Then there was Momma, her face so white with worry for they had been gone so long that Hannah felt sick with shame. It was all her fault, she told herself, flinging her arms around Bloomah’s neck. All her fault.
And then the explanations, the interminable talking, the displaying of the lavish purchases Nathan had made with the money he had been given, the talk about the change that had been thrown at Hannah, to learn to be a lady.
‘A Jewish home, Bloomah,’ Nathan kept saying. ‘Never forget that, a good Jewish home. Skinking rich they may be, but it’s a Jewish home. That house – oy, oy, that house! You should see that house, Bloomah! It’s amazing – a-mazing! With a mezuzzah on the door, just like us. Bigger and fancier I grant you, but a mezuzzah. Such a chance, Blooman, for our little dolly, and how much longer can she go on sharing with her brothers, hey? If it’s only Friday and Saturday nights it’s not so bad, Shabbas and all. But in the week, in the week she can sleep in a big bed as big as we got all to ourselves. I tell you, Bloomah, it’s the best thing that ever happened. The best.’
And Bloomah said yes, of course, Hannah must do it. It would be good for her, ideal for her, what more could any mother want for her child?
But she cried when she went to bed and went on crying a long time. Hannah woke up twice in the night and heard her.
22
The worst part of it all for Bloomah was Hannah’s eagerness. She had known as soon as she had looked at the child’s face that someone had lit a fire inside her. There was an intensity in her, a blazing blue-eyed hunger that could not be ignored. Hannah actually wanted to go away to spend half her life with strangers, and looking at the life around her, Bloomah could not blame her.
She had tried to make a home of the two rooms and landing they rented in Antcliff Street, had tried desperately, but as the children grew and space shrank and her own strength ebbed away, the rooms had become harder and harder to keep tidy. Every movement in the cramped space was likely to send something toppling over, the rickety table, or the papers Nathan kept piled in the corner which on one was allowed to touch. It was rare that Nathan’s earnings brought enough to feed them properly, and there were more days that she could not work than days when she could, and Isaac was not the sort of master tailor to pay workers who didn’t work. Even his own sister.
She had hoped after Lazar and Rivka had died, that Nathan would accept Alex’s offer of the house in Sidney Street, but he had roared with a monumental rage when she had broached the idea.
‘Take from him, from my younger brother I should take such favours? He can go to hell in a teapot, him and his favours! I don’t take no favours. What sort of a man is it takes such things from his own younger brother? What sort of wife it is asks of a man he should make such an object of himself?’ And so on, and so on.
So Alex had shrugged and put Benjamin and his wife Sarah and their three children in the Sidney Street house, and given Bloomah a few shillings to help out a bit. (She never dared to take more in case Nathan found out; better to be hungry than to put up with Nathan shouting questions because they had a chicken in the pot when he knew perfectly well he hadn’t earned enough to buy even the giblets) and shaken his head and gone away to go on making money.
Bloomah tried to understand what made Nathan the way he was. He had refused, over and over again, to accept help from his own family. He was as he had been for the past twenty years, the poorest member. Even the children of Benjamin, the rabbinical scholar who lived entirely on his father-in-law’s beneficence and his brother Alex’s gifts, went better shod and fed than her children did. Yet Nathan would go cap in hand to the schnorrrs' shop to cringe before those high nosed aristocrats and their probings! How could a man be that way? How could he let his own children suffer because of his stubbornness? Bloomah too could ask unanswerable questions, but she asked them of herself, not the entire universe, the way Nathan did.
Sometimes she thought she glimpsed an answer. Nathan, she suspected, took pride in being so very poor, so severely hard done by, when his family were there to see. He was very meticulous about attending every family function, everything at which Alex and Benjamin and Reuben and their wives and children might be. Here he would stand ostentatious in his shabbiness alongside Reuben’s polished paunch and Benjamin’s neat gabardine, Bloomah, miserable beside him in her eternal purple rep dress, the one he had got for her from the schnorrers' shop long ago, making her usual heavy contrast with her satin clad sisters-in-law, and he would shine with a sort of unctuousness. He seemed on these occasions to wear his poverty and his injustice with the passion of martyrdom. How could he have accepted help from Alex, which would spoil all that?
So Bloomah would sometimes say to herself as she sat unhappily with the women at a baby’s circumcision party of at a wedding, feeling shame at the way her children’s eyes lit up at the sight of the food that was so lavishly spread. But she never dared to speak such thoughts to Nathan. His anger would not be worth it. It had been a long time since Bloomah had regarded Nathan with anything but wariness. Once, long ago, there had been love and a great deal of passion. Now there was just fatigue, bone deep fatigue, and an anxiety so constant and so all-pervading that she could not remember a time when she had not felt the knot of it in her belly.
Only the children gave her solace, her two boys, and above all her quiet Hannah. She would sometimes watch Hannah, sitting as she did, quiet and controlled on he edge of her brothers' noisy play, and try to fathom what the child was thinking. She knew that the roof had become Hannah’s special place, and would sometimes stand in the shadow of the door of here room staring out of the landing window at the child’s oblivious back, wondering what went on in that carroty head, and aching to ask her. But she never did.
So, when Hannah showed how clearly she wanted to go away for half the week more than half the week - to another woman’s company, Bloomah could not be blamed for feeling so. What had Bloomah to offer that could possibly compare to Mary Lammeck’s promise? She took a deep breath, and dragged herself from bed to wash all of Hannah’s clothes, to take with her, and when the carriage arrived for her on Sunday morning (much to the amazement of all the other residents of Antcliff Street) kissed her cheek and said gruffly, ‘Mind your manners,’ and let her go. The gulf to next Friday yawned in front of her, terrifyingly empty, but she could not, would not, say a word about it.
So Hannah went, convinced that after all her mother didn’t mind her departure, and that she had no idea how frightened Hannah was, how much she waned to stay at home and live her usual life and never see the big house or Mrs Lammeck again. Momma, she told herself, in spite of her crying in the night wanted her to go as much as Poppa did. It was a bleak thought, but she swallowed it and went, leaving Bloomah to spend her Sunday in an even deeper silence than usual, and Nathan to harangue the world with questions until even he was too exhausted to go on. She was going to a marvelous new life and everyone, except Mary Lammeck, was miserable about it.
Mary Lammeck was incandescent with joy, as anyone who had ever bothered to take notice would have known from her blank face and her total composure. She had told Emmanuel so casually that he hardly noticed when she said that she had decided to take in one of the children from the Settlement.
‘An experiment, she said, pouring coffee for him as they sat a breakfast on the Saturday morning before Hannah was due to arrive. ‘If these girls can be taught to improve themselves, they will rear their own children to be more capable of absorbing the ways of this country, don’t you think? If it works well perhaps other children could be taken into other houses… ’
‘Hmph,’ said Emmanuel and looked at the clock. ‘Three quarters of an hour, I want to be in good time for the service this morning. Albert’s bringing his Amsterdam brother-in-law, and I want to arrange for him to dine here. Monday, I think. A child? What sort of child?’
‘Oh, a scrap of a creature,’ Mary said vaguely. ‘Small and quiet, you know. I shall teach her to sew and such things, a
nd she can cook with Mrs Sarson.’
‘As long as the servants aren’t upset by it, I suppose it is a good enough idea.’ He swallowed the last of his coffee and wiped his moustache. ‘Yes. Give you something to think about, too, I dare say. Make sure you’ve got the right shoes on this morning. I don’t want you complaining all the way, like last week.
It was a constant thorn in Emmanuel’s side that the synagogue of which he was a leading congregant was so far from the fashionable purlieus of Eaton Square. He had considered property on the Bayswater side of Hyde Park, but the northern side was the wrong side, and that was all there was to it. Better to live in Eaton Square even it did mean a half hour’s walk every Sabbath.
There had been times when Emmanuel had considered taking his carriage to the end of Edgeware Road and walking the much shorter journey from there. Then he would shake his head. God could not be mocked; inevitably someone would see him descending from the vehicle, and then tongues would wag. A devout Jews never rode on the Sabbath, and although Emmanuel was privately less than convinced of the value of the laws of his religion he was well aware of the importance to his friends and neighbours of his outward observances. So he, and therefore Mary, walked to Bayswater every Sunday morning, through the Park, rain or shine, even though Mary often ended the journey hobbling, for fashionable shoes gave scant consideration to religious demands.
This morning, however, she walked with a spring, and was quite unaware of the cruel pinch of kid boots. Hannah was coming. Her red headed ten-year old was coming, tomorrow morning. Life was going to start again, from Sunday to Friday every week. For the first time in twenty years Mary Lammeck had something to look forward to.
At first Hannah was so overcome by the newness of it all that she seemed struck dumb. She watched as Mrs Lammeck’s dressmakers measured her, and there and then sitting in the little sewing room at the rear of the housekeeper’s domain, cut and stitched for her two plain print dresses embellished with cotton lace collars and cuffs, and two sets of underwear, the drawers trimmed with blue ribbon. And her eyes opened wide.
‘More when you come next week,’ Mary promised her on Friday morning as she packed the basket the child was to take back with her to Antcliff Street. ‘Show your Mama these, and I'm sure she will be pleased for you. And take her these as well.’ She gave her another larger basket, with eggs and cheese and a cooked chicken and several pots of jam in it. ‘For your little brothers, you know, she said in the vague way that Hannah was already beginning to realize masked feelings of great intensity. ‘Tell your Mama it is for your brothers, a little present from you, not from me.’
Mary had meant to be tactful in so instructing the child, but it had not worked as well as she had meant. When Hannah arrived at Antcliff Street in the carriage, stepping out of it with great aplomb, for having ridden in it every day since Sunday she was becoming quite at home there, she looked to Bloomah’s eyes a different person. Mary’s maid had cut her hair and arranged it, and now she had a crop close curls that framed her face much more appealingly than the old unkept mop had done, and she was wearing one of her new dressed and a fine woollen shawl over her shoulders and net lace-tied shoes over warm black woollen stockings.
'You look like a servant girl,’ Bloomah said shortly, unable to cope with the way Hannah seemed to glow in her new finery. ‘No hat! Where’s your black straw?’
'Mrs Lammeck doesn’t like it,’ Hannah said. ‘She said I don’t have to wear it if I don’t like. She’s getting me a new one.’
The gift for her brothers created a chill too. They seized on the treats in the basket, but Bloomah, straight faced and sullen, refused to touch anything. ‘You brought it for your brothers.’ she said flatly when Hannah tried to persuade her. ‘Not for me.’ On that first visit home, Hannah lost some of the bloom she had acquired and returned to Eaton Square on Sunday morning with a deep sense of relief which made her feel more miserable than ever. She ought to feel bad, she thought, as she looked back at Antcliff Street from the carriage, trying not to cry. It would never do to let the staring children in the street, among whom she had spotted Rachel Levin and the Stern boys, see her weep.
But fortunately Bloomah saw her unshed tears, and they comforted her greatly. By the time Hannah returned the following week she had softened, and even though she had yet more new clothes, a handsome woollen coat and hat to match and a air of stout walking boots together with a very pretty muff, Bloomah welcomed her warmly and with no jibes at all. Hannah had gained some weight, even in so short a time, and her cheeks were filling out to a more dimpled prettiness that made her brother Jake stare at her solemnly and treat her more politely than he ever had. At sixteen he was a strutting self-confident boy, street-sharp, with an intimate knowledge of the tangle of alleys that interlaced the quarter, and an even more detailed awareness of the stalls in the market which were easy to pilfer and those which must be voided.
Once, he had regarded Hannah as part of the furniture of his life, of no more significance than the knob that pulled the front door open, but now, arriving as she did with gifts of woollen clothes and new boot and coats for her brothers as well as baskets of food, he realized that she was worthy of respect. And Hannah enjoyed that.
As for Nathan, he blossomed in the warmth of his daughter’s good fortune. He took from her hand each week the envelope Mary gave her for him, smiled at the sight of the clothes and the food baskets, and began to strut a little. None of his brothers' children had done so well for themselves! Not even Benjamin’s David, who had won a scholarship to the City of London Boys' School, could be said to be as successful a Hannah was. So he smiled, and stopped shouting questions at the ceiling and everyone relaxed and basked for a little while in the warmth of his satisfaction.
The year slid along its grooves. March drifted into a blazing blue April, which made even Whitechapel feel a better place to be, and on into a hot summer. By September 1903, which was warmer still, Hannah had grown two inches and had filled out amazingly. She stood almost as tall as stocky Jake now, a next to her Solly looked positively squat. Not that they were not benefiting from Hannah’s new life; indeed they were, in direct material ways. Week by week Mary sent supplies for them, gifts purchased on long and joyous expeditions she took with Hannah about the shops of the West End. She had a new purpose in her life now and even her long years of practice at looking imperturbable did not protect her. Her relations began to notice how much better she was looking, how must more cheerful, and actually commented on it to each other.
Hannah and Mary began to establish a pattern of life at Eaton Square. Hannah soon learned, as much from what Mary did not say as what she did, that the master of the house was a man to be avoided. It was not that he was particularly short tempered or disagreeable; indeed, on the few occasions that Hannah encountered Emmanuel he was affability itself, treating her with bluff politeness. He nodded at her monosyllabic answers to his questions (Hannah had realized at once that he was one of the Mrs Arbeiters of the world, given to asking but not to listening) and gave her a shilling from his pocket and chucked her under the chin and sent her away. She went gratefully. He was not alarming, but he was not particularly enticing company either. If Mary chose to keep her out of his sight, that suited her well enough.
So, she and Mary spent Sundays peaceably together, while Emmanuel was out on some sort of vague ‘business.’ Hannah had been puzzled at first, for she knew that offices and shops closed on Sundays, Only in Whitechapel where just Jews lived did some shops stay open and even they closed early. What sort of business was it that this big important man could be about on a Sunday?
After the first few weeks, she asked Mary who looked vague and said, ‘Oh, people just people,’ and Hannah had to settle for that. But before the year was out she had discovered, by listening to the gossip in the kitchen, that Emmanuel liked the company of lady people more than gentlemen people. That, as far as Ellen and Cook were concerned, was the way he spent his Sundays. She also realized very
quickly that that was the way Mary like it, for it gave them their tranquil afternoons with needle and thread or music lessons or reading lessons ‘to widen her vocabulary' or, to Hannah’s special delight, drawing lessons.
She soon showed an aptitude for art, especially the drawing of interesting gowns, and thus, associated with her growing skills as a needlewoman, gave them both much pleasure. They planned clothes for Hannah, and with the dressmaker’s assistance, made them up and were very content indeed with the results.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, Mary went to the Settlement as she had always done. Now that she had Hannah she would have gladly given up her charitable duties, but she was much to wise to do so. To let Davida suspect for a moment that she so much enjoyed the company of the child who had so insulted her would never have done, so she went serenely about her usual ways, leaving Hannah with much regret to the care of the housekeeper, Mrs Sarson.
Hannah spent those days learning to cook, once she had overcome Mrs Sarson’s initial resistance to ‘that charity child.’ By the end of the year she was a capable hand with cakes, and was beginning to master the intricacies of pastry making and to understand the different ways of dealing with fish.
Though Hannah did not enjoy this aspect of her new education, she was wise enough to be silent on that score. She listened and learned and worked industriously at all she was asked to do, and at last received the grudging acceptance of the upper servants. The housemaids and footmen and boot-boys, of course, ignored her. What else could they do to one who was of no greater status than them but who spent so much time with Madam? She was an anomaly and as such to be disregarded and despised.
The Running Years Page 24