by Maisie Mosco
Sigmund provided the answer when they opened his workroom door and smiled at him. “I’m cutting myself a new suit before I get too busy again,” he said without preamble. “After what I’ve been through, I deserve to give myself a present.”
This was all he said to them. He made no comment about his belongings being delivered by David, nor did he say where he had spent the nights since leaving his wife. But Helga saw grass-stains on his trousers and surmised he had slept in a park.
The next morning, Sarah called to see him.
“You’ve come to interfere?” he said gruffly when she put her shopping basket on the bench and made herself comfortable on the only chair.
“With what?” she smiled.
Sigmund eyed her suspiciously. “You haven’t come to tell me to go back to my wife?”
“God forbids! Here is where you belong, Sigmund.”
“I’m glad everyone still thinks so,” he said sounding sheepish.
“You were the only one who didn’t.”
“So now I know better.”
Sarah watched him thread a needle and was warmed by the familiar sight. “You haven’t been back five minutes and already your waistcoat has a hundred pins jabbed into it,” she laughed. “For Helga to pick up when they drop on to the kitchen rug.”
“Once a tailor always a tailor,” he replied.
“Did you have to marry Gertie Fish to find that out?”
Sigmund went to stare out of the window and toyed with the frayed tape-measure slung around his neck. “I could have lived without a needle in my hand, Sarah. But a man can’t live without respect.” He turned to face her. “A ganef my wife called me.”
Sarah pretended she had not known this, though David had told her.
“And all I was doing was exchanging the lousy ten-shilling note spending money she allowed me, for silver! To give Martin half-a-crown for coming top in the exams.” The words had poured out of him in an angry gust and he stood red-faced, his stocky figure trembling.
“Such an evil mind,” Sarah said with revulsion.
Sigmund simmered down and began tacking a jacket sleeve with careful, even stitches. “God will forgive me for leaving her. To a person like that I owe no allegiance.”
Sarah went to kiss his cheek, which she only did on special occasions. “I agree.”
Chapter 11
On the second Saturday in December, two topics dominated the conversation at Sarah’s tea party. The King’s abdication with its accompanying scandal had shocked the family and nobody could quite believe it had happened. They also found it hard to take in that Hannah and Carl would shortly be the parents of twins.
Carl had taken his wife to St Mary’s Hospital during the night and was still there, with Sammy for company.
“I’ll be glad when Shabbos is out, then I can get on with knitting the second shawl,” Helga said. A complete layette for one baby had been prepared some time ago, but the necessity for a second one had only been revealed the previous week.
“You won’t have time to knit, when Hannah comes home with the babies,” Sarah told her. “And goes back to work, while you take care of them,” she added with disapproval.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Helga smiled. Life had denied her the chance to be a mother, but now she would be-the next-best-thing.
“I wonder what Edward will say when he broadcasts tonight,” David mused returning to the other topic.
“Who’s that walking down the street? Mrs. Simpson’s dainty feet!” Ronald sang out.
“Don’t be clever,” Nathan chided him.
“All the kids at school are singing it,” Ronald informed him. “She’s pinched our King from us, hasn’t she?”
“So, we’ve got another one,” Sarah said philosophically, though she had not expected Edward’s departure to occur in her lifetime.
“And after him we’ll have to have a queen, because he’s got no sons,” young Arnold Klein declared as if this were a deprivation.
“Two of England’s greatest monarchs were queens,” Marianne reminded him in defence of her own sex. “But I’m glad I’m not Princess Elizabeth. I wouldn’t like to be one.”
Shirley eyed Marianne’s simple, brown wool dress and glanced at her own elaborate, burgundy velvet one. “You wouldn’t make a very good one,” she said condescendingly.
“And I suppose you think you would?” Marianne retorted.
“She would if all it took was dressing up,” Martin said snidely.
“Those two are always getting at me,” Shirley protested.
“It’s because they’re jealous of you, darling,” Bessie comforted her.
Marianne and Martin shared a smile and got up and left the room.
David was still musing about the abdication. “You’d think he’d have more responsibility than to put love before duty.”
Nathan smiled sourly. “You’re a great one for duty, aren’t you, David?” His sympathies were with the love-torn Edward, but he said no more. Rebecca was looking at him over the rim of her tea cup and he had learned he must watch his words in her presence.
“Leona’s hair is even redder than Shirley’s,” Sarah remarked to change the subject. Things had not been too bad between David and Nat since Bessie stood by Rebecca and she wanted them to stay that way. She lifted her youngest granddaughter from the rug and stroked the soft little cheek. Leona was much prettier than Shirley, she thought, cuddling the baby close and hoping she would also have a sweeter nature.
Sigmund was toying restively with his watch chain. “Why aren’t Carl and Sammy back from the hospital yet?” he exclaimed, getting up to pace the room.
Miriam was putting on her coat to go to a call-box and telephone the hospital when her husband and brother arrived.
Carl had a dazed expression on his face. “I’m the father of two boys and I can’t believe it,” he said lowering himself into a chair.
“Mazeltov!” the family cried in unison.
“I had to hold him up when they let us see them,” Sammy grinned while Abraham was getting the whisky out of a cupboard.
“They’re not a bit alike,” Carl supplied. “One’s like me and the other’s the image of Hannah.”
“When Tibby had her last lot of kittens, three were her colour and the others were like Mrs. Evans’s cat,” Ronald said helpfully.
Abraham handed around drinks amid gales of laughter.
The whole afternoon hardly anyone has laughed, Sarah reflected. Oh, what a bit of good news could do for a family! But this was a double joy. “With two boys, you can call one after Edward and the other after George,” she suggested to Carl. “As they were born on such a special day.”
Carl was gulping his whisky as if he needed it. “Hannah’s already named them Frank and Henry.”
“After whom?” Sigmund asked. “Her own forebears, she doesn’t know who they were. And there was never a Frank or a Henry among yours.”
Carl smiled. “You know Hannah. Frank was a man who used to bring sweets to the orphanage she was in. And Henry was someone who gave the kids rides in his van.”
“Two very nice names,” Sarah pronounced decisively, busying herself with the tea things so nobody would notice how the explanation had affected her. For Hannah to have attached so much significance to such small kindnesses told its own story. What a sad childhood she must have had.
Sarah thought about Hannah again that night, after she and Abraham had listened to Edward’s farewell to the nation, on the wireless.
“Carl’s wife was born to nothing, yet such a strong character she’s got. It makes you think, Abraham.”
“You, you don’t need anything to make you think! But tell me what anyway.”
“That a man can be born to rule, but in the end it’s his own nature that rules him. The wonderful upbringing Edward had, what good did it do? He’s let down his family and his country, to marry Mrs. Simpson,” she said dabbing her eyes with her apron.
“You’re crying for E
dward?”
Sarah thought of Queen Mary who didn’t have a son made of iron, like David, to stop his brother from doing the wrong thing. “I’m crying for his poor mother.”
Chapter 12
David had succeeded in persuading Esther and Ben to let Marianne complete her primary schooling in Cheetham Hill, but it would have been better for her if he had not. She passed the scholarship examination, along with Shirley, only to learn afterwards that the Kleins’ removal from Manchester prohibited her from attending a high school in the city.
By then, all the places at equivalent establishments in Salford were filled and she had to accept one at a lower grade of school, where the emphasis was on commercial subjects to equip the girls for secretarial careers.
Marianne found shorthand and typewriting easy to learn. But taking down business letters and typing them with the required neatness bored her. Book-keeping confounded her, and she came to dread the lessons, when the sight of long rows of figures awaiting her attention would throw her into a panic and cause her mind to close up whilst the teacher’s voice droned on about double entry.
Latin was not taught at the school, and Martin, who was emerging as a Classics scholar, declared this disgusting. He advised Marianne to work hard at French, because she would need a language in order to qualify for university and was even more appalled when she said none of her schoolmates had university in mind.
Martin’s views increased Marianne’s feeling that she had been deprived of the kind of education her ability merited and her consequent resentment eroded her will to do well. Her work suffered accordingly and the report she took home at the end of her first year bewildered her parents.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ben said, re-reading the marks and comments. “How can she come bottom of a class of girls who didn’t pass for a high school like she did?’
The shop bell tinkled, but he did not rush away to make sure Harry could manage, the way he usually did. “What’ve you got to say about it, Marianne?”
Marianne shrugged, and munched the buttered teacake her mother had just put on the table for her. “Nothing.”
Ben looked at his wife and spread his hands perplexedly.
“So, your daughter won’t be a professor,” Esther smiled. “Be happy our Arnold’s turning out to be one. A girl doesn’t need to do well at school, she’ll end up cooking and cleaning anyway.”
Marianne escaped to the small, back bedroom she thought of as her private sanctum and lay counting the roses on the wallpaper, which she always found helped her not to think.
“Sometimes I wish we’d never come to live here,” Ben said to Esther breaking the silence their daughter’s abrupt departure from the room had engendered.
“Me too, it isn’t the same,” Esther agreed. Then her eye roved to the carved walnut sideboard and chairs and the new carpet they had recently acquired. “But I change my mind when I think of the things we’ve got now that we didn’t have before.”
Ben’s policy of working on turnover had paid off handsomely, but it was not this alone that had caused the business to thrive. Esther’s full-time presence had made an immense difference. The local women liked her and would come in just for a chat, but rarely left without buying something. She dressed the shop window, too, with row upon row of articles ranged on stands, one behind the other, and the effect was of a mountain of cut-price bargains, which tempted the passing trade.
Ben stuffed Marianne’s school report into his pocket and stared out of the window at the dismal backyard. “But like you said, Esther, it isn’t the same. For you and me it doesn’t matter, but where our kids live can affect them. Have you ever wondered why our Marianne never invites her schoolfriends home like she did in Cheetham?”
“I can’t say I have,” Esther answered impatiently. The shop bell had just rung twice, but suddenly Ben didn’t seem to care! “What’s that got to do with her getting a bad report?” she added.
“I didn’t say it had,” Ben retorted. Sometimes he wished his wife’s interest in their daughter wasn’t confined to just her physical well-being. “But she’s the only Jewish girl in the school, isn’t she? Perhaps she doesn’t invite friends home because she hasn’t got any.”
That night, Ben went to sit on Marianne’s bed before she fell asleep, as he had often done when she was younger. “You’ve got something on your mind, love, haven’t you?” he said gently. “Why don’t you tell your old dad about it? Two heads are better than one.”
Marianne gazed into the kind, brown eyes that were filled with concern for her and the deep love she had for him felt like a lump in her throat. But it was his fault she wasn’t at a high school. Dad and Mam hadn’t known how removing to Salford would affect her, but she was sure they would have done it anyway. They thought a girl’s education wasn’t important! She swallowed the constricting emotion down and hardened her heart. “You’re to blame for everything!” she told her father.
Ben’s long face creased with distress. “Me? What have I done?”
“If you don’t know, why should I bother to tell you?”
“Because we’ve always been good pals, haven’t we?”
Marianne stared up at him enigmatically.
“Sometimes you remind me of our Joe!” he exclaimed frustratedly recalling his journalist brother’s moodiness. “And look how he’s ended up!” he added irrationally, unable to think of Joe without a stab of pain because he had married a Gentile.
“He’s my favourite uncle,” Marianne said, though she had only met him once. “When I grow up, I’m going to London to stay with him and get to know my cousin Christopher.”
“The while you’re only a stupid little girl!” Ben shouted.
Marianne turned her face to the wall and he went downstairs, trembling with angry confusion, wondering how his attempt to comfort the daughter he loved had turned into a row about something else.
Ben had flicked off the light switch and Marianne could not summon the energy to get out of bed and put it on again, so she could count the roses. She tried counting them in her imagination, but it didn’t stop her from thinking. She lay listening to the trams and lorries rumbling by on the main road, which could be heard even at the back of the premises, then pulled the eiderdown over her head to shut out the sound, just as she did when she was making up a story.
Once, it had only been Mam who didn’t understand her, but now it was Dad, too. Why couldn’t she talk to him anymore? Because it hurt that he couldn’t see why she was unhappy; that he needed telling. And she couldn’t forgive him for what removing had done to her. She blamed him more than Mam, who’d always been just a parent, never a pal.
The next day was Saturday and she tried to avoid going to the tea party, where everyone would be talking about the children’s reports, as if they affected the whole family.
“You’re going with Arnold, like always,” her mother said while they ate their dinner. “Now Harry works in the shop, he isn’t expected at Bobbie’s until later, with me and Dad. But you’ve got no excuse.”
“My head’s aching,” Marianne answered, providing one, and felt her temples begin to throb as she said it.
Esther gave her a generous helping of prunes with her lokshen pudding. “So, I’ll give you an Aspro and tonight you’ll take syrup of figs.”
Marianne pushed her dessert away. “Why do you think a laxative’s the answer to everything, Mam?”
Esther wanted to slap her but knew it would do no good and wished she could think of something that would. She ate her own meal quickly, so she could go into the shop and let Ben have his.
Harry was finishing his soup, having just been relieved behind the counter by Arnold who, despite his lack of interest in the business, gave a hand when necessary without being prompted.
“It’d do our kid good to have to work on Saturdays, like I have to,” he said to his mother.
“I help when I’m asked to,” Marianne declared.
“But you never think of offering to,
do you?” Esther pointed out.
“It’d be nice if she sometimes did,” Harry said.
The feeling that everything and everyone was against her increased when Marianne arrived at her grandmother’s house.
“I heard you came bottom of the class,” Shirley greeted her the minute she entered the parlour.
Mam must have rung up Uncle David and told him, like she did about everything! Marianne went to sit on the floor in a corner of the room and listened to her Auntie Bessie boasting about Shirley and Ronald’s high marks. Her grandmother was reading Martin’s report and Arnold had just handed his to Uncle Nat.
I expect Dad threw mine on the fire, Marianne thought despondently, opening the book she had brought with her and hoping Martin would notice it was Wuthering Heights and not the childish stories she used to read.
Martin did not notice. He was squatting on the hearthrug with Shirley and Arnold, discussing the Latin essay he had written for the end of term examination.
“Why not go and sit with them instead of hiding yourself in a corner?” Hannah smiled to Marianne above the clamour of voices and the clinking of china.
“Our Marianne is getting like Greta Garbo,” Abraham chuckled. “She wants to be alone.”
“What if I do?” Marianne said defensively though she did not. But there was no point in her joining the group on the hearthrug, she wouldn’t know what they were talking about.
Hannah sensed her unhappiness and wondered what had caused it. “What’s wrong, love?”
Marianne managed to smile. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Anything you’d rather not talk about it’s best to get off your chest right away,” Nathan, who was sitting beside them, counselled his niece.
“My husband, the psychologist!” Rebecca interceded caustically, watching her daughter toddle precariously across the room.
“You should put Leona in clogs, she seems a little bandy,” Sarah advised.
“Because her mother feeds her too well. She’s overweight,” Nathan said.