way in which I could divide the small amount of Canadian red cheese so that I could have some without leaving them short. The severe illness I had suffered two years earlier had left me very apathetic about myself; it was enough for me if I could crawl through the day without incurring either Mother’s or Mr Ellis’s wrath and perhaps get a kind word from my dedicated night school teachers.
Mother was a demonstrator. She took short contracts with department stores who wanted to launch new kitchen gadgets, and she stood in the store and showed people how to use them. Occasionally, she did door-to-door selling for vacuum cleaner companies, family photographers, Christmas card publishers or sweet firms. When doing outside work, she wore an all-enveloping leather coat which she had bought second hand. This protected herfrom Liverpool’s damp, cold wind, and, despite its bulk, she still managed to look elegant in a faded way. She had a lovely carriage and an authoritative voice with a pure Oxford accent. She was a very good saleswoman.
Her supervisor in a vacuum cleaner company, who once called at the house, said admiringly, ‘She could steal your front door key off you and sell it you back before you knew it had gone.’
Father received this doubtful praise in stiff silence, while his guest threw a cigarette stub into the hearth and smoothed his curled moustache.
I do not know what Mother thought of some of the men with whom she worked, but it is doubtful if their crassness bothered her much. She was so sure of herself, so certain of her social superiority despite our current circumstances, that she was to a degree armoured against them.
Father was different. He was abject in his failure and very easily hurt. His public school training, followed almost immediately by war service in Russia during the Revolution, had given him little preparation for a world which had changed completely by the time he came home. He might have survived better had the Depression – and a large family – not added to his difficulties. Like many soldiers returning from the First World War he was emotionallyand physically drained by its unremitting horrors; there was little real strength left; and I could guess at the cold flame of hatred in his heart, when faced with a runt of a salesman, who was probably doing rather better than he was as a City clerk.
Mother came downstairs with the coarse white teacup in her hand, and paused when she saw me in the hall to ask if I felt better. I said I did. How could I complain of overwhelming fatigue to someone who looked like a haggard ghost herself?
As we stepped out of the house into a beautiful, rain-washed morning, glad to be away from a fetid, crowded home, Alan offered to pay my tram fare to work. He was shy about referring to my aches and pains of the previous day, but he was well accustomed to their occurrence.
‘No, dear,’ I said. ‘I shall be all right. In fact, the exercise is good for me.’ And I marched beside him down the street as if I had not a care in the world. I could not take his pocket money; but I loved him for the sheer kindness of the offer, and our conversation held more than its usual friendly warmth.
‘The man from the furniture shop came last night – after you’d gone to bed,’ he informed me, as we paused to look in the window of the bicycle shop at the corner of Bold Street; and hesighed over black enamelled frames and racing handlebars.
‘Oh, dear!’ I exclaimed. ‘What now?’
‘Threatening to take it away again.’
‘Haven’t they been paid lately?’
‘Suppose not,’ he replied gloomily.
‘Oh, blow. It’s such an appalling waste, Alan. Mummy and Daddy make the weekly payments for a while. Then the stuff is repossessed – but we still have to pay for it – it doesn’t get us off the hook. It’s so stupid. Really, they’re absolutely crazy.’
‘Humph.’
He was not very interested. He never used our front sitting room. His friends did
Mother was a demonstrator. She took short contracts with department stores who wanted to launch new kitchen gadgets, and she stood in the store and showed people how to use them. Occasionally, she did door-to-door selling for vacuum cleaner companies, family photographers, Christmas card publishers or sweet firms. When doing outside work, she wore an all-enveloping leather coat which she had bought second hand. This protected herfrom Liverpool’s damp, cold wind, and, despite its bulk, she still managed to look elegant in a faded way. She had a lovely carriage and an authoritative voice with a pure Oxford accent. She was a very good saleswoman.
Her supervisor in a vacuum cleaner company, who once called at the house, said admiringly, ‘She could steal your front door key off you and sell it you back before you knew it had gone.’
Father received this doubtful praise in stiff silence, while his guest threw a cigarette stub into the hearth and smoothed his curled moustache.
I do not know what Mother thought of some of the men with whom she worked, but it is doubtful if their crassness bothered her much. She was so sure of herself, so certain of her social superiority despite our current circumstances, that she was to a degree armoured against them.
Father was different. He was abject in his failure and very easily hurt. His public school training, followed almost immediately by war service in Russia during the Revolution, had given him little preparation for a world which had changed completely by the time he came home. He might have survived better had the Depression – and a large family – not added to his difficulties. Like many soldiers returning from the First World War he was emotionallyand physically drained by its unremitting horrors; there was little real strength left; and I could guess at the cold flame of hatred in his heart, when faced with a runt of a salesman, who was probably doing rather better than he was as a City clerk.
Mother came downstairs with the coarse white teacup in her hand, and paused when she saw me in the hall to ask if I felt better. I said I did. How could I complain of overwhelming fatigue to someone who looked like a haggard ghost herself?
As we stepped out of the house into a beautiful, rain-washed morning, glad to be away from a fetid, crowded home, Alan offered to pay my tram fare to work. He was shy about referring to my aches and pains of the previous day, but he was well accustomed to their occurrence.
‘No, dear,’ I said. ‘I shall be all right. In fact, the exercise is good for me.’ And I marched beside him down the street as if I had not a care in the world. I could not take his pocket money; but I loved him for the sheer kindness of the offer, and our conversation held more than its usual friendly warmth.
‘The man from the furniture shop came last night – after you’d gone to bed,’ he informed me, as we paused to look in the window of the bicycle shop at the corner of Bold Street; and hesighed over black enamelled frames and racing handlebars.
‘Oh, dear!’ I exclaimed. ‘What now?’
‘Threatening to take it away again.’
‘Haven’t they been paid lately?’
‘Suppose not,’ he replied gloomily.
‘Oh, blow. It’s such an appalling waste, Alan. Mummy and Daddy make the weekly payments for a while. Then the stuff is repossessed – but we still have to pay for it – it doesn’t get us off the hook. It’s so stupid. Really, they’re absolutely crazy.’
‘Humph.’
He was not very interested. He never used our front sitting room. His friends did
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