The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  Not that he told Hannah that. He was not the most sensitive of young men, but he did realize that Hannah must be bitterly hurt by Davida’s treatment of her. To have as your mother-in-law one who regarded you as a ratbag, a whore, a piece of fifth, could not be easy. Yet Hannah never spoke a word against Davida and showed only a nice respect for her father-in-law, for whom she was in fact developing a very real affection, for he was an easygoing pleasant man, and put himself out to please her.

  Yet, try as she did, it was not possible to bury every atom of her distress over her father and brothers. Their silence gnawed at her and she went to a great deal of trouble to find out in every way she could how they fared.

  At first she had to rely on cryptic notes sent to her by her Uncle Reuben, in reply to her long letters to him. ‘Yr Pa and Bros is fit and well,’ he wrote. or, ‘Yr Pa came in yest’day, looked alright.’ Then to her intense relief her telephone rang one early April afternoon, and Uncle Alex’s voice boomed at her from the ear piece.

  ‘Uncle Alex!’ she cried joyfully. ‘You're back! Of, I am so glad. Why were you so long away? And what happened? Are you well? And have you seen Poppa and the boys? And how did you find out where I lived and what the number here was?’

  ‘Enough!’ Uncle Alex’s voice clacked tinnily at her, but sounded blessedly, wonderfully like Uncle Alex. ‘This ain’t no way we should talk after so long. Is it all right I should come and visit you? Your husband whoever he is won’t mind?’

  She laughed at that. ‘My husband is Daniel Lammeck, surely someone told you? And of course he won’t mind! Why on earth should he? When can you come?’ ’sure they told me. I heard nothing else since I come back. How’s about now?’

  ‘Now is perfect,’ she said with delight and hurried to the kitchen to ask Bet to make a special late lunch for her own uncle, who was just back in London from America and was coming to call. She felt a moment of pride in the fact that she had so splendid a relation all of her own; for once she did not have to feel inferior to all her husband’s family.

  He arrived in a large motor car that chugged around the Square with several small boys from the King’s Road running alongside him and cheering. The car was a large open vehicle with heavily padded green leather upholstery inside and gleaming brass fitting on its black paintwork. Alex sat in it very upright, holding onto the steering wheel with great nonchalance, a cigar stuck in his mouth to make an insolent angle under his heavily checked flat cap. His overcoat matched the cap, having the same checks only larger, and he was wearing large goggles. He looked every inch a modern man, and Hannah could have burst with delight at the sight of him, and almost hurled herself into his arms as he stepped down from the car, pulling off his heavy leather gauntlets as he did so.

  ‘A welcome I expected, but this is more like an attack! Dolly, you look swell, real swell. Marriage suits you.’

  ‘Uncle Alex, you look, oh, wonderful! And a car! And those goggles! wonderful. He grinned at his car and patted it, as though it were a horse that cold appreciate his love. ‘Not bad, hey? de Dion Bouton.’

  She looked puzzled and he laughed again. ‘One day you'll know all about cars too, dolly. This husband of yours he'll get you one, and you'll drive everywhere like those American ladies. Some ladies, I'll tell you, but I never saw one who was a patch on you, dolly!’ He pinched her cheek.

  He sounded odd, she thought, speaking with more of a drawl than he used to, and peppering his speech with unfamiliar phrases, but she soon became used to it as he talked on and on, keeping her enthralled over lunch, and long into the afternoon. Indeed by the time he was ready to leave the new American sound had gone from his voice. He had stopped putting on his special little performance for her, and that made her feel comfortable.

  He had had a most exciting few months. The original boxing match for which he had rushed to Atlantic City had been a success and he had gone on to set up several more. Listening to him, Hannah could hear the excitement he had found in the New World, and the regret with which he had left it.

  ‘You mean you mightn’t have come back?’ She looked blankly at him. ‘Uncle Alex, you wouldn’t leave us all here, would you?’

  ‘Believe me, dolly, I thought of it, a then I realized people like me are ten a penny in New York! I deal a bit here and there and in Manhattan and I think I'm doing big and then all of a sudden I meet another fella, doing even bigger, me and all over again! And I think, well, in London I know what I'm doing, I know my way around, and I'm a bit special, you know what I mean? Why should I start all over again some place else, hey? I got my tea shops here, and a bit of action at the theatre and all. And I tell you something else, I thought. I can make my friends there in America, we can arrange things anyway. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘Big what?’

  He laughed. ‘Big Deal! The way they talk, these Americans, it’s great. I like it. ‘I noticed,’ she said and smiled and he made a little grimace and then laughed too.

  ‘Oh, it is good to see you!’ she said, and put her hand over his impulsively. ‘I needed you so much when …' She stopped and shook her head.

  ‘I heard.’ The laughter melted away. ‘He’s a fool, your father, you know that? So it’s sad, your friend Mrs Mary goes and dies the same time as your Momma, it’s sad. But it ain’t no crime you should go to see her, you're told she’s dying! I told Nathan, believe me I told him, he’s a fool to you and to himself. The last ting he needs is to cut himself away from is only daughter now that Bloomah is dead. God rest her poor soul in peace. But will the stupid meshuggenah listen? Not him! He sits and sulks and he enjoys being hard done by. He’s made up his mind you're the bad one, so there he is with no daughter, no son-in-law, no thing.’

  ‘Will he change his mind?’

  There was a little silence and then Alex said gently, ‘No, dolly, I don’t think he will. He made up his mind twenty odd years ago that his family had treated him bad, and he wasn’t never gong to forgive them. He never did. He made up his mind I was a know-nothing upstart and he wasn’t going to take no help from such a brother, especially a younger brother. So he never did. Not directly. And now he’s made up is mind again.’

  ‘The boys then? What about them?’

  He shrugged. ‘They're all right. They got little jobs, you know, pick up a few bob here and there. I give young Solly a few quid when Nathan ain’t looking, he pays the rent, gets some food in, the same old business! I got to go backwards to do my own brother a bit of good!’

  ‘Will they talk to me again?’

  ‘Of course they will! They got nothing against you, but they don’t want to upset the old fool, so they don’t answer your letters when you write, in case he finds out. You can understand.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She sighed and leaned back in her chair. ‘I just wish there was some way I could help a little. I sent some money, Daniel gave me to send, but it was sent back. What can I do?’

  ‘Same as me,’ Alex said, and patted her hand. ‘Same as me. Wait and see. It'll come out in the wash. Most things do.'

  ‘Uncle Alex, you remember you offered me a job?’

  ‘Sure I remember. And you said no.’

  ‘But I was going to say yes. When I left Mrs Mary - you were away, so I couldn’t.’ Alex hit the heel of his hand against his forehead. It was a gesture of mock fury, but Hannah could tell there was some real annoyance there. He truly wanted her to work for him. ‘What about the boys, Uncle Alex?’ she asked ‘Couldn’t one of them - ’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘I love you, dolly. I love my relations. But Iove business too, and I tell you, it wouldn’t work. Managers they ain’t, those two. Too lazy Jake, too unreliable young Solly.

  ‘Well, a job at least, for Solly!’ she said again and put her hand on his. ‘Please, Uncle Alex. he’s got to leave school soon. I don’t want him to have to work in a factory like Uncle Isaac’s. I hated it. I wouldn’t want to see him there. Bad enough Jake has to work with Uncle Reuben, can’t you do something fo
r Solly? Somewhere you could keep an eye on him?

  He shook his head a her, and stood up. ‘It’s time I was going. I got a meeting, a business meeting, you understand, in Whitechapel Road. Got an act I want to send over to America I can make a few bob for myself this way, believe me. Agent, you know, for these burlesque houses. Okay, okay, I'll find a job for Solly. But nothing big, mind you, till the boy shows me he’s got a bit of his sister’s commonsense, and I ain’t too hopeful, I tell you.’

  He kissed he cheek with a smacking sound and she followed him out into the hall.

  ‘It’s a pity they can’t see what a lovely life you’ve got for yourself here, dolly, the aunts, the uncles. My brother Reuben and his Minnie - they’d go meshuggah they saw this house!’

  ‘They’d never come, the way they all feel about me now.’ She followed him out of the front door to the doorstep, then stood and looked back into the hallway. The cool white paint, the drooping green fonds of palm in the corner, the flight of red carpeted stairs, did look pretty, and she would find pleasure in showing it all off to her aunts and uncles and cousins. Bu she couldn’t imagine them ever coming.

  ‘Who says the wouldn’t?’ Alex said, and kissed her cheek again. ‘Sure they would! They ain’t go no quarrel with you, dolly. Nathan they all understand and what he don’t know won’t hurt him. You ask ‘em, they'll come and say nothing to Nathan, no harm done.’

  Her chin lifted with delight at the idea. ‘Really? Would they? Uncle Isaac and Aunt Minnie and all the rest?’

  ‘Sure! They’d some. As long as Nathan wasn’t told.’

  ‘Then I shall!’ she said. ‘Uncle Alex, when shall it be? You tell me, because you'll be here too, won’t you? We'll ask them all to come to tea.’

  ‘Next Sunday.’ He climbed into the seat of his car, with a swish of the skirts of his coat, scattering admiring small boys in all directions. ‘Next Sunday three o'clock. I'll bring ‘em, every one. Make sure you got the samovar ready!’

  And he was gone in a cloud of exhaust gas and noise, leaving her bursting with excitement at the thought of giving her first real tea party. Mr Daniel Lammeck, At Home to her family!

  34

  Daniel was feeling very pleased with himself. He had set himself a target by which he would bring his mother around and he was fully four months ahead of it. He had hoped by the end of the London season in late July to have persuaded Davida to accept his young wife to the point of being willing to introduce her into Society. The, he had thought, by the autumn when the Holy High Day were over and the winter season started they would be like any other young couple in London’s rich Jewish circles. Dining out in other people’s houses, going to the theatre and opera and giving the occasional crushes of their own. And, he thought shrewdly, they would be less strapped for money. David’s purse strings would be loosened and he could have his own carriage again, even a car. It was time he had a car. His cousin Peter had one, and he was not working any harder at Lammeck Alley than Daniel was, or so Daniel told himself.

  And now Davida was coming to visit! He hugged his success to himself like a child with a secret, and glowed whenever he thought about it, sitting at his desk in Lammeck Alley sorting through the piles of ledgers the junior clerks had brought for his approval.

  In fact, his success had more to do with David’s misery than his own powers of persuasion. She had thought at first that her feelings were lacerated beyond repair by Daniel’s behaviour, and that she would never be able to forgive him or to accept his hateful guttersnipe, and all through the late winter weeks and early spring she had glowed with her self-righteous fury. But, as day succeeded day and it became ever more clear that Albert was not going to help her to make life difficult enough for Daniel to force him to leave his Hannah, loneliness for him filled her. In his bachelor days he had been busy with his clubs and his own friends and had come to sit with her and gossip no more than once or twice a week, but she missed him sorely, and once the family’s interest had died down, and there was no one who would listen to her suffering and complaints, there was too much time to think about how much she missed him.

  She missed Mary too, which was a disagreeable surprise. For years Davida had regarded Mary with contempt, considering her weak and stupid for putting up with Emmanuel’s flagrant behaviour. The more Davida had ill used Mary, the more Davida had despised her for not standing pat and refusing to allow it. She had shed no tears at Mary’s death, dismissing Ezra’s Susan, who had, as ‘merely sentimental.’ But now she missed Mary, and often she remembered the days when she visited Eaton Square and sat there chattering away for hours on end and found tears in her eyes.

  So Daniel's patent willingness to forget the outrageous things she has said to Hannah, and Davida knew perfectly well that she used quite appalling language, was balm to her soul. Had anyone spoken so to her nephew Peter about his young wife Judith he would, she knew, never had anything to do with that person again. Peter was quiet and spoke only rarely, but when he did it was to some purpose. Davida quailed when she thought how dreadful she would now feel if Daniel were like Peter.

  But Daniel wasn’t. He had coaxed and persuaded and cajoled at her till she felt her rage subside. Leontine Damont was still unmarried, and who knew what Davida might not be able to arrange? In time perhaps Daniel would see sense and tire of his Hannah, and though divorce was unheard of in respectable Jewish circles, there was a first time for everything. No one would think all that ill of a sensible young man shedding a guttersnipe of a wife who had trapped him into marriage in the first place. And, anyway, there weren’t rally married at all, in a sense. Davida knew perfectly well that a civil marriage was as legally binding as a religious one, but dissolving one would not be difficult, and any succeeding marriage Daniele made could be solemnized in a synagogue, properly, as though hannah had never existed. So Davida thought more and more often, and so she began to make her plans. To be loving to Daniel, even at the cost of visiting his wretched Hannah, made good sense. So it was that she greeted Daniel with a gracious smile when he arrived to collect her from Park Lane at half past three on a bright Sunday afternoon when early daffodils and hyacinths scented the air from the window boxes and the trees in the park blushed a pale green with the promise of a summer. He was very cheerful too, feeling particularly hopeful about the outlook for this afternoon, for Hannah had been playfully mysterious with him about her plans for the day.

  ‘I'm having a tea party,’ she said importantly. ‘No, don’t ask me who is coming. It’s a surprise! It’s my first real one, and I want you to be like one of the guests - I mean, I want it to be as new to you as it is to them so that you can tell me how it all is. Do you understand what I mean?’

  He had laughed, and said he did, although he didn’t quite, but was delighted all the same. Clearly she had chosen to invite some of the neighbours in Paultons Square, with whom they were now on nodding terms, and that would be splendid, for it would mean that when he arrived with Davida there would be others there to take some of the strain out of the situation.

  ‘I’ve got a guest too,’ he said and pinched her cheek. ‘No, if you won’t tell me who yours are, I shan’t tell you who mine is. But you'll be pleased to see her, I know.’

  And the less time you have to think about who will be here the better, he told himself shrewdly. If I say it’s to be Mamma Hannah might stand on her pride and refuse to see her. A fait accompli will be much wiser.

  Rosa Lewis, Hannah, who else? And smiled and said no more. Rosa would be fun to see again, and would impress the family - especially Uncle Alex - and Hannah had a childish desire to do that.

  The ride from Park Lane to Paultons Square was agreeable in the sunshine. Daniel sat beside Davida, very dapper in his light flannel suit and round straw hat, feeling proud of his mother. She looked as handsome as any young man could with a female companion to look impeccably dressed in a hand tailored dark green merino coat and skirt under her duster coat and with her hat swathed in a motoring veil. Her fa
ce peeped out from folds of gauze which hid the softening of the jawline that the years had brought and her cheeks were whipped red by the crisp air. She looked delightful and she knew it.

  ‘Such a charmingly quant corner, my dear,’ Davida murmured as the car chugged its stately way along King’s Road and turned left into Paultons Square, looking at the vista of flat fronted houses marching away round the four sides of the central garden. ‘Later, of course, you'll need to come back to London proper, but for the present, this is very nice. Which house is yours?’

  ‘On the corner,’ he said and frowned. ‘There’s a wretched char-a-banc left outside.’

  ‘Yes dear, so there is. Perhaps someone is to have a ball and they have sent the extra servants in? Although they should have put the vehicle in the mews.’

  ‘We don’t have any mews,’ he said shortly, as the chauffeur brought the car to a stop just in front of the char-a-banc, a gaudily painted open topped vehicle with two rows of polished wooden seats inside. The two horses tossed their heads and snorted, sending clouds of chaff and bran flying from their nosebags. Sparrows came swooping down at once in a great twitter and Davida smiled forbearingly as she climbed out of the car, Daniel helping.

  ‘Never mind, dear. You can send your servant out to tell them to take the thing away.’ She looked back over her shoulder at the vehicle, so incongruous in the quiet square, as Daniel led he way up the steps to the front door.

  He had to use his kay to let them in, somewhat to his chagrin, for he had expected Florrie neat and deft as usual in her frilled uniform, to appear at the door in immediate answer to his ring. As the door swung open wide Florrie appeared at the foot of the stairs, looking a little flustered.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ she said. ‘Oh, sir, I couldn’t get to the door in time, but they want so much tea, you see, and I was just ‘alfway up the stairs with ever such a big tray, so I ‘ad to go the rest of the way,’an I'm very sorry, sir.’