Twopence to Cross the Mersey

Along the pavement men in shabby cloth caps shuffled from litter-bin to litter-bin to sift through the garbage for food and cigarette-ends. In the gutter stood four unemployed Welsh miners, caps held hopefully out while they sang over and over again in sad tenor voices ‘Land of our Fathers’ and ‘All through the Night’.

‘Are you lost?’

I jumped and Avril stopped wailing. A policeman, water running down his cape and helmet, was bending over us, his red face concerned.

‘No, thank you,’ I said primly, and, since he continued to look down at us doubtfully, I added, ‘Mummy is in the waiting-room.’

He smiled in a friendly fashion.

‘Better go back to her, luv,’ he said, ‘Lime Street is no place for a nice young lady – and ye’ll get wet.’

Reluctantly, I retraced my steps to the waiting-room.

Father had been away four hours or more. Baby Edward had not been fed and was crying lustily. Brian and Tony, aged six and five respectively, were playing tag round and round the high, varnished benches. Despite his determined effort at playing, I could see that Brian was afraid. Taut and dark as an Indian, so highly strung that he suffered constantly from nightmares, his little hands were clenched tight and his heart-shaped face was grim. Tony was playing the game with his usual cool care, watching his elder brother closely so as to anticipate every move he made. His mind seemed to work with such intelligence that it was as if he had been born with a brain already mature and furnished with knowledge. Sometimes when I stroked his silky, flaxen head I was almost unnerved by the idea of the latent power beneath my hand.

Fiona, aged nine, was still sitting silently by my mother, nursing her favourite doll, her huge, pale-blue eyes wide with dumb fear. We all loved Fiona with unquestioning devotion. She never had tantrums as Avril and I did; she never seemed to get dirty or forget her table manners. I always had a book in my hand, hated to miss school and loved an argument; Fiona adored her large doll family, accepted school but learned little. She was our placid refuge when we had been spanked, which was not infrequently, but now she needed asylum.

Mother lay on the stretcher, her eyes closed, her face ethereally white. An empty teacup on the bench beside her spoke of the kindness of the lavatory attendant, who stood leaning against her cupboard door, smoking a cigarette and regarding us curiously. There was no one else in the waiting-room.

None of us had eaten since breakfast, a meal of toast hastily consumed, and now it was after four o’clock. I knew that my mother had no money in her handbag, so it was no good offering to go and buy something to eat from the station restaurant.

I went up to my mother. A tear lay on her cheek.

‘Are you all right, Mummy?’

‘Yes, dear. I got up and walked for a few moments a little while ago.’

‘You’ll soon be better, Mummy?’

‘Yes – yes, I have to be.’

I picked Edward up from beside her and, holding him against my shoulder, tried to stop his healthy bellows for food by walking up and down with him and patting his tiny back.

Alan had been kneeling on a bench by the window, watching the horses and drays in the station yard. Now he came and walked with me. We did not talk; both our hearts were too heavy.

I knew that Mother had been ill after Edward was born and had been in hospital until Christmas Eve, a scant eight days ago. I realized, with a sense of shock, that Christmas and New Year had passed uncelebrated, lost in a foggy nightmare of quarrels, recrimination and general disorder in the house. Mother had discharged herself from hospital, before the doctors thought she should, so that we could come to Liverpool.

As I clucked sympathetically at Edward, it seemed madness to me to embark on such a journey. I could not understand why the moneylender could not wait a few days more before taking legal action, so that Mother could get a little stronger before she moved. I had no conception of the panic gripping my parents, a panic which had made them lose completely any sense of proportion. They had been brought up in a little world of moneyed people, insulated by their private means from any real difficulties or hardships. When there was no money, they had no idea what to do, beyond trying to obtain a ‘suitable’ position. A moneylender was, to them, a ruthless Scrooge, and I do not think that it occurred to them that if he had been apprised of Mother’s illness he might have had a little compassion. And so they compounded their troubles to an unnecessary degree.

My relief was overwhelming when my father, soaking wet, came into the waiting-room, with a muttered apology to the attendant. He went straight to my mother. She opened her eyes and surveyed him sullenly.

‘I have obtained two rooms. Not very good. Just for a week.’ He sounded breathless and on edge. ‘Had to pay in advance. Walked back. I’m going to get a cab.’

My mother closed her eyes, and my heart sank. They were trying not to talk to one another again.

Father vanished again into the vast cavern of the station, and Mother told me to help the boys get their overcoats on.

A few minutes later, Mother was carried on the stretcher with the aid of a porter to a taxi-cab, the children trailing behind and the baby and Avril still crying. The procession caused some interest in the station, and I remember my face burning with embarrassment under the shadow of my velour school hat. Well-bred people, I had had it drummed into me, did not draw attention to themselves.

Mother crawled into the cab, and the porter folded up the stretcher, which belonged to the railway company. Somehow we all squeezed into the taxi, a hungry, forlorn group too tired to talk.

Three (#u89ca00d6-5177-599c-b11c-dc87a485b863)

A stout, untidy blonde opened the door to us. A suffocating odour of unwashed bodies, old cooking and cats rolled over us. The woman beamed at us, however, and welcomed Father like an old friend. She helped him assist Mother into a room so shabby and so dirty that I could honestly say that I had never seen anything like it before. Next to it was a bedroom with two double beds crammed into it. There were no sheets or pillow-cases, just greasy pillows and grey blankets.

Mother sank on to a broken settee, while our landlady looked us over.

‘You can keep coal out back and use t’ kitchen and bathroom. There’s eight other tenants upstairs and me and me sons on the top floor, so keep as quiet as yer can.’ Her battered face showed pity. ‘Ah’ll give yer enough coal to start a fire. Coalman’ll be along the street this afternoon and you can get some then.’

The room was very cold and Mother looked round it disdainfully, but she said, ‘Thank you’ in response to this offer of fuel.

‘Come on, luv,’ the landlady addressed me. ‘There’s a booket in that cupboard. We’ll fill it and you can bring it back.’

After a trip through linoleumed passages and a littered, stinking kitchen to a coal-house by the back door, I staggered back with a bucket of coal, some wood chips and a newspaper. After much anxious effort, Father got a fire going. It was the first time he had ever made a fire.

Tony and Brian, usually the best of friends, had been bickering irritably for some time, and they now turned on Alan, who was himself fretful with hunger. Furiously, he cuffed the younger boys and made them cry.

Father snapped at him to stop.

Alan, usually so cheerful, stopped, and said heavily, ‘When shall we be able to have something to eat?’

‘How much money have you?’ asked Mother. She had sat silently staring into space, while we had divested ourselves of our coats and Father had lit the fire.

Father went through his pockets, and laid the results of his search on the settee, so that we could see the small pile of coins in the light of the bare electric bulb hanging from the ceiling.

‘Two and ninepence,’ he announced helplessly.

Thirty-three precious pennies would buy quite a lot in those days, though they would not last long in a family the size of ours.

In a dull monotone, Mother upbraided him bitterly about the mess he had got us all into, and Father snarled back that she had never been any help to him. Finally, Edward’s wailing drew his attention to more immediate concerns, and he said, ‘There is a little corner shop down the road. We could at least get some milk for Edward.’

‘And for me,’ said Avril, thrusting her small chin aggressively forward.

‘Be quiet, Avril,’ I hissed, afraid that my parents would start to quarrel again.

‘Won’t,’ replied Avril defiantly, but she did keep quiet thereafter.

Finally, it was decided that since Father was already wet through he might as well get a bit more wet by going out to the shop and buying all the food he could for the money he had.

When he had departed, the children crouched around the miserable fire, and Mother managed to change Edward’s nappy. We had only three nappies with us, and the baby had not been changed since we had set out that morning. He was, therefore, in a disgusting condition. Mother gave me the nappy she had removed, told me to find the bathroom, wash the dirty garment and bring it back to dry by the fire. I wandered off, sick and dejected, and did the best I could with cold water and no soap in a Victorian bathroom which stank of half a century of neglect.

Afterwards, Alan and I went to the kitchen, where a few dust-covered dishes were strewn along open shelves. We collected them and washed them under the only tap and, with frozen fingers, carried them back to our room. With nervous and uncertain gestures, we laid them on the table, which was covered with torn, stained oilcloth. We also had hopefully brought with us a saucepan and a frying-pan, since there was no stove in the kitchen on which to cook.

Our spirits rose when Father returned with milk, two loaves of bread, margarine, tea, sugar and a small packet of sausages. He had also bought a twopenny packet of Woodbines. With cigarettes in their mouths, our parents became a little more civil to each other.

Under Mother’s instructions, I made a feed for Edward and then fed him: he was ravenous and took the whole small bottleful. Father cooked sausages on the smoking fire, found a knife in the kitchen and cut the bread and spread it with margarine. We sat around on whatever we could find and ate a sausage apiece in our fingers. He managed to boil a pan of water and make tea in it. Mother drank much and ate little, refusing a sausage which was happily snatched up by Avril. Father finally ate, and only afterwards I realized that he had not had a sausage, and I felt a crushing sense of guilt about it.

Our landlady called down the stairs to say that she could hear the coalman coming, and my father looked aghast. The coal donated by our landlady was already nearly consumed and we had exactly a penny left. We could do nothing, and sat hopelessly silent, as the shout of ‘Coal, coal, one and nine a hundredweight’ faded down the street.