By the Waters of Liverpool (14 page)

In a flurry of dropped newspapers, Mother and Father were beside me in a second.

‘Good God, Helen! Whatever’s the matter?’ Father’s face was shocked.

But I could not answer. I was far away, outside the tortured being standing at the sink, totally unable to take command again of my normal territory. I shrieked like an air raid siren out of control.

Mother took my arm and shook me. ‘Stop it, Helen! Do you hurt somewhere?’

Hurt? I hurt all over. The shrieks became wild laughter.

Father seized me by the shoulders, turned me towards him and administered a great slap across my face.

It was partially effective. Mind and body snapped together again. With a hand to my stinging face, I continued to cry helplessly, bellowing like Avril in a tantrum. But I no longer laughed or shrieked. And this was no tantrum. It was like the cries of someone just bereaved. Mother put her arm round me and led me into the living room. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered, and parked me on a straight chair by the table. I laid my head on the table and continued to cry helplessly. ‘Tell us what is the matter.’ Her voice was unexpectedly concerned, and somehow the unusual tone caused greater paroxysms of tears.

Father, standing anxiously beside me, produced his dismally grey pocket handkerchief, and proffered it. I took it and wept into it.

Mother pulled up another straight chair and sat down. ‘Are you ill?’

I nodded negatively. I could not put into words what ailed me. How can you say to the person most responsible that you are brokenhearted?

‘Perhaps you’d feel better if you lay down for a little while,’ suggested Father. In the Victorian and Edwardian world from which he came, women were entitled to have the vapours, a tearful manifestation of low spirits. They were usually persuaded to lie down and have smelling salts and brandy administered to them, until they could rise and face their
terribly narrow world again. The connection struck me immediately and caused fresh storms of sobs.

‘Nervous breakdown?’ Mother whispered to Father, and I wanted to scream again.

‘I hope to God not,’ replied Father, as if I was not there. And that was the root of the trouble. To both of them most of the time I was not there – I did not exist. I rubbed my face on the dirty cloth and howled.

Mother patted the back of my head. ‘I think bed is best. Come along upstairs, and when you are rested you can tell us what the trouble is.’

I was too far gone to care what happened, so I was led upstairs, kicked off my shoes and lay down on my bed. Mother brought a blanket to cover me, as I continued to cry. It was as if I would never be able to stop.

Father sat on the edge of the bed, while Mother went to fill Edward’s hot water bottle.

‘What’s the matter, old lady?’ Father asked, while Mother was downstairs.

‘It’s all too much,’ I nearly shrieked. ‘I’m so tired. So tired and so lonely. I work hard – I never stop – and I never get anywhere.’ I wept on, while Father sat, quiet, on the bed.

‘I feel so weak – and I’m always hungry. And I’ve no money to buy anything at all – and I wonder if I
ever will have. And nobody seems to notice or care. Nobody cares a tinker’s cuss.’

I turned on my face and roared into my knobbly pillow.

Father caught one flailing hand in his own tiny hands, which went white at the slightest cold because his heart was so bad.

‘Don’t say, that, dear,’ he responded, as if hurt to the quick. ‘You’re my Helen Rose. I care.’ He started to unclench my fist and to rub my hand as if it were cold. ‘Things are much better than they were, dear.’

‘They are for everybody else,’ I wailed. ‘Not for me.’ He continued to rub my hand. ‘I wish I was dead,’ I raved.

Mother came in with the hot water bottle. I took it from her and put it instinctively to my stomach, where the pain usually was, and curled up round it in a foetal position. I began to hold Father’s hand as if it were a lifeline.

The room was nearly dark, so Mother lit a candle and put it on the mantelpiece. Then she, too, sat on the edge of the bed. There was silence, except for the sound of my weeping. The concern of both parents was undoubted, but in a corner of my mind which was beginning to function it appeared to me that it was the fear of the scandal of mental
illness, rather than concern for me as a person, which bothered them. Probably this was unfair, but such was the distrust built into me since infancy.

I do not know for how long I cried. The storm began gradually to retreat, until I was sobbing occasionally, eyes sealed tight. The warmth of the blanket and the hot water bottle began to relax me, and I lay exhausted.

I lay quite still, too drained and fatigued to speak. Father still patiently held my hand, waiting for me to recover. Mother began to fidget round the room. ‘Feeling better?’ she inquired.

I looked dully at her silhouette against the candle. ‘Yes, thank you,’ I muttered, and then added hesitantly, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right, dear. You rest now. I’m going to attend to the blackout, and then I’ll make some fresh tea and bring it up.’ She turned briskly to Father, and said, ‘You had better stay with her.’

‘Of course,’ Father assured her, and gave my hand a little squeeze. He must have been getting cramp from my holding on to his hand for so long, but I felt that if I let go, and lost the human contact, I would slip back again into hysteria.

I heard the big shutters in the living room being slammed and the iron bar being threaded across
them, and then the ting of the rings on the blackout curtains which we had so painstakingly hand-stitched; there were small thuds as Mother put some books along their hems to hold them flat against the window, so that light did not seep through. I began to cry again. The thought of the war made me feel even more helpless.

Father carefully put my hand down. ‘I’ll blow the candle out – the Warden may spot it.’ He went over and blew out the small flame, and the odour of the smoking wick permeated the room. I watched him, still sobbing. He turned and looked out of the window through which the faint last afterglow of the sunset filtered. Over the chimneys of the houses huddled close to the back of our home, the thin, pencil line of a searchlight swept slowly across the sky.

Between huge, shuddering sobs, I said, ‘I’m sorry to make such a fuss, Daddy.’

He turned and came slowly back to me. Seated on the bed, he faced me and asked, ‘What happened?’

I tried to compose myself, and in unhappy gasps, I answered, ‘It’s nothing really, Daddy. I’m stupid. I spent my return fare from the office on a telephone call for a client. So I had to walk home from Bootle – and it seemed the last straw. I’m so tired – I feel I want to die with it.’

‘You’ve had a lot of illness, I know. But I thought you were quite well.’

‘I suppose I am.’ Still weeping, I pulled myself up to a sitting position.

He sat looking anxiously at me, while I tried, not very successfully, to control myself.

‘It wasn’t exactly being without the twopence to come back to the city – it was the whole thing. Everybody in the family – all their needs – seem to be considered – but never me. I haven’t a penny. I can’t find another student to teach. No lunch, no make-up, no clothes. I’m desperate for new stockings.’ My voice rose with a hint of hysteria again. ‘If it wasn’t for the Greek gentleman who gave us theatre money again this winter, I would never have been able to do anything. Even to visit Sylvia costs tram fares.’

‘Have you told your mother?’

‘Oh, Daddy! Ever since I went to work, she has done her best to make it impossible for me to stay there. She wants me home as a cheap housekeeper. She wouldn’t give me a penny.’ I put my head in my hands and cried some more.

‘She paid for a coat for you recently.’

‘She
lent me
the money – and she wants it back.’ I nearly screamed in fury, ‘And I only got that in the hope of not having the police on our backs –
that would have been a real scandal, wouldn’t it? Nice families don’t get called in by the police, do they?’ I put my head on my knees and lamented like a wind on the moors.

Father put his arms around me, the first time I ever remember him doing so, and did his best to comfort me.

A very subdued Mother brought me tea, which I drank. Then as my sobs subsided, she suggested that I try to sleep. Still shuddering, I thanked them both and obediently lay down like an exhausted rabbit in a thorn bush.

Through my troubled sleep, I was aware of a first-class uproar in the living room below. The battle between Mother and Father was joined again while I lay in bed on Sunday morning – the first Sunday I ever remember staying in bed, except when I had been ill.

Shattered and demoralised, I lay by Fiona, crying softly and listening to the enraged voices going back and forth. I wondered if I was indeed losing my reason.

A little more food had come my way. We had a fire more often, and usually there were enough pennies to provide a minimum of gas and electricity. These were solid gains, for which I should be grateful. I did not realise that it is not the actually starving who revolt – they are too weak – rather, it
is the underfed, the underprivileged, who feel that the system could provide more for them. My system – my family – had taken my money, my work, my affection – and had given very little. I felt betrayed and forgotten by those who should have had my interests at heart, and I wept on.

Fiona stirred, stretched and shivered in the bedroom’s clammy stuffiness. She heard my snuffling into the pillow, whipped around and lifted the blanket cautiously off my shoulders.

‘What’s the matter, Helen? Have you got a tummyache?’

Slowly, I turned my face towards her. She looked quaint with her hair neatly rolled up on hairpins secured under a net – Europe might be in flames, but Fiona set her hair every night without fail. The deep, violet blue eyes looked down at me with alarm.

‘I don’t really know exactly what is the matter, Fi. My tummy’s all right. I just can’t stop crying.’

She rolled close to me and put an arm round me. ‘It must be something.’

I curled up close to her and cried into her shoulder, while she made soothing noises and stroked my long straggling locks.

Between sobs, I began to tell her about not having a student to teach and my resultant penury.
She was a good listener and by no means as stupid as she sometimes led our parents to imagine. ‘This last few days I’ve realised, Fi, that without an education – with no degree – I’ll never be able to be a real social worker. I might do the same work, but I would not be as well paid. And night school doesn’t provide degrees.’

Fiona smiled. ‘You’re clever – and you can write shorthand and type. You could get a really good secretarial job.’

‘Not the way I look,’ I lamented. ‘My clothes are all right nowadays for social work – one shouldn’t look too smart. But a secretary must look really nice.’

‘You should ask Mummy. She’d buy you some clothes – she’s got plenty of money – she buys all mine.’

I felt the hysteria returning. I burst into further muffled wails. ‘Mother expects me to manage.’ I did not want to remind her that both she and Mother preyed on me for the bits of clothing I managed to obtain for myself.

Fiona pushed my hair back from my face and said earnestly, ‘I didn’t think you were interested in clothes and things like that. You’re always too busy.’

‘Nobody thinks,’ I shot at her bitterly. ‘I just don’t
really exist where most people are concerned.’

She stared at me uncomprehendingly, as the tears came down on her nightgown in rivulets.

She hugged me tightly. ‘Please, please, don’t cry, Helen. If clothes are the trouble, it’s easy enough for Mother to get them.’

‘It’s not only that,’ I wept. ‘I want to have fun and go dancing, like the detective said.’

This made Fiona lean back and look at me in astonishment. ‘Really?’

‘Well, of course I do,’ I nearly bawled.

‘I thought you liked studying – and books – and helping people.’

I gave up, and cried on, and a bewildered Fiona held me tightly, until her nightgown was thoroughly wet.

Downstairs Father’s footsteps echoed in the hall and a moment later the front door slammed. The key hanging from the letter box by its piece of string made a protesting rattle against the wooden panels. Father, I guessed, was going for his usual Sunday morning walk and drink at Peter’s, a famous public house near Catherine Street.

Mother’s slippers flip-flapped up the stairs and I clung closer to Fiona. Over me crawled my infantile fear of Mother, primitive, childlike, ridiculous, but nevertheless overwhelming.

‘How are you feeling?’ she inquired to the back of my head buried in Fiona’s shoulder. ‘Crying again? Come on, that won’t do. There’s no need to weep so much.’ The voice was kind, a little weary.

Fiona, bigger and stronger than me, pushed me away from her and eased me round to face Mother.

I made an effort to check the waterfall, and sniffed and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’

Fiona burst in. ‘Mummy, she’s feeling miserable. But all she really needs is to look nice to get another job – and have some boy friends – and things.’ She spoke cheerily and patted me. ‘Isn’t it, Helen? That’s all.’

In part she was right, so I nodded. How could I explain my frantic need to feel that someone cared, that another adult loved me enough to really care what happened to me?

Mother had not yet washed, and she looked as badly as ever I did, with her dyed black hair in a ruffled mop and the lines on her pasty-white face looking as if they had been etched in. But she laughed, an unusually natural laugh, and sat down with a bounce on the bed. She spoke with determined cheerfulness.

‘Your Father and I have been discussing the matter,’ she announced.

I tried to stop crying and to listen. I did not know that I had frightened them both very much by my sudden collapse, which they feared was the beginning of a complete breakdown, with all its future slurs on the mental stability of the family. In those days one was, to most of the population, either sane or insane – and insanity marked the whole family, not just the victim.

‘We think that you and Fiona must be treated alike.’ I felt Fiona stiffen beside me – and suddenly I wanted to laugh, in spite of her sympathy. Did she fear being reduced to my circumstances? Mother continued, ‘Daddy and I can manage if you pay into the house the same amount as Fiona does – and we’ll get you some clothes out of pawn.’

I gazed at her dully. I wanted her to take me in her arms. I didn’t care about the physical help. I was mentally begging her to love me, to tell me that she would do what she could to help me, sympathise, comfort.

She was waiting for my reaction, and shrugged her cardigan up closer round her neck. She became uncomfortable under my gaze and said suddenly and defensively, ‘You were always so keen on managing alone.’

I was astonished, and I stopped crying. How could she rationalise the situation like that? But
there was no strength in me. After all, hadn’t I wanted to be treated like Fiona? And, as far as physical needs were concerned, that was what she was offering.

I had no stamina left. One cannot argue a person into loving one, so I ignored her last remark and said, ‘Thank you. It would help a lot if I paid like Fiona – and I would be grateful for some clothes.’ I leaned against Fiona and tried by closing my eyes tight to stop a further flood.

There was silence for a moment, while Fiona hugged me close, and then Mother said, ‘Your hair is a mess. Lady Fayre is having a sale of perms. They’re down to three and sixpence. I’ll stand you one, if you like.’

Fiona burst in enthusiastically. ‘You should, Helen. You should. Betty is a wizard on hair.’

I crushed down the pain within, and said, ‘That’s very kind of you, Mummy. I would love to have my hair done professionally.’

Mother really was trying to be supportive; I realised it, and I added, ‘Thanks, Mum,’ while I clung to the comforting warmth of Fiona, and I lay quietly while the two of them swiftly planned my physical rebuilding.