A HANDFUL OF STARS An enthralling story of poverty, passion and survival: one of the Tyneside Sagas

by Trotter, Janet MacLeod

  ‘Vinnie?’ Clara demanded. ‘Did you see him?’

  Patience shook her head. ‘We were out walking Dougie — only gone ten minutes. They’re watching the place.’

  ‘Jimmy must have worked out we’d come here and told the others,’ Clara said bitterly. ‘Vinnie’s brainwashed him. We can’t stay in Byfell. This’ll just keep happening.’

  Before they had time to clear up the mess in Max’s sitting room, there was a commotion at the door. Clarkie appeared, shoving Jimmy ahead of him. Jimmy staggered and fell at Clara’s feet, his left eye cut and swollen from a beating. Patience screamed and rushed to her son.

  ‘What have you done to him?’ she cried.

  Jimmy groaned as Clara and her mother lifted him to his feet and into a chair.

  ‘That’s what happens to those who don’t obey me,’ Vinnie said, strolling in behind. ‘Young Jimmy didn’t want to tell me where you were. It was that noisy mongrel gave you away.’ He kicked out viciously at Dougie.

  Clara looked at him with loathing. ‘Get out of here!’

  Vinnie laughed harshly. ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’ He stepped forward menacingly. ‘I’ve had enough of your awkwardness.’

  ‘Shall I give her a slap or two?’ Clarkie asked, grinning.

  ‘Oh, Clara will do as she’s told without that,’ Vinnie answered, ‘won’t you, Mrs Craven?’

  Clara’s heart thumped in fear. ‘I’m never going back to you, whatever you do to me. Our marriage is over, Vinnie.’

  Vinnie’s expression darkened. ‘You’ll come back cos I say so,’ he threatened, ‘and stop this silly rebellion. You can’t survive without me — look at this place! You and your pathetic family are nothing without me. You’ve always needed me! If you come back without any more fuss, I might just forgive you — and take your half-wit brother back into my troop.’

  Patience was holding a damp cloth to Jimmy’s face. ‘Clara’s right, you’re nothing but a bully,’ she hissed. ‘I’ll not let her go back to you.’

  He looked at her in disdain. ‘And how are you going to do that? You’re nothing but a daft weak woman who’s sponged off me for years. Don’t know what Magee ever saw in you. No wonder he took to drink.’

  As he turned from her, he caught sight of Paolo standing rigid in the bedroom doorway. Quick as lightning, he crossed the room and grabbed the boy. Paolo wailed in terror.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ Clara shouted, reaching out for the petrified child. Clarkie pushed her aside and she stumbled against the table.

  ‘If you don’t come back with me like a good wife,’ Vinnie bellowed, ‘Clarkie will give the lad a good kicking.’

  Clara pulled herself up, smothering a sob. She would rather die than let him hurt the boy. There was nothing for it but to do as Vinnie demanded.

  ‘All right,’ she gasped, ‘I’ll come. Just promise me you won’t hurt the lad or my family.’

  ‘That’s better.’ Vinnie smiled coldly and let the boy go. Paolo fled to Clara and threw his arms round her waist, shaking. She held him close. ‘Now, say goodbye to the little peasant and come with me,’ Vinnie ordered.

  ‘No!’ Patience spoke up. ‘I’m putting a stop to this evil once and for all.’

  Vinnie barged past her as if she had not spoken. She caught his arm.

  ‘You listen to me, Vinnie Craven! You’ll not want a wife like Clara when I tell you what I know,’ she cried. He shook her off but she pursued him. ‘If the newspapers get hold of this story, you’re finished in the BUF. And I don’t mean some grubby little affair with Cissie Bell-Carr.’

  He stopped and whipped round. ‘What are you talking about?’

  For an instant, Patience glanced across at Clara. Her expression was full of regret. Then she faced Vinnie. ‘Clara is Jewish!’

  There was a moment of silence, of incomprehension, as they all stared at Patience.

  ‘Harry’s not her father,’ Patience said, trembling, ‘Leon Brodsky is; the man we paid you to get rid of. What was it you called him; a money-grabbing little Jew? It wasn’t money he was after — he never cared about that — it was Clara.’

  ‘Mam?’ Clara gasped, her heart pounding in shock. ‘You can’t mean—’

  Patience looked at her with deep sorrow. ‘I’m sorry, pet. I’m not your mam either.’

  ‘Not my mam?’ Clara echoed, quite at a loss.

  ‘Your mother was a Russian lass.’ Patience spoke in a strained voice. ‘The Brodskys were Communist Jews staying at my aunt’s boarding house — they’d escaped from Russia and were half starved. Leah died giving birth to you. Your father tried to keep you, but the war broke out and he was rounded up and sent back to Russia to fight.’ She swallowed and went on. ‘Harry and I were betrothed. We told Brodsky we’d take care of you till he could come back. But none of us thought he would — him being Jewish and a radical one at that. Brodsky said himself that returning to Russia was like a death sentence. It was the biggest shock of our lives when he turned up all those years later — like a ghost from our past. We thought he was long dead.’

  ‘You’re a lying bitch!’ Vinnie shouted. ‘I don’t believe a word of it. You’re just desperate to turn me against Clara so you can keep her to yourself.’

  ‘It’s Clara I’ve lied to,’ Patience cried. ‘Do you think I’d willingly tell my lass all this when I’ve spent a lifetime keeping it buried? I’ve carried it around like a stone in my heart since the day she was born. I loved her from the minute I held her,’ Patience said with vehemence, ‘but that’s not the reason we took her. It was much more selfish. I wanted Harry to marry me quick and get me out of that common boarding house — and he saw it as a way of avoiding joining up.’

  ‘Joining up?’ Vinnie frowned.

  Patience goaded Vinnie with her words. ‘Yes, Harry Magee, the man you praised as a war hero — he never was one. We knew as a married man with a bairn, he could avoid conscription for longer. Harry said conscription would come in sooner rather than later; there were that many lads been killed in Flanders or sunk at sea. Well, he didn’t want to be one of them. So you see, Vinnie, we took a Jewish baby off a penniless Russian clock-mender and his dead Communist wife to save my Harry from going to war.’

  Clara struggled for breath, her mind reeling. She found it as hard to believe as Vinnie did. Clarkie and Jimmy were staring at her as if she had two heads. Vinnie would not look at her.

  ‘Prove it,’ he hissed. ‘Prove to me my wife is nothing but a foreign Jewess — daughter of penniless riff-raff. She doesn’t look it to me.’

  ‘Does she look like me or Harry?’ Patience demanded wildly. ‘Look at her! She’s got her mother’s fair hair and slanting eyes.’

  Suddenly Clara gasped as if winded. ‘The locket? The woman in the locket!’

  She rushed into the bedroom and returned with the handbag full of jewellery, hastily spilling the contents on to the table. Grabbing the cheap locket she opened it out and thrust it at her mother. Patience stifled a cry.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It was in the lining of Dad’s coat — Mr Slater returned it to me when we pawned his clothes. Is this. . . ?’

  ‘Yes,’ Patience whispered. ‘It’s your mother.’

  Vinnie snatched it out of her hand. ‘Let me see!’ He stared at the photograph in the locket and then at Clara.

  ‘Can’t you see how alike they are?’ Patience railed at him.

  Vinnie let out a savage oath and flung the locket across the room. It hit the wall and dropped from sight behind Max’s desk.

  ‘You’re a wicked bitch!’ he raged at Patience. ‘You’ve deceived me all these years — lived off my generosity like a leech. You tricked me into marrying that lass.’ He stabbed a finger at Clara. ‘My perfect English rose!’ He spat out the words.

  Clara was stung by his vitriol. She rounded on him. ‘No one tricked you but yourself. You and your delusions of grandeur! You think you can mould everyone to how you want them — charm or bully them till they
submit — but you can’t. We’re real flesh and blood people, Vinnie, not pawns in your selfish little games.’

  His look was full of loathing. ‘I’ll not be preached at by a common little Jew. I don’t know you anymore. You’re an impostor. You and that conniving woman — you both disgust me!’

  ‘Then go,’ Clara ordered, ‘and leave us alone!’ She squared up to him. ‘And I’ll tell you this for nothing — you stay away from us or you’ll be sorry. If any of your thugs threaten me or my family again, I won’t just go to the police; I’ll go to the papers. You and the story of your shameful marriage will be headline news. Imagine what Mosley would have to say,’ she taunted, ‘one of his most trusted lieutenants married to the daughter of Jewish Bolsheviks!’

  Vinnie looked thunderous, but Clara held his look. She saw the tell-tale flicker of fear as he glanced away. Then he swung round and marched to the door, nodding at Clarkie to follow.

  ‘The lot of you can gan to hell!’ he blazed. ‘I’ll divorce you, Clara, cut you off without a penny — and I’ll make sure none of you Magees get work round here again.’

  As he went, Clara heard him snap at Clarkie, ‘Breathe a word of this and you’re out on the street.’

  Clara slumped into a chair, her legs shaking with shock. She could hardly take in what had happened. Where had she got the strength to stand up to Vinnie and threaten him like that? She looked at Jimmy’s stricken face, then at her mother’s. Except Patience was not her mother. It was as if the world had shifted beneath her and nothing was solid any more.

  Patience looked at her with remorse. ‘I’m sorry I ever had to tell you — but I knew Vinnie would never let you be.’

  Clara gulped, feeling the first tears sting her eyes. Were they tears of anger at Patience or relief at being free of Vinnie?

  Patience came closer but did not dare touch her. ‘I may not be your natural mother,’ she said, ‘but I’ve always loved you like my own — always. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you to Brodsky — and neither could Harry.’

  Just then, Paolo crept round the chair and silently climbed on to Clara’s knee. Clara felt tears flood her throat as she put her arms round him. She had only known this boy for a matter of months, yet she loved him deeply. Patience had loved her with such a passion that she had gone to extreme lengths not to lose her to Brodsky.

  ‘Please don’t hate me,’ Patience whispered.

  Clara put out a hand and Patience seized it. ‘How could I hate you?’ Clara said hoarsely. ‘You’re still my mam. I wouldn’t have gone with Brodsky even if I’d known. You and Dad were my parents — and Jimmy’s my brother,’ she added with a tearful glance at him. ‘Brodsky must have seen that for himself.’

  Patience sobbed in relief, pressing Clara’s hand between hers. ‘Poor Leon,’ she cried, ‘we should never have treated him so badly. And now it’s too late to make amends.’

  Clara hesitated, stroking Paolo’s head in thought. ‘Maybe not,’ she murmured. ‘Remember Vinnie said he never got rid of him; had him mending clocks instead. Perhaps we can still find him.’

  Chapter 4O

  By autumn they had moved to an upstairs flat in the same street as the Lewises’ in Sandyford. Paolo was delighted to be near Terese and they both went to the same school where he picked up English fast. More amazingly, Patience put aside a lifetime’s prejudice against Germans and made friends with Marta, helping out in the shop in return for free wash and sets and midday meals. ‘I suppose I was jealous,’ she confessed to Clara, ‘because you always felt so at home among them.’ At Christmas, she persuaded Marta to sell decorations, ribbons and small toys to her customers. She talked everyone who came into the salon to buy some gift and the profit was spent on presents for the Spanish children.

  ‘In the spring you can sell cotton gloves and chiffon scarves; maybe brooches and earrings,’ Patience enthused.

  ‘Your mama,’ Marta said to Clara in admiration, ‘she is top businessman, ja?’

  Clara smiled in agreement. The Lewises knew of Clara’s parentage — Reenie had been trying to help her trace Leon — but to the outside world they carried on as before. Clara was getting plenty of work from Jellicoe and from Max, and was sending off articles to the national newspapers in the hope of being published more widely. She drove herself relentlessly, for it stopped her having to think too deeply about who she was.

  She still struggled to accept the story of her birth parents. She did not feel the least bit Russian or Jewish. What should she feel like? The heroines of romantic novels, orphaned and brought up by strangers, always knew they were somehow different; a square peg in a round hole. But Clara had no such feelings. She was a Tyneside lass with a fierce and loving loyalty to the parents who had brought her up. She had no feelings at all for the woman in the photograph. Only on restless nights, when she could not sleep, did she take out the locket and gaze at Leah and wonder what this unknown mother had been like.

  As for Leon, she remembered him with alarm as the dishevelled man who had stalked her when she was fourteen years old. In truth, she was reluctant to meet him; frightened that she would find him dislikeable. So her attempts to trace him were half-hearted and she kept telling Reenie she was too busy with work to have time to spare on a wild goose chase.

  Jimmy was Clara’s one real worry. Against all their pleadings, he had returned to Vinnie, begging to be taken back, unable to bear the humiliation of being punished by his own comrades and losing their tight-knit friendship.

  ‘I’m worth nowt without them,’ he told Clara when she tried to stop him. The BUF’s me life.’

  ‘They’re finished,’ Clara protested. ‘No one takes them seriously anymore.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Jimmy said stubbornly. ‘Plenty support us and they’ll come back in their thousands once they see us taking power. Just like Hitler.’

  ‘It’ll never happen,’ Clara insisted, ‘not while the trade unions and the Left are strong. Don’t let Vinnie rule your life again.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ Jimmy glared. ‘You’re not me real sister. You’re foreign filth.’

  He had left before Christmas and never contacted her or Patience since.

  ‘He’s lost to us,’ Patience mourned. ‘My own flesh and blood. Who would have thought we would grow so far apart?’

  ‘He’s still young and naive,’ Clara reasoned. ‘One day our Jimmy will see things differently.’

  ***

  Vinnie was true to his word. In early 1938, divorce papers came through, citing adultery with Max Sobel and giving details of her living at his flat. Clara wanted to contest this, but Max told her he was happy to be cited if it freed her from Vinnie for ever. She followed her estranged husband’s movements from afar; the boxing hall was doing well as was his business with Templeton selling machine tools to Germany. Yet there was mounting unease in Britain about the Nazis as Hitler took supreme command and marched into Austria in early March, annexing the neighbouring country for Germany. There was talk of rearmament once more and a national register for war service was prepared. Perhaps Vinnie’s business was not so secure.

  On a personal front, he grew quite brazen about being seen out with Cissie at the theatre, the boxing or the Sandford Rooms. Clara wondered if Alastair condoned the affair or was too far removed in his feudal world of Hoxton Hall to notice. Vinnie seemed to thrive on taking risks, as if to prove he was invincible. He organised a Blackshirt march through Byfell at Easter which ended in mayhem, with dozens of people injured including three policemen. Vinnie was quoted in the Tyne Times as blaming the police for not giving them protection. Jimmy escaped with a broken nose.

  Covering the story, Clara came face to face again with the BUF’s vicious messages of hatred and intolerance. Reporting from the sidelines, she shuddered in shame to think she had once worn the black uniform and marched under their fascist flags. She unburdened her self-disgust to Reenie.

  ‘How can I make up for being a part of all that?’ she fre
tted. ‘I was going along with some terrible things — hatred of the very people I’m supposed to belong to ...’

  Reenie squeezed her arm. ‘Say it,’ she encouraged her. ‘Say you are Jewish.’

  Clara shook her head, her eyes smarting with tears.

  Reenie said gently, ‘You have to find your father. You’re never going to have peace of mind until you do. Only he can answer all your questions.’

  ‘I don’t have any questions for him,’ Clara was defensive.

  ‘You’re a journalist,’ Reenie retorted, ‘you’re bursting with questions. But you’re avoiding them by doing nothing but work.’

  Clara gave her a haunted look. ‘But what if he’s dead and I’m too late? Or gone abroad?’

  ‘He came back for you, didn’t he?’ Reenie said. ‘I don’t think he would have left unless he had to.’

  Another thought struck Clara and made her blanch. ‘But if he did stay around, he would have known about me marrying Vinnie — being mixed up with the BUF.’ She covered her face in horror. ‘He’d hate me for it. He might want nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It would give you the chance to explain,’ Reenie urged. ‘I’ll help you. Don’t lose your courage now, Clara.’

  With Max’s help they trawled through parish records and old newspapers for deaths, census records for the living, lists of clock-makers and jewellers for whom Leon might be working. They trudged round boarding houses and asked at the synagogue, but no one knew of him.

  ‘What if he changed his name after Vinnie sent him packing?’ Reenie pondered one day.

  Clara sighed at the hopelessness of the task. ‘Maybe he just doesn’t want to be found.’

  Max turned to Patience, offering her a cigarette. ‘Is there anything else about Brodsky you can recall from the boarding house? Any interests — relations — friends?’

  She frowned in concentration, then shook her head. ‘It’s so long ago — and I didn’t really know them, my aunt kept me that busy.’