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 19

Each day my mother went out to try and get work and spent most of the morning and afternoon in a fruitless round of offices and shops. Before leaving, she would give me a shilling to buy the day’s food. This I laid out to the best of my ability on bread, potatoes, rice, tea, sugar, pennyworths of bacon scraps or margarine and, that dire necessity, a pint of milk for Edward, which cost twopence.

At first, Edward used to cry with hunger, but as he grew a little older, he would lie lethargically in the Chariot, making no sound most of the time. The other children also grew apathetic and the smaller ones tried to take bits of bread when I was not looking. We never heard from the school about their progress nor did my father inquire.

One morning my parents went out quite early, before Edward had been fed. After the children had been given a meagre bowl of porridge each and had been sent to school, there was no food left in the house. I was desperate with hunger. And the usual pint of milk would, I knew, not be enough to last Edward for twenty-four hours. However, clutching the shilling, I wrapped Edward up in his stinking blanket, put on my woollen cardigan, my coat being still in pawn, and went downstairs to buy milk from the first passing milkman.

Standing on the doorstep were two pint bottles of milk, presumably delivered for Miss Sinford, the lady with religious mania, and Mrs Hicks, who lived with her unemployed husband in the bowels of the basement. The other tenants patronized a milkman who came later.

I looked at the bottles and then up and down the apparently empty street, hoping that the milkman might still be near by. There was no sign of him, however, and I turned back into the house with the idea of getting out the Chariot and wheeling it round to the dairy to purchase Edward’s precious pint.

Edward began to whimper. I looked down longingly at the milk bottles. Then, like a fleeing cat, I tore up the stairs, Edward bobbing up and down in my arms. I laid him down gently in the Chariot, took our two cracked cups, ran down to the bathroom and filled one with water, then ran silently down the rest of the stairs to the front door.

I glanced quickly up and down the street. Everyone was apparently sleeping the long hopeless sleep of the unemployed.

Quickly I took the lids off the bottles, filled the empty cup with a little milk from each bottle, topped the bottles up with water, carefully replaced the lids, shook the bottles gently, and then crept upstairs again with my precious prize.

I managed to make a feed for Edward before the little fire I made from paper flickered out, and I fed him contentedly, knowing that I could make the pint of milk I would buy stretch further for him. I had no qualms of conscience about my theft – I thought only of Edward – and I was mercifully unaware that the policeman on the beat had quietly watched the whole operation.

It was late February, with days of pouring rain interspersed with weak sunshine. The trees and bushes in the locked gardens in the squares were beginning to show a faint swelling of their buds, and, as I wheeled Edward to the tiny local grocery shop and to the greengrocer’s each day, I would wonder why the children running in and out of the traffic or playing with cigarette cards on the pavement could not be allowed to play in the gardens. I would stand watching them dully as they cursed and tumbled each other about, their white or black skins equally grey with dirt and dust, their noses dribbling, their bare legs chapped and with septic sores on their knees. Little girls would play endless games of skipping and hopscotch, each with its appropriate song, learned from their elder sisters and passed down from generation to generation.

‘I am a girl guide dressed i’ blue,These are the actions I must do.Salute to the King, bow to the QueenAnd turn my back to the people.Pepper!’

And at the word ‘pepper’ they would turn the skipping-rope with feverish speed to see how many fast skips they could do before being tripped up. Sometimes, I would wish wistfully that I might be able to join in, but I had always to watch Avril and Edward and I was mortally afraid of something happening to them in this strange world which I did not understand.

Another pleasure was to stand in front of the greengrocer’s and contemplate the neat pyramids of oranges, apples, lemons and tomatoes. Mentally, I ate my way through the piles from top to bottom. I lacked the courage and initiative of the little street arabs, who would sometimes snatch a piece of fruit and fly like jets down the narrow back alleys, there to consume it with much ribaldry at the expense of the outraged greengrocer. A cry of ‘Bobby’ or ‘Cop’ or ‘Flattie’ would, however, send them speeding off again, old gym shoes or bare feet thudding over the flagstones like rapidly bouncing rubber balls.

With Edward replete with Miss Sinford’s and Mrs Hick’s milk and sleeping quietly in the Chariot, Avril and I went on the usual shopping round. At the greengrocer’s I stood and dithered. If I bought rice, I argued with myself, Mother would say that I should have bought potatoes; if potatoes, then she would say rice. I knew I could not win. Mother was getting better and her increasing irritability at my sins was a sign of it

The policeman on his beat stopped and chucked Edward under his chin. Edward opened his eyes and managed a small smile. I looked up and smiled too, my morning peccadillo completely forgotten.

‘Nice baby you’ve got,’ he said, putting his hands behind his back and rocking gently on his heels. He beamed at me from under his helmet. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Edward,’ I said. He was a nice-looking young man, neat and clean, despite the acne spots all over his face.

‘And what’s your name?’

‘Helen,’ I replied promptly.

He looked down at the baby again, while the greengrocer peered through the glass of his window, which he had been polishing.

‘No Mummy?’

‘Yes, she’s looking for work. So’s Daddy.’

He looked surprised, apparently at my clear English, so different from that of the other children round about. It was better English than he spoke himself.

‘Having a hard time? Got any other brothers and sisters?’

‘Yes,’ I said simply, in answer to the first question. ‘We are seven. The others are all at school.’

The wind was getting up and it was beginning to rain. My teeth started to chatter and I wrapped my cardigan closer round me.

The policeman stared at me with calm blue eyes and said, ‘Humph.’ He adjusted the collar of his cape. I became aware of the interested gaze of the greengrocer, and decided on rice for supper.

‘Goodbye,’ I said to the policeman and pushed the pram a bit farther along the street and parked it outside the grocery shop, where Avril watched it while I went inside. The policeman, after a moment’s hesitation, went into the greengrocer’s shop.

The following morning a pint of milk was delivered to the top landing of our staircase. When I ran downstairs to catch the milkman and return the bottle to him, he insisted that it was for Edward and was sent by a friend, and not even Father could make him say any more. For two long intolerable years the milkman stolidly climbed the stairs and deposited a pint of milk on our top step. It probably saved Edward’s life.

Many years later, the greengrocer told my mother about the young policeman who had inquired about us from him, and had then gone round to the dairy and ordered a daily pint of milk to be delivered for Edward, and had paid for it out of his own meagre wages.