The cat was still yowling, and she turned in the direction of the sound before replying.
‘You do not understand,’ she said. ‘He loves me. He wants to protect me.’
Ted opened his mouth to argue but stopped himself. She was right. He didn’t understand this mentality and never would, but it didn’t matter. One day he’d have to confront this tyrant and tell him that he couldn’t live his daughter’s life, but now he just wanted to relish this fantastic moment.
She was stroking his cheek. ‘We will meet in town. Like first time, yes?’
She was looking up at him and he bent down and crushed her mouth with kisses while his hungry hands slid down the front of her blouse, tentatively at first, until they found her breasts and he almost stopped breathing as he felt their softness and warmth.
She made a small movement as though to stop him but closed her eyes and threw her head back as she surrendered to the urgency of his touch.
The cat was shrieking in the relentless throes of mating, providing an unsettling soundtrack to their lovemaking.
‘I’m so happy, I could die right now,’ he murmured. His own words took him by surprise, and the rawness of his emotion brought tears to his eyes. No matter what happened, he would never let her go again.
Chapter 38
Kath was sweeping the hall when she noticed the corner of a white envelope poking under her front door. She rested the broom against the wall and picked it up. Apart from the occasional get well card for Meggsie, and a few words of encouragement written by one of the schoolteachers or someone in a nearby street, she rarely received any letters. The envelope didn’t have her name or address on it. Perhaps it was a notice of some kind, advertising a sale or the opening of a new store.
When she tore open the flap and looked inside, her eyes widened. The envelope contained the thickest wad of pound notes she’d ever seen outside the cash register in the pub. She checked the envelope again but there was no letter. Sinking into a kitchen chair, she glanced around to make sure she wasn’t being watched, and enjoyed feeling the weight of all that money before starting to count it. Fifty pounds! A fortune. She riffled through the notes to make sure she hadn’t overlooked a letter, glanced around, and stuffed the notes hurriedly back into the envelope, elated and uneasy at the same time.
Someone had slipped that money under her door, but who and why? She’d seen enough crime movies with James Cagney, Edward G Robinson and Humphrey Bogart to suspect some ulterior motive. Maybe someone had stolen it and ditched it in a hurry. Perhaps she was being framed.
It flashed through her mind that she could hide the money and pretend she hadn’t seen it, but the crook would probably knock on her door one day and bash the truth out of her. But by then she would have spent it all, and then they’d either kill her or set the cops on her for stealing it.
She slipped her hand into the envelope again and felt the thickness of the wad with longing. All that money. If only she could keep it. She took her old jewellery box from the top of the dresser and jammed the notes inside. For once the box was so full that she had trouble closing the lid. Pushing the box under her pillow, she covered it with her candlewick bedspread and ran across the road to tell Verna Browning.
Grabbing Kath’s arm in excitement, Verna said, ‘What a windfall! Well, you asked for a miracle and you got one.’
Kath looked dubious. ‘But who is it from? I don’t know anyone with that much money. And why didn’t they include a note, or at least write their name?’
‘Maybe they’re shy and don’t want any thanks. In the papers they’re always writing about people making anonymous donations to flood victims, cancer sufferers and suchlike.’
‘Well I’m not a flood victim, and anyway, I can’t think of anyone who’d do that.’
‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Verna said. ‘It’s not as if you found it in the street and didn’t hand it in. Whoever left it meant you to have it.’
‘Maybe I should go to the police and ask if anyone has reported it missing, in case it was stolen,’ Kath said slowly.
Verna was shaking her head. ‘I wouldn’t do that, love. Someone put it there because they know you need it, so use it.’
The first thing Kath did when she returned home was to make sure the money was still where she’d left it. Then she went in to check on Meggsie. Night fell quickly on these midsummer evenings, and the children had stopped their games and gone home for tea, so there were no sounds in the darkening street. In his room, Meggsie was staring into space, sad and listless. Seeing him like that made her feel like crying, but she swallowed hard to stop the tears.
She turned up the volume on the radio in the kitchen and switched the dial to his favourite serial, Yes, What? But for once the exasperated schoolteacher and his cheeky pupils didn’t bring a smile to his pale face.
Putting her head around the kitchen door she shouted, ‘Alan! Ray! Come in here at once and play with your brother!’
‘Aw, not now, Mum, we’re building a tower with the blocks Uncle Bill gave us for Christmas,’ Alan called back.
She rushed into their room, grabbed them by the arms and pulled them to their feet. ‘Did you hear what I said? Or do I have to take the wooden spoon to you so you do as you’re told?’
She could hear them muttering as they stomped around their room. Selfish little brutes, only thinking of themselves. Only little Pete showed any spontaneous feeling for Meggsie. Without being told, he often perched on his bed and chattered about school and the footie or played snap with him until Meggsie’s arms grew too tired to hold the cards.
‘It’s okay, Mum, I’ll read my book,’ Meggsie called out.
She felt guilty now for rousing on the boys. They were only kids and it wasn’t their fault they had a sick brother and a mum who’d just about reached the end of her tether. While she stirred breadcrumbs into the mince, and shaped the mixture into rissoles for dinner, she thought about what Verna had said. Perhaps she should keep the money and use it to get Meggsie treated, so one day maybe he’d walk again …
Lost in her daydream, she hadn’t noticed that the meat had caught on the bottom of the frying pan and the smell of burning filled the kitchen. ‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered as she wiped the spattering fat off the stovetop. Now the rissoles were ruined. Cursing under her breath, she moved the blackened patties around with her spatula and added some water to the pan to stop them drying out when the doorbell rang. She ran to the door, half expecting to see a policeman standing there with a search warrant, or a mean-eyed character in a long trenchcoat and black fedora. Thank goodness it was only Mr Emil, who gave her his stiff little bow and headed straight for Meggsie’s room.
As Kath scraped the burnt bits off the rissoles it suddenly struck her that it might have been Mr Emil who’d slipped the money under her door. He was exactly the kind of person Verna had mentioned, shy and self-effacing. He’d be one of those anonymous donors who’d hate being thanked. Then there was his recent friendship with Meggsie. And it couldn’t be mere coincidence that he had turned up half an hour after she found the money. It all added up. And since no one knew anything about him, he could easily have lots of money stashed away. He could even be forging it. She stopped stirring the rissoles. What if the money was counterfeit and she was caught passing it? The cops would never believe that she’d found it under her front door. If only she knew what to do.
As soon as Meggsie saw Mr Emil, he put down the book he was reading but he didn’t smile.
‘That show I wanted to see, you know, Morris the Magnificent, well it’s finished, and now I’ll never get to see him,’ he said.
It was strange that he found it much easier to confide in Mr Emil than in anyone else. He didn’t want to add to his mother’s distress by telling her how miserable he was, and as for the neighbours, he knew it wasn’t nice to complain or make a fuss. In any case, they wouldn’t know what to say if he told them how he really felt.
As for the other kids, he already felt he
was living on a different planet from them. By the way they wriggled, sighed and kept asking the same questions without waiting for his answers, he knew he made them uncomfortable. They couldn’t relate to his life and he couldn’t relate to theirs any more. The only one he would have liked to talk to was Hanny because he knew she’d listen and understand, but she still wasn’t allowed to come and see him, and dropped in only when her mother was out.
‘Morris the Magnificent?’ Emil repeated.
‘He was supposed to do the bullet trick in his show,’ Meggsie said. ‘You know, the one where the magician’s helper points a pistol at him and really shoots him. Did you know that’s the most dangerous trick in the world?’
Emil nodded. ‘How do you know about it?’
‘There was a book about magicians in the library at school and I borrowed it before I got sick. One magician got killed doing it. Chinese, I think he was.’
‘Chung Ling Soo,’ Emil said.
‘How did you know that?’ Meggsie asked, amazed. There was no end to Mr Emil’s surprises. Not only had he read The Count of Monte Cristo and loved it as much as Meggsie did, but he knew about the bullet trick as well.
‘Like you, I read about it,’ Emil said. ‘But he wasn’t really Chinese at all. Chung Ling Soo was his stage name. He was American, but he didn’t speak very clearly so he pretended to be Chinese and did his show in silence.’
Meggsie was looking at him with awe. ‘Gosh, Mr Emil, you know everything. Do you know anything about Houdini?’
Emil smiled at the boy. Houdini had been his inspiration from childhood. He’d read everything he could find about the phenomenal escapist, and became convinced that Houdini’s performances weren’t merely shows, they were real-life dramas in which he was always alone, fighting for his life, as he struggled to free himself from situations where the odds were always stacked against him. To Emil there was something mysterious in the way Houdini’s acts crossed the boundary from magic to mysticism. In his feats of unpicking locks and escaping while tied up in chains even when he was underwater, Houdini seemed almost to want to escape from himself, to test the limits of his strength and challenge his own mortality. That was something Emil could understand.
‘Houdini did not like people who said they could contact the dead,’ he said to Meggsie. ‘Have you heard of Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories?’
Meggsie nodded, and he went on. ‘He and Houdini became friends, but there was one thing they never agreed on. Conan Doyle believed the psychics who said they could contact his dead son, but Houdini thought they were charlatans who were tricking him.’
Meggsie was staring at him round-eyed. ‘And what do you think, Mr Emil? Who was right?’
Emil shrugged. ‘I do not know, but I understand Conan Doyle. When you have lost someone you love, you want to believe the clairvoyants.’
He sighed and changed the subject, and for the remainder of his visit they talked about Houdini’s miraculous escapes from locks and chains.
Kath had been listening out for Emil, and as soon as she heard his soft footsteps in the hall she came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She had been rehearsing how to thank him for his gift in a way that wouldn’t embarrass him.
‘I wanted to tell you how much we appreciate your kindness,’ she began, but before she could say any more, he gave a curt nod, rammed on his little hat and hurried from the house.
Chapter 39
Ever since their fight about Ernst Hauptmann, Sala and Szymon had hardly spoken to each other. Usually their arguments ended quickly, but this time she couldn’t forgive him for what he’d said. As for Szymon, he’d become unusually quiet and brooding, like a volcano about to erupt. Although she kept to her side of the bed and shrank from any accidental touch, she resented that he didn’t reach for her any more, and no longer called her Salcia.
They were having dinner in silence a week after the argument when, exasperated by his morose expression, she banged her knife and fork down on the table. ‘How long are you going to keep this up? What’s the point of dwelling on the past?’
He looked up from his plate, met her eyes for a moment and looked away again.
‘It’s not the past I’m upset about,’ he said. ‘It’s the present. I knew you didn’t love me when we got married, but I hoped things would change. Well they haven’t, and I’ve been thinking maybe we should separate.’
Sala stared at him. Although she’d often thought the same thing, and sometimes said so to provoke him during an argument, she was shocked to hear him say it. More than the words, it was the deadly calm with which he spoke that stung the most. Instead of shouting or spitting out hurtful words, he spoke quietly and with great sadness. He’d obviously been mulling over it for some time.
In the emotional seesaw of their relationship, she had always held more power. She was the one who threatened to leave because she knew that he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, and that her threat would put an end to the argument and lead to renewed affection. Now the ground had unexpectedly shifted under her feet, and she was struggling to find her balance.
‘Do whatever you like,’ she said coldly, and started clearing away the dishes.
The following morning they dressed, gulped their coffee standing up and left for work without exchanging a word. It was New Year’s Eve and they had been invited to Fela and Lutek’s place that evening. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Alex would be there, Sala would have made an excuse not to go, but the urge to see him again was too strong to resist.
On her way home from the Jewish Welfare Society that morning, she bought a white pique blouse with a plunging neckline which revealed her cleavage. She experimented with her hair and decided to leave it loose for a change, parted on the side.
When Szymon came home from work, neither of them spoke as they dressed. Sala was pleased with her reflection in the fly-spotted mirror, but for once Szymon didn’t comment on her appearance.
‘Look at you!’ Alex exclaimed and came towards her with his arms outstretched as soon as they walked into Fela and Lutek’s flat.
Turning to Fela, he said, ‘You didn’t tell me Lauren Bacall was coming tonight!’
He was squeezing Sala’s waist, pressing her against him, and as she wriggled out of his playful embrace, her face was flushed and she laughed for the first time that week.
She was relieved that Fela and Lutek had invited three other couples, so that she could avoid Szymon without making the strain in their relationship obvious. Looking around the room, Sala saw Franka Feldman deep in conversation with a short man with bushy hair. She hadn’t expected to see her there, but it wasn’t surprising that members of the Polish Jewish community knew each other.
Franka introduced her to her husband Zenek, whose watchful, heavy-lidded eyes had a bemused expression that made Sala feel uncomfortable. She was trying to think of something to say when she remembered that he was studying medicine again.
‘How are you finding your course, Dr Feldman?’ she asked.
With a short laugh, he ran his small hands through the clumps of crinkly hair on either side of his pink scalp.
‘How do I find it? Not so good. Look, I was a psychiatrist in Warsaw for over twenty years, so being treated like an ignorant student by lecturers half my age is pretty hard to take, but I’m regarding it as one of life’s never-ending lessons. For most of the students I’m something of an oddity, an old man who can hardly speak English, can’t play poker, doesn’t drink and doesn’t understand cricket. Luckily there are a few returned soldiers doing the course who are a bit more mature.’
He rested his somnolent brown eyes on her. ‘And what about you? How are you finding life?’
Knowing that he was a psychiatrist made her choose her words with great care, and she gave a brief, noncommittal reply. He nodded and waited but, wary of revealing the turmoil she was in, she said lightly, ‘Language problems, money problems, just the usual things.’
&nb
sp; She found his gaze disconcerting and scanned the room for Alex, but he was murmuring something to a pretty brunette, so she turned her attention back to Dr Feldman. From his half-smile she could tell he’d followed her glance.
‘The first year in a foreign country is very tough on migrant couples, don’t you think?’ he said.
‘I always thought only the first twenty years were tough,’ she quipped.
He was studying her with obvious interest and, regretting her flippant remark, she added, ‘I always thought that starting a new life together would bring people closer.’
He shook his head. ‘Grief, loss and trauma tear most couples apart.’
She wondered why he’d brought up the subject of marital problems, but she remembered Franka saying that their first year in Australia had been traumatic, so perhaps Dr Feldman was probing to see if other couples experienced similar difficulties.
Her mother used to say that psychiatrists chose their speciality in the hope of solving their own problems, and she wondered if that was the case with him. Or perhaps he’d seen her looking at Alex and suspected something. Psychiatrists were good at getting people to expose their innermost thoughts and feelings, and she felt increasingly uncomfortable, as though her mind had suddenly become transparent and he could see her naked thoughts. But although she wanted to keep her feelings secret, at the same time she felt tempted to reveal her turmoil, in case he understood what she was going through and could tell her whether she was normal or not.
Choosing her words carefully, she said, ‘When you said that grief and trauma tear couples apart, did you mean grief and trauma they’d gone through together, or individually?’
He raked his fingers through the clumps of crinkly grey hair again. ‘Either. The point is, if people haven’t confronted their past and dealt with it, it can destroy their life and their relationship.’
Empire Day Page 26