By the Waters of Liverpool Read Online Free PDF

natural refinement and an endearing gentleness, without a hint of snobbery. She floated amongst all kinds of people without difficulty. Her letters, however, did not produce any replies,despite the fast postal service which we enjoyed, and Fiona became very depressed. Mother thankfully set her more and more household tasks each morning, and then borrowed her fares and lunch money, which meant that even if she obtained an interview with a firm, she would probably have to walk to it.
    I encouraged her to keep on writing applications and, as my office was close to the Liverpool Echo’s office in Victoria Street, I dropped her replies each day into the newspaper’s letter box.
    I had hoped to have a talk with Father on that busy Saturday, because both he and I finished work at one o’clock on Saturdays. Every time I thought about the coming Confirmation lessons, my stomach clenched with apprehension and I longed to unburden myself to somebody. But he had spent the afternoon at the public library, and after he had eaten his tea, he went immediately up to bed. He had had a heart attack when I was a little girl, and occasionally pain in his chest sent him hastily to lie down.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘Why can’t I sign on at the Labour Exchange?’ asked Fiona fretfully. ‘They might have a job for me.’ She was helping me to clear the breakfast dishes, and without make-up she looked tired and not very well.
    Mother was putting on her lipstick in front of a piece of broken mirror wedged into the frame of the back kitchen window, and at this remark, she paused and said to Father, ‘She might be entitled to Unemployment Insurance.’
    ‘If she was, she has forfeited it by voluntarily leaving her position.’ Father was running backwards and forwards between kitchen and living room like a demented hen. ‘Where can my hat be? Have you seen it? I’ll be late.’ He called to Brian who was about to go out of the back door to school, ‘Brian,wheel the bike round to the front door, there’s a boy, while I find my hat.’
    ‘I’ll be late if I do,’ complained Brian, his dark, heart-shaped face sulky, as he clapped his school cap on to his head.
    ‘Oh, rubbish,’ replied Father. ‘Go and get it. And don’t wear your cap in the house – you are not a workman.’
    Brian slammed down his satchel on to the floor, flung his cap on top of it, and went to do as he was bidden.
    ‘Why can’t I?’ reiterated Fiona, plaintively.
    ‘Do you want to stand in a queue with a mass of unwashed, vulgar girls?’ asked Mother. She quickly licked her forefinger and ran it over her eyebrows to remove the surplus face powder clinging to them. ‘There is no point anyway. They would try to put you into domestic service. Do you want that?’
    ‘No,’ muttered Fiona dejectedly. Neither she nor I had ever considered going into domestic service. Even in my most deprived days, when I began to fear I would die from hunger, I had never considered this way out of my misery. Both of us remembered the servants in our own house when we were small. With the exception of their weekly half day off and on alternate Sundays, they werenever free from six o’clock in the morning until eleven at night.
    No. No domestic service for Fiona. Being at home was a shade better than that; at least one could have a good cry in the privy at the bottom of the back yard.
    Father found his hat under the living room table, where the boys must have been using it as dressing-up material. He grabbed the bicycle from a fuming Brian at the front door, and pedalled creakily away to work.
    ‘Never mind, Fi,’ I comforted. ‘What about writing to some of the big shops in the city – they like to employ under sixteens. I’ll deliver the letters – or Alan can.’
    Fiona’s face lifted a trifle. ‘Who should I write to?’
    ‘Um – er, try Lewis’s or Blackler’s.’
    ‘I’d love to work for Owen Owen’s or Boots.’
    I was hastily getting into my coat and hat. Given good