A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Such a good boy,’ she said, vaguely, but she didn’t offer an errand. ‘So drink up your tea while it’s nice.’

  It was very hot in their parlour, especially now that it was crowded with cloth ready for her to baste, and the air smelt of new wool and was full of fibres. He drank his tea thoughtfully, gazing past her busy fingers at the blackened brick of Fashion Street. There wasn’t a sound in the room except for the rasp of her needle, and when the three-quarter hour struck, it was so loud the church clock could have been just outside the window.

  His mother folded the garment she’d just finished and straightened her back, moving stiffly and grimacing. It was an expression he’d seen so often he knew exactly what to offer. ‘You vant I should rub your back?’

  ‘You’re a good boy, bubeleh,’ she said gratefully. ‘You rub, I pin, eh?’

  So he massaged the small of her back, rubbing gently with the side of his fingers, while she pinned another coat together, and sighed. And sighed again. Her forehead was quite damp with sweat.

  They were banging and thumping in the Flowery. Steady rhythmical thumps like somebody hitting a huge drum. Oh, how very much he wanted to see it! Especially with Alfie Miller. Perhaps she’d let him go now, if he asked very politely. He’d just rub a little bit more and then…

  ‘So maybe you should run an errand, bubeleh,’ she said, wearily.

  ‘Yes.’ Oh, let it be a nice long way, and then he could come back past the Flowery. He was so excited he hardly noticed how tired she looked.

  ‘Mrs Finkleheim,’ she said. ‘You know Mrs Finkleheim, in the baker’s, corner of Thrawl Street. Tell her no trouble, has vesholem, but if she has a minute, I’d be glad to see her.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ready to leave at once. It must be nearly four o’clock. ‘On my vay home, I vatch the men in the Flowery, maybe?’

  ‘Destruction you should vatch,’ Mama said, sighing, ‘at your age! Oy, oy, vat a vorld!’ She was rubbing the small of her back, and her eyes were closed. But she didn’t forbid it, so he left the room quickly before she could. It worried him that he wasn’t being entirely honest, but he really had to go to the Flowery. And besides he was running an errand for her, so he ought to get some reward.

  He was just in time. Alfie Miller and his gang were rollicking down Fashion Street as he ran out of the baker’s having delivered his message and answered a lot of silly questions from Mrs Finkleheim. Was Mama in bed? At this time of day! What kind of question was that?

  ‘Come on, kid,’ his hero said. ‘They’re knockin’ down the chimbley. Be some sport.’

  And it was sport! The best sport in the world, like all acts of public destruction, dirty, noisy and totally enjoyable. A team of six men were pounding a side wall with pickaxes, and almost as soon as the gang had arrived and taken up good positions at the front of the crowd, they prized an ancient ivy from its long hold on the brick. It fell slowly, like a curtain, cascading them with dirt and debris, broken brick, red dust, filthy bus tickets, green crusts, fragments of old boot and a stampede of beetles and spiders. A bit further up the road two men were smashing windows with happy abandon, while a second team clattered tiles from the roof. Barefoot gangs scurried from one pile of debris to the next, collecting treasures in their filthy aprons, and an assortment of dusty mongrels ran madly about, barking and growling, or stood with their forepaws on the broken brick wall, rigid with excitement, or fled in sudden and cringeing terror as a particularly lethal object fell from the rooftop in their direction. As a spectator sport it couldn’t be bettered, so the road was full of spectators.

  David watched enthralled, feeling very small in such a crowd, but rewarded. Very much rewarded. And thinking how odd it was to see the sky in the middle of Flower and Dean Street. A lovely blue sky too, looking very clean beside all those dirty bricks and those heaps of grey plaster.

  Then there was a slight pause in the destruction while the roof gang gathered round the chimney stack and considered the best way to bring it down. There was so much pink dust on the pavements that Ruby Miller drew hopscotch squares in it and started a game with her sister Amy.

  Alfie was over on the other side of the crowd with two of his cronies. They seemed to be playing some kind of hiding game, dodging in and out among a group of evening shoppers who’d stopped on their way to the Lane and were watching open-mouthed, their heads tilted towards the new skyline. Alfie was wearing his triumphant face and signalling to his friends, sticking his right thumb in the air and grinning, before he ducked behind another back. It must be a good game, David thought, to make him look so happy. And he wished he was old enough to be allowed to join in.

  Then his attention was caught by a movement on the other side of the road, and as there was nothing particularly exciting happening just at that moment he turned to see what it was. A young man had arrived with a very odd machine and was arranging it on the pavement. It was a small black box balanced on three long narrow black stilts, like a daddy-longlegs with three legs. He was a well-dressed young man, and he was taking great care with his machine. Happily curious, David wandered across to see what it was.

  ‘Camera, young shaver,’ the young man explained. ‘I’m a-goin’ ter take a picture to put in the paper Thursday.’

  This was an incomprehensible answer. Drawing a picture he understood, but taking a picture … ‘How you take a picture?’ he asked, his eyes quite round with the wonder of the idea.

  ‘Light, young shaver,’ the man said. ‘Goes in this ’ere haperture, prints on this ’ere plate, and bobs yer uncle – a picture. Quick as a flash!’

  ‘Vithout you draw?’

  ‘Vithout I draw. Miracles a’ modern science. Whatcher think a’ that, eh? Tell yer what. You go an’ get your friends over an’ I’ll take a picture of you. Put that in the paper too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  What excitement! To have a picture ‘taken’. ‘Ruby!’ he called, running back to gather the gang.

  Ruby wasn’t too keen on the idea. ‘Better buck up, then,’ she said grudgingly. ‘They’ll ’ave that inside wall down next, an’ then we’re in after the planks.’

  ‘A picture, Ruby,’ he urged. ‘He says he take a picture. Of us! To put in the paper, Thursday!’

  So she assented. ‘Oh all right! Come on gang!’

  ‘I should get Alfie?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alfie. For the picture.’

  ‘No fear. ‘E’s busy.’ He certainly wouldn’t want to have his photo taken when there were so many pockets to pick.

  It was a disappointment, but it couldn’t be helped. If they didn’t hurry the young man would fold up his machine and go away and the chance would be lost. He peered into the mass of bodies all around them but there was certainly no sign of Alfie. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Ve go.’

  The young man took a long time arranging them, in a close group with their backs to the demolition. Then he disappeared underneath the cloth and told them all to say ‘cheese’ while he counted to twenty. It was a very long time to say one word. By the time he’d finished their jaws were aching. But it was exciting just the same. Even Ruby agreed.

  But then the demolition men started to knock down the inner walls. ‘Told yer!’ she said, and pushed her way back to the front of the crowd. David struggled behind her, wishing she wasn’t quite so quick. ‘This’ll be the last,’ she said. ‘See if I’m not right. Soon as they’re finished we’ll nip in fer the wood. You get round the side there, Johnny. There’s a good bit under them bricks.’

  ‘Is it stealing?’ David asked anxiously. He couldn’t take wood if it was stealing.

  ‘Nah! Gawd ’elp us! It’s firewood! We’re cerlectin’ it.’

  So that was all right, If it was firewood Mama would be glad he’d come here to collect it too.

  They waited patiently until the workmen had put on their coats and gone, taking a lot of the wood with them. And then what a rush there was. For there were grown-ups collecting firewood too and they pus
hed him out of the way and grabbed all the biggest pieces before he’d had a chance to see where they were. But he got a good armful, just the same. Ruby said it was a good armful. ‘Your Ma’ll be pleased as Punch,’ she predicted.

  He walked home, warm with achievement. A hurdy-gurdy, a big bundle of kindling, his picture in the paper, what tales to tell at suppertime! Now he was a scholar how rich life had become!

  Aunty Dumpling met him at the top of the stairs. And Aunty Dumpling was cross. ‘Where you been, you bad boy?’ she said, speaking Yiddish. ‘Staying out all hours and your poor mother so ill! You should be ashamed!’

  He was frozen with fright, the delights of the day quite forgotten. ‘What is it?’ he asked, flinging the firewood to the floor. ‘How is she ill?’ his bottom lip trembled into tears. ‘Mama!’ He must run to the bedroom at once and see for himself. She was well when he left her. Had she had an accident? Or a fever? What was it?

  Aunty Dumpling put out an arm to prevent him. ‘You are to come home with me, you bad boy. Your mother is in bed.’ Then she took pity on his stricken face, and spoke in English because she could see her use of Yiddish had alarmed him. ‘Mrs Finkleheim she got with her. You ain’t to go in.’

  ‘She very ill, Aunty Dumpling?’

  ‘No, bubeleh. You ain’t to go in though. She got enough without you already.’ Her voice was softer now, and her face rounder and more like itself. Now he could ask the question that was filling his chest so painfully.

  ‘She won’t die, Aunty Dumpling? Has vesholem.’ And saying those magical words, hoping they would ward off disaster, he remembered that his mother had said them too – ‘Tell Mrs Finkleheim, no trouble, has vesholem.’ ‘Oh say she won’t die, Aunty Dumpling.’

  ‘No,’ Aunty Dumpling said kindly. ‘Suffer she might, die she von’t. Not if you come home vid me, like an angel.’

  ‘Where is Father?’

  ‘Vid your moder.’

  It was too much. He began to cry, sobbing aloud in his fear, sobbing like a baby, ‘Mama! Mama! I want to see Mama!’

  ‘Shush! Shush!’ Aunty Dumpling scolded, pushing him into the nearest chair, and holding him there. ‘You vant she should get vorse?’ And at that he sobbed even louder.

  But then his father appeared as if from nowhere and wiped his eyes and made him blow his nose and told him his mother was better now and he was to be a good boy and stop making a fuss or he would grieve them all.

  ‘I stayed out. I worried her,’ he said between sobs. ‘Ai! Ai! It’s all my fault. All my fault. I was disobedient, Father. I went to the Flowery. I wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘Shush! Shush!’ Aunty Dumpling wailed. ‘Vhat ve do vid this boy? Hush, bubeleh, shush!’

  ‘Take him home, Raizel,’ Father said, using her real name for once. Oh, things were terribly serious!

  So he went home with Aunty Dumpling, sobbing all the way, and the guilt he carried was heavier than all the firewood in the Flowery.

  Chapter Four

  Aunty Dumpling lived in Brick Lane, in one room at the top of four flights of stairs above Mr Jones the Dairy. It was a small room and the furniture in it was massive, being the kind made in Worship Street for the high-class trade who lived in double-fronted houses and had rooms large enough to accommodate it. Here, in a room ten feet by twelve, it swelled and creaked, like a fat woman in a corset, filling every space and corner. But David loved it because it was comfortable and familiar, and Aunty Dumpling kept it all so clean, every day polishing the leather, beating the rag rugs, blacking the stove, dusting the ornaments, cleaning out the canary, killing the bugs. There was a place for everything in this room. And a special place for him. Ordinarily, a visit to Aunty Dumpling was a real treat, to be savoured for days in advance and remembered for weeks afterwards. Now he was too consumed by guilt and anxiety to enjoy anything.

  They went there in fits and starts, trotting through the crowds in Fashion Street, with David’s hand crushed firmly against his aunt’s roly-poly bosom, but stopping every few yards to talk to the neighbours, who wanted to know how his mother was. Unfortunately, their conversations were conducted in short unfinished sentences, and often contained more sighs than words, so he learned very little from them even though he listened with straining ears.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Oy, oy, poorly.’ Sigh.

  ‘Poor soul.’ Sigh. ‘Did she …?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Nebbish.’

  ‘Such bad luck!’ Sigh. ‘So how many is this?’

  ‘Five, poor soul …’ Sigh.

  ‘I saw you go by, Mrs Esterman. How is Mrs Cheifitz? Has she lost …?’

  ‘Ai-yi-yi! The pity of it!’

  Why were they talking about something his mother had lost? Was that what had made her ill? It didn’t seem likely. People lost things all the time, even money sometimes and that was very bad, but they didn’t get ill. David sighed heavily, looking at the pavement. There were times when grown-ups were very hard to understand. Why couldn’t Aunty Dumpling just tell them what the illness was? Then he would know. Not knowing made him feel so afraid. And yet they didn’t sound as though they expected her to die. They were sorry, but not that sorry. Vaguely comforted, he trotted on.

  They climbed the stairs slowly, as always, and Aunty Dumpling complained all the way up, as always, ‘Oy, my poor old legs! Oy, my back! Oy, such heat! Oy, oy, such a climb!’ stopping at intervals to catch her breath and lift her skirts away from her feet. And the higher they went the more miserable he felt.

  When they got into the room, and the canary was shrilling a welcome to them, and the kettle was on the stove, and the usual pile of dainty blouses was heaped on the table waiting to be trimmed, reminding him of his mother, his misery welled up inside his chest and couldn’t be borne. ‘Oh, Aunty Dumpling,’ he wailed, face wrinkling into tears. ‘Vhat I done to Mama?’

  She sat herself down in her sewing chair beside the window and scooped him up into the cushion of her nice wide lap. ‘Vhat you done, bubeleh? You ain’t done nuttink. She just ill, poor soul. You ain’t done nuttink.’ And they both cried and howled with abandon, until their faces were wet from eyelash to chin and their misery was all sobbed away. And Aunty Dumpling rocked him and called him ‘bubeleh’ and told him over and over again that it wasn’t his fault. ‘Listen, bubeleh, ain’t she been ill before? So, she been ill before, an’ you come here, vid your old Aunty Dumpling, like a good boy, ain’t she got better? So it’s the same old story. Same this time as all the others, don’ I tell you.’ And finally he believed her.

  ‘Ai!’ she said. ‘If only she got a place in the Buildin’s. None a’ this happen then, I tell you.’

  This was a new idea. ‘Vhy not, Aunt?’

  ‘In the Buildin’s is all much better, I tell you. I should know. In the Buildin’s she vould be happy. Plenty vater. A front door. Give you a nice baby broder, maybe.’

  Why would Mama give him a nice baby brother because she had a front door? ‘She don’t ’ave babies,’ he said. Other mothers had babies. Lots of them. But his didn’t. It wasn’t something he ever gave any thought to. It was just a fact of life.

  ‘You like a baby broder, maybe?’

  He shrugged. He hadn’t thought about that either. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I vould like a biscuit, please.’

  ‘So, I give you a biscuit, ve get her a place in the Buildin’s. Vhat you think?’

  It seemed an admirable solution.

  There were so many nice things about Aunty Dumpling. One was her nice easy emotion which came bubbling up so quickly and washed all over you and used itself up with such a lot of comforting noise, so that you felt quite better afterwards. Another was that she could sew and talk at the same time, even when she was doing the most complicated things, like stitching on frills or ruffles, her plump hands so brown and deft among all that fluffy material. Mama didn’t seem to be able to talk and work. She said she had to think what she was doing. But Aunty Dumpling was different. And another nice thing about Aunty Dum
pling was that she let you talk about almost anything. All sorts of things. She didn’t mind a bit. Things you weren’t quite sure you could talk about at home.

  Later that evening, when he’d eaten a bowl of borscht, every last drop, and washed his face and hands in Aunty Dumpling’s washbasin, which only had a very little crack in it, just in one side, and said his prayers for her like a good boy, he sat up in the middle of her high bed, cocooned inside one of the voluminous nightgowns she kept specially for him, and they talked.

  She told him all the old stories, that he’d heard so often and liked so much. About Uncle Solomon, her husband who was too good for this world, and had left her, after four short years, with no children of her own, ‘Nebbish!’ but with the incontrovertible status of widowhood and a room full of fine furniture. ‘Vorkmanship? You never saw such vorkmanship. So look at the quality of that sideboard, vhy don’t you?’ And then they got on to his father, who was the best man ever born, and had brought them all out of Poland when they were little more than children, and looked after them all in this cold strange country. ‘So young! The baby! And wasn’t he farder and moder to us, I tell you. A good man, your farder! And work? You vouldn’t believe!’

  It was all reassuringly true. But there was still Mama’s illness. ‘Mama von’t die, Aunty Dumpling?’ he asked, knowing already that she would reassure him about this too.

  ‘Ain’t I told you, bubeleh?’ she said as well as she could with a dozen pins between her lips. ‘Two-three days you be home again, everything as right as rain.’

  ‘I wish I could get her a place in the Buildin’s,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘So you go to school,’ she advised between pins. ‘You learn English good. You get a good job. Nice steady job, good pay. You go to shul, like a good Jewish boy. You marry a nice Jewish girl. No common shiksa for our Davey. Nu! So you settle down. Have kids. Vhat a life you got!’

  Yes, hadn’t he. Dear Aunty Dumpling, to see his future so clearly. He beamed at her over the counterpane, his dark hair so long and thick it was almost in his eyes. But the present and its problems were pressing. ‘Aunty Dumpling,’ he said. ‘Can you be two people?’