Our Street

by Pemberton, Victor

  For Elsa, Thursday afternoon meant early closing day for Barclay’s jumble shop. On the dot of 1 o’clock, she would take out the long wooden pole with the metal hook at the end, and pull the heavy wooden blinds down over the outside of the shop window. Then, after collecting her hat, usually the one with the veil and wax fruit, a black fur coat and a fox stole, she would lock up and make her way along Tollington Road, past the Astoria Cinema on the corner of Seven Sisters Road, and eventually on to Finsbury Park Underground Station, via the entrance just beneath the railway bridge. Usually, she had to wait no more than a few minutes for her train for, despite the war, the London Underground system was managed meticulously, with the trains nearly always punctual. Elsa loved the journey, for it gave her the chance to study the faces of the English people who sat so po-faced in their seats, nobody speaking or even acknowledging the other’s presence. And she loved practising her English by reading advertisements like those for Zubes and Lyons Ointment, and also official Ministry of Defence warnings like: ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives.’ Another favourite way of passing the journey was to sit in the rear compartment, usually quite empty, and to chat to the Guard. More than once the thought that she was an escaped lunatic from the Colney Hatch Asylum crossed his mind. Other times, she got so bored staring at the strips of bomb-blast protective tape across the windows that she fell asleep and went on to the next station.

  Elsa’s final weekly destination was always Gershners, the Jewish restaurant in North London’s cosmopolitan Swiss Cottage. At three o’clock every Thursday afternoon she would meet her old friend Gertrude Rosenberg there, always at the same table in the corner by the window, and always ordering their customary afternoon tea and apple strudel. For an hour and a half they would indulge in their customary exchange of barbed one-upmanship, which occasionally ended in a tantrum from Elsa or floods of tears from Gertrude. Theirs was a real love-hate relationship, but at the heart of their friendship was their childhood together in Germany and the risks they had taken when escaping from Adolf Hitler’s persecution of the Jewish people.

  ‘If you come at zis time, why bother to come at all?’ Gertrude, dressed almost identically to Elsa, was at her most spiky. She always hated to be the first one to arrive. ‘Vot happened zis time?’

  Elsa was still peeling off her gloves. ‘They say a woman threw herself on to the railway track. Somewhere along the Piccadilly Line.’

  Unlike Elsa, Gertrude’s English accent was totally fractured, and she was furious that her friend refused to speak German when they were together. However, she could never resist the odd relapse into her mother tongue. ‘Dumm frau!’ she snapped. ‘She must have felt guilty about keeping her friend waiting!’

  ‘Oh shut up, Gertrude!’ snapped Elsa firmly. ‘It’s only two minutes past three!’

  While the elderly waiter came to accept their order, Gertrude, raising her hat veil, and for a brief moment getting it caught up in her spectacles, suppressed her irritation by powdering her face. Once Elsa had ordered the usual tea and strudel, Gertrude was ready to pursue her weekly antagonism of her old friend. ‘Zo, how are things in zat terrible shop of yours?’

  ‘It’s not a terrible shop, Gertrude. It gives me a lot of pleasure.’

  ‘Does it make money?’

  ‘Money isn’t everything.’

  Gertrude peered over the top of her compact mirror. Her face was shaped a bit like the fox on the fur stole she was wearing, and her cheeks, like Elsa’s, were heavily rouged. She also had a large mole on the right hand side of her chin, which she had painted, like her eyelashes, with black mascara. ‘It’s a terrible shop,’ she insisted, as always wanting the last word.

  Gertrude had never liked the shop Robert Barclay had bought for his wife. To her, it was common to sell secondhand goods, and she felt Elsa was demeaning herself by running it. Gertrude had never approved of Elsa marrying an Englishman, especially a Christian Englishman and she had resented Robert Barclay taking her friend away from her. Gertrude herself had never married, though since arriving in England she had had a succession of gentleman friends, most of them mid-European exiles, and most of them very well-off.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘if now you vere to sell zat shop, you could buy a very nice flat up here in Swiss Cottage.’ She closed her powder compact, and slipped it into her handbag. ‘Zere are some beautiful places in Goldhurst Terrace.’ What she really meant was that it was in an area where there were plenty of their own sort, refugees from Hitler’s invasion of Europe.

  Elsa sighed and started aimlessly to rearrange her cutlery. ‘I’ve told you before, Gertrude – I don’t want to live in Swiss Cottage. I like it very much in Holloway. They are honest and hard-working people, there.’

  Gertrude sniffed haughtily. ‘How can you like zem vhen they paint your door viz swaztikas, and call you dumm vords in ze street?’

  ‘Some people only see what they want to see, Gertrude. We mustn’t forget that we are not the only ones to suffer. The people of this country have suffered, too and, to them, all Germans are the same – even if they are Jewish Germans.’ Elsa stared out at the main road through the windows criss-crossed with protective bomb-blast tape, her mind on her own beloved part of London. ‘I’ve grown very fond of those funny little streets where I live probably because they’re so different to the old country. And you know, sometimes when I walk along the Seven Sisters Road, I can see my Robert as a young boy there, holding his mother’s hand as they went out shopping together. It’s strange, isn’t it? I mean, I never knew him as a little boy, but I can see him.’

  The elderly waiter brought their order, and Gertrude immediately complained about the sogginess of the apple strudels. But then Gertrude always complained about most things when she came to the restaurant; it was her way of trying to show how important she was. However, the elderly waiter, who was also an exile, knew her well, and snapped back with a dismissive, ‘Zo vot do you vant me to do, make the pastry myself?’ As the waiter waddled back to the kitchens, Gertrude glared at him and quickly used her fork to tuck into her strudel. ‘You know your trouble, Elsa?’ she muttered. ‘You have no idea how to use your money.’

  Elsa ignored her friend’s remark, and used a knife and fork to cut her strudel. So many times she had listened to this same nagging from Gertrude, mainly because Gertrude was convinced that Elsa had a large amount of money stacked away somewhere. When they escaped to England in 1933, Elsa knew that her friend had sewn plenty of jewellery in her clothes – but how much it was all worth, Elsa had no idea. In return, Gertrude had always suspected that Elsa’s family had managed to smuggle money out of Germany into a Swiss bank. But there was no way she could prove it without actually asking Elsa – and that she couldn’t do. ‘I always say, unless you invest for your old age, vot’s ze use of having money. Zat is –’ Gertrude was taking a sly look at Elsa over her strudel, ‘depending on how much you have to invest.’

  Elsa clattered down her fork. ‘Oh, do stop talking about money, Gertrude! I’ve told you so many times, money doesn’t interest me. As long as I have a roof over my head and enough food to eat, who cares? Robert left me more than comfortable, and I’m a very lucky woman.’

  ‘But vot happens if you die?’

  ‘So I die. It happens to everyone in time.’

  Gertrude’s false eyelashes quivered with irritation. ‘Dumm frau! You know vot I mean!’

  Else put her knife and fork down, and wiped her lips on a paper napkin. ‘I may be a stupid woman, Gertrude, but at least I’m not obsessed with money like you.’

  Gertrude was outraged. ‘Obsessed! You call me – obsessed!’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Elsa was completely calm. ‘Yes, Gertrude, I do.’

  ‘Just because I like to buy nice things, and not all zat secondhand junk you sell in zat – zat shop of yours!

  ‘I like secondhand junk!’

  ‘Of course you do! It suits your position in life!’

  The elderly waiter, hearing the two women’
s raised voices, recognised all the signs of yet another Thursday battlefield and shrugging, scuffled off back into the kitchen.

  Now Elsa’s hackles were rising. ‘If it is my position in life to buy only things that I can afford, so be it!’

  ‘Ha!’ Gertrude let out a loud dismissive laugh. ‘Vhen you die, Elsa Lieberman, ve shall see how much you you have never been able to afford!’

  ‘When I die, Gertrude Rosenberg,’ Elsa snapped back, ‘at least no one can accuse me of being mean!’

  This final remark was like a dagger to Gertrude’s heart. Her lips started to quiver, her face crumpled, and she began a self-indulgent little sob. Then she rose to her feet, saying that she never wanted to see Elsa again as long as she lived, and a moment later she stormed out of the place, leaving Elsa to pay the bill. On the way, however, she managed to smile sweetly at a handsome, middle-aged man sitting by the door. Once outside, she lowered her hat veil, and swept quickly past the window, pointedly ignoring Elsa who was waving to her from inside, smiling.

  The following Thursday, at three o’clock in the afternoon precisely, Elsa returned to the restaurant, where Gertrude was waiting at their usual table, in the corner, by the window, waiting for her tea, apple strudel, and, of course, her dearest and most cherished friend, Elsa Lieberman . . .

  Chapter Six

  The symphony orchestra was playing a Hollywood love theme at full blast and, in the middle of it all, was Frankie, resplendent in cycling shorts and school cap, gliding his way along the cycling path alongside the great Southend Road, the sun in his eyes, the wind on his cheeks, his blue and white Raleigh Sports bike the envy of all the other cyclists on the path . . .

  ‘Who, I wonder, would ever want to ride on a thing like that?’

  Frankie, nose pressed up against the window of Pascall’s bike shop, turned with a start to find Elsa standing just behind him. ‘Miss! What are you doin’ ’ere?’ As he spoke Winston leapt up, grateful that someone had at last interrupted his master’s dream, and delighted to see his new friend.

  ‘Winston! Good boy!’ Elsa patted him on the head and made a great fuss of him, and his tail nearly fell off it wagged so much. ‘It’s terrible the way your master keeps you waiting so long every night. And all because of a silly old bicycle machine.’

  Frankie looked puzzled. ‘’Ow d’you know I come ’ere every night?’

  Elsa grinned mischievously. ‘Because a good spy must always keep her eyes open. Tell me,’ she said, looking at the dream bike in Pascall’s window. ‘What’s so special about such a dreadful machine?’

  Frankie answered as quick as a flash. ‘It ’ain’t a dreadful machine!’ Then he turned to look back in the shop window. ‘It’s the most t’rrific bike in the ’ole wide world!’

  ‘Then why not get your father to buy it for you?’

  Frankie fell silent and suddenly he felt depressed. ‘My ’ole man in’t got that sorta money – an’ never will ’ave.’

  Elsa didn’t look at Frankie, but she understood immediately. ‘Oh – I see.’ She allowed a respectable pause before continuing. ‘Then, I suppose you must save all your pennies until you can afford to buy it for yourself.’

  ‘Yeah,’ groaned Frankie. ‘And by then it’ll be long gone.’ Dejected, he turned away from the shop window. ‘Anyway, I don’t get any pennies ter save.’

  ‘Then it’s time you found yourself a part-time job.’ They moved away from Pascall’s shop window, and strolled off down Hadleigh Villas. They walked very slowly, for it was now dark and a thick frost was settling on the pavements. Elsa was a little unsure on her feet in such conditions, so, to Frankie’s surprise, she took hold of his arm for support. Winston followed on behind, and all three of them made slow progress across the road to Elsa’s house.

  While she was opening the front door, Elsa said that she wanted a cup of tea before going to do some tidying up in the jumble shop. Frankie accepted her invitation to join her and was told to go into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  Elsa’s kitchen fascinated Frankie. Situated at the back of the house overlooking the garden, it was bigger than the front room in his own family’s house and it was full of interesting things like a coffee grinder, a dresser lined with blue-and-white willow-patterned dinner plates. The kettle was huge and made of copper, so it took a long time to boil on the smart-looking gas stove.

  Elsa came into the kitchen and, to his horror, insisted that Frankie make the tea, something he had never done in his whole life. But, under Elsa’s supervision, the job was accomplished most successfully.

  Triumphantly, Frankie carried the tea-tray into the sitting-room, where Winston had already curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace and within a few minutes all three were relaxing with tea and petit-beurre biscuits, which Elsa had bought with her ration coupons just a few days before at Woolworth’s in the Holloway Road. The room was chilly, so Elsa lit the paraffin stove, which immediately emitted its own particular pungent smell.

  As soon as tea was over, Elsa went upstairs to change into work clothes. While she was gone, Frankie wandered across to the fireplace to look at the collection of old snapshots that were scattered all along the mantelpiece. One or two were merely torn pieces of sepia photos, of people Frankie imagined were friends or relatives of Elsa from pre-war Germany. But nearly all the others were of Elsa and a man whom Frankie presumed to have been Elsa’s late husband, Major Robert Barclay. The centrepiece of the collection was a large, framed photograph of Robert in army uniform, a full-length studio portrait which revealed on the back that it had been taken at Jerome’s photographer’s studio in the Seven Sisters Road. Robert Barclay had been a good-looking bloke, Frankie thought, tall, with strong features and a friendly face. Just as he was studying it closely, there was a loud banging on the front door. Winston immediately leapt up and rushed out into the hall, barking loudly. Quickly replacing the picture, Frankie followed him and yelled up the stairs, ‘Miss!’

  There was no response from Elsa, and when the knocking on the front door started again, this time more aggressively, Frankie yelled again, louder, ‘Miss! Someone at the door.’

  At last, Elsa called out from a room at the top of the stairs. ‘Then open it!’

  Frankie went to the street door. It was now blackout time, so he turned off the hall light. Then, after grabbing hold of Winston’s collar, he timidly opened the door. Standing there were two figures, only visible as silhouettes.

  ‘Elsa? Is that you?’ It was a man’s voice, deep, and to Frankie’s mind, hoity-toity.

  Frankie said nervously. ‘Who is it, please?’ as Winston barked frantically.

  As soon as Frankie spoke, a torch beam shone directly into his eyes. ‘Who the devil are you? and where did this dog come from?’ asked the intruder.

  Before Frankie had a chance to answer, the two figures pushed past him, and strode into the hall. Struggling to hold on to Winston’s collar, Frankie was too startled to know what to do.

  This time a woman’s voice called out, ‘Elsa? Are you there?’

  Suddenly, the man turned on the hall light, and Frankie got the shock of his life. ‘Shut the door!’ commanded the man. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on!’

  Frankie obeyed, but his eyes never left the man’s face. Standing before him was the man in the photograph on Elsa’s mantelpiece.

  ‘He must be a neighbour or something,’ said the woman, who had a high-pitched voice, and a nose that was plum-coloured from the cold.

  ‘Who is it?’ Elsa yelled down.

  ‘It’s us, Elsa,’ called the woman, looking up the stairs. ‘Jack and Celia.’

  ‘Jack and Celia?’ Elsa, wearing light blue slacks and high-heeled, clog-like shoes, came down the stairs. ‘What are you doing here at this time of night?’ Then she patted Winston who was still barking. ‘It’s all right, Winston. Down boy! Down!’ Winston duly obeyed.

  ‘It’s only six o’clock, Elsa!’ The woman, who was almost the same height as her husband, had t
o bend down to greet Elsa. ‘It’s so good to see you, dear.’

  Elsa turned her cheek, reluctantly allowing the woman to kiss it. ‘You can’t have any tea,’ said Elsa, meanly. ‘We’ve just finished ours.’

  The man stepped forward. He was tall, and wore a dark overcoat with a velvet collar, and his trilby hat had been steamed into a very cocky shape. ‘We don’t need tea, Elsa. We were just passing, and wanted to know how you’re keeping.’ He bent down to peck her on the cheek, but even as he was doing it, Elsa strode off to the sitting-room.

  ‘You live in Hertfordshire, and you’re just passing Seven Sisters Road?’ She grunted dismissively. ‘What kind of a map do you read?’ When they had all entered the sitting room, she sat in her usual armchair. ‘You don’t have long. We’re on our way to the shop.’

  The woman sat on a straight-backed chair, body upright. Her husband remained standing. ‘Isn’t it about time you got rid of that shop, Elsa?’ he said. ‘It can’t bring you much of an income.’

  From her sitting position, Elsa’s feet didn’t quite reach the floor, and they dangled as she talked. ‘How interesting. You’re the second person to ask me that question today, Jack Barclay. The answer is no. I am not going to sell the shop. As a matter of fact, it is about to make me quite a lot of money.’

  ‘Oh really?’ The woman crossed her legs, adjusted her top coat and headscarf, and smiled. ‘How nice.’

  The man Elsa had called Jack Barclay, had taken off his trilby, and was holding it in both hands, behind him. ‘I’m all for your making yourself a lot of money, Elsa, but I’ll be darned if I know how you’ll ever make it running a jumble shop single-handed!’ As he talked he seemed to rock himself back and forward, which irritated Elsa enormously.

  ‘Who said I am single-handed?’ she replied immediately? ‘I have plenty of help from my assistant.’

  ‘Your assistant?’ The woman’s curiosity got the better of her. ‘What assistant?’

  ‘Frankie!’ called Elsa, but as she turned to introduce him, she found the boy in the hall outside, peering round the sitting-room door, thunderstruck by what Elsa had just said. ‘What are you doing out there, boy? Come in and meet my brother and sister-in-law.’