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 TWELVE

      One of the advantages of being very poor is that one has time. Since we had no clothes except those on our backs, there was no pile of washing to be dealt with each Monday. When there is little food, there is little cooking, and since we possessed no bed linen, towels, cleaning materials or tools, most other domestic jobs either were non-existent or could not be carried out. As the weather improved, therefore, I began to take a walk each day, pushing Edward and Avril in the Chariot.

      These were, for me, voyages of discovery into a world I had never dreamed of before. I meandered along narrow streets, where the soot-blackened early Victorian houses opened directly upon the pavement. Some of the houses had the flagstone across their front door scrubbed and neatly whitened, with a strip of well-shone brass covering the sill; their painted window-sills were carefully polished and their garish chintz curtains were starched as stiff as the sentries outside Buckingham Palace. Others were like our house: dull windows veiled in grey webs of lace, window-panes missing and filled in with cardboard, old orange-peel and cigarette-ends littering their frontage.

      The local pawnbroker’s shop, with its dusty sign of three golden balls hanging outside over a wooden table piled high with second-hand clothing, made for me a fascinating treat. I loved to gaze in the windows at the rows of Victorian and Edwardian rings for sale, the war medals, violins, blankets, china ornaments and sailors’ lucky gold charms.

      The pawnbroker himself was part of the scene, as he stood in his doorway puffing at a cigarette, shirt-sleeves rolled up to show olive-coloured arms, tight black curls receding from his forehead, a magnificent watch-chain with dangling seals swathed across a wrinkled, blue serge waistcoat over a comfortable paunch.

      ‘Come on, me little blue-eyed duck!’ he would call to Avril when he saw her, and occasionally he would feel around in his waistcoat pocket with his tobacco-stained fingers to dig out a grubby sweet for her. She loved him and would howl dismally on the days when we did not walk that way. For me, he would have a polite nod and a brief Afternoon. Nice day’, regardless of whether it rained or shone.

      One mild March afternoon, I circled the cathedral and listened to the ring of the stonemasons’ tools on its great sandstone walls. It rose like a graceful queen above slums which put Christianity to shame. I stared up the beautiful sweep of steps leading to its entrance, wondering if I dare go in, but I was too afraid. I had not seen myself in a mirror since coming to Liverpool, but I knew I was both dirty and shabby. My hat and shoes had been passed to Fiona, who was obliged to go out to school, whereas I could stay indoors. The shoes had been replaced by a pair of second-hand running shoes with holes in the toes; my head was bare and my hair straggled in an unruly mass down my neck; it was rarely combed and never washed.

      Still pushing aimlessly, I wandered along Rodney Street, a lovely street of well-kept Georgian houses, the homes and surgeries of Liverpool’s more eminent doctors. A brass plaque on No. 62 informed me that Gladstone was born there. Mr Gladstone was not one of my heroes, so I continued onward enjoying the peace and orderliness of the quiet road.

      I turned down Leece Street, past the employment exchange where Father spent so many unhappy hours, past tall, black St Luke’s Church and into Bold Street, the most elegant shopping centre in Liverpool. Although there were at least a dozen empty shops up for rent, the atmosphere was one of opulence. I pushed past women in fur coats and pretty hats, who stared at me in disgust, to look in windows which held a single dress or fur or a few discreet bottles of perfume. A delicious odour of roasting coffee permeated the place.

      Onward I went, through the packed shopping area of Church Street, where trams, nose to tail, clanged their way amid horsedrawn drays, delivery vans and private cars, and newspaper men shouted to me to ‘read all abaat it’. The cry of ‘Echo, Echo, Liverpool Echo, sir’ comes wafting down the years, like the overwhelming scent of vanilla pods, the sound and smell of a great port.

      ‘I know where we’ll go,’ I said to Avril, who was bouncing up and down in the Chariot pretending it was a horse.

      ‘Where?’

      ‘We’ll go down to the Pier Head!’

      I knew this part of the town, because I had been shopping in it on many occasions with my grandmother. I pushed the Chariot purposefully up Lord Street to the top of the hill, where Queen Victoria in pigeon-dropped grey stone presided, down the hill, through a district of shipping offices with noble names upon their doors: Cunard, White Star, Union Castle, Pacific & Orient, the fine СКАЧАТЬ