But it was like shrieking in a dream for no one could hear her. The two men were thumping at each other furiously; Basil, for all his lack of Kid’s skill and experience, making good use of his much greater height and dodging and feinting blows while occasionally managing to land one of his own on Harris’s face, which made an easy target for him; whereas Kid Harris had to reach upwards to hit him and so leave his body vulnerable.
The rest of the house had by now become aware of what was happening in the stage box, and people in the gallery were leaning over the rail, at grave risk to themselves, to see all that could be seen and to shout encouragement. In the balconies and the Grand Circle the interest was no less intense, and in the orchestra stalls below people were all looking upwards so that their faces made a white sea in the prevailing colours of red from the plush-covered seats and black from the men’s clothes.
There were people thundering along the passageway outside too, and the door, which Basil had kicked closed behind him now was flung open and three men came pouring in, clearly intending to separate the two fighters and so put an end to the fracas.
But they were too late, for Harris, using every atom of skill he had, had forced Basil to turn round and had pushed him back against the low parapet of the box, and then, punching hard and fast, made him lean back and over as Mildred, now almost frantic with fear and her own rage and excitement, tried to pull Basil back, convinced he was going to fall head first out on to the people below him.
And so he did, for no matter how many people tried to seize on Kid Harris’s pumping elbows as he rained punch after punch on Basil’s rapidly swelling face and bleeding nose, the punishment went on and on and slowly, agonizingly so to Milly as she tried to hold on to him, Basil toppled over the edge of the box and went down, his arms and legs flailing as Kid Harris continued with his relentless steam engine action, his elbows going like pistons and his fists threshing the air.
How she ever got down there she was never to remember. All she knew was that she turned and ran blindly, pushing her way past the men who were still trying to control Kid Harris’s rage and round and down the small flight of stairs that led below, bursting at last through the curtained doorway to where Basil lay, spread out on the floor between the rows of seats, and looking dreadful. On each side of him people milled and chattered, one of them making a loud fuss about how his own neck had been nearly broken when Basil had landed on him from above.
‘I wouldn’t worry, ducks,’ someone said as she flopped down beside Basil and with her hands shaking tried to feel his face to see if he was still breathing. ‘’E didn’t come down fast, and ’e’s that tall ’e was nearly down ’ere before ’is feet left the box, like. And ’e landed on that fat fella there and that made it easier for ’im.’
He was breathing, and she touched his face and he groaned and opened his eyes.
‘Basil?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’ and he closed his eyes with a grimace of pain and she knew her question had been fatuous in the extreme. ‘Oh, you idiot,’ she cried and fumbled in her bodice for the handkerchief she usually kept there, so that she could mop his face. ‘Why did you do anything so stupid? You must have known he would do this to you!’
‘If he’s done anything to you I’ll kill him,’ Basil managed to say hoarsely and then closed his eyes again as tears of pain squeezed out beneath his lids.
‘I – don’t be so stupid –’ she began but then someone was leaning over them and pulling her away.
‘Come on now, Miss. Let the dog see the bleedin’ rabbit. We’ve got a show to get on ’ere and it’s time we was on the way again. Let’s ’ave this fella out somewhere where ’e can get ’isself together and we can all get to rights again –’
There were several of the theatre’s uniformed attendants with the man, who was wearing an evening suit so old that it looked green and so crumpled it looked like an elephant’s skin, and at a sign from him they swooped on Basil and lifted him up, paying no attention to his groans, and carried him out with Mildred hurrying along behind them to the doors at the side, and then along the passageway to the foyer of the theatre. Behind her she heard the orchestra strike up its sprightly music again and then it was muffled as the auditorium doors were closed, and the audience settled down to enjoy the rest of the show for which they had paid, having much enjoyed the impromptu free one they had witnessed during the interval.
Kid Harris was already sitting in the foyer, his legs sprawling as he lay back in a chair that had been fetched from an office, as a woman in a red dress bathed his face with a towel which she dipped from time to time in a bowl of water beside her. As the blood was mopped from his face and transferred to the water it reddened so that it began to match the woman’s gown and, feeling suddenly sick, Mildred turned away and looked to where Basil had been laid down on a bench.
‘You want to clean ’im up, then, ducks?’ someone said and brought a bowl of water to her and after a moment she took the towel she was also given and imitating the actions of the woman attending to Kid, began to clean up Basil’s face as he lay and groaned under her attentions. Slowly the other people began to melt away, going back to more interesting activities, until just the manager and the two men and their attendants were left.
‘I’ll call a coupl’a cabs for you, then?’ The manager was clearly anxious to get rid of them all. ‘You be on you way and no questions asked. I know the Kid, and I don’t want to make nothing nasty out of this. But you’d better be on your way, or we’ll ’ave the bloody rozzers round ’ere making pests o’ themselves when no one wants ’em. Sooner you lot’s gone the better. You’ll take ’im then, Mrs Mendel? An’ then you can take the other one off –’
‘I want a doctor for my brother,’ Mildred said shortly over her shoulder. Under her careful fingers his face was beginning to show more clearly the injuries he had suffered and they were not as bad as she had feared. A rapidly darkening eye, an area of puffiness on the left of his face and a badly swollen lip which had split where it had been pressed against his front teeth seemed to be the worst, though there were other bruises and lacerations of less severity. But she was worried at his dreadful pallor and the way he lay with his eyes half open and showing no real awareness of his surroundings.
‘Take him to the London,’ the woman in the red dress said. Her voice was rather deep and had a familiar ring to it, and Mildred looked at her over her shoulder and the woman looked back at her and raised her brows slightly in a not unfriendly grimace. ‘They’re used to these things there. And they’ll see you get back up West all right. I dare say the boy’ll be all right once he’s had a bit of sleep and a chance to get the stiffness out of his bones. But make sure to keep an eye on how he sleeps. If he sleeps too deep, wake him up. If you have trouble waking him, get the doctor to see him again fast. All right?’
Mildred nodded. ‘Thank you – what about him? Is he all right?’ And she craned her neck to look at Kid Harris, who was still sitting silently, his head a little slumped, paying no attention to anyone.
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ the woman in red said cheerfully. ‘More annoyed with himself than anything else, if I know him. Silly devil –’ And she pushed his shoulder in an oddly playful gesture that made Mildred’s brows snap down.
‘Perhaps he’s hurt too. Perhaps he should be at the hospital,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’ll take him. He’s a friend of mine and although I’m very angry with him –’ she swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Although I’m angry with both of them, I wouldn’t for the world have anything happen to him. As soon as a cab comes I’ll take them both –’
‘Oh, I can manage this one,’ the woman in red said and stood up more straightly and dusted her hands together. ‘I’ve done it often enough before. Great shlemiel that he is. Been doing it for years for him, come to that.’
She lifted her head and looked at Mildred and smiled widely at the sight of her frown. ‘Don’t look like that,’ she said. ‘I’m his sister Jessie. And you mu
st be his shicksah, I suppose?’
10
They sat side by side in the echoing space of the marble-floored waiting hall, silent and glum, the thick reek of carbolic and harsh yellow soap sharp in their noses as they listened to the occasional cry of a child or the shout of a distressed patient, and found nothing to say to each other.
Or at least Mildred did not. Jessie Mendel had tried several times to start a conversation, but Mildred had sat mulishly with her mouth clamped shut, refusing to look at her, let alone speak to her. The nurses, blue and white and rustling and deeply disapproving, had taken both Basil and Kid away to cubicles where they had rattled curtains closed upon them, and made it very clear that neither of the women was at all welcome. They had to sit and wait, and although Mildred had tried to use the sort of imperious West End voice she had heard her father employ to considerable effect in such situations, it had done no good. The senior nurse, a girl probably younger than Mildred, had looked at her down her snub nose and said icily, ‘Only patients are permitted to enter cubicles. You are not a patient. Be so good as to wait on the bench there. If you are troublesome I shall be obliged to fetch the porter to remove you.’ And Mildred had looked over her shoulder at the large and forbidding man in serge and brass buttons who was standing magisterially still and watchful by the main doors and, furious but impotent to do otherwise, had sat down beside Jessie Mendel.
The great clock ticked on the far wall, ominous and heavy against the white tiles, and still Mildred sat there, staring down at her hands clasped in her lap, and glowered. Her head was bubbling with a tangle of thoughts and feelings and she didn’t know which was distressing her most; her sense of her own stupidity, for it had been stupid in the extreme even to start on this mad trapsing around the East End which had landed her in this dreadful situation; anxiety about Basil’s welfare, for he had looked so very white and sick when he had been half led, half carried to the cubicle by the small and masterful nurse who had taken charge of him; concern about Kid Harris, who had been bleeding steadily if sluggishly from the cut above his eyebrow which had opened up again in the fight; fury with both of them for being so lunatic as to start fighting in such circumstances, and over such a cause – was she not a free person, entitled to make her own decisions about what she did and where she went? How dare they fight over her as though she were a prize in a boxing match? – and, simmering beneath all of it, cold anger at the woman in the red dress, now with a rabbit fur cape slung over it in a casual and rather beguiling manner, who sat beside her.
How dare she, she thought furiously now, how dare she try to be friendly and to start conversations with me after calling me names as she had? Mildred had heard the word shicksah before. Mrs Harris had used it, and she had been very aware of the scorn with which the word had been filled, and knew it to be an insult. And now Kid’s sister had used the same insult; and Mildred sat and glowered and tried to think of what she could do to repay her in kind.
‘Listen, why are you so broigus with me? What have I done?’ Jessie said then and she shoved with her shoulder at Mildred so unexpectedly that she almost lost her balance and was at risk of toppling sideways off the bench. ‘Eh? Why don’t you talk?’
‘It would help if people spoke to me in simple English,’ Mildred said frostily, unable to maintain her sulky silence any longer. ‘If you wish me to understand, you must use words I recognize.’
‘Hoity toity,’ Jessie said equably. ‘What did I say that you couldn’t understand? Broigus, was it? Bad-tempered, that is. Annoyed. Broigus. You can hear what it means – the word sounds like what it is, don’t it?’
‘Not to me,’ Mildred snapped.
‘All right, I’m sorry, already. So I’m not one of you hoicke fenster people –’ She stopped then and laughed, a pleasant sound deep in her throat. ‘You see my problem? Here we all talk this way. You say I’m not talking English to you but to me you don’t talk English when you don’t understand what I say. It may have some Yiddish in it, but believe you me, it’s English. East End English. All right, so I don’t talk like you, who lives where all the houses have high windows, is what I mean to say, but that don’t mean I ain’t got nothing to say you won’t want to hear. Does it?’
For the first time since they arrived at the hospital Mildred turned and looked at her companion. She was sitting very straight, her arms crossed on her bosom and her head tilted a little and as Mildred’s eyes met hers she grinned, showing very white teeth, as uneven as her brother’s, but on her they looked particularly attractive. They gave her a crooked smile that was full of warmth and amusement. ‘Does it?’ she repeated, and smiled even more widely.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Mildred said and turned away. ‘And frankly, I am not particularly interested. I want just to get my brother out of here and take him home. Nothing more.’
‘And what about my brother?’
‘You can take him anywhere you like,’ Mildred said shortly. ‘He’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Hey, I thought you were his friend?’ Jessie said. ‘What sort of a way is that to be with a friend?’
‘He’s no friend of mine,’ Mildred said and let the bitterness display itself in her voice. ‘To beat up my brother like that, and –’
‘I saw it, you know. Saw what happened. I was on the second row, underneath your fancy box in the stalls. I could see. And from where I was sitting it was your brother who went looking for mine. And who, I think, hit out first.’
‘I’m well aware of that. But Kid Harris – he’s the older of the two, and the one with all the – the benefit on his side. He’s a trained boxer. To fight like that with a boy as young as Basil, and to throw him out of the box like that – he could have killed him.’ Mildred’s voice began to rise as her anger rekindled. ‘It was the most stupid and dangerous thing anyone could possibly have done, but he didn’t stop to think. He just threw him out of the box and –’
‘Ah, poppycock!’ Jessie Mendel said and laughed aloud. ‘I tell you, I saw what happened. That box wasn’t more’n ten feet above the ground, and your brother’s a good six-footer ain’t he? Lizah hung him by his ankles so he had only a couple of feet to go, and he made sure he landed on a nice fat ’un. Believe me, your brother was hurt more in his dignity than what he was in his head.’
‘And then, how dare you,’ Mildred said, refusing even to contemplate the possibility that she might be right about what Kid Harris had done. ‘How dare you call me names?’
Jessie’s eyes widened in genuine amazement. ‘Names? What names did I call you?’
Mildred took a deep breath. ‘That word that – schick – something.’
‘Shicksah? It means a girl who isn’t Jewish! By some people, I can tell you, that ain’t no insult. It’s a compliment. No one’d choose to be a Jew, not if they could be born to be West End madams like you. You want that I should shout Jew girl after you in the street the way I’ve had it shouted after me, sometimes? I don’t like it when they do it, but I don’t see it as an insult, on account of it’s what I am. And shicksah is what you are. A girl who isn’t Jewish.’
Mildred sat and stared at her, taken aback. The other woman smiled at her, friendly still, and shook her head. ‘You’re tired, that’s what it is. Tired and upset. It made you br – it made you take offence. Being worried does it to some people, don’t it? Me, when I get worried, I eat.’ She shook her head in mock self reproof. ‘My Momma and Poppa have another of their fights, and my Poppa comes round and wants to stay at my house, so what do I do? I don’t shout at him and tell the silly old fool to go home the way I should. I make up a bed for him and then I go eat a plate of bagels and herring. My husband died, God rest his wicked soul, and I tell you, I got half as big again.’ She looked down at herself, and unfolded her arms and smoothed her hands proudly over the front of her dress. ‘Now I got me a new fella paying me some attention and I ain’t eating no more. And Gotse Dank, it shows. Not bad, eh? Turn of the year, I weighed thirteen stone. Now I
’m down to eleven and a half. Six weeks of loving – it does a lot for a woman.’
Suddenly Mildred felt her face go hot. She had been so pleased with herself and her appearance because she had plumped up during this past four or five months, since she had been seeing Kid Harris, but now she was embarrassed, as though Jessie had made her think disgusting thoughts.
‘Well, anyway –’ she began and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘I wish they’d hurry up! I want to take Basil home as soon as possible. If it gets much later, Papa may be home and then –’ She stopped and bit her lip. Getting home again was indeed going to be a very real problem, for now it was well past eleven o’clock, and there was no sign that Basil was to be released to her care yet. But that was a bridge, she told herself sententiously, to be dealt with when it came into view.
‘Listen, why don’t you stay down here, with me? Let your brother go home his way – put him in a cab – and no one won’t say nothing. Fellas, they can stay out as late as they like, come home looking like something the cat would be ashamed to know, let alone to bring in, and no one says nothing. But for a woman –’ She shook her head. ‘For a woman, and a single one at that, it ain’t so easy. So stay here, tell your brother to cook up some tale or other and slip home tomorrow when it’s quiet and no one won’t notice.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Mildred said shortly. ‘If I’m not at breakfast they will look in my room and then everyone will know at once that I’ve been away all night.’
‘At breakfast? You all sit down to breakfast like it was a supper?’
Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles) Page 11