A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  In April Alfie Miller followed his brother-in-law into the war, and came back to Petticoat Lane peacock-proud of his new status and his glamorous uniform, his tomcat face all grins under a perky cap, his hair cut short and his ginger moustache waxed to black points as sharp as needles. Mrs Miller and Ruby now had two soldier heroes, and kept their postcards on the mantelpiece for everyone to see. The censor had blacked out all the place-names but they knew where their menfolk were, for the name of the place was printed below the view on the front of several of the cards, YPRES.

  ‘Could a’ saved hisself the bother a’ blackin’ that lot out, silly beggar,’ Ruby said. ‘I can’t even pronounce it, leave alone know where it is. Ippers! I ask yer. What sort a’ place is that?’ But Sid seemed very cheerful in his new life as a soldier and always wrote that he was ‘in the pink’, and ‘Al’ and advised them all to ‘keep smiling’, and that was a great comfort to her. Alfie’s occasional laconic note gave no indication that he was in any danger, although as his mother was quick to point out, ‘Not that he’d tell us if’e was.’

  Alfie and Sid were the only soldiers David and Ellen knew, for none of their other friends had volunteered. The recruiting sergeants never came to Whitechapel, knowing what sort of reception they’d get, for as David and his friends told one another on their way home from the synagogue, this was a British war and they were Jewish.

  From time to time, when Miriam’s nagging made him more wretched than usual, Hymie would sigh that he ‘had half a mind to go fer a soldier’. But as the war went on and increasing numbers of men left their jobs at the Gas Board to enlist, there was more and more work to be done by those who were left behind. So he was kept comfortably busy by day and spent his extra wages gambling the evenings away, and managed to avoid his wife that way instead.

  In the second autumn of the war, food shortages began and sugar was rationed. But a shortage that struck terror into middle-class bellies had very little effect in Whitechapel. They were used to being short of food there.

  Ellen was more concerned about the health of her children. Just after the New Year, when Benny was due to start school, they all went down with chicken pox. And after chicken pox, they all caught the mumps, and after the mumps it was measles.

  This time Ellen was frightened, remembering her brother Seamus, but David took it deliberately calmly to reassure her. ‘They won’t die, bubeleh,’ he said, ‘because we’ll look after ’em properly. We won’t leave ’em for a minute. We’ll give ’em the best of everything. They’re strong. You’ll see.’

  So they took it in turns to sit up at nights with their delirious young and Aunty Dumpling came in every day to help with the chores and tempt them to eat, and although the disease ran its course in its usual frightening way, none of them had any complications and eventually they began to recover, although by the time they were up and about again, they all seemed to have grown several inches and their legs were as thin and shapeless as broom handles.

  When August came and the war was two years old, David and Ellen were so exhausted by the strain of so many illnesses they spent the Bank Holiday sitting in their garden.

  ‘It makes you wonder what you’re in for next,’ Ellen said, when the kids had been coaxed into bed at the end of the day. ‘It’s just been one thing after another this year.’

  ‘So maybe now we’re in the clear,’ he said hopefully. ‘All our troubles behind us, nu?’

  But the next thing that happened was trouble of a very different order and it walked into their house on the stout flat feet of Miriam Levy.

  Miriam Levy came to visit them whenever Ellen wasn’t quick enough to think up an excuse to prevent her. On this occasion she didn’t even try, for she had to admit that the poor woman had had more than her share of trouble recently too, and deserved a chance to grumble some of it away. In June, after a dramatic pregnancy, loudly suffered, she’d given birth to a stillborn boy.

  ‘We’ll ’ave ter let ’em come, poor things,’ she said when the postcard arrived. ‘Whatcher think, Davey?’

  David said he supposed so. But his youngest was aggrieved. ‘They ain’t bringing that Baby, are they?’ he demanded.

  Miriam’s daughter had been named Zillah five and a half years ago but nobody called her anything other than Baby. She was an unprepossessing child, overweight like her mother and with her father’s bushy hair and close-set eyes, and Miriam treated her as though she were still in the cradle, pandering to her every grizzling whim and demanding special treatment for her ‘because she’s only little!’ So all three Cheifitzes loathed her.

  ‘’Course she’s coming!’ Ellen said. ‘They could hardly leave ’er be’ind, now could they? ’Ave some sense!’

  ‘Ain’t fair,’ Benny said, and he began to gather up his toys, tucking his favourite, a model engine he’d been given for Christmas, safely under his arm.

  David watched him and scowled at the unpalatable thought that was entering his mind. ‘Where you going with that lot, son?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ Benny said with determination. ‘I’m gonna hide ’em under the bed where she can’t get ’em.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ David told him sternly. ‘Ellen, d’you allow this?’

  Ellen had always allowed it. It seemed common sense to her to put precious things out of harm’s way. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong wiv it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it,’ he said, angry and disappointed that she hadn’t seen it for herself. ‘It’s selfish an’ dishonest an’ no way to teach a kid to behave. You’ll put all them things back in the box,’ he told his son, ‘an’ learn to share.’

  ‘But Pa,’ Benny protested, ‘she’ll smash ’em ter bits.’

  But David was firm. ‘You’ll learn to do the right thing,’ he said. ‘And that goes for you too,’ looking at Jack and Gracie.

  So all playthings remained where they were till Sunday afternoon, and when Baby arrived on her much dreaded visit, she had first pick of the playbox which had been put out in the garden in the middle of the grass so that the kids could play while the grown-ups had tea. And, of course, the first thing she seized upon was Benny’s engine.

  ‘You can ’ave a go of my doll if yer like,’ Gracie offered in a vain attempt to divert her.

  But no! Nothing but the engine would do.

  ‘So let her have it,’ Miriam called from the kitchen. ‘She’s only little. You don’t vant it, do yer, Benny?’

  ‘Yes,’ Benny growled. ‘I do too. So there!’ But none of his guests took any notice of him, so he tried a new tack and suggested a game. ‘You push it ter me an’ then I’ll push it back.’

  ‘Shan’t!’ Baby said truculently, and she took the wooden toy to the end of the garden and tried to roll it along the top of the fence, scraping the undercarriage most cruelly.

  ‘It’ll fall off!’ Benny warned. ‘You’ll break it.’ He looked back anxiously for his brother and sister, but Gracie was skipping at the other end of the garden and Jack was busy building bricks.

  ‘See if I care!’ Baby said, and as she glanced away from the fence to sneer at him, the train fell onto the path.

  He made a dive for it and grabbed it before she could. One of the wheels was a bit squiffy. ‘Look what you done!’ he said, so angrily that Jack looked up from his bricks.

  ‘Give it back!’ she said imperiously. ‘Ma says I’m to ’ave it.’

  ‘You bent my wheel!’

  ‘Let’s ’ave a look-see,’ Jack said, stepping in to support his brother.

  Baby planted her plump feet solidly on the path. ‘If you don’t give it back ter me this minute,’ she threatened, ‘I’ll scream.’ And she took a deep breath, ready.

  ‘Shut yer face!’ Jack said, but pleasantly enough. It was the sort of warning he often gave to his friends.

  But it didn’t work this time. Baby grabbed the train violently with both hands and began to yell, a loud, high-pitched, wailing squeal that had all the grown-ups runni
ng out of the house in no time. As soon as she saw her mother she threw herself face downwards on the grass and screamed louder than ever. ‘’E pinched me, Ma! Oy-oy-oy!’

  Miriam scooped her pathetic infant into her arms and carried her into the house, contriving to glare at Benny and Jack and murmur soothing endearments at the same time. ‘Don’t you cry, my precious. That naughty Benny von’t pinch you no more vid your mother around.’ And Baby’s tears dried miraculously, and leaning on the protective bulk of her mother’s heaving bosom she flung the engine into the air as far and as hard as she could, ‘N’yer!’ she said. ‘You can ’ave yer rotten old engine. See if I care!’

  The toy fell heavily, skidding along the path with an audible scraping of paint. Two wheels spun off into the strawberry patch and disappeared under the leaves, and the funnel was horribly bent. Benny dropped to his knees on the path and burst into tears.

  His father was beside him at once, controlling him into better behaviour. ‘Stop that row, d’you hear. Get up, and don’t be such a baby.’

  ‘Pick up the pieces, lovey,’ Ellen said kindly. ‘It’ll mend. You’ll see.’

  So he struggled to master his rage and find all the pieces, neither of which was easy, especially with Aunt Miriam going on and on inside the house.

  ‘You oughter control that kid a’ yours,’ she was saying to Ma. ‘Could a’ done my poor baby a mischief. Don’t you cry, bubeleh. Mama got you.’

  ‘No bones broken,’ Hymie said, trying to placate her into a better humour.

  ‘She broke Benny’s engine,’ Gracie said, and even though Pa said, ‘Shush!’ and Ma made a warning grimace at her, she went on boldly, ‘She done it deliberate.’

  ‘Oy! Vhat a spiteful thing ter say!’ Miriam yelled, rounding on the child. ‘You dropped it, didn’tcher, Baby.’

  ‘No she never,’ Gracie persisted. ‘She threw it Deliberate. I seen her.’

  ‘Are you going to sit there an’ let that child insult my Baby?’ Miriam said. ‘Really, some people got no control over their kids at all!’

  ‘Apologize to yer aunt, Gracie,’ David said sternly, and he continued to be stern even though the child’s face was crumpling with distress.

  Oh no, Ellen thought, I can’t ’ave that. Fair’s fair! ‘Gracie’s right,’ she said. ‘There’s no call fer apologies. She did throw it I seen ’er mesself.’

  ‘Oh that’s right!’ Miriam yelled. ‘Take ’er side! I should! You ain’t got the slightest concern fer me. Never ’ave ’ad.’

  ‘Fair’s fair, Miriam,’ Ellen said, trying to stay calm. ‘She done it deliberate.’

  ‘So my child’s destructive. Is that vhat you’re saying, nu?’

  ‘If you want the truth of it, yes.’

  ‘Truth! Truth!’ Miriam shrieked. ‘The truth ain’t in you, Ellen Cheifitz. You vouldn’t know the truth if it come up an’ bit yer! Truth! I lived in your rotten ‘ouse eighteen months all on account a’ your rotten lies. Don’t talk ter me a’ truth. All that cock an’ bull story about some lodger, an’ ve vas ter be quick. I should never a’ come ’ere if it hadn’t been fer that.’

  Ellen paled visibly. Hymie was so nervous his cup and saucer were rattling like castanets. But it was David who answered her, speaking quietly and with such control that Ellen grew more afraid by the second.

  ‘What lie was that, Miriam?’

  ‘Told me you ‘ad a lodger waitin’ ter take our room. That’s vhat she done. Mrs Brunevald never heard nothink about it. She told me after. But me, I believe her. So ve rush. Ve take it, nebbish. And vhat’s the result a’ that? I tell you vhat it vas. Misery. Unhappiness. The vorst time any voman ever ‘ad vhen my poor baby vas born. The vorst time. Hymie, vill you stop making that silly row! If you can’t hold a cup proper, put it down!’

  ‘No you never!’ Ellen argued, glad of a chance to refute something else, and turn their attention to another topic. ‘You ‘ad the same midwife as me. There was nothink the matter with the way you was treated, so don’t you say so, ‘cause I won’t ’ave it.’

  ‘Nothink the matter! Nothink the matter! Ai-yi-yi! So I’m left on my own for hours an’ hours in absolute agony, I tell you. Not so much as a cup a’ tea …’

  ‘I was up an’ down them stairs every minute a’ the day,’ Ellen roared back, glad to be able to release her fear and her temper in safety. ‘You ‘ad tea an’ dinner an’ God knows what …’

  Both women were on their feet, shouting without listening, red-faced and wild-eyed, with their children sitting around them, avid with half-terrified curiosity. None of them noticed that David had gone quietly to the door to get the hats. He put them on the table among the tea things, still unnoticed as the row continued, and walked delicately through the group of listening children to Hymie. ‘Take your wife and child,’ he said in Yiddish, ‘and go home. This is not good for any of us. We must stop it.’

  And to everybody’s surprise, Hymie stood up and put on his hat, solemnly as though it were a judge’s wig, and actually ordered Miriam to come home!

  ‘Vhat?’ she said, halted in mid roar.

  ‘You ’eard what I said, Miriam. Enough’s enough. You too, Zillah. Put yer ‘at on. We’re off!’

  ‘Veil!’ Miriam puffed. ‘So I ain’t ter speak me mind, is that it?’

  ‘Trouble with your mind,’ her loving husband told her, ‘it’s too darn loud. Come on, Zillah. Sorry about all this, Ellen.’ And he took hold of Baby’s hand and walked her out of the kitchen towards the front door.

  ‘So vait fer me, vhy don’t you,’ Miriam said, and she seized her hat from the table so violently that it knocked over the milk jug which bounced on to the floor. There was a trampling and banging in the hall, and they were gone.

  It was suddenly so quiet in the kitchen that they could hear a bluebottle buzzing against the window.

  ‘Clear the tea things,’ David told his children, sternly. ‘Gracie, you get a cloth an’ mop up that milk. Then you can wash up and the boys can wipe. Then you’re to put yer toys away. I want that garden tidy. Yer Ma an’ me’ve got things to talk about.’

  They obeyed in silence, for their father wasn’t a man to argue with when he was in a mood and they all recognized that this mood was one of the worst and quietest they’d ever seen. Miriam had upset him.

  When the tea things were cleared he shut the scullery door on his children and turned his awful attention to Ellen. ‘So now you tell me,’ he said, and his nostrils were pinched with rage.

  This was the moment she’d been dreading ever since she told that silly lie to Miriam. But she stood her ground, even though her throat was constricting with fear at the thought of what might be said next. ‘I done it fer you,’ she said, swallowing nervously.

  He saw the movement in her throat but his anger was too extreme for pity. ‘You lied!’ he said. ‘You lied, Ellen! After all we’ve said about telling the truth, you told a lie. A deliberate lie.’

  ‘I had too. Honest!’ His face was so dark and threatening. Such a hard face. Flesh turned to stone. ‘Davey, please, I had to.’ She knew she was yearning for his gentleness to return, but she couldn’t think what to say to change him. Because she had lied. He was right. Oh, how she wished she hadn’t.

  ‘You told that lie to keep my mother out the house,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I don’t know that. Hymie an’ Miriam all settled in nice an’ quick before I could tell her to come ’ere, where she ought to ’ave been. How could you?’

  ‘She’d a’ made us all unhappy,’ Ellen said. ‘I done it for the best. Honest ter God!’

  ‘She wouldn’t, she’s a good woman. Look how she loves our Gracie.’

  ‘She don’t like me, Davey.’ But that sounded petty.

  ‘She’d ’ave come round if you’d a’ give ’er a chance. It’s because you ain’t Jewish.’

  ‘That ain’t my fault!’

  ‘I thought we was building this marriage on truth,’ he said. The anger he was still holding in check was a tight knot of pai
n in his chest. ‘Truth’s more important to me than anything else in the world. You know that, dontcher? I give up my religion fer you, my family, my friends, a whole way a’ life. Even my sons. Oy-oy! Even my sons.’ The pain was welling into his throat. ‘I got two sons an’ they ain’t even Jewish. All for you, Ellen. Nobody else. Just you. An’ this is how you repay me. With a rotten, ugly, disgusting lie.’ It was no good. His control was breaking. Anger was taking him over. ‘I loved you an’ you lied. Oy, how could you?’

  ‘I’ve give up things too!’ Ellen said, terrified by the power of his emotion. Quick, quick, think of some. But she couldn’t. Her mind wasn’t functioning properly.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Things we’ve give up.’ Weren’t they?

  ‘We’re talking about lies. Lies!’

  ‘It was only one, Davey.’

  The old ridiculous argument. ‘There ain’t no such thing as one lie,’ he said passionately. ‘Either you lie or you don’t. There’s truth an’ there’s lies. And you lie. Dear God. All these years wasted!’ The room was flaming with terrible red light. He could barely see her face. ‘Wasted! Twelve years living a half-life. Never a shabbas in my own house in all that time. Never one single Shabbas.’

  ‘We could’ve ‘ad Shabbas. You never said …’

  ‘If you’d a’ been Jewish I wouldn’t’ve had ter say. Can’t yer see? All these years … Eatin’ food I couldn’t stand. Married in a register office. Ai-yi-yi!’

  ‘It’s been ‘ard fer me too.’

  ‘I gave up my religion fer you. My religion. Ai! They were right. We should never a’ married. It was a mistake from the first day …’

  ‘No, no!’ Neither of them noticed their children at the scullery door.

  ‘We’ve lived on a lie. Don’t you understand? I thought we had a good marriage …’

  ‘We did. We did! We do! We still do!’

  ‘It was all a lie. I thought we was building on firm foundations. There ain’t nothing there, Ellen. Nothing.’

  ‘There is!’ How inadequate that sounded. But what else could she say? ‘We got a good home.’ But he didn’t respond. He seemed to be brooding, gathering his strength. ‘I’m sorry I lied, Davey. Truly, truly sorry. If I could call it all back an’ do it all different, I would. You know that, dontcher?’