Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  I wondered if one could enroll at times other than September. Perhaps there would be someone on the premises who could tell me about it. I wheeled the Chariot through the gate to the schoolyard and was hesitantly searching for a door, when a hoarse voice shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  The voice came from an upper window, where a bald man in shirt-sleeves was glaring down at me. I wilted.

  "I—I was looking for someone to ask about evening school," I stuttered.

  My questioner looked pained.

  "On Saturday afternoon? 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 stamped her foot like a pocket-sized thundercloud. "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 panfijl 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. "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 fi-om happy; yet they had stayed together, and his anxiety about Mother was based on genuine respect. "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'm 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. Finishing schools in the slums of 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 defense 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'm 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. '

  1 won t!

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

  "I have nothing to be thankftil for," I retorted bitterly.

  "Helen, Helen, don't!" Fiona whispered, her eyes wide and terrified, as she clutched my arm. Alan, fi*om 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. So, one morning I prepared her as best I could.

  At the last moment she balked. "I feel shy," she said, 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 fi"om the daily food shilling. But still she would not move. "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 the adjoining church. A high, iron railing surrounded the playground, and we paused by the gate to see if we could find one of Fiona's playmates.

  A pretty lady teacher came hurrying toward the gate. When

  she saw Fiona, she smiled at her. "Good morning, Fiona. I'm glad to see you back. Are you feeling quite well again now?"

  She ran her eyes over Fiona's thin, underclothed body. Then she looked at me in a puzzled fashion.

  Fiona had been brought up properly. She immediately said politely, "Miss Brough, may I introduce my elder sister, Helen, and this is Avril and this is my baby brother, Edward."

  Miss Brough's brow cleared. She said, "How do you do. "

  I murmured, "Very well, thank you."

  "I don't remember you going through our school, my dear," she remarked to me. "You must have left before I came." She looked at me sharply. "But that is not possible—you are quite young." She laughed. "You must have gone to school somewhere else. "

  My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I could not answer.

  Fiona said brightly, "She used to go to our old school. She has never been to school in Liverpool."

  "Haven't you, my dear? "

  "No, Miss Brough."

  I was nearly tongue-tied with fear of what my parents would say if they found out about this conversation.

  She must have seen the stark fright in my eyes. She pursed her delicately painted lips, and said, "Well, never mind. Fiona, hurry up, or you'll be late. "

  My legs were shaking so much that I could not start the pram. I watched her disappear through the school's ornately carved doorway before, at last, I could make my feet move.

  I said nothing to my parents.

  A week later a school-attendance officer called upon my parents while I was out. How they evaded being prosecuted and sent to prison for my long truancy I will never know. Perhaps their calm authoritative manners made even school-attendance officers quail. My immediate attendance was, however, ordered.

  I faced two outraged parents every day for the next six weeks until my fourteenth birthday. The day after that, I was back home again looking after Edward.

  I found myself far ahead of the other children in the class in everything except mathematics. It was bliss to hold a pencil in my

  unaccustomed fingers and to try my wits against the work put before me.

  This school had a new and enthusiastic art teacher. His students, for the most part, hardly knew that artists created pictures, and he had only pencils, paper, and pastel crayons with which to work, but at my first lesson
he did his utmost to explain perspective to the disinterested class.

  "Any questions?" he asked.

  While the rest of the class stared at him glumly, I put up my hand. "Could you explain why medieval pictures often look so alive and real though they have no perspective?" I asked hopefully.

  The class turned around in a body and stared at me open mouthed. The teacher's Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he sought to reply to me.

  Finally, he set the class the task of drawing a picture of mountains and roads, then came and sat on the bench beside me. He looked carefully at my work and suggested a technical method of improving the shading in it, while I sat in fi*ozen silence, afi'aid that I must smell abominable.

  "I should like you to draw me one or two more, as homework," he said at last. "Anything that takes your fancy. I want to see what you can do.

  He provided me with pencils and paper, and for several evenings I sat on the steps, Edward crawling at my feet, while I sketched the life of the street.

  A week or two later, the art teacher expressed his approval of my work and produced a small examination paper for me to work my way through. The paper, with my drawings, vanished into officialdom.

  "There is a scholarship available at the City School of Art," he explained kindly to me, "and I have put you in for it."

  I was happy. For the first time in two years I played with other girls, and I was being taught something. Nobody wanted to sit by me because I was so disgustingly dirty, but in the open schoolyard I played tag and skipped until my limited strength gave out.

  My fourteenth birthday passed, and my parents put an end to my little holiday. I wept and raged, but to no purpose. I was

  wanted at home, and Father thankfully turned over Avril and Edward to me again.

  I was back where I had started from, pushing Edward's Chariot to and from the shops or the park, and without any hope of bettering myself.

  During the summer holidays, I took all the children to the parks to play, and sat wistfully among stout mothers in black shawls, watching my little charges play just as they did. The children accepted me as just another Mum, and I was too shy to ask if I could play too.

  September saw the children back at school again. I watched them go with envy. Now I was over fourteen I could not hope for further education.

  Alan and I sat huddled together on the front step. The October evening was cold and clammy, yet we were reluctant to go into the stuffy house. The gaslamps gleamed softly on the damp pavement, and women hurried by, their black shawls held tightly around them, their children whining at their heels. Maurrie, the secondhand-clothes man, shuffled by with a sack on his back.

  An Irish woman plodded stolidly up the street. Near us, she stepped out into the middle of the street and took up a belligerent stance facing the house opposite.

  Her appearance frightened me. She was hugely fat with legs like wool-clad pillars. Her hair was parted across her head from ear to ear and elaborately plaited in a Victorian hair style that looked outlandishly fierce. She smoothed down her white apron over her black skirt, wrapped her black, crocheted shawl around her enormous folded arms. Then, gathering her breath until her purple cheeks stood out like balloons, she opened her mouth and screamed.

  "Yer pack o' bloody whores! I'll show yer! Taking a decent woman's hoosband. "

  A crowd materialized from nowhere. "Go it. Ma!" shouted one of the young men from the comer.

  There was a flutter of sniggering laughter from the crowd and a murmur of encouragement.

  A red-headed, middle-aged woman, her bare legs thick with varicose veins, was unwise enough to open the door and appear on

  the steps before her. "You'd better stop that," she shouted, 'or I'll call a copper. "

  This produced such a description of the moral habits of the local constabulary that even the young men in the crowd were impressed. The Irish have a vivid way of expressing themselves, and the shawl woman was no exception. She lifted a fist as stout as a leg of mutton and shook it at the prostitute.

  "Yer harlot, yer!" she finished up and spat accurately at the Lady of Sin.

  Alan giggled behind his hand and whispered, "Has the lady on the steps taken the other lady's husband fi*om her?"

  "Yes, " I said under my breath.

  "I'm not surprised—she looks as fierce as a tiger."

  I looked at the woman on the steps. She was quite old, her face haggard under its paint. I was mystified as to where her charm lay. I had read most of Emile Zola's works and now understood the occupation of the ladies opposite. But Zola's heroines were beautiful, and I had always gathered from the conversation of grown-ups that, unless one was beautifial, one did not stand a chance of even a husband, never mind a whole queue of men.

  The woman on the steps drew back toward her fi*ont door. She glanced uneasily up and down the street. Several possible clients, hands in pockets, were wandering a trifle unsteadily toward the crowd.

  She became anxious to placate. "Ah dawn't know who yer hoosband is. Ah dawn't even knaw who yer mean. Na go home," she wheedled, "and stop making an exhibition of yerself."

  This infi^iriated the Irish woman so much that she went up the steps like a tank and punched the small woman in the face.

  In a moment, clutched together, they were rolling down the steps and onto the pavement, clawing at each other's eyes, using teeth and knees to inflict as much damage as possible.

  The crowd surged forward, roaring approval, and shouting encouragement to whichever participant they favored.

  Three very large dock laborers, who had been watching the exchange uneasily, raised their voices against the general hubbub: "Na, Ma, come on, this is too much. Come on, na. Break it

  oop!"

  But the Irish woman, shawlless and nearlv blouseless bv

  now, was too busy holding off the red-haired cat she had provoked to take anybody's advice. Alan and I watched, open-mouthed, through the shifting legs of the crowd.

  Suddenly, a little spurt of blood showed on the shawl woman's face, and the crowd hushed.

  A male voice said sharply, "Ee, that's not fair. Get oflF, you. "

  A boot was sharply applied to the prostitute's bottom, and she let go immediately, whipped to her feet, and whirled on her new assailant.

  He backed away from her warily. "Na, you just take that blade out from under yer thumbnail, yer lousy bitch."

  The shawl woman heaved herself to her feet, panting. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. When she saw blood on it, she screamed in mixed rage and terror.

  "I'll get yer for this!" she shrieked, at the same time putting a little distance between herself and her opponent.

  Two of the dockers jumped the prostitute suddenly from behind, caught her arm, and twisted it behind her back. While one held her, the other extracted a piece of razor blade from under one of her long nails and held it up for the crowd to see.

  There was a threatening murmur.

  "Let me go, " she shouted, her voice frill of fear.

  The men released her, and she ran up the steps, her carpet slippers flapping as they hit the stone.

  We became aware of another heated altercation on the edge of the crowd. The pub had closed, and its patrons were coming home, among them a huge, bull-necked man, who was bellowing, "Ah'll teach 'er to make a row in t' street, ah will!"

  The crowd opened to make way for him while his friends pulled anxiously at his shabby jacket sleeve. "Na, then, Bill. Na then."

  The prostitute vanished into the House of Sin, and the sound of a bolt being shot inside came clearly across the street. The bull-necked man charged through the expectant crowd, undoing his trouser belt as he came. His seamed face was red with rage, and the muscles and veins of his neck bulged. With a smart pull, he whipped his belt out and, swinging it by its buckle, advanced on the shawl woman. Her shawl was again draped across her back, but her huge bosom was almost bare. She threw back her shoul-

  ders to exhibit her ample charm and swayed
her hips seductively, though blood still trickled down her cheek.

  "Na, then, our Mary Ann. What yer think yer doing? I won't stand for it, d' yer hear me!"

  She stuck her chin in the air and spat an epithet at him.

  Infliriated, he shot out a huge red fist, took a firni hold on her tumbling plaits, and twisted her by her hair till her back was toward him. Then, lifting his belt he brought it down hard on her buttocks. She screamed, and her shawl fell off again, revealing her fat, naked shoulders. A second time the belt whistled through the air, and a red welt appeared on them.

  I started up with a cry of horror, but one of the women who lived in our house pushed me sharply down on to the step again. "Let him be," she hissed. "She loves it." The belt cracked down again, and the woman screamed.

  The crowd was silent now, tense. The woman fi-om our house added kindly, "You go inside and leave the likes of them to themselves."

  Alan and I, both frightened, ran into the hall of our house, from which vantage point we continued to watch.

  Beating her steadily, while the shawl woman alternately screamed and cursed, the man gradually dragged Mary Ann through the crowd to a small house farther down the street, where apparently they lived. He flung her against the closed door, and she stood with her back against it, sobbing wildly.

  The crowd whooped. "Go it. Bill," they shouted.

  Bill reached behind his wife and turned the door knob, then put his hand on the woman's naked breast and pushed her, so that she seemed to fly backward into the narrow hall. He followed and slammed the door after him.

  Regretfully, the crowd slowly broke up and departed. Alan and I, both shaking with nervous tension, went slowly up to our apartment.

  Fiona was sitting by the window, having watched the same scene from a better vantage point. She had evidently been much impressed. "You should draw a picture of it, Helen."

  I laughed. "I don't think Mummy or Daddy would like me to draw pictures of things like that. Come along, I think you had better go to bed. "

  Alan came and stood by us, looking down at the street, which was now practically empty. "Why didn't you go to art school, Helen?" he asked unexpectedly.