Twopence to Cross the Mersey Page 14

  Although I had played with other girls at school, I had found nothing in common with them. They had a hearty vulgarity of speech and manner which made me recoil from them and, to them, a girl who spoke as if she had ollies in her mouth was very suspect A small group of girls who were better behaved and came from better homes regarded me with undisguised horror.

  I was back where I had started from, pushing Edward’s Chariot to and from the shops or the park, and without any hope of bettering myself.

  During the summer holidays, I took all the children to the parks to play, and sat wistfully amongst stout mothers in black shawls, watching my little charges play just as they did. The children accepted me as just another ‘Mum’ and I was too shy to ask if I could play too.

  September saw the children back at school again. I watched them go with envy. Now I was over fourteen I could not hope for further education.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Alan and I sat huddled together on the front step. The October evening was cold and clammy; yet we were reluctant to go into the stuffy house. The gaslamps’ light gleamed softly on the damp pavement and women hurried by, their black shawls held tightly round them, their children whining at their heels. Three young men lolled against the iron railings of the corner house; their noisy laughter mingled with that from the public house on the corner opposite to them. Maurrie, the second-hand clothes man, shuffled by with a sack on his back.

  An Irish woman plodded stolidly up the street. Near us, she stepped out into the middle of the street and turned, to take up a belligerent stance facing the front steps of the house opposite.

  She was a scarifying-looking person, hugely fat with legs like wool-clad pillars. Her hair was parted across her head from ear to ear and the back part had been plaited and made into a neat bun; the front hair had been parted again down the middle and plaited forwards, the resulting braids being draped down either side of her face and under her ears, to be fastened at the back. The result was outlandishly fierce-looking to anyone unaccustomed to the Victorian hair-styles of some Liverpool Irish women. She smoothed down her white apron over her black skirt, wrapped her black, crocheted shawl around her and folded her enormous arms. Then, gathering her breath until her purple cheeks stood out like balloons, she opened her mouth and screamed.

  ‘Yer pack o’ bloody whores!’ she yelled at the house Miss Sinford called The House of Sin. ‘I’ll show yer! Taking a decent woman’s hoosband.’

  A crowd materialized from nowhere.

  ‘Go it, Ma!’ shouted one of the young men from the corner.

  There was a flutter of sniggering laughter from the crowd and a murmur of encouragement.

  A frail-looking, middle-aged woman, her bare legs thick with varicose veins and her feet shoved into ancient carpet slippers, was unwise enough to open the door and appear on the steps before her.

  ‘You’d better stop that,’ she shouted, ‘or I’ll call a copper.’

  This produced such a description of the moral habits of the local constabulary that even the young men in the crowd were impressed. The Irish have a vivid way of expressing themselves, and the shawl woman was no exception. She lifted a fist as stout as a leg of mutton and shook it at the prostitute.

  ‘Yer harlot, yer!’ She finished up, and spat accurately at the feet of the Lady of Sin.

  Alan giggled behind his hand and whispered, ‘Has the lady on the steps taken the other lady’s husband from her?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said under my breath.

  ‘I’m not surprised. I imagine he ran away from her – she looks as fierce as a tiger.’

  I looked at the woman on the steps. She was quite old, her face haggard under its paint. Her hair was dyed a startling red, and diamanté earrings hung from each ear. I was mystified as to where her charm lay. I had read most of Emile Zola’s works and now understood the occupation of the ladies opposite. But Zola’s heroines were beautiful, and I had always gathered from the conversation of grown-ups that, unless one was beautiful, one did not stand a chance of even a husband, never mind a queue of men such as these ladies commanded.

  The woman on the steps drew back towards her front door. She glanced uneasily up and down the street. Several possible clients, hands in pockets, were wandering a trifle unsteadily towards the crowd.

  She became anxious to placate, and whined, ‘Ah dawn’t know who yer hoosband is. Ah dawn’t even knaw who yer mean. Na go home,’ she wheedled, ‘and stop making an exhibition of yerself.’

  This infuriated the Irish woman so much that she went up the steps like a tank and punched the small woman in the face.

  In a moment, clutched together, they were rolling down the steps and on to the pavement, clawing at each other’s eyes, using teeth and knees to inflict as much damage as possible.

  The crowd surged forward, roaring approval, and shouting encouragement to whichever participant they favoured.

  Three very large dock labourers, who had been standing uneasily watching the exchange, raised their voices against the general hubbub.

  ‘Na, Ma, come on,’ they cajoled the Irish woman. ‘This is too much. Come on, na. Break it oop!’

  But Ma, shawlless and nearly blouseless by now, was too busy holding off the red-haired cat she had provoked to take anybody’s advice. Alan and I watched, open-mouthed, through the shifting legs of the crowd.

  Suddenly, a little spurt of blood showed on the shawl woman’s face, and the crowd hushed.

  A male voice said sharply, ‘Ee, that’s not fair. Get off, you.’

  A boot was sharply applied to the prostitute’s bottom and she let go immediately, whipped to her feet and whirled on her new assailant

  He backed away from her warily.

  ‘Na, you just take that blade out from under yer thumb-nail, yer lousy bitch.’

  The shawl woman heaved herself to her feet, panting. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. When she saw blood on it, she screamed in mixed rage and terror.

  ‘I’ll get yer for this!’ she shrieked, at the same time putting a little distance between herself and her opponent.

  Two of the dockers jumped the prostitute suddenly from behind, caught her arm and twisted it behind her back. While one held her, the other extracted a piece of razor blade from under one of her long nails and held it up for the crowd to see.

  There was a threatening murmur.

  ‘Let me go,’ she shouted, her voice full of fear.

  The men released her and she ran up the steps, her carpet slippers, still on her feet, flapping as they hit the stone.

  We became aware of another heated altercation on the edge of the crowd. The pub had closed and its patrons were coming home, among them a huge, bull-necked man who was bellowing, ‘Ah’11 teach ’er to make a row in t’ street, ah will!’

  His friends pulled anxiously at his shabby jacket sleeve and murmured, ‘Na, then, Bill. Na, then.’

  With a sigh of delightful anticipation, the crowd opened to make way for the bull-necked man, while the prostitute vanished into the House of Sin and the sound of a bolt being shot on the inside of the door came clearly across the street

  The bull-necked man charged through the expectant crowd, undoing his trouser belt as he came. His seamed face was red with rage and the muscles and veins of his neck bulged above the neck-band of his union shirt. With a smart pull, he whipped his belt out and, swinging it by its buckle, he advanced on the shawl woman, who came towards him, her shawl again draped across her back, but her huge bosom almost bare. She threw back her shoulders to exhibit her ample charm and swayed her hips seductively. Blood still trickled down her cheek but she smiled slyly at the newcomer.

  ‘Na, then, our Mary Ann. What yer think yer doing? I won’t stand for it, d’ yer hear me!’

  She stuck her chin in the air and spat an epithet at him.

  Infuriated, he shot out a huge red fist, tore at her bun, took a firm hold on the tumbling plaits and twisted her by her hair till her back was towards him. Then, lift
ing his belt he brought it down hard on her buttocks. She screamed, and her shawl fell off again, revealing her fat, naked shoulders already scratched in the fight. A second time the belt whistled through the air and a red welt appeared across the buxom shoulders.

  I started up with a cry of horror, but one of the women who lived in our house pushed me sharply down on to the step again.

  ‘Let him be,’ she hissed. ‘She loves it’

  ‘Loves it?’ I hissed back. ‘But she’s being hurt!’ And I winced as the belt cracked down again, and the woman screamed.

  The crowd was silent now, tense with the same tenseness of dogs sitting in front of a house where there is a bitch in heat I felt sick.

  The woman from our house said kindly, ‘You go inside and leave the likes of them to themselves.’

  Alan and I, both frightened, ran into the hall of our house, from which vantage point we continued to watch.

  Beating her steadily, while the shawl woman alternately screamed and cursed, the man was gradually dragging the woman through the crowd and over the cross-road to a smaller house than ours farther down the street, where apparently they lived. He flung her against the closed door and she stood with her back against it, sobbing wildly. The man threw himself against her, and the crowd whooped.

  ‘Go it, Bill,’ they shouted.

  Bill reached behind his wife and turned the door knob of his home, put his hand on the woman’s naked breast and pushed her, so that she seemed to fly backwards into the narrow hall. He followed, and slammed the door after him.

  Regretfully, the crowd slowly broke up and departed. Alan and I, both shaking with nervous tension, went slowly up to our apartment

  Fiona was sitting by the window having watched the same scene from a better vantage point. She had evidently been much impressed by the prostitute.

  ‘Wasn’t it exciting, Helen? Wasn’t the little woman opposite brave to fight that big, fat shawl woman? What were they fighting about?’

  ‘I am not sure,’ I said untruthfully.

  Fiona said, ‘You should draw a picture of it, Helen.’

  I laughed.

  ‘I don’t think Mummy or Daddy would like me to draw pictures of things like that Come along, I think you had better go to bed.’

  Alan was wandering about the dark room and he came, finally, and stood by us, hands in pockets, looking down at the street which was now practically empty, except for one or two jolly-looking sailors rolling unsteadily up the steps of the House of Sin.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to art school, Helen?’ Alan asked unexpectedly.

  I turned and asked in surprise, ‘Art school? What do you mean?’

  The response was truly brotherly.

  ‘Art school, stupid. What do you think I meant? You know, when you got the scholarship. I always meant to ask you, but there never seems to be much peace for conversations.’

  ‘Scholarship? I have never won a scholarship, you know that’

  ‘Heavens, you are dumb! Don’t you remember – you sat for it when you got caught and had to go back to school.’

  Alan looked at me as if I had lost my reason.

  ‘Oh, that I didn’t get it. I never heard anything about it, after Mr Piper entered my name for it.’

  ‘But – but –’ stammered Alan, ‘Mr Browning – the headmaster – asked me only the other day how you were getting on, and I meant to ask you what happened. If you got it, why didn’t you go to art school? It would have been wonderful for you.’

  The episode in the street had left me rather trembly and I sat down suddenly as a horrible suspicion went through my head.

  Had I indeed won the scholarship? If I had, my parents would have been informed of it. Had they refused it on my behalf? They were perfectly entitled to do so – schooling was not compulsory after the age of fourteen.

  This idea was so repulsive to me that at first I could not accept it Surely, my parents would realize that it was a wonderful opportunity for me. Surely, they would have my interests at heart. It must be a mistake – I could not have won.

  Yet if Alan’s headmaster said I had won, won I had. He would not forget that one of the few scholarships available at that time had been awarded to his school.

  ‘If I won,’ I said through clenched teeth, ‘I was never told about it.’

  ‘How queer,’ said Alan, and Fiona’s enormous eyes widened even farther as she, too, considered the matter. ‘You’d better ask Mummy or Daddy.’

  Such a rush of pain went through my skimpy body that I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned my head nearly down to my knees. In little gasps, I said, ‘I don’t think I want to ask them. I don’t think I can bear to.’

  ‘I’ll ask,’ said Alan stoutly. ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘Oh no, Alan,’ I said. ‘You will only be told that it’s none of your business – and the whole family will be upset.’

  He knew I was right and was silent.

  I was almost certain in my mind that my parents had just not told me because my attendance at school for a prolonged period would have compounded their difficulties; they would have lost their baby-sitter and housekeeper – and they would have had to pay a substitute.

  I rocked myself backwards and forwards, as my touching belief that my parents, even if they had not much love for me, would do their best for me, and that they had always done so, died. I was in agony. The research into the ruthless exploitation of the eldest child was still far in the future, and there was no explanation to console my childish despair.

  Two bony pairs of arms were quietly wrapped around me, and two young heads came close to mine.

  ‘Never mind, Helen. Please don’t cry. What’s a silly old scholarship, anyway? You got it. You’re clever. You’ll get another one some day.’

  I did not cry. I could not.

  Gently, I told Alan to go to bed.

  I pushed Fiona quietly towards our pile of newspapers laid on top of the old door; the papers had an irritating habit of spreading themselves on to the floor as well. I laid myself down on them, facing the wall, and pulled my knees up tight like a baby in the womb. If I took little breaths and lay perfectly still, perhaps the pain inside me would go away.

  I slept little, but felt calmer in the morning. The children were dispatched to school. Mother went out. Father hurriedly prepared to go down to the labour exchange. As he struggled to neaten himself, I asked him diffidently, ‘Did you ever hear anything about the art scholarship I sat for?’

  He looked at me abstractedly. ‘Art scholarship?’

  ‘Yes. You remember – the one I sat for while I was at school – just before my birthday.’

  He was quiet for a moment and sat staring at his shoelace which had broken.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘We did hear something about it. It couldn’t be awarded to you.’

  ‘But did I win?’ I asked in a whisper.

  ‘You did. However, when we said that you were born in Cheshire, we were told that you were ineligible and should never have been entered for it. Cheshire comes under a different education committee.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘There seemed no point – children get upset about these things.’

  I nodded. I could not speak because my teeth were chattering so much from the nervous effort I had made to ask about the scholarship.

  I hugged Edward to me, while he seized his battered trilby hat and departed. I could hear the loose sole on one of his shoes flipping on each step.

  All that morning, I thought about the scholarship. Pressed against the glass-topped biscuit tins in the tiny grocery store, the rancid smell of the bacon-cutting machine enveloping me, I had a long wait in the tiny shop while the grocery woman measured out single ounces of tea, sugar and margarine, climbed her ladder to reach down tins of condensed milk and had long arguments with several desperate women trying to extend their credit with her.

  By the time it was my turn to be served with the twopennyworth of
rice I wanted, I had come to the conclusion that I must accept my father’s explanation, despite the fact that the school had known my place of birth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  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.