A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘You ain’t got no choice, David,’ Emmanuel said. ‘You must marry a Jew.’

  ‘No,’ David said, stubborn but still reasonable. ‘I want to marry Ellen.’

  ‘Ve marry for life,’ Emmanuel warned.

  ‘Yes,’ rapturously, ‘that’s what I want.’

  ‘How vill you keep Shabbas vid a shiksa for a vife? You ain’t thought of that, nu?’ his mother said. ‘Does she cook good? I bet she don’t cook kosher.’

  ‘It don’t matter how she cooks. We’ll manage. We love each other.’

  ‘Love!’ his mother snorted. ‘Such nonsense. Love!’

  His father sighed anxiously. ‘You ain’t thought of your childer?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ David answered honestly. ‘What’s to think?’

  ‘Vhat’s to think?’ his mother shrieked. ‘Vhat’s to think? Ai-yi-yi! She’s put the evil eye on him, this shiksa. Vhat’s to think? So vhat vill they be? Half an’ half, neither one thing nor the other, poor childer. Vhat’s to think!’

  ‘So maybe they’ll be Jewish, Mama. I don’t know.’

  Emmanuel’s long face was pale even in the gaslight, the lines denting his cheeks and forehead deeper and blacker than ever. The family is the centre of life,’ he said, passing his long hands over his eyes with a terrible weariness. ‘The core. There ain’t nothink more important Ai-yi! Is this for vhy I send you to study the Talmud? Vhat you thinking of? Vhere’s your modesty? You don’t choose your own vife? It ain’t modest. You think I chose your mother? Nu, nu!’

  ‘Times change,’ David said stubbornly. ‘This ain’t Poland.’

  ‘You ain’t thought of Yom Kippur,’ his mother accused, weeping freely. ‘And how vill you celebrate the Passover, you tell me?’ And she blew her nose as though that was a clinching argument

  ‘I’m goin’ ter marry Ellen,’ he said and his spine was rigid with determination. It wouldn’t matter what they said now, he had made up his mind by action.

  The argument went on and on, round and round, threshing and struggling and making no progress at all, a snake eating its own tail. When the church clock struck twelve, Emmanuel decided to call a truce. Tomorrow ve see the Rabbi, nu?’ he suggested. ‘Ve hear vhat he says, nu? Now ve sleep, odervise ve ain’t fit fer nothink in the morning.’

  David agreed to see the Rabbi even though he knew it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. Rachel wailed into the bedroom and cried herself to sleep, and Emmanuel sighed with distress and guilt, remembering the words of Deuteronomy, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice.’

  And one crowded mile away, among the muttering sleepers in Mr Pegg’s second dormitory, Ellen lay wakeful, tossed between ecstasy and worry. Now that she had time to think about what they’d done, she was remembering that it could have awful consequences. What if she had a baby? Plenty of girls did, as she knew only too well from her life in Dorset Street. Perhaps they ought to have waited till they were married. That was the proper way to go on. But oh, the memory was too close and too rapturous to be denied. And they’d be married as soon as ever they could. He’d promised. Married and together for ever and ever, sleeping in the same bed, loving like that whenever they wanted to. Even the thought gave her goose pimples.

  But then practical considerations came plodding into her mind. If she got married she would have to leave her job, because Hopkins and Peggs didn’t employ married women. And that would mean the loss of at least half a guinea a week. And the more she thought about it, the more stupid it seemed that she should have to forgo her wage simply because she and David had decided to live together. ‘I shan’t tell ’em,’ she decided. ‘It’s no concern a’ theirs what I do with me private life. I’ll ask permission to live out. I don’t ’ave ter say nothink about getting married.’ She could tell them she was living with a relative, which would be true enough. That way she could have the wage and David. And goodness knows they’d need the money. She was still plotting warmly when sleep drifted her away for the second time that day.

  David was late for work next morning. He was most upset and apologetic, especially when Mr Quinton assumed he’d got a thick head and made a joke of it.

  ‘We’re doin’ a piece on the Thames Embankment,’ he said. ‘Cleopatra’s Needle, Hotel Cecil, Savoy, Somerset House. All straight lines. Draw a straight line, can yer?’

  ‘Don’t tease the lad, Quin,’ Mr Palfreyman said, stepping neatly into the office. ‘Good morning, Cheify. Fine weather again. Five minutes at the end of the day to make amends. Is that acceptable? Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘You got off light, Cheify,’ Mr Quinton said as they went striding off towards the Embankment. ‘Think yerself lucky an’ don’t go makin’ a habit of it, that’s all.’

  ‘No, Mr Quinton,’ David assured him. ‘I won’t.’ And he sighed deeply. Telling your parents you were going to marry someone they couldn’t approve of wasn’t something you’d ever want to repeat. Nu-nu!

  Mr Quinton gave him a quizzical look but no further comment. And presently they arrived on the Embankment where the roadway was rattling with cabs and trams and scuttling with pedestrians, and the river was choppy with the wash of boats and barges. ‘River scene fer a start,’ Mr Quinton said and darted across the road to Somerset House, notebook in hand, leaving David to get on with it

  Work was a blessing that day. It occupied his mind and passed the time and, rather to his surprise, gave him an appetite. But he was preoccupied, despite all his efforts to appear as normal as he could, and the perceptive Mr Quinton noticed, of course.

  ‘There’s sommink up wi’ young Cheify,’ he told Mr Palfreyman, when the two gentlemen met in Craig’s Oyster Bar for their usual liquid lunch with shellfish.

  ‘Cherchez la femme, dear chap,’ Mr Palfreyman said, and, turning to the waiter, ‘Could I have a dry glass, do you think? Thank you so much. Is it affecting his work, would you say?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it’s his affair, not ours. Yes, indeed. He’ll sort things out, I daresay. He’s a sensible lad. Just keep an eye on him.’

  ‘I’d every intention,’ Mr Quinton said. The speed and delicacy of those drawings were too good to be lost. And besides, he liked the kid.

  Ellen worked hard that day too, for the store had plenty of custom. But she worked automatically and that gave her plenty of time to daydream. It seemed an age since she’d last seen him and seven o’clock was hours and hours away. She’d have liked to have told Maudie she was going to get married, but she knew that wouldn’t be at all wise, because Maudie was such a gossip. On Wednesday she’d tell Ruby and Mrs Miller, and see what they said about it. But in the meantime she’d just got to get through this Monday. Oh what a very long day it was!

  And it got longer. For when the goods had finally been covered and the shutters drawn and the doors bolted, and she had gone skimming up the stairs to the dormitory to change her clothes and escape, there was a postcard waiting for her. ‘I told my parents. Now I got to see the Rabbi tonight. I will be outside the store at nine o’clock, I promise. I.L.Y. David xxxxx.’ Two more hours! It was a lifetime. But if he was seeing the Rabbi that probably meant he was fixing the wedding, so it was time well spent, even if they couldn’t see one another till later. When they met again they’d know when they were going to get married. We shall ’ave ter find somewhere to live next, she thought, and decided to occupy the intervening hours reading the advertisements.

  It never occurred to her that his parents would actually refuse to accept her. They’d go on making a fuss, for a little while at least, because Jews usually married Jews, but she felt vaguely sure that they’d come round to the idea in the end. She knew they were good caring parents because they’d always fed him well and seen to it that he had warm clothes and that his boots were mended. So they’d hardly refuse him now, over something as important as this. Not when he’d made up his mind. There was an inflexibility about him when he’d made up his mind, a quiet unspoken determination that
would be very difficult to oppose. No, it would all come out right in the end. She was certain. Well, very nearly certain.

  So it upset her to see how downcast he looked as he came up Shoreditch High Street to meet her just after nine o’clock. He was striding, because his legs were too long for him to walk in any other way, but there was no eagerness in his stride, and his face was taut and hard with unhappiness. ‘Oh Davey!’ she said, slipping her hand through the crook of his arm to comfort him, and the tone of her voice told him at once how well she understood what he was feeling.

  ‘I can’t get them ter see sense,’ he sighed. ‘They just keep on an’ on.’

  ‘Did yer see the Rabbi?’

  Oh yes, he’d seen the Rabbi, and a fat lot of good that had done. Sitting blackly in his high carved chair with a brown dusk filling the room around him and three thousand years of tradition heavily behind him. He’d been kind and courteous and quite quite firm. Jews married Jews, honoured their fathers, perpetuated their race. The only possible hope he could offer was the thought that the young lady might care to convert to Judaism.

  ‘She ain’t Jewish,’ David had said, recognizing how unpleasantly truculent he sounded, but powerless to say anything else.

  ‘You have asked her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, maybe you should, nu?’

  And that was how they’d left it, with no decision made, and no hope of making one. Impasse.

  ‘I won’t give in,’ he told Ellen fiercely as they walked north past the Music Hall towards St Leonard’s Church. ‘One way or the other we’ll get married.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, giving his arm a squeeze. ‘What say we catch the last house? Cheer ourselves up. My treat.’

  So they went to the Music Hall, although he wouldn’t allow her to pay for the tickets, and were cheered for an hour. But when he kissed her goodnight in the staff porch his eyes were sombre again.

  ‘It’ll work out, you’ll see,’ she said, with her arms about his neck and her cheek against his chin. ‘Just so long as we love each other. P’rhaps your Aunty Dumpling’ll bring ’em round.’

  But he groaned into her hair. ‘Bubeleh, bubeleh.’ He was ashamed even to think about Aunty Dumpling after what they’d done in her room. Oh why was something as simple and wonderful as love so terribly complicated?

  Had he known it, Dumpling was doing her best for him at that very minute. At the end of the interview he’d stormed out of Rabbi Jaccoby’s room and rushed down the stairs two at a time in his anger, and his father had gone sloping back to the flat. And there he’d found both his sisters waiting for him, Rivke eagle-fierce, Raizel all tremulous anxiety.

  ‘Veil?’ Rivke said.

  He sat wearily in his chair and told them what had been said. ‘He ain’t move an inch. He says he’ll marry her.’

  ‘Ai! Ai!’ Rachel wailed. ‘Vhat ve gonna do, Dumpling? Like a madman he is.’

  ‘So the boy’s in love,’ Dumpling said, defending him although she wasn’t sure she ought to, knowing what they’d been up to. Her neighbours had been quick to tell her all the scandal the minute she got back.

  ‘I seen your nephew, Sunday, Mrs Esterman,’ Mrs Smith said. ‘Brought a young lady wiv ’im. Did yer know?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Dumpling assured her. ‘They come to feed the bird.’

  ‘Took ’em hours!’ Mrs Smith said. ‘Can’t think what they could a’ been doing up there all that time.’

  ‘Cleaning the room, Mrs Smith,’ Dumpling said, covering for them at once. ‘Left it lovely, they have.’

  ‘Very kind of ’em, I’m sure!’ Mrs Smith said, and her expression said, you don’t fool me!

  Ai! Dumpling thought. So young and so much in love, vhat you expect? It’s only human nature.

  ‘A shiksa!’ Rachel moaned. ‘I never hold my head up in the Buildin’s ever again. Ai! Ai! Ai!’

  ‘We should’a found him a vife months ago,’ Rivke said, lopsided but stern. ‘This never vould’a happen, we found him a vife months ago. Nice Jewish girl. Izzie’s girl maybe.’

  ‘She’s twenty-five already,’ Dumpling pointed out reasonably. ‘She got a wall eye.’

  ‘So who’s perfect?’ Rivke said. ‘She’s a good Jewish girl. Make a good Jewish vife. Ai-yi, dolly! Don’t you vish you listen vhen ve tell you?’

  But Rachel was too grieved to hear the rebuke. ‘Vhat for he do this to his Mama? I never hold my head up again. Maybe ve find him a pretty girl, nu?’

  ‘You could take the prettiest girl in the whole a’ Whitechapel, and plate her vid gold, vouldn’t make no difference, bubeleh. Still he vould love this girl.’

  ‘It’s so unreasonable,’ Rachel complained.

  ‘She vants love should be reasonable!’ Dumpling said to her brother.

  Emmanuel had been sitting quietly in his corner, listening to the storm of his wife’s distress. Now he lifted his head and gave his opinion, quietly and sadly. ‘Ain’t no earthly use ve oppose,’ he said. ‘Raizel’s right. The boy’s in love. Ve got to accept.’

  ‘But he’ll marry her!’ Rachel wailed. ‘Ai-yi-yi! It’s the end a’ the vorld. All my life I say I should only live to see him under the chuppah! And now …’ And she dissolved into bitter tears and refused to be comforted. ‘Vhat for he do this to his Mama?’

  ‘So you vear him down,’ Rivke suggested. ‘He’s young yet You vear him down.’

  Emmanuel shook his head. ‘Von’t vork,’ he said.

  And it didn’t

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The struggle continued all through the lovely warm June and well into the heat of July. David lived between ecstatic happiness when he and Ellen were alone together and stubborn despair when he had to be at home with his parents. Between them, his family kept up a relentless pressure upon him, all the more difficult to withstand because it was so varied. His mother nagged. Had he thought of the children? The Shabbas? His duty? His religion? His father mourned. How could he marry? No Jew could be married in the synagogue unless he was marrying another Jew. If he married this girl none of his family could attend the wedding. Rivke and her husband simply assumed he would capitulate; Aunty Dumpling kept out of the way, grieved that her darling was so unhappy but powerless to help him. And Rabbi Jaccoby padded about the building on his soft cloth shoes, and waited.

  After two weeks, Ellen was woken one morning by the familiar ache low down in her belly, and knew that at least she wasn’t going to have a baby. But as she hadn’t told him she was worried, she couldn’t share the relief with him either. And his distress was becoming more and more plain as the weeks progressed. He was all eyes, she thought, and his pale face looked gaunt.

  At the end of June, Aunty Dumpling asked them both to supper with her and Mr Morrison, and made a great fuss of them. But they were careful not to speak of love or weddings and even though the two women kissed most lovingly when they parted, theirs was the affection of the powerless and they both knew it.

  In the end it was Mr Palfreyman who found the solution.

  He and Mr Quinton were ‘pondering’ a lengthy operation that would eventually decide which of three possible articles would be included in their next issue. Mr Quinton’s office was curtained with print-outs and sketches, the Shaver had been sent out for fresh coffee, and David, having time on his hands, had found a space in the corner of the print room and started a sketch of his favourite model, wearing her pretty straw hat and her blue bloomer suit and leaning on the handlebars of her bike. He was so absorbed he didn’t notice that Mr Palfreyman had come out of the office on the look-out for the Shaver and had been standing behind him for several minutes, watching the progress of the sketch. When David realized he was being watched he was embarrassed into stammering excuses. ‘Oh, Mr Palfreyman, sir, I was just – um – I mean – all the other sketches are done, sir – um …’

  Mr Palfreyman brushed his confusion aside with a small benign wave of his white hand. ‘A beautiful girl,’ he observed, noticing David’s blush
before the boy ducked his head to hide it. ‘Drawn from the life, I daresay.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘If I had artistic talents, my dear chap, which I must confess I have not, I would choose just such a model. Yes, yes indeed.’

  David looked at Ellen, and sighed, and Mr Palfreyman looked at David, and considered, and Mr Quinton came out of the office, and understood, and the presses clattered all around them for several metallic minutes.

  ‘If I had such a model,’ Mr Palfreyman said at last, ‘which I must confess likewise I have not, I would want to marry her.’

  David looked his master straight in the eye and decided to tell him. ‘I’d marry her termorrer, sir. If I could.’

  ‘She is married to another?’

  ‘No, sir, nothink like that. I’m Jewish, she ain’t.’

  Mr Palfreyman made two immediate decisions. ‘We will print the Thames by night and the building of Kingsway, Mr Quinton,’ he said, ‘and I would be much obliged if you could spare me young Cheify for twenty minutes.’

  So they retired to Mr Palfreyman’s quiet, dry office, to the prognostication of matchsticks and the consideration of pros and cons.

  ‘Firstly, she returns your affection, I presume,’ Mr Palfreyman began, holding the first match between finger and thumb, and when assured that she did, ‘Yes, yes, of course. Then this is our first pro. However. Your parents are in oppositon, you say.’

  It took a quarter of an hour for all their hopes and disappointments to be enumerated and discussed and laid in line. And at the end of that time there were two identical rows of matchsticks facing each other on the tidy desk. Youth, love, beauty and natural inclination to the right; obedience, religion, duty and parental disapproval to the left. He’s a kind man, David thought, looking at the matches sadly, on’y he ain’t told me nothing I don’t know already. It’s a stalemate. Impasse.

  However Mr Palfreyman still held a matchstick neatly between thumb and forefinger. ‘It is my opinion, David Cheifitz,’ he said with immense seriousness but with the beginnings of a smile twinkling behind those gold-rimmed glasses, ‘my opinion that we have underrated one of the factors in this case. A factor that should never be underrated. No indeed. I refer of course to your love for the lady and her love for you. Which, in my opinion, is worth two points. At the very least.’ And he laid the final matchstick at the head of the pro column, and smiled like sunshine. ‘I think you should marry,’ he said, ‘and the sooner the better.’