“What do you mean, I’m a spoiled nutter?”
Solly ignored him, began a tuneless whistle.
Avram grunted, scuffed his shoes against the loose stones underfoot. A raindrop rolled off his cap and on to his nose. He wiped it off with the back of his hand. A light came on at a first floor window. A woman came into the room, hauled open the window.
“Ma bleedin’ washin’,” she moaned, snatching her laundry off the outside pulley.
Avram snorted a laugh, as did Solly. He felt the tension between them ease.
“Aye, yer a spoiled nutter,” Solly sniffed. “So what if ye dinnae get to play for Celtic? Ye can always play football for fun. The park’s full of teams on a Sunday needing their numbers made up. Meanwhile, yer getting an education.”
“I don’t want an education.”
“Dinnae knock it, Avram. Yer clever. Really clever. When ye came here ye couldnae speak the language, never mind kick the leether about. Now look at ye. Staying on for secondary. And yer always thinking about all that religious stuff. Ye could be a rabbi or something.”
“What? Like Lieberman?”
“Just dinnae be like me if ye can choose not to be. Standing out here in the rain waiting for the polis or the punters while my father’s working illegal. Just dinnae be like me.”
Another figure appeared at the far end of the lane. Avram braced himself to run but Solly held him back
“It’s the lampie, ye bampot.”
Avram peered down the lane at the tall, lanky, uniformed figure emerging from the drizzle with his lit-up pole laid over his shoulder like the rifle of a soldier coming through the fog on a French battlefield. Avram curled his fingers into the shape of a makeshift gun, sounded off a shot. Then, without saying goodbye to his friend, he ran off through the rain to his Hebrew class.
“Ah, it’s you, Avram.” Rabbi Lieberman reluctantly sat back down. “These lighting restrictions make everything such a darkness. Nu? I am in a hurry. Quickly, now. What do you want?”
“Today we studied from the Book of Samuel. The story of King David.”
“Nu?”
“There is something I don’t understand.”
“Nu? Spit it out. Quick, boy. Quick.”
“Are there two Gods, rebbe?”
“What are you saying?”
“I just wanted to know if there could be two Gods?”
“How can you say such a thing? You of all boys, with the Shema prayer in your bar mitzvah portion.” The rabbi pointed a gloved finger heavenwards. “Shema yisrael adoshem elokenu, adshem echod. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Then he turned his finger on Avram. “Are you meshugge?”
The rabbi’s histrionics no longer impressed him. Back before his bar mitzvah, the pointed finger may have intimidated him into submission in the same way as Lord Kitchener’s poster persuaded troops to enlist for the Front. But now, with the war into its third year and so many hundreds of thousands of lives lost, Avram’s confidence in the authority of God and his earthly servants had eroded to the point of questioning everything he had been taught.
“It’s just that it seems God loved David so much,” he said.
“This is true. David was an eesh ahoov. A beloved man.”
“But he broke two of God’s Commandments, rebbe?”
“And what Commandments were those?”
“Adultery.” Avram said the word hesitantly unsure of the nature of a sin he assumed could only be committed by adults.
“Go on.”
“And then he had Bathsheba’s husband killed by sending him to the front line.”
“That was Uriah. Uriah the Hittite. And, and …?”
“Is that not murder?”
The rabbi began to fiddle with the straps of his briefcase. “That is not for us to judge. Nu? What’s the point? Get to the point.”
“Why did God treat him so kindly?”
“What do you mean, ‘kindly’?”
“Why did He allow David a life full of glory, when he was a sinner against the Commandments?”
“Na, na, na, na. God was not so kind to David. Their first child – the child of David and Bathsheba died in infancy. That was the punishment. The death of the child.”
“But after the first child they had another child, Solomon, who became a famous king. And look what God did to Moses when all he did was strike a rock …”
“Moses, David. David, Moses. What is it with you and Moses?”
“But Moses …”
“I will hear no more of this. It is not for you to question the ways of the Lord.”
That night, from under the warmth of his bedclothes, Avram heard Papa Kahn return from the shop. There was the double-locking of the door, then the slice of light into the bedroom as he paused to check on the breathing of his son. Then came the clanking of pots in the kitchen in the search for the food that Celia had left him, the scraping of a chair on the stone floor, the sound of grumblings, the smell of tobacco from the one cigarette before bedtime. There was a time when Avram would have risen from his bed to join Papa Kahn at the kitchen table, to stand in the crook of his arm and ask him if indeed there were two Gods. But he let the lights go out and the flat settle into silence.
Eighteen
AVRAM LIKED THE STEAMIE. He liked the scald and hissing boil of the place, the bubbling vats, the scrubbed cleanliness, the stench of carbolic. But as the only male among the maids and housewives, he hated the teasing.
“Here’s your boyfriend come to get you,” one of the women cackled.
Mary strutted out of the boiling mist. Her face was blotched red, her hair matted in strands to her cheeks. Sweat stained her dress in a yoke above her breasts. She placed a hand on a bony hip cocked in her teaser’s direction.
“I need more of a man than that to satisfy me. And a rich one at that.”
“You know what they say about these young ’uns,” responded the teaser. “Plenty of powder in their guns.” Other women laughed.
“Master’s son, Mary,” another voice chided. “Don’t go fouling yer own nest.”
Avram felt the shirt clinging to his back from the humidity and the heat of his own embarrassment.
“Come on,” he pleaded. “Let’s go.”
“He ain’t the Master’s real son,” Mary said. She looked straight at him. “So I ain’t be fouling my own nest.” With a tilt of her head, she indicated a large basket piled high with whites. “That’s ours.”
He took one handle, waited for Mary to pull her cardigan tight around herself then pick up the other side of the basket. After the steamie’s concentrated heat and viscous smell, he breathed easier in the outside chill. It was only a couple of streets to home, a journey he tried to walk in silence, letting Mary babble out a mouthful of complaints about the housekeeping if she had to.
He sensed matters between them had changed since Madame Kahn’s departure. Despite her threats, the tension was more between Mary and Celia now. He almost detected a softening in her attitude towards him. She never touched him and if she would have, he had promised himself he would hit her back. The last few months had seen him sprout taller too, putting his height on a par with her. There was down growing on his face and between his legs, and a feeling towards her growing inside himself that was not entirely unpleasant.
“I think you’ve got eyes for that cow,” Celia had accused.
“Away with you.”
“You want to go roamin’ in the gloamin’ with her. I can tell.” Celia burst into a teasing sing-song. “Roamin’ in the gloamin’ on the bonnie banks o’ Clyde. Roamin’ in the gloamin’ with Mary at Avram’s side …”
“I hate her,” he said.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it. You’re always looking at her.”
And when he thought about it, so he was. Sometimes he would watch her working, the hem of her skirt retreating up the firm calf of her green woollen stockings as she reached for the pulley, or the heaving of her breasts as she sat in
a squat on a stool to breathlessly scrub clothes on the washboard. He watched Celia too. But in a way that was different.
“You can help me mangle this stuff.” Mary sniffed the air just before they reached the close. “But dinnae hang it out in the green after, though. I think it’s going to rain.”
And she was right. Just after the work with the mangle, the rain came down in buckets. Mary went upstairs to her room in Uncle Mendel’s flat to close the windows. He was left to take down all the dry clothes from the kitchen pulley, hang up the fresh wash. Celia came in, saw the newly-plucked dry stack in the basket, told him to put it in the bedroom for ironing. He did as he was told then remained to finish his homework by Nathan’s bedside. He propped his schoolbook among the bedclothes and tried to work out the mathematical problems in his copybook. Nathan was asleep, his breathing coming in a light snore. Celia worked quietly in a rhythm with the steam iron.
“What’s that you’re doing?” she asked.
“Algebra.” He enjoyed the subject, the combination of numbers and letters offering up a different language, the discovery of unknown value through the knowledge of other values, the puzzle of it all. He could almost feel his mind visibly expand to accommodate the new concepts, like a muscle training and straining to lift a heavier weight.
Celia sniffed. “That’s all that stuff with ‘x’ and ‘y’ in it. I don’t see the point, really.” As if to emphasise her statement, she slammed the iron hard down on one of Papa Kahn’s shirts stretched out on the board. There was a warm spittle of hiss from the device which looked too large and heavy for her thin arms. Her hair was up under a headscarf, her Paisley-patterned apron hugged in her waist, spread out tight over her hips. She muttered to herself as she worked, fussing with her fingers over buttons that had unthreaded loose or a stretch of material that wouldn’t sit just right across the board. Her face was flushed from the heat and her brow was damp where it had crinkled into a frown over her task. She was only a few months older yet he thought how grown-up she had become since Madame Kahn had been arrested. So efficient. So bossy. So like her mother.
“I think you’d be good at it,” he said.
“Maybe I would. But I’ve got other plans.”
“What other plans?”
“Plans for when Mother gets back.”
“You’ll still have to work here.”
“No I won’t. Women are going out to work now. They’re in the offices and the factories. That’s one good thing about the war.”
“There’s nothing good about the war.”
Almost as if in agreement, Nathan let out a groan and shifted in his bed, knocking Avram’s schoolbook to the floor. Avram turned his attention to the figure twisted out from under the bedclothes. Nathan seemed to have wasted away to nothing. He ate little and sometimes Celia had to force-feed him. The skin across his collarbone where his nightgown had pulled down was dry and thin. His wrists hung out of his sleeves like chicken bones. Avram was certain Rabbi Lieberman was right. Nathan did have the blood of a lamed vav, pouring the suffering of the world into his veins.
And there was plenty of suffering around. Avram read the papers every day, sometimes adding up the published lists of the dead, mouthing quietly to himself the names of these men who had become no more than a two- or three-word item in a newspaper column. The totals were atrocious. Reports for the last three months showed three hundred and fifty thousand Allied soldiers killed at the Somme, along with some six hundred and fifty thousand Germans. There were one and half million Jews starving in Russia. Together that was three times the population of the city of Glasgow, half the population of Scotland. He tried to picture the streets of the Gorbals littered with the bodies of the starving and the dead, and shivered at the image.
He thought that if he kept the newspapers away from the bedroom, Nathan would be unaware of what was going on. But then he realised that if Nathan was indeed related to a lamed vav, he would surely be able to feel the suffering without having to know about it. Somehow the pain would sink into him from the atmosphere, through radiowaves, from silent screams or the reports of angels.
Even for Avram, it wasn’t really necessary to read the newspapers to know about the tragedies occurring in mainland Europe. He could just go out into the streets to witness the men without limbs, with scarred faces, with the blank expressions of those who had seen too much and now only wanted to see too little. There was no rush to sign up for King and Country now. The war hadn’t ended before Christmas. It hadn’t ended before nearly three Christmases. Conscription had been introduced. Fifty thousand men were needed a month. He made the calculation in his head. Unless the war ended, in seven months all the new recruits would be dead at the Somme.
Celia picked up a shirt, tucked the neck under her chin, folded it just right.
“I want to be a clippie,” she announced.
“Of course you do.” He rolled his eyes at her then tried to visualise Celia in a conductress’ uniform. Black Watch tartan skirt, Corporation green jacket, her badge, the whirring ticket machine. “Papa Kahn would never allow it.”
“Makes no difference. I’m still going to do it.”
“You’re too young. You need to be at least eighteen to work with the public, handling money.”
Celia tucked a stray curl back under her headscarf. “I’ll lie about my age. Men lie to be in the war. Or I’ll work in a factory. Girls of sixteen are working in factories. Making shells. Some are even fourteen.”
The doorbell rang.
“Avram,” she said firmly, with a nod to the hallway.
At first, Avram didn’t recognise the young woman standing in the doorway. She was hatless, her blonde hair wet and dripping. One hand was flat against the door jamb while with the other she clutched her chest beneath her coat, trying to calm her breathing.
“It’s Mr Kahn,” she managed between gulps for air.
Avram recognised her now. Sadie, from Papa Kahn’s shop. He heard a gasp from behind him, then Celia’s voice, suddenly shrill.
“What’s happened to him?”
“He collapsed, Miss. Mrs Wallace wants to call a doctor. Please come, Miss. She don’t want to do it without yer permission. The cost and that. Please come.”
“Avram. Get Mary to come down and look after Nathan.” Celia snatched her coat off the hall-stand. “Then come down to the shop.”
“Take an umbrella, Miss. It’s coming down something rotten.” But Celia had already disappeared out of the close.
Avram raced upstairs to Uncle Mendel’s flat. He didn’t ring or knock but went straight in. The darkness of the hallway brought him to a stop as he tried to figure out which would be Mary’s room. Even though Uncle Mendel had been away for months, the smell of pipe tobacco still lingered. He saw light where a door was slightly ajar. He meant to knock but the door swung open when he touched it. What he saw at first confused him. The sheets were in a sprawl upon the floor. On the bed, there was the bare back of a dark-haired man and the tangle of naked limbs. Mary was underneath, her red hair fanned out on the pillow, her eyes squeezed shut but her mouth slightly open, breathing out a moan. As soon as the door was full wide, Mary’s eyes opened and she saw him. She pushed off the body from on top of her, made to yell at him but something changed her mind. He could see it in her expression as her lips moved into a strange smile. He had seen that smile before. He had seen it before in her wine-sodden kiss, he had seen it tell him there would be no more football.
“So look who it is.” Mary made no attempt to cover up her nakedness.
“Get him out of here,” the man shouted.
“No, I want him to see this.” She rose from the bed. Her whole body was covered in freckles except for the thatch of hair between her legs. She stepped towards him but he couldn’t move. She came close enough for him to smell an odour he had never smelt before. Close enough to feel the warmth radiating off her so white skin.
“It’s Papa Kahn,” he shouted. “He’s collapsed in the shop. You
’ve got to come.”
“Yer lying.”
“It’s true. Celia’s gone to him already. We need you to look after Nathan.”
“Jesus Christ!” she hissed. She turned to the man who was busy putting on his underwear by the side of the bed. The mound of a crumpled uniform lay at his feet. “For Christ sake, Brian. Get me a robe.”
Avram turned and ran out of the flat. As he sped down the steps and out into the rain all he could think about were Mary’s breasts. Round nipples the colour of her hair.
Nineteen
AVRAM ARRIVED AT THE SHOP to find Papa Kahn slouched sickly on a rickety wooden chair, his blood-shot eyes open, staring vacantly at the floor. The man’s collar hung loose, his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a hollow chest gulping air in a series of wheezes. Cuttings of different coloured cloth clung to his shirt like medal ribbons. Celia and Mrs Wallace clustered on either side of him.
“Please, Avram,” Celia called. “Come over here.” Her voice was steady but he could see the anxiety pinched tight in her eyes. He went round beside her. She put an arm around him, drew him in, dropped her head on to his shoulder. She had taken off her headscarf, her hair was lank and wet against his cheek. Her shoes looked sodden through. Underneath her coat, she was still wrapped up in her pinny. She was shivering. He knew he should be feeling anxious about her father. Instead, he felt glad to have her close like this, to be able to protect her.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “But the worst seems to have passed. He was still on the floor when I came. Sadie’s gone for the doctor.” As she spoke a hansom drew up sharp outside the shop window.
Dr Drummond was a plump, red-faced man with full mutton-chop whiskers who entered blustering and breathless under Sadie’s hastily erected umbrella. He opened his bag, brought out a stethoscope, shooed everyone away from around his patient.
The Credit Draper Page 11
