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 33

Edward had been put to bed, and Mother and I sat on our two chairs staring out of the window, united by our worry over Father. Occasionally, there was a steady clang-clang and flashes of electricity from behind the houses opposite as tram cars a couple of streets away swayed around a corner. The irate ‘whip-whip-whip’ of a naval vessel making its way upriver competed with the noise of the trams, and, in the far distance, the shunting yard at Edge Hill lent a background of clanking to the other sounds. No cars passed – the district was too poor for anything more ambitious than a horsedrawn milk cart. A boy came by on a bicycle and two giggling girls paused to gossip under the gaslight outside.

A car drew up outside our house so quietly that we were at first unaware of its presence. Someone got out.

‘Good night, and – thank you very much.’

It was Father. His voice was unmistakable.

We jumped up as the front door slammed in the distance. We could hear Father’s laborious step on the stairs. He was whistling ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’.

Never had the old tune sounded so welcome. If he could whistle, things were not that bad. We ran to the top of the stairs, six small grey ghosts and one adult, and peered over the banisters.

‘Hello, children. Is Brian safely home?’

‘Yes,’ we chorused. ‘What happened to you?’

Father emerged from the darkness of the stair-well. He was smiling broadly and his step was jaunty.

‘It’s a long story. Come in and I’ll tell you.’

He even smiled at his wife, I noticed, and I could see in the small light from the street the sudden, unreasoned hope spring in Mother’s eyes when she saw Father’s cheerful expression.

‘Come in. I have lots to tell you, and you are all old enough to hear it’

He led us, like the Pied Piper, into the living-room.

‘Tell us,’ we implored, hunger, filth, misery forgotten.

Father made the most of his moment. He settled himself in a chair and took Avril on his knee. He was still beaming.

He cleared his throat.

‘I expect Brian told you about our walk.’

‘Yes,’ we said impatiently.

‘What happened when the policeman caught you?’ asked Brian.

‘He wanted to see my tie.’

‘Your tie?’ exclaimed Mother.

‘Yes, my old All Saints tie. I thought he was mad, but I was afraid to do anything else but pull it out and show it to him.’

Avril shoved herself around on Father’s lap and pulled out the sad remains of his old school tie. It looked the same as usual.

‘When he saw it, he opened his own overcoat at the neck, and he was wearing the same tie – I mean a nice, new version of it.’

Alan whistled.

‘He asked me how I came to be down and out.

‘“It is a long story,” I told him. Suddenly, my legs began to give under me – we had walked a very long way, you know, and I get faint very easily these days. He saw that I was feeling ill, and said it didn’t matter.

‘“Come and sit in the car for a few minutes,” he said. “I have to wait for a colleague who has business in this building here.”

‘I was thankful to get into the car and sit down. Almost immediately his colleague came and was surprised to find me in the car – I suppose he thought the man on the beat would normally deal with vagrants like me. However, my friend of the tie put the car into gear and said that we were going to go to the police canteen.

‘“Don’t get the wind up,” he said to me. “I think you can do with a meal.”

‘I felt too weak to care what happened to me, but a meal sounded a wonderful idea. So away we went to the police station and through to the canteen.’ He paused reminiscently, and then went on, ‘He stood me a full meal – stew and steamed pudding.’

‘Delicious,’ we murmured enviously.

‘And when I had finished, he gave me a cigarette, and he seemed such a decent sort that I told him about everything that happened to us.

‘He did not interrupt me once – and his friend sat and watched me. At the end they looked at each other – and mulled over what I had said.

‘He asked me quite a lot about our school, and then said he remembered me. He left All Saints the year after I was sent there, but he recollected that blow on the head I got from a cricket ball; it caused a good deal of consternation because I took a long time to come round and they were not able to get a doctor for some time.’

‘Childhood episodes do stick in one’s mind,’ said Mother.

I looked at her in surprise. It had never occurred to me that she understood the world of children or that she had been a child herself. Nanny was the person who understood children.

Father continued, ‘He said he thought he could get me a job with the City.’

‘Really?’ queried Mother, frank disbelief in her voice.

‘Yes. I told him that I had made every endeavour to obtain employment – but now I was so shabby it was impossible. I said frankly that the rags he saw me in were all I had, that I had not even soap to wash myself with.

‘And do you know what he said then? It was most unexpected.’

‘No?’ we breathed.

‘He said the school would undoubtedly outfit me from their benevolent fund – I used to subscribe to that, you know, but I never thought of it in connection with myself. He is going to write tonight to ask for immediate help. Meantime, he is going to talk to the City about me.’

‘How wonderful,’ Alan cried.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Mother.

Fiona began to cry slowly; they were tears of relief. Her illness had left her with practically no stamina, but she rarely complained and, I believe, most of the family hardly realized she existed.

She was a great contrast to her lively, noisy younger sister, who now said unsympathetically, ‘Oh, shut up, Fiona. You’re supposed to be glad, not sad!’ And cuddling up to Father, she inquired, ‘Shall we be able to have a roast joint?’

We all laughed, and afterwards, we sat up late while we discussed every detail of this miraculous encounter. Even Mother was quite excited and animated about it.

The days dragged by, however, and nothing happened. Father stood in his queues; Mother got two days’ work, looking after a special photography display in a store which found that cameras were a slow-moving item amid the general penury in the city. We ate fish and chips one night as a result of this windfall, and Mother was able to buy some stockings, makeup, etc., so that she could look more respectable and, therefore, more employable. We always despaired about our lack of simple articles, like scissors, combs, hair grips, things one takes for granted in a normal home.

At last, when we had given up standing on the front steps waiting for the postman and the spring had again gone out of Father’s step, the plain-clothes man called in person. He was let in by Miss Sinford, who fortunately did not connect him with the police, and he clumped up to our evil-smelling den.

Father was out

Mother received him with her usual grace and sat down on one chair, while he, in response to her invitation, lowered himself cautiously on to the other. Most of the children were at school; Avril, Edward and I, however, stood in a group and stared goggle-eyed at our saviour.

All Saints School, the visitor said with a friendly grin, had made a grant sufficient to outfit Father completely, provided he shopped carefully. He stopped, his beefy face showing some concern. ‘Er – the school has asked me to administer the grant – and – er – I hate to say tins – they want me to go with your husband to shop. Now, I don’t mind in the least – but I hope he won’t be offended.’

‘I am sure he won’t,’ said Mother with unusual briskness. ‘However, you will appreciate that he is in no state to go out with you – or enter a decent shop.’ Her voice broke, and she looked as if she was going to weep. She recovered herself, however, and said as she studied her chapped, unmanicured hands, ‘Do you think the grant committee would mind giving enough money first to buy some soap for a bath – and a haircut?’

The plain-clothes man leaned forward and patted her hand.

‘I am sure that would be all right I do understand – you know, in my job I see a lot of things.’ He thought for a moment, and then added, “The public swimming-baths have also places where you can take a full bath – I think it costs sixpence – and they provide soap and towels, as well.’

I marvelled that a man whose life had obviously been comfortable, should understand that it was likely we had no towels.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ I said impetuously, only to be silenced by an icy look from Mother.

I could hear Father dragging himself slowly up our endless staircase, and, picking up Edward, I ran to meet him and whispered about the visitor.

When Father entered, the man rose courteously and held out his hand. Father clasped it. I doubt if anyone had felt that his hand was worth shaking since our arrival in Liverpool.

Father’s fatigue fell away from him. It was arranged that the policeman would buy some underwear and bring it to us. He also said gently that, if Father would accept them, he could bring a pair of flannels and an old tweed jacket from his own home, so that Father could go into a store without embarrassment to choose a suit and raincoat.

It was obvious that Father felt his humiliation very deeply. His face was sadder than I had ever seen it He appreciated, however, the great kindness of this police officer on whom he had no other call than that they had attended the same public school, and he thanked him gratefully for his thoughtfulness.

‘I have tentatively arranged for you to see this man in the Municipal Buildings at ten o’clock next Friday morning,’ said our friend, standing up and handing Father a slip of paper.

Father nodded, took the slip of paper and carefully laid it on the dusty mantelpiece.

‘I don’t know how I am going to repay you for all this,’ he said.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said the plain-clothes man cheerfully. ‘Very glad to be able to help – put it down to the old school tie!’

The underwear, trousers, jacket and a shirt arrived in a brown paper parcel, addressed to Father and left on our landing. When I asked our incorrigible old lookout, Miss Sinford, who had delivered the parcel, she insisted that nobody had called at the house that day. I can only imagine that someone like the milkman, who still brought Edward his pint of milk, must have been asked to bring them in, so as to avoid a police car being yet again stationed outside the house. Miss Sinford would not have counted the milkman as being a person; like the postman, the public assistance visitor and the poor, he was always with us.

Armed with five shillings given him for the purpose, Father went to the public baths and found that, indeed, a spotlessly clean bath, towels and soap, not to speak of hot water, were all his for the sum of sixpence. Apparently, he spent so much time in the bath that the attendant threatened to charge him another sixpence or empty the bath if Father did not come out

He dressed himself in his clean clothes, rolled up his rags into a bundle, except for his broken-down shoes, which he had, perforce, to retain, dumped the bundle into a litter-bin outside the baths, and went for a shave and a haircut.

When he came home, I hardly knew him. Although the jacket and pants were too large for him and his shoes were a mess, he had an aura of respectability about him that did more for our spirits than anything heretofore.

There was still some money left from the five shillings, and Father sent Alan and Fiona to buy fish and chips and peas and a packet of cigarettes. I hoped that All Saints School did not learn, by some extraordinary means, that we had spent two and sixpence of their money on food instead of on outfitting Father, and, even worse, sixpence on cigarettes.

The detective picked Father up two days later, and they went together to buy a good ready-made suit, another shirt, a raincoat and a pair of shoes.

It seemed to Alan and me that we had got our Father back from the dead, because he now looked to us as he had done before we came to Liverpool, except that he had shrunk considerably.

Without any difficulty, Father got the clerical post for which he was interviewed – the detective was apparently sufficient reference. He was infinitely better educated and more widely experienced in the business world than the type of clerk the City was normally able to command, and, except when it came to running his own affairs, had a clear and analytical mind.

Though the post was a temporary one, he soon discovered that many of his colleagues had been ‘temporary’ for ten years or more – it saved the impoverished City from having to provide pensions for them.

He served the city of his birth faithfully and well. Later, he became part of its permanent staff, and, when his department was taken over by the Government as part of the new National Health scheme, he became a civil servant and gradually worked his way upwards. He was never very well-to-do again; on the other hand, he was never again reduced to penury, and he managed to enjoy the latter part of his life in a modest way.