Liverpool Miss (15 page)

I knew Emrys Hughes for only two weeks, but he left me a legacy which changed my whole life. He taught me that I was worthy of love and respect. He revealed to me that, given normal circumstances, I could be a cheerful, merry companion. He gave me self-respect, a belief in myself. This change in attitude did not reveal itself immediately because I was locked into circumstances beyond my control. But it was there, tucked away in the back of my mind to give me strength of purpose when the time came.

The raunchy cotton mill girls had also done something for me. I had not at first understood their conversation, because I did not know the words they used, but constant repetition soon made their meanings clear. They talked of nothing but sex, and
their lurid discussions soon knitted together for me much that I knew subconsciously before. Then the reading of a great number of files and observation of the prostitutes in the streets greatly added to my understanding. One is supposed to be shaken by such revelations, but it all seemed quite normal to me and I accepted it without being disturbed. Perhaps because I was so starved, I had almost no feelings myself. My days were choked with work that had to be done, giving little time for contemplation of anything other than the next essay to be written, the next cup of tea to be provided.

I did not think of sex in connection with Emrys Hughes. He was a dear person, very careful of me, and I gave him the same kind of affection that I gave my grandmother, uninhibited and unthinking. Only years later, in the ripeness of womanhood, I realised that he might well have fallen for an innocent slip of a girl. He would not have been the first man to love someone thirty years younger than himself. But that last fortnight of his life was not wasted. It enriched mine immeasurably.

One of the more understanding ladies dressed in green overalls was a psychologist, a Mrs Croft, and, unlike the others, she would sometimes talk to me when I took her in a cup of tea at a time when she
had no client with her. She knew that I attended night school and was learning shorthand. She asked me if I could teach another girl this subject.

The girl lived too far from the city to attend evening school. She could, however, take a lesson immediately upon finishing work and before going home. I could use Mrs Croft’s husband’s office as a place to give the lesson, and could charge about one shilling and sixpence each time.

So once a week, on an evening when there was no night school, I went to Mr Croft’s office for an hour and gave a lesson to a languid, uninterested girl a little older than myself, while the cleaning staff mopped and dusted round us.

Probably because I was not a very good teacher, the girl quickly lost interest. But I earned enough money to enable me to put an advertisement in the
Liverpool Echo
, and acquire another pupil. A boy of about sixteen, suffering from epilepsy, asked to be taught at home. He was a very different kind of person, eager and enthusiastic. He practised assiduously and, by the time his parents moved with him to a milder climate, he was writing steadily at forty words per minute.

My parents approved of this tutoring, though Mother grumbled because I would not be available to help until late in the evening. I said that I
proposed to keep the one shilling and sixpence a week that I was earning, towards buying lunches and some clothes.

At first, Mother frequently borrowed what I made, by riffling through my handbag and taking the money out. She never considered it necessary to pay it back. Finally, I made a stout little cotton bag to hold the precious pennies, and hung it round my neck by a piece of string. Once a week, I went to Woolworth’s cafeteria at lunch time and bought a threepenny bowl of excellent soup and a roll. It was a treat to look forward to.

Before I thought of keeping my teaching money in a bag round my neck, and had managed to accumulate a few shillings, the shoes I had worn on holiday got to a point where there was so little sole left that I could not keep the pieces of cardboard from falling out. Finding shoes for all the children must have been a nightmare for Mother, and the best she could do for me was to give me her summer sandals which still had a little wear in them.

I woke up one morning to a black city suddenly made into a wonderland by an early fall of snow. I spent my last penny on a tram to work, but still my feet were sopping wet and freezing before I arrived at the office.

I sat down in the office kitchen, took off the
sandals and wiped them with the floor cloth. Then I rubbed the stockinged toes with the same cloth.

The letters for hand delivery that morning were fortunately all for nearby offices, and I was just about to set out with them when the Cashier sent for me.

This forbidding lady always frightened me and she was not in the best of moods. She had a letter to be delivered to the Dental Hospital about a mile and a quarter away. It was still snowing, so I asked if I might take the tram.

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘We haven’t any money to waste on tram fares.’

By the time the local letters had been delivered, the snow was nearly up to my ankles and I was in real pain. Before setting out for the long trudge up the hill to the Dental Hospital, I sat down on an office stairway, took off the sandals and knocked the snow out of them, then brushed off the ice clinging to the stockings. I was weeping, and I wondered if I took the letter back to the office and refused to deliver it, I would be dismissed.

I decided that I probably would lose the job, and I dreaded this more than anything else. So up the hill I went through almost deserted streets, delivered the letter, and came down again at a stumbling run, crying all the way with pain in my feet. I envied Alan
the new pair of shoes that had recently been bought for him. But he also got his feet wet that day.

Back at the office, I stripped off shoes and stockings filled a sink with water and, teetering on one toe, plunged each foot in turn into the hot water. Then I tried to dry them on the roller towel, an impossible feat. So I left a trail of water leading to the kitchen, while I went to dry them on the floor cloth.

As I put on the wet stockings again, I began to laugh shakily at the idea of the Presence surprising me with one foot caught in a roller towel. She was kind enough that, had she known about it, she would probably have been very upset at my being sent so far in such bad weather.

I was still shivering as I ran to make the tea and then fled up and down the eternal stone steps to deliver it, but probably the exercise helped to restore the circulation. I was left with only a very bad cold.

That lunch time, Miriam offered to lend me a portable typewriter for a week, so that I could practise at home. She was a member of the Communist Party and did all she could to attract other members. Another of the stenographers was an equally ardent member of the Roman Catholic Church and also keen on converts. So between the
two of them, I received a lot of attention. Life was such a struggle for me, however, that I had neither time nor strength to consider their arguments and remained totally uncommitted.

The loan of the typewriter was most kindly meant and I wanted to hug Miriam in gratitude. She brought it to the office the next day and I took it home, with some scrap paper, and put it in the empty front room. The children all wanted to try it, but I told them it had to be taken special care of because it was on loan. I joyfully practised far into the night, much to the irritation of Father, who could not sleep because of the steady tapping. I was myself always short of sleep, because I did my homework in the early mornings before the family got up, or late at night after they had gone to bed, provided that there was a penny to put in the gas meter to obtain light, or a stump of candle.

When I had finished my long practice, I returned the typewriter to the safety of the front room, put a penny from my handbag into the gas meter ready for the morning and crept up to bed. I was filled with hope that a good typing speed would help me to get a better job.

The following evening I had to go to night school, so I was too busy to practise on the typewriter. On the third evening, I hurried through my work and then ran into the empty front room to fetch the machine.

There was no typewriter.

Perplexed, I looked in a built-in cupboard by the fireplace, but it held only the gas meter.

Mystified, I went back into the living room, where Mother was sitting by the fire reading the newspaper. Edward and Avril were playing on the coconut matting, squabbling over a few cigarette cards they had found.

‘Mummy, did you move the typewriter from the front room?’

Mother looked up with studied casualness, and
I knew instinctively that something was wrong.

‘Yes, I did,’ she said carefully.

‘Well, where did you put it?’ I asked impatiently. ‘I want to practise.’

‘It is not here.’ Her cultivated voice was without expression.

The fearful apprehension in which I spent most of my life suddenly reached swamping proportions.

‘Mother! What have you done with it? You haven’t sold it, have you?’

‘No.’ She was looking at me with a kind of lazy indifference. I felt as if she had me impaled on a pin and that in the back of her mind she was enjoying the situation. My childish belief that parents always did the best they could for their offspring had long since vanished, and I was very frightened.

‘Mother,’ I whispered. ‘What
have
you done with it? Are you teasing me – joking?’

‘I never joke,’ said Mother, and I realised that that was true.

She got up from her chair with a slow graceful movement, walked past me and into the hall. Through the open door, I watched her leisurely put on her hat and then her coat.

‘Where is it, Mother?’

‘In pawn.’

‘Oh, my God! For how much?’

‘Three pounds.’

I gasped. ‘But I’ve got to return it in a couple of days!’

‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll get it out in due course.’ She turned towards the front door.

‘By Friday?’

‘Oh, I doubt that.’

‘Oh, Mummy!’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ she fumed irritably, as she opened the front door. ‘You must make an excuse to keep it another week. It’s time Avril and Edward were put to bed.’

The cold was thick in my head and my throat was so sore and constricted that I could hardly ask the next question.

‘What shall I do if Miriam says she needs the machine?’

She snapped back angrily, ‘That’s your headache. You should be able to manage something like that.’

I stared speechlessly at her as she stepped out on to the pavement slamming the front door after her. All the horrors that could possibly befall me if the machine was not returned flew through my head. Accusations of theft, of court proceedings, loss of my job. I could tell Father, but what could he do? He had no money to speak of.

There was no one to help me. I wished that the dirty, linoleumed floor would open up and swallow me, so that I did not have to face poor Miriam.

My terror was so great that it blotted out everything else. I failed to hear instructions given to me in the office, and was constantly in trouble for forgetting small errands which the filing clerks pressed upon me. I forgot to take a voluntary worker a cup of tea. I accidentally put a ‘By Hand’ letter into the post box; the firm it was addressed to telephoned to complain about having to pay the postage. I carried a big tea tray carelessly through a doorway and knocked the spouts off two teapots. I stood, appalled, while tea gushed all over the floor, and the Cashier ranted that I would have to pay for new teapots. I nearly laughed at her. At night school, I sat at my desk and saw and heard nothing. The essays and assignments set me remained undone.

‘Whatever is the matter, Helen?’ each teacher, in turn, demanded testily.

Miriam reluctantly agreed to allow me to keep the typewriter for another week.

At home, I moved like a zombie through the usual routine of baby-sitting, shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing. The children were used
to my being quiet, except when embroiled in a fight with my parents or a rare spate with Alan or Fiona, so I doubt if they noticed much change. Father lived in his dream world, went most evenings to the library and on Saturday and Sunday went out for a drink with a colleague. I saw no point in asking Father’s help; it would spark another family row. Only Mother knew, and she made no reply when I pestered her to redeem the machine.

I had never considered that children might love their mothers. I always feared mine.

I think that sometimes, when I was little, Mother felt guilty at pushing me on to Grandma or to Edith, and it was then that she would send for me. She would listen to my reading or give me a sweet and ask me about school. But she did not really hear me when I replied, and I would thankfully rush back to Edith or close my eyes and look forward to the next visit to Grandma’s house.

At the end of the second week, Miriam said she needed the typewriter. Her rich brown crown of shining hair swung round her pixielike face, as she looked up at me with such a friendly grin that I wanted to cry.

‘I’ll bring it in on Monday,’ I promised, my voice strained with the cold and sheer terror.

At home, Father was out, and I had a fearsome
row with Mother to no purpose, and retired to bed crying hysterically.

On Tuesday, Miriam, her expression a little puzzled, inquired again.

I apologised for forgetting to bring the machine in the rush of getting to work. On Thursday and Friday, I muttered the same apologies. She just nodded and looked curiously and unsmilingly at me. Undoubtedly, she had begun to worry about her prized possession.

I was saved from having to face her on Saturday morning. One Saturday each month was free, and I stayed at home and did the washing.

Dressed in an old cotton frock, I was carefully washing my work skirt in the kitchen sink, when there was a polite rap on the iron door knocker.

Mother was cutting bread and margarine for tea, so, with hands still dripping, I went into the empty front room and peeped through the piece of net curtaining we had pinned across the windows.

Standing on the pavement looking up at the decrepit brick house was Miriam.

I flitted back to the kitchen.

‘Mother!’ I whispered in a panic. ‘It’s Miriam! She must have come for the typewriter. What am I going to do?’

Mother looked up from her bread cutting, knife poised in mid-air.

‘Don’t answer the door,’ she said simply.

‘But she must have come all the way over from the north end of town specially.’

‘I said, “don’t answer”.’

I wrung my hands, as I hissed back, ‘But, Mummy …’

She was implacable. ‘Don’t answer.’

I was panting with fright and stared at her helplessly for a minute. Then I said angrily in a normal voice, ‘I
will
answer. I can’t bear it any more. I will tell her exactly what has happened.’ My voice rose in hysteria. ‘I just can’t endure it any longer.’

Fiona, the only other person at home, came in from the lavatory in the back yard. She stared at us in scared apprehension.

Miriam rapped again, louder. I started for the living room through which I would have to pass to reach the front passage.

‘Oh, no, my lady.’ Mother dropped her knife, swiftly slammed the door and put her foot against it. She glared at me. ‘How dare you?’

I stopped. I wanted to strike her to make her move, but it was so alien to me that I could not.

In a fever of fear, I shouted, ‘I will tell them in
the office on Monday and then they will know you stole it.’

Mother went white. ‘You would not dare to tell such a lie,’ she retorted, as the knocker sounded once again.

But I did not care what happened, as long as the intolerable burden was removed from me, and I replied determinedly. ‘It is not a lie and I certainly would dare.’

‘All right. I will speak to Miriam. You remain here.’ She was bristling with anger.

She opened the living room door and marched through to the front of the house.

I clung to the kitchen table, hardly able to stand, while the sound of the front door opening and then Mother’s delicate voice echoed through the house.

Mother and Miriam had not met before, so Miriam first explained who she was and then asked politely if she could have the machine back, because she had some work to do on it. Mother said enthusiastically how delighted she was to meet her and how grateful she was for her kindness to me. I closed my eyes and prayed, wondering what she would say next.

The well-bred voice was explaining that she herself had ventured to use the machine yesterday. Unfortunately, one of the letters had fallen off and
needed soldering on again, so she had taken it up to town to have it repaired.

‘Oh, dear,’ exclaimed Miriam. ‘Where did you take it?’

‘Um, you know that place on Dale Street? I took it there. They said it would be ready on Tuesday.’

Miriam sounded very relieved, as she replied, ‘Oh, that’s not too bad. I could pick it up myself.’

Mother’s voice chimed in with measured charm. ‘Oh, I won’t hear of it. I must pay for it. I will arrange for Helen to bring it into the office on Wednesday. I am so sorry that up to now she has been so delinquent about returning it. I will make sure that this time she does not forget.’

There was a mumble of polite, friendly argument, then good-byes were said, and the front door was softly closed.

I was so shaken that I wanted to vomit.

‘What was that about?’ asked Fiona, as she took her skipping rope off a hook on the back door.

I did not reply for a moment, and then I said wearily, ‘It’s so complicated, Fi, I can’t explain it. But everything is OK now.’