Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  I stared after them dumbly. They had recognized me. I knew they had. Then why had they not stopped and spoken to me?

  A gentleman told me irritably to get out of the way, and I became aware that the Chariot and I were blocking the pavement. Still dumbfounded, I turned the pram homeward and slowly pushed it up the hill, gazing vacantly before me.

  Coming toward me, amid the well-dressed shoppers, was an

  apparition. A very thin thing draped in an indescribably dirty woolen garment which flapped hopelessly, hair which hung in rat's tails over a wraithlike gray face, thin legs partially encased in black stockings torn at the knees, flapping, broken canvas covering the feet. This thing was attached to another one which rolled drunkenly along on four bent wheels.

  I stared with dawning horror. I was looking at myself in a dress-shop window.

  It was a moment of terrifying revelation, and I started to run away from myself, pushing the pram recklessly through groups of irate pedestrians. Every instinct demanded that I run away and hide, and for a few minutes my feet were winged. Halfway up the hilK however, undernourishment had its say, and I sank exhausted on the steps of a church, while Avril giggled contentedly in the pram after her rapid transit up the street.

  I was disgusted with myself. I felt I could have done more for myself. I was old enough to know that I should wash; at least cold water was available. And if I could wash garments for the children, I could have washed some of my own.

  I realized, with some astonishment, that I had always been told what to do. The lives of children then were strictly regulated by domestics, and parents and teachers. I washed when told to wash, went to school when told to go, got out of my playthings when permission was given. Disobedience was a crime. I don't think that I had ever had an original thought until I had been plunged into this queer life in Liverpool.

  Now, sitting on the blackened stone steps of the church, I realized that neither Father nor Mother was particularly interested in me. With all the bitterness and unreasonableness of a budding teenager, I saw myself as a convenient tool of my parents, my only reason for existence that I could take the children ofi^their hands.

  I fastened the two remaining buttons of my cardigan, got up, and wheeled the Chariot slowly up the hill. For the first time, I tried to think constructively, to devise ways in which the family might get out of the morass in which it was floundering. But my experience was too limited and my mind too dulled, for me to come up with a possible solution.

  I cried openly as I trudged along, my glasses sliding slowly

  down my nose, the tears making white rivers in my gray face.

  When my parents came home that evening, I again brought up the question of my going to school. But when I suggested that I would have to complete my education before I cold hope to go to work in the future, Mother simply dismissed me by saying, "Don't be absurd. Go and put Avril to bed." Father laughed and added, "I hope no daughter of mine will ever have to go to work."

  Father's kindly meant remark startled me. Even a young girl like myself knew that times were changing, and more and more women were entering the labor force. Lancashire had, in addition, a long tradition of women working, and the only future I could visualize as holding an iota of happiness for myself was one which contained a career.

  "But. . ." I began.

  "That is enough, Helen. Do as you are told."

  And Helen did as she was told.

  With the exception of a weekly visit from an officer of the public-assistance committee, which consisted of a quick counting of heads and a few questions snapped at my parents, we had no visitors. I was, therefore, surprised when I arrived home one day to find a well-dressed gentleman, asking Miss Sinford where he could find my father.

  Miss Sinford saw me hauling the Chariot up the steps and said, "Child, take this gentleman to your father," and vanished into her room.

  The gentleman regarded me with obvious repulsion, but insisted on helping me up the stairs with the Chariot, which meant that Edward sailed up still sleeping and Avril had a wonderful ride.

  Father was at home. He immediately oflPered his chair to the strange gentleman, who sat down reluctantly as he surveyed the smelly room. His rubicund face, plump figure, and well-tailored clothes suggested a successful businessman.

  He cleared his throat, rubbed his well-shaven chin, and said hesitantly, "I—er—we served in the same regiment—you wrote to our commanding officer. I was asked to call on you."

  Hope lighted up my father's face, and we children stood, tense and silent, around him.

  "I am authorized to make you a grant of five pounds from our regimental fiind, if conditions seem to warrant it. "

  He looked around again at the empty fireplace and the ragged, gaunt children and sighed heavily.

  Father nodded.

  "Could you show me your discharge papers?"

  "Yes, indeed I can."

  He took an old business envelope from the top of the bookcase and, from among a pile of birth certificates, finally extracted the precious papers.

  The gentleman examined them. "You were a private?"

  "Yes."

  "I thought you were a lieutenant."

  "I was. I got tired of guarding the East Coast, so I resigned my commission and remustered as a private—and was sent to Russia."

  The gentleman looked very impressed. "Were you? That was no picnic."

  They went on to discuss the Russian campaign for a few minutes, while Alan's hands were clenched together as if in supplication.

  Five whole pounds! Would he give it?

  He smiled and drew out his wallet, and the sound of a tremendous sigh of relief went through the children. Brian shouted, "Hooray" and went bounding around the room. We all laughed hysterically and escorted our bountiful visitor afiection-ately down the stairs.

  Mother came home and was told the good news, and it was wonderfiil to me to see some of the tenseness go out of her.

  Alan and I were immediately despatched to buy a vast quantity offish and chips and peas and milk, and we spent a blissfijl ten minutes of anticipation, standing in the steam of the fish-and-chip shop, while the fish sizzled in a great vat of boiling fat.

  A fat, sharp-eyed little man, who kept a newspaper and tobacco shop nearby, heard me give a big order to the shopkeeper.

  "Ain't you the kids from Number Twelve? " he asked.

  "Yes, " replied Alan.

  "Got a lot of money to throw around tonight? "

  "A man from Daddy's regiment gave us five pounds," said Alan frankly.

  The man's eyes gleamed malevolendy. "Eeee! 'e did, did 'e. Well, yer can tell yer Dad fra' me that I'll be coming over temight. Yea, temight!"

  That last word came out like a small explosion and was obviously a threat.

  Alan whitened visibly, though he answered quite steadily, "I'll tell Daddy."

  We picked up the two big newspaper parcels of food, paid for them with a pound note, grabbed our change, and ran through the gloomy, gaslit streets as if pursued by ghosts. We knew instinctively what the newspaper-shop man was. He was a Creditor!

  "Do you think he'll take our five pounds?" I panted to Alan.

  "Not all of it, " said Alan defiantly. "We'll have finished the fish and chips before he gets to our house. Let's get the milk quickly."

  Not even the colossal row which immediately broke out between my parents when we told them about the Creditor could dim the pleasure of eating, really eating, once more. My fish and chips and peas were cold by the time I had fed Edward and got the children settled at their meal, but they still tasted like a meal fit for a king.

  "Well, where did you think I got the cigarettes fi*om?" asked Father, his teeth deep in fish.

  "I never considered the matter," said Mother haughtily.

  I had been so used to seeing my parents smoke that it had never struck me to question the source of their supply of cigarettes.

  "How did you imagine you would pay for them?" she inquired.
>
  "I didn't know. I had to have a smoke. You smoked them, too!"

  Mother began to cry, while Father phlegmatically started to gnaw at another piece offish.

  "I don't know how you persuaded him to trust you," she sniffed unhappily.

  I knew how he had obtained credit—good Oxford accent. A

  man who spoke as Father did would be trusted by working-class people; they would be sure in their minds that a man who was so well spoken and refined would have the means to pay, no matter how shabby he looked.

  At that moment there was a knock on the door of the room, and a fearful silence fell upon us all.

  Trying not to tremble, I opened the door to reveal our Creditor.

  "I want me money," he said grimly.

  "How much?" asked Father, licking his fingers as he got up.

  "You know! Thirty-seven and sixpence—and I want it all. Pack o' bloody liars, the lot o' ye," and he glared around the room.

  "Here," said Father, counting out the money, "and get out before I throw you out for swearing in fi-ont of a lady."

  The little man carefully pocketed the money. "Lady!" he sneered. "Ha."

  Father was very neatly made, though by no means tall. His face went red, and he charged straight at the offender, who shot down the stairs to safety, then shook his fist and left.

  Mother had sat silent through the exchange. Alan and I looked at each other. I could see his visions of a new pair of socks slowly fading away. Thirty-seven and sixpence was more than a quarter of the regiment's grant. My own dreams of a broom to sweep with and piles and piles of soap lay shattered.

  Fiona whimpered and ran to me, and made me take a fiirther step toward growing up.

  I put my arms around her and said, with reassuring cheerfulness, "Daddy still has lots of money left, haven't you, Daddy? We'll be able to have fish and chips again tomorrow, won't we? "

  Father had come back into the room and was standing in front of the fireplace. He caught his cue.

  "Of course, Fiona, of course we will. Don't worry, little girl. Fish and chips tomorrow."

  Brian suddenly vomited. It seemed to me the worst possible waste of good fish and chips.

  Mother went to town on a shopping expedition the following morning, while Edward, Avril, and I went to the pawnbroker's to redeem my overcoat.

  The pawnbroker hailed his blue-eyed duck with pleasure, when I entered the dark, back part of his shop, pawn ticket in hand.

  He smiled at us both. "Sit the little girl up on the counter, while I deal with these ladies," he told me cheerfully.

  I lifted Avril on to the high counter.

  The counter was divided up into three by means of partitions, so as to give people a little privacy in their transactions, and in the next cubicle were a couple of Irish women in black shawls and white aprons. They had each brought their husband's best suit to pawn, since both men had got ships and gone to sea.

  "Himself sailed last night, and bloody good riddance to him, I say. "

  A bundled-up suit was pushed over the counter.

  "Will you get an allotment?" asked the pawnbroker, as he inspected the seams of the jacket for wear.

  "Och, for sure. Not much though—himself will see to that."

  "I won't be seeing you for a while then."

  "And will it be breaking your heart?" She dug a stout elbow into her friend's ribs, and they both chortled.

  And so on, bickering about how much the suits were worth— worth more than shiftless husbands, I gathered—until finally they swayed out of the shop, their layers of black skirts giving out an unbelievable stench as they moved.

  Mother had given me three shillings, which I handed to the pawnbroker with his receipt for the coat. He gave it to his gangling young assistant, who disappeared up a ladder into the loft. A bundle wrapped in a piece of cloth was tossed down and neatly caught by the pawnbroker.

  "There you are. When you bring it back, wrap it in the cloth again, " he said kindly. "Everything has to be wrapped up in a bundle." He pushed the tightly wrapped package over the counter to me. "You should undo it and check it."

  I did this and my hopelessly crushed coat was revealed.

  "Would threepence buy an iron?" I asked, emboldened by his amiable manner.

  His black eyebrows shot up and his sharp brown eyes looked at me shrewdly. "Not fi-om me, " he replied. "You might get one from the junkyard at the back."

  He turned, and shouted up the chute to the storeroom above, "George! Mind shop! I'm going out back a minute."

  George came tumbUng down the ladder, and I lifted Avril oflP the counter, where she had been contentedly kicking her heels and watching the proceedings.

  We went out through the back door and through the pawnbroker's yard. The yard was paved with brick, and neat flowerbeds filled with dafibdils lined the high walls. He opened the gate, and we crossed the narrow alley to a yard piled high with rusting iron—all the domestic debris of the neighborhood, fi-om old bedsteads to hip baths.

  "Hey, Joe! Where are ye? Got any old flat irons?"

  An aged, hunchbacked gnome emerged fi-om under a lean-to, peering at us fi^om under a greasy black cap. I had often heard him calling through the streets as he pushed his handcart, "Any rags, bottles or bones? Any old rags today?"

  "Humph," he grunted. "Ah might 'ave. "

  He rooted through a collection of old kitchen pails, washboards, and dollies lying under an ancient wooden mangle, and finally came up with a small, rusty iron, which he agreed to part with for threepence.

  Back in the pawnbroker's shop, I was made to wait while George found a piece of sandpaper and rubbed the iron clean for me. Gold teeth flashing, the pawnbroker finally presented me with quite a respectable-looking iron.

  "There ye are, luv," he said.

  "Thank you very, very much, " I said, and swept out, iron in hand, my coat over my arm.

  I had not forgotten the awful scarecrow I had seen in the Bold Street shop window. I took Edward and Avril straight home, made a fire with some of the coal the regimental grant had enabled us to buy, heated water and washed myself.

  This I did, though I had no soap. I hoped Mother would buy plenty of washing soap, so that I could wash my clothes too. I knew that our family looked far more neglected than many children did.

  I had pressed my coat reasonably well by the time Mother came home. She was laden with socks, vests, a real towel, a wash bowl, some cups, saucers, and plates, knives and forks, a sauce-

  pan, some aspirin, some cigarettes, and, best of all, some toilet soap and soap powder.

  It was Friday, and when the children came home, I stripped their clothes off them, put on their overcoats, and washed everything. Soon the room was festooned with steaming garments.

  Then I washed the children thoroughly, one by one. They were all emaciated, bug-bitten, and shaky on their feet in spite of their two fish-and-chip dinners. Only years later, when I saw pictures of the prisoners released from Belsen, did I fully realize how close we were to dying of starvation. What an ordeal it must have been for those children to drag themselves to school and back and try to pay attention while their bodies gradually wasted.

  Nobody in the school seemed to notice the children's suffering. The school nurse found that their hair was verminous, and sent a note to say that we should buy a certain kind of ointment and rub it into their scalps. We had no money for ointment, however, so nothing was done.

  No priest of any denomination ever came to see us, though the school was a church school and a Church of England minister came once or twice to visit Miss Sinford. We knew that we were too dirty and shabby to be welcome in a church, and, God, like Santa Claus, went out of our lives.

  For some time, our only entertainment was to walk the streets and look in shop windows, but gradually the younger ones found ways of amusing themselves. Better weather brought Httle urchins out to play cricket, with a piece of wood for a bat and a couple of beer bottles for wickets, and my brothers were tolerated in t
hese games. Fiona and Avril learned from Fiona's school-friends how to skip and play hopscotch on the pavement in front of the house. They all quickly learned to scream and swear with an unlovely Liverpool accent.

  I read all the books in the small bookcase in our room. I often read while washing the dishes or feeding the baby, and it was then that I discovered that a book laid on the cover of the Chariot could be read while pushing it along the street. I waded through a curious collection of reading matter, including Hadji Baba of Isphahan, Ideal Marriage, most of Walter Scott's works, a handbook for midwives and several copies of^Moore's Almanac.

  With the last few pennies from the regimental grant. Father

  enrolled himself and Mother in the local branch of the public library, and immediately life seemed filled with untold riches, because I, too, could obtain books on their cards. The modest little building had a certain elegance—and it was warm. I could not sit in it for hours, as Father did, because I had Edward and Avril always with me, and they could not keep quiet for long, but I eagerly snatched books fi*om the shelves and read avidly and haphazardly.

  The good effect of the regimental grant remained with us, in some degree, for several weeks, though we were still verminous, still had no change of clothing, and were desperate over the need for shoe repairs. We searched the second-hand shops for old gym shoes, anything to cover our feet. Even a few pence spent on such things, however, meant that we could not, at times, have even enough starches to eat. Mother and I found it ever more difficult to drag ourselves up and down the endless stairs, and Father looked like a scarecrow.

  Would it ever end? I wondered—and then was seized with childish terror that it might end in death.

  Then, in April Mother got a job. She had tried recently for domestic work, but well-to-do housewives did not want a refined woman to scrub their floors; it made them feel uncomfortable. She had also tried all the city shops. But many of them employed, as far as possible, girls under sixteen years of age, and dismissed them on their sixteenth birthday, because at that age they had to pay to the government heavier National Health and unemployment insurance contributions for them. Amost all of those who survived their sixteenth birthday in employment, lost their jobs when they were eighteen because at that age, again, the employers' contributions went up. In Liverpool unemployment was rapidly reaching a peak of 31.5 percent.