The Complete Helen Forrester 4-Book Memoir: Twopence to Cross the Mersey, Liverpool Miss, By the Waters of Liverpool, Lime Street at Two

‘There’s not likely to be night school on Saturday afternoon, now is there? You’ll have to come on Monday night’ And he started to lower the window.

I did not move. I wanted to ask what time I should come.

He threw the window up again impatiently.

‘Now get outta here! We don’t want the likes of you hanging around. Get out!’

I got out, and stood in the street quivering with mortification.

Avril, looking like a pocket-sized thundercloud, stamped her foot and said, ‘Nasty old man! I don’t like him.’

I laughed a little weakly, and looked again at the poster. It said the classes were from 7.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.

My mind made up, I went home determined not to be put off by nasty old men.

Father was sitting by the empty fireplace, reading War and Peace. Without preamble, I mentioned the evening school to him.

He hardly seemed to hear me, and I busied myself making a bit of fire to boil a panful of water for tea.

‘Daddy?’ I queried again.

At last he said, ‘You cannot go to evening school.’

‘But, Daddy, why not?’ I protested. ‘Fiona and you could watch Avril, and I could put Edward to bed before I went. Tony and Brian will go to bed whenever you or Mother tell them.’

His face was wooden, though at the same time sad.

‘If you go to evening school, my dear, it will be necessary to state your age and other details. You are not yet fourteen and the school inspectors would order you back to day school.’

‘Well, I can’t see why I can’t go to either day school or evening school,’ I said with all the irritating belligerence of a thirteen-year-old. ‘Why can’t Mother look after Edward and Avril, while I go to school? She’s much better now.’

‘Mother still isn’t fit, you know that. She is doing her very best.’ He stopped. The marriage had been far from happy; yet they had stayed together and his anxiety about Mother was based on genuine respect for her. ‘Your mother is just able to manage if she goes out into the fresh air or works among adults,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know what might happen to her if she was confined with a whining baby.’

‘He doesn’t whine,’ I exclaimed angrily. ‘And I nearly go mad trying to make this beastly fire and buy us enough to eat, and … and … ’ I burst into loud crying.

That was the beginning of a tremendous family row, in which everyone joined.

Alan tried to soothe me. ‘You could go back to school when Edward’s bigger,’ he said hopefully.

‘Once I am fourteen the school won’t take me back,’ I screamed in an abandonment of rage.

‘Stop making an exhibition of yourself,’ said Father. ‘When I get a job, you will be able to go to finishing school.’

I looked at him scornfully. French finishing schools were expensive and seemed far removed from the realities of life in Liverpool.

Fiona began to cry. ‘Don’t be cross with Helen, Daddy.’

‘Oh, shut up, Fiona,’ I snarled.

‘I want my tea,’ demanded Avril.

I slapped her.

She immediately began to bellow like a lovesick moose.

This brought Tony hotly to her defence and a smart rebuke to me from Father.

Into the uproar came Mother, weary and hungry.

‘What is the matter?’ she asked, putting down her battered handbag.

‘Helen wants to go to evening school and I have told her that it is impractical, because the school inspectors would pick her up as being young enough for day school.’

‘Well, why can’t I go to day school?’

Mother’s lips began to tremble. ‘You are needed at home, dear.’

‘No, I am not. You can very well look after the children.’

‘I have to go to work. The doctor recommended it. And I am the most likely one to get work.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. Thirteen-year-olds can be very cruel.

‘The general welfare of the family demands that you stay home.’

‘I won’t!’

Mother suddenly started to cry hysterically, shrieking that it was too much and I was a hard-hearted, thankless daughter.

‘I have nothing to be thankful for,’ I retorted bitterly.

‘Helen, Helen, don’t!’ Fiona whispered, her eyes wide and terrified, as she clutched my arm. Alan, from across the room, implored me silently.

The fight went out of me. I turned to Fiona and let her lead me back to our newspaper bed. There, crouched together with my head on her shoulder, I wept myself to exhaustion. I had lost my Waterloo.

By mid-May, Fiona seemed well enough to go back to school. She was by nature placid to the point of apathy, and her gentle pliability made her popular at school. At home, she received no attention and, without playthings, she began to get bored and to ask to be allowed to return to the more lively world of school. My parents had not mentioned school to her. They went out on their various rounds of employment agencies, libraries, etc., and seemed to have forgotten her. I, therefore, prepared her for school one morning as best I could.

At the last moment she balked.

‘I feel shy,’ she said, standing uneasily in the dark hall and rubbing one foot against the other. ‘And I haven’t got twopence for the fee. Alan should have waited for me.’

Impatiently I thrust twopence into her hand from the daily shilling I received to buy food. But still she would not move and stood biting her nails and staring anxiously through the glass door at the busy street.

‘Come with me,’ she demanded.

In a home as empty as ours, there was little for me to do, so I put Edward and Avril into the Chariot and together we walked the four blocks to school.

The school was a fine, stone building, matching architecturally the adjoining church and presbytery. A high, iron railing surrounded the playground, and we paused by the gate to see if we could find one of Fiona’s playmates, so that she would not feel so lonely when going into school.