And when the war came it was much like that other war, only much worse because of the incessant bombing and the constant fear hanging over them that drew the two sides closer together than ever before. The destruction of the Jewish tailoring shops on Daw Bank had a profound effect upon them, with the same thought that I myself had had, that if the German planes could deliberately pick off a row of Jewish shops they would do the same to the row of Jewish houses.
“Oh, we was that afeared for ’em,” Annie said. “We didn’t want that t’appen t’our Jews. We’d’ve taken ’em in to our ’ouses if they’d come, but none of ’em wanted to do that.”
I smiled. I couldn’t picture any of them accepting such an invitation, and yet it was such an unprecedented offer I couldn’t help feeling a little amazed. I just wished she hadn’t spoken of us as “our Jews.” I didn’t care much for that.
The important thing was that the street had not been hit, despite all the damage to the mills and to other streets in the surrounding area in the almost constant air raids. Annie told how old Mr. Harris refused to go to the shelter when the sirens went off. He was then living alone in the house with its handsomely furnished parlor, his wife having died and the daughters long since all married off. They tried to get him to go to the shelter, but it was no use. He stayed there alone in the house reading his newspaper, and some of the more superstitious believed that it was because of his presence that the street had been saved, the Germans having been afraid that he would put a curse on them if they dropped their bombs on him.
I smiled again. It was certain that the old man had heaped many curses on them, and if you wanted to be superstitious about it, the curses had their effect on the outcome of the war. But there were other things on my mind. I wanted to know about the Forshaws. They had written to us for a number of years, so I already knew of the tragedies in their life, the death of Lily, then Arthur, and finally Jimmy. There had to be more to tell, though.
Yes, there was. Annie’s face turned sad. “Oh, those poor two people,” she said. “You know, they were always a cut above th’rest of us, they’d been real ’igh class once before the drink got the better of Mr. Forshaw, but they never let on as to that, and acted as if they was just one of us. I liked ’em, and so did everybody else. We were all sorry when Mr. Forshaw started to go down still more than he already was. I suppose it was Jimmy getting killed that was the final crushing blow. They’d loved the boy so much. He was just like his father, as nice a boy as you could want, and just as clever too, winning the scholarship and everything, and getting ready to go to university when the war came and he joined up. Didn’t have to draft him. He joined up right away and he was killed right away, just as soon as he got over there in France. After that, Mr. Forshaw took to ’is drinking real bad. I suppose it was the drink killed ’im. And so Mrs. Forshaw was all alone, like a lot of the other women on th’ street, and you’d think all of this would’ve done ’er in too. But, no, it was just th’ opposite. She seemed to come alive more than she’d ever been. What she did was join the Labor Party, if she ’adn’t been in it already—I’m not sure about that because she never spoke much to anybody on th’ street—but they gave ’er a job. Afore you know it she was talking at meetings and she was going around knocking on doors and telling ’em to vote Labor. When the Labor Party got in power back then, around 1946 I think it was, she left th’street and went to live in London and got a real important job with th’party. They say she had a lot to do with getting that public ’ousing bill passed, and ’aving our street knocked down and new ’ouses put up with electric lights and bathrooms inside and bathtubs and everything. I ’ear she died. I’m not sure. But she was a good woman, and she meant well, even if she did take th’street away from us.”
“I’m sure she did,” I said, and I looked at my watch. It was getting late. We must have been sitting there for at least two hours talking and we had had I don’t know how many cups of tea. The time had passed so quickly I had not noticed it. In the meanwhile, it had grown dark outside from overhanging clouds, and the room had darkened with it, and the fire glowed, reminding me of my mother’s shop on a rainy day when the women would come in to sit and talk.
It was time for us to go, and it was difficult parting with Annie. She was so much alone in that empty street. I could feel her sadness and loneliness as I embraced her and kissed her and assured her that we’d try to come back to visit her in her new surroundings with electric lights and a bathtub and closet and everything that only the rich once had. She laughed even though there were tears in her eyes and said, “Yis, I’ll be living like th’queen of England, won’t I?”
We laughed too. We thanked her for her hospitality and her fine tea and biscuits, and stepped out under the umbrella. It was coming down hard now, and drumming heavily on the umbrella over our heads. I took one last look at my old house as we crossed, then we struck out along Brook Street.
It was late when we got back to London and our hotel. We were both very tired and went straight to bed. Ruby fell asleep almost immediately, but I could not sleep. I tossed and turned all night, thinking of our visit to the street, the things that Annie had told us, my recollections of the past, the images that brought people back to life, my head fairly bursting with all of that.
I knew that I would never see the street again with all its bleak houses facing one another. The wreckers would soon take care of that, and perhaps, too, they would dismantle the invisible wall along with it. But maybe that had been done already. When Ruby and I entered Annie’s house, I think that must have been one of the few times in the history of the street that anybody from our side had gone into a house on the other.
I thought a great deal about that and finally the night was over and it was dawn, with thin gray light creeping into the room. But even then the street was still there and I heard the sounds I used to hear when I was a child lying in bed in the upstairs room of the house on our street. It was the sound of wooden clogs marching. It began very quietly as the first pair of feet stepped out onto the hard cobbled ground. Then it grew louder gradually as more clogs joined in the march, and louder still like the movement of a symphony rising to a climax, and a violent crescendo as they reached the mills with a simultaneous blast of whistles from all of them. Then there was silence and my eyes would close and I was asleep.
About the Author
Ninety-six-year-old HARRY BERNSTEIN emigrated to the United States with his family after World War I. He has wrote all his life but started writing The Invisible Wall only after the death of his wife, Ruby. Bernstein is also the author of The Dream and The Golden Willow. He died in 2011.
Copyright © 2007 by Harry Bernstein
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bernstein, Harry.
The invisible wall: a love story that broke barriers / Harry Bernstein.
p. cm.
1. Bernstein, Harry—Childhood and youth. 2. Bernstein, Harry—Homes and haunts—England—Lancashire. 3. Authors, American—21st century—Biography 4. Jews—England—Biography. 5. Lancashire (England)—Social life and customs.
I. Title
PS3552.E7345 Z46 2007 2006043057
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-49735-2
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