She slid a glance at Marcus, mockingly, and he raised his eyebrows at her in a parody of husbandly reproof.
‘To tell you the truth, Uncle Alex, I had remarkably little to do with it all,’ Hannah said sweetly. Marie, and Marcus, were the ones who were most busy. He’s a bit of a bully, you know.’
‘She’s lying in her teeth,’ Marcus said. ‘Ignore the woman - she’s only my wife - and come and have another drink with me. You're looking a bit too sober for my liking.’ The two mean weaved their way across the crowded floor towards a bar which had been set up on the far side.
Hannah watched them go, smiling a little indulgently, happy to see them so comfortable together, and then smiled even more widely as Jake went swooping by with a Damont cousin in his arms, dancing with all the New York style he could muster. Since coming back from his eighteen months there with Solly, he’d been more American than the movies, something which had helped a lot with Marie. She had scorned her uncles whilst they were London East Enders, but New York East Siders were different - they had a special classiness of their own that made them socially acceptable to her, and she was very gracious with them these days.
Indeed, she was very gracious with everyone, Hannah thought happily, sweeping the crowded floor with her gaze, looking for her. It had been difficult, that meeting at Lausanne, over six months ago. Hannah had been afraid that Marie would sulk and be difficult, or worse still refuse to accept Marcus as a stepfather, for their previous encounters had not been happy ones. But to her intense relief Marie had not only accepted him, she had been delighted with her mother’s news.
‘Does that make Daphne my aunt, then?’ she demanded. ‘I would like that, having a countess for an aunt, and you couldn’t stop me from being friends with my own aunt, could you, Marcus!’ She had laughed at that, giving him a wicked little sideway glance. ‘I mean, you were madly annoyed at me for going to her parties, weren’t you? And sent me home like a baby. But you couldn’t do that if she were my aunt, could you?’
‘You were younger than, my dear,’ he said gravely, ‘and less aware of the ways of the world. Now you’ve been here to school and learned a little more, I think you'll understand more about how to behave, and also why I was so tiresome when we last met. I shan’t be a nasty step-papa, promise you.’
‘I shouldn’t let you be,’ she had said airily, and for a moment Hannah felt her belly lurch with apprehension, but then relaxed as she realized all would be well. Marcus would be tactful with her and Marie was genuinely pleased about their marriage, and threw herself with great delight into the business of planning the wedding. Hannah was glad to let her do so, for it gave the child something to keep her busy after her time at the school ended in September , and also keep her mind off the change in her personal fortunes. For in August Albert died. He was not all that old, just reaching his sixtieth birthday, but he had chosen to retire from Lammeck Alley when his brothers did, though they were older than he and ready to do so, and somehow he had never really found his life worth living after that. He had left the bulk of his fortune to his granddaughter, Mary Bloomah Lammcek, to he hers absolutely when she reached her eighteenth birthday.
Hannah was shocked by that. It was not that she did not want her child to be the heiress to such a sum (for Albert, although he had been a prodigal spender, had left a sizeable fortune). Any mother would want it for her daughter. But she knew her girl, and it frightened her to think of her having the use of so much at so young an age. Marcus shared her concern, and it was he who told Marie of her inheritance in such a way that she did not fully realize how much it was, nor that she could have control of it in just over a year’s time.
‘The less she knows the better.’ Marcus said. ‘I'll see to the investments, and we'll try to keep any fuss about it to a minimum. Let her have her head with the wedding, my love, and that will help.’
Marie had shown a remarkable skill for one so young in planning a big party, and Hannah had greatly enjoyed watching her busy with her lists and her plans and her estimates and her suggested menus and her decoration schemes. It was all so like the way she had been herself all those years ago planning Mary’s ball for the old King.
There had been one altercation to mar everyone’s pleasure in the coming wedding, and that had been Hannah’s insistence that all her East End relatives be invited. Marie’s brow had darkened in the old childish way, and she had expostulated bitterly, but Hannah had been adamant. It had been Marcus who had managed to persuade Marie that having an invitation list that covered every sort of society was extremely chic. He pointed out the way his sister the countess filled her parties with crooners and jazz players and boxers, anyone who was fashionable, and managed to convince Marie that a party that included Uncle Reuben and Aunt Minnie’s great brood with all their husbands and wives and in-laws and children would be as chic as any number of jazz players and boxers. Amazingly she believed him.
‘I’d rather leave Daphne and Rupert out,’ Marcus had said to Hannah over dinner at his flat that evening. ‘How I ever come to have so disreputable a pair as my closest kin I'll never know. Someone up there must hate me. Mind you, they say the same about me they think me intensely boring. Still, what can I do? They're my sister and brother and Marie would never forgive me if i didn’t ask her wretched countess of a new aunt! You don’t want that ice, do you Hannah, my darling Say you don’t and come to bed.
That was the silliest part of that summer and autumn and early winter of 1926; their pretence that they were not yet married. It would have made no different to anyone at all if they had chosen to set up house together as soon as they came home from Lausanne, indeed Florrie and Bet expected him to move in to Paultons Square. But, perversely, they chose to wait until the ‘proper' wedding was over. So, all through those long month each of them lived in their own home, and worked at their own work. They made love whenever they could, either at Marcus’s flat or at Paultons Square on the rare occasions when no one was at home to interrupt or disturb them. It was mad, but it was fun and it also had another function; it gave Hannah the time she do badly needed. Time to make the move from her old life to her new one, time to realize that she was not some sort of threat to Marcus, that she could be, eventually, the happy successful wife she so wanted to be.
And now, sitting here at her own wedding party at the savoy hotel, watching the great banqueting suite pulsating with people dancing to celebrate their happiness, she felt deeply content. The metamorphosis was complete, she told herself. She was happy, and she could go on being happy.
The music changed and the floor thinned out a little and she could see the children across on the other side of the room. ‘I shouldn’t call them that,’ she thought, and smiled at herself. Children, with Charles, newly home form his prolonged stay in Amsterdam, so tall and handsome, and Marie so exquisitely grown up as she was! Seventeen now. It didn’t seem possible.
They were standing side by side near the bar where Marcus was still talking to Uncle Alex, and there was something in the way Charles was hovering over Marie that made Hannah more watchful for a moment. He had been different somehow, since coming home, still besotted with his politics, of course, though less involved with religion. It seemed as though his long period of study with Henk Damont in Amsterdam and burned that passion out of him. He had been Barmitzvah as he had said he would be, shortly after return to London, at a quiet service one very wet morning at a synagogue where none of the family was particularly well known, so that there was the minimum of fuss, and then had spent less and less time with David at his yeshivah, much to David’s regret, though he did not question it. Charles no longer wished to study the word of God? All right, that was his affair and God’s. He, David, would turn his attention to his own boy Lionel, a precocious lad of nearly seven. One day he would be David’s great scholar, since Charles had decided to abdicate that role.
Charles instead began to work at a settlement, in Jubilee Street, not far from David’s home, running a youth club for t
he local children and teaching them politics with every chance he got. His days were largely his own and once Marie had come home he had taken to spending more and more time with her, helping her with her planning, running errands for her willingly. Hannah had been delighted to see it. She had tried to rear them as happy brother and sister, and she had been sad when a split appeared between them as it had after he had left Eton. To see them so close again now was warming. Bu she watched them now across the ballroom floor and wondered. Brother and sister? Was it really like that? Or had it changed? There was something about Charles’s posture as he stood watchfully beside Marie that made her dubious.
Marie was talking to a tall young man, and Hannah wondered who it was. She could not see clearly from this distance and he had his back to her. She got up, pushing aside the table bedecked with flowers at which she had been sitting, and began to move across towards the little group there by the bar.
But Marcus was back. He slid his hand under her elbow and bent his head and whispered, ‘Isn’t this exciting? Imagine, married! At last!’
‘Idiot!’ she sad, and lifted her face and kissed him, and he grinned at her, cheerfully. ‘Where were you heading so purposefully?
‘What? Oh, Marie. I thought - I wanted to tell her how lovely she looks. And how beautifully everything went. And how happy I was in the synagogue this morning. All those things.’
‘And I thought you were going to scold her,’ he said lightly. ‘You had that mother-hen look on your face.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said consideringly, and then made a face. ‘I was a bit bothered. Charles - ‘ She turned her head to look for them again. ‘Look at him. He looks so … I'm not sure. What do you think?’
The dancers who had been clustered in the way moved a little and she could see where the trio had been, but only Charles was there now and she frowned, for he was leaning against the bar, looking, she thought rather pale.
‘I thought Marie was there,’ she said, and began to move again towards Charles. Marcus followed her.
‘Hello, my boy,’ Marcus said. ‘Why so pale, why so wan, alone and palely loitering? Has the Belle Dame - whoever she was - been at you?’
Charles looked up and made a little grimace. ‘Do me a favour, Uncle Marcus, I can do without the gags. I'm just a bit bored, if you must know. I know it’s your wedding, but really, all this - ‘ he swept his hand out in a comprehensive gesture. ‘It’s really obscene, isn’t it?’
‘Obscene?’ Marcus said, interested. ‘Where? Who’s being obscene?’
Charles shook his head irritably. ‘You know quite well what I mean, I’ve said it often enough.’
‘Yes, you’ve said it. And you're right, up to a point. A lot of rich people stuffing themselves and drinking too much when half the world is starving. But there are other values as well as concern for the poor, you know.’
‘I don’t know of any,’ Charles said harshly.
‘Oh, family feeling, and giving pleasure to others, and rites of passage to make people happy about the way their experience changes - things like that! You can’t make the poor any happier just by making the better off miserable.’
‘That’s a specious argument, and well you know it,’ Charles began hotly, but Hannah moved between them and took each of them by the elbow. ‘I'm damned if I'll have politics at my wedding,’ she said lightly. ‘Charles, my love, where’s Marie? I wanted to tell her how clever and lovely and altogether splendid she - ’
‘Gone,’ Charles said shortly.
Hannah' eyebrows snapped down. ‘Gone? Where?’
He looked at her with a sharp little glance from dark eyes that seemed suddenly to be thick with tears though he was quite dry eyed. ‘She’s got a tendency to slope off from weddings, hasn’t she, our Marie? But no need for any worries, so don’t look like that! She’s gone with your brother, Marcus. He’s taking her on to a party. Apparently the Prince of Wales will be there, no less, and you know our Marie. can’t resist a name and never could. Told me to tell you, so I'm telling you.’ He pulled away from her a little abruptly and moved across the big room to sit beside David and his family and talk earnestly to them.
Hannah watched him go and frowned and then Marcus said softly, ‘Oh dear,’ and she turned and looked up at him, her forehead creased.
‘I think now what’s happening to our Charles,’ Marcus said. ‘Bad enough the poor chap’s been bitten by this wretched political bug. Add love on and he’s really floundering.’
She turned to him and put her arms up so that they could dance, for the music had started again and she could see her cousin Leon moving purposefully towards her and she wanted to talk.
They moved through a few tuns, dancing easily and comfortably as they always did, enjoying the contact with each other, and then she said abruptly. ‘Do you really think that’s what’s happened? They grew up together. People who were children together don’t fall in love, do they?’
‘It’s been known,’ he said. ‘And they’ve been apart a lot lately. She’s changed a lot, you know. Since Lausanne. Much less petulant, and very - oh, I suppose poised is the word. I don’t like it, sounds like a damned magazine, but if fits her. She’s a very handsome young lady, your Marie and very beguiling. I can see he’d be bowled over by the change in her.’
‘Has he changed, too, then? I thought he had. He seems bigger somehow, since he got back from Holland. And just as involved with his ideas, but less well, childish about them them than he was. They seem more part of him. Will it be all right for him, Marcus? Will she see the change in him and be bowled over too?’
‘Darling, I don’t know.’ He held her close as the music changed yet again, sliding into a very romantic waltz. ‘And stop trying to be Mrs God. I know you’d like to run their lives for them and make it all cozy and tidy, but you can’t, Leave them to sort out their feelings, and concentrate on ours. Have you told me today how much you love me?’
‘Can’t you remember?’
‘I don’t choose to. Tell me now.’
She told him, and they danced closer still and she felt her cheek against his and his back strong and relaxed under her fingers and she knew she was blessed. But even while she revelled in her own happiness, dancing at her own wedding, she watched Charles sitting alone now on the far side of the room and staring down at his fingers and thought about her Marie, out somewhere with Rupert. It shouldn’t worry her, for Rupert was a grown man, well able to take care of any girl he escorted. So what she was worried?
It’s a habit, she told herself, and looked up at Marcus and kissed his cheek. A bad habit worrying about Marie. High time I stopped it. She'll be fine.
59
‘So, then what happens?’ the Prince said, enthralled. Marcus looked across the room and caught Hannah’s eye and she nearly exploded into laughter but somehow managed to keep her face straight.
‘What happens?’ Sadie said. ‘I tell you, it’s like nothing you never saw in your whole life! They go meshuggah - ’
‘Meshuggah?’ murmured the Prince.
‘Crazy! Mad!’ Sadie made a face, twisting her cheeks and mouth into an extraordinary grimace and crossing her eyes ferociously and the Prince blinked. ‘They carry on like there’s never been no fish brought into the place before, they jump up and down, they holler, they swear, you should forgive me mentioned such vulgarity to such a person as yourself, they hit each other sometimes but mind you, no hard feelings. Business is business and when it looks like someone else is gettin' a barrel of herring you got a fancy for, and what you know is the best, sure you get broigus and hit out a bit - ’
‘Broigus?’
‘Oy, Your Majesty, imagine me giving you a lesson in Yiddish!’ Sadie beamed hugely. ‘Broigus means annoyed, put out, not very pleased, you know?’
‘I'm beginning to know,’ the Prince said. ‘Now, what was the other word you told me? Maven. One who knows. I trust I'm beginning to be a maven - and to help you be a maven - Mrs Lazar, may I explain to you that it
isn’t correct to address me as majesty. Sir will do.’
Marcus had moved across the room to stand beside Hannah. He murmured in her ear, 'I don’t think I believe this. I know he fusses about democracy and getting to know the people, but finding out from Cousin Sadie how to run a fish shop in the Mile End Road is taking it to the outside edge of enough - she'll be offering take him with to Billingsgate next.’
‘I tell you, sir, Your Majesty,’ Sadie said with an even wider beam, leaning forwards to tap the Prince’s arm with a large red hand, much bedecked with garnets. ‘I'll tell you what. You feel like getting up a bit early one morning? I'll take you down the market, show you the ropes! We'll buy the fish, you'll come back to my place, have a cupper coffee, and onion platsel maybe, and a nice bit of fried halibut - ’
‘Too kind, but I rather think that will be difficult. Other demands you know, other demands, although it’s all so interesting, Mrs Lazar, I truly regret it is not possible. But I wish your business every success in the future, indeed I do. I trust you will - er - always get the barrels of herrings that you fancy.’
‘From your mouth to God’s ears!’ Sadie said and clasped her hand together prayerfully.
Someone on the other side of the room changed the record on the gramophone and the rhythm of the ‘Black Bottom' scattered people into dancing couples and the Prince turned away to talk to Lady Ingham. Sadie sat and fanned herself happily, revelling at being at so smart a party. ‘Although,’ she later told her enthralled cutomers, ‘It wasn’t what you might call a proper catered affair. I mean, no food as you’d notice, just a few bits ‘o this and that on a plate, and more cocktails than I’ve had chicken soup, I tell you. Still, what do you expect of these fancy people?’
Hannah relaxed. She’d been doubtful about this party but Marcus had insisted and he had been right. He had become one of the Prince of Wales’s most trusted advisers during the year they had been married, even though Marcus disapproved of some of the Princes' other friends, and was not afraid to say so, but the Prince respected his views and allowed him to say what he thought. They saw a great deal of him though usually within the same close circle of familiar people. But Marcus had told her the Prince wanted to know more about other people in his country, and it had been Marcus’s idea that they give a party that mixed both sides of their family, to give the Prince the chance he wanted. So here were several of the Lazar clan including David and his Sonia together with the regular aristocratic crows. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.
The Running Years Page 59