Read Online Liverpool Miss by Helen Forrester - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Helen Forrester
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Edward would be safe with her.
Please, Lord, please let it happen, I prayed silently. Aloud, I said, ‘Thank you very, very much. I would love the job if you think I can do it.’
She smiled. ‘Of course you can do it. Shall I call on Mrs Forrester tonight? You might like to talk to both your father and your mother first.’
‘I will,’ I said, though I had no real hope. Perhaps, however, with an advocate like this respectable lady, just perhaps, they could be persuaded.
‘I’ll come this evening, then?’
‘Yes, please,’ I mumbled.
In a daze, I wheeled Edward home, pushing the pram unseeingly through the usual crowds of black, white and yellow men idling at the corners. Some of them murmured resentfully as the pram brushed carelessly past them.
How on earth was I to approach Mother and Father about this offer? I worried. A chance of freedom at last, a tiny flame of hope in a very bleak world.
The whole routine of the family would have to be altered. Alan and Fiona would have to shoulder some of my work. And Alice would have to be paid. Some clothes would have to be redeemed from the pawnbroker – or obtained from somewhere else. Where would Mother find the money?
At home, I poked up the fire and began to make toast for the children’s tea, while I thought once again of running away. Could I live on twelve shillings and sixpence? Boys sometimes ran away to the south, where there was more work than in financially ruined Liverpool. Occasionally, girls did, too. I had, however, read in the newspaper about the flourishing white slave traffic into which girls were sold. I was not clear what happened to white slaves, except that they were kept in bondage and abused by ruthless men until they died. I imagined them being misused like American black slaves, and I had no wish to die a dramatic death like Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin . I had wept over this tragedy as a small girl and did not wish for a similar fate.
I did some careful arithmetic. A small, unheatedhousekeeping room could be found for about seven shillings and sixpence a week; food, say, four shillings, firing in winter would take the other shilling, leaving nothing for clothing. I did not consider that I might need tram fares – I had been walking, now, for the past three years all over south Liverpool; make-up was beyond my experience, and pocket money an idle dream, anyway.
The children drifted in for tea and I dealt with their squabbles and their hunger as best I could.
Father and Mother returned from work soon after the children. Inside five minutes, they were quarrelling violently. I cannot remember what triggered the trouble. It did not matter, because the underlying animosity smouldered all the time and needed very little to make it flare up. As usual, they drew each child into the argument in an effort to make them take sides, and this frequently reduced Avril and Brian to hysterics as they agonised between the parents. Fiona and Alan were old enough to retreat to friends’ homes if they got desperate enough, but poor Avril, Tony and Brian had no such refuges. Tony usually managed to stay a little calmer, though he was always upset, and Edward just stuck firmly in whichever lap he happened to be cradled when hostilities broke out.
Even when I was very small, I wondered why my parents stayed together. I knew a girl whose mother was divorced, and I quite envied her. But I had been fortunate in having Edith to take care of me and there were the long absences from home when I stayed with Grandma. In their conversations about the people they knew, they taught me that not all families were riven by warfare. Now, as the fight raged over the tea table, I wished passionately I could run to Grandma for help.
Alan had piled into the fight with some furious, rude remark and was sharply slapped by his father. He shot out of the kitchen door into the back yard, raging nearly as incoherently as Father was.
Fiona wept helplessly, her head on the
Please, Lord, please let it happen, I prayed silently. Aloud, I said, ‘Thank you very, very much. I would love the job if you think I can do it.’
She smiled. ‘Of course you can do it. Shall I call on Mrs Forrester tonight? You might like to talk to both your father and your mother first.’
‘I will,’ I said, though I had no real hope. Perhaps, however, with an advocate like this respectable lady, just perhaps, they could be persuaded.
‘I’ll come this evening, then?’
‘Yes, please,’ I mumbled.
In a daze, I wheeled Edward home, pushing the pram unseeingly through the usual crowds of black, white and yellow men idling at the corners. Some of them murmured resentfully as the pram brushed carelessly past them.
How on earth was I to approach Mother and Father about this offer? I worried. A chance of freedom at last, a tiny flame of hope in a very bleak world.
The whole routine of the family would have to be altered. Alan and Fiona would have to shoulder some of my work. And Alice would have to be paid. Some clothes would have to be redeemed from the pawnbroker – or obtained from somewhere else. Where would Mother find the money?
At home, I poked up the fire and began to make toast for the children’s tea, while I thought once again of running away. Could I live on twelve shillings and sixpence? Boys sometimes ran away to the south, where there was more work than in financially ruined Liverpool. Occasionally, girls did, too. I had, however, read in the newspaper about the flourishing white slave traffic into which girls were sold. I was not clear what happened to white slaves, except that they were kept in bondage and abused by ruthless men until they died. I imagined them being misused like American black slaves, and I had no wish to die a dramatic death like Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin . I had wept over this tragedy as a small girl and did not wish for a similar fate.
I did some careful arithmetic. A small, unheatedhousekeeping room could be found for about seven shillings and sixpence a week; food, say, four shillings, firing in winter would take the other shilling, leaving nothing for clothing. I did not consider that I might need tram fares – I had been walking, now, for the past three years all over south Liverpool; make-up was beyond my experience, and pocket money an idle dream, anyway.
The children drifted in for tea and I dealt with their squabbles and their hunger as best I could.
Father and Mother returned from work soon after the children. Inside five minutes, they were quarrelling violently. I cannot remember what triggered the trouble. It did not matter, because the underlying animosity smouldered all the time and needed very little to make it flare up. As usual, they drew each child into the argument in an effort to make them take sides, and this frequently reduced Avril and Brian to hysterics as they agonised between the parents. Fiona and Alan were old enough to retreat to friends’ homes if they got desperate enough, but poor Avril, Tony and Brian had no such refuges. Tony usually managed to stay a little calmer, though he was always upset, and Edward just stuck firmly in whichever lap he happened to be cradled when hostilities broke out.
Even when I was very small, I wondered why my parents stayed together. I knew a girl whose mother was divorced, and I quite envied her. But I had been fortunate in having Edith to take care of me and there were the long absences from home when I stayed with Grandma. In their conversations about the people they knew, they taught me that not all families were riven by warfare. Now, as the fight raged over the tea table, I wished passionately I could run to Grandma for help.
Alan had piled into the fight with some furious, rude remark and was sharply slapped by his father. He shot out of the kitchen door into the back yard, raging nearly as incoherently as Father was.
Fiona wept helplessly, her head on the
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