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 32

Dully, sulkily, I continued to look after the children through the winter, trying to dry their rags when they came in rain-soaked, trying to buy with pennies enough food for nine, living in a world where handkerchiefs, toilet-paper, hot water and soap ranked as unobtainable luxuries. Fortunately, the stomach can become accustomed to very little food, and the children did not now cry very often that they were hungry, as long as they had bread and potatoes.

In an effort to make sales and increase their profits, even the more reputable local shopkeepers now cut margarine into quarter pounds, though it cost only fourpence to buy a whole pound, and opened pots of jam to sell at a penny a tablespoonful – bring your own cup. One tiny corner shop, presided over by a skinny harridan whose hands never seemed to have been washed, would make up a pennyworth of almost anything that could be divided up. This resulted in a very high price per pound – but if one has only a penny one has little choice in the matter.

A learned professor published a detailed menu showing that a full-grown man could eat well on four shillings a week but it was of no help to me. Four shillings per week per head to spend on food would have represented to us an unattainable height of luxurious living.

In the city council, a stout, outspoken Labour couple tore into the mayor, aldermen and councillors with bitter tongues on behalf of the unemployed, the homeless and the aged. Mr and Mrs Braddock – our Bessie, as Mrs Braddock was known to many – started a lifelong battle on behalf of the poor of Liverpool. On the docks, the Communists made inroads among the despised and ill-treated dock labourers, the results of which are still apparent in the labour unrest rampant in the docks of Liverpool forty years later.

City health officials looked in despair at horrifying infant mortality rates and at a general death rate nearly the highest in the country. Nobody, of course, died of starvation – only of malnutrition.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England continued to build themselves a cathedral apiece and solicited donations.

My parents at about this time seemed to have given up all hope of any real future and struggled on from one day to the next, too dulled by hunger and privation to plan how they might get out of the morass they were in.

My father tended to sit silently indoors now, only going to the labour exchange and the public assistance committee, because he was more ragged than the most poverty-stricken tramp I ever encountered. My mother still made valiant efforts to keep her appearance reasonable so that she could apply to shops and offices for work.

One sunny Sunday in March, however, Father decided he could stand the rank atmosphere of the house no more and he and Brian went for a walk in the town, which was fairly deserted on Sundays. Father always feared being arrested for vagrancy, but he hoped police would be few and far between on this day of rest.

Two hours later, a petrified Brian came rushing up the stairs and into our living-room, where I was rocking Edward to sleep in his Chariot He buried his face in my shoulder.

‘Daddy’s been arrested,’ he cried.

I jumped up in alarm and Edward cried out as the rocking ceased.

‘Oh, Heavens! Whatever did he do?’

Brian continued to sob in my arms in sheer fright.

‘Tell me, Brian. What did he do? Did he steal some cigarettes?’

I felt Brian nod negatively.

‘Well, he must have done something!’

‘He didn’t do anything.’

I knelt down and hugged Brian close.

‘Well, tell me what happened. Come on, love, tell me.’

Brian’s sobs reduced to sniffs and with all the maddening long-windedness of children, he said, ‘Well, we walked down into the town and we looked in Cooper’s and MacSymon’s windows at all the lovely food – they had peaches in brandy in Cooper’s. And then we looked in the furniture stores and Daddy showed me a jade idol in Bunney’s, at the corner of Whitechapel. Then we walked up Lord Street – opposite Frisby Dykes – and looked at the tailors’ shops in North John Street.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said impatiently.

‘Well, then Daddy wanted to look at the gentlemen’s shops in the arcade in Cook Street – and it was at the corner of Cook Street that we saw this strange man.’

‘What kind of a strange man?’

‘Well, he was big and nicely dressed with lovely polished boots. Daddy said he was a plain-clothes policeman – and we were both a bit scared – but Daddy said to keep on walking as if there was nothing wrong.’ Brian wiped his nose on the cuff of his jersey. ‘So we did – and we looked at all the pipes and tobacco and suits and things and this man started to walk up behind us.’

‘What did you do?’

‘We started to walk faster and faster and when we got to Castle Street and turned the corner, we ran like anything and the man ran after us. Daddy pushed me into a doorway by a pillar and told me to stay there, and he went on running. When the policeman had passed me by, I peeped out – and the policeman had his hand on Daddy’s shoulder like they do in books.’ Brian burst into tears again. ‘So I doubled back down Cook Street and came home.’ he wailed.

‘Never mind, Brian. I am sure Daddy will be all right. It is probably a mistake. We’ll tell Mummy about it. You just wait here a minute.’

Mother was taking a little nap in the bedroom and I was very afraid that if I woke her with Brian’s story she would have one of her periodic outbursts of temper, or perhaps have hysterics; but she sat on the edge of the old mattress while she considered it, and then said quite sensibly, ‘I don’t think we can do anything except wait We don’t know which police station he is in. I expect they will let us know what he is charged with.’

Her calmness calmed Brian and me, and he went off to play with Tony, while I went back to my book. I could not read, however. I realized suddenly how much officialdom Father coped with on our behalf. Without him, we were defenceless against those who would put us in the workhouse.

I began to shake with fear, fear for my father and terror at the inhumanity of the workhouse.