Tuesdays and Thursdays were delightful days, for both Hannah and Mary. Then they wandered from shop to fashionable shop, and ate ices at Gunter’s. To Hannah, Gunter’s was splendid with its little tables at which the most beautifully dressed people ate ices and cakes and drank China tea out of perfect porcelain and chattered so busily they almost drowned the sound of the music played by the string quartet in the corner.
Hannah learned much about the city of her birth on those happy expeditions, discovering the beauties and excitement of Oxford Circus and Regent Street, Pall Mall, and Piccadilly, the charms of Hyde Park and above all the theatre, for sometimes Mary took her to matinees. She would sit on the edge of her seat bewitched, watching the most beautiful actresses and unbelievable exquisite actors gyrate and dance or fall on their knees at each other in scenes of undying passion in which Hannah believed implicitly. She adored every moment. But she didn’t plan to be an actress herself any more. Somehow that dream had burned out; she no longer needed it.
With each week that passed, Mary became ever more delighted with life. She had taken to her protégé because of her appearance, only her appearance. Red hair and blue eyes had opened the way for Hannah. To find therefore, as Mary did, that the child was an amusing chatterbox and therefore good company was a bonus she had not expected. She had wanted a doll to play with, a live doll to take the place of her dead one, and what she got was a genuine companion, someone with real warmth and real emotions who made her feel, for the first time in twenty years, that she was real herself. It was as though she had been encased in a transparent shell and Hannah was chipping away a gap ever more widely until Mary could emerge as a whole person again.
It was Daniel who first told her what had happened. He was paying a duty visit, for as a well brought up young man he knew the respect that was due to his aunts, and made the rounds of them punctiliously once a month. He watched her help Hannah with a piece of complicated knitting the child was struggling with, and then, when she had gone to her room up in the attic to fetch another ball of wool, said easily, ‘That child clearly has made you very happy, Aunt Mary. Is she the same one who spat at Mama? The one I scooped up as she was running away?’
Mary reddened a little. ‘Ah - What was that, dear? I don’t quite remember …’ Daniel laughed. ‘Oh, come on, Aunt Mary. You can’t bamboozle me! There can’t be that many coppertops around. Mother told me you’d got a maggot in your head and taken in a charity child, but she never said it was this one.’
He grinned then, stretching out his legs and contemplating his boots with satisfaction. ‘Mind you, under the circumstances I doubt she would. Would she?’ He looked sideways at Mary with a wicked little glance, and Mary allowed herself a small smile in return. She had always had a very soft spot for this good looking nephew, even though he was the disagreeable Davida’s son.
‘It might be as well to say nothing of it,’ she murmured. ‘Of course your dear mother knows, but we don’t discuss it, you know. I see no reason why we should.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Daniel heartily as Hannah came back. He smiled at her, and held out one hand and bade her come and talk to him.
Hannah, who had felt herself go hot all over the first time he had come visiting and who still went hot all over every succeeding time, stood at the door and folded her lips and shook her head, allowing herself to show her own will for the first time since arriving at Eaton Square. Mary looked surprised and Daniel amused as she blinked and turned and bobbed awkwardly at Mary and went away to hide until Daniel had gone.
Even when she reappeared after his departure, and Mary tried to discover why it was she had behaved so, she still kept her own counsel, and continued with unusual stubbornness to do so.
How could she do otherwise? Ever since that morning when Daniel Lammeck had caught her under her arms and lifted her high in the air to kick helplessly and impotently at him she had adored him. She saw him, very definitely as the author of all her good fortune. If he had not so caught her, had not stopped her from escaping into Hanbury Street that March morning, she would not be here now, would she? That was why she thought him the handsomest, most agreeable person she had ever seen in her life. And that was why he was at the core of every one of the stories and dreams with which she sent herself to sleep every night in her snug attic room.
23
Walking down to the corner shop was one of Bloomah’s favourite activities. In the old days she’d gone rarely, sending Jake or Hannah when she had to because it was easier for them to ask Black Sophie to put it on the slate please, just for a day or two, than it was for her. On the occasions she’d had to do it she had stood there sick with shame, afraid to meet the other women’s eyes and see their contempt, or worse, their pity; those had been bad days indeed. But not now, because of Hannah. She could walk down to the corner shop with her plaited straw bag in her hand and her chin up as high as any of the neighbour’s.
Because of Hannah. She stopped at the chicken stall at the kerb outside the shop and tried not to think of Hannah. She chose a neat little fowl, just big enough for the five of them, yellow with fat and with a plump look that promised unlaid eggs, golden globes of deliciousness, lurking inside. She bought extra giblets, too, asking especially for gorrigles, the neck pieces; Hannah loved those after they’d been cooked in the soup and would sit happily for half an hour or more stripping the shreds of meat from the tiny bones with her teeth.
Not Hannah, she told herself. She won’t be home to eat with us. Not till Friday. Today’s only Tuesday. No Hannah till Friday. Don’t think about her. Onions and carrots and potatoes at the vegetable stall alongside, big Joe scooping up the earth encrusted roots in his gleaming brass scoop so that they tumbled and rattled against the scales. A cabbage, with thick dark leaves, ideal for stuffing with minced soup meat from the butcher, to whom she could afford to go these days. Don’t think of Hannah. And then Black Sophie’s shop, smelling so powerfully of garlic pickles and salt herrings and cream cheese and freshly baked bread that your mouth burst into saliva as you walked through the door.
They made way for her at the counter. Mrs Arbeiter of course - she was always there at this time of the morning, and Mrs Abrahams, and a clutch of younger wives with their small children bawling at their skirts. Bloomah nodded gravely at them and settled down to wait while one after the other they listed their wants, and watched eagle eyed as Sophie measured out cheese and weighed out ounces of tea into twists of heavy blue paper and bestowed a few broken biscuits on the children, while the women chattered. The women of the quarter didn’t need a newspaper. They were a newspaper.
‘So she was in labour twelve hours and nothing happening, I tell you even Mother Charnik from Christian Street, she said she’d never seen such a case, so they have to get the doctor out no less, from the hospital, you shouldn’t know of such things and you know what he had to do?’ The voice dropped, became confidential, and was overwhelmed by Jenny, who had the highest and shrillest voice of any of them. ‘ - So the teacher says to me, she says, he’s very bright boy, Mrs Fishman, you should understand so bright I haven’t had one like him in years, and I want he should have his opportunities, so I'm putting his name down for the scholarship to Raine’s Foundation School, and meanwhile we got to worry about buying the uniform, such a performance You won’t have such worries by your Morry, please God.’
And Mrs Kellerman, bristling. ‘My Morry? Already he knows all his colours and can count up to twenty and only just walking, already so soon! Believe me, we'll have the same problem as you in spades, and before the boy’s ten years old, that’s for sure.’
‘… and when the bandages came off, the agony! Six babies I had, and never do I know of such agony as from that leg! I said to Sam, I said, if your mother God rest her dear soul in peace had had half the suffering what I get, she’d never have got up and cooked and cleaned for you the way I do - the lazy schloch that she was.’
‘My Sadie, already she’s got three boys looking at her serious, such a dolly she
is! Won’t be fourteen till next High Holy Days. Please God no harm should come to her, and she’s such a well developed girl, we'll have to make a nice early shidduch for her, and how’s by your Hannah, Mrs Lazar? Just a bit younger than my Sadie, ain’t she? Give or take a month or two … so how is she? She meeting nice boys and all where she is?’
The shop slithered into an expectant silence and Bloomah smiled as easily as she could. ‘Hannah? She' very well, thank you. Getting very tall of course, and such a beauty
- but thank God I don’t have such problems with her as boys. At her age it would be a great worry to me, and I can imagine how you must worry, Mrs Arbeiter, believe me. It’s not easy, girls working in the factories, to keep such an eye on them as is necessary. Hannah, thank God, is well looked after - ’
‘Oh, I'm not so sure,’ Mrs Arbeiter said with a fine judicious air. ‘Girls is interested in boys no matter how careful they get to be watched over. You was interested I dare say, and so was I, and why should our girls be any different? At least in the factories the girls meet only Jewish boys. In a place like your Hannah’s she might meet anyone. God forbid.’
‘It’s a good Jewish house!’ Bloomah said, stung into dropping her guard. ‘The richest place you ever saw, believe me.’
‘Sure, I know,’ Mrs Arbetier smiled sweetly, revealing blackened front teeth. ‘But it’s not like your Hannah is exactly living with them, eh? I mean, they have men servants, don’t they? And they ain’t Jewish boys, that’s for sure. Shagetses every one of ‘em - it must be a great worry to you … ‘ And she swept out of the shop like a galleon in full sail, giving Bloomah no chance to riposte.
She went home feeling the weight of her loneliness more heavily than her laden shopping bag. Of course, Mrs Arbiter was right. What sort of life was it for a nice girl from a decent Jewish family, being in such an occupation? Poor they may always have been, she and Nathan, but they have never had had any problems such as the one Mrs Arbeiter had so cruelly underlined. Hannah was exposed to influences that could damage her; might indeed get so involved with the servants in that house that she would marry out of the faith.
Don’t be stupid, she told herself as she climbed the stairs to the flat. Don’t be stupid. You know how it is there. That woman dotes on our Hannah. Treats her like her own child. There’s no risk she'll ever let her come to such a harm as that. No risk. And anyway, she’s changed Hannah so much she’d frighten off anybody who ever looked at her. She’s not like a child of mine any more.
That was the worst part of all for Bloomah. Not the shame of having to depend on the earnings of so young a child to keep the family, not the pain of missing her so cruelly from Sunday morning to Friday afternoon, but the pain of change. The scrawny little ten-year old who had gone to be companion to Mrs Lammeck three years go had disappeared inside the handsome, self-possessed your woman who came in her carriage each Friday afternoon laden with basket of food and clothes and sometimes even more exotic gifts like a bottle of brandy and a couple of cigars for Nathan. Bloomah’s Hannah had been dreamy but biddable, an untidy child with frizzy hair and a bouncing vigour who looked out at the world with unquenchable excitement behind her bright blue eyes. Mrs Lammeck’s Hannah was quite different. Always polite and cheerful, never obviously dreamy and certainly never excited. She wore her hair brushed sleekly over her forehead now, its natural curl well controlled by the attention of Mary’s hairdresser. Her eyes were watchful. Her figure, well rounded and mature for nearly fourteen, looked neat and controlled beneath the expensive clothes, and she moved carefully, with none of the hoydenish bounce of her young years.
All of which of course had to happen, Bloomah told herself, as she unpacked her purchases and stored them away in the metal mesh food safe on the window to catch whatever cool breezes there were this hot August day. If she’d stayed here with us she’d still have grown up, wouldn’t she?
It was not Hannah’s emerging womanhood that hurt her. It was the remoteness of Hannah that edged its way under Bloomah’s skin and made her so irritable on each of those much longed for yet miserable weekends. Hannah would sit beside the table in the front room, a cup of lemon tea and a slice of Bloomah’s best cheesecake in front of her, and in every neat movement of her hands, every small and tidy bite, Bloomah read criticism. Hannah never said anything about the way they lived; about Nathan’s noisy eating or the way the boys gobbled their food, nor about the flat, with its overcrowded furniture and the flies that could not be kept out and the reek of pine disinfectant that struggled to overwhelm the stench of vagrant cats on the stairs, against whom Bloomah fought an unending battle. She never complained at having to sleep on the sofa with broken springs, that had to be dragged out onto the landing at night, so that she need not share the front room with her brothers. But in Hannah’s silence, Bloomah found pain. It shouldn’t be that way, and she knew it. But she could do nothing about it, so she turned her distress against Hannah, feeling that in her silence she was scorning her parents, and her home.
Somewhere deep inside herself she knew she was wrong; that it was inevitable that Hannah would notice the difference between the luxury she knew all week and the poverty of her East End weekends, and that to blame the child for noticing was cruel. It was wrong, too, to blame her for her new manners, her tidy style of eating, her way of sitting with her knees together and her back straight, her hands clasped quietly in her lap. Clearly she had been taught to behave so by Mary Lammeck and it had become second nature to her. Under the circumstances Hannah could not help becoming better behaved than the people from whom she sprang, any more than she could be blamed for the way she spoke. As a child she had sounded like every other child of the quarter. Her speech had been nasal, tinged with that curious mixture of cockney and the sing-song intonation brought to London from the shtets of Russia and Poland. Now she spoke in a well modulated voice, with neat, clipped vowels and the nasal sound quite gone. Is that something to resent in your own child? Bloomah would ask herself. Of course it isn’t but she still resented it, for Mary’s teaching, Mary’s way of life, Mary’s ideas her own and only beloved girl was imbibing, not her mother’s.
Bloomah took refuge from the confusion of love and deprivation and resentment that filled her in the only way she could. She remained silent. The long weekend would pass with her sitting there beside the table most of the time, not talking at all while Hannah tried to make conversation - another of the things she had been taught was the right way to behave. The harder Hannah tried, the more monosyllabic Bloomah became. Bloomah was aching to pour out all her fury and distress and then to hug her daughter close; but that she could not, indeed would not, do. I may be poor, she would think grimly, but I got my pride.
Inevitably her feelings about her daughter spilled over into her behaviour towards the rest of the family. Nathan, descending ever deeper into his own resentments, spent less and less time at home. There seemed little point in it, for Bloomah sat as silent with him as she did with Hannah. Each morning he disappeared with his packet of pens and paper, making a pathetic attempt to pretend he was going to work, and Bloomah watched him go and ached to be closer to him as much as she ached for Hannah, and was as incapable of letting him know.
As for the boys, they inhabited a world of their own. She cooked and cleaned for them, washed their clothes, and let them be. Solly, a boisterous ten-year-old, found most of his joy in the streets just as his big brother had once done. He would come home from school, on the occasions he actually went (for he was an inveterate truant, and very good at not being caught) to take a slice of bread smeared with chicken fat and then run out into the street ‘to play', To him it was play, though most of the neighbours what he and his cronies got up to was rather more sinister. They were accomplished petty thieves, young Solly and his friends, Barney and Issy, getting apples from street stalls and lollipops from corner shops, lifting handkerchiefs and old clothes and bric-a-brac from various sorts of busy stalls in Petticoat Lane, anything that could be tucked e
asily beneath a shabby jacket, then sold to other stalls further down the Lane. At home, Solly was silent, knowing well that silence was what Bloomah liked best. Or seemed to.
Sometimes he would go to the gym in Leman Street, a dispirited building containing little more than a roped-off open space and a few battered chairs. There he would watch his brother Jake sweating heavily as he tried to work up the skill he was sure he had somewhere deep inside him, if only he could get it out - the skill of hitting an opponent harder and faster than the opponent could hit him. Sometimes Uncle Alex would be there, too, watching the sweating would-be-boxers with a sardonic look on his face, and when Solly saw him, he would melt away and take to the street again. Uncle Alex didn’t approve of ten-year-olds in the gym, and had been known to make his disapproval felt. Although not a boxer himself, he still knew enough about the fight game to be able to handle even someone as tough and quick on his feet as young Solly, when he chose to.
Solly loved the gym. He loved the smell of sweat and old rubber shoes and dust overlaid heavily with the pungence of liniment. He loved the way the boxers grunted and snorted as they dodged around the ring, though most of the boys with real talent, the ones with the intelligence to see blows coming and to parry them rather then mere sluggers who just hit out, went to the better gym, the one that Solly had heard his Uncle Alex owned, down near Limehouse police station.
Solly knew that Jake took boxing deadly seriousness. He was supposed to be a lathe operator for his Uncle Reuben but turned up at the factory rarely as he could, complaining of aches and pains and ills galore to cover his absences: Reuben shrugged and said nothing. He didn’t pay Jake, of course, if he didn’t work, so why upset his sister-in-law by telling her of her older son’s defections? Let him explain to her why he came home from wok with no money to give her. It wasn’t Reuben’s problem.
Not that Jake ever did explain. Somehow he lurched from financial disaster to financial crisis and got through. There was a side bet to be made, always a bit of dealing to be done in the Lane, above all always Uncle Alex to touch for a loan. Uncle Alex always came through. He would just nod, then shake his head and hand over the cash, and say nothing. It was, after all, another way of helping his stupid brother Nathan without his knowing it, and Alex, for all his busy life and his boxers and his thriving coffee stalls and his own dealings in and about Petticoat Lane still cared for his brother Nathan, and curiously, felt a guilt about him, though the rest of the family had long since stopped bothering about his complaint, regarding him simply as the failure who deserved all that happened to him. But Alex felt sorry for his brother, and wanted to pay back the debt his parents had incurred; so, shelling out for Jake pleased him. The fact that it didn’t do much for Jake, whatever it did for Nathan, did not escape him. But Alex was an observant man. He looked at his nephew with clear eyes and recognized his central tragedy; the possession of a huge ambition and no talent with which to achieve it. ‘Poor devil,’ he would think, and slip him a sovereign. ‘Poor shlemiel. What'll he ever be? Not even a boxer.’
The Running Years Page 25