Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  Mother's employer was a slippery eel of a man who lived nearby. In his kitchen, he mixed that old-fashioned spring remedy, brimstone and treacle, filled ice-cream cartons with it, and sold it door-to-door. He had done so well that he decided to employ Mother on a commission basis. She would receive a haljfpenny on a small pot and a penny on a larger one sold.

  Unaware of the need for a pedlar's license. Mother set out hopefully to knock on the fi-ont doors of the better-class

  districts, her supply of brimstone and treacle carried in a paper bag.

  Since she had a very dignified presence, not many doors were slammed in her face, and at the end of a six-day week she found she had made seven shillings and sixpence and her tram fares. The weather had mercifully been fine, and the steady walking had strengthened her muscles. Morever, a number of kindly housewives had helped her along with cups of tea and biscuits.

  Mother's modest success at her first job dimmed considerably any hope I had of ever being able to go to school again; it was as if a jailer had clanged shut yet another prison door between me and freedom. I realized how deeply I had hoped she would prove a failure at work, so that she would be forced to stay at home. I felt wretched and could comfort myself only with the thought that when Father got work, Mother might feel there was no necessity for her to work.

  I bumped the Chariot slowly down the stairs. Edward who, by now, was trying to sit up, hit his head when I went over a stair more clumsily than usual and started to cry. Avril, who was hungry and tired, joined in.

  At the bottom of the stairs, an infuriated Mr. Ferris awaited me. His droopy yellow mustache was flufiisd out with rage, and his eyes bulged like a Pekinese dog's.

  "What the hell are you doing, making such a noise?" he shouted.

  I stared blankly at him, not knowing how to reply.

  "I can't practice with such a racket. I won't stand for it! You'll have to go. Mrs. Foster will have to put you out!"

  Miss Sinford came through her door, like the old lady on a weather vane. "Go back to your piano, sir," she squeaked. "And pray for forgiveness for your bad temper."

  I stood between them as they ranted at each other, so filled with fear that I could not move.

  He had said, "You'll have to go! Mrs. Foster will have to put you out!"

  "Oh, no, O Lord, " I prayed. "Nobody else will ever take us in. We'll have to go to the workhouse. Don't, please don't, let Mrs. Foster turn us out."

  when Miss Sinford dived past the Chariot and struck Mr. Ferris a sharp blow on the nose, I was galvanized into trying to escape. Hastily, I maneuvred the Chariot past the contestants, through the front door and down the worn steps to the street. Fear beat at me, and I ran blindly through the gray streets and did not stop until my sticklike legs failed me.

  The workhouse—or Institution, as it had recently been renamed—loomed like a scarifying black shadow over all the destitute of England. And I was ready to die of fear.

  SIX

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  Very slowly, I trundled the Chariot down the avenue. The trees that lined it were in leaf, and on the stone-flagged pavement the puddles from recent rain were drying up under a mild sun. My teeth gradually stopped chattering. Avril demanded to be lifted out so that she could walk.

  When I picked her up out of the pram, she felt remarkably light, even in my wasted arms, but she began to toddle along contentedly, singing "Little Bo Peep," which we had been practicing together.

  "Frog's eyes! Frog's eyes!" shouted a rough voice in my ear, and a couple of big boys made playful snatches at my spectacles.

  Avril screamed. I instinctively clutched at the precious spectacles. They laughed, kicked my shins with their heavy boots, and ran on down the avenue.

  "Beasts!" Avril shouted after them.

  Crying quietly with pain, I walked on into Princes Park and into the rose garden which, though as yet bare of roses, was a pretty place, with a little lake much favored by ducks and other small water birds.

  My legs felt like jelly, and I thought I was going to faint, so I sat down on the first bench we could find. At the other end of the seat was an old gentleman. He was shabbily, though respectably, dressed, and he had an air of quiet dignity. He was perusing a small, leatherbound book.

  Avril came to sit on my knee, and I began to teach her the names of the various kinds of ducks swimming on the lake. The faintness receded, and I forgot my bruised shins.

  Our peace was soon broken.

  "Hey, you there with the pram! Get out o' here! No children allowed in this here garden without an adult. "A uniformed park attendant was waving a stick at us fi*om the rose-garden gate.

  Because I did not immediately respond—I was still unaccustomed to my reduction to the ranks of the underprivileged— he started down the path toward us, his stick raised menacingly.

  Without warning, a quiet commanding voice beside me said, "The children are with me. I am responsible for them."

  The old gentleman had closed his book and was staring coldly at the attendant.

  The parkkeeper lowered his stick and looked disbelievingly at the old gentleman, who gazed back calmly at him, until finally the parkkeeper, his lips curled in a sneer, grunted, "Humph!" and turned away.

  In a quiet voice, with an accent that might have been French, the old gentleman asked me, "And where did you learn to speak Enghsh like that, child?"

  I blushed guiltily. He must have been listening to Avril and me.

  What was wrong with my English? And how does one learn one's own language? I asked myself. I was nonplussed.

  Sharp brown eyes, with yellowed whites, appraised my bare feet, greasy jumper, worn without a blouse, and holey cardigan. Ashamed, I bowed my head so that my face was shielded by a mass of untended hair.

  "I... er... I learned it at home," I muttered.

  "You speak it beautifully," he said with a gentle smile. "I have not heard better speech during my many years in Liverpool." The intonation was definitely foreign.

  The bent head shot up. This was the first compliment anyone had ever paid me.

  "Do you really think so?" I asked incredulouslv.

  "Ido."

  I said impulsively, "Mummy and Nanny thought it was important to speak well. Neither of them seemed to think that I spoke very well."

  "Nanny?"

  I nodded confijsedly. "We don't have a nurse now." A watery sniff muffled the much admired accent.

  He said dryly, "I imagine not."

  Avril clambered down off^ my knee and went on one of her small perambulations. Edward slept. My acquaintance opened

  his book, as if to continue his reading. Instead, he sat tapping the page with a swollen, chilblained finger.

  My eyes were carried to the page by the pointing finger, and I was astonished to see that the print in the book consisted of curly dashes with occasional dots.

  He noticed my interest, and smiled at me. "It is Arabic," he said.

  I was impressed. "Can you speak it, sir?"

  "Of course. My mother was an Arab."

  That accounted for the darker skin, I thought, and I wondered if I dare ask him what brought him to England. How romantic to have a real Arab for a mother! I wondered if she wore a yashmak and transparent trousers, like the princesses in my fairytale books.

  His eyes were twinkling. Perhaps he was lonely, too, for he said suddenly, "I speak seven languages and can read four more."

  "How wonderful!" I exclaimed in genuine admiration, remembering my own struggles with French.

  "Tell me," he said. "How is it that—that—" and he waved his hand in a comprehensive gesture, which took in the Chariot with its half-starved baby and Avril's and my deplorable condition.

  Hesitating and seeking for words at first, I explained as best I could about bankruptcy and unemployment. Gradually I gained courage and confided in him my despair at not being able to continue at school and my fear of what would become of u
s.

  He listened patiently, occasionally interjecting a question or nodding understandingly. Finally I trailed to a hopeless stop.

  He sat silent for a while, contemplating the lake, his book still open on his knee, his face full of the sad resignation of the very old.

  At last, he sighed and said, "You know, child, it is not what happens to you that matters—it is how you deal with it."

  This was a new idea to me, and I pondered on it, as I shyly watched his face.

  "You can read?"

  "Yes."

  "You go to the library?"

  "Yes."

  "Then read! Read everything you can. Read the great histor-

  ians, the philosophers, especially the German ones, read autobiographies, read novels. One day, you will have the opportunity to make use of the knowledge you will accumulate, and you will be surprised to find that you know much more than those who have had a more formal education."

  He closed his book and put it in his pocket, and then said quite cheerfully, "Your day will come, child. Your parents are having a difficult time at present and cannot help you."

  He got up from his seat slowly and stifily and then bowed politely to me. "I come here every sunny afternoon to commune with nature. Come one day and tell me what you have read."

  The faintness which had threatened me before was making his face dim to me, but I thanked him warmly and promised that I would come. I felt wonderfially comforted.

  I sat down again after he had left, to allow my faintness to recede. Then I called Avril and hastened out of the rose garden before the keeper could find us without a guardian.

  The way home seemed infinitely long and the momentary peace engendered by the conversation with the old man gradually left me, to be replaced with memories of Dickens' descriptions of workhouses.

  When I arrived home, Alan and Fiona were sitting on the bottom step. The evening was drawing on, and the lamplighter was going on his rounds, pulling on the gas lights with his long rod.

  Alan was talking cheerfiilly to Fiona, who looked white and woebegone. "What's the matter?" I asked in some alarm, as I stopped the Chariot beside them.

  Alan peered up at me. "Fiona's scared, and I'm telling her that there's nothing to be scared about," he said stoutly.

  Trying not to show that I was frightened, I lifted Avril out of the Chariot and sat down beside Alan. "What is the matter?"

  Fiona answered through trembling lips. "Mrs. Foster is shouting at Mother, and Mother is shouting at Father—and— and it's an awful noise. And I want to go home to Nanny!" And she began to cry.

  "Be quiet!" I snapped at her, and she was immediately reduced to cowed silence.

  I turned to Alan. "Has Mr. Ferris compkiined? "

  Alan looked puzzled. "Mr. Ferris? You mean about the noise we make?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, no." Alan chuckled suddenly and began to play an imaginary piano with gusto. "He makes too much noise himself. He just shouts at us because it makes him feel better." He tossed back his hair, exactly as Mr. Ferris did, and finished his piano piece with a mighty boom on the bottom notes, "Boom-tiddly-boom —boo—om—boom!"

  I wished that I had Alan's cool common sense. In one sentence he had calmed my fears. But not Fiona's apparently. Tears were running down her cheeks like raindrops.

  "What has happened, then?"

  Alan sobered. "Daddy didn't pay the rent. He spent the money on cigarettes, and Mrs. Foster is as cross as two sticks. And Mother is crossest of all, because she helped to smoke the cigarettes without thinking of where they came fi-om. And—well, you know Mother. "

  I did know Mother. Even in her most halcyon days, her temper had been something to avoid at all costs. Now, sick, bewildered, hungry, and despairing, she had bouts of temper bordering on insanity.

  I licked my lips and voiced my dread in a whisper, so as not to frighten Avril. "Do you think she'll turn us out into the street— Mrs. Foster, I mean?"

  "No idea," replied Alan phlegmatically. "Fiona and I just opened the door when we came back from school, and understood what the trouble was inside a minute. So we just left them to it—and came down here."

  "Where are Brian and Tony?"

  Alan sighed. "They bounced right into the room. Now they'll be expected to take sides—and Brian will have nightmares and probably be sick after tea."

  I nodded silent agreement. Poor Brian, sensitive to every nuance of every word spoken to him, would be reduced to incoherence by such an episode.

  "Have we got bread for tea? " asked Fiona.

  "A little," I said.

  "Shall we ever have butter again?"

  "of course," said Alan.

  Avril toddled up to us. "I like jam as well as butter," she announced. "I want jam for tea."

  I suppressed an irrational desire to slap Avril, and we sat quietly watching seamen crowding into the hall of a house opposite to ours. In this house lived an assortment of middle-aged women, who were a great mystery to me. They were much better dressed than their neighbors, though they never seemed to go out to work. And they had lots of visitors—all men.

  I watched them lounging up the steps now. Many were already drunk. They shouted raucously to each other and laughed at remarks I did not understand.

  One of the single ladies who lived in our house came down our steps and paused by us. She looked across the road and then regarded us uneasily. "Dawn't yer think ye'd better go in, luv?" she asked.

  I looked up at her dully. She seemed magnificent to me with her veiled, flowered hat and flashing diamante earrings. Her silver evening shoes and rayon stockings were close to me, however, and she did not smell very nice.

  Uneasily, I turned my head away. "We can't," I said.

  "Daddy and Mummy are cross," announced Avril, rising from the pavement and dusting down her little backside.

  The lady bit her scarlet lower lip. Then she said in confidential tones to me, "Eee, luv, ah think you better get inside. Over there is going to be ruddy noisy—and rough to the likes o'you. There's four ships in. "

  Though none of us knew what she meant, we rose reluctantly, and Alan helped me pull the Chariot up the steps. I appreciated that she had tried to be kind to us, and I thanked her.

  "That's all right, luv," she said cheerfiilly, and hitching her mangy fox fi.ir up around her chin, she started to walk with swaying hips to the bus stop at the comer.

  As Alan and I jointly heaved the Chariot up the stairs, the sounds of battle grew louder. Just as we were about to tackle the last flight of stairs, we heard Mrs. Foster's heavy tread coming down. We cringed together on the landing as, without a word, she passed us, her black georgette draperies floating around her.

  Dead silence greeted us as we entered our room. My parents

  occupied the two kitchen chairs. Their mouths were clamped shut, and only my mother's fast breathing told of the earlier strife. Brian was biting his nails feverishly, but Tony was calmly playing with a pebble on the table, pretending it was a train. He looked up as we entered.

  "Hello, Helen," he said, his voice sounding loud in the prevailing quietness. "What about some tea—it's late. '

  I didn't know what to do about my parents, so I answered him: "Yes, dear. Just let me unload."

  From around Edward's feet in the pram, I exhumed a mass of small pieces of rubbish I had gleaned during my walk, and laid them in the hearth: empty match-boxes, cigarette cartons, bits of stick, twigs, paper of every description, and a whole tattered copy of the Liverpool Echo.

  I raked through the cold ashes in the grate and salvaged a few cinders. Would I have enough fuel to boil some water? I wondered anxiously.

  Alan kindly volunteered to run down to the bathroom for water, and Fiona, without being asked, took Edward on her knee. She gasped as his wet napkin damped her jumper and bare legs, but she did not complain. And all the time my parents sat in silence.

  It was nearly dark by the time the water was persuaded to boil and the tea was made. I cut
a dry, white loaf into eight pieces of roughly equal size, and gave each of my parents a piece of it with a cup of the smoky tea, which had, of course, no milk or sugar in it. I gave a little tea to each child in whatever receptacles I could muster, with a piece of bread.

  "Can I dip?" asked Tony. "The crust is too hard to bite."

  My mother ignored the question, but Father picked up his cup and said suddenly, "You may."

  Thankfully, Tony and Brian plunged their bread into their tea. "The bread is so stale it's secondhand," remarked Tony.

  Brian giggled into his jam jar of tea. "I've got a secondhand teacup to match," he gurgled, a note of hysteria in his voice.

  "I want some jam," shouted Avril.

  "Be quiet, Avril," said Fiona, who had given Edward a little of her bread to suck on. "You know there's no jam. "

  "Not even any secondhand jam?" the younger girl demanded with mock indignation.

  My father began to laugh, at first a small wry chuckle in his throat and then, gaining momentum, one of his old hearty laughs. I joined in, and soon the whole family was laughing hysterically, the noise pealing along the cobwebbed ceiling and down the stairs to the floor below, where the other tenants, hearing us, must have believed us to be mad.

  Only Mother, wrapped in pain, fatigue, and semistarvation, sat silently staring at her cup of tea, her piece of bread in her hand.

  SEVEN

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  We crept through the spring and summer, cursing wet days, rejoicing in warm, dry ones, ignoring petty ailments and hunger.

  Several of the children had sores that took a long time to heal. These were sometimes caused by normal cuts and abrasions, sometimes from their scratching at their vermin-ridden bodies. We nearly all suffered from toothache from time to time, and Mother's teeth began to loosen. Brian suffered torture from gumboils. His wizened face would swell up, and he would cry hour after hour, until finally the abscess would burst, and the pain would be reduced. On one occasion his weeping was heard as far away as the basement of the house; and Mrs. Hicks made the long journey up the stairs, to inquire what was the matter.