The Liberation of Celia Kahn

by J David Simons

  Celia poured herself a brandy this time, knocked it back quickly, thought about having another, her nerves so fraught. The plate was still on the table, she had a quick look at it, front and back. The name of the awardee was a Mrs Frances Dixon. So much for a Mrs T then. She pinched a cigarette from Charlotte’s case, lit up, let the tobacco rake her lungs, relax her a bit. As she sat back, watched the smoke drift up towards the clothes pulley, she thought of Jonny. His mother was getting more ill by the day, he didn’t think she had much longer to live, her lungs were giving out fast although it didn’t stop the poor dear smoking. She examined her own cigarette at this thought, took another drag. Compared to these beasts of men these two women had for husbands, Jonny seemed like an angel. He didn’t drink much for a start. And perhaps he did look a bit like Ivor Novello if he’d just lose the tan. But then again, he might come across just fine in the courting. Who knows what kind of monster he might turn out to be later. You just couldn’t tell with men. And where was that Charlotte, she was taking her time with this woman?

  She stood up, felt a bit more calm in herself, the brandy quickly doing its work. She walked over to the bedroom, opened the door up a crack, poked her head in. Mrs T was sat on the bed with her skirts up, bloomers down, cigarette in her mouth, Charlotte crouched between her legs, sleeves rolled up, hands fiddling about where they shouldn’t be.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Charlotte. I thought we were only giving advice.”

  Charlotte turned her head to the door. “I’m only helping out, one woman to another. I’ve fitted these things enough times to know what to do.”

  Mrs T resumed smoking, cool as you like, as if she was observing a plumber come in to fix her pipes, flicking the ash into the palm of her hand.

  “I’ll be outside,” Celia said, closing the door on them.

  There had been only the two clients that first session. But come the second session on Thursday, they had five visitors, three coming through meetings and pamphlets, two recommended by Mrs B of all people. The following week, seven women turned up on the Tuesday, ten turning up on the Thursday. Within two weeks, they had seen twenty-four women, given away forty-eight caps. Celia could also see that the women’s reasons for attending were beginning to divide into three clear categories – religion, health and poverty, sometimes all three reasons present in one case.

  That final day of ten clients, they had to extend the session by an hour, making it too cold and too late for Celia to return home any other way than in a hansom. She decided to save the fare, stay at the flat, Charlotte too, who telephoned Mrs Kahn from a neighbour’s to tell that Celia was staying with her. They were both exhausted anyway.

  Celia prepared the hot water bottle, wrapped the metal container in a cloth cover, slipped it into the bed, then moved in beside it. Charlotte came into the bedroom, her winter coat worn over her nightdress, with a couple of bottles of stout she’d picked up from the public house earlier, a straw placed in the neck of each. Charlotte got in beside her still with her coat on while Celia plumped up the pillows. She could see the reflection of the two of them in the mirror on the wardrobe door swung open but neither of them willing to bear the cold again to close it. What a pretty pair they made, she thought, puffing on their cigarettes, drinking their ale through a straw.

  “Sucking the monkey,” Charlotte said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Drinking your beer like this. That’s what the sailors call it. Sucking the monkey. I can’t remember why exactly. That Brian I used to see told me. He was in the Navy.”

  “Yes, I remember him.” She thought how she had eavesdropped on their coupling on this very bed. “He did have the smell of the sea about him.”

  Charlotte sniffed heavily as if she was still trying to smell him out from between the sheets. “I’m absolutely exhausted.”

  “Me too. I thought all this work was going to make me feel good. It’s just making me anxious and depressed.”

  “Which bit of it is getting you down?”

  “Listening to these women’s stories. It makes me so angry and tearful at the same time. And there’s so little we can do. I’m sure half of these women don’t really know how to fit these caps properly. They just take them from us so as not to be embarrassed.”

  “To be honest, for some I doubt there’s much there to fit the cap too. Their whole insides have been ripped up and stretched apart. Who was that woman? Mrs P? Dropped sixteen children in seventeen years, half of them dead on arrival. It makes me want to be like you, practise social purity.”

  “We need a proper clinic. With proper doctors and nurses.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on doctors knowing much about women’s matters either. Look how many of our clients told us they asked their doctor for advice and he hadn’t a clue what to tell them. I’m better qualified than them to know about what goes on down there. Not some quack who can’t tell a valise from a vagina.”

  Twenty-seven

  The next morning, she woke up early, head woozy from the stout, still dark outside, but the moon sending in a crack of blue-white light through the curtain onto the blankets. Charlotte sleeping beside her, lightly snoring, such a beautiful face, she would have reached out and stroked her cheek but for fear of waking her up. She would also like to have turned over, gone back to whatever dream she had emerged from, but it was Friday, the eve of the Sabbath, plenty chores to be done at home. She rose from the bed, peed into the chamber pot, raked up a fire in the grate, put a kettle to simmer on the hot-plate, left Charlotte to sleep, let herself out. She took a subway into St. Enoch station, walked the rest of the way, feeling much better in herself than she had done the day before. Dim sunlight was sneaking its way into the morning, those of the population with jobs were on the march to their offices, the factories, the shipyards, the steelworks and the mines. And here she was travelling in the opposite direction pleased with her own efforts towards the liberation of women from their yoke of poverty, religion and poor health. She entered her home, Papa Kahn and Nathan already gone to the shop, exchanged a few words with her mother who was giving a good polish to the silver candlesticks that had been in her family since Napoleonic times. The one good thing about her mother was she didn’t say too much first thing in the morning, taking a few hours to wind herself up like a bagpipe before moaning out her customary complaints. She picked up the shopping bag, her mother’s list of messages with the usual bread and herrings to be collected for the Shabbos meal, went back out again. She was humming quietly to herself. That old tune by Ivor Novello. Keep the Home Fires Burning.

  When she got back, she’d hardly had time to bring the shopping through the front door when her mother accosted her in the hallway.

  “There’s a gentleman here to see you. Just arrived.”

  Celia glanced at herself in the hall mirror. Her hair was all mussed up, she’d hardly given herself a wash that morning, her hands stinking of vinegar from scooping pickled herrings and cucumbers from the barrels outside Fogell’s bakery.

  “What will he think of me?”

  “I wouldn’t worry trying to tidy yourself. Just go on in. Hurry.”

  It wasn’t Jonny as she had expected. Instead there was the long figure of a man sat with his back to her, legs stretched out to the fire, didn’t even get up when she entered, just turned his head round towards her.

  “I believe you two know each other,” Madame Kahn said.

  “Good morning, Miss Kahn. It’s been a long time.” It was Jimmy Docherty. Reporter for the Evening Citizen.

  “Yes, it has, Mr Docherty. Four years perhaps.”

  “Tempus fugit and all that. Why don’t you sit yourself down.”

  “This is my own home, Mr Docherty. I think I can do as I wish.”

  “Celia,” her mother scolded before wriggling herself into a more polite demeanour. “Now, Mr Docherty, please tell me how you know my daughter?”

  Docherty straightened himself up from his slouch, gave the knot of his tie a pinch as if this s
omehow proved himself a gentleman. “I can promise you my dealings with Miss Kahn have all been above board.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. But I cannot imagine what reason she has to be in the company of men of the press in the first place. I don’t think I know my own daughter any more.”

  “Mother. Will you please stop being so dramatic.”

  “Dramatic? I never know where you are. You are like a lodger in this house. A mother cannot worry about her daughter?”

  “There is nothing to worry about.” She could see Jimmy Docherty smiling as he slowly turned in his seat, untangled his long limbs to take up a proper position at the table. He reached into his pocket, took out a notebook and pencil.

  “Please sit down, Miss Kahn.”

  This time she did as she was told. She placed her hands defiantly in a clasp in front of her, then withdrew them when she caught a whiff of the pickled herring off her skin. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s about your brother.”

  “Nathan?”

  “No, the other one. Avram. The one that was murdered.”

  “I thought it was an accident.”

  “There might have been a misunderstanding. But they intended to kill whom they killed.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, Mr Docherty. But my Uncle Mendel will know all the details. He will be back from the Highlands this evening for the Sabbath. He can tell you what you need to know.”

  “I don’t need to know anything. I’ve already spoken to the constables. Two men have been arrested. One is a local pharmacist who mistakenly believed your brother to be having an affair with his wife. That was the unfortunate mix-up. Another man – the accomplice or the actual murderer, that is yet to be established – was a quarry guard whom I believe held a grudge against your brother.”

  “He was my adopted brother.”

  “I’m sorry. Your adopted brother then.”

  “He was always going to be trouble, that boy,” her mother said. “From the moment I first saw him. Tzores, I thought. This can only be trouble. And was I wrong? Was I wrong? Now we have a murder in the house.”

  Docherty scratched his nose, then held up his hand in a languid, gentle gesture for her mother to stop. “Mrs Kahn. Please let me explain my purpose for being here.”

  Madame Kahn bit her lower lip, folded her arms. Docherty continued. “Like you, we understood this incident to be an unfortunate accident. Now that it is being treated as the murder of a young Glasgow man, then, of course, it is of local interest. We have reason to believe the involvement of the quarry guard may have been due to some anti-Jewish feeling. I believe the phrase is ‘anti-Semitic.’”

  “Anti-Semitic,” her mother shrilled. She pulled up the sleeves of her blouse, held out her bare arms to Docherty. “See these hands. I worked them to the bones for making Army uniforms for our soldiers. To the bones. And balaclavas I knitted too. Every day, balaclavas I send to the Front.”

  “Mother, will you please calm down.”

  “I am perfectly calm.”

  “I am going to telephone Papa to come.”

  “You will not do such a thing.” Her mother raised the back of her hand to her head in another dramatic gesture. “I have such a headache now. I am going to lie down. If you will excuse me, Mr Docherty, I will leave you to speak to my daughter. When this headache comes, the pain is unbearable. I have to close my eyes.”

  “I can bring you a hot towel, Mama.”

  “No, no. Just speak to this man.”

  With Madame Kahn gone, Docherty stretched himself out again, plucked a cigarette from his top pocket, lit up without even asking a by-your-leave, causing her to get up, bring over an ashtray from the mantelpiece. She decided against offering him a cup of tea.

  “Please excuse my mother, Mr Docherty. But she is of German descent. During the war she was interned in a camp as an enemy alien. It’s an experience she’s neither forgiven nor forgotten. Just the slightest criticism for being a German or a Jew sends her into a panic.”

  He tapped the end of his cigarette on the table, then lit up. “It’s understandable,” he said unconvincingly. “Now, about this other matter. The reason I came here is simple. We’re interested in the Jewish angle. This anti-Semitic attack. Our readers probably don’t know too much about the Jew community in Glasgow. How many are you? Eight thousand? Ten thousand?”

  “I don’t know. You would have to ask my father about these things.”

  “You see, we don’t often get stuff involving Jews. I mean you pretty much keep yourselves to yourselves. Like some secret society. There was that famous Oscar Slater murder case, he was a Jew wasn’t he? But that must have been before the war. There’s been a few run-ins over gambling, accusations of sweated labour, that Manny Shinwell was a Jew, of course, but for the most part you keep your copy-books clean. So what I was looking for was a bit of background. And remembering you being of that faith, I thought you could help.”

  “This isn’t really the best time to be coming here talking about this. My mother never liked Avram but the rest of us are in shock about his death. My father has only just got over his grief and returned to work. I don’t find all this talk of anti-Jewish sentiment to be appropriate.”

  “I’m only doing my job, Miss Kahn. I’m not asking much. Just a few personal accounts of what it feels like being a Jew living in this city. Perhaps you could introduce me to some local dignitaries or tell me a bit about Avram. He was a credit draper, wasn’t he? And this uncle of yours too. Selling goods on credit to poor Highland crofters and village folk. Was he lending money to them too? That’s what this quarry guard is saying. Lending his sister money to buy things she didn’t want on the never-never so she was always in his debt.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I did you a favour those years back, digging deep to find out about Agnes’ death. It’s time to collect, Miss Kahn.”

  “I appreciate what you did for me. But I think you should leave.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m on a deadline with this. All the other papers will be running the same story. But you can give an old hack like me an edge. I could do with a hand here.”

  “Mr Docherty. Will you please go.”

  Docherty rubbed out his cigarette harsh in the ashtray, stood up, picked up his hat. “There’s something I should tell you, Miss Kahn.” There was an angry colour to his face, his eyes blazed down at her. “I lied to you about Agnes. I didn’t want to upset you with the truth. Natural causes I told you. But the guards did get to her. They were force-feeding her till she got sick and died. It’s a pity you left her to languish in the jail. Maybe if you’d gone to the press like she suggested, she might have lived. I’ll leave you with that thought, Miss Kahn.”

  No sooner had Docherty closed the front door than the telephone rang. She wanted to let it be but she had a sudden sympathy for her mother lying down with her splitting headache. Shaking, she picked up the earpiece, let the operator hand over the call. It was Jonny. His mother had passed away.

  She didn’t tell Papa Kahn about Docherty’s visit. Her mother appeared happy to co-operate in the conspiracy for she didn’t mention the matter either. Other events had taken over anyway. Jonny had sounded quite calm on the telephone, he didn’t talk long, there were other people to notify. She wished him ‘long life’, as was the custom. Just prior to the commencement of the Sabbath dinner she told her mother, who surprisingly let out a wail on hearing the news before immediately beginning her calculations, her headache quickly forgotten.

  “Now if this Mrs Levy, may she rest in peace, died this morning, then it was too late to bury her today. The funeral cannot take place during Shabbos so the service will be on Sunday. There will be time to think of the right approach.”

  “What right approach?” Papa Kahn said, looking up from his peeling of an apple. There was a time when he could pare the skin off in one complete piece, this skill with a knife having impressed Celia ever since she was a chi
ld. It was, he told her, the basis on which he decided he could be a tailor. Now the knife shook in his hand, she feared he might cut himself or that the apple spin out of his grasp.

  “I think we should go to the funeral,” Madame Kahn replied. “It is the right thing to do.”

  “What are you talking about?” her father said. “We don’t even know the family.”

  “It is this Jonny’s mother. We should put in an appearance.”

  “At the funeral? I’m not schlepping all the way out to the Necropolis. Anyway, there is no reason to start behaving like machetonim.”

  Celia paused in her vague reading about the progress of the British Mandate in Palestine as reported by the Glasgow Jewish Evening Times. She hadn’t really been listening closely to her parents. She was still upset from the conversation with Docherty. It wasn’t even what he had told her about Agnes. That event was so much in the past she could hardly feel guilty about it anymore. And how did she know that he hadn’t lied just to hurt her? She was more disturbed about Avram being killed in an anti-Semitic attack. Why should anyone kill him for being a Jew? She had always felt safe in this city, in this country. Perhaps this sense of security had only been an illusion. But then she heard her father talking about ‘machetonim’, about two sets of parents brought together by the marriage of their children.

  “What are you saying?” she asked.

  Even her mother looked a bit embarrassed. “I am just saying that perhaps we should show some kind of consideration, that’s all. Given our situation.”

  “What situation?”

  “Between you and this Dr Levy. After all, you have seen a lot of him lately.”

  “Well, I won’t be any longer. Now that his mother has died, he will return to Palestine.”

  “That’s settled then,” her father said, cutting his apple into not so neat segments. “No need to attend the funeral.”

  “What about the shiva house?” Madame Kahn asked.