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 35

Very few people who try to commit suicide really want to kill themselves; their attempt is a last hysterical cry for help. When willing hands are outstretched to aid them and some effort is made to alter the circumstances that drove them to such despair, they will try again to cope with life. I was no exception; two people had been very kind to me and I was extremely touched by the fact. On my return home, the necessity of dealing with the children’s needs steadied me and Fiona’s loving help with these tasks comforted me. I clung to her when we went to bed and drew some strength from the touch of her frail body and from her gentle spirit. By morning, something of my normal common sense had returned.

The day was as bright and clear as its predecessor had been foggy and damp. The family dispersed to school and to work, Avril going proudly to school holding Fiona’s hand. Edward and I were left to contemplate a bare house, except for our shiny new drawing-room, which I dusted very carefully from time to time. The few dishes were soon washed, what beds and substitutes for beds we had were soon tithed and the fire allowed to go out until evening. Though still very exhausted, my spirits rose a little as Edward and I went out to buy food.

Outside the elementary school a fresh poster announced the opening of evening schools that day for the winter session. I contemplated it with a feeling of hopelessness. It would certainly be inconvenient to my parents if I was out in the evening – they would almost certainly veto any such idea.

The hopelessness gave way to a slow burning anger, and then to determination. I would try once more to go to school. Perhaps if Father and Mother were faced with a fait accompli, they would give in. I therefore took Fiona and Alan into my confidence at tea-time, and they agreed to help with Edward and Avril while I was away and to cover up for me if my parents noticed my absence.

When both parents went out to the library, I slipped away to the school and joined a crowd of youngsters moving slowly through the entrance.

A young teacher asked me, as I stood uncertainly in the hall, what courses I wanted to take.

I was aghast I had no idea what courses to take. All I wanted was to continue my education from where I had left off nearly three years earlier.

‘I am not sure,’ I managed to mutter. ‘I know I need to learn arithmetic’

She pointed to an open doorway farther down the hall.

‘Try bookkeeping,’ she said kindly, as she turned to attend to another lost youngster.

I did not know what bookkeeping was, but I was so scared of the shifting, staring young people crowding round me, some of whom sniggered when they looked at me, that I bolted down the corridor and turned thankfully into a classroom holding about a dozen boys and girls and a young lady teacher.

The classroom, with its walls of frosted glass and varnished wood, had enough desks, made to accommodate two pupils each, to swallow about fifty children; four electric lights hanging from the ceiling failed to illuminate it adequately; the bare wooden floor was grey from years of tramping boots. Facing the pupils’ desks was a high, single desk for the teacher and near it stood a black-board on an easel. The air smelled of chalk dust and damp woollens. A dingy, uninspiring room it was, but it was made more lively by the buzz of conversation among the pupils.

As I came through the door, the teacher looked up, and a pall of silence fell upon the gathering. The mouths of the neatly clad, well-scrubbed young people fell open. Then a well-curled blonde began to giggle. She hastily stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, while a derisive grin spread through the class.

The dim electric lights became blurred, as tears of realization welled up. I must have been a horrible sight, with hair draggling round my shoulders, its greasiness combed through with my fingers; septic acne sores all over my face; hands with dirty, broken nails, sticking out from an ancient cardigan with huge holes in its elbows, no blouse, and a gym slip shiny with accumulated grime. Red blotches of bug bites were clearly visible on my naked legs and thighs, our new house being equally as verminous as our old one, and my toes stuck out of the holes in the laceless gym shoes on my feet.

I fought back my tears. I was made of better stuff than the children before me. My family had been fighting England’s battles while theirs were still serfs fit only to keep pigs. I would show them.

Lifting my ugly hooked nose into the air I stared calmly back at them. Gradually, the grins were replaced by uneasy looks and they began self-consciously to talk to each other again.

There ought to be a special medal for understanding teachers. I do not know what prompted the small, perfumed occupant of the teacher’s podium to come down from her perch, put her arm around my shoulders, regardless of the fact that I was obviously verminous, and say sweetly, ‘Do you want to take bookkeeping, too, my dear?’

She was taken aback visibly when I answered her in my clearest English – she must have expected a strong Liverpool accent

‘I had hoped to learn arithmetic, ma’am. Do you teach it?’

She recovered herself and guided me to an unoccupied double desk at the front of the class, as she replied.

‘No. This school has only commercial courses – it is assumed that you will have done the necessary arithmetic already in day-school.’

The other children were again staring at me, and she turned to them and said sharply, ‘Please fill in the forms I have given to you. I will take them in in a few minutes.’ She turned back to me. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘what kind of arithmetic do you want to learn?’

I explained my lack of algebra, that my academic training had come to an end at a chapter called ‘Compound Interest’, and that was as much as I knew.

She sat casually on the desk in front of me and looked me over thoughtfully.

‘When did you leave school?’ she asked.

I explained about leaving school when I was twelve and the subsequent glorious six weeks I had enjoyed just before my fourteenth birthday, and about Edward and Avril and the family.

‘I see,’ she said, drawing her pale blue cardigan more tightly around her. ‘Do you want to train for any particular occupation?’

An occupation seemed so far away, so unattainable, that I said hastily, ‘I have not thought of anything special – except that I would like to be able to help the hungry, unemployed people round me.’

She smiled at this and suggested, after some consideration, that I should take the standard commercial course, in which she taught bookkeeping. In addition, she would guide me through a basic course in arithmetic and algebra, which I could do as part of my homework.

‘If you take the commercial course, it will form a basis for several different ways of earning a living,’ she said practically.

I agreed because it seemed that I had no choice and, at least, she had opened a tiny door of hope for me. Yesterday there had been no hope; today there was a faint gleam.

She lent me her pen and I filled in the form she gave me, while the other members of the class handed theirs in, had them checked and were told to report back two nights later to commence their instruction.

When the classroom had emptied, I went to the teacher’s desk and handed in my form.

‘Fine,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Now, that will be half a crown; and here is a list of books you will need. They will cost about ten and sixpence.’

I was stunned. My tiny hope door slammed shut. I managed to gasp out, ‘I did not know there was a fee for evening school – I thought it was like elementary day-school – provided by the city – so – so I haven’t brought any money.’

The amounts were so small; but they might just as well have been hundreds of pounds, because I did not have them.

The teacher was collecting her papers, and she replied, without looking up, ‘Well, never mind. Ask your mother to give you the fee for next time – and you can get the books from any bookshop sometime during the week. Now, be here on Thursday at 7.30, remember.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said heavily. ‘Good night – and thank you.’

I turned and marched out.

As soon as I was outside the school, I rushed to a corner behind a buttress of the building where the street lamps’ rays did not penetrate, and, putting my face against the damp, red bricks of the wall, I cried hopelessly and helplessly until not another tear would come. I cried from the frightful pent-up tension of yesterday and the disappointment and humiliation of today. I cried because I was drifting helplessly on a sea of life for which I had not been prepared and which I did not understand. I cried for the perfect peace and safe refuge of my grandmother’s house by the sea. I cried because I could not cross the Mersey to reach the green fields and wild seashores I loved.

Frozen and exhausted, I stuffed my blue hands into my cardigan pockets and turned towards home.

I took two steps and stopped. In my pocket was a hard little card. Mother’s library card!

Books! Perhaps the library had the books I needed. If they had, I could keep on reborrowing them, I argued. If it was not yet nine o’clock, I could run to the library and look.

I tore through the streets, taking shortcuts through every alleyway I could, regardless of danger. Dogs barked and cats and rats scampered away at the sound of my thudding feet.

I squeezed into the library’s muggy warmth five minutes before closing-time, the list of books clutched in one hand.

Feverishly, I sought through the index. Had they got them? Had they?

They had.

A few minutes later, I emerged, equipped with text-books.

At home I poured out my adventures to Alan and Fiona. It was a long time since I had had such a conversation with any of the family, and they were jubilant about the enrolment and the books. Alan offered to lend me his pen each evening.

‘If you don’t remind them, perhaps they’ll forget that you owe them half a crown,’ he said hopefully, in reference to the school fee.

‘They will have to,’ I said woodenly, ‘because I am going to school, no matter what happens.’

Brave words, but I still needed at least one notebook, and, as I put the family to bed, I worried more about obtaining twopence to buy a notebook than I worried about the half-crown.

On Wednesday, I found a piece of comb in a gutter and painfully attacked my tangled mop of hair with it Mother had a tiny pocket-comb, which of a necessity she had kept for herself, because she could not make herself neat for work if the precious object was broken. Father was fortunately almost bald. The children went uncombed and, mostly, unwashed, until more regular work enabled Mother to buy a strong comb for use by the family.

If ever I became rich, I told myself savagely, I would help to provide a basic kit for the more unfortunate of this world. It would consist of a large bar of kitchen soap, a pile of old white cloth, a pile of newspapers (newspapers can be made into beds, handkerchiefs, toilet-paper, warm padding under thin garments, draught excluders, makeshift window-pane replacements, firing, and a thousand other uses), some razor blades, for beards and nails, and a comb. One has to be without such small amenities to appreciate their worth.

My appearance was not much improved when I again presented myself at school, quailing at the thought of not being able to pay the fee.

The bookkeeping teacher was as kind as before and, after she had given the class some work to do, she brought over to me a small arithmetic textbook, told me to take it home, read the instructions in the first chapter and see if I could work my way through the problems based on them. She promised to mark the work for me.

Several children had no notebooks, so she provided some paper both for their work and mine. I soon became absorbed in the struggle to make my sluggish brain work, and forgot the silent distaste with which my fellow students were treating me.

Halfway through the evening, the class was taken over by a thin, energetic teacher who was to instruct us in English grammar. She proved equally as friendly and as helpful as the bookkeeping teacher.

Evening school has a long tradition in Lancashire and all over the city classrooms were crowded with young people desirous of improving their education. Again I was following in the footsteps of the humble weavers about whom my old gentleman in the park had told me.

It was Fiona who, accidentally, let fall one evening the information to my parents that I had gone to evening school.

They were rightly angry that I had taken such action without consulting them and both stormed at me about it

It would have brought more wrath down upon my head if I had defended myself by saying that I had long since concluded that consultation was waste of time, so I just stated firmly, ‘I have been going to evening school and I’m going to continue going.’ I had nothing to lose but my chains.

‘Where did you get the money from?’ asked Mother suddenly, her voice full of suspicion.

I had to own up that I owed the Liverpool education committee two shillings and sixpence – and, worse still, I needed two shillings more for bookkeeping books and other notebooks.

This led to further recrimination, and, with unusual impudence, I asked, ‘Would you prefer that I stole it rather than owed it?’

Such insolence was so unlike me, that it brought my parents up short.

Mother said quietly, in a tone more normal than anything she had used since we had arrived in Liverpool, ‘No, we would not Probably we shall manage to find the money somehow.’

This sudden reasonableness frightened me more than if she had had hysterics. I had become so used to her being ill and being unable to pay normal attention to us, that I had forgotten that new hope had recently entered her life and was helping her to get better quite rapidly. Once I had got over the shock and stopped staring at her, round-eyed and fearful, I was piteously grateful.

The following Tuesday evening, hair neatly combed into a bun held with a piece of string, and wearing Fiona’s cardigan, which was reasonably clean, I ran through the dank September evening to school. Hot in the palm of my hand was a half-crown, the most important coin I was ever to possess. I was to spend seven years in evening schools and I managed in each subsequent year to win a small scholarship, which covered the increasing fees and my books, as I advanced through the system; so that I did not cost my parents anything more.

The electric lights had already been turned on in the school and a great shaft of light blazed out across the pavement from the main doorway. It was early and no one else was entering. I looked up the stone steps, hollowed out by hundreds of feet, through the hall and up the staircase to the second floor.

The welcoming doorway was my hoping door; the worn stone steps my ladder to the stars. Kind hands, earnest people, were there to help me up them.

I bared my yellow teeth in a smile of pure happiness, charged across the threshold and galloped up the stairs.