‘Silly,’ she said aloud, and pushed her feet into her slippers and began the slow painful descent of the stairs.
The bell rang again, impatiently, a double ring, and she said aloud, ‘All right, all right! I'm coming!’ even though she knew she could not be heard. She could see a shape against the stained glass insets on the door and she squinted a little, trying to identify who it might be, but the shape was ill defined, refracted by the shattered light.
She stood in front of the door for a moment and then opened it cautiously a few inches.
The light was lowering now as the sun moved further down the sky and the figure in front of her was hard to see. She squinted again and said carefully, ‘Yes?’
‘I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am.’ It was a soft drawling voice with a unfamiliar accent, a high voice. Hannah looked closer, puzzled. The figure was wearing trousers and a shirt and had a cloth cap on its head and she had thought, just for a moment, that it was a man. Now she could the face, and relaxed a little. A round face, soft and young. A girls.
‘Yes?’ she said again.
‘I'm looking for a Lady Lammeck? I was told that this was the Lammeck home and … but you are, aren’t you? You're Lady Lammeck. I can see you are.’
Hannah frowned and stepped back a little, pushing the door almost closed.
‘What d'you mean, you can see I am?’ she said, sharply. You can’t see me properly at all.’
The girl smiled widely, showing very white teeth. ‘I can see you hair, ma'am. Red hair. Like mine. She lifted her hand and took her cap off and a tangle of hair fell over her shoulders, red coppery hair, just as Hannah’s own had been.
She stood there for a long moment, listening to her pulse beating thickly in her ears, staring at the thin girl in her shabby shirt and trousers and with a mass of red hair framing her face, not daring to think, not daring to hope, only daring to breathe slowly, regularly, counting each breath. One, two, three.
‘I'm Lee,’ she girl said ‘Lee Lammeck. I said I’d come and find you, ever since I was a kid. And now I have. Do I call you grandma, or would you prefer something else?’
69
Lee was sitting on the floor, her knees hunched up and her arms hugging them, while Hannah sat very upright in her high backed chair on the other side of the fireplace. The small table with the remains of their supper stood on one side and Hannah looked at it and thought, I ought to clear that up But she did not move.
Lee had been quite calm about it. She had come to London to find her grandmother, and she had every intention of staying with her, now that she had found her.
‘You’ve got room, haven’t you? Or would I be trouble to have around? I'm not usually. I'm used to living in other peoples houses.’
‘No trouble at all,’ Hannah said. ‘And yes, I have room. Too much room.’
‘I can see that.’ She looked around consideringly. ‘I was told you're rich, and you sure are. Looks like you're loaded, in fact.’
Hannah frowned a little at that. ‘I don’t talk about money,’ she said stiffly.
Lee nodded. ‘That sure as hell proves you got a lot of it. You can ignore it when you're loaded. When you're not it sort of pushes itself at you, know what I mean?’
‘I know,’ Hannah said. ‘I was born in he East End.’
‘Oh? Where’s that?’
‘Where poor people are born.’
‘I was born in san Francisco,’ Lee said after a moment. ‘Or so I'm told.’
Hannah took a deep breath. So far she had hardly dared to speak to the girl at all. Her own feelings were in far too great a turmoil to be able to say much and the girl herself seemed so contained and remote, somehow. So, she had offered her supper and Lee had accepted calmly and helped her make omelettes for them both, and chattered on about her journey, about how long it had taken her to save the money to buy an air ticket by working as a waitress and in a summer camp and as a baby sitter, and how dramatic the world look from so far up and Hannah had listened and watched the girl’s face and the way the light played on her hair and lit it to that familiar bronze sheen that used to look back at her from her own mirror.
And now she cold wait no longer.
‘Lee,’ she said. ‘Your mother. Tell me about Marie.’
The girl looked up at her, swinging her head so that the mass of hair covered half her face and she could hide behind it. All Hannah could see was one eye staring watchfully at her.
‘What about her?’
‘Where is she? Why hasn’t she been in touch with me all these years? And Rupert, your father, what about him?’
‘Oh, he’s dead,’ Lee said easily and looked away, staring at the window which the summer twilight was now deepening to a dusky blue.
‘Oh,’ Hannah said blankly, and she felt a little chill inside her. Was this child as cold as she seemed? ‘I'm sorry.’
Lee shrugged. ‘Why should you be? I mean, from my point of view, gee, I never even saw him! He was gone before I was born, they told me, and I never knew anything about him till after he died.’
‘They told you - who told you?’
‘Aunt Pearl,’ Lee said. ‘I lived with Aunt Pearl, you see. In Sacramento. She took me after … when I was four. I lived with her ever since, till she died last year. They tried to put me in a Home then you know? In California they’ve got all these crazy laws about how old kids have to be to be left in peace to live on their own, and they tried to put me in a Home, like I’d done something and I never did a thing I shouldn’t! Aunt Pearl would'a killed me if I had. So when she died, and they started talking about a Home, I though hell, no, and I lit out.’
‘Lit out?’
‘Went to New York. Hitched, y'know? Wow it was tough sometimes. Some of these truck drivers think that just because you want a ride you're… well never mind. Anyway, I got to New York and - ’
‘But Marie. Your mother,’ Hannah said, holding onto the thread tightly. There was a lot to hear about Lee, but first things first, she told herself. First things first. ‘Marie?’
Lee sat silently staring out at the dark square, then said abruptly, ‘I’d rather not talk about her.’
The silence between them lengthened and then Lee said angrily, ‘Oh, hell! What can I do? You were her mother so I guess … She took coke, okay? So Aunt Pearl said, anyway. Got into a whole coke bit and that did it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Hannah said carefully. ‘I'm sorry, but I don’t understand.’
‘What don’t you understand? That your daughter was a lousy addict. Spent most of her time so stoned she couldn’t even talk, let alone take care of a kid? I remember it, you know that? I remember being in that apartment and she lying there breathing so loud I could … and so goddam hungry I didn’t know … A w, hell, she’s dead, Okay? And Aunt Pearl was her friend and she found her dead and took me in and that’s all. Now, can we lay off my mother? I know you had to be told, but it … I jusy don’t like talk about it. I told you what I know, now leave it alone already.’
Hannah said nothing. There was nothing she could say. She sat in the darkening drawing room remembering and trying not to see Marie in a high chair, Marie in a frilled white dress going to a children’s party, Marie and Charles in blue holland overalls painting at the big nursery table.
‘I'm sorry,’ she said then. ‘Sorry for you, sorry for me. Sorry for Marie. I don;t know what I did wrong, but I … her father died when she was a baby, I … I did my best. But is wasn’t enough.’
‘Listen,’ Lee said and there was a rough anger in her voice. I'll tell you what Aunt Pearl told me, okay? That some people are born to it, you know? Born to misery, I mean. That is it no one’s fault it happens, that you can be the best friend that a person ever had, the best kid, the best parent, I guess, bit no matter what, they just don’t make it. Aunt Pearl was the greatest friend anyone could have had. What she did for my mother, well, I'll tell you she was the greatest, fantastic. And she learned not to blame herself and she taught me not t
o blame myself, and now I'm telling you. None of this had anything to do with anyone except my mother, okay? You don’t own people just because you care about ‘em. You do what you can and the rest is up to them. That’s what Aunt Pearl said.’
‘Aunt Pearl sounds every special,’ Hannah said quietly.
‘She was. The best there was. She died bad, too, didn’t deserve it. She had cancer in the breast. Awful.’
Lee stretched suddenly and yawned, opening her mouth wide and Hannah saw the gleam of her teeth in the darkness. ‘And here I am. I got here! I always said I would. Aunt Pearl told me I had this high toned family back in London, and if I ever needed any help, go find ‘em. So here I am. Jeeze, it wasn’t easy, you know that? Getting a passport and all. I had to lie like crazy but I got it, and I raised the money and I kept out of their goddam Home and I made it! And from where I'm sitting that sure is something.’
‘Indeed it is,’ Hannah said, and felt a sudden warmth for this strange sharp girl. It wasn’t just that she looked so like Hannah herself at her age. It was the determination in her, the strength in her that made Hannah feel good and whole again. Without thinking she put out one hand and a said, ‘I'm so glad you did. Glad you made it. I think I’ve been waiting for you.’
Lee sat in the darkness for a moment and then she put out one hand too and took Hannah’s in her rough young fingers.
‘It’s okay, then? You want me to stay?’
‘I sure do,’ Hannah said, and laughed softly in the dark room, enjoying her moment of affectionate mockery. ‘I sure do.’
‘Thanks awfully,’ Lee said with a neat imitation of an English voice. ‘Thanks most awfully awfully.’
And so it was that at the age of sixty-four Hannah started to live again. It seemed to her sometimes over the next ten years, that this was what she had been born for, what all the sad and painful years had been leading to, making a haven for this tough little scrap of a girl who had, in her own way, suffered as much as her grandmother had. Nurturing her and teaching her and protecting her and loving her, watching her lose, slowly, her defensive edginess and become a laughing relaxed and happy person. That was what life was for. Even Florrie seemed to have a new lease on life with a young one in the house. She nagged less and sang more, and fussed over both of them with ill concealed delight.
Together they explored the East End where Hannah had been born, for Lee had a hunger for information about the past that was almost insatiable, and, slowly because of Hannah’s arthritis, they walked through the Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road as Hannah told Lee stories of the old days, and how it had been to live in these tight, mean hungry street.
Many of them were gone now of course; where Antcliff Street had been there were now great tower blocks of flats set at angles in rough litter-covered grass. Sidney Street was still there and so was Jubilee Street, though largely rebuilt on the bombed sites of long dead houses and little shops, but Bromehead Road and Bromehead street had gone, and the market stalls had gone. Now there were black and Asian faces where once had been Jewish curls and old women in sheitels and men with their prayer shawls dangling beneath their waistcoats.
Lee stared and listened and asked questions and Hannah found herself, to her own surprise at first, talking about Charles and how he had come to these streets to fight for a better world with the blackshirt marchers, how he had burned out his young life fighting, fighting, fighting. Lee had lifted her chin in exaltation at this story, and at last Hannah had stopped mourning for the loss of Charles and was able to celebrate the fact that he had lived. So his life had been short? What matter when it had been so important and so well used? True, he had died alone and lonely in a foreign country. But what matter when he lived on now in this granddaughter of hers whom he would have loved as much as Lee had come to love his memory? Charles lived again, and lived well, because of Lee.
Lee and Uncle Alex took to each other with a delight that made Hannah wan to weep with sheer pleasure. The old man, now almost ninety, would sit in his armchair when they went to visit him, and laugh and tease Lee as though he were still a sprightly sixty, and she teased him too, asking him why he had never married, just for the joy of hearing him giggle wickedly and tell her that he had been too clever.
‘I tell you, dolly,’ he would say in his thin old voice. ‘I tell you, I had such girls! They were crazy for me, but I had my Hannah to worry over so that did I want with wives and more children! I had my Hannah and how she’s got you. It all comes out in the wash, hey? That’s what my Momma Rivka used to say, in the heim. It all comes out in the wash.’
One of Hannah’s greatest delights was to discover that Lee had inherited her grandmother’s gift for design and sewing. She told Hannah very quickly after arriving that she had no notion of being a layabout.
‘I'm going to get a job, she said. ‘I'll find something to do. I gotta be independent, you know? I don’t take no handouts from no one. I worked for Aunt Pearl, soon’s I left school and I'll work now.’
‘You don’t have to, Lee,’ Hannah said, tentatively. ‘I don’t mean I'll take care of you, though I would, gladly, but you’ve got your own money. Marie, your mother, only drew the income from hers. The capital’s considerable by now, I imagine. All you have to do is go to Lammeck Alley. Once they know your Mare’s daughter, then, there it will be. You'll have all the money you need.’
‘To hell with that,’ Lee said, her voice flat. ‘To hell with that. Much good it did my mother to have it. She didn’t work for it, so she used it for junk. She killed herself with it. Didn’t' she? Not me. Not nohow, not ever. I'm going to work for my money. Anyway, I don’t give a good goddam for money, not for itself. It’s what you do that matters. What you create with your own head and your own hands. No handouts for me. I'm going to get work of my own.’
The work she got was in a dress shop and after listening to her and watching for a year, Hannah suggested, tentatively, that maybe it would be an idea to have a shop of her own.
‘Not a handout,’ she assured Lee hastily. ‘I promise you not a handout. It’s something that interests me, too, and maybe you could design your own, just as I did when I was Mary Bee Couturiere.’
And so it happened. By the time Uncle Alex died sweetly and contentedly in his sleep just after his ninety-first birthday, Lee had her shop just around the corner from Paultons Square in King’s Road.
‘Not the smartest place in the world, I grant you,’ Hannah had said when they found the premises. ‘But if you do good things people'll come to you, and districts change. You never know. King’s Road could turn out to be a good place to have a shop.’
She was right, of course. By the time Lee’s twenty-fifth birthday came, her boutique was regarded as one of the best in London. She had her own workshops behind it and was turning out clothes that every magazine wanted to write about and every smart woman wanted to wear. Never mind Courrèges and Quant, it was Lee Lammeck clothes they all wanted. And bought and talked about and feted Lee and she and Hannah laughed over the way it was all happening again.
Lee found a particular delight in tracing the similarities between herself and her granddaughter’s history, telling every interviewer that her grandmother had been to the 1920' what she, Lee, was now, forty years later.
And aged seventy-two, with her hair now completely white and her back as stiff as ever and her arthritis gripping her ever more tightly, Hannah found herself once again a person of fashion. It amused her immensely and when she planned a special birthday party for Lee, she made up an invitation list that was starred with famous names. Pop singers and photographers, actors and politicians, everyone who was anyone was invited. It was the biggest party of the year, one of the highlights of the Swinging Sixties world that London had become.
But Hannah did not invite only the rich and famous, any more than she had all those years ago when she and Marcus had entertained the Prince of Wales in their house in Paultons Square. She invited her cousins and their children too, though this
time the difference between the children and Lazar and Rivka and the new aristocracy of England was difficult to see. For they came to the party in Paultons Square in their Bentleys and Mercedes, dressed and bejewelled as richly as anyone else, and spoke in the same voices with the same sort of words, expressing the same sort of sentiments. The difference had melted away in three generations. The poverty, the loneliness, the alienation of the immigrant East Enders were all gone.
One of the guests was Adam Lazar, the son of Lionel. A tall quiet young man with a passion for learning that Hannah found very reminiscent of his long dead grandfather David and David’s father, Uncle Benjamin. He had been away working in America for the past five years and he and Lee had no met before.
Hannah watched them talk and laugh and dance together at Lee’s twenty-fifth birthday party and knew that a new phase was about to begin, that a new generation was waiting to take the stage. And somewhere deep within herself she knew that the seeds of a new loneliness were being sown for her. And she was right, because in May 1967 Lee Lammeck married Dr Adam Lazar at the New West End synagogue at the smartest wedding of the year. Their shared relation, grandmother and great cousin Hannah was the most honoured guest. She sat at the top table as the other guests danced and ate and drank and danced again and watched them and thought her quiet thoughts. She was to be alone again, for Adam had an important research job to return to in California, and Lee was to accompany him. Hannah, almost seventy-five, could have gone with them; both had begged her to, but she shook her head and patted their cheeks and told them, no.
‘I belong here,’ she said.’ Born and bred a Londoner, you know that. My parents and my grandparents had to wander, you have to wander. But me, I'm one of the few who stay put. So I'm staying here. Come and visit me when you can. The house will always be here and I'll always be in it. G'ey g'zint.' And she smiled at herself for speaking Yiddish for she never had. But it was necessary, for that was what Uncle Alex would have said to them. ‘G'ey g'zint.' Go in good health.
The Running Years Page 69