A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘It’s too late fer that now,’ he said. ‘The damage is done.’ He wasn’t even sure what the damage was, but he felt it most keenly.

  ‘What’ll you do?’ she asked fearfully. Her voice was almost a whisper, because she was so afraid.

  ‘There’s nothing else I can do,’ he said knowing what it was as he spoke. ‘Our marriage is a fraud. We must break it up. Destroy it. That’s all.’

  He couldn’t! Please God, he couldn’t. ‘It ain’t a marriage you’re breakin’, Davey, it’s me.’

  But the need to destroy was overpowering. ‘I can’t stop here another minute,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear it. To think you would lie. You of all people! I shall ’ave to go, Ellen. I can’t stay ’ere. I can’t bear it!’ And he had his hat in his hand and was out of the door before she had a chance to think of any answer at all.

  Mile End Place was full of the luscious, innocent scent of roses. But that only increased his pain. To have come so far and with such hopes and all for this! Angry images jostled in his mind; Hymie under the chuppah, and his own intolerable sense of being an outsider; his father’s bewildered face when he first told him about Ellen; the Lady of Shalott, drifting towards death because she’d broken her solemn promise; Miriam’s fat mouth, ‘that cock an’ bull story about some lodger’; his realization that the lie had been told to keep his mother out of the house. And the pain was more excruciating than he could bear, so that he groaned aloud, walking down the Mile End Road in the warm, mocking sunshine. It must all be destroyed, wiped out, annihilated. That was the only clean way.

  He had reached the corner of Tredegar Street, where the bathhouse was, and as a crowd of young men were barring his progress along the main road, and he was too angry to ask them to make way, he turned down the side street, still walking furiously. And found himself standing in front of the Army recruiting office. There was a poster in the window declaring ‘Your country needs you’. And although he’d never given the war or the Army a thought until that moment, he knew with a passionate upsurge of fury that this was the answer. He would join up. Get right away. Make a new clean start.

  Still trembling with anger he marched in through the door.

  It was cool in the office, and the uniformed man behind the counter was pale and calm and controlled and gentlemanly, as though anger and war and pain and death simply didn’t exist in his well-ordered world. He took David’s furious entry with a flattering air of approval, and within ten minutes was pressing the King’s shilling into his hand and requiring him to sign on the dotted line. When David stepped out into the sunshine again, clutching his copy of Army Form B2505A, Short Service, he was a soldier.

  It was a terrible anti-climax, for although his anger had diminshed it was still bubbling, and although he’d taken action he was still in exactly the same place. For a few minutes he stood on the pavement, looking across at the baths and completely at a loss to know what to do next. He could hardly go home, after all that. Nor to his mother’s. Nor to Hymie. So as he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he took a bath. But the warm water only cleaned his body. His mind was still in turmoil.

  There was nothing for it but to walk about. Down the Mile End Road, past Sidney Street and the London Hospital, along Whitechapel Road, up Commercial Street, through the Lane. He came to the Aldgate pump and took a drink of water from the tin cup, clinking the chain against the basin as he drank. Then on again, aimlessly, striding and thinking, into the empty City, through the narrow cavern of Fenchurch Street stifling in the heat, and down Gracechurch Street to the muddle of roads at the Bank. And there was the Thames, shining in the sunshine, and the straight road over London Bridge.

  Apart from a carter and one lone hackney cab, he had the bridge to himself. He walked to the middle and stood, leaning on the parapet, gazing down at the blue water. He had walked all his anger away and now he was weary and demoralized. There was nothing left for his mind to consider. He’d been angry. He’d taken action. It was over.

  But now, and quite unbidden, memories of Ellen and the children took easy possession of the void his passion had left behind. Ellen sponging the blood stains from her blue suit, laughing at him on the steps of the Town Hall as confetti danced in the air before their eyes, holding up their newborn daughter for his approval, kissing him and kissing him, his own beautiful Ellen, looking at him with loving eyes, and the children playing in the garden, sitting round the table, cruising down this very river in the pleasure steamer last summer. Was it only last summer? So much happiness and so much good. And he put his head in his hands and groaned to think of what he’d lost. ‘What have I done?’ he said aloud.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  In the silence that followed the reverberating bang of that front door, the children crept into the kitchen and Benny and Jack began to cry.

  ‘Don’t start that!’ Ellen said irritably, because she wanted to cry herself. The terror of their row was still whirling about her in that quiet brown room. She could still see his face, distorted and withdrawn, and, what was worse, she could still feel the awful destructive force of his anger. She’d seen it before, on rare occasions and always briefly, when he tore a newly finished drawing and threw it away in angry dissatisfaction, but never directed at her, and never like that. Never in such terrifying, unstoppable fury. Her heart was still beating painfully, even now, and she knew she would cry if she didn’t keep tight hold of herself. But she mustn’t break down. Not in front of the kids.

  ‘’E said ’e was gonna break something,’ Jack wailed. ‘What ’e gonna break, Ma?’

  ‘I want my Pa!’ Benny howled.

  ‘’E said ’e was going,’ Gracie told them, ‘that’s what ’e meant. ’E’s walked out on us, ain’t ’e, Ma?’ She was shocked to think that her father could have done such a thing, but shock made her calm.

  ‘’E ain’t, ‘as ’e?’ Jack said crying more than ever.

  ‘No!’ Ellen said stoutly. ‘’Course not! ’E don’t meant it. Dry yer eyes! That’s all silly talk. Grown-ups do talk silly sometimes. ’E don’t mean it. What say we make a jam roly-poly fer supper?’

  ‘It’s too hot,’ Gracie said. And her eyes were saying, he meant it. You don’t fool me.

  ‘Red currant pie then. There’s still some on the bush. Get us a jug, Jack, there’s a good boy.’

  So she and the boys went out into the garden to scavenge what was left of the currants. But Gracie stayed thoughtfully indoors.

  They made the pie and boiled some potatoes, and somehow or other Ellen managed to keep them all cheerful and occupied, although Gracie was a good deal quieter than she would have liked. But when the meal was cooked and their father still hadn’t reappeared, they were anxious again.

  ‘Ain’t ’e coming back, Ma?’ Jack wanted to know, his long face puzzled, mouth drooping.

  ‘I expect he’s working somewhere,’ Ellen said, trying to sound convincing. ‘You know ‘ow ’e does.’ And there was some truth in the suggestion, for he often went out in the evenings to draw a first night or the posh people going to the opera or something like that. ‘We’ll ’ave ours, shall we? We can hot his up for ‘im when he comes in.’

  So they had their supper and washed the dishes, and the heat began to drain out of the day. And he still hadn’t come back. What if he’s done something dreadful, Ellen thought, smashed something up and been arrested, or got in a fight and been beaten up. It wasn’t like her gentle Davey, but the man who’d stormed out of the house was a stranger to her, a dark-faced, destructive stranger and capable of anything. She remembered how violently he’d fought Jimmy Thatcher and his gang, and was more worried than ever.

  ‘I’ll just pop down the end a’ the road, an’ see if I can see any sign of ‘im,’ she said. But that filled them all with apprehension.

  ‘You won’t go far, will yer?’ Gracie asked. And Jack began to weep again. One parent suddenly disappearing was bad enough, but if Ma went there’d be no one left at all.

  She unders
tood his fear, and fidgety though she was, changed her plans at once. ‘I shan’t go nowhere an’ leave you,’ she promised. ‘Tell yer what, we’ll ask old Aunty Dumpling to come down an’ look after you, while I nip out. How would that be? You’d be all right then, wouldn’tcher?’

  That was different. They’d be all right with Aunty Dumpling. So it was agreed and Gracie was despatched to Brick Lane with a note and two pennies for the tram fare.

  ‘Now then,’ Ellen said to her anxious boys. ‘We’ll ’ave them dirty faces washed an’ you can get ter bed. If you look sharp I’ll read you a story.’

  ‘Each?’ Benny asked. This was better. This was more like a normal Sunday.

  ‘Each,’ she promised, kissing him.

  But while she was reading the first story, which was Benny’s choice and interminable, she suddenly had the clearest impression of David standing beside an expanse of water. It was a very strong impression and very alarming, but it receded at once under the rhythm of the story.

  ‘Hold on a tick,’ she said to the two boys. ‘Must just nip out the back fer a second. Keep yer finger in the place, Benny. Shan’t be a minute.’ She had to have a few minutes on her own, and going to the W.C. was the only excuse she could think of.

  They let her go, grudgingly, although Jack informed her solemnly that he would ‘listen fer the chain’, and she went downstairs slowly, willing the vision to return. It came back when she got into the kitchen, where the brown walls were still echoing with angry words and the trailing stain of that spilt milk still darkened the tablecloth. He was standing on a bridge. She was sure of that. Leaning over the parapet, looking down at blue water, and she could feel his misery, oh so strongly. Oh God, she thought, ’e ain’t thinking a’ jumpin’ in or anythink silly like that? And the very idea made her shake, remembering his terrible driving urge to destroy something or somebody. Hurry up back, Gracie, she willed her daughter. I’ve got ter get down there an’ find him.

  She was reading the second story, which was Jack’s choice, when she heard the key in the door at last. ‘There you are,’ she said with relief. ‘That’ll either be yer Pa, or old Aunty Dumpling come back with Gracie. You be good boys while I go down an’ see.’

  It wasn’t either of them. It was Gracie, with a belligerent expression on her face, and behind her Mama Cheifitz, looking oddly sheepish, her head bowed.

  ‘Dumpling’s out,’ she said placatingly. ‘Sunday is her night out. Alvays. I come instead. Your Gracie showed me the note. I hope you don’t mind. So vould I do?’

  It was asked so humbly that Ellen felt quite moved, but then she realized that her mother-in-law must know about the row, and that made her blush with shame. ‘We ‘ad a bit of a barney,’ she admitted. ‘Nothink much on’y ’e’s gone rushing off somewhere. Come in.’

  ‘Alvays the vay, vid our Davey,’ Rachel said, taking it with amazing calm. ‘Such a temper you never saw, don’t I tell you. First day at school he bites the teacher.’ She took off her hat and gave it to Gracie to hang it on the hook behind the door. ‘Gracie an’ me, ve look after the childer,’ she said. ‘Don’t you vorry.’

  ‘It’s ever so good of yer,’ Ellen said. And they both knew she meant it. ‘I got an idea where ’e’s gone, you see. If I could just nip out fer a minute, I’m sure I could find him.’

  ‘Nu-nu,’ Rachel said, ‘so you go quick, you find him.’ She’d never been a suitable wife for David, this shiksa, but she was showing a lot of spirit now. And besides, she was Gracie’s mother, and Jack’s and little Benny’s even if they weren’t Jewish.

  ‘Bubbe, is that you?’ Benny’s voice called down.

  ‘Yes, yes, my liddle chicken,’ she called back. ‘So you go to sleep, I come up an’ see you maybe.’

  Ellen had already put her hat and coat on. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she promised. ‘Help yer grandma, Gracie, there’s a good girl.’ And she set off on her search.

  She started with Tower Bridge, which was the nearest, but he wasn’t there, although the sense of water and bridges was stronger than ever. Never mind, she told herself, I’ll just move up-river and try every single one. And she caught the next bus to the foot of London Bridge.

  She saw him as soon as she began to walk across, leaning on the parapet, looking down at the water, his outline unmistakable even in the half-light of a gathering dusk. Then she ran, eager to be with him and help him, even though she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was going to say, But it didn’t matter, for neither of them needed to say anything. He heard the rush of her approach and looked up, his face anguished, and then they were in each other’s arms and he was kissing her face and telling her how sorry he was, and she was holding him round the neck and telling him she’d never lie again, never, never, never, and they were together again, despite everything, and the sense of loss was fading.

  ‘Come ‘ome,’ she suggested, when they’d recovered a little. ‘Our Jack’s been ever so worried.’

  Now he remembered the children. ‘Who’s lookin’ after ’em?’ he asked. ‘Our Gracie?’

  ‘No,’ she said, delighted by the answer she was going to give him. ‘Your Ma.’

  He looked momentarily pleased. Then he scowled. ‘Did you tell ’er?’

  ‘On’y that we ’ad a bit of a barney, that’s all.’ Then as he went on scowling. ‘It’s all right now, ain’t it?’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘it ain’t.’

  ‘Ain’t yer forgive me?’

  ‘Yes.’ With a kiss to prove it. Now he couldn’t think why he’d been so very angry with her, when he loved her so much.

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘I joined the Army.’

  ‘You never.’ She was still smiling at him, not taking it seriously.

  ‘I ’ave.’

  ‘Well,’ she said comfortably, ‘you’ll just ’ave ter go back tomorrer an’ tell ’em you’ve changed yer mind.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Ellen,’ he said, touched by her naivety. ‘I’ve took the King’s shilling.’ And he pulled the short service form from his pocket and showed it to her.

  ‘D’you mean you’re goin’ ter France?’ she asked, understanding at last.

  ‘Yes.’ It made him miserable even to admit it.

  ‘How could you?’

  He shrugged and sighed. There was nothing he could say. Now that his temper was over, it all seemed ridiculous, like a bad dream. And yet she had lied. He’d been right to make a stand. If only he hadn’t made it in this way.

  ‘We’d better go ‘ome,’ she said. ‘The kids won’t sleep till you’re back.’ If he really had done this stupid thing, she would have to accept it, but she couldn’t even think about it now.

  So they went home and told his mother, who thought it was ‘vhat you vould expect’, and didn’t seem displeased, and the children, who were still awake and thought it was thrilling.

  ‘Fancy you goin’ fer a soldier, Pa,’ Jack said, his eyes shining. ‘Will you go ter France?’

  ‘’Course ’e will, silly,’ Gracie said. ‘They all go ter France, don’t they, Pa? That’s where the war is.’

  And Ellen wondered whether she was the only one who had seen any wounded soldiers or looked at those awful casualty lists. He could be killed, she was thinking. He could go to France and be killed and we’d never see him again. But they were all being so cheerful and encouraging, she kept her thought to herself. It was enough that the row was over and they were still together.

  He took his mother all the way home, feeling that was the least he could do to make amends. And she was easy and loving with him as though he hadn’t done anything unusual. ‘So I see you Sunday, nu?’ she said as they kissed goodbye. It was a little unreal.

  By the time he got back to Mile End Place again, all three children were in bed and asleep and Ellen was sitting in the chair by their bedroom window watching out for him. When he tiptoed into the room, she turned towards him at once to greet him. She was in her nightgown, with her long hair brushed fr
ee and her white feet bare, and her face was tremulous with love.

  ‘Oh Ellen!’ he said, weak with desire for her. ‘How could I have walked out on you like that? I must’ve been out a’ my mind. I love you so much.’

  Her answer was a kiss so welcoming and so passionate that words were superfluous. He gathered her body towards him, with the gentlest pressure in the small of her back, and kissed her throat and her mouth over and over again, and fondled her breasts, until she was moaning with pleasure. They fell into bed together almost without noticing what they were doing, their desire for one another stronger and more powerful than it had been for years, and were rewarded with a pleasure so exquisite that it had to be experienced again. And again.

  Afterwards, in the clear air of their reconciliation, they talked.

  ‘Why didn’tcher tell me you didn’t like my food?’ she asked.

  ‘Didn’t want to upset you. Anyway, I like some of it.’

  ‘You’ll tell me now, wontcher?’

  ‘’Course,’ he said, tracing the outline of her mouth with his forefinger.

  ‘About the boys bein’ Jewish …’ she said.

  ‘We let them chose when they’re older, nu?’ Why hadn’t he seen that possibility sooner?

  ‘And Shabbas?’

  ‘We’ll talk about Shabbas tomorrow,’ he said drowsily. Contentment was washing him into sleep. ‘Oy! I do love yer!’

  Thank God! Ellen thought, as she watched his eyes close. ‘Dear Davey!’ she murmured. And then she was asleep too.

  It upset David that he was regarded as a hero, especially when his friends on the Essex Magazine treated him to a slap-up meal at Craig’s Oyster Bar, and Mr Palfreyman made a speech about him and said he was one of the finest young men who’d ever worked on the magazine. ‘A credit to us all, dear chap,’ he said, the pale dome of his bald head shining with sweat and excitement. ‘All the best and bravest young men of your generation have answered the call, so naturally you would wish to join them. Yes, yes of course.’