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 29

Malnutrition, when much prolonged, causes a terrible apathy, an inability to concentrate or think constructively, and that winter was so grim that my mind was closed to the intense suffering of my parents. A child’s world is a small one and given a reasonable round of home and school, his life is fairly full. Our little ones suffered unbelievably, however, as they dragged themselves to and from school through snow and rain. Even brave Alan cried when the great chilblains on his heels burst and went septic, and it seemed as if the clothes of all of them were permanently wet; good fires are a necessity in a climate as rainy as Lancashire’s. In my parents’ case, however, they suffered not only all that we did but also from social deprivation; they starved mentally as well as physically.

To me, the suffering of Fiona and baby Edward was the more scarifying, because it was silent. Fiona never complained as the others did; she sat quiet and terrified in a kind of mental burrow like a fox that has been savaged by hounds and must be quiet lest they find him again; only when she was playing with Brian and Tony did a happier little girl emerge. And I loved her so much that it filled me with grief to be unable to comfort her – she was past comforting. Edward, who could now crawl rapidly and occasionally stood up, was making valiant efforts to speak. He seemed to have a natural serenity, but when he cried (which he rarely did), it was with terrible deep sobs that came slowly, not at all like Aval’s ferocious bellows when she was thwarted in any way.

Until hunger made him fall into lethargy, my father tried to pick the brains of other men who stood with him in the endless queues. He tried to find out how they stayed alive and how they hoped to get a job. But, finally, it took all his strength to get to the labour exchange or to the offices of the public assistance committee and stand, without fainting, until he received a curt ‘nothing today’ from the former and forty-three shillings each Thursday from the latter.

We always had colds. Old copies of the Liverpool Echo were collected from anywhere we could find them and torn up for use as handkerchiefs. The paper was then used to make a fire in the tiny bedroom fireplace in our living-room.

The acid which I had spilled on my leg from the battery of the radio caused a burn which went septic, and the sore showed signs of spreading. Old Miss Sinford noticed the mark on my leg as I went upstairs one day and commanded that I come into her room to have it examined. She sat me down on a wooden chair placed on a piece of newspaper and, having put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, she took a good look at it.

‘I’ll poultice it for you,’ she decided. ‘You should have kept it cleaner.’

The fact that I was seated in the middle of a newspaper indicated that she knew how dirty our family was, so I just smiled weakly.

She found a clean piece of white cloth, put it in an old sugar basin and poured over it boiling water from the kettle on the hob. She then wrung it out and slapped it on to the sore, scalding the surrounding flesh until I clutched Edward too hard and he cried out. She hurled texts about Good Samaritans at me, as she worked with trembly ancient fingers, and then ordered me down to her room the next morning for a repeat performance.

Her room was spotless, filled with crochet work which she had done herself. In the window on a wickerwork table stood a large aspidistra in a plum-coloured china pot, and I gathered that an aspidistra was a lot of work, as she felt the need to dust it daily. She cooked at the fireplace, which was larger than ours, her room having been the dining-room of the original home.

It was from her that I learned that the house opposite, which was visited by so many seamen, was a House of Sin and that the women who lived in it were harlots. ‘Harlot’ was a word which occurred in the Bible, so I ventured to ask her what it meant.

She blinked at me through her spectacles, as if realizing for the first time how young and innocent I was. Then she pointed a bony finger at me and said sharply, ‘Girls should not ask such questions.’ Her voice became shrill. ‘It is not a word I should have used. It is a word you must not use. Out! I must pray!’

She seized me by the shoulder, turned me about and pushed me into the hall.

Bewildered, I took myself back upstairs and left my leg to heal by itself, which it eventually did.

Next time I went to the library, I looked up the offending word. It really sounded very wicked indeed, and I was most impressed.

Fiona came home from school one day, in tears. She said she had a pain in her back and chest. I felt her forehead. It was burning with heat. Helplessly, I looked at her and we were both terribly afraid.

When Father came home from the library, I told him about Fiona. I had laid her on the bed and, to keep her warm, had covered her with what few odds and ends of blanket and garments I could find.

We went to look at her and found that she had tossed aside her wrappings and was muttering feverishly, her mouselike hands clenching and unclenching.

Father clamped his mouth tight. His breath came in small gasps and perspiration glistened on his forehead.

Alan came softly up to us.

‘Don’t you think we had better send for the doctor, Daddy?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t any money to pay him,’ was the despairing response.

‘We could tell him that.’ Alan’s lips trembled. Like all of us, he loved Fiona. ‘He might come anyway.’

I said, ‘We have nothing to lose by asking. Is Fiona very ill, Daddy?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I can see that she is very ill indeed – I am not sure what it is, though.’

I leaned over Fiona and whispered that we would get a doctor for her and she would soon be better.

‘I’ll go and ask,’ said Alan in his bravest voice, sticking his chest out and trying to look strong.

‘Yes, do so. I think Helen and I had better stay here. I haven’t any paper on which to write a letter. You will have to explain to him yourself. Tell him about the pain and the temperature.’

Tony, Brian and Avril tiptoed into the room and went silently out again.

Alan plunged out into the February wind once more. Terrified of facing whoever would answer the doctor’s door but even more terrified about Fiona’s illness, he seized the doctor’s brass knocker and banged it.

The door was answered by a neatly dressed older woman.

‘The doctor’s out,’ she said before Alan could open his mouth.

‘It’s my sister,’ said Alan. ‘She’s awfully ill and we haven’t any money to pay the doctor. But, please, will he come?’

The boy’s evident fear made the woman soften her tone.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘step in, lad. I am not sure that the doctor can come. He’s very busy.’

Alan, shivering, stepped into the linoleumed hall. Under the faint light of a very low wattage electric light bulb, the lady surveyed him.

She sighed at what she saw, and took down a notebook from beside a telephone on the hall wall. ‘Tell me your name and address and I’ll ask him. Now then.’

Alan told her, and explained the symptoms of the illness as best he could.

‘Now mind,’ said his questioner as she shut the notebook. ‘I don’t know whether the doctor can come. I’ll have to ask him. If he does come, it will be after surgery, about half past nine.’

The hours dragged by. We took it in turns to sit by Fiona. She would not take the tea we offered her. I wetted our only towel which was, as usual, very dirty, and wiped her face and hands with cold water. This seemed to console her a little. Occasionally, she was racked by coughing.

Mother came home and stared dumbly at her second daughter. It was as if she could not let any more troubles in upon herself; she seemed numbed, unable to accept any more. Her unkempt hair had escaped from her hat and hung in straggling oily tails down to her shoulders. Her hands were swollen with chilblains, in spite of Mrs Hicks’s gloves, and she stood awkwardly, because the heels of her shoes were worn down so badly that she walked almost as if she was bandy-legged.

‘We must keep her covered,’ she said at last

It was difficult to see in the reflected light from the street lamp, and Father said worriedly, ‘I don’t know how the doctor is going to be able to see to examine her – if he comes.’

‘Couldn’t we borrow a shilling to put in the electric meter?’ I asked.

‘Brian went down and tried the couple below; they didn’t have one. I can’t ask Mrs Foster – we still owe her a week’s rent – and I can’t ask Mrs Hicks because I haven’t yet paid her back the last shilling I borrowed.’

This was the first intimation I had had of his borrowing from the other tenants; it accounted for a general coldness towards us recently.

Without a watch it was difficult to tell the time, but both house and street were quiet when the front door bell rang. Hopefully, Brian pounded down the stairs to open the door.

A firm voice said, ‘We can’t afford to fall down this black pit – I’ll put my flashlight on.’

Brian laughed shrilly and called, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Helen! The doctor has come!’

The bedroom door opened and the light of a torch blinded me momentarily. The doctor must have had long experience of the straits of poverty to carry such a powerful torch.

‘Come in, come in,’ said Father, his voice filled with relief.

I stood up respectfully as the doctor put down his bag.

‘Now, what have we here?’ he asked as he got out his stethoscope, and then took Fiona’s wrist in long, capable fingers.

Father explained the symptoms and I nearly stopped breathing as the doctor listened to his patient’s labouring lungs and frequent coughing.

‘Pleurisy, I think,’ he said. ‘She must have hospital treatment immediately. I will go and telephone the Children’s Sanatorium, and arrange for an ambulance.’

Father whispered, ‘It isn’t tuberculosis, is it?’ In those days, tuberculosis was still a major killer.

‘I doubt it. The hospital will take X-rays.’ He stood looking down at Fiona’s face by the light of the torch. ‘Does she have a mother?’

‘Yes,’ Father replied. ‘You kindly took some stitches out for her after an abdominal operation some time ago.’

‘Oh, did I,’ he said absently, and then rather more alertly, ‘Yes, I remember. How is she?’

Father looked uneasily at me, and then plunged in. ‘Her physical health has improved – as far as it can in our circumstances.’ He paused, and then added, ‘She isn’t herself, though.’

The doctor nodded understandingly. He did not offer any more help. He would deal with our emergency; he could not do more. He had to treat first those patients who could pay. In the torchlight I could see the frayed cuffs of his overcoat and I guessed that he had very little himself.

The doctor asked to see Mother, who had been up in the attic room dealing with Tony. Tony had had a nightmare and had woken up screaming.

When she came, he instructed her to get Fiona ready for hospital.

Mother said in a flat tone of voice, ‘There is nothing to do. She must go as she is. She has no other garments than those she has on – and I cannot wash her in cold water in her present state.’

So Fiona went to a huge hospital on the farther outskirts of the city, without benefit of bath, tooth-brush or nightgown, and my poor, crushed mother suffered the indignity of seeing her almost unconscious child stripped of her clothes and plunged into a disinfecting bath, her head rolling on her neck as the probationers washed her crawling hair. The tattered clothes were rolled into a bundle and handed to Mother, with the curt information that she could wait.

Mother was used to waiting – she spent her days in office and shop waiting-rooms as she applied for job after job with hordes of other applicants. Finally, about three in the morning a night nurse remembered that she was still there and told her she could go.

‘I want to know what is the matter with the child and I want to see her, now she is in bed.’

‘You will have to come on visiting days. Your doctor will be informed regarding her illness, and he will tell you.’

My mother lifted her hand to slap this inhuman automaton, but she was afraid of what might happen to Fiona if she made a fuss of any kind, so she turned slowly into the long, brown corridor to the front door.

She had come to the hospital with Fiona in the ambulance. Nobody had considered how she was to get home again. Outside was the dark and bitter cold of a February night.

She paused on the step, shaken by the knowledge that the only way to get home was to walk the seven miles to our part of the city. She was not even sure of the route.

The city was completely quiet and, emboldened by this, she set out, following the tram lines which glimmered in the gaslight. The freezing wind cut into her and, after a couple of miles, she was so cold that she was staggering in a ragged line along the pavement.

A dim light at a corner attracted her attention. It was a telephone box, and she quickened her step and sought refuge inside it.

Paralysed with cold, she stood there looking dully at the receiver on its hook, the telephone book hanging below it, and at two buttons marked ‘A’ and ‘B’. Idly, she read the instructions for making a call.

‘Insert two pennies. When the telephone is answered press Button A If no reply, press button B for the return of the twopence.’

Return of the twopence!

She hopefully pressed Button B.

Nothing happened, so, after a few minutes, she started again on her long hike homewards. An early tram rumbled past her, its lights flashing as it pitched and tossed its way along the lines.

When she reached the next public telephone box, she entered it and, without much hope, pressed Button B, and was immediately rewarded by the happy rattle of two falling pennies. She snatched them up and took the next tram home.

Father and I had waited up for her and were frantic with anxiety. Our anxiety turned to fury when we heard of the discourteous treatment she had received, and we did our best to comfort her before managing to get her to go to bed.

Our visits to the sanatorium were strictly regulated by whether we could find a telephone box where someone had forgotten to press Button B for the return of their twopence – and it was remarkable how many we found.

Though Fiona’s illness was long and our public assistance was reduced by the amount given for her maintenance, we were not altogether sorry. She was at least fed in hospital – great hunks of bread and margarine, bowls of sugarless porridge, meat stews, boiled puddings and steamed fish. Patients were expected to augment the hospital’s food by supplying their own sugar, jam, cake and fruit. We had nothing to bring Fiona. The diet was, however, so much better than she had received for many a month that, once the pleurisy was drained, she began to look much stronger.

She was sorely troubled by bugs in the hospital bed. Father complained, and was told roughly that she must have brought them in with her.

‘She was stripped and bathed when she came in,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the bed could be stoved.’

A ferocious female, who looked as if she had been put through a starch solution with her uniform, said cruelly, ‘Of course, it will be stoved – after your child is discharged.’

Father’s expression, after that remark, was like that in the painting of Christ crucified which hung over my grandmother’s bed. He bowed his head and turned silently away.

A slightly plumper waif of a child was returned to us six weeks later. There was no ambulance this time and she found the long tram ride a sore trial. She came home to again face hunger and cold with us.

‘The spring is coming,’ we comforted her.

The studied rudeness with which every member of the family was faced whenever dealing with officialdom, as personified by the public assistance committee, by the labour exchanges, by the voluntary agencies working in the city, was a revelation to us. We began to understand, as never before, the great gulf between rich and poor, between middle class and labour. It considerably improved our manners towards our less fortunate neighbours.

When I grew up, I told myself, I would do some kind of work which would improve this situation and make it possible for people to be helped without at the same time humiliating them.

When I grew up!

But I was growing up. Even in my pinched body, changes were taking place which indicated that soon I would be a young woman. A ghastly, ugly, uneducated wreck of a young woman but still a woman.

As I sat on the doorstep in the weak April sunshine, Edward on my knee, I wondered what would become of me. Other girls went to school and then to work, but for me life had stopped in one place on my first day in Liverpool. The other children were getting at least a basic education; Alan talked hopefully of Tony and Brian being able to win scholarships to grammar school; he himself was too old to sit the examination, but he worked hard at school and read a lot afterwards. At fourteen, he could leave school and he hoped to get a job ‘with a future’. Fiona, I thought, would sooner or later marry well – she was so pretty; I did not consider how, in this wilderness of slum, she would manage to do that.

Avril, throwing her weight about both physically and verbally, amongst a number of small girls from neighbouring houses, was tough enough to take care of herself, and Edward, watching the world go by from the safe refuge of my lap, was young enough not to have to worry.

Without an education, I saw myself being kept at home until my parents died and then becoming some bad-tempered old lady’s companion-help, subject always to the whims and fancies of others. I knew I was far too plain ever to hope for marriage.

I laid my cheek on little Edward’s scurvy head and decided that such a life was not worth living.