by Maisie Mosco
“I’ve had enough of your cracks, Nat!” Rebecca retorted. The only other one he had made was about the matchmaker, but she had not yet recovered from it. “And I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how your people behave. If everyone will excuse me, I’d like to go home.”
Sarah watched her go sullenly to the lobby to get her coat. Until now, Rebecca had seemed placid; this sudden flare-up was a surprise. She caught Abraham’s eye and knew he was thinking the same. Another temperamental daughter-in-law was all they needed!
Chapter 7
Sigmund married Gertie Fish in November, as she had decreed. A General Election returned the Conservatives to power the same month and Carl said that England, as well as his father, was now on the road to trouble.
“Why d’you think that, Uncle?” Martin asked him.
Helga had invited Miriam and her family for Friday-night supper, to meet the lodger who had moved in that day, and Carl was thoughtfully breaking up the extra knedl his sister had just plopped into his chicken soup.
“That power-drunk maniac in Germany isn’t going to limit his activities to the Third Reich,” Carl predicted. “But all we’ll get from Baldwin’s government will be the politics of appeasement.”
“And appeasement doesn’t prevent war,” the pleasant-faced young woman opposite him added. “It just allows more time for the other side to build up their armaments.”
“You’re making me go goosey, Miss Ritman,” Miriam shuddered.
“But it’s no use having one’s head in the sand, is it?”
“That’s what Father used to say before the last war,” Helga recollected. “He saw it coming long before it happened.”
Miriam looked troubled. “Father prophesied what’s happened to the German Jews, too, but he didn’t limit it to Germany.”
“He’s obviously a clever man,” Hannah Ritman, who had not yet met Sigmund, concluded.
“I shouldn’t think there’s a book he hasn’t read,” Martin told her. “Well not one that’s worth reading, Miss Ritman.”
“I wish you’d all call me Hannah,” she smiled.
Martin indicated the crammed bookshelves lining the walls of the homely little room. “All those are his. I bet you’ve never seen so many before.”
“Well, certainly not in anyone’s kitchen.”
“He used to sit in here when he wasn’t in his workroom,” Helga explained. “His wife wouldn’t let him take them to her flat, she said they’d spoil the decorations.”
“She wouldn’t let him take his gramophone and records, either,” Martin said with disgust. “She can’t bear classical music.”
“Not like you, eh, Martin?” Hannah laughed. “Maybe I’ll take you to hear the Halle Orchestra.”
“Uncle Carl takes me.”
“But you’re welcome to join us, Hannah,” Carl put in.
“Thank you.” Hannah got up to examine some of the book titles. “Proust, Plato and Goethe, and I haven’t even begun looking yet!” she exclaimed with delight. “Am I allowed to borrow them?”
Carl looked surprised. “Of course. But I’ve never met a woman who’d want to.”
Hannah’s hazel eyes twinkled. “Really? I understand you work in a very highbrow bookshop.”
“I meant an ordinary woman.”
“Oh dear,” she said returning to her chair with mock chagrin. “So that’s how I strike you!”
“I just meant – well, you’re not a blue-stocking,” Carl mumbled confusedly, aware of his family watching the exchange with interest. He averted his gaze from Hannah’s ribbed, wool jumper which emphasized her small, high breasts. “At least you don’t look like one.”
“Some people would say I am,” she replied getting on with her meal.
“Well it’s unusual for a woman to be as interested in politics as you obviously are,” Carl said.
“But it shouldn’t be, should it?” Hannah smiled. “A woman’s brain is no different from a man’s. Why shouldn’t she use it?”
Miriam laughed. “She’s too busy frying the fish.”
“Because she’s let men convince her that’s all she’s fit for,” Hannah answered heatedly. “It’s a very convenient arrangement for the male sex to be waited on hand and foot and women ought not to accept it.”
“You sound like Mrs. Pankhurst,” Helga said in a shocked voice.
“Mrs. Pankhurst was the best thing that ever happened to the English female,” Hannah declared. “We wouldn’t have had the vote without her.”
Sammy chuckled. “It’s no wonder people think you’re a blue-stocking!”
“I took a degree in political science, as it happens.”
Carl stopped eating. “There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there?”
Miriam and Helga were regarding Hannah with something akin to awe, but she appeared not to notice and went on spooning her soup.
“For a while, I lectured on it,” she added. “But it was like living in a world of theory. What I want is to see the right theories put into practice.”
“You mean the left ones, don’t you?” Carl joked. Something about this lively woman told him she was a Socialist.
“Touché,” she smiled.
Miriam and Helga got up to take the empty soup plates to the scullery.
“Can I help?” Hannah offered in her brisk yet easy manner. “I’m not domesticated, but I’ll try not to break anything.”
“Stay here and entertain the men,” Miriam instructed her. There was no doubt that Carl was in his element in Hannah’s company, though the opposite was probably the case for Sammy! “Tell me all about her,” she said to Helga when they were alone in the scullery.
“All I know is she was brought up in an orphanage in London and she’s just got a job teaching poor kids in Ancoats. The headmaster saw our advert in the Manchester Evening News and told her about it,” she said. Helga began dishing chicken and tsimmes on to dinner plates and smiled. “Carl wasn’t keen to take her. He would’ve preferred another man in the house.”
“If he shuts his eyes, he can pretend she’s one, with that deep voice and those intellectual ideas!”
“But when he opened them he’d know she wasn’t, with that long, fair hair. Not to mention her figure.”
“He’s noticed that all right.” Miriam smoothed down her tailored, grey dress. “She must be about my age, but she makes me feel matronly.”
“Me too,” Helga declared.
Miriam surveyed her sister, who was thirty-eight but looked ten years younger. “There’s nothing matronly-looking about you, love. Nobody’d guess you’re older than me, it must be marriage that ages a woman.”
Helga laughed. “In that case, I’ll look young forever!”
“Aren’t you ever going to say yes to Moishe?”
“I doubt it.” Helga poured gravy on to the heaped plates. “But even if I never remarry, I’m not alone in the world, like Hannah is. It must be terrible to have no family.”
Miriam smiled dryly. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”
When they returned to the kitchen, Sammy was listening politely to something Hannah was saying. But Carl and Martin had their elbows on the table and their chins cupped in their hands, their eyes riveted to her face.
“Your son’s very interested in hearing how Hitler came to power,” Hannah told Miriam whilst the plates of food were distributed.
“My brother seems to be, too,” Miriam smiled. “Which is rather surprising as I’m sure he already knows.”
“Then why hasn’t he told Martin?” Hannah asked eyeing reprovingly.
“He didn’t ask me,” Carl said.
“In future you must,” Hannah counselled the boy. “And you can always ask me anything you want to know. If I can’t supply the answer, I’ll find a book that will.”
“That’s an invitation for him to drive you daft!” Miriam laughed.
“I shan’t mind,” Hannah assured her. “Childhood is the time to form the habit of questioning everythin
g. If you don’t start then, it’s on the cards you never will. But parents discourage it. They think their kids are clay to be moulded in their own image.”
Miriam exchanged a glance with her husband.
“If you ever have any, you’ll find there’s more to being a parent than that,” he told Hannah.
“I don’t intend to.”
“Don’t you like children?” Martin inquired looking crestfallen.
“Of course, I do, love. But who’d look after them while I’m busy with my career?” Hannah tasted the tsimmes and pronounced it delicious.
“I’ll show you how to make it,” Helga offered.
“What’s the point when I’m never likely to do any cooking?”
Hannah’s vibrant personality dominated the rest of the meal.
“My mother-in-law’d have a fit if she heard some of Hannah’s ideas,” Miriam said to Carl when he came into the scullery to see why she and Helga were taking so long to make the coffee.
“I wish I hadn’t asked her to go with us to the tea party tomorrow,” Helga said.
Carl grinned. “It’ll be like an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”
Chapter 8
The clash of personalities Carl foresaw did not take place the following day. Nor did Sarah’s Shabbos gathering. Martin was taken ill early in the morning and by the afternoon tea-parties were far from the family’s thoughts.
Miriam found him seated on the edge of his bed, clutching his stomach, when she went to waken him, and his ghastly colour told her the pain was no ordinary cramp. If only Esther was here, she panicked. But the Kleins had moved to Salford two weeks ago and she could no longer dash across the back entry to fetch her practical sister-in-law as she had often done in the past.
“Sammy!” she shouted. “Go next door and bring Mrs. Hardcastle, right away!”
“I don’t want Mrs. Hardcastle,” Martin groaned. “I feel sick.”
Miriam gathered him close. His face felt hot and dry to her touch, but his hands were cold and clammy. “Martin ate too many prunes last night,” she said trying to smile as Sammy came in from their bedroom, half-dressed. “Hurry up and go next door, will you?”
“I’ll go to the phone box and give our Nat a ring, as well.”
The way his wife went to pieces if anything was wrong with their son had always troubled Sammy. Everyone loved their kids, but not in the obsessive way Miriam did. If Martin so much as pricked his finger, she would panic in case he got blood poisoning. Sammy too wished his sister was still at hand as he limped downstairs and went to fetch their neighbour. Mrs. Hardcastle was a kindly woman, but full of old wives’ tales and would probably work Miriam up instead of calming her down.
“Do you think a hot water bottle’d help?” Miriam asked anxiously when Mrs. Hardcastle entered Martin’s bedroom bringing with her the smell of the bacon she had been frying.
“Lawks-a-mercy no, lass! ’Eats’ t’last thing ter put on a bad stomach ache, in case it’s appendicitis. Best wait for yer brothers-in-law, Miriam.”
“Is that what I’ve got, Mam?” Martin asked. “Will they have to cut me open?”
Miriam could not reply. Her tongue had cleaved to the root of her mouth.
Mrs. Hardcastle sat down beside Martin. “Now don’t you fret, lamb.” Beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead and she wiped them away with a corner of her flowered overall, her homely face crinkling into a reassuring smile. “Me grandson Albert ’ad ’is took out, but they put ’im ter sleep. ’E knew nowt about it.” She glanced at Miriam. “Yer mam looks a sight worse’n you do, Martin. Ambulance men’ll be cartin’ ’er off on a stretcher’n if they only fetches one wi’ ’em, you’ll ’ave ter walk!”
Nathan had left on his rounds when Sammy telephoned his home, but Rebecca said Lou was at the surgery and she would ring up and ask him to call.
“Get a grip on yourself, Miriam!” Lou instructed when he arrived and found her sitting tying knots in her dressing gown cord, her thick, black hair in violent disarray as though she had run her fingers through it a hundred times.
“That’s what me’n Sammy’s kep’ tellin’ ’er, Doctor,” Mrs. Hardcastle said. “Poor Sammy doesn’t look too good ’imself. I don’t know which ’e’s worried about most, ’is son or ’is wife.”
Lou sent the neighbour downstairs to make some strong tea while he examined Martin.
“I wish I ’ad ten bob fer every cup me’n Esther’s ’ad ter make ’er since Martin ’ad ’is first tumble when ’e were knee ’igh t’a grasshopper,” she said as she departed.
It did not take Lou long to complete the examination. “I’ll take you to hospital in my car, chuck,” he told Martin, hiding his grave thoughts behind a smile. “You’ve never had a ride in it, have you?” The boy’s soaring temperature indicated the presence of peritonitis and waiting for an ambulance to be arranged could mean the difference between life and death.
Miriam slumped to the floor as Lou and Sammy left the room carrying Martin wrapped in a blanket.
“Mrs. Hardcastle’ll take care of her. I can’t spend all morning with you Sandbergs,” Lou said.
But his expression told Sammy this was not the reason he had not turned back.
“I’m taking you to the Royal Infirmary, chuck,” he smiled to Martin. “Where your Uncle Nat and I trained to be doctors.”
By one o’clock, Martin was in bed on a surgical ward, minus his appendix. But the deadly infection was rampant.
Lou telephoned Nathan.
“You’d better tell Miriam. I’m glad it isn’t me who’s got to,” he said ruffly. “Give her a good talking-to and bring her to the hospital. I’ll stay with Sammy until you get here.”
Nathan stood gazing through the hall window at a clump of laurels in the front garden that were eternally fresh and green. If God could create plants that living didn’t diminish why hadn’t He created Man that way? And why had He allowed diseases to scourge mankind, so that chaps like Nathan had to spend their lives battling against them?
Sometimes Nathan wondered if there was a God, but his religious conditioning would conflict with his reason as it was doing now, and he’d expect to be struck down for his treacherous thoughts. Saturday morning always depressed him. It was the time that he set aside to visit his housebound geriatric patients. To check on the progress of their decay, he thought cynically, though his compassion for them was boundless.
Who wouldn’t be cynical after being confronted with all those senile smiles and wrinkled faces? The shrunken, bent-over bodies and gnarled, liver-spotted hands. The eyes dimmed by cataracts. And the abject gratitude for ten minutes of a young man’s time. But Man was not a laurel bush, Nathan reflected bitterly, and there was no medicament to halt the ravages of old age. He replaced the telephone receiver which was still in his hand after Lou’s call. Or to wipe out infections like his nephew had.
Rebecca had come out of the parlour and was standing behind him. “What is it, Nat?” she asked quietly.
“It’s possible Martin’s going to die.”
Her hand flew to her throat. “What’s the matter with him? Can’t you and Lou save him?”
“We’re doctors, not miracle-workers!” Nathan exclaimed angrily as the limitations of his profession hit home. “And the same goes for the surgeons at the Infirmary, who are a damn sight cleverer than we are. People seem to think doctors are endowed with magic powers, they won’t accept it when there’s nothing we can do.”
He went to fetch his coat from the cloakroom. “And now I’ve got to try to make Miriam accept it. Tell her she’s just got to hope Martin will be one of the lucky ones whose body can fight the infection.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“What for?” Nathan said venting his feelings on her. “She’s bound to take it badly and you’ve made it plain you don’t approve of the way my family behave in a crisis.” He left the house without giving Rebecca time to reply.
Miriam lay on the kitchen sofa t
rying to draw a veil over her mind. It was only a dream, she had not really emerged from a faint to find Mrs. Hardcastle waving smelling salts under her nose and Martin gone, not downstairs reading at the table, not anywhere in the house, but whisked away to an operating theatre. She opened her eyes and saw Nathan standing with his back to the fire looking at her.
He had entered the back way and had sent the neighbour home. Miriam had seemed to be asleep, but he realized now that she had just been lying with her eyes closed, shutting everything out. How was he to tell her what he must? He made himself do so and her lack of response chilled him more than if she had screamed.
“We’d better go now,” he said gently.
“I’ll have to get dressed first. I’m still in my dressing gown.”
“You’re wearing a jumper and skirt, Miriam.”
She glanced down disinterestedly and saw that she was.
“Don’t you remember putting them on?”
Miriam shook her head. She did not want to remember anything.
Nathan brought her gabardine from the lobby and bundled her into it. She made no attempt to help him, letting her arms fall limply to her sides after he had put them into the coat sleeves, sagging like a rag-doll while he fastened the buttons and pulled out a pocket flap which his meticulousness would not allow him to leave tucked in.
When they got into the car, he opened the windows wide so that the cold air would blow in her face. But her cheeks remained chalk-white and her demeanour lifeless.
“I think we should take Mother,” he said pulling up outside his parents’ home. The need for Sarah’s strong and comforting presence had suddenly assailed him.
“Take anyone you like,” Miriam answered indifferently as if they were going to the cinema and not to where her child lay perilously ill.
Nathan bounded up the path and kept his finger on the bell until Sarah opened the door. He glanced back at the car before entering the house, but Miriam had not so much as turned her head and remained silent when he returned with both his parents. What’s going to happen to her if Martin dies? he asked himself. If just the possibility of it is enough to reduce her to this?