Читать книгу 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 - Страница 17

Mother still had in the stitches from the major operation which had been performed upon her soon after Edward’s birth. I had seen the scarifying gash which ran from above her waist to her pelvis; it was now healed and should really have been examined by a surgeon some time back. We considered getting the stitches out ourselves, but we had no scissors and Father was afraid to risk cutting them with his blunt razor. It was decided, therefore, that next time Father drew our allowance from the public assistance committee, Mother would have to see a doctor, no matter what we had to go without as a result of having to pay his fee.

Two mysterious middle-aged ladies, who went out only in the evening, and two married couples lived on the floor below us. With strict instructions from Father not to speak to either of the single ladies, who were, I was assured, not ‘nice’, I was dispatched to inquire from one of the married couples the name of a doctor.

A man in mechanic’s overalls answered my knock. He was undersized and very thin, his hair slicked back from a long, narrow face. Tired, hazel eyes regarded me kindly.

‘What do you want, luv?’

‘My father sent me down to ask if you know where we could find a doctor round here.’

‘Soombody took ill, luv?’ His voice was much more alert.

‘No, thank you. Mummy was very ill before we came here and now she must see a doctor – to have her stitches removed.’

‘Oh, ay. Just a minute, ducks, I’ll ask the wife.’

He left me standing at the open door, while he retreated into the room. I caught a glimpse of a stoutish blonde girl ladling stew out of a saucepan on to plates at a table by the window. The room was crowded with a bed, a stove and living-room furniture, but the general effect was of cosy friendliness. The smell of the stew was unbelievably good and I sniffed appreciatively as I waited.

The girl put down the saucepan and they both came to the door. She wiped her hands on a grubby apron as she looked down at me.

‘There’s the parish doctor,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But none of us goes to ’im unless we’re dying. Tell yer Dad that Dr Dent around the corner by the grocery shop is proper kind. He wouldn’t charge you much – but you’d better take half a crown, in case.’

I thanked her and was just about to turn and run back upstairs, when she put her hand in her pocket and brought out a toffee. ‘’Ere yer are, luv. Have a toffee.’

I had not tasted a sweet since I had arrived in Liverpool and I accepted the gift delightedly and rushed up the stairs with unseemly exuberance.

‘’is surgery hours are seven to nine,’ she called up after me.

Father normally went to the library in the evening to read the Liverpool Echo and write replies to any advertisements which offered office jobs, so I was told to accompany Mother to the doctor’s surgery. Alan would take care of the rest of the family while we were away.

Mother washed herself as best she could with a piece of rag dipped into cold water, and made sure she had no vermin on her. I did the same and also combed my hair; we had only one small pocket comb between us and were always afraid of breaking it, as we could not afford to replace it; consequently, I hardly ever combed my straggling locks. Since my overcoat was still in pawn, I borrowed Fiona’s.

For the first time since she had arrived, Mother made the long trip downstairs. The night was clear and frosty and she paused at the top of the front steps to take a big breath of fresh air; it smelled good after the foul atmosphere of the house. Slowly we proceeded down the steps and down the street, to a cross street of smaller houses and shops. We found the doctor’s front door, which led straight off the street, except for two small steps. A notice on the door invited us to enter. I turned the well-polished brass handle, it gave, and we went in.

We found ourselves in a narrow hall in which ancient brown linoleum gleamed with much polishing under a low-watt light. To our right was a door slightly ajar, marked ‘Waiting-Room’. This proved to be packed with people, many of them Negroes, sitting on chairs ranged round the walls of the room; the centre was occupied by a large Victorian dining-table on which a number of tattered magazines lay in disarray. A gas fire, turned low, stood in front of a black, iron fireplace. On the varnished mantelpiece a marble clock ticked despondently, while on either side of it two cast-iron Greek warriors kept guard.

A whisper of conversation ceased as we entered and all eyes regarded us. I suppose that Mother’s pale pink hat caused the interest. While we hesitated, a huge man in an old macintosh got up off his chair and offered it to Mother, who, by this time, was looking very white.

‘Thank you,’ she said and sat down gratefully.

The man grinned sheepishly, his great red face breaking into a thousand wrinkles, as he stood near us fingering a greasy cap. I stood close to Mother, feeling a little frightened. This was all so different from the chintz-clad sitting-room of our old doctor and the ready welcome of his smart little wife.

Neither of us had any idea how one communicated the fact of one’s presence to the doctor. But we soon saw that at the other end of the room was another door and that at the sound of a buzzer people went in and out of it. Presumably the doctor was in the next room. We could not guess how people established when they could go in so we sat and sat until we were the last people in the waiting-room, and the front door was closed and locked by an elderly woman. When the buzzer rang again, Mother rose and went in to see the doctor, and I was left alone.

I got up and went to stand by the gas fire. The unaccustomed warmth was delicious and wrapped itself around me in a comfortable blanket of heat. I gazed at the iron Greek soldiers on the mantelpiece and smiled at them. My grandmother had such a pair on her kitchen mantelpiece in her beautiful little house on the other side of the Mersey. The tears sprang to my eyes as I remembered it. How long would it be, I wondered, before I had twopence so that I could take the ferry across the Mersey and visit her. My parents never mentioned her and she did not write to me. Probably she did not even know where I was. I wondered if I dare write to her without my parents’ permission. Impatiently I wiped away the tears. Paper and stamps cost money, too, you stupid, I told myself.

The doctor was taking a long time over Mother’s stitches. Perhaps he would make her quite well. Then she could look after the children and I could go back to school. Perhaps in school there would be a school-teacher who would tell me what steps one had to take to get work when one had finished school.

I had always wanted to be a ballet-dancer and my father had indulged me in this by sending me to a very good teacher when I was about five years old. Just before my seventh birthday, however, a very heavy, old-fashioned wardrobe had unexpectedly fallen over while I was in my parents’ bedroom, catching my legs under it. This had resulted in one of my feet being permanently slightly twisted. It was not an unsightly crippling but was sufficient to make any dancing career impossible. During the months I had had to lie with the foot up I had discovered a natural ability for drawing, and this had led to an ambition to design clothes for the theatre.

I gazed into the doctor’s miserable gas fire and saw gorgeous imaginary figures in clothes designed by me tripping and leaping across an imaginary stage. I wished I had a pencil and paper to catch and record permanently my pretty dream. If only the doctor would make Mother well, I would study and draw and practise and fill the stage of the Liverpool Empire with such glamour as its old walls had never seen before.

There was a click as the doctor opened his surgery door for Mother and bowed her out, and she smiled her delicate, beguiling smile at him.

He was a dark, intense-looking young man; he was, I later discovered, an ardent communist who tried his best to practise his beliefs in the stinking slum in which we lived. He grinned cheerfully at me and said good night to us both.

‘What did he say?’ I asked anxiously as I held Mother’s arm to steady her, after the doctor’s housekeeper had locked the front door behind us.

We walked slowly down the empty street for a little way before Mother answered.

‘He said I should have gone to the outpatients department of a hospital.’

‘Did he take the stitches out? Did it hurt?’

‘Yes, he took them out – it didn’t hurt much – he’s a surgeon as well as a physician.’

In a trembling voice I asked another question, one with selfish intent. Behind it was my despair at the drudgery I was facing and my hopes that if I was allowed to go to school I might find a way out from being for ever the unpaid, unthanked housekeeper for our poverty-stricken family.

‘Will you be all right?’ I asked. ‘Will you get better?’

‘He thinks I will, if I go to work – in the open air.’

‘Work?’ I was truly astonished.

At my query she looked down at me, but there was no affection, no real interest in her gaze or in her voice as she answered, ‘Yes. Work.’

The idea that work could cure someone who had been ill was too difficult for me to understand. I knew nothing of mental illness, except that lunatics were shut up in lunatic asylums, and I had no comprehension of the mental stress under which my poor mother laboured and which the doctor had diagnosed.

‘You can’t,’ I said desperately. ‘There is Edward – and Avril – and me – I haven’t got my matric yet – I have to go back to school.’

‘We shall see,’ she said thoughtfully.

My stomach clenched in a deadly nervous pain. In a perceptive flash I saw myself for ever at home, the uneducated daughter retained to help in the house – and there were still some of these when I was a child – grey, uninteresting, the butt of everyone’s ill-temper, without money of my own and consequently entirely dependent upon the goodwill of the rest of the family. I saw myself for ever struggling with the care of Edward, with Avril’s tantrums and the boys’ fights, with Mr Parish’s miserable pittance, and I realized that the daughter who did not have to go to school or to work would be the one to be clothed and fed last.

I burst into tears, my hopes shattered.

‘Oh no, Mummy!’ I wailed. ‘I want to go to school! I want to be like other girls!’

‘Be quiet,’ said Mother sharply. ‘You are making an exhibition of yourself.’

I continued to weep – but quietly. Little ladies did not make exhibitions of themselves in public.

‘You have to learn that you cannot have everything you want. The family must come first.’