A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘I’ll look up an’ wave,’ he promised. ‘It’s all watchin’ anyway, wherever you are. You got a good view up ’ere.’

  ‘Hum!’ she said crossly. ‘I don’t think much of it, an’ that’s a fact.’ But she gave him a smile as he left her, because she didn’t like to see him looking upset.

  ‘Daddy gorn,’ Gracie said, catching their emotion and bewildered by it.

  ‘No ’e ain’t,’ she said, as calmly as she could. ‘There ’e is. See? Down there under that cover with yer Uncle Hymie.’

  It was a splendid canopy, all red and gold embroidery and fringed with heavy gold tassles. Hymie looked uglier than usual standing underneath such opulence, especially as they’d made him wear a long white shirt instead of a coat. It’s more like a shroud than a garment, she thought. They’re a funny lot these Jews. Fancy getting married in a shroud.

  But then the bride was making her entrance and she forgot about the vagaries of the Jewish race and leaned forward to catch her first glimpse of Hymie’s intended. She was certainly very fat, even if you allowed for the yards of material in her white dress, but her face was covered with such a thick veil that only the bump of her nose could be seen through the cloth. Everybody in the synagogue was singing some Jewish song very loudly, and the Rabbi had joined all the young men under the canopy, resplendent in a long black coat and a huge hat trimmed with brown fur. She watched as he unfurled the scroll of parchment he carried and the service began.

  It was all in Yiddish. What a sell! She couldn’t understand a word of it. But she recognized the moment when Hymie put the ring on his wife’s finger and then at last the veil was lifted and they could all see the bride’s face. And she was hideous. Poor Hymie. She had a broad squashed face, like a pug, with a stubby nose, and small eyes and a mouth that was downturned with discontent, even at this moment when it ought to have been looking happy. Poor old Hymie!

  While she was still feeling sorry for him, one of his friends put a wine glass on the floor at his feet and he smashed it to bits with the heel of his shoe, and they all yelled ‘Mazel tov!’ as though he’d done something clever. They really are the most peculiar lot, she thought, as the Rabbi started another chant. Oh ’e’s off again. Wonder what David’s thinking about. He looks very soulful.

  David was listening to the words and envying his friend. For they had reached the moment of the seven benedictions, when the words brought all their hopes of happiness into passionate focus. ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast created joy and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and exultation, pleasure and delight …’ And he felt the surge of support for Hymie all around them, the full loving power of their tight-knit tribe, and he regretted his own exclusion from it. This was what he should have been given on his own wedding day, love and support and approval. And he knew, as he stood beside his friend, enriched by the emotion of this most Jewish of all Jewish occasions, that if his second child was a boy he ought to have his brit. I’ll bring him to the synagogue when he’s eight days old, he thought, and he can be circumcized and entered into the Covenant of Abraham along with all his relations. Nothing less would do.

  Jack Cheifitz was born on 15 December. He was a fine fat baby, every bit as pretty as his sister had been, with the same dark blue eyes and the same thick hair. But undeniably male.

  Now, David thought, looking into his son’s trusting eyes for the very first time, now we shall have to decide. But there were still eight days for them to make up their minds and arrange the ceremony. Nothing need be said just yet.

  Aunty Dumpling appointed herself nurse again, and Gracie was her helper in her own nurse’s cap and a miniature white apron specially made for the occasion. ‘You go ter work, Pa,’ she said, ‘an’ me an’ Aunty Dump’in’ll look after Ma, nu?’ And that little, expressive, overworked Yiddish word caught at his heart and made him more determined than ever that both his children should be accepted by his tribe.

  But he said nothing until a week had passed and he was quite sure Ellen was recovering and the new baby was settled. This was a delicate subject and had to be approached with care.

  It wasn’t until late on Friday evening, when Aunty Dumpling had gone home for Shabbas and Gracie was curled up in her little cot fast asleep and the baby was dozing in Ellen’s arms after his late-night feed, that a moment presented itself.

  ‘Mrs Mullins says I shall be up an’ about in nice time fer Christmas,’ Ellen said. ‘Whatcher think a’ that?’ It had been one of her major concerns that she might still be lying-in when Christmas Day arrived.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, stroking the baby’s head with his forefinger. ‘We got another special day to look forward to an’ all.’

  ‘What’s that?’ she said, but apprehension was already tightening her throat as she spoke.

  ‘The brit,’ he said, not looking up at her yet. But hoping.

  She could feel her heart sinking through her chest into her belly. ‘Oh not that again, Davey, please!’ she said. ‘We been through all that. We decided.’

  ‘No,’ he said, quiet but determined. ‘We deferred, bubeleh. Tha’s all we done. We deferred.’

  He looked so handsome and she loved him so much, with their two pretty babies sleeping beside them. It was going to be very difficult to deny him but it had to be done. ‘It’s all superstitious nonsense,’ she said. ‘Out a’ date. Like poor old Hymie’s marriage. You said so yerself.’

  ‘No,’ he argued calmly. ‘It ain’t the same. This is the way all Jewish boys are accepted. They enter the Covenant of Abraham. They belong. Dontcher want our Jack ter belong?’

  ‘’E belongs to us,’ she said stoutly as she settled the sleeping infant into his crib. ‘That’s enough fer me.’

  ‘But he’s Jewish.’

  ‘Half Jewish.’ And she tried a joke to lessen the tension that was building up between them. ‘You can ’ave the top half.’

  He sighed profoundly, upset by a joke at such a time. ‘We can’t leave him out in the cold,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t want that, surely ter goodness?’

  ‘’E’s here, in the warm, with me,’ she said, still trying to laugh him out of it. ‘You do talk tripe. Out in the cold!’

  ‘It’s got ter be done, Ellen.’

  ‘No it ain’t,’ she said, turning from the crib to face him, suddenly fierce. ‘I told yer before. Nobody ain’t choppin’ bits off a’ my baby.’

  He stood up and went to stand beside the window, parting the curtains with both hands and looking down into the snowy garden beneath them. ‘It’s fixed,’ he said. ‘I’ve fixed it, Ellen. I’ve seen the mohel. It’s got ter be done.’ His spine was rigid with determination, his jaw implacable.

  She was out of the bed and across the room and standing beside him before he realized she’d moved. It surprised them both, for she wasn’t supposed to get out of bed until her lying-in was over, and the speed of her movement drained all the colour from her face and made her feel frighteningly dizzy. She hung onto the curtains to steady herself, then the blood returned to her cheeks and her face blazed with protective fury.

  ‘I love you more’n anything in the world,’ she said, ‘except my babies. Nobody ain’t doin’ nothing to my babies. I don’t care who it is or what it’s for. Not even you. Nobody.’

  ‘They’re my babies too,’ he said stiffly, feeling the angry colour flooding his own cheeks. He knew she was running risks getting out of bed and into the cold air, but the brit was so important it even blotted out his concern. He had to make a stand now, or his son would be ostracized. Why couldn’t she see it?

  ‘You never carried ’em, an’ you never birthed ’em,’ she said. ‘That’s what counts when it comes to ‘aving bits cut off of ’em.’ The determined fury on her face was so daunting he had to drop his eyes. ‘I won’t allow it, an’ that’s all there is to it. If that mogul comes anywhere near my little Jack, I shall take his stinkin’ scissors and carve a great lump out ‘a him, so help me God. An�
�� then I’ll pack me bag an’ take me babies an’ go off somewhere you’ll never see me again.’ She was panting with anger and exhaustion.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said aghast. ‘You wouldn’t leave me. That’s just talk.’ But it frightened him and his eyes showed it ‘Where would yer go?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ she said wildly. ‘Liverpool with me Ma.’

  Anger made him scathing. ‘An’ where would yer get the fare?’ It was a cruel thing to say, and when she winced he felt ashamed. But only momentarily.

  ‘I’d walk,’ she said. ‘I’d walk every inch a’ the way. You ain’t touchin’ my baby.’ She knew she was losing blood. She could feel it trickling down her leg. But although the knowledge frightened her so much it made her shake, she went on fighting. They stood within inches of each other, red-faced and panting.

  ‘I’ll never give in,’ she said, glaring at him.

  ‘It’s got ter be done,’ he answered.

  ‘Just try! That’s all! I’ve warned yer!’

  The tremor in her legs was making her nightgown flutter, and the movement flicked a splinter of anxiety into his mind and he knew he was afraid for her. ‘Come back to bed,’ he said. ‘You’ll make yourself ill.’

  She clung to the curtains like a lifeline. ‘Not till you agree ’e ain’t to be cut.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrer.’

  ‘No, now!’ We got ter decide it now, she thought. I couldn’t fight like this again. She gathered all that was left of her trembling strength. ‘You’d better make yer mind up,’ she said. ‘Either you say ‘e’s to ’ave this brit or ’e ain’t. If you insist ‘e’s to ’ave it, I’ll leave yer, an’ I’ll take ’em both with me. I mean it. So, what’s more important to you, ‘avin’ the brit or stayin’ with me?’ Her eyes were challenging him, and although she was trembling, there was no weakness about her anywhere.

  She’ll do it, he thought. She really will. And it seemed to him that this wild-eyed woman standing beside him in their familiar room was a sudden stranger to him, the weight of her determination equalling his. There was no way he could persuade her. She would leave him. And even with anger blocking off every other emotion he knew he couldn’t bear that.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  He knew the answer but it was several seconds before he could bring himself to give it. ‘Stayin’ with you,’ he admitted, and he looked away from her, sighing miserably, because he knew he was defeated.

  She gave a little sobbing sigh and he could feel her drooping away from him, her body folding towards the floor, and he turned quickly and caught her as she fell. Her face was pale as paper and there were mauve shadows under her closed eyes. ‘Ellen!’ he said. ‘Ellen bubeleh!’ his chest torn with remorse. What had he done to her? Why had he fought her, now, so soon after the baby?

  To his great relief she was struggling back to consciousness as he set her down in the bed and wrapped her in the blankets and cuddled her cold body close against his warm one. And she clung to him and shivered and cried, and told him over and over again how sorry she was but how she had to do it. And he smoothed her hair and told her over and over again that he loved her more than anything in the world, and he wouldn’t have hurt her for anything, only the brit was so important.

  And finally when they had cried their way back together, she tried to find some words to comfort him. ‘It’s who ’e is what counts,’ she said, ‘not what they done to ‘im.’

  And he tried to agree with her. But what should have been done to this child was so important. If only she could understand it. Halevai!

  So the brit was cancelled, ‘for the time being’, and Jack was allowed to grow uncircumcized. And they both pretended that the topic was forgotten.

  But from time to time in the months that followed it returned to plague them. He would try to explain the religious significance, stressing how quickly and easily the thing could be done, providing the child was young enough. Or he would talk vaguely about everybody’s need to belong, and touch on the special needs of Jews who were strangers wherever they lived. And she would ignore him, or change the subject, or argue it out all over again, in the same words and with the same demoralizing conclusion. It was a thorn of discord that neither could dislodge, and as winter gradually gave way to a reluctant spring, the pain it caused intensified.

  But by the end of May, something happened that stopped all argument. Infant cholera came to Whitechapel.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  However trenchantly Aunt Rivke might disapprove of things, like mixed marriages in general and Ellen and David’s in particular, when it came to protecting small children from epidemics, her action was immediate and liberal. The minute she heard there were two babies in the Buildings struggling for their lives with violent sickness, she put on her wig and her second best hat and stomped off to warn her relations. She did a round tour, starting next door with Josh and Maggie, who had already heard and were frantic with worry, then on to Joe in the Wentworth Buildings, and finally to Quaker Street and Ellen.

  She came to the point without preamble, even though she could see that the girl was alarmed by her precipitate arrival. ‘Ve got cholera in the Buildings, dolly,’ she warned. ‘Boil all the vater. Don’t drink nothink vhat ain’t boiled. You take my advice, keep your pretty chickens indoors. Ve don’t vant they should catch it. A terrible disease, don’t I tell you. You got kettles, nu?’

  The pretty chickens were sitting on Ellen’s latest rag rug directly underneath the open window, now protectively barred by their doting grandfather. They were both in their petticoats because of the heat and to Ellen’s considerable relief they looked healthy as well as angelic.

  ‘Thanks ever so much er telling me,’ she said to Aunt Rivke.

  And Rivke was warmed by her gratitude and clicked her teeth and told her to ‘think nothing of it’.

  Ellen was so shocked that it wasn’t until Rivke had adjusted her wig and crashed off down the stairs again that the full impact of the news she’d just heard caught her heart in a vice. Cholera! Dear God! Kids died like flies of the cholera! She looked at Gracie’s pretty round face and little Jack’s thin arms and her mind spun with panic. Outside, the frowsy air of Shoreditch was lethal with lurking germs. She could almost see them circling among the motes in the column of sunlight slanting visibly into her room. We must move, she thought. I can’t stay here and let them catch the cholera. And she made up her mind at once.

  ‘We’ll go an’ find another place,’ she said to her children. ‘Out in the country, in the fresh air. You’d like that, wouldn’tcher?’ And little Gracie seemed to agree for she smiled and said ‘In a’ tuntry’ most amiably, even though her brother was far more interested in his toes. ‘No time like the present,’ their mother said. ‘Come an’ get yer clothes on, there’s good kids.’

  She wrote a note to David, in case he got back before they did, ‘They got cholera in the Buildings. Your Aunt Rivke has been. I have gone to look for a place somewhere else, Love E.’ Then she fed the baby and slung him onto her back inside a shawl and she and Gracie set off to look for the country. And naturally enough they started their search in the Mile End Road, where Ellen had taken her escaping mother all those eventful years ago.

  When they left Quaker Street she really had very little idea what she was looking for. It had to be a step up from two rooms in a tenement, and she wanted a tap in the kitchen, because lugging water up and down two flights of stairs every day was no joke, but apart from that the necessities she sought were nebulous things like fresh air and good health, and safety from infection. Her children were in danger and her children had to be protected. Somehow or other they had to escape.

  The corner shop advertisements were all for rooms and they all turned out to be in teeming tenements that she rejected at sight. Gracie grew tired of trudging from house to house in the heat, and trailed behind her mother, tearful and weary. It was a long way for a three-year-old to walk, and she was too young to understan
d that it was all for her own good. ‘We’ll find somewhere soon, lovey, you’ll see,’ Ellen comforted, as the child wept and dragged her feet.

  Finally, and in some desperation, she took her problem to an estate agent.

  ‘Well now,’ that gentleman said when he’d seated her in his office and she’d taken a weary child on each knee. ‘It all depends on what you are prepared to pay.’ He’d been impressed by the information that her husband worked for the Essex Magazine. ‘Good accommodation is usually pretty pricey. I’ve got a very nice house in Mile End Place, clean, immediate vacant possession, twelve and six a week. Would that suit?’

  A house, she thought, all to ourselves. We could get right away from the cholera in a house. So although she was rather afraid of the price, she said she’d see it.

  ‘It’s just along the road,’ the estate agent said. ‘No distance at all, and so handy for the trams.’

  It was almost as near as he claimed, but at first sight it wasn’t at all promising, for the entrance was through a narrow brick archway beside the Tyne Main Coal Company, and the brickwork was dank and blackened and forbidding. It’ll be another tenement, she thought, as sure as God made little apples.

  Nevertheless she followed him through the archway. And found herself in the country. Two rows of neat white cottages faced each other across a cobbled street, each with its own front garden full of flowers, and beyond them, forming the fourth side of the square, was a low brick wall and an open skyline, fringed with thick trees. It was so totally unlike anything she’d ever seen before that for a few seconds she simply stood where she was and enjoyed it. There’s so much sky here, she thought, and the air smells quite different, with all them lilacs and wallflowers. You wouldn’t catch any rotten old diseases in a place like this. It reminded her of Kent and the freedom of the hop fields. She tucked the baby more firmly onto her shoulders and took little Grace by the hand. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This might do.’