!’ Her voice was bell-like. ‘This is a pleasure! Come in. Do sit down.’ She ignored poor Fiona, who came and stood by me, and stared dumbly at our new-found friend.

      ‘Father’? It was beyond me. I had never seen an Anglican priest in high church robes, nor yet a Roman Catholic one, in the small towns in which we had previously lived. I stood, with fingers pressed against my mouth, and wondered what further troubles this visit portended.

      He was explaining to Mother that the school was an Anglican Church school. After Fiona had come out of her faint, the headmistress had wormed out of her something of what was happening to us, and had then telephoned him. The advent of four well-dressed, well-behaved children entering a slum school had already caused some stir among the teachers and considerable jeering and cat-calling among the other pupils, so the headmistress had asked him to call upon us. Here he was, he announced gravely, and could he be of help?

      As I examined the beautiful, serene face of the young priest, Mother poured out a condensed version of the story of Father’s losses. He was a Liverpool man originally, she said, and had come back to his native city in the hope of earning his living there. To me, the well-edited tale still presented a picture of foolishness, extravagance and carelessness.

      Now, at last, I knew why we were in Liverpool and what the word ‘bankruptcy’ really meant to our family. I knew, with terrible clarity, that I would never see my bosom friend, Joan, again, never play with my doll’s house, never be the captain of the hockey team or be in the Easter pageant. My little world was swept away.

      I looked at Alan, who was standing equally silently by the window. His eyes met mine and we shared the same sense of desolation. Then his golden eyelashes covered his eyes and shone with tears, half-hidden.

      ‘Have you no relations who would help you?’ asked the priest.

      ‘I have no relations,’ said Mother coldly, ‘and my husband’s refused to know us at present.’

      The priest combed his beard with his fingers, and smiled when Avril tried to reach up to touch it. He took her hand gently and held it, and within thirty seconds she had established herself triumphantly on his knee, from which safe throne she surveyed the rest of the family gleefully.

      ‘There is a great deal of unemployment in Liverpool,’ he said. ‘I fear your husband may find difficulty in finding work.’

      Mother just stared disconsolately at him.

      At that moment Father entered, dragging his feet slowly and looking almost as hopeless as Mother. The children ignored him, the exhausted baby slept.

      Desperate to fill the silence, I cried gladly, ‘Daddy!’

      He managed to smile faintly.

      Mother introduced him formally to the priest, and he sat СКАЧАТЬ