of Operatic and Dramatic Societies, and she knew enough of stagecraft to use her voice and manner to the best effect. She was never paid enough for her ability.
She looked very attractive, despite her thinness, in a black dress and black shoes purchased from a second-hand shop. I used to cut her hair for her with Father’s cut-throat razor and then curl it each morning with a pair of curling tongs, bought for a penny from the pawnbroker’s oddments table set up outside his shop.
Of course, I never approached her while she was working; and Avril understood that she must be quiet and tiptoe away at an appropriate moment. I doubt if she noticed that we were there, because she never mentioned seeing us.
Avril’s and my great enemies were the shopwalkers. Sometimes when we were cold, we would go into a big shop and skulk around the different departments until we became warm again. And then the shopwalker would pounce.
Shopwalkers always looked very imposing. They were usually elderly gentlemen dressed in stiff, white, Victorian wing collars and black suits. They perambulated stiffly up and down the aisles of the shops, hands clasped behind their backs. They glared ferociously at the young girls and boys who served behind the counters. Then, with a slight bow, they would lend a courteous ear to customer inquiries, the whispered remarks almost drowned by the loud rings of the containers, holding payments or change, shooting along wires above their heads on their way from the counter to the cash office.
I never argued with shopwalkers.
‘What do you want?’ they would snarl.
‘I’m just looking,’ I would say loftily, exactly as I had heard people round me say.
The usual reply was, ‘You can look in the windows.’
Then they would stride crossly to the nearest door and fling it open, and Edward, Avril and I would slink out like lost puppies.
One October day, we went into a shop in which Mother was working, to get warm. Mother was selling photograph albums. Her voice penetrated clearly through the murmur of shoppers as she extolled the advantages of having an album for each particular type of photograph. Avril, Edward and I settled down to watch.
I had not been feeling well for two days. My back ached, as did my head. I had got very wet in a rain storm earlier in the week, and I shrugged off the low level discomfort as being due to this. As I watched, however, the pain in my back began to feel as if an iron belt had been suddenly clasped round my waist. Pains shot down the sides of my stomach.
I gasped to Avril that we had to go home quickly, and dragged her back to the pram, parked in the shop doorway. She protested in a loud whine as I plunked her into the pram with Edward. Panting with pain, I began the long ascent up Renshaw Street, Hardman Street and Leece Street.
The pain came in ever increasing waves. Sweat beaded my forehead and I leaned on the pram handle for support, as I almost ran for home.
In St Catherine’s Street, opposite the Women’s Hospital, I stopped to lean against a brick wall as a particularly agonising pain ripped down the side of my stomach. Though I stared at the hospital with glazed eyes, it did not occur to me to seek succour there. To a child, in those days, hospitals were usually where old people went to die. Fiona had once gone to hospital and her lurid tales of her experiences had been enough to frighten all of the children. So the hospital was just another impersonal red brick building to stumble past on my way home.
Avril was whining and snatching at the twig with which Edward was playing. Mercifully, they both seemed unaware that anything was wrong.
I ran the pram up to the front step of our house, and tugged at the string sticking through the letterbox. The string pulled back the lock, the door swung open and I almost threw first Edward and then Avril into the narrow hall.
The pain was again surging in my stomach.
Frightened to death, I slammed the front door, snatched up Edward and carried him through to our back yard, leaving an angry Avril howling in the hall. Perhaps if I went to the lavatory I would feel better.
I left the lavatory door ajar, so that I could watch Edward, while I snatched down my knickers.
The torn, grey garment was covered with blood.
I thought I would faint with sheer terror.
Was it appendicitis?
Again the waves of pain. I dropped down on to the seat, clasping my stomach. When the pain eased slightly, I hitched up the soaked knickers and took Edward back into the house. I had to lie down.
Avril was sitting on an upturned paint can, nursing a stray cat which had wandered in a day or two before. She had been crying and when she saw me, she let out a fresh bellow. Normally, I would have comforted her, but this time I dumped Edward unceremoniously down beside her.
‘Watch Edward,’ I ordered.
Where should I lie?
My bed upstairs was a door set on four bricks and I could lie on it. But Edward might follow me up the stairs and then fall down again.
Better to go into the nicely furnished front room, a place I normally did not enter because Edward was usually with me – and he always had grubby hands and was not yet reliably watertight.
Edward did follow me in, and I hastily gave him the new, unused bronze fire irons to play with. A resentful Avril stayed with the cat.
My parents, with their usual blithe inconsequence, had furnished the front room very well on the hire purchase system, regardless of the fact that the children still slept three to a bed under a motley collection of old coats and bits of blanket; and I did not even have a bed.
I was thankful enough that day, however, to curl up on the green leatherette settee. In the foetal position the pain lessened, though during the next surge I fainted.
I sobbed to myself and prayed that Mother would come home soon. Then the scarifying spasms retreated slightly and I fell into a doze.
Father shook me gently to awaken me and asked anxiously, ‘Are you all right, dear? You look very white.’
My stomach and back were tight knots of pain, increasing and decreasing like waves on a seashore. I was also shivering with cold from the unheated room. I hardly dared to move, as I whimpered out the story of the torment I was enduring.
‘My underneaths are bleeding, Daddy. Do you think I’ve got appendicitis?’
Bent over me, he listened. Then his eyes began to twinkle, his lips to twitch. A loud guffaw burst from him.
I was horrified at such a reaction to my story.
‘Daddy!’ I reproached him, and then broke into a moan as the pain increased.
Father straightened up and, still smiling, let out a slow sigh of relief.
‘Didn’t your mother explain this to you?’
‘What?’
‘This – this bleeding?’
‘No. Was she expecting it?’ I was totally bewildered, and I sobbed as the pain hit new heights.
‘Well, of course. She must have been. You’re a girl.’
‘Of course, I’m a girl,’ I gasped. ‘What difference does that make? Daddy, could you get the doctor? The pain’s getting worse.’ I was deeply upset at his laconic attitude.
He hesitated for a moment. Then he said, ‘You just stay where you are for the moment, until Mother comes home. Fiona’s making the tea. I’ll ask her to bring you a cup. She peeked in here and thought you were sleeping, so she has laid the table for you and cut the bread and butter. I will make the fire in the kitchen for the children.’ His voice was kind.
With eyes screwed tight to help me bear the raging pain, I put my head down again on the inhospitable green leatherette. I heard him open the door, pause a moment and then say, ‘Don’t be afraid, old lady. This is nothing to be frightened about. You