“No … I’m just …”
He shuddered as he felt her quickly squeeze his hand. Her palm lingered, soft on his skin.
“Try to enjoy the picture,” she said, before returning her hand to rest on her knee. He brought his own hand to lie close by on his thigh. He imagined he could feel the heat across the short distance between their fingers, yet the gap between them still seemed so achingly far. He decided he would count to three, then place his hand on hers. He tried to discreetly rub his palm dry along his thigh. One. Two. Three. He lifted his hand on to hers. Her wrist immediately twisted on contact so she could entwine his fingers in her own. He let out the breath he realised he had been holding for a long time.
He clutched on to Fiona’s hand for the rest of the film then clung to it proud as they all bundled out of the picture house. It had rained while they had been inside. The streets were wet, the air unseasonably clammy. “What now?” he asked Solly.
“Let’s go for ice-cream,” Solly declared to the company then whispered in Avram’s ear: “Don’t worry, soldier boy. I’ll pay.”
Solly took them to Valentino’s where they were greeted by Carlo, the proprietor, a small worried-looking man in his mid-sixties who was also one of Solly’s punters. Carlo waved them to the rear where Avram finally let go of Fiona’s hand so she could slide into one of the red-leather booths. As Avram moved into position beside her, Solly leaned over the table.
“Listen to what I say, soldier boy. And don’t look behind ye.”
“Stop messing around,” he said with a quick smile to Fiona.
“It’s Begg,” Solly whispered. “He’s just come in. He’s at the counter.”
“You’re having me on.”
“I kid ye not. It’s the one-eyed monster himself. Keep low and he won’t see ye.”
Just the mere mention of Begg’s presence made the tension crawl up Avram’s spine. He hunched over Valentino’s elaborate tasselled menu, trying to concentrate on the list of ice-creams as if it were some dense tract from the Torah. He could imagine his former gym teacher waiting tense for his order, kitted out as he had been on the evening he had visited Papa Kahn – three-piece suit and homburg, with his thick neck straining for release from the confines of its unaccustomed collar.
“You’ve gone awfully quiet,” Fiona said.
Avram shivered as he sensed a figure approach the table.
“You like to order?” An elderly square-faced woman in an ill-fitting waitress uniform stood poised with a notepad. “We have mostly nothing.”
Molly laughed loudly. “What do you mean? Mostly nothing.”
The waitress remained impassive. “Just plain we have. Plain scoops.”
“That’s all?” Molly said, her mouth in a pout.
“Don’t ye know there’s a war on?” Solly chided his girlfriend. “A soldier in the trenches can only dream of a scoop of ice-cream.”
“It’s just that I really wanted …”
“Escovitz!” boomed a voice the length of the cafe. Avram didn’t turn round but he heard the footsteps click across the tiled floor. Then Roy Begg’s face appeared at his shoulder so close he could smell the man’s hair lotion, see the web of broken blood vessels across one cheek. “The ice-cream here kosher enough for you, Escovitz? That is the word, isn’t it? Kosher?
Avram stared straight ahead.
“We could’ve won the cup last season. But for you and your Jew customs.”
Avram turned to look at his tormentor. Roy Begg’s eyes were bloodshot, there were clusters of stubble around his cheeks and jaw. He wasn’t dressed up in a three-piece suit either – just an old sweater and trousers wet around the turn-ups from the rain. He held an ice-cream cone in his hand.
“That’s not true,” Avram protested. “It wasn’t my fault we lost six-nil.”
“Oh aye, it was. Aye it was, most definitely.” Begg pulled back, swayed slightly on his feet. The waitress looked on anxiously as he grabbed the ledge of the table for support. “You were my best player. You had it all. You could have played for Celtic.” Begg held out his arms to the otherwise empty cafe. The ice-cream cone had started to drip on to his hand. “And you threw it all away. All for your bloody Jew Sabbath.”
“Excuse me, Mr Begg,” Solly interjected. “But please don’t swear in front of these young ladies.”
“Fuck you, Green.” Begg wiped a hand across his mouth. “Excuse my French, ladies.” He turned the attention of his one eye back to Avram. “You were a coward, Escovitz. You could have faced up to … to that Jew Kahn. But you backed down.”
“Don’t you think I wanted to play? Don’t you think I miss the football?”
“That’s your own fault. You were a bloody coward.”
“No, he isn’t,” Fiona said, the colour flooding into her milky cheeks. “He’s enlisted.”
“Enlisted?” Begg’s neck bulged at the collar. “Enlisted? A cowardly little runt like you?”
Avram clenched his fists, wished for the courage to rise to his feet to hit this man he’d once seen pulverise a punch bag in the school gym, rip the flesh off a classmate’s palms with six swipes of his tawse.
“Let him be,” Solly said. “He’s drunk.”
“He’s a better man than you,” Fiona shouted at Begg. “Others are dying while you’re drinking.”
Roy Begg drew back as he tried to focus on the source of the insult. “Why you little …” But Carlo had approached purposefully from the counter, his sleeves rolled up, a dish towel slung over his shoulder. He took Begg’s arm and with a few persuasive tugs managed to lead him back from the table towards the door.
“It was my eye that did it for me.” Begg twisted his head to call back. “But for my eye I’d be out there with the boys. Out there in the trenches. Fighting with the boys. But for my eye.”
It was dark by the time they left Valentino’s. Solly proposed they should walk the girls home like proper gentlemen. Avram was walking ahead hand-in-hand with Fiona when he realised Solly and Molly were no longer behind them.
“They’ve gone winchin’ up that close,” Fiona said. “The lamp not working makes it a favourite.” She turned to face him square and near, rocking back and forward in front of him so that her breasts just brushed lightly in a rhythm against his chest. “Do you want to join them?”
He stood awkwardly, trying to hide the growing hardness between his legs. “If you like.”
“Of course I’d like. Or I wouldn’t have asked. Come on.” She pulled him by the hand to the entrance of the close. He stumbled after her in the darkness through the front passage, past the doors of the ground floor flats, under the stairwell and into the corridor that led to the back green. The moonlight came in from the rear and he could see Solly pressing Molly hard against the close wall.
“Joining us, then?” Solly said, pulling away from his embrace. Even in the moonlight, Avram could see Molly’s face flushed, her clothes dishevelled. Her cardigan was open, the buttons hung loose on her blouse. Solly’s shirt flapped free under his sweater.
“Aye,” Fiona said matter-of-factly. And she moved up to a couple of yards from her friend, turned her back to the tiles, beckoned for Avram to come into her arms. He moved in close and she put a hand around the back of his head, pulling him in towards her. He buried his mouth in her neck, feeling the softness beneath the collar of her blouse. He recalled for an instant the soap-smell of his mother’s neck as he held on to her at the quayside and he felt as if he could stay like this forever, his lips nuzzled against Fiona’s skin, any girl’s skin, it hardly seemed to matter.
Fiona wriggled slightly in his grasp, then pulled his head up. She looked at him straight, her eyes questioning, her lips thin and tense.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He heard a giggle from Molly.
“Give her a Frenchie,” Solly said.
Avram pressed his lips flat and hard against Fiona’s. His face was hot and he had one arm awkwardly around her back against the cold slime of
the tile. He kept his mouth pressed against hers until he felt her lips open slightly. He responded, letting his mouth fall into the contours of hers. Then he pulled away gasping for breath.
“You got to breathe through your nose, silly,” she said.
He pressed in again, this time with his mouth open. He brought his free hand between them, flat against the soft contour of her breast. Fiona moaned slightly, pushed hard against him. He felt her fingers tug at the waistband of his trousers, pulling out his shirt. Then, her fingers cold against the flesh of his stomach. The sensation was too much.
“Oh God,” he moaned. He snatched his hand away from her breast, leaned against the wall as his penis pumped and pumped its discharge into his underpants.
“What’s going on?” Fiona gasped.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. Then he turned away and fled out of the close, feeling the warm wetness spread over his groin as he ran.
Twenty-four
ALL WAS SILENT IN THE ROOM except for Papa Kahn’s hoarse breathing. It was an awful sound. A wheezing inhalation, then a pause during which Avram was not sure if the outbreath might ever come. He wondered how Papa Kahn must feel at that instant when his lungs were poised between life and death. Before the sudden relief followed quickly by the fear of death again. Inhale, pause, exhale. Life, pause, life. Papa Kahn appeared to be listening to the sound too. His head was tucked to one side as if the muscles in his neck had completely given up their function, exposing an ear cocked to the sound of his breath. His beard had grown ragged compared to the precise cut of healthier days when he was a man of such sharp contrasts, of glossy black cloths and shining white shirts. Now everything was grey. His hair, his eyes, his skin, his nightshirt. Even the air in the room.
Avram stooped to help Papa Kahn struggle to raise himself straight. He could smell the soiled warmth of the man’s nightclothes, the sick desiccation of skin reminding him of the palm-sweated mustiness of old prayer books. The man’s bones hung brittle and lifeless as he settled his hands on the bedclothes.
“You are angry with me,” Papa Kahn said. The sound of his eerie battle for breath filled the room. “Ever since that business with the football. Go on. Say it.”
Avram shook his head.
“Say it.”
Still Avram said nothing.
Papa Kahn lips parted into a lop-sided smile. His teeth were stained a yellowish-brown. “Anger can sometimes be a good thing. It can push you on.” He eased back into his pillows, coughed hard, his lungs heaving under his nightshirt like a pair of battered bellows. “Pass me some water.”
Avram took the cloth off a jug on the bedside table, poured out a glass, placed it in the man’s hands. Papa Kahn sipped slowly until his breathing relaxed.
“Remember what I told you about numbers?”
“Numbers never lie.”
“Good. And they don’t lie now. Numbers show I cannot afford to send you to school. They are stopping your education. Just as quotas did mine.” His voice trailed off and his head fell back into the pillow. “But numbers will also help you in your job with Herr Stein. And when I am well again, we can see what we can do to return you to your studies.”
“I don’t want to go back to my studies.”
“Of course you will return to your studies. You are a smart boy, Avram. Don’t throw away your chance to learn.”
“I have other plans.”
“What other plans?”
“I have to go,” Avram said, turning away from the sick figure. “My train leaves at …”
“Wait.” Papa Kahn’s voice was hardly a whisper now. “Do you ever think of your mother?” The man’s jaundiced eyes were wiped with a sudden brightness. “Yes, your mother. Dear Rachel. Do you ever think of her?”
The question surprised Avram. He stopped at the door. “Yes, sometimes. Sometimes she comes to me in my dreams.”
“I can see her in you. I couldn’t before, but now I can. I can see her in your eyes. And in your forehead.” Papa Kahn cupped a hand around his own mouth and nose so that Avram was left only with the sight of the upper half of the sick man’s face. A pale, feverish forehead, dull eyes in dark sockets. He waited until Papa Kahn’s head had sloped sideways and his eyes had shut. Then he went in to see Nathan.
The boy lay semi-conscious on his bed. On a nearby table there was a tray of breakfast dishes from which Celia had tried to spoon-feed her brother. Avram picked up Nathan’s hand. Such a weightless thing that rested in his palm like a few dried twigs.
“Your father doesn’t understand. But you do, don’t you?”
Unlike his father, Nathan breathed easy, pleasant puffs of spittle through his lips, as effortless as a young baby. His neck was arched back slightly to reveal the white slithers of his half-opened eyes. A red rim to his nostrils was the only sign of colour on the bloodless face. Avram felt a slight pressure on his palm from the boy’s bony fingers.
“You can hear me, can’t you, my little lamed vav? You can hear me.” He watched as Nathan’s hand twisted around in his own. “So let me tell you something. A little secret between you and me. I am leaving you. I am leaving Glasgow. And I am leaving being a Jew. Being a Jew only brings me trouble in this world. You can see that, can’t you, my little lamed vav? So I am leaving. And you will suffer less when I am gone.”
The tram clattered to a halt at the bottom of Buchanan Street. Avram jumped off, Celia skipped down after him. Together they walked the few yards to the hitching-post where carthorses were gathered for the haul of their wagonloads a quarter-mile up the easy slope to the station. A young boy wandered in and out of their steamy flanks with a brush and shovel sweeping up the hot manure.
“Give us a ride, please,” Avram shouted to one of the drivers who was getting ready to pull off with a half-load of grain sacks.
The lad turned to look at him, then at Celia, pushed his already rolled-up sleeves even further up on his brawny arms, let out a shrill whistle. “I shouldnae really … och, aye … hop on.”
Avram swung on his bag and parcels first, then heaved himself on to the rearside of the wagon. He held out his hand. Celia grabbed it, pulled herself on board.
“Mind yer dress from the wheels,” the driver shouted. “Don’t want to be getting yer skirts dirty. Yer young fancy man wouldn’t be wanting that.”
“He’s not my fancy man.”
“Right then.” The driver gave his brace of Clydesdales a flick and the horses began their plodding ascent.
“Oh, Avram,” Celia said. “This is such fun.” A Salvation Army band had struck up as they passed St. Vincent Place, and she began pumping her elbows in time to the brass. “I’m sorry, Avram. I should be feeling sad about you leaving but the weather … the music … and the people. It all makes me so happy.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s good to see you like this.” And he meant it. She had become so serious these days, always rushing around intent on her chores, staying up late to read in the kitchen, hardly a smile to lift the frown from her brow. Political tracts, she read. Manifestos and socialist commandments. There were piles of them, printed up on cheap ink that came away on her fingers, smeared her eyes when she rubbed the tiredness out of them. She devoured them all. As greedily as Solly could swallow down a jelly piece.
The wagon pulled up sharp as a large group of women and children waving flags and banners swarmed around them on a march across the road. At their head, two stern-faced matrons held up poles stretching a white sheet declaring the procession’s purpose in bold, red lettering – Defending Our Homes Against Landlord Tyranny. The cloth brushed over the pricked-up ears of the horses but the beasts just snorted, wriggled their thick necks, jingling the buckles and straps of their halters. A boy in a sailor suit ran alongside dwarfed by his own giant placard demanding: Rent Strike Against Increase. Despite the sunshine and the buoyant blare of the band, an angry mood pulsed through the marchers. Avram could sense it in the bark of their slogans, in their pinched faces, in the thrusting
shake of their banners. This was no Sunday stroll up Buchanan Street. The lined-up constables twitching their batons were testament to that.
The wagon-driver sprang halfway up from his bench. “I’m with you,” he said, pumping a clenched fist. “Bloody landlords.” Then, as if he felt the need to give some explanation, he twisted his head back. “On their way to George Square. For the big demonstration.”
“Brave women,” Celia said.
“They are that, bless ’em.” The young man gave her a broad smile then cracked his whip. The team started moving again. Avram saw that Celia’s cheeks had reddened. She began to swing her legs back and forward over the side of the wagon.
“Are ye gettin’ any increases where ye are?” the driver asked over his shoulder.
“We’re from the Gorbals,” Celia said. “We’re too far away from the shipyards. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Partick.”
“That’s one of the worst areas.”
“Aye. There’s a big housing shortage with all those workers from outside floodin’ into the steel and engineering works. Landlords are rubbin’ their hands together like they’re kindlin’ fire with sticks. Meanwhile ma faither’s in France and I could be off there any day now. Fightin’ for King and country. And the factors want our families out on the streets to make room for all these new folks if we cannae pay the hikes.”
“It won’t happen,” said Celia with some assurance. “You’ve got a lot of support. Especially from these women. The Government will pay attention. These wifies will make them.”
“That’s a fine way of thinking ye’ve got for being a lassie.”
Avram was leaning against the sacks, head back to the weak sun, listening to the conversation. He had never heard Celia talk like this before. She was all riled up, her face and neck in a flush. He eased a knee against her back.
“These pamphlets you read? Is that how you know all of this?”
She turned to him. Droplets of perspiration had formed just above her upper lip. “I read the papers.”
The Credit Draper Page 15
