Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  Mrs. Foster, declaring that she had never had a complaint before, produced half a can of powder to repel the bugs. It did have some temporary effect, but the pests were coming in fi-om the house next door and were soon back. We had to learn to live with them, just as we soon had to learn to live with head lice which the children picked up in school.

  I went through each child's clothing before it set off for school, hoping to save them the humiliation of being labeled verminous; they were already cowed enough.

  The days dragged by, and both Mother and I became stronger, despite our poor diet of white bread, potatoes, and tea. Though Mother's physical health was improving, she seemed to withdraw further and fiirther away from us. It Wiis as if she could not bear to face our miserable existence. She tried very hiird to appear normal and calm, but attacks of hopeless hysteria descended on her without warning, and she would rage and weep over some trifle. We were iill still at the age when we believed that grown-ups knew what they were about and had sensible reasons for all that they did, and in consequence we were thrown into red fright each time one of these scenes occurred.

  I learned to do practically everything for the baby, and when my legs were steady enough, I borrowed Mother's overcoat and took Edward and Avril down to the street for fresh air.

  In Victorian times the street had been quite a fashionable one, and each house had a flight of steps up to its front door, framed with heavy iron railings. Women sat on the steps or stood in groups gossiping. They were mostly of the laboring class, dressing in dull grays and blacks, some with flowered aprons and most of them wearing black shawls as protection against the cold wind. Their hair either hung in greasy confusion to their shoulders or was braided and pinned up in Victorian fashions. Their teeth, when they smiled at Edward and Avril, were uniformly bad or nonexistent. I passed them shyly without speaking, carrying Edward in my arms.

  A Spanish woman was seated on the steps of the next-door house, watching my promenade with merry black eyes. Finally, she called me to her.

  "Can I see your baby? " she asked in a throaty voice.

  Obediently I brought Edward to her and lowered him so that she could see his sleepy face. She made delighted clucking sounds at him.

  "You not have pram?" she asked.

  "No."

  She looked at me carefully, weighing me up. "Not your baby?"

  "Of course he's my baby. He's my brother."

  My innocence nonplussed her for a moment. Then she laughed and pinched my cheek. "So! He is little brother."

  "Yes. Mummy's ill," I volunteered, warmed by her cheerfulness.

  "I know. Mrs. Foster tell me. "

  She put her finger into Edward's hand. He promptly clutched it, and she sighed gustily.

  "I got old pram. You have it. My baby big boy now. No more babies for me. You wait. "

  She got up and tripped down the steps and into the basement door, and I waited quietly, rocking Edward in my arms under the approving glances of her neighbors.

  The best that could be said about that pram was that it had four wheels. Its lining was torn and gray with dirt; its wheels had

  no tires; the ribs of its hood stood out as if it was hungry and its cover had no many cracks in it that it looked Hke a map of Europe. When it was moved, it squeaked steadily in protest. It was, however, to be my constant companion for years, and the cover had the virtue that it was firm enough to support an open book, so that I could read as I trudged along.

  I was immensely grateful to my new friend, and I happily laid the swaddled Edward into his new carriage. Cautiously I pulled it up the fi-ont steps of Mrs. Foster's house, then up the three double flights of stairs to our room. Bumpety-bump it went on each stair, and bumpety-bump went the patient Edward inside it. Mrs. Foster's brother, Mr. Ferris, infuriated by the regular pounding on the stairs, burst out of his room.

  "For God Almighty's sake be quiet!" he shouted up. "I can't concentrate. "

  I did not answer him. I was triumphant at having found something for Edward to sleep in and to wheel him out in.

  Mother was lying down on the bed, but at the sound of the pram's appalling squeak in the room, she sat up.

  "Good heavens!" she exclaimed. "Where did you get that ghastly chariot?"

  I explained, as I took Edward out of it.

  "We can't put him in a thing like that," Mother said.

  "Why not?" I asked. "It gives him a place to sleep—you might be able to sleep better yourself, if he wasn't in the same bed as you."

  Mother nodded acceptance, her face mirroring the hopelessness which recent events had made part of her character.

  So the Chariot became part of Edward's and my life and squeaked its way painfially through miles and miles of black Liverpool streets. Sometimes I think there must still be two little ghosts and a squeak floating gently through Princes Park, because we went there so often.

  FOUR

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  Mother still had in the stitches from her operation. The incision was now healed and should really have been examined by a surgeon some time back. We considered getting the stitches out ourselves, but we had no scissors, and Father was afraid to risk cutting them with his blunt razor. It was decided, therefore, that next time Father drew our allowance. Mother would have to see a doctor, no matter what we had to go without.

  Two mysterious middle-aged ladies, who went out only in the evening, and two married couples lived on the floor below us. I was dispatched to inquire from one of the married couples the name of a doctor.

  A man in mechanic's overalls answered my knock. He was undersized and very thin, his hair slicked back from a long, narrow face. Tired, hazel eyes regarded me kindly.

  "What do you want, luv?"

  "My father sent me down to ask if you know where we could find a doctor around here. "

  "Somebody took ill, luv?" His voice was much more alert.

  "No, thank you. Mummy was very ill before we came here, and now she must see a doctor—to have her stitches removed. '

  "Oh, ay. Just a minute, ducks. Til ask the wife."

  He left me standing at the open door, while he retreated into the room. I caught a glimpse of a stoutish blonde girl ladling stew out of a saucepan. The smell of it was unbelievably good.

  They both came to the door. "There's the parish doctor," the blonde girl said doubtfrilly. "But none of us goes to im unless we're dying. Tell yer dad that Dr. Dent around the comer by the grocery shop is proper kind. He wouldn't charge you much—but you'd better take half a crown, in case."

  I thanked her and was just about to turn and run back upstairs, when she put her hand in her pocket and brought out a toffee. " ere yer are, luv. Have a toffee."

  I had not tasted a sweet since I had arrived in Liverpool, and I accepted the gift deUghtedly and rushed up the stairs with unseemly exuberance.

  is surgery hours are seven to nine," she called up after me.

  Father normally went to the library in the evening to read the Liverpool Echo and write replies to advertisements for office jobs, so I was told to accompany Mother to the doctor's surgery.

  Mother washed herself as best she could with a piece of rag dipped into cold water, and made sure she had no vermin on her. I did the same and also combed my hair; we had only one small pocket comb between us and were always afraid of breaking it; consequently, I hardly ever combed my straggling locks. Since my overcoat was still in pawn, I borrowed Fiona's.

  For the first time since she had arrived. Mother made the long trip downstairs. The night was clear and frosty, and she paused at the top of the front steps to take a big breath of fresh air; it smelled good after the foul atmosphere of the house. Slowly we proceeded down the street, to a cross street of smaller houses and shops. The doctor's front door led straight off*the street, except for two small steps. We went in.

  We found ourselves in a narrow hall. To our right was a door slightly ajar, marked "Wai
ting Room." This proved to be packed with people, sitting on chairs ranged around the walls of the room; the center was occupied by a large Victorian dining table, and a gas fire, turned low, stood in front of a black, iron fireplace. On the varnished mantelpiece, two cast-iron Greek warriors kept guard.

  A whisper of conversation ceased as we entered, and all eyes regarded us. While we hesitated, a huge man in an old mackintosh got up off^his chair and offered it to Mother, who, by this time, was looking very white.

  "Thank you, " she said and sat down gratefully.

  The man grinned sheepishly, fingering a greasy cap. I stood close to Mother, a little fiightened. This was all so diffisrent from the chintz-clad sitting room of our old doctor and the ready welcome of his smart little wife.

  At the other end of the room was another door, and at the sound of a buzzer people went in and out of it. Presumably the doctor was in the next room. We sat and sat until we were the last people in the waiting room, and the front door was closed and

  locked by an elderly woman. When the buzzer rang again, Mother rose and went in to see the doctor, and I was left alone.

  I got up and went to stand by the gas fire. The unaccustomed warmth was delicious and wrapped itself around me in a comfortable blanket of heat. I gazed at the iron Greek soldiers on the mantelpiece and smiled. My grandmother had such a pair on her kitchen mantelpiece in her beautifiil little house on the other side of the Mersey. The tears sprang to my eyes as I remembered it.

  How long would it be, I wondered, before I had twopence to take the ferry across the Mersey and visit her? My parents never mentioned her, and she did not write to me. Probably she did not even know where I was. I wondered if I dared write to her without my parents' permission. Impatiently I wiped away the tears. Paper and stamps cost money, too, you stupid, I told myself.

  The doctor was taking a long time over Mother's stitches. If he could make her quite well, she could look after the children, and I could go back to school. And when I'd finished school, I could find work.

  Just before my seventh birthday, an accident had laid me up for some months, and during my convalescence, I had discovered a natural ability for drawing. This had led to an ambition to design clothes for the theater.

  As I gazed into the doctor's miserable gas fire, I saw gorgeous imaginary figures in clothes designed by me tripping and leaping across an imaginary stage. If only the doctor would make Mother well, I would study and draw and practice and fill the stage of the Liverpool Empire with such glamour as its old walls had never seen before.

  There was a click as the doctor opened his surgery door for Mother and bowed her out, and she smiled her delicate, beguiling smile at him.

  "What did he say? " I asked anxiously as I held Mother's arm to steady her. We walked slowly down the empty street for a little way before Mother answered.

  "He said I should have gone to the outpatients department of a hospital."

  "Did he take the stitches out?"

  "Yes, he took them out—he's a surgeon as well as a physician."

  In a trembling voice I asked another question, one with selfish intent. Behind it was my despair at the drudgery I was facing and my hopes that if I was allowed to go to school I might find a way out from being forever the unpaid, unthanked housekeeper for our poverty-stricken family.

  "Will you be all right?" I asked. "Will you get better?"

  "He thinks I will, if I go to work—in the open air."

  "Work?" I was truly astonished.

  At my query she looked down at me, but there was no affection, no real interest in her gaze or in her voice as she answered, "Yes. Work."

  The idea that work could cure someone who had been ill was too difficult for me to understand. I knew nothing of mental illness, and I had no comprehension of the mental stress under which my poor mother labored. The doctor had noted it, though.

  "You can't," I said desperately. "There's Edward—and Avril—and me—I haven't got my diploma yet. I have to go back to school."

  "We shall see, " she said thoughtfully.

  My stomach clenched in a deadly nervous pain. In a perceptive flash I saw myself forever at home, the uneducated daughter retained to help in the house—and there were still some of these when I was a child—gray, uninteresting, the butt of everyone's ill temper, without money of my own, entirely dependent upon the goodwill of the rest of the family. I saw myself forever struggling with the care of Edward, with Avril's tantrums and the boys' fights, with Mr. Parish's miserable pittance. I realized that the daughter who did not have to go to school or to work would be the last one clothed, the last one fed.

  I burst into tears, my hopes shattered. "Oh no, Mummy!" I wailed. "I want to go to school! I want to be like other girls!"

  "Be quiet," said Mother sharply. "You are making an exhibition of yourself. "

  I continued to weep—but quietly. Little ladies did not make exhibitions of themselves in public.

  "You have to learn that you cannot have everything you want. The family must come first. "

  Immediately on arriving home, I threw a tantrum which left even

  Avril awed. I stamped, I cried, I shouted that I would go to school. Twelve and a half was too young to have to leave. I would not stay at home and look after babies.

  My bewildered father, who did not know the cause of my rage, shouted at me above the storm to be quiet. Mother shouted back at him. Fiona and Tony, terrified by the noise, wept steadily in a corner, while Alan told everyone to shut up. Brian took refiage halfvay up the attic stairs and watched through the banister. Baby Edward cried for his forgotten bottle. A voice fi*om below yelled up to us, "Shut that bloody racket, can't yer!"

  As my anger gave way to hopeless tears. Father gradually picked up the story and said he thought the doctor's idea of Mother's going to work was an excellent one and that it would probably be for only a little while. When I continued to weep passionately, he slapped me across the buttocks and told me to go into the bedroom until I could behave in a civilized manner.

  I lay face down on the bed until I could not stand the stench of it anymore. The nervous strain under which the children labored in their cold, hungry, new world was so great that Brian, Tony, and Avril had become incontinent at night, and Edward had no rubber undersheet to help him. So the already disgusting beds were invariably wet somewhere on their surface.

  Emerging finally in sulky silence and with bloodshot eyes, I found Edward still whimpering disconsolately, but the children were silently getting themselves ready for bed, by taking oflPtheir outer clothes. My parents were arguing heatedly about what kind of occupation my mother could undertake.

  Still sniffing, I made a bottle for Edward with the last of the baby food, and since I was still filled with resentment at my parents, I took him outside and sat down on the top stair and fed him.

  The smell of the overcrowded, verminous house, its filthy, overused bathroom and the efforts of nine diffisrent cooks combined with Edward's rancid odor was almost overpowering, and I put my cheek against his scurfy little head and wept again.

  During the next few days my mother went out each afternoon for a walk to strengthen her legs, and then one day she sponged her dress and pressed it with an iron borrowed from Miss Sinford, the benevolent old lady on the ground floor, wiped her shoes over

  with a wet cloth, and washed herself down with a rag and cold water. She then made up her face with the last of her makeup and went out without saying where she was going.

  As she went down the stairs, I realized for the first time how much my mother had changed. She had been considered beautiful and vivacious and had always had a court of young men who called upon her—there were still some gentlemen who lived on private incomes in those days and who had time to take tea with a pretty woman—but now her dress hung loosely on her, her face was haggard and lined, her shining black hair had grown long and straggling. The polished ovals of her nails were ruined by her having to bite them to shorten them, as we all ha
d to do, because we had no scissors. How much had Father changed? I wondered. And the children? And me?

  Avril was howling because she could not go out too, and I decided that I might create a diversion by washing her and washing Edward.

  We had a fire that day, a luxury we fi-equently had to forgo despite the icy February weather, so I went down to the bathroom with our kettle and only saucepan, filled them with water, brought them upstairs, and set them on the fire. Carrying Edward on my hip, I took the handleless coal bucket down to the basement area, and washed the coal dust out of the bucket as thoroughly as I could under a tap.

  Watched by a fascinated Avril, I set the bucket in front of the fire, put the warm water in it, stripped a protesting Edward and washed him from head to heel. This was the first time he had had a complete bath since we had left home, and I found that he had numerous bug bites and his little back was sore where the urine had not been properly washed ofi^him.

  I had no change of clothing for him, but I pinned on a piece of the rag the priest had given us as a rough diaper and laid his blanket over him while I dealt with Avril.

  Fortunately, Avril thought it was a wonderful game and submitted to being rubbed all over with a wet cloth. Dirt was ingrained in her skin and I could not get her completely clean without soap. I had an uneasy feeling that her fine golden hair was verminous, and certainly she had scurf around her forehead.

  I sighed as I slicked the water off her. She, like Mother, had

  changed. She had been a pudgy child with rosy cheeks; now she looked wan, her ribs showed, and her stomach stuck out too much.

  While I scrubbed the children. Father was stuck in one of his everlasting queues. He worked very hard at being unemployed. He spent most of two days a week walking to the employment exchange, standing in a long queue, signing on as being available for work, walking back up the hill, pausing outside the old Philharmonic Hall to read the concert notices with wistful attention, then on past the hospital and through an endless maze of decaying houses to our comfortless eyrie. He was not so badly off as dock laborers, he told us. They had to sign on for work twice a day.