by Maisie Mosco
The shrewd little man did believe him. David’s purposeful gaze left no room for doubt. And a man who would marry Bessie Salaman to get where he wanted had to be admired as well as sympathised with. “It’s a deal, David,” he said decisively. “I’ll give my notice in at the shop tomorrow.”
Sarah banked up the kitchen fire with damp slack so she would not have to relight it in the morning and sighed as she turned out the gaslight. Weddings should bring pleasure to a family, she thought as she went upstairs to bed, but the day she’d just put behind her she wished she could forget. Two sons married in the same year and both of them to the wrong girl. No. Bessie was right for David, even if he didn’t know it yet. But Miriam would never be right for any of them. Why had Sammy brought her into the family? Now there were two Sandberg daughters-in-law who hated each other. And Sammy’s marriage had done nothing to heal the breach between the Moritzes and herself and Abraham. She’d hoped that under the chupah, when their children were being united before God, the feeling of togetherness would embrace all of them, but Sigmund had kept his eyes averted and Rachel—poor Rachel! It had been a shock to see what the sickness had done to her, she’d sat limply in a bath chair and had only once looked in Sarah’s direction. Even at home, when they had had to speak to each other briefly, their eyes had not met.
“You worry too much, Sarah!” Abraham grunted when she entered their bedroom without looking at him. He was always the one who had to suffer for her feelings!
“Who will worry if I don’t?” she retorted.
“Perhaps it’s you who sometimes makes the worries!” he snapped back. “You want to live everyone’s life for them.”
Sarah recoiled as if he had slapped her face. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Maybe,” he muttered afraid he had said too much.
Sarah unpinned her brooch and laid it carefully in the little box Sammy had made for her, then she began to undress, her fingers fumbling with the fasteners on her frock, which was the one she had worn for David’s wedding. “You think a mother should stop caring about her children when they grow up?” she asked tremulously.
“Don’t cry,” Abraham begged. “All I need right now is for you to cry.”
“Since when am I a crier?” she said blinking back the tears.
He had not seen her weep for years. “So when you do I know it’s for something.”
“And shall I tell you what the something is? We’ll have trouble in our own family now Miriam is Sammy’s wife. As if we didn’t have enough with how things are between us and her parents.”
“You’re getting like Bessie Salaman.”
“Who is now Bessie Sandberg. And how am I getting like her? A plump lady I’ll never be.”
“You haven’t noticed how she lets her mind run away with her and makes a great big hoo-ha out of nothing? And once she’s made it, it’s there for everyone to see, when it wasn’t there before. Why don’t you take a leaf out of your old book, Sorrel?”
The intimate name softened her and she let him put his arm around her when she got into bed, which she had not intended to do. “What old book is that?” But she knew.
“See all and say nothing, until there’s really something to say it about.” He stroked her hair gently. “Me, I do it all the time. And who did I learn it from? You.”
He turned out the light and they lay side by side in the warm darkness, beneath the perineh they had brought from Russia eighteen years ago.
“I’m forty-three already,” Sarah said softly. “And you’re forty-eight.”
“Whenever there’s a Bar Mitzvah, or a wedding or a birth in the family she reminds me of how old I am!”
“That’s when you notice that the years have passed by.” Sarah sighed thinking about it. “Once you held me in your arms and loved me every night.”
“I love you still.”
“But like that not too often.”
“You’re complaining?”
“I’m not complaining. Whatever’s happened with you has happened with me also.”
Abraham chuckled. “What’s happened with both of us is middle age.” He stifled a yawn. “And who can have the strength for everything?”
“Even those who have, their children would take it away from them!”
“Go to sleep, Sorrel. I’ve got a big day tomorrow. David’s turning the factory upside down, he’s making a new pressing room and he wants me to advise him.”
“Who else but you would he ask? An expert and also his father.” Sarah turned on her side and tried to settle, but she could not. “So I’ll see all and say nothing. What good is it when my daughter-in-law Bessie won’t do the same? One day she’ll make a hoo-ha and a half if I don’t stop her.”
Oy vay, poor Bessie, Abraham thought before he fell asleep. He had not yet met the person who was a match for Sarah.
“You’re paying your layabout brother good money so a certain person won’t go short!” Bessie shrieked at David the moment he arrived home from work. She never referred to Miriam by name and since Moishe had joined the staff, doing what she felt should be Sammy’s work, had begun referring to her often.
There was sufficient truth in the accusation to cause David to avert his eyes. But how could he let Sammy, with his lame leg, drag a case loaded with samples around the country? He did not say this to Bessie, or tell her what she already knew, that his brother was useless as a salesman, but kissed her cheek as if her outburst had not occurred.
“Shmoozer!” she flung at him as she waddled into the kitchen where the table was laid for supper. She lifted the pan of soup onto the fire to bring it to the boil. “But you can’t shmooze me!”
“Calm down, love. It’s bad for the baby,” David said soothingly.
“Everything’s bad for the baby, but nothing’s bad for me!” she retorted.
David walked through to the scullery to wash his hands and stared at his strained reflection in the mirror above the sink. Bessie had thought him crazy when he had insisted on hanging a mirror in every room, but he had not tried to explain, knowing she wouldn’t understand. She hadn’t understood about the orange-box when he’d tried to tell her what it meant to him and had only agreed to have it in a corner of their bedroom when he’d said he wouldn’t sleep there without it.
Their lovemaking had slackened off during her pregnancy and was now non-existent because the baby was due soon. The cessation had not severed the bond between them entirely, their unborn child still held them together. But David was now aware of a lack in his marriage which he had not felt too painfully until there was nothing to compensate for it. Throbbing inside him was a part of his being he could not share with his wife, the emotional motivation which inspired his material ambition and made him determined to prove his worth despite the obstacles life had set him. The orange-box was the only memento of the past he had allowed himself, an ever-present reminder of his humble beginnings. The mirrors proved he was on his way.
They weren’t the only things that proved it, he thought as he combed his hair before the one above the scullery sink. The house he and Bessie had chosen for their home was pleasantly situated near the Bellott Street park, in Cheetham Hill. No factories darkened the skyline here. The park was minute, but its greenness heaven to behold and the terraced houses were set back from the street, each in its own patch of garden. Cheetham Hill was the new ghetto, but apart from its predominantly Jewish residents bore no resemblance to the grey vista of Strangeways. To David it was the first rung of the ladder he had set out to climb.
The house was airy and spacious, with ornately carved cornices in the high-ceilinged rooms, painted gilt by a previous tenant, and mahogany surrounds framing the fireplaces. Panes of stained glass adorned the front door and upstairs there was not only a bathroom, but a separate lavatory perched like a throne on a dais beneath the window.
Bessie had asked her father to live with them, but he would not move from the factory premises in case someone burgled them at night, for which
David was immensely thankful.
“So what’s your brother done to earn his wages today?” Bessie resumed her attack immediately David sat down for supper.
He wanted to yell at her, tell her to shut up, but mindful of her condition said nothing.
“Without your generosity they wouldn’t be living round here!” she said sharply.
David and Bessie paid 12s 6d a week to rent their superior home, but Bessie did not begrudge it. Miriam and Sammy’s rent was 7s 6d and their house accordingly less grand, but knowing they were able to live in Cheetham Hill incensed her. She set a bowl of soup in front of David angrily, spilling some on her snowy cloth. “Now look what you’ve made me do! As if my back isn’t aching enough from being pregnant, I’ll have to stand at the sink tomorrow scrubbing the stain you’ve made me make!”
David picked up his napkin to mop the soup from the tablecloth, but she snatched it from his hand.
“He wants to ruin the napkin, too!”
He thought of his mother’s homely kitchen, where they had all crowded around the small table, leaning their elbows on it while they chatted after the meal, which his wife would not allow him to do. In Moreton Street they hadn’t had napkins, but who needed them? There’d been none at the Salamans’ table, either, when he was courting Bessie. But marriage was her incentive to refine her lifestyle. She had become more fastidious about her appearance, which he welcomed, and always laid the table carefully with the good china they’d received as a wedding gift from her Auntie Rivka, a lady with the same delusions of grandeur Bessie was acquiring. You can’t have it both ways, he told himself wryly. It went hand in hand with wanting a mansion in Cheshire.
Bessie had reset his cutlery at the other side of the table and was putting an upturned plate between the damp linen and the polished surface which nobody ever saw because she kept it covered with a red chenille square. She returned to her chair and sat down with a thump, glaring balefully at him. “What’s a certain person done to deserve a house round here? I’ll tell you what. Married David Sandberg’s crippled brother because she wasn’t rich enough to get him!”
David got up and strode into the front parlour. One more word and he would be out of the house! Through the window he could see a boy and girl sitting on a bench in the park with their arms around each other, in the quiet dusk. Why had he listened to his head instead of to his heart? But Miriam had given him no peace, either. Her disapproval of everything he was had eaten into his pride like dripping water relentlessly pitting a pebble. He turned from the window and saw Bessie standing in the doorway, her eyes imploring forgiveness.
“I didn’t mean it, David. I’ll never say anything like that again.”
“You might as well say it, if you think it.” Her self-induced hysteria latched on to everything. She would never change.
“It’s because I’m not pretty,” she told him piteously. “I’m frightened you’ll leave me.”
He looked at her squat figure, the hand wearing the wedding ring he had put there resting upon the mound of her stomach which held his child. “I’ll never leave you, Bessie.”
She flung herself upon him, covering his face with kisses and that night they slept in each other’s arms and were closer in spirit than they had been for a long time.
Three weeks later their baby boy was born dead and Bessie was inconsolable. Her Auntie Rivka moved into the house to look after her and David was left in no doubt as to why Uncle Aaron had taken to the bottle.
“My poor dollink niece, she should only be well and have a hundred more children, blames the tragedy on aggravation,” she announced dramatically one evening, returning downstairs with the invalid’s supper tray.
Uncle Aaron cast his bleary eye on the plate from which Bessie had consumed every morsel of a large portion of pot roast and potatoes. “Aggravation should only give me such an appetite!”
“For a liquid diet, who needs an appetite?” Auntie Rivka removed a half-empty bottle of whisky from under his red-veined nose. “God alone knows what a married woman has to put up with!” Her long-suffering gaze moved to David. “So what’s this aggravation my poor niece keeps talking about? Don’t tell me! It’s enough that she has it.”
She began serving a meal to David and her husband, her fat lips pursed censoriously, every bulge in her well-corseted body quivering with righteous indignation.
David wanted to remind her that he too had been bereft of a son. For nights he had been unable to sleep, haunted by remembrance of the little white face, its features perfect in death. He had not even been allowed the comfort of sharing his grief with Bessie. Auntie Rivka had banished him to the kitchen sofa and was sleeping with her niece. At other times, the domineering woman stationed herself like a sentry at the bedside, preventing David from being alone with his wife.
“A girl who’s expecting can do without aggravation like that.” She eyed David accusingly as they began eating.
David put down his fork. “Like what?”
“A nice gratitude he gives me for taking care of his sick wife,” she told Uncle Aaron. “Like what my poor niece didn’t say,” she informed David and carried her plate of food upstairs to escape from the enemy camp.
“So what can you do?” Uncle Aaron sighed commiserating as much with himself as with David; he had accepted defeat a long time ago. He picked some meat from between his dentures, which he would not have dared do in his wife’s presence, then went to the sideboard to fetch his bottled comfort. “I’ll pour you a shnapps, David. It’ll help you to forget.”
David shook his head. It was Bessie who needed to forget. The unspecified aggravation was rooted in the past, as always. Miriam.
Chapter 12
There was much to occupy David’s mind in addition to his traumatic homelife. Industrial strife was affecting the garment trade no less than others and though Salaman’s was still not a union shop, some of the newer employees thought it should be.
David was unaware of this until he found them conducting a heated discussion in the pressing room, during the morning tea break. Abraham was drinking his tea with Eli and the agitators had the room to themselves. They stopped talking when David entered.
“So what’s going on in here you don’t want me to know about?” he joked, but sensed that whatever was afoot might not be a joking matter.
The three youths exchanged a glance. Jake and Mendel were machiners. Maxie was one of the underpressers.
“We’ll tell you when there’s something to tell, Mr. Sandberg,” Mendel said brusquely.
David was taken aback by his antagonistic expression. He knew Mendel had been to high school like himself, that his education had been cut short for the same economic reasons, but boys to whom this happened were not rarities in Strangeways. He glanced at the book Mendel had in his hand with the instinctive interest books always aroused in him. “What’s that you’re reading?”
The lad handed it to him defiantly, as if the question was a challenge; it was a copy of Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England.
“I see,” David said pleasantly, handing it back. But he felt that some kind of gauntlet had been thrown down and that Mendel was waiting for him to pick it up.
Jake and Maxie had dropped their eyes, sheepishly, but Mendel met David’s gaze steadily. Is he trying to get my back up? David thought. The lad’s lips had a downward curl at the corners and he seemed to be eaten up by an inner fire. It was there in the aggressive thrust of his chin, the way his sharp nose looked pinched at the tip.
“I’d like to read that book sometime,” David told him.
“Be a good idea if you did, Mr. Sandberg.”
David glanced at his watch to put an end to the conversation, which felt like a confrontation, and the youths left the room. Mendel’s receding back was as defiant as his face had been.
It was the first time David had experienced tension when talking to his workers and a feeling of disquiet assailed him. It was soon replaced by anger that they had made him
feel that way. There was no shortage of machiners and pressers looking for jobs and his first impulse was to dismiss the three of them. Then his innate sense of justice prevailed. What had they done to deserve dismissal? Make him think trouble was in the air, and prevention was easier than cure. He stood beside his father’s ironing board thinking it over.
“You’ve found something wrong with my work?” Abraham asked when he returned and found him staring down at a half-pressed coat which was draped on the board.
David turned on him hotly. “How could you be in here all day with Maxie and not know something’s going on?”
“What’s going on?” Abraham parried.
“You tell me! Nobody talks to me anymore it seems. I’m only the boss.”
Abraham lit the gas jets to heat his irons, avoiding David’s eye. “So some of them want to join the union, maybe,” he said casually.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“You haven’t got enough on your plate right now? With Bessie and everything? I should worry you more?”
David stormed back to the office cubicle he had had erected in a corner of the workroom. Immediately after returning from his honeymoon, he had engaged a firm of builders to reconstruct the factory layout. Salaman now slept downstairs and the bedrooms he and Bessie had occupied were part of the extended workspace.
Neat rails of samples, which buyers could examine when they called, stood at one end of the room in the uncluttered area where the cutting bench was situated. The sewing machines had been rearranged symmetrically in rows and David was able to supervise the machiners through a pane of glass in his office wall. It was not the factory he intended to have eventually, but a vast improvement on the chaos over which his father-in-law had reigned and would do to be going on with.