A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  So of course he had to be resuscitated by being kissed until he opened his eyes. Then she discovered a graze on his left cheek which needed attention, and stood between his knees to bathe it with fresh water, and that rapidly became the most loving exercise of all. The kisses grew longer and longer and more and more passionate. And they forgot all about the canary.

  ‘We oughter soak your bloomer suit an’ all,’ he said looking down at the red blotches trailed across the front of that pretty blue cloth.

  ‘Be a bit of a job,’ she hesitated. ‘I’d ’ave ter take it off ter get at all a’them.’

  ‘Take it off then,’ he said, and was delighted at how easy and natural he’d made it sound.

  ‘I don’t know …’ she said, tempted by such a daring idea, but feeling she ought to resist for appearances’ sake.

  ‘No one’ll see,’ he urged. ‘Go on! Why not? You’ll never get the stains out once they dry.’

  ‘Well …’ she said again. But she was unrolling her cummerbund, thoughtfully, debating the possibilities inside her head. It would be horrid to have her lovely bloomer suit ruined. But on the other hand she knew very well that young women weren’t supposed to run around in their underwear in front of young men. But he was in his underwear and that didn’t seem to matter. And surely there’d be no harm in him seeing her in her chimmy.

  ‘Could yer lock the door?’ she asked.

  The door was locked, and fresh water poured into a second bowl, and when she’d taken off her boots and set them neatly underneath the bed, the bloomer suit was unbuttoned and removed.

  She was wearing combinations too, a pretty one-piece garment made of white lawn, the bodice cut so tight and so low that he could see the entire swell of her breasts, the waist neat and slender, and the drawers open-fronted like harem trousers and ending in lace frills just below the knees. The sight of her so delectably and desirably undressed concentrated such intense pleasure in him that he had to close his eyes for a second.

  When he opened them again she was busy dipping the bloodstains in the second bowl, working methodically and neatly, rub-rub-rub, and on to the next spot. And he noticed that she wasn’t wearing any corsets.

  ‘You ain’t got no stays on,’ he said delighted.

  ‘No,’ she grinned back at him, pleased, after all, to see how much he admired her. ‘I’ve given ’em up when we go cycling. They pinch.’ And her throat flushed with soft colour.

  The sight of that flush and the thought of her supple flesh being pinched by whalebone filled him with tenderness. He stood behind her, protectively, and put his hands round the soft lawn at her waist and held her gently. ‘If I was your stays, I’d hold you so light an’ gentle you wouldn’t believe,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t nip yer.’

  She leaned back against his chest and sighed. ‘You go on like that, I shan’t get me suit dean,’ she warned.

  ‘How many more spots you got ter do?’

  ‘Three. Four if you count that little’un.’

  He stood behind her, almost cuddling her while she scrubbed the last four marks, squeezed the damp patches in a towel, patted the cloth smooth again, and arranged her pretty suit over the back of the tallest chair to dry.

  But then he couldn’t resist temptation any longer, and bent his head to kiss the nape of her neck. And the kiss was so pleasurable he let it travel down her throat towards the lacy frill on her chemise and the soft breast swelling just below it. The flush on her throat deepened and now he could see her nipples rising towards his mouth, rising and hardening, showing their pleasure just as his own flesh was doing. And he was aware of the lovely pearl pink texture of her flesh, and recognized that her nipples were exactly the same colour as her lips, a soft muted red, like raspberries.

  But then she was purring in her throat, ‘Um um, um,’ and the sound drove all other thoughts from his mind. He turned her in his arms and found her mouth and kissed it until they were both trembling. It was such a satisfying, enticing kiss and the sensation it produced in them both was so intense that when they finally drew apart their legs wouldn’t support them. They sank down onto Aunty Dumpling’s nice convenient bed, side by side and panting. And kissed again. Greedily. And their next kiss drew them down into the feather mattress.

  ‘Take that awful belt off,’ she said, wincing away from it as he drew her body towards him again. So it was removed at once, with apologies, and as his trousers wouldn’t stay up without it and his boots were in the way, they were kicked off too. And now there was nothing to impede them and they could kiss with unrestrained pleasure and the most exciting sense of daring.

  By now her breasts had escaped from the soft constraints of her chemise and lay in his hands, full and eager. They lay thigh to thigh, letting instinct and strong sensation lead them on. knowing they ought to resist, but too entranced to make the effort. He kissed her mouth and her neck and her breasts and her eyes, moving from one to the other, on and on and on, taut with desire, in an ecstasy beyond words. And she kissed him back instinctively, rolling against him in a torment of pleasure so sharp it was making her feel dizzy.

  ‘I love you, love you, love you,’ he said, sliding his lips up her neck towards her mouth again. And in that one easy movement he was inside her, so quickly and so naturally it was done before either of them realized it.

  For a second the shock and the pleasure of it stopped them both in mid-breath, and they stayed still, flushed and panting, knowing what was done and wanting to continue. Then he was moving again. He simply couldn’t help it, and she simply couldn’t stop him.

  ‘I must,’ he groaned, his face paler and his eyes darker than she’d ever seen them.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, almost fiercely. ‘Go on!’ They were all instinct now, and all pleasure, and their pleasure rose and became ecstasy, better and better, sharper and sweeter, stronger and stronger.

  And that was how, in the luscious summer of their seventeenth year, and the privacy of Aunty Dumpling’s hospitable room, they came together.

  And came, miraculously, together.

  Afterwards they slept, quiet and contented and sated, their arms about each other. And the canary, having given up all hope of food, slept too.

  Chapter Twenty

  When they woke, the sun was slanting in through the window at a completely new angle and the canary was singing passionately, the feathers at his throat throbbing and fluttering, his high whistling melody flute-shrill in the sleepy room. In the street below a cart was creaking past, the steady clop clop of its horse’s hooves as slow and predictable as the tin clock on the dresser. It was nearly eleven o’clock.

  ‘We been asleep fer hours,’ he whispered, still lapped in contentment. ‘What a way to go on!’

  ‘Did we oughter get dressed?’ she said sleepily. But she made no effort to move away from his side. It was too warm and comfortable beside him.

  She looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen her, but softer and vulnerable. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said rather fearfully, thinking, please don’t say we shouldn’t ’ave. I know we shouldn’t ’ave. But I done it fer you.

  The anxiety in her voice released a flood of protective affection. ‘I shall love you fer ever an’ ever,’ he said. It upset him that she was feeling guilty, especially as guilt was creeping into his mind too.

  ‘I love you so, so much,’ she said touching his cheek tenderly. ‘It wasn’t wrong, was it?’

  That was a question he couldn’t answer and remain truthful. ‘We will get married,’ he said. ‘Soon as ever we can. I promise.’

  She remembered the newspaper cutting. Now, she thought, let him see it now. There’ll never be a better time than this. ‘I got sommink ter show you,’ she said, sitting up, but gently so as not to disturb him. ‘Stay here. I shan’t be a tick.’ And she eased herself out of the bed and padded across the lino to the tall chair where her bloomer suit was drying.

  She’d found the cutting yesterday evening when s
he was getting ready to go and visit her mother. Was it really only yesterday evening? It had been folded away inside the brown paper cover of an old exercise book she was using to keep accounts in. When it fell out onto her counterpane she had no idea what it was. She’d opened it idly and glanced at the picture and read the headline before she realized how useful it could be. Now she took it from her pocket and padded back to the bed with it and spread it out across Aunty Dumpling’s patchwork quilt. ‘There!’ she said, more boldly than she’d intended. ‘Whatcher think a’ that?’

  He read the headline aloud. ‘Slum houses make way for Mr Rothschild’s new Industrial Dwellings. Demolition teams at work in Flower and Dean Street.’ And looked at the picture, piles of rubble, jagged walls and a line of urchins all staring owl-eyed at the camera. ‘I remember that,’ he said with surprise and delight, ‘all them old places comin’ down. I was on’y a little’un. I went down ter see it, I remember. With Alfie Miller. Look, there’s ’is sister Ruby. An’ that’s me. An’ there’s Amy Miller an’ Johnny What-ever-’is-name-was. Where d’yer get it, Ellen? And that boy used ter foller Morrie about all the time. I remember him. An’ that awful Smelly Ellie, look, on the end a’ the line. Trust her ter push herself in where she wasn’t wanted. She was awful! Smelly Ellie Murphy. Pinched my cake, she did.’

  He was so busy examining the picture he hadn’t noticed the distress on her face, but now she caught her breath suddenly as though she had a pain, and he looked up straight into her eyes, and her eyes were anguished. ‘Ellen?’ he asked.

  ‘It was a good cake,’ she whispered. ‘Tasted lovely.’

  ‘Ellen?’ he said again, scowling at her. She couldn’t be Ellie Murphy. No, no, no, it wasn’t possible. She was Ellen White, beautiful Ellen White. But then he remembered that awful room in Chicksand Court.

  ‘I never ’ad no breakfast,’ she explained and burst into tears.

  Then how tenderly she was cuddled and consoled, and how anxiously he regretted his stupid thoughtless words. And she assured him that she was quite, quite changed now she was Ellen White, and he assured her that he knew it, that nobody could ever dream of calling her Smelly Ellie when she was the sweetest girl alive, and just let anyone try, he’d give ’em a right pasting. And her tears were kissed quite away and his battered hands were held tenderly in hers. And now there was no doubt at all that they would marry, and marry soon.

  ‘I tell you, bubeleh,’ he said passionately. ‘I say thanks to the good Lord every single day a’ my life fer lettin’ us meet. An’ now we’re man an’ wife – yes, yes, we are. Man an’ wife in everything bar the ceremony – I shall be grateful to Him for ever an’ ever. It don’t matter what you was like as a kid. That’s all over an’ done with.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said, tearful with joy this time, ‘I shall love you fer ever an’ ever. You’ll see.’ And she kissed his battered hands. ‘Oh your poor hands.’

  The sight of his torn knuckles and the knowledge of who she was triggered another memory. ‘We ’ad a fight once, you an’ me,’ he said. ‘D’you remember?’

  ‘No we never,’ she said, surprised into forgetting her tears. ‘Boys don’t fight girls.’ She’d given plenty of boys a thump in her time, but not David. Never gentle Davey Cheifitz.

  ‘It was down the Lane,’ he said. ‘We must ’a been about seven. No more. I ’it the wall, I was so wild. Cut all me knuckles. You called me a mug.’

  ‘The ring trick!’ she said, remembering. ‘They made yer pull the ring trick. Alfie Miller, wasn’t it? Alfie Miller and the bloke they called Crusher. Oh Davey! Fancy me callin’ you a mug!’

  ‘I was a mug,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘Caught me good an’ proper they did with that ol’ ring trick. You knew though, didn’tcher?’

  ‘You learn young if yer live in Dorset Street.’

  ‘You’ll never live in Dorset Street again,’ he promised.

  ‘I’d ’ave a job,’ she grinned at him, ‘seein’ they’ve pulled it down.’

  ‘Oh Ellen!’ he said laughing at her, ‘That’s what I love about you. Give us a kiss!’

  Three kisses later, and at last, they remembered the poor canary and hastened to fill his seed bowl and clean his cage and provide him with fresh water, allowing themselves to feel safely ashamed of this particular unworthiness.

  Then it was time to put on their clothes and tidy the bed and resume the rest of the day. They dressed slowly, partly because they were still languid with lovemaking, and partly because they recognized that every movement they made was taking them back into the ordinary world again, where neither of them wanted to be.

  ‘No point us trying to catch the club up,’ he said as he tied his bootlaces. ‘They’ll be gone much too far by now.’

  ‘We could ’ave a pie somewhere an’ go to Hyde Park,’ she said pinning up her hair, and watching her daytime face reappearing in the looking glass. They were two separate people again, two individuals, not man an’ wife, and the corners of her mouth were drooping at the sadness of it.

  ‘Soon we’ll be married, bubeleh,’ he said, putting his arms round her. ‘I shall speak to my father tonight, the minute I get back.’ He hadn’t the faintest idea what he would say, but he knew it would be done.

  It was past ten o’clock when he got home that night. The air brooding over Whitechapel was still warm and the sky was the dusty mauve of untouched grapes, but for the first time in his life the beauty of it didn’t move him at all. He was tense with the certainty of conflict. ‘Soldier of the line prepares fer battle,’ he told himself, trying to make a joke of it. But he couldn’t fool himself. Whatever he said in the next few minutes and however carefully he said it, somebody was bound to be hurt. Oh, if only he could restrict the damage to his own emotions. Halevai!

  Most of the parlour windows were open to the heavy air, and behind them the gaslights shone like Chinese lanterns. His parents were sitting underneath their particular gaslight, beside their open window, he reading studiously, she sewing buttons on a shirt, and both of them lapped in contentment with each other, the very picture of sholem bayis, the ideal of Jewish domesticity.

  The sight of them squeezed David’s heart with a pang of foreboding and regret. Until this summer he’d loved them so entirely and easily, his thin, stooping, upright father, a chawchem, a man worthy of admiration, and his pale, hardworking mother, with her chapped busy hands and the humility of that downcast look, a woman to shield. Now he remembered all the errands he’d run to save her strength and all the odd jobs he’d undertaken to earn her the money for this flat, and all the old protective love for her filled his chest and made his eyes sting with tears.

  He hung Aunty Dumpling’s key on the nail above the dresser, glad that it was down at the dark end of the room and that he could stand with his back to them for a second and recover the calm he needed.

  ‘So you fed the bird, nu?’ his mother said mildly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No troubles?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So vhy she don’t let me feed that bird I can’t imagine. After all these years. I should give it the evil eye maybe.’

  ‘Rachel!’ Emmanuel demurred, drawing his eyebrows into the downward flicker that was the nearest he ever got to frowning at her.

  ‘Come and sit beside your Mama,’ Rachel said, patting the chair beside her. ‘You had a good day vid your cycles, nu?’ Then as he walked into the gaslight she saw his torn knuckles and let out a little shriek, dropping the shirt and stretching out her hands towards him. ‘David, bubeleh, vhat they done to you?’

  He’d forgotten all about his injuries. ‘Drunks,’ he explained waving away scars, concern and explanation. ‘Shouting their mouths off. Bit a’ punchin’. Nothing, Mama. Nothing really. I got something much more important to tell you.’

  ‘So let me see,’ she said taking his right hand firmly and turning it towards the light. ‘Ai-yi! Vhat more important than your health, I should like to know. Did you bathe it? Show me the other one.
Ai-yi-yi, vhat a state!’

  He looked at her face, all loving concern, all innocent loving concern, and he felt like a butcher. ‘I want to get married,’ he said.

  Emmanuel closed his book and set it aside, and David knew he was alert and attentive even though he could only see him out of the corner of his eye. But his mother paid no attention at all. ‘You should have come home,’ she grumbled affectionately. ‘I vould a’ bandaged you up good. Vhat a state! Ai-yi!’

  ‘You vant me to make inquiries?’ Emmanuel asked. ‘Somebody to make a match, nu? Shadchanim ve don’t have in Vhitechapel, but there’s plenty here know the art.’

  ‘He’s too young for matchmaking yet,’ Rachel said too quickly, giving his hands a little shake of exasperation.

  ‘Don’t it say in the Shulchan Aruch, “At eighteen a young man should take a wife”?’ David tried, looking his father full in the eye and wishing he could control his erratic breathing.

  ‘True,’ Emmanuel said. ‘That is vhat it says in the Shulchan Aruch. But you should know it is also written there, “Marry an estimable woman of respectable family”. I start to ask for you, nu?’

  ‘No,’ David said, staying calm with a great effort. ‘I’ve already found a wife, Papa. I know who I want to marry.’

  ‘The idea!’ his mother exploded. ‘So vhat next? I never heard nothink so ridiculous. A meshuganer we bred, Emmanuel. Chose your own vife. Ai-yi! Vhat sort of a vorld ve live in?’

  ‘Her name’s Ellen White,’ he said, speaking quickly before they could stop him or he could lose his courage. ‘She’s eighteen. She works in ’Opkins an’ Peggs, where Josh works. She’s very pretty, and I love her.’

  ‘Ellen White?’ his mother said. ‘So vhat sort a’ name’s that? That ain’t a Jewish name.’

  Tell them quickly, David thought. Now, while it’s possible. ‘She ain’t Jewish, Mama.’

  ‘A shiksa!’ Rachel wailed, both hands fanned across her mouth as though she could prevent any further upsetting speech by their pressure. ‘He vants to marry a shiksa. Speak to the boy, Emmanuel. A shiksa! Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi!’