The Complete Helen Forrester 4-Book Memoir: Twopence to Cross the Mersey, Liverpool Miss, By the Waters of Liverpool, Lime Street at Two
The complete four-volume collection of classic memoir recounting a poverty-stricken childhood in 1930s Liverpool that started with Twopence To Cross the Mersey.Twopence To Cross The Mersey – When Helen Forrester’s father went bankrupt in 1930 she and her six siblings were forced into dreadful poverty in Depression-ridden Liverpool. Managing the household and caring for the younger children all fell on twelve-year-old Helen. Written without self-pity, Forrester’s memoir of these grim days is as heart-warming as it is shocking.Liverpool Miss – Life remains extremely tough for fourteen-year-old Helen. Her continuing struggles against malnutrition, dirt and, above all, the selfish demands of her parents, are deeply shocking. But Helen’s fortitude in the most harrowing of situations makes this a story of amazing courage.By The Waters Of Liverpool – though her parents are as financially irresponsible as ever, wasting money while their children go without, for Helen the future is brightening. At seventeen, she has fought won some important battles with her parents and won, then she meets Harry…Lime Street At Two – It is 1940 and Helen, now twenty, is working at a welfare centre. Her wages are pitifully low and her mother claims the whole of them for housekeeping but she is still thrilled to be gaining some independence. As WWII rages, tragedy isn’t very far away, but Helen faces it with courage and determination.
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HELEN FORRESTER
THE COMPLETE HELEN FORRESTER
4-BOOK MEMOIR
Twopence to Cross the MerseyLiverpool MissBy The Waters of LiverpoolLime Street at Two
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Twopence to Cross the Mersey first published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1974 Liverpool Miss first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head Ltd 1979 By the Waters of Liverpool first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head Ltd 1981 Lime Street at Two first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head Ltd 1985
Copyright © Jamunadevi Bhatia 1974, 1979, 1981, 1985
Cover Layout Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006361688, 9780006365402, 9780006364948, 9780006370000
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007550401 Version: 2017-10-26
CONTENTS
HELEN FORRESTER
Twopence to Cross the Mersey
To the Liverpool City Police
CONTENTS
Liverpool is a city through which visitors pass on their way to other places. It is to them a dull world of shipping and commerce which sprawls untidily along the north bank of the River Mersey. Many of them will not know that it has a sister port, Birkenhead, on the opposite bank, which is linked to it by ferry-boats, a railway tunnel and a road tunnel. Beyond Birkenhead lie the small seaside towns of the Wirral peninsula and behind them is pleasant countryside. My widowed grandmother lived in the Wirral, and here, while visiting her, I spent the happiest days of my childhood, on sandy beaches or in wind-swept gardens. I remember with love the rain-soaked hills looking out on to stormy seas and the turbulent estuary of the Mersey.
It used to cost twopence to cross the river on the ferry-boat from Liverpool to Birkenhead. Twopence is not a very large sum, but if one has no money, the river is a real barrier, and, during the Depression years, was an impassable one to many of the poverty-stricken people of Liverpool.
Not so many years ago, I took my little Canadian-born son to see Liverpool and the places of my childhood.
‘Did you live here when you were small, Ma?’ he asked incredulously, his strong North American accent sounding strange amid the thick, nasal speech around him.
‘Yes, I was in Liverpool for part of my life.’
‘My, it’s dirty! Do you mind it being dirty?’
I smiled, seeing it all through his stranger’s eyes, eyes accustomed to new buildings, miles of neon signs, miles of prairie golden with wheat or diamond-white with snow.
I laughed down at him a little ruefully.
‘Yes, at first I did mind. Not now, though. I soon learned that people and cities which do the hard, unpleasant work of the world can’t help getting dirty. Liverpool’s a wonderful place when you get to know it.’
He looked at me derisively and said, with all the cold logic of a five-year-old, ‘They should use more soap and – wash the streets.’
My smile faded, as cold shadows of winters past crept over me. That was how I had felt, when first I had really looked at the city and not passed through it as a traveller. God, how I had minded the dirt! How terrified I had been! How menacingly grotesque the people had looked; children of the industrial revolution, nurtured for generations on poor food in smoke-laden air, grim and twisted, foul-mouthed and coarse, shaped in this strange gloomy world to serve the trade to the Americas. And I, a middle-class girl of the gender south-west of England who had been shielded from the rougher side of life by a private school system and obedient servants, had nearly gone mad with panic when, with little warning, I had been thrown amongst them. Gone was the protection of money and privilege; I had to make what I could of this grimy city and its bitterly humorous inhabitants and share with them their suffering during the Depression years.
