A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  The East London Weekly Pictorial, now seriously short of experienced workmen, had offered him promotion. Suddenly and without any warning he was in charge of the print shop, with a salary so princely he could afford to rent an entire flat all for himself. If that was what he wanted. And of course, it was what he wanted, if he could persuade his dear … Mrs Esterman to share it with him.

  Now, dressing himself most carefully in his new grey worsted, his boots polished until they gleamed, his watch chain hanging neatly across his waistcoat, and a clean pocket handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket, he was rehearsing the words he would say and making himself blush at the very sound of them. Oh dear, oh dear, what if she said ‘no’? Or worse, what if she laughed at him? But no, his dear Dum … Mrs Esterman wasn’t the sort of woman who would laugh at a man in such a predicament. Oh, if only he’d known a few weeks ago, he could have told her on Bank Holiday Monday, in amongst all the crowds, where he wouldn’t have felt so conspicuous. Sighing with an exquisite blend of hope, excitement and apprehension, he carried his bowler hat across to the kettle and began to give it a good steaming.

  Dumpling was looking forward to her Sunday evening with mixed feelings too. It had been a long week and not an easy one, and now her back was aching and her feet were sore.

  ‘Oy my back!’ she said to Rachel as she hobbled in through the door with half a pail of water.

  ‘So stay in tonight, vhy don’t you,’ Rachel suggested. She was going to visit Ellen and the children. ‘You got the place to yourselves. Vhy go traipsing all over London, nu?’

  ‘I ask him maybe,’ Dumpling said, sinking heavily into her chair. ‘If he got tickets for somethink I make the effort, nu.’

  ‘Pot of tea, peace an’ quiet, liddle rest,’ Rachel insisted. ‘Vhat more vould any man vant?’

  ‘This man, maybe you’re right. Ai! You tempt me, dolly. Vicked temptation.’

  ‘I come back half past ten,’ Rachel said, sliding a stool under Dumpling’s battered shoes. ‘You rest good, dolly. You earned it, nu.’

  It was true, Dumpling thought, adjusting the angle of her legs and easing her back against the chair. So maybe I’ll have forty winks. Then we’ll see.

  She was still snoozing when Fred came tapping at the door and his knock was so gentle it didn’t rouse her. He knocked twice, three times, inclining his head towards the wooden panels in case she was calling to him to come in. But it was all alarmingly quiet. ‘Are you there, Mrs Esterman?’ he said. But she still didn’t answer. Was she out, perhaps? Or ill? Oh dear me! He couldn’t bear to think of her being ill. And on her own too. Perhaps he ought just to peep in and see.

  Greatly daring he opened the door and tiptoed in. And just at that moment Dumpling woke up with a visible start.

  It would have been difficult to judge which of them was the most embarrassed, Fred because he’d been caught entering her room uninvited, Dumpling because she was still in her apron and had been caught fast asleep. They both began to babble excuses. ‘Vhat you must think … to be sleeping … oy oy vhat a vay to go on!’ ‘My dear Mrs Esterman, I’m so sorry … I had no idea … bargin’ in … ain’t got no manners, no manners at all. I’m so sorry.’

  Then Dumpling began to giggle. ‘Oy, Fred Morrison,’ she said. ‘You oughter see your face.’

  ‘You all right?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You’re not ill or nothink, are yer?’

  ‘Nu-nu,’ she assured him. ‘Just tired, that’s all. So ve all get tired, nu?’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he said at once, ‘an’ I’ll make a nice pot a’ tea.’ He knew exactly where everything was. Hadn’t he made tea for them on many many occasions?

  ‘You’re a good man,’ she said gratefully. Jew or no Jew, a good man.

  ‘We could stay in tonight, if you’d rather,’ he suggested.

  ‘Ve could,’ she said, settling her feet on the stool.

  So far so good, he thought, and busied himself with the cups and saucers, because he was feeling embarrassed all over again. His hands were trembling so much he was making the china rattle.

  Dumpling was too discreet to comment, but as he handed her the tea, at last, she put one hand down over his cold fingers and patted them. ‘A bad week, nu?’ she asked sympathetically.

  ‘No,’ he said, and managed a smile. ‘It was a good’un. Best ever, matter a’ fact.’

  ‘So?’ she asked, sipping her tea.

  He took his own cup and sat in the chair opposite her. There was enough darkness now to mask his apprehension. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Matter a’ fact, I been offered a rise.’

  She put down her cup at once. ‘Dolly!’ she shrieked, eyes bright with delight. ‘Vhat news!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. This was it. This was the moment. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Matter a’ fact, it’s enough fer me ter take on them rooms I was tellin’ you about. The ones in Underwood Street.’

  She remembered. ‘Vid a kitchen an’ scullery, on the ground floor. No stairs, think a’ that. Nu-nu, no stairs!’

  He coughed again. ‘Matter a’ fact,’ he said, ‘it was stairs I was thinkin’ about really. Seein’ how bad your legs are.’ But that sounded so dreadful he could feel himself blushing. ‘What I mean ter say is … Stairs ain’t the easiest things. Not when you got a bad back, I mean. Or bad feet.’

  ‘You ain’t got bad feet, ’ave yer, Fred?’ she said, her eyes beaming at him over the rim of her teacup.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, blushing again. ‘They ain’t so dusty. It was your feet I was thinkin’ of. On them stairs. It don’t seem right fer you ter be up an’ down them stairs all day an’ every day. I mean ter say … Not when … Not now I …’

  She put the cup down and folded her hands in her vast lap and waited, almost as if she knew what he was going to say next.

  ‘Two can live as cheaply as one,’ he struggled. ‘What I mean ter say is … Well, not cheaply, no. I got a rise when all’s said an’ done. An’ I’d look after yer. You wouldn’t ’ave ter worry. What I mean ter say …’

  At that she threw her apron over her head and began to howl. ‘Oy oy oy oy!’ over and over, rocking backwards and forwards on her chair. He was horribly alarmed.

  ‘Dumpling, my dear, what’s the matter? What’ve I said?’

  She lowered the apron like a yashmak and peered at him over the top of it, her eyes gleaming with tears. ‘You askin’ me to marry you or ain’t yer?’

  His confidence ebbed away. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

  She seized his face between her hands and kissed him moistly first on one cheek and then on the other. ‘A meshuganer!’ she wailed. ‘He don’t ask! So yes, yes, I tell you! Vhy you don’t ask, nu?’

  Relief made him weak at the knees. ‘Because I love yer,’ he confessed. ‘I couldn’t’ve borne it if you’d said no.’

  When Rachel came home they were still planning their new future together. Dumpling had been so happy all evening, she’d quite forgotten about the others members of her family. Now she just had time to warn him not to say anything. ‘Not yet, bubeleh. Leave it to me, nu?’

  ‘See you termorrer?’ he said. They’d already agreed that they would go and look at the flat, but he needed reassurance now that the outside world was walking up the stairs towards them on Rachel’s shuffling feet.

  ‘You van’ it in writing?’ she teased.

  That night she lay awake, sorting things out in her mind. It was going to be very difficult telling Rachel and Rivke. They wouldn’t approve, either of them. Better maybe to work up to it gradually. Wouldn’t do to shock ’em. Nu-nu!

  So the next morning while she and Rachel were eating breakfast, she started to reminisce, singing Rivke’s praises and rememembering how kind she’d been when Mr Esterman died. ‘A good voman, don’t I tell you, to take me in the vay she done. I stay vid her years an’ years, right up to the day she married.’

  But Rachel misunderstood her intentions. ‘So now you take me in,’ she sa
id. ‘You’re a good voman too, Dumpling, praise be to God. Don’t think I ain’t grateful.’

  Oy oy, so how do I talk my way out of that? Dumpling wondered.

  Fortunately they were both rescued by the noisy arrival of Goldman’s van which had come to pick up the finished overcoats and deliver the next batch. And by the time the delivery boy had clumped into their room and dropped two greatcoats on his way downstairs, and left mud on the rag rug, the topic was more or less forgotten.

  That afternoon, she tried a different approach. ‘Oy, them stairs give me gyp!’ she said after her regular trip to the tap. ‘Vhat a blessing it vould be to live on a ground floor somevheres.’

  ‘Cost the earth,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘Ground floor! Ve should be so lucky! Oy oy! Vhere ve get the money for the ground floor?’

  Rent, Dumpling thought, realizing the implications of this conversation too. When I marry Fred she’ll be left behind vid this room to pay for all on her own, and it’s been hard enough to make ends meet with both our wages put together. I should ask her to live vid us, maybe? But her flesh quailed at the thought. This was going to be even more difficult than she’d imagined.

  On Tuesday evening, when the work was done for the day and supper was over, she spoke about loneliness, hoping to evoke a little sympathy for her intended. ‘Poor Mr Morrison, living alone all these years. It ain’t good, nu-nu.’

  ‘He got a good job, dolly,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘Ve don’t get all ve vant in this vorld, nu nu.’

  ‘Vhat you think?’ Dumpling said, seizing the opportunity. ‘This week he got promoted. Better job, better pay, better flat maybe.’

  Rachel went on drying the cups and didn’t comment.

  ‘But on his own you see, dolly. It ain’t natural. Poor Mr Morrison.’

  ‘So ve all need company,’ Rachel agreed easily, but she didn’t pursue the topic. She seemed to be paying more attention to the washing up. ‘I take the dirty vater down now, nu?’

  By Thursday morning her good news was still a secret and more impossible to deliver than ever. And the canary was dead. As she drew the blinds she saw its little yellow body lying stiffly at the bottom of the cage, twig legs in the air, claws curled. ‘Oy oy oy!’ she mourned, holding the fragile corpse in the palm of her hand. ‘Poor liddle thing! Vill you look at that, Rachel. Gone in the night. Poor liddle thing!’

  ‘He vas a good age, dolly,’ Rachel pointed out, sympathetically. ‘They don’t live for ever, these liddle birds. Ve get a new one, nu? Club Row, Sunday. Vhat you think?’

  But Dumpling didn’t want a new bird. Not now. Not in this room. A new bird could wait until she’d settled in with Fred. ‘No,’ she said, more firmly than she realized. ‘Not Sunday. Sunday is too soon. Ve vait.’

  Rachel let this pass. ‘So vhat ve do this afternoon?’ she asked. They always took a little time off from their sewing on Thursday afternoons.

  ‘I vas thinkin’ a’ going shopping,’ Dumpling said, but she looked oddly shamefaced about it. ‘Fred, he vants to choose new curtains … Hopkins and Peggs maybe.’

  Hopkins and Peggs reminded Rachel of Ellen. ‘I shall go an’ see liddle Gracie,’ she decided. ‘He don’t need me to choose his curtains, nu nu.’ She’d had a lovely letter from David the day before, with a column of tiny sketches in the margin, and she always took his drawings to Mile End Place to show young Gracie.

  Ellen had had a letter from David too, and a particularly long one. ‘We shall be going up the line again soon,’ he wrote. ‘This is the last chance I shall get to write for some time. This war goes on and on. There is no end in sight that any of us can see. It is an endless nightmare. I will say this for it though. It puts things into perspective. Before I come here I thought I knew what was important to me, like the brit and celebrating Shabbas, and being born a Jew. Now all these things are trivial, not important at all. There is no God in the trenches, I can tell you. We are forsaken, all of us, Jew, Christian, atheist. We all die the same way. What is important is surviving, coming home to our wives and children. That is what we dream about and keep alive for. One day I will explain all this to you. Sorry this is not so cheerful. I don’t mean to depress you. Better next time maybe. I.L.Y. David.’

  Oddly, for all its sombre theme, the letter didn’t depress her. Rather the reverse. She felt comforted by it.

  ‘Whatcher think a’ that?’ she asked Ruby when she and the children came to visit that afternoon.

  ‘Serious stuff,’ Ruby said, grimacing. ‘I don’t like all that about we all die the same way. ‘Nough ter give yer the creeps. Tommy, don’t eat mud, lovey.’

  Ellen could see she hadn’t understood the letter at all so she changed the conversation. ‘You ‘eard from Sid?’

  ‘Sat’day,’ Ruby said happily. ‘Goin’ on all right, ’e sezs. They’re learnin’ ‘im ter drive a motor car. Whatcher think a’ that? ’e reckons ’e’ll get a job drivin’ a van when ’e comes ’ome. Good job an’ all. Didn’t do ‘im no good at all luggin’ that great bread van round the streets. Back-breakin’ that was. ‘E’ll be a sight better in a van.’

  ‘We seen some changes on account a’ this old war,’ Ellen said. ‘And not all of ’em bad neither.’

  ‘Amy’s got a job in munitions,’ Ruby said. ‘It makes yer skin go all yeller, but it’s ever such good pay.’

  ‘We’re starvin’!’ Jack informed them, coming into the scullery from the garden where they’d all been playing.

  ‘We’ll ’ave tea,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Tommy won’t need much,’ Ruby said. ‘All the mud ’e’s ate.’

  Tea was an unappetizing meal these days, with sugar so scarce it was almost unobtainable, and the national loaf grey and gritty, and jam more swede than fruit. But it was pleasant to eat it in the sunshine, no matter how bad it was.

  ‘If it keeps fine we’ll ’ave tea in the garden when Bubbe comes,’ she said to Gracie when Ruby had kissed them all goodbye and gone. Being on early turn was tiring because it meant getting up so early in the morning, but at least it gave her a chance to see her friends in the afternoons. And although neither of them had admitted it yet, even to themselves, she and Mama Cheifitz were more friendly towards one another than they’d ever been. They greeted one another kindly, if not affectionately, and there was always plenty to talk about these days, what with the war and the children’s schooling and David at the front. But this Thursday, the conversation began in quite an unexpected way.

  ‘I come to ask advice,’ Rachel said when she’d kissed the children and was following Ellen into the house. She knew exactly what she wanted to say, and she said it at once before she could lose her courage. ‘Mr Morrison got promotion, bubeleh. I think he vant to marry Aunty Dumpling.’

  ‘’Bout time too,’ Ellen said, turning to look at her as they walked into the kitchen. She was thrilled by the news. ‘Oh I know ’e ain’t Jewish, but ’e’s a good bloke, Bubbe. ’E’ll be ever so good to her.’

  ‘Nu-nu, I know it,’ Rachel agreed, putting her shopping bag on the kitchen table. ‘It ain’t that. Vonce it mattered. Vonce, I tell you. Now, veil now, I ain’t so sure. So many good men dead. A Jew, a goy, vhat’s the odds?’

  ‘Sit down,’ Ellen said, plumping a cushion to put behind her mother-in-law’s back. ‘I got sommink ter show yer. Your Davey’s been saying just the same thing.’ And she gave Rachel the letter.

  She read it quietly, sitting in her son’s chair, while the kettle fizzed on the stove and the children chirruped like birds in the garden, and when she’d absorbed every word she set it aside on the table and nodded her head. ‘Jew, goy,’ she said again. ‘Vhat’s the odds?’

  ‘So when’s the wedding?’ Ellen asked, warming the teapot.

  ‘Ellen, bubeleh, that’s vhat I come to say. Tomorrow they’d marry, you ask me. Only they don’t ask me. And for vhy? Because your Aunty Dumpling got a kind heart. That’s for vhy. Oy oy!’ And she began to cry, her face forlorn, and the tears oozing from the corners of her eyes
.

  Ellen put down the teapot and came and sat at her mother-in-law’s feet. ‘So tell me,’ she said.

  ‘The canary died,’ Rachel said through her tears. ‘She don’t buy a new one. He gets promotion. She says he’s lonely. He got a new flat, ground floor, I tell you. She don’t manage stairs so good. Ai yi, they vould marry tomorrow. Vhat’s to stop them? I am, bubeleh. I stop them. An old gooseberry, that’s vhat I am. An old gooseberry. Ai-yi-yi!’

  Despite her garbled explanation Ellen understood her completely. ‘It’s the rent, ain’t it?’

  ‘Ten an’ six a veek I ask you. Seven bob maybe I could manage. So vhere you get a room for seven bob?’

  The solution was so obvious and so easy, it was spoken before either of them realized what an enormous thing it was they were contemplating. ‘You can come ’ere an’ live with us,’ Ellen said. ‘We got plenty a’ room.’

  ‘So I’m a burden maybe?’ Rachel said, her face wrinkling with distress, in case they were making a mistake, after all these years.

  ‘No you ain’t, Bubbe. You’re a grandma.’

  ‘You sure, dolly?’

  ‘We’ll ask the kids. Gracie, come in ’ere a minute will yer?’

  Rachel dried her eyes and blew her nose for it wouldn’t have done to let the child see she’d been crying.

  ‘How’d yer like yer grandma ter come an’ live with us?’

  The delight on the child’s face was a joy to both of them. ‘Now, d’yer mean?’

  ‘In a week or two maybe,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Yes,’ Gracie said. “Course. You can ’ave my bed if yer like. I could sleep with you, couldn’t I, Ma? It’s a nice bed, Bubbe. I could make it up lovely for yer. An’ we could ’ave stories of an evening, when Ma was on the trams.’

  ‘An’ chicken soup,’ Jack said. ‘An’ borscht.’

  ‘An’ hamantash,’ Benny said, licking his lips. He was very fond of Bubbe’s prune cake.