Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  1

  They were sitting in a row on the wall, eating the cherries they had stolen from the stall at the end of Jubilee Street market. Sammy of course had most, because he had planned the theft, and Barney was getting the second most, because he’d been the decoy while Sammy had filled his hat with the spoils, and the rest of them, Abe and Mossy and Rae, were enjoying the small shares that befitted immediate relatives of the lordly Sammy and Barney. Lexie had done well to get as many as four, and she sat there at the end of the row, bursting with pride at being part of so splendid a company, and rubbing the dark red skins of the cherries on her pinafore to burnish them to a rich glow. When they were bright enough she would hang them over her ears to be earrings and leave them there all afternoon, and not eat them till they were really warm from lying against her skin. A delicious prospect.

  ‘What they do is lie on top of each other,’ Sammy was saying, through a mouth so full that cherry juice dribbled down his chin. ‘That’s what they do. an’ then, nine months after, pfft, out it comes, suckin’ its thumb.’

  ‘Out of where?’ Rae asked and Sammy glared at her.

  ‘None of yer business. This is what boys talks about. If you don’t keep yer bleedin’ mouth shut, you gotta go away, see? So shut up.’

  ‘She don’t have to,’ Barney said, immediately aggressive. ‘She can talk about anythin’ she likes. She’s my sister.’

  ‘So? She’s still a girl, ain’t she? This ain’t for girls to talk about.’

  ‘Why not?’ Rae was feeling argumentative. ‘It’s us they pffts out of, ain’t it? Girls. So we c’n talk about it as much as you can.’

  ‘It’s dirty talk for girls,’ Sammy said sententiously and spat the cherry stones at her. ‘Barney orta know better’n to let his sister talk dirty.’

  ‘She don’t talk dirty!’ Barney roared and began to wriggle from the wall, the better to get at Sammy at the other end.

  ‘They come out of their bottoms,’ Lexie said dreamily.

  ‘Eh?’ Sammy turned and stared at her, and Barney stopped wriggling and stayed on the wall, staring at her too. ‘What’sat you say?’

  ‘They come outa their bottoms. The front bit of their bottoms. You know, Rae — the bit where you — you know. Not out of girls, of course. Only out of ladies.’

  ‘Blimey, she really does talk dirty, don’t she?’ Sammy said, almost admiringly, and made a face at Barney. ‘She’s a lot worse’n your sister.’

  ‘They don’t,’ Mossy said suddenly, in his piping little voice that sounded as though he were about to burst into tears. ‘They come outa their bellies — they splits open and they comes out o’ their pippicks —’

  ‘Who told you that? That’s all a lotta —’

  ‘My brother, he told me, Alf, he said they got brown lines down the middle o’ their bellies and that’s where they splits —’

  ‘No they don’t,’ Lexie said and polished her cherries a little harder. They were getting wonderfully shiny. ‘They comes out of their bottoms. Joe said, and Joe’s a lot older than your Alf. Alf’s only nine and Joe’s ever so old. He’s seventeen. Grown up.’

  ‘My Momma says out of Mrs Charnik’s bag,’ Rae said loudly and wriggled off the wall, her black-stockinged legs in their over-sized boots scraping against the rough red bricks, which left marks on them. She straightened her pinafore with an air of condescension, very aware of its row of white broderie anglaise trimmings. Rae’s mother was a dressmaker in a big way of business and could afford these special touches for her daughter. ‘And my Momma knows more’n anybody about anything, don’t she, Barney?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Barney said and jumped off the wall himself. ‘An’ she said people mustn’t talk like what you do, Lexie, so we ain’t goin’ to talk to you no more. Come on, Rae,’ and he pushed his sister in the back to urge her along the street.

  ‘Your Momma don’t know as much as my Bessie knows —’ Lexie shouted after them, stung. ‘Bessie knows everything about anything anybody ever asked her. So you tell your Momma to ask Bessie where they come out — Bessie’ll know.’

  They were all off the wall now, except Lexie, and Sarnmy sniggered and hauled his smallest brother, Abe, on to his shoulders in a pick-a-back. ‘Garn,’ he said. ‘From where does she know anythin’? Soppy old maid, that’s what she is. No one’d ever want to get on top of her, old hunchback Bessie Ascher. Bessie Ascher, she’s a hunchback, Bessie Ascher, she’s a hunchback —’ and he laughed and, with Mossy at his heels, went running off down the street, Abe bouncing on his brother’s back and bawling as they went, leaving Lexie still on the top of the wall which suddenly seemed a very long way from the ground.

  She looked down at the cherries in her hand and saw the way the juice was running over her fingers and on to her clean pinafore and tears tightened her throat and made her eyes feel as though needles were being pushed into them and she wasn’t sure whether she was crying because of the loss of the cherries, because of her stained pinafore, because she was stuck on top of a wall and scared to get down, or whether it was because of the nasty things they’d all said about Bessie.

  The trouble was, she got angry with Bessie, too, sometimes, wanted to shout at her and kick her, the way she went on about things like behaving right and talking right. That was the worst bit, Bessie going on about talking. Auntie Fanny and Uncle Dave never said anything about the way she talked, nor did Joe. Nor did Benny, but Bessie, she went on and on about it. ‘Sit up straight, when you speak…. Don’t talk with your mouth full…. Don’t say “ain’t”.’

  ‘Ain’t, ain’t, ain’t —’ she said loudly now and jumped, tumbling into the dust of the street and tearing her stockings and barking her knees painfully so that the crying, which she’d managed to stop, started itself off again, and she went limping home to Sidney Street, sniffing miserably and dodging the middle-aged women who tried to stop her with clucks of sympathy to find out what it was that was upsetting her.

  The street was bustling in the late June sunshine as the women dragged their kitchen chairs out on to the doorsteps to sit fanning themselves and gossiping with each other as the heat of the afternoon began slowly to dissipate. The smaller children scuffled in the dust, squabbling and playing and squabbling again, and a couple of cats sunned themselves on upper windowsills. Lexie looked down towards Number Twenty-two, hoping that perhaps this time Bessie would be out with the other women, sitting on her doorstep, but of course she wasn’t. Bessie never did ordinary things other people did.

  She walked slowly along the road, past Mrs Fishman and Mrs Fleischer, heads together as usual as they sat and crocheted the vast pieces of putty-coloured networks they were interminably working with, past old Mrs Arbeiter, asleep in the sun with her head nodding over her vast folded arms, past the old men who stood outside Number Seventeen, the curls over their ears shaking and trembling as they nodded in vigorous discussion of some obscure piece of gibberish. The smells that were so much a part of her life slid into her nose: cats and dust and fried fish and garlic and human sweat and horse dung and hot cloth going through the pressing machines and oil and dirt; agreeable smells that began to make her feel better. It had been fun this afternoon at first, and then horrible because of the nasty things the others had said, but now it was getting better again. And maybe Bessie wouldn’t be cross. Maybe Bessie’d be smiling —

  She’d been busy all day, first humping her father around the bed as she gave him his weekly blanket bath and changed his bedding — a hateful job, for Shmuel was so heavy and so uncaring of anything she did and so unaware of what was happening to him; it hurt her that he had no modesty left, that he didn’t care whether his nakedness was exposed to her gaze or not, didn’t care whether she heard him fart, didn’t care that he smelt and was so deep in his own private silent world that he probably didn’t even know he didn’t care. Then she’d cleaned his bedroom from top to bottom, scouring the floor, washing the windows, reaching into the corners for cobwebs and patches of mildew and fina
lly making him his dinner and sitting feeding him with it.

  That was the worst part of it all. Three times a day she had to do it, and three times a day she hated it, and hated him for making it necessary and hated herself for hating him. Pushing the mushed up food past his lax lips, catching the slobbering in her spoon, nagging him to swallow, to drink, to eat, to swallow for God’s sake — it was a purgatory every time she did it.

  But then at last he’d been settled, snoring heavily in the clean scrubbed room, and she could turn her attention to the rest of her day’s labours. To the living room and its overstuffed, over-cluttered furniture. That was pleasant to do, because she could take some pride in that, if not a great deal. It was all very well for Dave and Fanny to keep sending her their furniture every time they bought something new and special from the West End — and these days they did that with ever-increasing frequency — but they made no allowance for the amount of space she had to put it in.

  The room was barely twelve feet square, yet it contained two sofas, three armchairs and a large mahogany table with four matching chairs as well as all sorts of ornaments and pictures and vases of dried flowers; getting round it took time, and cleaning it took hours.

  But still it had to be done, and grimly she did it. Never would anyone say her Lexie lived in anything but the cleanest of homes, the most tidy of establishments. Not for Lexie the casual squalor that was so integral a part of so many people’s lives in these hot, sour streets. For Lexie it would be clean and pretty and good. Never mind that Lexie herself seemed to prefer the untidiness of other homes, actually enjoyed playing with the Levys next door, a place where you couldn’t see the floor for the piles of magazines they had on it, and where the windows were in a perpetual state of fog, even on the clearest of days; as long as Bessie had any say in the matter Twenty-two Sidney Street would be the place Lexie deserved. Not as palatial as the Foxes’ house at Arbour Square, perhaps, but all the same — and she settled to rubbing blacklead into the already shining range and then to cleaning the brass samovar her mother Milly had valued so much that she had carried it all the way from Russia, all those years ago.

  Then there was the day’s laundry. Lexie’s pinafores, and Lexie’s vests and knickers and dresses, and Lexie’s stockings and handkerchiefs, as well as Shmuel’s malodorous bedding and her own few bits and pieces. After that, while the washing dried on the clothes horse, ready to be ironed, the food to be prepared and cooked and set ready for Lexie’s supper. A long hot hard day, and all through it, as her muscles ached with the efforts she was making and the sweat stuck her hair to her scalp, the thoughts that kept her sane, the long rich imaginings of how it would be, one day. One day, when Lexie had her deserts, one day when everything would happen for her, one day when she would have silk underwear and pretty dresses and the sort of food that would make her face round out and become pretty, and her hair to curl as lusciously as the Levy child’s next door.

  Not that she was ever able, in these dreams of hers that filled her head as her arms pumped away, scrubbing, to see quite how it would happen. Sometimes she let herself see her sister Fanny and her husband run over by a brewer’s dray as they went strutting down to the market at Petticoat Lane to make more money, and would see herself and Lexie getting Arbour Square and all it contained, but that never really offered any sort of satisfying dream, because, though imagining Dave and Fanny dead disturbed her not a whit, she couldn’t bring herself to imagine the death of young Monty. Spoiled, noisy, whining child though he was, he was still a child. Only nine years old — how could she imagine him dead? But if she didn’t, he would get Arbour Square and all its contents, so where was the point in making up hopeful dreams for Lexie of getting rid of Dave and Fanny? It just wouldn’t work.

  She had long ago given up any dreams involving herself. The days before Lexie when she had read her penny magazines about the dancers, had tried to see herself in those filmy ballet dresses, with her hair bound in a silver fillet and her ankles wrapped in pink satin ribbons as she danced, feather-light, in front of a vast and exceedingly expensive audience, seemed like another life now. That hadn’t been Bessie who had had those stupid ideas. That had been someone else. A girl of twenty-one who had been too stupid to know what was possible and what wasn’t. Now she was a balabuster, a careful housewife who was as near thirty as made no matter, a person with responsibilities, a senile old father, and a child.

  A child. Now, sitting at her well-polished mahogany table, the smell of the fish she had fried earlier lingering appetizingly in the air, she heard the shuffle of Lexie’s footsteps on the staircase below and lifted her chin in anticipation, and for a moment the fatigued, drawn face brightened and she looked almost pretty in her eagerness and in her pleasure. But the look faded as Lexie came dragging into the room and Bessie could see her.

  ‘Lexie! For pity’s sake, Lexie, what have you been doing? You look like a — you look like a ragamuffin! Have you no shame? You wanted to play, you said, wanted to play with the other children and I said, all right, you can play, only keep yourself clean. Didn’t I? And now look at you! Just look!’

  ‘Fell over,’ Lexie mumbled.

  ‘I can see! Did you hurt yourself?’ Bessie was on her knees in front of Lexie, examining her torn black stockings and her stained pinafore. ‘Is that blood? — oh, my God, is that — no — it’s — where did you get that from?’

  ‘Sammy Feld,’ Lexie mumbled again, ‘gave me some cherries. They got squashed.’

  ‘And where did he get them from, hey? I’ve told you, Lexie, those are bad boys. You shouldn’t play with such bad boys — they’re dirty and they’ll — they’ll take liberties.’

  ‘What’s liberties?’

  Bessie had started to undress her, peeling off the hot black stockings so that Lexie could scratch luxuriously, and then tugging off the offending pinafore. ‘Where’d he get them from? … Stand still,’ Bessie said absently, beginning to unbutton the red serge dress the pinafore had covered. ‘Liberties? They’re — it’s just that boys can’t be trusted. They hurt little girls like you. Boys are dirty. Never you forget it, Lexie. Boys are bad for you — now come along. We’ll wash you and then you can have your supper —’

  ‘I’m not going to bed yet!’ Lexie cried, alarmed. ‘Am I? I don’t want to go to bed! It’s only five o’clock and I’m seven now. I don’t have to go to bed at five o’clock! Let me put my dress on again —’ And she tugged at Bessie’s fingers, and tried to escape from her grasp.

  It followed the usual pattern, Lexie protesting and Bessie first hectoring and then cajoling and finally giving in, and at last Lexie, clean and with her freshly washed hair lying in damp tendrils over her forehead, was once again dressed in her red serge dress, with a fresh pair of black stockings on her thin legs and her freshly polished boots back on her feet. Bessie sat her at the table and set her supper in front of her, the piece of fried plaice with the very tiny dab of chrane, the fiery beetroot-flavoured horseradish sauce that Lexie adored and which Bessie thought unsuitable for her, and a plate of bread and butter, and the next ritual started: persuading Lexie to eat.

  A neat thin child with a natural tendency to be wiry, much as Bessie herself had been, she needed far less food than her sister thought she did and each mealtime was a battle as Bessie tried to fatten up the child to the peach-and-white plumpness she had so long yearned to have for herself, and Lexie, equally determinedly, refused to be stuffed like a Strasbourg goose. As usual Lexie won, and at last she scrambled down from the table and, as Bessie started washing the dishes in the little cubbyhole on the landing which was their kitchen, she started her wheedling.

  ‘Just for a little while, Bessie. I’ll come back as soon as the clock says seven o’clock, God’s Honour I will, seven o’clock, soon’s the clock says seven, I can tell the time proper for myself now —’

  ‘Properly,’ Bessie said automatically, her head down over the dishes she was rubbing with ferocious concentration. ‘Properly.’ It hur
t her bitterly that Lexie so enjoyed going to see Fanny, hurt her deeply that the child seemed not to want to spend the long hot evenings here with her in Sidney Street. She often offered to sit and read a story to her, from one of her precious collection of special books, or to take her to the library to choose her own for Bessie to read to her, but it was no use. All Lexie ever wanted to do was to go to Arbour Square, to be with Joe and Benny.

  At least, that was what Lexie always said. She adored her big brother Joe with all the passion that seven years old can display. In her eyes he was the handsomest, the funniest, the tallest, the nicest person in the world, and Bessie couldn’t deny that her less than virtuous younger brother had developed into a personable young man. At eighteen he was turning the heads of a great many of the luscious black-ringletted brown-eyed girls who paraded along Whitechapel Road these hot summer evenings, and she could understand their partiality for him. Tall, with dark hair that waved sumptuously over a broad forehead and with particularly heavily lashed dark eyes that gave him a soulful look — as false as it was attractive — it was natural that girls should like him. But not little girls like Lexie, his own sister. So, Bessie told herself bleakly as Lexie went on and on with her nagging for permission to go. It isn’t Joe she loves. It’s Fanny, hateful Fanny. I wish she was dead. I wish she was in America like Busha and the others. I hate her —

  ‘All right,’ she said at length, almost violently, as she hung the tea towel over the stone windowsill to dry. ‘All right, go, if you want to. Cross the road carefully and come back not a minute after seven —’ And Lexie was gone, clattering down the stairs in a scramble, terrified Bessie would change her mind, and Bessie stood at the window and watched her go, wanting to cry with the frustration of it. Always telling her off, always fighting with her, instead of —