A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Them red coats was lovely,’ Maud said following obediently. ‘I wouldn’t mind one a’ them mesself.’

  ‘I’d rather ’ave the feller inside it,’ Polly said, laughing.

  ‘Wouldn’t do yer much good wiv ’im marchin’ off ter war,’ Ellen said, straightening a curtain on her way out.

  In the street below them the crowds were walking away too. The excitement was over. But had they known it, the story of those red coats had only just begun.

  Out on the sun-scorched plains of the veldt they weren’t quite so lovely as they’d been in the streets of Whitechapel. In fact they were a conspicuous nuisance and it wasn’t long before the army had decided to discontinue their use in battle and to dress their troops in a colour that would give them some camouflage. They called it khaki, and its arrival had a profound effect on the casualty rate.

  It also had an unexpected effect on the tailoring trade and women’s fashions at home. Khaki costumes with scarlet trimmings were all the rage that year, and Hopkins and Peggs soon had a window full of them. Not to be outdone by the gentry, Ellen and Maud bought several yards of striped ribbon from haberdashery and having trimmed their boaters and the collars and cuffs of their white blouses went off in style to the London Music Hall of a Wednesday to sing patriotic songs in their patriotic colours.

  And down in Whitechapel the tailors were working all hours to fulfill a rush of orders, for all those fashionable costumes, and officers’ uniforms in fine worsted, and the new heavy battle dress for the infantry. Khaki for the troops was an awkward material to work, being thick and cumbersome and very, very heavy. It exhausted Emmanuel Cheifitz, and tore Rachel’s fingers, and reduced Rivke to growling. But at least the work paid, which was just as well because the rents had gone up again and so had the price of bread. ‘So that’s var for you,’ Aunty Dumpling said. ‘The var begin, the price go up.’

  It was a bad winter. Emmanuel grew more gaunt with each cold day, his thin chest wracked with coughing and his eyes haggard.

  ‘A doctor you should see, maybe?’ Rachel suggested, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Doctors cost money and there was little enough of that for food and coal.

  ‘No. No,’ he sighed. ‘It vill pass, bubeleh.’

  But it didn’t pass. It got worse and worse, until finally when the sleets of February had chilled him to the bone he began to run a high temperature and was too ill to get out of bed. This time his sisters were adamant and the doctor was called. ‘Inflammation of the lungs,’ he said, and advised complete rest until the fever subsided, ‘otherwise he’ll end up with pleurisy and we don’t want that.’ It was a blow to the entire family.

  ‘I must work,’ Emmanuel insisted, struggling to sit up and finding even that impossible. ‘I shall be well tomorrow, Rachel, I promise you.’ To be ill when there was so much work!

  ‘Rest, bubeleh,’ Rachel said. ‘Don’t you worry. Ve manage.’

  But it was easier said than done. With the breadwinner’s wage lost to them, they wouldn’t be able to afford the rent. And even if the Board of Guardians gave them a loan to tide them over, it would still have to be paid back. And how was that to be done? Women might work every bit as hard as men, but they didn’t earn the same kind of money. The three women thought and planned and agonized, but however often they asked one another what they should do, the blunt answer remained the same. There was nothing within their power.

  To David there was no problem. He knew exactly what had to be done and who had to do it. He was nearly fourteen and Bar Mitzvah, with his own phylacteries to use at morning prayer, an adult member of the community. ‘Don’t you worry, Mama,’ he said when Rachel finally admitted defeat and began to weep, ‘I will take care of you.’

  ‘Such a boy!’ Aunty Dumpling admired, removing her apron from her head, to give him a watery smile. But she burst into tears again when he told them what he intended.

  ‘I shall leave school,’ he said calmly, ‘and go to work and pay the rent. I am Bar Mitzvah now. A man. It is high time I worked.’

  ‘But your education, bubeleh!’ his mother protested. ‘Your drawing!’

  ‘I can draw any time,’ he told her gently. ‘Now we need a wage.’

  Emmanuel said he wouldn’t hear of it, and wept tears of disappointment and weakness. But the boy was determined.

  That afternoon he went to see the principal and explained his situation. ‘I must go to work. The rent has to be paid. I am the man of the family now.’

  And the principal, who had heard this story from so many of his students, sighed and agreed, but with the proviso that he become apprenticed to a good trade and that the remainder of his scholarship should be transferred to pay the premium. ‘It will mean a smaller wage,’ he said, ‘at least to begin with, but it will be secure work, and it could lead on to better things. When you are sixteen you can come back to evening school here. By then you should be earning a fair wage and things should have sorted themselves out for you. It would be a pity to discontinue your education, having come so far. Go and see Mr Tranter. He will know what apprenticeships are available.’

  David came home that afternoon with his future settled, clutching the address of a bookbinder in Shoreditch High Street. And Emmanuel, who felt too weak to argue, agreed that if this had to be done, an apprenticeship was the best way to do it, and comforted them both that bookbinding was at least an artistic trade. ‘But you go back to the school vhen you sixteen,’ he urged. ‘This you promise?’

  David had every intention of going back. Life at the Tech was too rewarding to be relinquished for ever. And besides, he was drawing better now than he’d ever done, and he was secretly hopeful that if he could only study just a little longer, he might become an artist. Even Mr Eswyn Smith said his work was ‘quite good’ nowadays, and that was praise indeed. So one day. When things weren’t quite so difficult.

  In the meantime, there was a job to be done, and if he had to earn his living, binding books seemed as good a way as any.

  He went to Mr Woolnoth, Bookbinders, the very next morning. It was a very small shop on the west side of Shoreditch High Street, and at first sight it didn’t look at all promising, but once inside, he could see it was a thriving establishment Behind the green baize window was a long busy workshop, so long and so busy that he couldn’t see what was going on at the other end of it. It was mounded with paper and full of apprentice boys stacking and packing and counting. In one corner a spiral staircase corkscrewed upwards, and the boy who’d opened the door to him gave him a grunt and led him towards it. At the top was a small archway that led to the upper workshop.

  Here men were painstakingly stitching pages together, or carving coloured leather with a battery of curious tools, or working with fragile gold leaf, and all round the edges of this skilled occupation boys were watering glue pots and cleaning tools and sweeping. He’d certainly be kept busy here, if nothing else.

  He waited patiently while the boy went off to fetch Mr Woolnoth, and presently a man in a brown suit put down the leather he was handling and walked across the workshop towards him.

  ‘Mr Tranter tells me you write a fair hand,’ he said, ‘and are on your way to becoming a competent draughtsman. Is that so, would you say?’

  ‘I hope so, sir.’

  ‘There’s pen and paper,’ Mr Woolnoth said. ‘Write your name and address. Take as long as you need. It’s quality we’re after, not speed. When you’ve finished, take a second sheet and draw something.’ And then he was gone, moving delicately between the desks, as soft-footed as a cat.

  David wrote obediently and in his very best copperplate, and drew a careful sketch of the row of glue pots on the shelf beside him, and after a while the boss returned to consider his efforts. By now, such was the inescapable sense that he was being tested David was feeling and looking more nervous than he knew. But the sight of his bitten lip pleased Mr Woolnoth. His writing and drawing were both pronounced ‘fair enough’ and he was told to report for work in ten days’ t
ime and to provide himself with a good quality linen apron in the meantime. It was as quick and easy as that.

  Although he’d always imagined he would feel terribly excited when he first started work, he went home in a state of calm so profound it was almost as though he was walking in his sleep. Now nothing remained except his farewell to the Tech.

  Saying goodbye to his friends was easy enough. They all lived locally and knew they would see one another in the Buildings or down the Lane or at one of the music halls. But the teachers were more difficult, for several of them were annoyed at his sudden departure and said so, and Mr Eswyn Smith was furious.

  ‘It’s always the same story,’ he said when David came to see him at the end of his last Friday. ‘Just when I’ve got you into some sort of shape. Well, don’t blame me, boy, if you never amount to anything.’ He was so annoyed he was snorting.

  David tried to assure him that no blame would ever be attached. But that only made him worse. ‘God damn it!’ Mr Smith roared. ‘Why you? I could have made a fine artist out of you, given the time. What sort of world do we live in, I ask you.’ And he tore his paintbrushes from behind his ear and threw them at the wall.

  ‘I will come back, the minute I’m sixteen,’ David promised ardently. ‘You have my word of honour.’

  ‘You’d better, God damn it!’ the art teacher said. ‘And don’t you stop drawing for a minute. You’re one of the best pupils I’ve ever had.’

  This was news. ‘Am I?’ He’d never said anything like this before. Never. ‘Am I?’

  ‘You didn’t know it? Yes, God damn it, you are. And now this! Well, go if you’re going, before I throw something else.’

  This time David went home in a highly emotional state. To have discovered how much he was valued just at the very moment he had to leave was an irony he hadn’t expected. Until then he’d been buoyed up by the knowledge that he was doing the honourable thing, supporting his parents and earning his living, and he hadn’t stopped to think beyond it. Now he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was throwing an opportunity away. I’ll go back, he promised himself. On my sixteenth birthday, I’ll go back. No matter what it costs. I’ll have earned it. And that thought was comforting.

  The next Monday he started his apprenticeship, with the best of intentions and three pennies in his pocket. And although he missed his friends and felt cut off from all the things he’d enjoyed so much at school, he was resolutely uncomplaining. He was a man now, at work and supporting his family, and men didn’t complain.

  In the first week he was set to unpack the printed pages, in the second he was taught how to collate them. In the third he was told to make the glue and keep it watered, which he didn’t enjoy at all. But he learned fast and could see that Mr Woolnoth was pleased. Six weeks later when his father was finally well enough to return to work, he was learning how to make endpapers, and how to set up the frames and how to mark up for sewing. By the summer he was sewing simple stitches and gluing up spines. And by then the work was enjoyable. He still missed school, but there were rewards in this crowded workshop among the quiet sounds of sewing and carving and the intermittent conversation of the men and the clowning friendship of the boys. It was hard work, just as he’d known it would be, but there were pleasures attached to it too. He liked the warm smell of new leather and the crisp scent of a new-printed page, and after a time he even enjoyed the smell of the gluepots, sweet and fishy though they were.

  And whenever he had a minute to spare he drew sketches. Of Mr Woolnoth pondering, and Mr Steinway carving, and old Mr Martinson burnishing the gilded edges of a huge book held between his knees, of Tom and Jem and Fozzy and Abe and Dickon, the other apprentices, sweeping and setting up frames and stacking and stitching and grimacing at the smell of the glue. And every sketch was a step nearer the time when he could go back to the Tech.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aunty Dumpling had found herself a gentleman friend. The shock waves that caused in the Cheifitz family! To be keeping company with a Jew would have been bad enough. But a goy! Rachel and Rivke were scandalized.

  ‘At her time of life!’ Rivke said scathingly. ‘She should be so stupid!’

  ‘I never hold my head up again!’ Rachel wailed. ‘The shame of it, Rivke. Vhy she do this?’

  ‘Ai-yi-yi!’ Rivke howled. ‘Forty-nine years old to take up vid a goy!’

  Emmanuel tried to be reasonable. ‘So he takes her to the theatre vonce in a vhile, a meal maybe. It ain’t a marriage yet.’

  ‘Great oaks from little apples,’ Rivke said, her face more lopsided than ever with disapproval.

  ‘Has vesholem!’ Rachel prayed. ‘How could she spend her time vid such a schlemiel?’

  David didn’t know how he should react. It was certainly a most deplorable thing for a Jewish woman to marry out of her religion. He’d always known that. But this Jewish woman was Aunty Dumpling, his own roly-poly Aunty Dumpling, with her marvellous capacity for fun and affection, and he couldn’t help thinking she’d hardly be likely to choose an unsuitable man, even for a trip to the theatre. And as to getting married, why that was really ridiculous. She couldn’t possibly get married. He wouldn’t even think of it.

  ‘What’s ’e like?’ Hymie asked as they settled down to their weekly game of cards in the empty parlour above the Levy’s shop.

  ‘Haven’t seen ’im,’ David admitted, dealing the cards.

  ‘They’re in love, maybe,’ Hymie said. He was already sixteen and had been out at work with the Gas Company for more than two years now so he considered himself an expert on love, as on many other matters. He was a solid looking individual with thick black hair and the makings of an equally black moustache, but as ugly as he’d ever been, his eyes too small behind those heavy horn rims and his nose too big and his wide shoulders awkward.

  David on the other hand had grown steadily more handsome. When he’d left school he’d been a little boy, pale and anxious and undersized. Now he was a grown man, five foot ten inches tall, with a silky moustache and fine brown eyes and the confidence born of knowing that he was quite good-looking. Certainly the young women he passed on his way to and from Mr Woolnoth’s were gigglingly aware of him, and some of the bolder ones had taken to making eyes at him from beneath their hats or, even worse, fishing for him with saucy remarks flung more or less in his direction. ‘Mind you don’t tread on the nice young man’s feet, Elsie!’ or ‘What I wouldn’t give fer a nice strong arm to ’old on to.’ He didn’t find them particularly attractive or interesting, and he knew, from everything he’d been taught at home and in the synagogue, that a brazen woman was best avoided. But that left him in a difficult position. He simply didn’t know how to respond. Occasionally he was flattered by their attentions, when the hint was just a little too broad, he was shocked and couldn’t avoid showing it Then they laughed at him until he could feel the blushes spreading flame into his cheeks, and he would fall over his feet in an effort to get away from them. At home among modest Jewish women he’d always felt safe and comforted. And now his own modest Jewish aunt was courting a goy.

  ‘She can’t be in love,’ he said scowling at the idea. ‘She’s forty-nine.’

  Hymie grinned. ‘Can happen any time,’ he said. ‘Take my word fer it. I fall in love every Thursday.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Straight up! Every Thursday. I only have to be in that theatre five minutes and I’m in love. You never saw such girls as there are in that theatre of a Thursday. You got to admit it.’ He and David went to the Pavilion nearly every week to see a Jewish melodrama, and now it was pantomime time which was even better.

  David laughed at him. ‘That’s not love, Hymie. You never even speak to ’em.’

  ‘I would if they gave me half a chance,’ Hymie said ruefully. ‘Don’t even see me, that’s the trouble. Wait till it ’appens ter you, then you’ll know what I mean.’

  ‘Unclean thoughts!’ David warned, laughing at him again. ‘You’re supposed to keep yer e
yes to the ground and resist temptation, like a good Jewish boy.’

  ‘And miss all the fun!’ Hymie said. ‘I should co-co. Have a gasper.’

  David took the proferred cigarette and they both lit up, feeling very grown up and manly.

  ‘No seriously, Davey,’ Hymie said. ‘Don’t yer want ter fall in love?’

  David stung his nose by exhaling the smoke too quickly, so for a few minutes he had to blink back tears and couldn’t answer, which was just as well, because he wasn’t sure about his feelings at all. Of course he wanted the comfort and happiness of a good marriage, and he supposed he would fall in love like everyone else, but there were fears too. What if the girl he loved didn’t love him? Or what if his parents arranged a marriage for him and he couldn’t love the girl? The whole subject was fraught with difficulties. Better to avoid it.

  ‘I’m going up Brick Lane termorrer,’ he said. ‘If ’e’s there I’ll do a sketch, show you what’s ’e’s like.’

  Hymie flicked ash from his cigarette and grinned, and let the subject pass, like the good friend he was. ‘Good idea,’ he said. David’s sketches were always worth looking at, and this one should be particularly good.

  The next day was clammy with fog licking long, sulphur yellow tongues against the windows and curling through every crack to chill and choke. Rachel wasn’t at all happy about her David going off to Brick Lane in such weather. ‘You catch your death a’ cold, bubeleh,’ she warned. ‘Some other time, nu?’ But curiosity was stronger than cold weather.

  ‘I knew you vould come, bubeleh,’ Dumpling said wrapping him in the fondest embrace as soon as he stepped inside her room. ‘Nothing don’t keep my Davey away from his old aunty. Vhat you think of my Davey, Mr Morrison? He’s a fine boy, nu?’

  The man sitting beside the stove had risen to his feet when David entered. Now he stood nervously holding out his hand in greeting, a short slender man, with sleek brown hair greying at the temples, and the narrowest moustache David had ever seen. It was little more than a line, but very neatly trimmed. He must have a very steady hand shaving, David thought, and shook that steady hand, surprised at how cold it was.