Two bony pairs of arms were quietly wrapped around me, and two young heads came close to mine.
‘Never mind, Helen. Please don’t cry. What’s a silly old scholarship, anyway? You got it. You’re clever. You’ll get another one some day.’
I did not cry. I could not.
Gently, I told Alan to go to bed.
I pushed Fiona quietly towards our pile of newspapers laid on top of the old door; the papers had an irritating habit of spreading themselves on to the floor as well. I laid myself down on them, facing the wall, and pulled my knees up tight like a baby in the womb. If I took little breaths and lay perfectly still, perhaps the pain inside me would go away.
I slept little, but felt calmer in the morning. The children were dispatched to school. Mother went out. Father hurriedly prepared to go down to the labour exchange. As he struggled to neaten himself, I asked him diffidently, ‘Did you ever hear anything about the art scholarship I sat for?’
He looked at me abstractedly. ‘Art scholarship?’
‘Yes. You remember – the one I sat for while I was at school – just before my birthday.’
He was quiet for a moment and sat staring at his shoelace which had broken.
‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘We did hear something about it. It couldn’t be awarded to you.’
‘But did I win?’ I asked in a whisper.
‘You did. However, when we said that you were born in Cheshire, we were told that you were ineligible and should never have been entered for it. Cheshire comes under a different education committee.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about it?’
‘There seemed no point – children get upset about these things.’
I nodded. I could not speak because my teeth were chattering so much from the nervous effort I had made to ask about the scholarship.
I hugged Edward to me, while he seized his battered trilby hat and departed. I could hear the loose sole on one of his shoes flipping on each step.
All that morning, I thought about the scholarship. Pressed against the glass-topped biscuit tins in the tiny grocery store, the rancid smell of the bacon-cutting machine enveloping me, I had a long wait in the tiny shop while the grocery woman measured out single ounces of tea, sugar and margarine, climbed her ladder to reach down tins of condensed milk and had long arguments with several desperate women trying to extend their credit with her.
By the time it was my turn to be served with the twopennyworth of rice I wanted, I had come to the conclusion that I must accept my father’s explanation, despite the fact that the school had known my place of birth.
Dully, sulkily, I continued to look after the children through the winter, trying to dry their rags when they came in rain-soaked, trying to buy with pennies enough food for nine, living in a world where handkerchiefs, toilet-paper, hot water and soap ranked as unobtainable luxuries. Fortunately, the stomach can become accustomed to very little food, and the children did not now cry very often that they were hungry, as long as they had bread and potatoes.
In an effort to make sales and increase their profits, even the more reputable local shopkeepers now cut margarine into quarter pounds, though it cost only fourpence to buy a whole pound, and opened pots of jam to sell at a penny a tablespoonful – bring your own cup. One tiny corner shop, presided over by a skinny harridan whose hands never seemed to have been washed, would make up a pennyworth of almost anything that could be divided up. This resulted in a very high price per pound – but if one has only a penny one has little choice in the matter.
A learned professor published a detailed menu showing that a full-grown man could eat well on four shillings a week but it was of no help to me. Four shillings per week per head to spend on food would have represented to us an unattainable height of luxurious living.
In the city council, a stout, outspoken Labour couple tore into the mayor, aldermen and councillors with bitter tongues on behalf of the unemployed, the homeless and the aged. Mr and Mrs Braddock – our Bessie, as Mrs Braddock was known to many – started a lifelong battle on behalf of the poor of Liverpool. On the docks, the Communists made inroads among the despised and ill-treated dock labourers, the results of which are still apparent in the labour unrest rampant in the docks of Liverpool forty years later.
City health officials looked in despair at horrifying infant mortality rates and at a general death rate nearly the highest in the country. Nobody, of course, died of starvation – only of malnutrition.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England continued to build themselves a cathedral apiece and solicited donations.
My parents at about this time seemed to have given up all hope of any real future and struggled on from one day to the next, too dulled by hunger and privation to plan how they might get out of the morass they were in.
My father tended to sit silently indoors now, only going to the labour exchange and the public assistance committee, because he was more ragged than the most poverty-stricken tramp I ever encountered. My mother still made valiant efforts to keep her appearance reasonable so that she could apply to shops and offices for work.
One sunny Sunday in March, however, Father decided he could stand the rank atmosphere of the house no more and he and Brian went for a walk in the town, which was fairly deserted on Sundays. Father always feared being arrested for vagrancy, but he hoped police would be few and far between on this day of rest.
Two hours later, a petrified Brian came rushing up the stairs and into our living-room, where I was rocking Edward to sleep in his Chariot He buried his face in my shoulder.
‘Daddy’s been arrested,’ he cried.
I jumped up in alarm and Edward cried out as the rocking ceased.
‘Oh, Heavens! Whatever did he do?’
Brian continued to sob in my arms in sheer fright.
‘Tell me, Brian. What did he do? Did he steal some cigarettes?’
I felt Brian nod negatively.
‘Well, he must have done something!’
‘He didn’t do anything.’
I knelt down and hugged Brian close.
‘Well, tell me what happened. Come on, love, tell me.’
Brian’s sobs reduced to sniffs and with all the maddening long-windedness of children, he said, ‘Well, we walked down into the town and we looked in Cooper’s and MacSymon’s windows at all the lovely food – they had peaches in brandy in Cooper’s. And then we looked in the furniture stores and Daddy showed me a jade idol in Bunney’s, at the corner of Whitechapel. Then we walked up Lord Street – opposite Frisby Dykes – and looked at the tailors’ shops in North John Street.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said impatiently.
‘Well, then Daddy wanted to look at the gentlemen’s shops in the arcade in Cook Street – and it was at the corner of Cook Street that we saw this strange man.’
‘What kind of a strange man?’
‘Well, he was big and nicely dressed with lovely polished boots. Daddy said he was a plain-clothes policeman – and we were both a bit scared – but Daddy said to keep on walking as if there was nothing wrong.’ Brian wiped his nose on the cuff of his jersey. ‘So we did – and we looked at all the pipes and tobacco and suits and things and this man started to walk up behind us.’
‘What