Liverpool Miss by Helen Forrester Page A

borrow a dress, shoes and stockings, if she would be kind enough to lend them to me.
    ‘Certain, certain, you can have anything.’ She paused and looked uneasily at her husband. ‘I would not wish to anger your good Mother, though.’
    ‘She need never know where I got the clothes from,’ I assured her. ‘I only need them for one afternoon. I’ll think of another way of getting clothes for the job itself.’ I had already thought of a possible source from which to obtain at least a dress, but not quickly enough for the interview.
    Though Cristina might have qualms about offending my parents, her swaggering gallant of a husband had none. I think he had always resented my parents’ supercilious attitude towards their neighbours and his pride had been hurt.
    ‘Give them to her,’ he ordered his wife, with such a lordly gesture that the cat was disturbed from his shoulder and did a quick leap to the floor.
    Cristina’s eyebrows went up expressively and she shrugged. She got up from her chair, flicked her black shawl up round her shoulders, and said kindly to me, ‘All right, my little one. Let us see what we can find.’
    I bounced out of my chair, suddenly gay, and followed her. She had lent me old shoes on one or two earlier occasions, when she had observed that my running shoes were soaking wet; and long ago her gift of the Chariot had saved me the heavy task of carrying Edward everywhere when he was too young to walk.
    Half an hour later, I glided through our back door, through the deserted kitchen and down the steps to the coal cellar, where I stowed away a brown paper bag containing shoes and stockings. On the inside of the cellar door, I hung a coat hanger which held a black dress with matching jacket shrouded in a piece of discarded curtaining.
    ‘Who is there?’ Father’s voice came sharply from the living room.
    ‘It’s only me, Daddy.’
    I opened the door and went in. The gaslight had been lit. The mantle was broken and the flame hissed and flickered over the comfortless room. The fire was out. Upstairs, I could hear the boys fighting in their bedroom. Presumably, Fiona, Avril and little Edward were asleep, since there seemed no sound from them.
    ‘Where have you been?’ Father’s voice was freezing.
    ‘To see Mrs Gomez. Where’s Mummy?’
    ‘She has gone down to Granby Street to buy apair of stockings.’ He flicked over a page of his book impatiently. ‘You know I don’t like you mixing with local people.’
    I hung my head, but did not reply.
    ‘If you have no homework to do, you had better go to bed.’
    ‘Yes, Daddy.’ I wondered if I should give him his usual good-night kiss, but he did not look up from his book, so I crept by him and went forlornly up to bed. I knew I had hurt him beyond forgiveness, and perhaps he really did not know how to cope with me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    In the usual rush to get everybody off to school and themselves off to work, my parents had no time to discuss Miss Ferguson’s visit with me. Mother gave me a shilling, as usual, to buy food, and two extra pennies to put in the gas meter. Father asked me to wash his second shirt ready for the next day, and suddenly Edward and I had the house to ourselves.
    Greatly daring, I borrowed a large pair of scissors from a crippled Jewish lady who lived across the road. I was acquainted with her, because on cold winter Saturdays, Brian lit her fire for her and went over occasionally to make it up, since her religion demanded that she do no work on that day.
    I stood in front of our piece of mirror in the kitchen window and hacked off the greasy rat’s tailsof hair until I was left with a short bob. I wished I had the family comb, but Mother had taken it to work with her. Then I attacked my nails, which were not very easy to cut with such big scissors, but finally they were snipped down to the flesh and that got rid of much of the dirt under them as well. Hair and body were then washed with a kettle of boiling water and a