Helen Forrester - Twopence to Cross the Mersey

He sat up quickly, looking very quaint in his rumpled outer clothes, and put on his spectacles.

He peered at me in an effort to persuade his slumber-ridden eyes to focus.

‘I think it’s mumps,’ he said incredulously.

‘It’s my old tonsilitis,’ I said in a whisper. ‘My ear hurts like it always does when tonsilitis is coming.’

My voice and the room seemed to be receding from me and I burned with heat.

‘I think you have mumps as well.’

‘Does mumps bring you out in spots?’ I asked.

He was scratching absent-mindedly at himself, as I spoke.

‘Oh my God!’

He looked at his own arms, and then at my bright red tummy, which I obligingly bared for his inspection.

‘Bug bites, I think,’ he said slowly. ‘Saw them in the army.’

Slow tears welled into Mother’s eyes.

‘I can’t bear it!’ she cried out suddenly. ‘I can’t bear it!’ She hammered the mattress with closed fists. ‘I can’t bear it!’ she screamed, her pretty face distorted. ‘I can’t stand any more.’

She continued to shriek hysterically as we gaped at her in terrified silence. For me the scene was almost totally unreal, as fever gained on me; yet I knew that one of my parents had nearly reached the end of the amount of suffering she could accept, and it was difficult for me to contain my own screams of sheer fright.

There was the sound of heavy feet on the stairs and a coarse male voice shouted up, ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up up there!’

In spite of the pain it gave my throat, I began to cry.

‘Don’t cry, Mummy,’ I begged, ‘we’ll get through somehow.’

Father, ever optimistic like Mr Micawber that something would turn up, bestirred himself and scrambled out of bed.

‘Yes, don’t cry,’ he said kindly. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Foster about the bugs – she’ll probably do something about them.’

Having seen Mrs Foster I doubted this, but I heartily agreed. Anything, I thought, to get that desperate look off Mother’s face and stop her screaming.

Slowly, as Father pottered round trying to bring some order to his distraught family, her cries gave way to sobs and she laid her head down on the mattress. She continued to weep, sobbing quietly to herself for hours.

Father trailed down to the basement to fetch some more coal and coaxed the fire into a more cheerful blaze than I had been able to create. Then we all went and stood by it while he took us one by one and looked us over.

Mother wept on, Edward and Avril slept.

In his opinion, Father said with a sigh, Tony and I had mumps. In addition, I undoubtedly had tonsilitis. Everybody was so used to my sporadic bouts of tonsilitis that this latter pronouncement did not bring me any particular sympathy. Rather, it was taken as an example of my usual awkwardness and waywardness of character. As Father said, ‘You would! Just at this time.’

It was presumed that Brian was also sickening with mumps.

We three sick children were piled into the attic bed. I hardly knew, by this time, what was happening around me. Apparently, Mother was persuaded to feed Edward, when he woke, and Father fed Fiona and Alan. He then took them to their new school, where he had to part with fourpence for a week’s fees.

I am not sure how my parents managed during the next few days, except that, according to Alan, they pawned my overcoat for two shillings in order to be able to buy coal. I remember, between bouts of delirium, seeing my mother crawling about, sometimes literally on her hands and knees, tears streaming down her face, as she struggled to look after Edward; and Fiona bringing me drinks of hot water with a tiny piece of Oxo cube dissolved in it.

The pain in my ears was intolerable, but there was no doctor to paint my throat with glycerine and tannin, no hot-water-bottle or aspirin to ease the searing pain, no drops in my ears to encourage a discharge. The mumps soon decreased, but it was several days before the agony in my ears suddenly diminished. There was a heavy discharge from them on to the bare mattress and my temperature began to go down. I became aware that Brian and Tony were no longer with me, and I called out, my voice seeming muffled and far away to me.

They both came clattering up the attic stairs.

Their faces seemed to have shrunk far more than the vanquished mumps justified. Brian looked more monkeylike than ever, and Tony’s blue eyes and the bones of his head seemed grotesquely prominent. They both had large, scarlet spots about their faces and necks.

‘It’s very quiet,’ I whispered. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Alan and Fiona are at school. Mummy’s in the living-room with the baby. We have to be quiet so she can rest.’

‘That is right,’ I said, trying to sit up and finding that the room swam around me, so that I was glad to lie down again. I looked imploringly at Brian. ‘I’m so cold, Brian. Could you find something more to cover me with?’

He immediately went and fetched his overcoat and put it over my shoulders.

‘Where is Daddy?’

‘He’s gone to see Mr Parish,’ volunteered Tony.

I smiled at his name for the public assistance committee.

‘Be a darling and bring me my specs,’ I commanded him. ‘I think I have to stay here a little longer. I still feel a bit hot between the shivers. Gosh, I do smell!’

The sides of my head were sticky with the discharge from my ears, but for the moment I had neither the strength nor the will to do anything about it.

‘Tell Daddy I’m better, when he comes,’ I said. ‘You can play in here if you like.’ And I closed my eyes, thankful to be free of pain at last, and fell into a deep sleep while the boys played tag up and down the room. I awoke much later to find Father bending over me, trying to see me by the light of a candlestub. He felt my head. It was cool.

‘Feel better?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s my girl.’

‘How is Mummy?’

‘Much better. She is walking quite well now.’

‘Has she stopped crying?’ I could not keep a hint of fear out of my voice.

Father looked old and very tired, as he said quietly, ‘Yes, she is better now.’

‘Can I get up?’

‘Yes, I think it would be a good idea. We’ve got a fire today, so it’s warmer in the other room.’

I craved a hot cup of tea and I hoped that if we had a fire to boil the water we might also have a little tea in the cupboard. My legs almost refused to obey me and I clung to Father’s arm as I shuffled across the floor, down the attic stairs and into the living-room, where I was greeted rapturously by Fiona and Alan and with a wan smile by my exhausted mother. Avril was sitting on the floor in a corner, her face red and tear-stained, getting over a tantrum.

Brian and Tony went back to school, two subdued ghosts walking hand in hand for fear of being bullied by the heavily booted older boys in the street.

Mrs Foster, declaring that she had never had a complaint before, produced half a tin of Keating’s powder to repel the bugs. It did have some temporary effect, but the pests were coming in from the house next door and only a thorough stoving of both houses would ever have cleared them. We had to learn to live with them, just as we soon had to learn to live with head-lice which the children picked up in school.

I went through each child’s clothing before they set off for school, hoping to save them the humiliation of being labelled verminous; they were already cowed enough.

The days dragged by and both Mother and I became stronger, despite our poor diet of white bread, potatoes and tea. Though Mother’s physical health was improving, she seemed to withdraw further and further away from us. It was as if she could not bear to face the miserable existence which was our lot. She tried very hard to appear normal and calm, but attacks of hopeless hysteria descended on her without warning and she would rage and weep over some trifle, while whichever child happened to be the cause of the explosion made matters worse by trying to defend himself or herself verbally. We were all still at the age when we believed that grown-ups knew what they were about and had sensible reasons for all that they did, and in consequence we were thrown into real fright each time one of these distressing scenes occurred. The idea that a person’s life could be so shattered that they were unable to build anything new was unknown to us. We were young – we hoped for better times in the early future.