‘What d’yer do of a Sunday?’ he asked, huskily.
‘We ’ave ter stay out all day,’ she said. ‘We’re supposed ter go ter church an’ visitin’ an’ such like. Ain’t allowed in till eight o’clock supper.’
‘D’you go ter church?’
‘No.’ She sounded surprised at the question, and he, remembering how secure he always felt at the synagogue on a Sabbath evening and how happy, was surprised at her surprise. The fact that she wasn’t religious registered somewhere at the back of his mind, but faintly, because there were other more important things to occupy him just at the moment.
‘I s’ppose you go visitin’ then,’ he said, hoping she didn’t. ‘Family an’ such.’
‘Some gels do. Not me though.’
‘Whatcher doin’ this Sunday?’
‘Nothin’ much really,’ she said, her eyes widening most beautifully as the same thought entered her mind.
‘We could go ter the country. Epping Forest. Take a train.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and now her voice was husky too. He was much encouraged by the sound, and was just beginning to think he might offer to kiss her after all when there was a scraping of locks behind the door, and at that she panicked and pushed the door open quickly, making excuses to the shadowy face behind it, and with two quick paces and a fleeting smile was gone.
He was so happy he skipped all the way to the tram stop.
He was the first customer to walk into Hopkins and Peggs at half past eight the next morning, looking very proper in his dark working suit and his cloth cap covering that thick dark hair. ‘Morning, Miss White,’ he said, touching his cap as he passed her counter. So they smiled at each other for a brief happy second before their working day began.
Miss Morton was charmed. ‘What a polite young man,’ she approved, and looked quizzically at her assistant for an explanation.
‘We was at school tergether,’ Ellen obliged. ‘’E’s an artist.’ And it was a great satisfaction to her that she could be claiming his friendship. An artist. It was a cut above a shop assistant, an’ no mistake.
The next morning he stopped beside the counter long enough to pass her a small much-folded note. And three aggravating customers followed him in and had to be served with chintzes, and curtaining, and took for ever to choose two perfectly ordinary dress lengths. Stupid women! It was more than twenty minutes before she could read what he’d said.
‘Dear Ellen, Don’t forget tomorrow. I shall be outside the main entrance eight thirty sharp. They say the fair is very good this year. Kind regards, David Cheifitz.’
Correct and formal though it was, it felt like a love letter. She tucked it inside her blouse and kept it there all day – when she wasn’t reading it again.
The next day they took a train to Chingford, along with several hundred others, and walked in a chattering crowd along the well-trodden path through the woods, among the grey-green columns of the beeches and the fluted boles of the famous hornbeams, their feet rustling the heaped copper leaves and their heads brushed by the low boughs of hideously pollarded trees, until they came to Queen Elizabeth’s hunting lodge and the fairground. Old women in feathered hats and old men in bowlers, costers with gaudy neckerchiefs under their dirty faces and their pockets crammed with bottled beer, misshapen mothers with tribes of skinny kids and various babes in arms, a gallimaufry of bonnets and baskets and trampling boots, all on their way to sample the delights of the countryside, donkey rides, swings, shies and roundabouts, ice cream and Indian toffee, cockles and whelks and winkles.
It was a friendly familiar place, much smaller than the Bank Holiday fair but every bit as good and splendidly noisy. They went on the donkeys and had two goes on the roundabout, and walked arm in arm through the crowds like a real courting couple, while the organ pipes fluted their tinny tunes and the drums and cymbals crashed their incessant rhythm and the showmen bellowed their wares. And presently they came to the flying trapeze, which by general agreement was reckoned to be the best and most dangerous thing at the fair.
It was a simple construction, consisting of a long metal frame from which hung a series of dangling ropes, each ending in a handle or a loop, and above them six wide metal hoops which served to give marginal support to the flyers as they swung from rope to rope along the frame. It was an irresistible challenge to the young men and their girls, and there was always a large crowd below them to mock or egg them on. When David and Ellen arrived, two girls were happily screaming their way along the ropes towards the point where their boys were eagerly waiting to catch them from their final leap.
‘Would yer like a go?’ he asked, watching the first girl as she squealed down through the air towards the welcoming chest of her escort.
‘If you go first,’ she said, and it struck him that she had two quite contradictory expressions on her face, her blue eyes bold but her mouth soft and vulnerable. And he was intrigued because he hadn’t thought of her as bold or vulnerable before that moment. Only as beautiful.
He’d only been on the trapeze once before, and that was last year, with Hymie, but he climbed up as though he was a veteran and swung with foolhardy audacity, jumping high into the air before he landed, so that the crowd would cheer and she could admire.
And then it was her turn. She tied her boater round her neck and set off, swinging like a lilac bell, her dark hair lifting on either side of her face like wings, and her boots treading the air. She didn’t scream like the other girls but swung steadily, hand over white hand, concentrating and purposeful, and as he watched her he realized that she was a little afraid and he called out to encourage her, ‘Nearly there! I’ll catch yer!’ And the crowd gave him a mocking cheer and some ribald advice. And at that he knew he’d made a mistake. He’d been so eager to hold her in his arms he’d forgotten how public all this was. It wasn’t the right time or the right place, and he was ashamed of the desire that had driven him to suggest it.
But she was already dangling from the last rope and there was nothing he could do to stop her. She dropped like a diver, her fists clenched on either side of her face and her eyes tight shut. Her fall was so precipitate and so swift that she knocked him off balance, and even though he caught her they fell backwards together and rolled over and over on the straw, laughing and gasping, with relief and desire and excitement. He could feel the full length of her lovely body against his, her breasts soft above the hard bones of her stays and her long legs rounded and warm, and the desire to kiss her was so strong it made him groan. But then they’d rolled to a halt and had to disentangle themselves, because the crowd was cat-calling and mocking again, ‘Go on boy, give ’er one!’ and he was ashamed because they were making a public spectacle of themselves, and the moment should have been private. She looked at him shyly as she scrambled to her feet, and he saw the flush on her cheeks and the moist gleam in her eyes and knew that he loved her.
‘Let’s have sommink to eat,’ he said.
They had beer and cheese in an old-fashioned pub just along the road. While they were eating it, there was a sudden rush of noise from the road below them, a rattle of wheels, and laughter and chattering voices. They stood up at once to see what it was. And a cycling club passed by on its way to one of the Riggs Retreats, the men in Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers, the women in tweed cycling dresses with their bonnets firmly netted underneath their chins.
Ellen watched them enviously. ‘We got a cycling club at ’Opkins,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t ’alf like ter join. I been savin’ up fer a bicycle, months an’ months.’
‘We could both join,’ he said, making up his mind about it at once. ‘Free ter ride wherever we like. Just the thing!’
She looked up at him with that odd mixture of confidence and uncertainty. ‘Take a bit a’ time,’ she warned. ‘Bicycles cost money.’
‘Secondhand’s cheaper,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘I’ll get ’em, shall I? Leave it ter me. I bet I could get two good ’uns in the Lane.’ The offer made him feel
manly and responsible and protective, particularly as he still had some of his commission left.
And to his great delight she agreed. ‘Be fun,’ she said.
And fun it was. Greatly daring, she invested a week’s wages in a length of pale blue serge and paid Maudie’s mother to run her up one of the new bloomer suits. It was a stunning creation and she looked extremely pretty in it, as she knew because she’d crept down to the shop after lights out to get a full-length view of herself in the long mirrors in the dress department. The high puffed sleeves nipped in at the elbows and the full bloomers nipped in below the knee were high fashion and very feminine. With a broad red ribbon trimming her boater and a broad red cummerbund emphasizing her waist, and new black stockings and neat button boots to complete the outfit, she looked like one of the swells. And that pleased her because she wanted him to see her at her best. For all her initial doubts about him, she had to admit he was becoming more and more important to her.
When he came into the shop the next day he gave her a note to tell her he’d ‘bought the bicycles, real bargains. I will tell you about them Thursday at the Music Hall. It is Little Tich and Gus Elan to top the bill. You will come, won’t you? From David.’
‘I can’t wait fer Thursday,’ she said to Maudie when they went down to the canteen for their mutton and potatoes. ‘We’re going to the Music Hall, Little Tich an’ Gus Elan.’
‘An’ David Cheifitz an’ all!’ Maudie teased. ‘You was supposed ter be a man-hater!’
‘So I changed me mind.’
‘You can say that again!’
On Friday morning, after a riotous evening at the Music Hall, he delivered her bicycle, which cost her less than she’d already saved, and that Sunday they joined the Hopkins and Peggs Cycling Club and went off on their first jaunt across London Bridge, through Bermondsey, and into the Kent countryside. They were very decorous, riding carefully along beside each other because they had to concentrate on the difficult business of steering and keeping upright. When they got back to Hopkins and Peggs just before supper time, they both said what a nice day it had been but they were both secretely disappointed with it. The bicycles were all very exciting but they’d actually kept them apart. They hadn’t held hands once all day.
However, the next Sunday was an improvement, for the club went to Epping Forest and by now they’d mastered the art of riding their awkward steeds and felt rather less self-conscious among their new friends. They stopped for a meal at Riggs Retreat, and ate on the wooden veranda among the potted palms with all the others, still behaving properly, but when the tour continued they contrived to dawdle behind all the rest until they were on their own. And after a while they stopped cycling and dismounted to get their breath back.
‘I’d like to do a sketch of you in that bloomer suit,’ David said as they rested on the handlebars, admiring one another. ‘You look ever so pretty in that bloomer suit.’ And the compliment made him blush and delighted her.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said.
So they propped their bicycles against the hedge and walked into the woods to find a suitable setting. Because it was rough underfoot and the twisted roots of the beeches were half hidden by all those long dead leaves, he offered his arm like a gentleman, and she slipped her nice warm hand into the crook of his elbow, and they were touching again.
Presently they found a secluded corner among the hornbeams. She found a comfortable place to sit and he settled down to draw his first sketch from life.
She’d already seen several expressions on his face, all of them handsome and all of them young somehow. Now, watching him as he drew, she saw another side of his character. His face darkened and looked older, and he scowled and stared, or smiled an indrawn, private smile. It was a passionate foreign face. The face of a man apart. And she admired it, and was excited by it.
It was so quiet among the hornbeams she could hear the scratch of his pencil and her own heart beating. Sunshine filtered through the green leaves to dapple her new blue suit with pale discs of silver and somewhere in the branches above her head a bird was fluting ‘peeep-a peeep-a peeep-a’, over and over again with a joyous echoing insistence. I shall remember this moment all my life, she thought, because I think I love him.
Then the sketch was done and his expression changed and he came rustling through the dead beech leaves to show it to her, eager and shy and young again.
‘I shall make a painting a’ this,’ he said.
She stood up at once and took the sketch book into her hands. ‘It’s ever so good,’ she said. ‘Do I really look like that?’ He’d drawn her half asleep, with the blue costume draped over her figure in the most revealing Pre-Raphaelite curves. Perhaps I ought to ’ave sat up a bit more.
‘You do ter me,’ he said, and then he was afraid that the drawing might have shown her too much about how he was feeling, and he put the little book back into his hip pocket, quickly. But they were still standing within an inch of one another, and they were alone, and the scent of her lovely dappled flesh was making him feel quite lightheaded. ‘You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,’ he confessed.
They were so close together she could feel the breath of his words. ‘It’s a lovely drawrin’,’ she said, looking straight into his eyes. What a warm brown they were and so tender.
‘Lovely Ellen,’ he whispered, and her face was so meltingly beautiful he couldn’t resist any longer. He leaned towards her, ever so slightly, and put his mouth gently onto her parted lips. It was a moth’s kiss, the merest brush, soft and tentative and gentle, a signal that he meant no harm, a touch of adoration. But it made them both tremble.
‘I love you,’ he whispered, putting his arms round her, but gently so that she could move away from him if she wanted to.
She swayed towards him. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered. ‘Oh David, I really do.’
And at that he kissed her again, as though he was in a trance, moving his lips languidly against hers, sipping the most exquisite pleasure from her mouth, his heart drumming more violently than ever. And she put her arms round his neck and returned the kiss, following his movement and increasing its pressure until they were both panting. ‘Oh Davey! Davey!’ she said when they finally paused for breath.
‘I could stay ’ere for ever kissing you,’ he said. ‘I love you so much.’
And this time she kissed him.
‘You give us the slip this afternoon an’ no mistake,’ Fenny Jago said as she and Ellen and the other live-in girls were getting ready for bed that evening. Her voice was tart with disapproval. ‘Where’d yer get to, you an’ that David Cheifitz a’ yours? As if we didn’t know!’
The bare brown room was mellowed by gentle gaslight and langorous with the accumulated heat of the day and the relaxed fatigue of its occupants. It was full of girls in various states of cloud-white undress, pale arms lifted above tucked chemises, petticoats discarded in a froth of frills, nightgowns billowing, bare feet ambling, long hair tumbled from all those restricting pins, bellies rounding away from the rigidity of all those hard boned stays. A drowsy, easy room, drifting towards sleep. And until that moment, the conversation had been as gentle as the setting.
Now tousled heads turned towards the speaker, some shocked, some frowning, but all alerted by the unpleasantness of her innuendo.
‘’E drew another picture,’ Ellen said mildly. ‘I posed fer ’im an’ ’e drew.’
‘An’ the rest!’ Fenny mocked. ‘An’ the rest!’
It was a direct insult but Ellen shrugged it away. She was still warm and content, well loved, much kissed and proof against the unkindness of envy, almost as if his arms were still round her, containing and protective. She went on brushing the tangles from her hair, and spoke to the girls gathered round her bed. ‘’E’s gonna make a paintin’ a’ this one,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you when ’e’s finished.’
‘Paintin’, my eye!’ Fenny said, and she walked across to Ellen’s admiring circle and pushed through u
ntil her sharp face was inches away from her adversary. ‘All that carry-on wiv poor Jimmy Thatcher. I remember. Don’t you think I don’t! An’ I tell yer, you never fooled me! Not fer an instant. Ice white! Load a’ rubbish that was. Ice white! You’re no better’n the rest of us.’
‘Shut yer face, you!’ Maudie said, springing to her feet and the defence of her friend.
But Ellen was still calm, to everybody’s surprise, including her own. She put out a hand to restrain Maudie and spoke directly to Fenny’s fierce face. ‘Never said I was,’ she said. ‘I put ’im in ’is place, that was all. ’E shouldn’t a’ tried ’is luck. Was ’is own fault.’
Fenny was too angry to hear her. ‘All that carry-on,’ she continued. ‘Ice white, my eye! Jimmy Thatcher was my feller. We was walkin’ out till you came along, I’ll ’ave you know. Walkin’ out. You ’ad no business taking my feller away, Ellen White, and then pretendin’ you was snow white. Pure as the driven snow, my eye! Well, you’ll come to it in the end, same as all the rest of us, you mark my words. Down on yer back you’ll be, same as all the rest. If you ain’t been there al-a-ready.’
The insult was so crude it caused an outcry. Ellen’s circle of friends protested loudly. ‘Oh, what a rotten thing ter say! You oughter be ashamed, Fenny Jago. Wash yer mouth wiv soap an’ water!’ And they glanced anxiously at Ellen and were intrigued and angered and excited to see that she was blushing.
The insult had been like a blow to her stomach. She was remembering the tenderness of his kisses and her sense of being loved and protected, and she was so furious to hear him being compared to that coarse Jimmy Thatcher that her calm mood was ruptured and gone in the instant. Her hairbrush was still in her hand and she stood up and swung it into Fenny’s sneering face, suddenly, like a fierce spiked weapon.
‘You jest watch yer mouth, that’s all,’ she said, ‘unless you want a clip round the ear’ole. I never took your precious Jimmy Thatcher. You can ’ave ’im an’ welcome. Much good may ’e do yer.’ Her friends growled approval and Fenny put up a hand to defend her cheeks. But she didn’t retreat, even though they were standing almost toe to toe.
A Time to Love Page 21
