Minerva's Stepchild

by Helen Forrester

  I borrowed from Mother the only pair of scissors we had. She carried them in her handbag, so that they could not be misused, but even so, they were blunt and the nails on my right hand had to be finished off by biting them. Toenails were always left to grow until they broke off, and sometimes they looked like cruel, yellow claws before they finally cracked.

  The scissors were too small to cut hair, so I combed my unkempt locks with the family comb, also normally carried in Mother's handbag, and hoped it would stay off my face until the interview was over. When I received some wages, I promised myself, I would ask Mother if I could buy some bobby pins.

  Even after these efforts, I must have looked very odd in a black dress too long and too loose for me and without an overcoat, though it was late February and the weather was damp and chilly.

  Full of hope, though shivering with cold, I trotted along beside Mother through the misty morning to the sweetshop.

  It was a very little shop, in a shabby block of other small shops and offices. Its window, however, sparkled with polishing despite the overcast day. Through the gleaming glass I could dimly see rows of large bottles of sweets and in front of them an arrangement of chocolate boxes, all of them free of dust. Beneath the window, a sign in faded gold lettering advertised Fry's Chocolate.

  Mother, who had not spoken to me during the walk, paused

  in front of the shop and frowned. Then she swung open the glass-paned door and stalked in. I followed her, my heart going pit-a-pat, in unison with the click of Fiona's shoes on the highly polished, though worn, linoleum within.

  An old-fashioned bell hung on a spring was still tinkling softly when a stout, middle-aged woman with a beaming smile emerged through a door to an inner room.

  "Yes, luv?" she inquired cheerfrilly.

  "I understand that you wrote to my daughter about a post in your shop?" Mother's voice was perfectly civil, but the word "post" instead of "job" sounded sarcastic.

  The smile was swept from the woman's face. She looked us both up and down uncertainly, while I agonized over what Mother might say next.

  "Helen?" the woman asked, running a stubby finger along her lower lip.

  "Helen Forrester," replied Mother icily.

  "Ah did. " The voice had all the inflections of a bom Liverpudlian. She looked past Mother at me, standing forlornly behind. Her thoughtful expression cleared, and she smiled slightly at me. I smiled shyly back.

  I felt her kindness like an aura around her and sensed that I would enjoy being with her, even if she did expect a lot of work from me.

  "Have you ever worked before, luv?" she asked me.

  I shook my head, then cleared my throat and said, "Only at home. "

  "What work would Helen be expected to do?" asked Mother, her clear voice cutting between the woman and me. The sweetshop owner was obviously finding her trying. "Well, now," she answered uncertainly, "I hadn't exactly thought. I need a bit o' help, that's all. 'Course she'd have to wash the floor and polish it, like, every day. And clean the window and dust the stock. And when I knowed her a bit she could probably help me with serving, like. I get proper busy at weekends—and in summer the ice cream trade brings in a lot o' kids, and you have to have eyes in the back o' your head or they'll steal the pants off'you."

  Mother sniffed at this unseemly mention of underwear, and then nodded.

  "And what would the salary be?"

  I groaned inwardly. I was sure that in a little shop like this one earned wages not a salary.

  The beginning of a smile twitched at the woman's lips, but she answered Mother gravely.

  "Well, I'd start her on five shillings, and if she was any good, I'd raise it. "

  Even in those days, five shillings was not much. The woman seemed to realize this, because she added, "And o' course, she can eat as many sweets as she likes. But no taking any out of the shop. "

  I could imagine that this was not as generous as it sounded. After a week of eating too many sweets, the desire for them would be killed and few people would want them anymore.

  Mother inquired stiffly, "And how many hours a week would she work for that? "

  "Well, I open up at half past seven in the morning to catch the morning trade, you understand. And I close up at nine in the evening. " She paused a moment and then said, "But I wouldn't need her afi:er about seven o'clock. Me husband's home by then, and he helps me after he's had his tea. And I close Wednesday afternoons, so she'd have the atternoon off after she'd tidied up, like. Me husband helps me Sundays, too, so I wouldn't want her then either. "

  I wanted the job so badly that I did not care how many hours I worked, how often I scrubbed the floor. The shop seemed so lovely and warm, after our house, and I sensed that in a rough way the woman would be kind to me. I tried to will the woman to agree to take me.

  A little boy burst through the shop door, leaving the bell tinging madly after him. He pushed past us and leaned against the comer of the counter.

  "Ah coom for me Dad's ciggies, " he announced, turning a pinched, grubby face toward the sweetshop owner.

  "Have you got the money?"

  "Oh, aye. He wants ten Woodbines. " A small hand was unclenched to show four large copper pennies. The cigarettes were handed over and the pennies dropped into the wooden till.

  "Now don't be smoking them yourself," admonished the woman, with a laugh.

  The boy grinned at her, and as he went through the door, he turned and gestured as if he were smoking.

  "Aye, you httle devil!" she said.

  The interruption had given Mother time to make a rapid calculation. As the woman turned back to her, she said sharply, "There is a law about how many hours a minor can work—and, incidentally a law about selling cigarettes to minors. I am sure that over sixty hours a week—at less than a penny an hour—are far more hours than are allowed."

  The woman shrugged huffily; her eyes narrowed, giving her a cunning expression.

  "I'm sure I don't know about that," she replied tartly. "If she doesn't want the job, she doesn't have to take it. There's others as will be grateful for it. " She sniffed, and looked at me disparagingly. "Anyway, I wouldn't take her. The sores on her face would put the customers off. I got to have a clean-looking girl."

  I looked at her appalled, hurt to the quick. In front of our broken piece of mirror, I had carefrilly squeezed each pimple on my face, so that the acne was temporarily reduced to raised red blotches. I had no makeup to cover the results, but I had hoped that I looked clean.

  Mother's face flooded with angry color. For a moment she looked like Avril in a tantrum. She cast a scornful glance at the shopkeeper, who stared back at her quite unabashed.

  "Good afternoon," Mother snapped, as she swung round and opened the street door. The little bell tinkled crossly at being so forcibly disturbed.

  "Helen, this way. "

  It was an order, and I slouched out through the doorway, closely followed by my wrathful mother.

  Mother scolded sibilantly all the way home, and blamed me for wasting her time. I was too crushed and disappointed to respond.

  Back I went to the kitchen and little Edward, who trotted patiently by my side, while I Rimed miserably. In saner moments, I acknowledged that Mother had saved me from savage exploitation. But her motives in doing so were, to me, suspect. And as the years went by, I felt that my increasing efficiency at home was daily making more certain that I stay there. Probably a few

  pennies of pocket money or a modicum of praise would have done much to soothe me. But everything I did was taken for granted. Faihires were bitingly criticized. There was no one to turn to for consolation, except, occasionally, to Fiona.

  And yet I yearned to love my parents and be loved in return, to have with them the tender relationship I had had with Grandma during the long months I had frequently spent with her during my childhood. But Grandma had vanished with the rest of my friends.

  There is no doubt that Mother never forgave her friends for deserting her after Fa
ther went bankrupt; it was as if she declared a silent, ruthless war against her own class. The depth of her bitterness was immeasurable.

  I remembered well the doll-like creatures who used to frequent our drawing room and dining room. In short, beige georgette dresses, their marcel-waved hair covered by deep cloche hats, they teetered on high heels in and out of our old home in considerable numbers. Afternoon tea or dinner were served by a parlor maid in black-and-white uniform. Sometimes well-tailored young men, who also had time to waste, came to drink a cocktail or have a cup of tea.

  Several times, a man vanished from the usual circle. One of the ladies would say, between puflFs on a cigarette held in a long holder, "Gas, dahling—his lungs couldn't stand it," or "He was loaded with shrapnel—a piece moved around to his heart. Too utterly devastating."

  I was allowed to attend the tea parties. Nanny would dress me in my best frock, usually shantung silk, long white socks, and brown lace-up shoes, and I would sit and nibble a piece of cake and watch the prettily dressed visitors. I soon learned that most of the men were unemployed, ex-army oflRcers; they usually had some private means left them by more enterprising forefathers, but as prices rose, their money shrank. They had no special qualifications and sought jobs as car salesmen or vacuum cleaner salesmen. One of them regularly allowed me to reach up and touch the silver plate the doctors had implanted to replace the top of his skull; another had an artificial leg that creaked when he walked. Father not only had trouble with his hands, but he also got chest pains, forerunners of heart attacks to come.

  So, perhaps my parents' friends, bereaved, disillusioned, wounded in a war of frightful, unnecessary suffering, had so many troubles of their own that they were unable to help one of their number who had failed largely through his own inadequacies.

  I was bom after the war, so it was only history to me. Had I realized, when I got so cross with my parents' ineptitude, how close it still was to them, how they had already gone through the shock of seeing the kind of life they understood crumble, I would have been much more compassionate.

  One windy March evening, when the children's need of clothing seemed particularly dire. Mother decided to write to some of her old acquaintances to ask for secondhand clothing. After all, she said bitterly to Father, the most she could lose was a three-halfpenny stamp, since she appeared to have lost any friendship there was.

  When the children had gone to bed, she sat at one end of the back-room table and wrote three letters, while I sat at the other end and did my homework.

  Three days later, a scented letter dropped through our letter box. As far as I could remember, it was the first letter, other than a bill, that we had received since coming to Liverpool. Opening it was a ceremony, carried out under the eager eyes of the entire family.

  "It's from Katie," said Mother, naming a gay, childless married friend, as she slit the envelope with the kitchen knife.

  It contained a single sheet of notepaper wrapped around a five-pound note. Katie was sorry about us and sent the enclosed with love. Mother had found a technique for adding to our income.

  Until she had exhausted every possible person she could think of. Mother wrote at least one begging letter a week. She rarely got money out of the same person twice. But she had had an enormous circle of acquaintances, and when she ran out of these, she wrote to the parents of the children's friends and also moving letters to their teachers. After that, she wrote to people whose names she had picked out of library reference books.

  She learned to write eloquently of the children's woes and her own efforts to find work. She did not mention Father in letters to strangers, perhaps to give the impression, without actually saying

  so, that she was widowed. She frequently passed her efforts over to me to read—one of the few times when she took me into her confidence. I had never heard of confidence tricksters, and I read them admiringly, believing them to be a perfectly honorable way of earning money. After all. Grandma had always said that charity was a great virtue, and we were certainly in need.

  There were many professional begging-letter writers in Liverpool at that time. Earnest gentlemen sat in their tiny bed-sitting rooms and wrote passionate appeals for help to any monied person who came to their attention. They invented whole families of starving children, aged parents, wives dying of tuberculosis, and so on. And they made a steady living at it. In contrast. Mother could say honestly that her children were in dreadful need.

  Some well-to-do people who were bedevilled by begging letter writers, including Royalty, would send the letters to a charitable organization with the request that they investigate the need; it was remarkable how generous people were when the need was found to be genuine. I do not recollect, however, anyone coming to investigate us.

  Thanks to the kindness of many people unknown to me, a few comforts began to trickle into the house, among them a secondhand iron bed for me. The spring was hollowed out like a hammock, it was a number of years before I acquired a mattress, sheets, and blankets, and I shared it for a while with Edward. But it represented my first personal gain at home since we had arrived in Liverpool.

  Sometimes in response to the letters, parcels of clothing or bedding arrived. The younger children were almost invariably allowed to keep gift clothing, and it helped to keep them tidy for school. But the rest of the clothing was usually bundled up with the bedding, ready for pawning.

  Seared by disappointment, I would take the cloth-wrapped parcel to the crowded pawnbroker's shop with its three golden balls, and, after much good-natured haggling with the pawnbroker, I would receive four or five shillings and a ticket so that I could later redeem the parcel.

  The parcel was whisked away fi-om the high, black counter and thrown up a chute to the pawnbroker's assistant in the storeroom above. Afl:er a year, if the goods had not been redeemed or

  interest paid on the loan, the parcel would be torn open and the contents sold. So many goods were for sale that the pawnbroker's was an excellent place to buy almost anything, from clothing and boots to an engagement ring or a bedspread or a concertina; and there were always women wrapped in shawls or in long, draggling men's overcoats, picking through the merchandise on the bargain tables set out in front of the store on fine days.

  The money raised from the pawnbroker might be used for a little extra food or, more frequently, to pacify a creditor who had threatened court procedure. Cigarettes were almost always one of the first things bought with it, and sometimes Mother would go to the cinema. She often remarked angrily that if Father could afford a drink, she could aflPord a cinema seat.

  The local newspaper-shop proprietor, afi:er a fierce row with me because Father owed him a whole pound for cigarettes, obtained a court order against us. This meant that the bill had to be paid by regular installments set by the court, on threat of the bailifls selling us up if we failed to pay. This added enormously to my fears, because I had stood and watched while whole houses of furniture were sold by the bailifis for a few shillings to settle a ridiculously small debt. Mother once bought for sixpence a superb handmade rocking chair when there were no other bids for it.

  I never knew where my parents might run up another bill or who might pounce on me when I answered the door. I had always been afraid of people who shouted, and I would stand shivering, with my shoulder against the inside of the door, while someone hammered and shouted on the outside.

  Once or twice I considered running away, but in those days there was no support from welfare organizations for such a runaway. And who would employ someone like me?

  FIFTEEN

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  Spring had come at last. The trees hning Princes Avenue were stickily in bud; the privet hedges were already bursting into leaf, and the sparrows and pigeons were a-bustle with the need to mate.

  I wheeled Edward down Parliament Street to the small Carnegie library. A playful wind flipped dust and pieces of paper around its railin
gs, against which women leaned, shopping bags on arm, to gossip in the pale sunshine. The soot-covered library was a handsome little building with high, arched windows which made it pleasantly light inside. Its battered books passed through my hands at the rate of about half a dozen a week and helped me to forget hunger, cold, and humiliation. The librarians knew me and sometimes recommended a new book which had come in.

  I parked the Chariot close to the iron railings at the front. Edward was a patient child who would sit and watch the passersby while I hastened to find something new to read.

  As usual, I went directly to the section devoted to travel books. A new travel book was a great treat to me. I learned all I know of geography from them. I would carefully follow on the maps in the books journeys through countries as diverse as Tibet and Bermuda, examining myopically photographs which ranged from very fiazzy to very clear. I was always annoyed when there was no map in the book, because I did not have an atlas.

  I pushed my straggling hair back behind my ears and took oflF my faulty glasses to peer closer at the shelves; sometimes I could see better without the glasses than I could with them.

  "Helen Forrester, isn't it?" inquired a voice from behind me.

  I turned slowly, surprised that anyone should know me by name.

  It was the deaconess from the church, to whom in a rage I had shown our house. I murmured shyly that I was Helen. She looked very sweet in her coif and frumpy clothes.

  "I was about to come to see you, ' she announced unexpectedly. Then she glanced around the book-lined room. "Perhaps we could talk here, though. Let's go over there." She took my elbow and guided me into a comer of the fiction section.

  "I wanted to ask you, my dear, if you would like a job as a telephonist. A charity I know of needs a girl, and I immediately thought of you, because you have such a pleasant voice."