by Maisie Mosco
He could see the women in the gallery above. The days when such distraction was prohibited by a screen were no more, though men and women still sat separately. His mother was the only woman in the family not wearing a new hat. Miriam had made her own and Esther’s but Bessie’s had been concocted by an expensive milliner and had cost a guinea.
His mother sometimes said scathingly that the hats seemed more important than the prayers these days. She was dressed in black, as usual, and David noticed that the silver wings which sprang from her temples had spread so wide none of the dark sheen he remembered was visible beneath the shapeless felt hat on her head. But her hair had been predominantly grey for years. How old was she now? It took him a moment to work it out. Fifty! And he was thirty-three, with a few grey hairs of his own. Where had the years gone to?
Sarah was wondering the same thing as she looked down upon her three sons. The loftiness of the building, the sunlight spilling like molten gold through many windows, the monotonous murmur of male voices praying below and the subtle scent of cologne sweetening the warm air combined to lull her into a state of recollection. Twenty-five years had passed since she and Abraham stepped off the herring boat in Hull. They had six grandchildren to prove it! And an English-born son studying to be a doctor.
She gazed at the pale oval of Nathan’s face. He was not reading from his prayer book and chanting aloud with the others, but sat silently staring ahead. The way he had to study deep into the night sometimes worried her and she often heard him pacing his room as if a restlessness had beset him. But the privilege of being called Doctor had to be earned, was not something achieved without effort. Any more than being a businessman was, she reflected noticing David’s frowning expression.
That her eldest son had business worries was no secret to his family. The finest raincoats in the world could not make a profit if nobody had the money to buy them and even the smart ladies in Cheltenham and Harrogate had to watch what they spent nowadays. Times were bad for everyone. When had they been good? Only once during all the years she’d been here. During the war. Did there have to be a war, men taking each other’s lives, before ordinary people could have enough to eat?
Her own family didn’t go short of food, but she knew there were those who did. Four years ago they had raised their voices and brought the whole country to a standstill, but it had done no good, nothing had changed. It was the same in other countries, too, she’d learned. Sometimes she read the Daily Dispatch, when David remembered to bring it for her and Nathan read the Manchester Guardian which Carl Moritz brought home for him from the bookshop each day.
Because Carl spoke German, his employers had sent him to see a publisher in Berlin recently and he had returned with disquieting news. People called Nazis were holding meetings dedicated to the glory of the Fatherland and it was said that their leader, a Mr. Hitler, did not like Jews.
A cold terror had gripped her when Carl recounted this at a Shabbos gathering, but she’d comforted herself with the thought that Berlin was a long way from Manchester. When Carl had later mentioned an Englishman called Mosley who also disliked Jews, her fear became dread and seemed much nearer home. She had managed to put it from her mind, but today one thought had led to another and the feeling returned. She fixed her gaze on the Ark and pleaded silently with God not to let the evil happen again.
Walking home from shul in the September sunshine, past the convent which was its near neighbour and the redbrick English houses on either side of Heywood Street, her anxiety seemed ridiculous. The pavements were thronged with Jews who had just poured forth from their temple and had no need to fear reprisals for being what they were.
Her neighbour Mrs. Evans was sweeping the leaves out of her front porch when the family trooped up the garden path and wished them a happy New Year.
“They’re nice goyim, the Evanses,” Abraham remarked at lunch. “The way they respect our Yom Tov.”
“Don’t we always wish them Merry Christmas?” Sarah replied.
“How could we not?” he teased her. “When you stand by the parlour window watching for them to come out of the Welsh chapel across the road so you can open the door and say it?”
“What if I do? Mrs. Watson opposite came specially yesterday to wish me all the best and I let her taste the chopping herring I was making. So she spat it out, what does it matter? She had a piece of strudel instead and asked me for the recipe. And she’s going to show me how to make little cakes called scones for my grandchildren, like she does for hers.”
“We get those at home, Bobbie,” Marianne told her. “Mrs. Hardcastle taught Mam and Auntie Miriam how to make them.”
“You mix the flour with sour milk, Mother,” Esther said.
“It’s a good way to use it up,” Miriam added.
“Sour milk I wouldn’t give to my cat. I don’t think I fancy those scones, but don’t tell Mrs. Watson. So you see, Abraham? If everyone was like me and my Christian neighbours and Esther and Miriam’s also, the world would be a better place.”
“Is that what you’re talking about?” Sigmund chuckled.
“I thought they were swopping recipes,” David said.
Abraham had also lost track of the conversation. “What is she getting at me for? What have I done?”
“Never mind,” Sarah retorted. “Just don’t do it again. And who exactly is this Mr. Mosley?” she inquired irrelevantly. Though her dread had receded, she resented the unknown figure who had caused it.
Her indignant expression made everyone laugh. “A fine joke!” she told them hotly. “He doesn’t like Jews, so what’s to laugh about?”
The family were seated around the big table in the dining room, the children together at the end nearest the door so they could run into the lobby and play between courses.
“What do you mean, who is he?” Sigmund said. “He’s a Blackshirt and they’ve already caused trouble.”
“Where?” Why had nobody told her about this?
“In the East End, Mother,” Nathan informed her. “Can I have another knedel in my soup, please?”
“He talks about matzo balls and people who cause trouble for Jews in the same breath!” Sarah looked at Nathan rebukingly, then sent Lizzie to the kitchen to fetch some more knedlach. She had never heard of the East End. Was it possible Nathan had meant somewhere in Manchester. “The east end of where?” she asked him.
“It’s in London, Bobbie,” Harry Klein piped up before his uncle could reply. One of his schoolfriends had cousins who lived there and Harry had met them. “Where they say Zaida and Buba instead of talking like we do.”
“Hm,” Sarah said thoughtfully.
Rachel was beside her in her bath chair and Helga was feeding her. She moved her limp hand with difficulty and touched Sarah’s. Nobody noticed the gesture, but Sarah knew her friend understood how she felt. Why weren’t the others taking her seriously? Enjoying their meal as if there were no such people as Mr. Hitler and Mr. Mosley!
“The Fascists aren’t very strong in this country,” Nathan consoled her. As always, he was more sensitive to her feelings than the rest of the family and had now realized she was immensely disturbed.
“Yet,” Carl added consuming his third knedl. He saw Sarah looking at him and shrugged. “If I don’t eat my lunch, will it make any difference?”
Sarah knew it would not, but was preoccupied during the rest of the meal. She did not bother to inquire what Fascists were, or where they came into it. The word had an unpleasant sound and that was enough.
All the children except Marianne and Martin had gone to play in the lobby, but these two sat quietly together gazing big-eyed at Sarah.
“You don’t want to go and play with your cousins?” Abraham asked them.
The sound of young feet racing up and down, and Shirley’s shrill voice dictating to the others, pierced the silence which had fallen in the dining room.
Marianne and Martin shook their heads. Something in the air held them fast, though they were not y
et six years old or able to understand anything that had been said. The sensitivity of both had always been apparent. Marianne had a habit of flicking her fringe nervously away from her eyebrows and Martin’s nails were bitten down to the quick. They were not just sensitive, but intense, in the way that kind of child can be, feeling things more deeply than others did, given to passionate outbursts for no apparent reason.
Esther’s disciplining had made Marianne into a neat and tidy little girl, but had been unable to curb her turbulent nature and wild imagination. Only in looks and will power did she resemble her practical grandmother. Sometimes she invented stories which frightened Martin and her brothers, tales of horrors which had befallen children who existed only in her mind.
Martin composed little rhymes which rolled effortlessly off his tongue, but unlike Marianne’s stories they were always about beautiful things happening to people he knew.
“If you didn’t know them, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths,” David smiled breaking the silence. He found his niece and nephew quaint, as most of the family did. “Sitting there like a little old man and woman!”
Ben laughed. “Our Marianne was never like a baby.”
“They’re going to be geniuses, the way they don’t want to miss anything,” Sigmund declared.
“Nosy parkers, I’d call them,” Bessie put in. She did not like the way these two children were always stealing the limelight from her own. “It isn’t good for them, being in here with the grown-ups when they’ve finished eating. I wouldn’t let my kids have their own way.”
Esther and Miriam exchanged a glance. But you do about everything else, they were thinking.
Sarah had not said a word.
“What is it, Bobbie?” Marianne asked her. “Who are you angry with?”
Her grandmother stopped crumbling the bit of bread on her plate and looked into the inquiring dark eyes, so like her own. “It’s not so much with who as with what, Marianne,” she replied.
“Has something happened?” Martin said apprehensively. He wanted his world to be a pleasant place, where only good things happened. “Something bad?”
“Of course it hasn’t,” his mother reassured him. “Tell him, Ma.”
“I can’t tell my grandson a lie.”
“For God’s sake, Mother!” David exclaimed. “What’s the matter with you?”
“That you need to ask is part of what’s the matter with me.”
“Just because you’ve discovered there’s such a thing as fascism is no reason to upset the kids.”
“The Fascists aren’t outside the door,” Carl said with more flippancy than he felt.
Sigmund took off his pince-nez and studied them broodingly. “You’ve made me go cold, Carl.”
Martin eyed his grandfather’s grave face and burst into tears.
“All we need now is for Marianne to start!” Esther said exasperatedly.
Her daughter obliged with a convulsive sob, then everyone began talking excitably at the top of their voices.
“Only Jews could behave this way, getting hysterical!” Nathan shouted above the din thinking of his cool Gentile friends at college who had to be confronted by a cadaver before they showed their feelings.
Sarah put him in his place. “And shall I tell you why, Nat? With Jews there’s always something to feel hysterical about. Even when it isn’t in front of our eyes it’s still there. Waiting.”
Miriam and Esther removed their weeping children from the room and shut the door behind them.
“I thought it’d gone away forever, but I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise all these years,” Sarah declared ruefully.
“So now you know better,” Sigmund, who had done no such thing, told her.
“And to know is to be prepared,” she answered. “I lied to David and Sammy in Dvinsk, so they wouldn’t worry or be afraid. The Cossacks won’t hurt you, I said. If I’d told them the truth from the cradle they’d have kept out of the Cossacks’ way and Sammy wouldn’t be walking with a limp.”
“A nice Rosh Hashanah she’s giving us here,” Abraham said gloomily.
“So what is Rosh Hashanah, Abraham? The beginning of a new year, when people take stock of what they have or have not. Let them also take stock of their lives.”
“A handful of Blackshirts in London’s nothing to get worked up about, Ma,” Ben said placatingly. “And I don’t believe in frightening children.”
“I’ll never lie to my grandchildren about what it means to be Jewish,” Sarah said firmly.
“They’ll find out for themselves sooner or later, like we did,” Nathan told her.
“Anti-Semites’re everywhere,” David endorsed. “It’s a fact of life.”
“Like those Blackshirts? That Mr. Hitler?” Sarah said eloquently. “So why didn’t I know about them before?” She spat three times to keep the evildoers away. “A snake doesn’t lift its head to strike until it’s ready, but the poison is still there.”
“Oy! Snakes she’s giving us now after our meal!” Abraham sounded bemused. “You think we could have some lemon tea, instead?”
But the discussion had gone too far to be cut short. “And what do you think you can do about it, Mother?” David demanded.
Sigmund sighed. “Soon there’ll be nowhere for a Jew to run to.”
“Except Palestine,” Bessie said examining a chip in her nail varnish. “But why is everyone talking about running, all of a sudden?”
“I am the only one talking about it,” Sigmund snapped. Bessie’s exaggerations irritated him.
“And nobody’s thinking about it. Here they don’t need to,” David declaimed.
“But they don’t have to be blind, either,” Sarah countered. “Once it was the Tsar and now it’s something else. Maybe in my time there’ll never be a safe place to be Jewish in. In my grandchildren’s time, who knows? Perhaps it will be better for them. But only if they always remember what they are and what could happen to them because of it, instead of waiting for someone to throw a stone through the window to remind them. So why’re we still sitting here?” She rose from the table and smiled at Rachel. “Come, I’ll take you to the parlour, we’ll drink our tea there.” She had said what she had to say and hoped it would have some effect.
“Ma’s enough to put the fear of God into a person!” Bessie exclaimed after Sarah had wheeled Rachel from the room.
David patted his wife’s hand reassuringly. But he felt uneasy.
Chapter 6
“Mind over matter, that’s all it takes,” Lou had counselled Nathan before the next session in the dissecting room. “Forget you’ve got a stomach, use your bleddy brainbox!”
The second time proved less traumatic and before long Nathan found himself able to perform the gruesome tasks in a detached manner, as Mary had said he would. Determination not to let his family down helped him to follow Lou’s advice and achieve this, but succeeding in Mary’s eyes was an added incentive. From their first meeting her confidence in him had been absolute and helped to sustain him.
“Where were you yesterday?” she asked when she joined him on the bench in Whitworth Park where he had taken to eating his lunch on fine days. She had brought an apple to nibble during her break from duty and gave it a wipe with the corner of her cape.
“It was Yom Kippur.”
“What’s that for heaven’s sake?”
“The Day of Atonement, when Jews ask God to forgive the sins they’ve committed all year and fast for twenty-four hours.”
Mary bit into her apple. “I don’t think I could do it. I’d have to have something to drink, even if I didn’t eat.”
“Not if you were Jewish you wouldn’t, you’d be used to it. I’ve been fasting on Yom Kippur since I was thirteen. Before then you don’t have to, though some kids do.” He grinned. “I wasn’t one of them.”
“You’re not all that religious then?”
Nathan did not reply immediately; he was not sure if he was or not. Many of the rituals
seemed absurd to him, yet he observed the basic ones. He could see Mary’s blonde curls peeping from the front of her nurse’s cap, her unmistakably Gentile profile despite the little bump at the bridge of her nose. One thing he wasn’t observing was not just a ritual, but a sacred law. If he cared about his religion, why was he becoming increasingly involved with a Christian girl?
They had known each other for almost a year, meeting in the park when her schedule of duty and his lectures allowed it, or for tea in a local café if the weather was wet. They went to the pictures in the evenings sometimes and dancing more often. The first time he had held her in his arms at a dance, the contact with her sweet-scented softness had told him he was involved, though his brain had continued to deny it. Then he had kissed her good-night and known for sure.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Mary reminded him twining her fingers through his. “Not that you need to, it isn’t my business.”
If Nathan had been looking at her, he would have seen that her eyes were troubled, but he was too preoccupied. “Of course I’m not religious, or I wouldn’t be going out with you. Intermarriage is the number one sin for Jews.” He had said more than he intended. Why had he put it that way, when he didn’t want her to take their affair, which was only one in the romantic sense, too seriously. Had he begun to take it seriously himself?
He recalled his mother warning the family after the Rosh Hashanah meal, telling them always to remember what they were, not to wait for someone to forcibly remind them. But being Jewish had built-in reminders. There were so many things which even a not overly religious Jew was aware he must never do and temptation would prod his conscience painfully.
If his mother knew about Mary she would say she’d rather see him dead than married to her. And if he did marry her, he would in effect be dead to his family. The week of mourning, exactly as after a bereavement, was observed by orthodox parents for a son or daughter who had committed the unforgivable sin and the sinner cast out of their lives forever. But he mustn’t be like his sister-in-law Bessie and build up an imaginary situation like seeing the family seated on low stools mourning for him, which he’d just allowed himself to do.