Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco

  For a week he had existed in a euphoria, seeing himself capped and gowned cycling beneath the dreaming spires. He would devote his life to Homer and Plato instead of to the dreaded Hippocrates. But he had arisen this morning gripped by apprehension. Medicine was the goal the family had set for him and today there would be the Shabbos tea party. How was he going to tell David?

  Somehow he found the courage to do so.

  David stood by the window looking out into the back garden, then drew the curtains across with a swift, sharp movement though it was not yet dark. He had listened without interrupting, but the stiffness of his stance prepared Nathan for the worst. He had not been scared of David since he was a small child, but the fear returned now and the drawn curtains made him feel shut in.

  “Are you out of your mind?” David thundered.

  “Please don’t shout at me.”

  “I’ll do more than shout if necessary, to bring you down to earth! Latin and Greek all of a sudden!”

  “That isn’t true, I’ve always loved Latin and Greek.”

  “Suddenly he doesn’t want to be a doctor!”

  “That isn’t true either, I’ve never wanted to be one.”

  “Well let me tell you something we both know is true, Nat.” David’s voice had sunk to a low pitch which was more alarming than his shouts. “The family’ve scrimped and sacrificed. All of us. Mother. Father. Esther. Sammy. Not to mention me. So you can be Dr. Sandberg.”

  Nathan averted his eyes. This was the part that made things so difficult.

  “What have you to say about that?”

  “I appreciate it. But wouldn’t it have been better to wait and find out what I wanted to be?”

  David took an apple from the bowl of wax fruit on the table and stared at it. “The scrimping and saving to educate you began the day you were born, Nat. Mother decided your schooling wouldn’t be cut short like mine was.”

  A small bell rang in Nathan’s mind.

  “Her youngest son was going to college if it took every farthing we’d got and in those days we had bugger all. I can remember Sammy and me walking around in shoes that let water in during the war, when we were all earning good money.”

  “Why didn’t Father mend them? He was a cobbler in Russia, wasn’t he?”

  “Have you any idea of how hard he had to work? All he was fit for at the end of a day in the pressing room was to flop into bed, it used to break my heart seeing him like that. But even if he’d had the energy, Mother wouldn’t have let him spend money on leather to mend them with. She hoarded every penny for you. Other people had new this, new that, but not the Sandbergs. Times aren’t good right now, but there’s still something going into the bank for you every week. I see to that. Esther and Sammy stopped giving when they got married, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t got a share in you.”

  Nathan had paled as David loaded the weight of responsibility onto him and the bell in his mind was still ringing. “What d’you mean by a share in me?”

  “A doctor’s a somebody and Mother wants a somebody in the family. The rest of us won’t mind having one, either.”

  “It’s bleddy disgusting!”

  “You’d better watch what you’re saying, our kid!”

  “Snobbery, that’s what it is!”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “Yes! I do!”

  David polished the wax apple on the sleeve of his jacket and replaced it in the bowl. “Well you haven’t roughed it like the rest of us, have you, Nat?”

  Nathan sat down and put his head in his hands.

  David wanted to tell him what it was like to scrub the scaly slime off Mr. Radinsky’s fish counter every night so your family wouldn’t go short of fruit and vegetables; to say goodbye to school when you were fourteen and spend your days in a hell-hole like Salaman’s used to be; to have your hopes and dreams trampled to dust and be left with nothing but ambition. “The somebody in our family might have been me,” was all he said.

  Something in his voice made Nathan raise his head and look at him, then the bell in his mind awakened a long forgotten childhood memory. He was sitting at the kitchen table in Moreton Street, kicking and screaming because nobody would tell him what had happened to David which could also happen to himself. He had not found out what it was until years later, when he’d learned his big brother had had to leave high school to work in a factory.

  “It might have been me, but it’s going to be you,” David said flatly.

  “I’m not going to be a doctor. I can’t.”

  David had bent his own life with the wind of circumstances when everything he yearned for lay in the opposite direction and the sacrifice was being flung in his face. He grabbed Nathan by the shoulders. “There’s no such word as can’t! Look at me, I’m a living example of it!”

  “Let go of me, David!”

  David was trembling with emotion. He dropped his hands and Nathan slumped back into the chair. “You’ll damn well be what the family wants you to be, you owe it to us after everything we’ve done for you,” he said curtly and strode to the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Nathan whispered.

  David turned to look at him, studying his forlorn countenance. He hadn’t meant to let fly at him, but the boy had to get his feet on the ground or he’d end up an intellectual nothing like Carl Moritz and break his mother’s heart.

  Nathan tried to smile. “I’ve let you down, haven’t I?”

  “No you haven’t. And you’re not going to. Tell your teacher Oxford’ll have to manage without you, Manchester University’ll do fine. And forget about Homer and Plato, they’ll get you nowhere. Start swotting to get into medical school.”

  The confrontation had brought David face to face with the past again and he was not himself for the rest of the day.

  “Don’t you love me anymore?” Bessie asked him. He had hardly spoken to her during the walk home from his parents’ house and was moody all evening. They had just come to bed and he was lying with his hands folded behind his head, gazing at the orange-box bookcase.

  “Why do you think everything I do or say’s got something to do with you, Bessie?” he said without looking at her.

  “I’m your wife, aren’t I?”

  “But you’re not my whole life.”

  Bessie’s mind leapt to Miriam and her new-found security slipped from under her. But David was not thinking of Miriam, he was remembering the far-off days before he had forcibly grown up, his daily escape from the ghetto to the world of school and books and his friendship with Jim Forrest.

  “I’ll kill her!” Bessie said feelingly.

  He could not summon the energy to tell her she was on the wrong track. Women, he had learned, functioned only on one level and could not understand that men did not. He was still gazing at the orange-box.

  “And I’ll set fire to that thing!”

  But you can’t destroy the part of me you don’t even know exists, he thought.

  Shirley cried out in her cot beside the bed.

  “You’ve made me wake her up!” Bessie rebuked him.

  David laughed and touched his wife’s plump cheek, affectionately. “You’ll never change, will you, love?” Her characteristic reaction had returned him to earth.

  She got up and brought the baby into bed with them.

  “But it doesn’t matter. I’m used to you the way you are,” he told her. She was the mother of his child and he felt tenderness for her, the more so when her new confidence occasionally deserted her and made her seem ridiculous and vulnerable.

  Chapter 2

  The section of North Manchester in which the family lived was a cultural and rustic fantasy. Ruskin, Wordsworth and Haydn lent their names to avenues of cramped terraced houses. Thirlmere and Crummuck Streets conjured up Lakeland vistas the residents had never seen and humble thoroughfares where no trees grew had leafy namesakes ranging from Maple to Birch.

  Miriam’s home was back to back with Esther’s, enabling them to pop in a
nd out of each other’s kitchens trough the yard doors. At the rear of the houses was a cobblestone passage known as “the entry.” Here, Mr. Cohen the fishmonger and Tom the rag-and-bone man would come with their donkeys and carts, providing a door-to-door service. Jewish and Gentile children played whip and top side by side while their mothers gossiped together as if being of different religions was of no account and the new school on the main road was attended by both denominations.

  The beginning of the Jews’ integration into the general community was a natural consequence. Esther cautioned little Harry not to make a noise when he played in the entry on Sundays because it was the Christian Shabbos and the Gentile neighbours showed the same respect for Saturdays. It was no longer necessary to engage a Shabbos goy to stoke up the fires, people offered to do so as a gesture of goodwill.

  The proximity of their homes engendered a closer relationship between the Kleins and the Sammy Sandbergs than might otherwise have been the case. Ben sometimes said Marianne had been born into the wrong branch of the family, she so obviously preferred Martin to her brothers.

  As soon as she was old enough to crawl she began scuttling across the entry to visit him, or he would do the same to visit her. In the warm summer months, when back doors were left ajar, Miriam or Esther would suddenly find two babies on the kitchen rug when a moment ago there had only been one.

  Miriam gradually came to rely upon her sensible sister-in-law and a warm friendship developed between them. Once, when Martin gagged whilst eating a chicken wing, she rushed with him in her arms to Esther. Her middle-aged next-door neighbour was leaning on the fireguard chatting to her when it happened and chased after her.

  “Pull thiself tergether, Miriam! Bang ’im on t’back, luv, appen ’e’ll cough it oop!”

  “I’m no good in an emergency, Mrs. Hardcastle,” Miriam said as she fled across the entry.

  “Tha’ll ’ave ter learn ter be!”

  Esther calmly hooked her little finger in Martin’s throat and dislodged the bit of gristle which had caught there. “He’s right as rain now, aren’t you, pet?”

  Mrs. Hardcastle pushed her hairnet higher on her forehead and scratched the red groove the elastic had made. “Is mam isn’t!” She folded her scraggy arms across her floral-overalled chest and smiled at Miriam’s tense expression.

  “I can’t help it,” Miriam apologised. “Would you’ve kept your head and known what to do if it’d been one of your kids, Esther?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t’ve sent for you! Look at you!”

  “Like as not a nice cup o’ tea’d set ’er reet, Esther,” their neighbour suggested.

  “I was just going to make her one.” Esther wrinkled her nose. “Something’s burning somewhere.”

  “Lawks! I left t’bubble’n squeak on t’stove when I popped inter Miriam’s fer a minute!” Mrs. Hardcastle dashed back across the entry.

  “Mrs. Hardcastle’s minutes are like other people’s half-hours,” Esther giggled. “She once came in here when I was making holeshkies. ‘Wrapping minced beef up in cabbage leaves as though it were a parcel? I never heard the like of it, Esther luv,’ she said. ‘You have now,’ I told her, ‘just like I’d never heard of frying cabbage up with bacon and calling it bubble and squeak, till I came to live round here.’ ‘Well you’d never heard of bacon, had you?’ she answered back! She’s a good sort, Mrs. Hardcastle.”

  Miriam tried to smile as she sipped her tea.

  “If you’re going to fall to bits whenever some little thing happens to Martin, you’ll end up a bag of nerves, love,” Esther said to her kindly. “You can’t bring up kids without having a crisis every now and then.”

  “He’s the only one I’ve got and I’m not likely to have any more.” Miriam picked up her son and cuddled him, but he wriggled away to play with Marianne.

  Esther looked shocked. “Who says you’re not?”

  “Doctor Smolensky sent me to a specialist because I took so long to get over Martin’s birth. I was like a wet week for ages afterwards.”

  “I remember.”

  “You should, seeing it was you who ran my home as well as your own till I picked up.”

  “I thought it was just because you’d had a very long labour.” Esther sounded upset. “Why didn’t you tell us, Miriam?” It was taken for granted that matters of health and welfare were the whole family’s concern.

  “I’ve kept meaning to. But with Mother getting worse all the time, I didn’t want to upset everyone more.” Esther was studying her anxiously. “He said I’m all right in every other way, so don’t worry. But it was a miracle I conceived Martin.”

  Esther looked at her nephew who might not have been born and knelt down to kiss his cheek. “God’s good, Miriam.”

  Miriam smiled. “You sound more like your mother every day! You won’t tell Bessie about this, will you?” She averted her eyes when Esther glanced at her sharply. “It’s not because of David, in case you think it is. All that’s over and done with, the way it is with you and Carl.”

  “With me and Carl it was never like it was with you and David.”

  “I’m happy with Sammy.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be? Our Sammy’s a diamond.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.” Nobody could have a better husband, even though they didn’t love him, Miriam reflected warmly. “But about the other, well I just don’t want Bessie to know.”

  Was it because Bessie was pregnant again? Esther wondered.

  “I don’t want her pitying me,” Miriam said quietly.

  They’d always have it in for each other, deep down, that was it. “I won’t say a word,” Esther promised with a smile. So long as it stayed deep down nobody would get hurt.

  Though David’s home was barely five-minutes’ walk away, Miriam and Esther rarely saw Bessie during the week. What she did with herself they never inquired, but Esther thought she just sat eating toffees and listening to the wireless. Nobody else in the family had one, but the others were not surprised that David and Bessie did. Though they were not really wealthy, they were considered the rich relations and the aura this carried with it set them apart. By the time they were toddlers Shirley’s cousins had set her apart, too.

  Esther and Miriam sometimes took their children to Bellott Street park in the afternoons, before collecting Harry from school and they would knock on Bessie’s door. Miriam never wanted to, but Esther insisted they could not just walk by. Bessie always gave them tea and showed them new treasures she had acquired for her home.

  “How can you afford to buy things, the way business is just now?” Esther inquired one day.

  “My dad’s got nobody to spend it on but me,” Bessie reminded her. “He gives me a present every week, Shirley as well.” Shirley’s teething ring with the silver bell attached to it had been a gift from Salaman, who made sure there was nothing his granddaughter lacked.

  “Doesn’t he ever give David a present?” The words slipped out before Miriam could stop them.

  Bessie’s eyes narrowed. “Are you being sarcastic, Miriam?”

  “Don’t be daft, love. She’s joking!” Esther said hastily and the awkward moment passed.

  Shirley was playing on the rug with an assortment of dolls. Marianne, who only possessed the wooden one her Uncle Sammy had made for her, was trying to play with them, too.

  “Mine! Mine!” Shirley screamed hitting her.

  Marianne did not return the blow, but Martin did it for her.

  “Say you’re sorry to Cousin Shirley,” Miriam instructed him.

  “No.”

  “You must. It’s naughty to hit someone.”

  “Martin not sorry,” he informed her.

  “He reminds me of your father,” Esther laughed.

  He sometimes reminded Miriam of him, too, and she slapped his hand because she did not want him to grow up with Sigmund’s stubbornness. His face puckered, but he did not cry.

  “Auntie Miriam’s naughty for hitting Martin,” Mariann
e said reproachfully and kissed him better.

  “Trust our Marianne to turn your own words on you,” Esther said. Her tiny daughter’s intelligence sometimes bothered her. “They’ll have to put her in the top class the day she starts school!”

  Shirley continued playing with her dolls. Martin and Marianne sat quietly watching her. There was never a happy atmosphere when these three were together.

  Bessie always entertained in the parlour. David had had a gas fire installed so it could be heated quickly in the winter, if anyone called unexpectedly. There was barely space to move between the many pieces of furniture and the rest of the family secretly called the room the Crystal Palace, because every inch of surface was bedecked with cut glass vases and bowls.

  The moment the children entered the house they became noticeably subdued and Arnold would stay perched on the edge of a chair throughout the visit, swinging his legs nervously. When their aunt gave them cakes they watched her warily whilst they ate them, trying not to scatter crumbs on the carpet. Yet Bessie was never less than kind to them.

  “There’s something about David’s house that gives me the willies!” Esther exclaimed after they had left.

  “Bessie,” Miriam declared.

  They laughed. Like the children, they were always relieved when the visit was over.

  “Heaven help Shirley when she starts school,” Miriam said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Miriam’s brow was puckered in thought. “I don’t really know, it’s just a feeling. I don’t get the willies there, Esther. I get stifled.”

  “The window was open today.”

  “I don’t mean that kind of stifled. I mean it’s like being in a sort of cocoon.”

  Esther shrieked with mirth. “Are you calling our sister-in-law a caterpillar, just because she looks like one at the moment? Don’t be catty!”

  “Well that’s how she lives, doesn’t she? All nicely padded with her expensive things, as if having them keeps her warm and safe.”