Twopence to Cross the Mersey Page 11

  The demonstration radio, meanwhile, was delivered to the door of our house by a supervisor, and was taken in by Miss Sinford, the most presentable of all the inhabitants.

  ‘Helen!’ she shrieked up the stairs to me. ‘Come and remove this wicked temptation from the hall!’

  I ran down the stairs with Edward on my hip.

  Miss Sinford pointed an accusing finger at a cardboard box and a wet battery beside it. The box was clearly marked that it contained a radio, and I guessed that it had been delivered in connection with Mother’s new job.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Sinford.’

  I sat Edward down on the grubby hall runner, and Miss Sinford withdrew with one of her loudest sniffs of disapproval. Avril had followed me down, and I left her to mind Edward while I puffed my way upstairs again with the radio. I made a second journey for the wet battery and carried it up so fast that I splashed some of the acid on my bare legs, burning them painfully.

  A third journey was made to retrieve Edward and Avril.

  Still panting from the journeys up and down, I read the instructions on the outside of the box to Avril, and then very carefully unpacked the radio and put it on the table. I plugged in the wet and dry batteries and nervously turned one of the knobs. The shining newness of it awed us both.

  Suddenly the room was filled with the sweet sound of violins.

  Avril climbed up on to one of the chairs and put her head close to the speaker and Edward smiled and sucked his thumb. I stood in ecstasy while the music swept round me.

  We spent a blissful afternoon listening to a faraway world where people spoke as we did and music was part of life.

  My parents were extremely angry when they came home and found the radio unpacked and working.

  ‘It does not belong to us,’ said my mother furiously. ‘You know quite well that you are not to touch anything which does not belong to you.’

  ‘I haven’t harmed it,’ I said defiantly.

  ‘No, she has not,’ interrupted Avril aggressively. ‘And I heard a nice lady say “happy birthday” and “hello, twins” on Children’s Hour and I liked it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Father, turning it off firmly. ‘Don’t touch it again.’

  Mother said, ‘I have to demonstrate it tonight, to Mr and Mrs Smithers, and I don’t know how to do it.’

  ‘You just put these plugs in here, like Helen did, and you turn that knob there,’ instructed Avril, stabbing the appropriate plugs and knob with a grubby finger. ‘And it goes.’

  She looked up at my mother with hard blue eyes, as if daring her to say she was not right.

  Father smiled.

  ‘She is right, you know. That is all you have to do.’ He looked worried. ‘I suppose the supervisor will move the thing to the Smithers’ house for you in his car?’

  ‘Heavens, no. I have to take it myself.’

  ‘But you can’t carry that weight,’ we said in chorus.

  ‘Besides,’ I added, sadly surveying the burning marks on my grey legs, ‘the acid from the wet battery can splash and burn your stockings.’

  We all knew that without stockings Mother was not suitably dressed for work, and we had all observed that even if she was not much interested in us, she was more alive, more aware of things going on around her, when looking for work.

  Silence fell upon the family. The radio and its batteries were really too awkward for anyone to carry any distance.

  Tony, who had been playing one of his endless games of puffer-trains with a dead cinder from the fireplace, looked up, as he shunted his imaginary train into an imaginary siding, and said quietly, ‘Put it in the Chariot and wheel it round to the lady’s house.’

  We all burst out laughing, and I snatched Edward out of the pram.

  ‘Try it for size,’ I invited.

  Very carefully, the radio was put back into its box and lowered into the stinking pram. The batteries followed. It all fitted in.

  A gentle sigh of relief went through the family.

  We ate a hasty meal of boiled potatoes, which tasted strongly of the smoke from an old shoe I had picked up in the street and brought home for fuel. Then, since it was dark, the whole family went in procession behind Father, who carefully wheeled the Chariot with its unusual contents. I clutched Edward to me and brought up the rear.

  Down the street under the light of the gas-lamps we marched, past the brothels, past the garish lights and conversational roar of the local pub, past the boys lounging at the street corners, who watched the weird procession speculatively, out of the slum which was our world, into quieter streets of neat terrace housing.

  At a corner, out of sight of the home of Mother’s customer, we unloaded the radio and set it down on the pavement. We whispered conspiratorially together, trying to decide how to get it to the house concerned, without the customer seeing any of us except Mother.

  Father finally decided that he would make the first sortie and carry the batteries to the front step of the customer’s house which led straight on to the pavement; there was no front yard or garden to be negotiated.

  We watched with excited anticipation as he glided ghostlike down the empty street, quickly deposited the batteries, and continued on down the street, round the block and back to us, so that he actually passed the house only once. Then Alan and Mother together carried the radio itself to the house, and put it down on the step. Mother stood by it, while Alan fled down the street, taking the same course as Father had.

  Mother was out of sight of all of us, but we heard the peal of the old-fashioned front door bell when she rang it; and the sounds of the door opening and shutting and of strong Lancashire voices came to us clearly through the frosty air.

  Brian and Tony started an excited conversation. Father hushed them immediately. He was standing tense, listening like a hound.

  My arms were aching with Edward’s weight, so I put him into the pram. Avril complained that she was cold and I put her in with him and rubbed her legs which were mottled like an old woman’s from exposure.

  Coatless, hatless and hungry, we were all shivering by the time we heard the sound of the door opening again and cheerful voices bidding Mother ‘good night’.

  She was coming slowly towards us. In the gaslight, her face had a look of stupefied wonderment, as if she had just experienced a religious revelation of some kind.

  The policeman on the beat was coming slowly towards us, trying the doors of each shop which faced the road on which we stood; and Father, ever fearful of being arrested for vagrancy, moved us slowly to meet Mother.

  ‘I sold it – that very one – they wanted the demonstration model. They signed the hire purchase agreement and gave me the deposit there and then. And they gave me tea and cake.’ Her voice quivered, as she mentioned the last item.

  ‘Really?’ exclaimed Father, unable to believe that in Depression-bound Liverpool anybody could afford to buy anything. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, sudden pride in her voice.

  ‘What will you get for it? Your commission?’

  ‘Thirty shillings.’

  ‘We shall have to tell the public assistance committee. The little bit you earned selling treacle was not worth worrying about We shall have to declare thirty shillings – and they will just cut it off our allowance.’ Father’s voice was tired and old.

  ‘Are you mad?’ cried Mother with an unexpected burst of spirit.

  ‘No, of course not. But it is not honest not to tell them.’

  ‘We will not tell them,’ said Mother savagely. ‘They’d let us die. They don’t care. Why should we bother about what is honest and what is not?’ The bitter question sounded all the more so because it was expressed in her beautiful contralto voice, a voice almost identical to Brian’s.

  Father had his arms crossed over his chest and his hands tucked into his armpits to keep them warm. He said in a broken voice, ‘I must have some gloves. I can’t bear the pain in my hands any more.’

  ‘And I must h
ave lots of fish and chips,’ shouted Avril unexpectedly. ‘Lots of lovely fish and chips.’

  Fiona clutched my arm.

  ‘Helen, I feel awfully odd.’ Her face was ashen.

  I caught her as she fainted. She was the quietest, most uncomplaining of us all and, as I held her frail little frame in my arms and looked down at her closed eyes with lashes like Michaelmas daisies, it seemed as if Death was breathing down the back of my neck.

  ‘Fish and chips,’ roared Avril again, quite unperturbed by her sister’s collapse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mother never sold another radio. It did teach her, however, that she might be able to sell things. Even her dismissal a week later because of her lack of sales did not deter her, and a little while later she got a temporary job in a store demonstrating baby baths. The store was gloriously warm, and she spent her days bathing a doll and extolling the virtues of rubber baths to expectant mothers who came to buy layettes in the baby-wear department. An arduous week’s bathing netted her ten shillings in commission, which she spent on shoes and stockings for herself, necessities if she was to continue to try for work.

  Christmas loomed near. I did not mention it to Avril or Edward. The other children whispered to each other about it None of them was in the Christmas play the school was producing and it was clear that none of them had any hope of our being able to celebrate the birth of Christ.

  On Christmas Eve, we were all seated in our living-room. The only light was a shaft of moonlight across the floor. We had a small stub of candle and a couple of matches to be used in emergency and these lay ready on the mantelpiece. Outside the church bells were ringing for Christmas services, and across the road in the mysterious house doors slammed occasionally and rowdy voices rose and fell upon the still air.

  I had just decided that Edward, Avril and Tony should go to bed, when Mrs Foster’s genteel bass could be heard in the lower hall.

  ‘A parcel has come for the top floor. Please come and collect it!’

  We were all immediately galvanized into action, except Mother, who continued to sit with her head leaning against the window-frame staring out of the window. We clattered like an army down the myriad of stairs into the hallway, which was dimly lit by a single gas jet.

  ‘Wow!’ exclaimed Tony.

  It was a very large parcel, addressed to Father, and it took the combined strength of Father, Alan and me to carry it up to our top-floor rooms.

  We placed it reverently on the dirty table, and, with shaking hands, Father fumbled with the knots of twine, trying to open it. Finally, he gave up, and we tore at the brown paper and the corrugated cardboard box underneath, frantically trying to find the contents.

  We clawed at straw and the infuriating string, and suddenly a golden orange rolled out, sailed slowly across the table and fell with a juicy plonk on to the floor.

  An orange! An exquisitely perfumed, golden fruit was sitting right in the middle of our floor.

  We all gaped at it, and then renewed our frenzied opening up of the package, while Edward crawled across to look at the strange object which had fallen off the table.

  We disinterred a turkey of proportions generous enough to have pleased a king, a large plum pudding in a bowl, a bag of potatoes, more oranges, and a box of sweets. Sweets! We were nearly hysterical with excitement.

  We had heard of these Christmas parcels, though we had not expected to be the recipients of one; there had been considerable controversy about them in the columns of the Liverpool Echo. Many people held that it was ridiculous to help the poor only at Christmas, that the money spent could be put to better uses throughout the year. Whoever made up the parcel for us, however, would have been amply rewarded by the ecstasy with which we received it. It was too much for me, and I burst into tears.

  All this time, Mother had continued to sit with her head against the window-frame, though she had shown some interest at first. Suddenly she began to laugh in a high-pitched, wild fashion.

  We were silenced immediately. My father was trembling visibly, as he looked at her. Was this the breakdown he had been fearing?

  ‘How are we going to cook it?’ she screamed between gusts of laughter. ‘With no fire, no oven, no nothing!’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Father said firmly, trying to keep a grip on the situation.

  Edward and Avril began to cry. Brian stood, an orange in his hand, as if turned to stone. Fiona, clutching the tattered remains of her doll, moved closer to Alan, who put his arm protectively round her shoulder. The darkness of the room made the whole scene macabre and unreal.

  Tony, who had been about to open the box of sweets, said, ‘Listen!’

  Through Mother’s wild laughter could be heard the sound of a heavy tread on the top staircase leading to our landing.

  ‘Mrs Foster,’ muttered Brian, his voice full of dread. ‘Have we paid our rent?’

  Avril stopped crying and listened: ‘Mr Parish,’ she suggested.

  The thought of the public assistance committee’s visitor discovering that we had a secret hoard of turkey and oranges and deducting its value from our miserable weekly pittance made me frantic, and I ran to the door with the idea of stopping his entering.

  I was too late.

  A knock sounded on our door.

  Mother was still giggling to herself and Father seemed unable to move.

  I will be brave. I will be polite, I told myself, and opened the door.

  A huge, joint sigh of relief nearly blew the visitor back down the stairs.

  ‘Ah come,’ said the visitor, peering round in the gloom, ‘to wish yer all a Happy Christmas from Mr Hicks and meself.’

  ‘Mrs Hicks!’ exclaimed Brian, and flew to his dear friend from the basement. She caught him in her one free arm.

  ‘Well, now me little peacock! How’s our Brian?’

  Father came out of his trance and led her through the darkness to our second chair. She sat down and carefully arranged her skirts over it like Queen Victoria about to be photographed.

  Mother was quietened by this unexpected visitor and regarded her with silent dislike. Mother, as far as possible, never spoke to anyone in the house, except Mrs Foster, and regarded all our neighbours with abhorrence. Her chilling stare did nothing to cool Mrs Hicks’s exuberance. She carefully laid a paper shopping-bag on the floor in front of her, and one by one she brought out a little package for each child and for Father. Lastly, she brought one out for Mother.

  ‘Here yer are, luv. Happy Christmas to yez.’

  Mother just stared.

  ‘Come on, luv. It won’t always be like this. Maybe the New Year’ll bring some luck to yez.’

  I could see my mother fighting to make a tremendous effort, and, at last, in a little, panting voice, she said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Hicks. You are very kind. I heartily reciprocate your good wishes.’ She took the parcel and laid it in her lap.

  Mrs Hicks was obviously nonplussed by the word ‘reciprocate’ but she beamed at Mother in a maternally approving way, and said, ‘Na, that’s better. You’ll soon be well, luv.’

  ‘Helen, can we open them? Please!’ Fiona had forgotten her earlier fright and was entranced at having a present

  I looked at Father and he said, ‘Yes, of course.’

  We all tore at the crumpled, old tissue paper of our parcels.

  Mrs Hicks had knitted each of us a pair of gloves and each pair had a distinguishing Fair Isle pattern in a contrasting colour worked into it.

  ‘So as you will know whose is which,’ she explained. ‘Ah made ’em outta a couple of old pullovers ah bought at Maurrie’s.’

  I looked at her with wonderment Such an enterprising idea had never occurred to me. The idea was better than the Christmas present itself, for I could knit Grandma had taught me. Mrs Hicks was brilliant! Bits of old hand-knitted sweaters and cardigans, too holey to be sold as complete garments, could be bought from old Maurrie at the second-hand clothing store for as little as two for a penny. I could buy some, unravel th
em and knit, just as old Mrs Hicks had done. Edward could have a warm sweater. I forgot my earlier tears in the splendour of this new idea.

  Mrs Hicks meantime had grown accustomed to the darkness and spotted the turkey on the table.

  ‘Got a Christmas parcel, have yer? Proper nice, ain’t it?’

  Father agreed that it was proper nice. Mother stared emptily at the naked bird.

  ‘There is one difficulty,’ said Father.

  Mrs Hicks looked puzzled.

  ‘We haven’t got an oven to cook it in,’ and he added rather apologetically, ‘or a knife to cut it up small enough to stew on our fireplace.’

  ‘We haven’t even got a fire,’ said Alan.

  ‘Oh aye,’ responded Mrs Hicks. ‘Now that’s a bit of a difficulty, aint it?’ She ran her red hands up and down her ample thighs while she considered the matter.

  ‘Tell yer what Ah’ll be cooking me own turkey on the morning, but there’s a good fire going downstairs now. If I turn it to the oven you could cook yours now. It would be cooked afore midnight, when we goes to bed.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Hicks!’ I burst out. ‘That would be marvellous.’

  Father looked dimly hopeful.

  ‘Would you mind?’ he asked.

  She laughed at him. ‘Not a bit. You could put some potatoes round it, to bake, and you’d have a reet good meal.’ She looked at our dead fireplace, and added, ‘You can put the pudding at the back o’ me fire at the same time. Most o’ the heat’s only going up t’ chimney right now.’

  Mother said suddenly, ‘Thank you, Mrs Hicks.’ I thought for a horrid minute that she was going to follow it with ‘But we do not require your assistance’. She controlled herself, however, when the whole family, sensing this, turned on her in frozen, silent rage.

  While the children sucked the oranges, Father and I took the bird, the pudding and the potatoes downstairs.

  Mrs Hicks put it into a baking-tin which was thick with the encrustations of twenty-five years of cooking, and larded it with a bit of bacon fat. Then, guided by her instructions, Father laid it in the ancient oven to the side of the kitchen fire. Some potatoes followed and the heavy, iron door was swung shut, Mrs Hicks having carefully checked that the cat, who apparently slept there normally, was not inside behind the turkey. Mr Hicks grinned all over his little, ferrety face and promised to sit and watch that it did not burn and to add water as needed to the blackened saucepan into which the pudding was subsequently lowered.