Free By the Waters of Liverpool by Helen Forrester Page B

imbalance.
    The ice between Father and me had been broken. Older now, I was more able to forgive and understand his weakness and in reaching out for his aid when I was so afraid, I think I had restored to him in some small part a sense of being wanted, being needed for more than the wages he brought in.
    Whether his talk with me had alerted him to the possible code of behaviour of his sons, I do not know. He began, however, to check on where they went in their spare time and what they did. He made them all promise to tell Mother or me their destination whenever they went out. Nobody thought of Fiona and Avril. The boys all had lively, inventive minds and were fairly well mannered. They tended to draw friends to them, whose parents were glad to have them play in their houses, where they were under supervision. The boys also frequently played together, and this helped to keep them out of bad company.
    Father’s new interest in his children was wonderful to me. One of the most scaring things in childhood is the lack of an older person to turn to, to depend on for guidance and advice. Now, in a diffident, irregular way he was beginning to makehis presence felt in the family, as if the trauma of the war and his financial ruin was beginning to be sloughed off. Though, in fearsome battles, Mother still shouted him down, he persisted quietly, using a strong sense of humour which I had not realised he possessed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Two women came on separate occasions to view our empty front room. One of them was an elderly widow and the other a shop girl in crumpled black – black was the uniform of work in those days. The lack of a bathroom and an indoor lavatory made them both turn it down with supercilious sniffs.
    A few days later, a young Irish labourer, cap in hand, came to see it.
    ‘I’m sorry I am not prepared to let the room to a man,’ Mother said, beginning to close the front door on him.
    ‘It’s not for meself only,’ pleaded the youth. ‘It’s me wife and me baby.’
    It is doubtful if anyone, except the poorest slum landlord, would have considered such a tenant.Labouring in Liverpool meant casual work at rock bottom wages – and a consequent difficulty in paying the rent. A baby meant noise and a lot of washing to be hung out. And Irish people did not have much of a name for cleanliness.
    I saw Mother hesitate. The careworn white face with its red-rimmed, pleading eyes must have touched some chord in her – perhaps she remembered when she had canvassed from door to door, trying to find a landlord who would accept seven children. ‘Is your wife with you now?’
    ‘She’s waitin’ at t’ corner.’
    ‘Ask her to come. She’d better see it, too.’
    Joyfully, he turned and bawled up the street, ‘Mary, coom ‘ere.’
    A plump, cheery woman wearing a black shawl, with a young baby wrapped in the front of it, came panting up to the doorstep. Her rosy face, and thick light brown curls bobbing round her shoulders, reminded me of Edith, our nanny. They both had the same country-fresh look. Her expression was one of sudden glowing hope.
    Fiona and I were longing to see the baby, which seemed very small, and when we had all trooped into the bleak front room, from which even the curtains had been removed by the hire purchase company, Mother asked if we might see it. Its tinypuckered face under a clean, frilled bonnet was tenderly admired by all of us, as it placidly slept.
    ‘’E’s only six weeks,’ his mother announced proudly as she wrapped the shawl back over him.
    Mother stood in the middle of the unvarnished square of wooden floor, where the carpet had lain, and explained the disadvantages of the room. The young couple were irrepressible.
    ‘Och, I can keep a couple o’ buckets o’ water in t’ room. And Pat will be gone to work before most of yez is up.’
    ‘We’re all away during the day,’ Mother informed her, ‘except for a little while when the children come home to lunch.’
    ‘To be