‘Sling yer ’ook, Thatcher,’ Maudie’s feller warned, moving into the attack. And he turned to David, feeling he ought to explain, ‘’E’s tight. ’E don’t know what ’e’s saying.’
‘He knows,’ David said suddenly and bitterly. ‘He means it.’ And he caught his adversary’s blunt fist in mid-poke and threw it aside with such force that it pulled them both off balance. Thatcher toppled backwards into the nearest table, removing cloth and decorations as he fell. David stumbled into the steadying arms of Maudie’s feller. And the cycling club took action, because Mr Peggs was striding through the crowds towards them, and if something wasn’t done soon, they’d all be in trouble.
‘Dance!’ Mr Galsworthy instructed, as he and three of the others seized one Thatcher limb apiece and prepared to carry him from the room. Luckily he was still too dazed to offer any resistance and although David was still trembling with fury, he followed Ellen and the others into the dance, which was a lively version of ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’ and soon pulled them into the crowd. By the time Mr Peggs arrived even the table had been set to rights and if the evergreens did look a trifle battered, he decided not to comment upon it.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ Ellen said, when ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’ was over and the noise of the dancers returning to their seats gave her sufficient cover to apologize. ‘I wouldn’t’ve ’ad that ’appen fer worlds. I never thought ’e’d go for yer. I’m ever so sorry.’
‘I should’ve hit ’im,’ he said, scowling. He’d endured an insult that shouldn’t have been endured and he felt diminished because of it. They should have been left to fight it out. Then at least his pride would have been satisfied.
‘Oh David,’ she said. ‘I am sorry.’
And this time he looked at her and saw how very upset she was. ‘It ain’t your fault,’ he said, but it was a grudging admission and didn’t sound like forgiveness to either of them.
Nevertheless the ugly moment receded as the dancing continued and Thatcher didn’t come back. They couldn’t stay miserable for very long when they were in each other’s arms and their feet were moving in rhythm. The band played with increasing abandon, the gaslights were turned down to the merest flicker, and in no time at all it was midnight. The crowded room grew gradually still while the party waited breathlessly, and at last the grandfather clock, which had been wheeled into the corner specially for the occasion, struck its twelve reverberating notes.
‘’Appy New Year,’ she wished him, kissing him softly under cover of all the riotous greetings and smacking kisses around them. Was she forgiven? He looked as though he’d forgiven her.
‘You too, bubeleh,’ he said lovingly.
‘Wonder what it’ll bring.’ Could they even dare to think of marriage? She’d better not mention it. She’d caused enough trouble for one evening.
‘Who knows?’ Oh if only she was Jewish. They could marry in the spring. They ought to marry in the spring. Then she’d never have to put up with louts like that Jimmy Thatcher ever again.
‘Auld Lang Syne!’ Mr Peggs announced.
The New Year had plenty of surprises in store for all of them, but at its start it was no more propitious than the old. January brought more fog and several days of sleet and an outbreak of flu. And at the end of the month, the Rothschild Buildings were a-buzz with rumours of a terrible massacre. The poor of St Petersburg had taken a petition to their Tsar, marching to his winter palace 200,000 strong in five huge processions, led by their priests and carrying their religious ikons, and their loving father, the Tsar of all the Russias, had ordered his troops to open fire on them, unarmed and defenceless as they were, and they’d been mown down in their thousands.
Russian Jews like Hymie and Morrie Leipzich spent all their evenings mourning their one-time countrymen, and debating the consequences.
‘Killed in their thousands,’ Hymie said, over and over again. ‘Ai-yi! Bread they ask for, bullets they get. The Tsar-murderer!’
‘Now there will be revolution,’ Morris predicted. ‘Ain’t nothink to stop it. An’ high time too! I shall go back the minute it starts.’ He’d been born in Whitechapel, but now he felt more Russian that his parents.
Terrible, David, nu?’ Hymie said.
And David agreed that it was terrible. A crime against humanity. But he couldn’t take it to heart and feel enraged about it the way Hymie was doing. It was all too far away, and he was too happy.
But it looked as though they were right, for within a week news filtered through that a wave of strikes had begun, and not just in St Petersburg either, but all over Russia, wherever there were mines and factories and dockyards to gather the workers together. More than half a million of them had downed tools according to Morrie Leipzich’s cousin. And that wasn’t all. Apparently the universities were joining in too, revolutionaries were making speeches to the students and 326 professors had signed a petition demanding a change of government, free elections and the power to make their own laws.
The nightly debates in the Rothschild Buildings grew more heated than ever as Jews from Eastern Europe, young and old, crowded into their neighbours’ cramped living rooms to relay the latest news and give loud voice to their hopes. They smoked and talked at speed, eyes glistening, arms waving, faces burning, while the samovar steamed on the sideboard and smoke clouded the ceiling.
Their passion reduced Emmanuel Cheifitz to beard-plucking anxiety. ‘Vhere’s the good?’ he asked Rachel after one particularly noisy evening. ‘Vid Mother Russia over the other side of the world. So they talk and talk, bubeleh. It don’t do nothing.’
‘Don’t you vorry your head, Emmanuel,’ Rachel soothed. ‘Ve let them talk, nu? They’re young yet.’ A revolution so far away was no concern of theirs.
Unfortunately revolutionary fervour was in the air in London too, and by mid February the cabinet-makers in Worship Street and even the tailors and operatives of Whitechapel and Spitalfields were holding union meetings and drawing up a list of reasonable demands, a working week no longer than fifty-eight hours, government contractors to pay wages at union rates, the right to eat their meals off the premises. By the end of the month, when the bosses had denied all their demands and looked set to ignore them for ever, they followed the blazing example of the Russians and discarded their meekness and refused to work.
Emmanuel was distraught. ‘For vhy they do this thing?’ he appealed to David. ‘To refuse to vork! Such madness! Ai-yi-yi! Vhat they vant to do to us? They get us all sacked. Ve strike, they sack! Ai-yi-yi-yi!’
For the first time in his life David found himself questioning the values he’d always accepted, and wondering whether the Jewish capacity for endurance wasn’t occasionally a disadvantage. The cabinet-makers had actually gained an improvement with their strike. The bosses wouldn’t increase their pay, but at least they’d cut their hours. And that couldn’t be bad.
‘What do you think?’ he asked Ellen when they were strolling back to the store from the Standard Theatre later that night.
‘One thing I will say,’ she told him, grinning, ‘it’s done us a bit of good at the shop. We ’ad roast beef fer supper Sunday. And sprouts!’
‘Yes, but going on strike,’ he said. ‘D’you think it’s right ter go on strike?’
‘I think you oughter stand up fer yer rights,’ she said. ‘If you got a chance to better yerself, why not?’
‘An’ not obey the boss?’ It was a new thought and a dangerously exhilarating one. ‘My Dad says they’ll all get the sack. He’s worried out of’is wits.’
‘There is that,’ she said but she didn’t seem at all concerned.
‘What about your Dad …?’ he tried tentatively. She never spoke about her parents, and until now he’d never tried to make her, but now it suddenly seemed possible.
‘Oh ’im,’ she said and laughed.
‘Would he go on strike, d’yer think?’
That made her roar with laughter. ‘Not likely,’ she giggled. ‘’E’s been on strik
e all ’is life, my ol’ man. Never done an honest day’s work as long as I can remember.’
David was rather shocked at this, and his face showed it, but by now they’d reached the shelter of the staff entrance and the chance to kiss goodnight, so the tricky topic was set aside.
But not for long.
Four days later Ellen had an urgent note from her sister Tess. ‘Plese coem and see ma. Bad news Love from your ever loving sister tess.’ Considerably alarmed she went to Whitechapel immediately after supper.
The family were living in one damp room in the basement of a terraced house in Chicksand Court. Ellen had only been there twice before and hadn’t thought much of it. She thought even less that evening, and David, who’d gone with her despite a vague feeling that she didn’t want him to, was appalled.
Tess had been watching out for her sister through the narrow basement window and as soon as she saw her boots on the pavement she ran up the area steps to greet her and thank her for coming. ‘I been at me wits’ end, Ellie,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t leave me new job, could I?’ She’d just started work as a scullery maid in a big house in Hoxton, and was eager to make a go of it.
‘This is my friend, David,’ Ellie said, picking her way down the broken steps of the area. ‘What’s up?’
‘Hello,’ Tess said vaguely, without looking at him. ‘I been at me wits’ end, Ellie.’
What a dreadful place, David thought, following them. He’d never seen so much dirt.
The door to the Murphys’ room was missing. It had been chopped up and burnt in the stove since Ellen’s last visit, and now the smell from the privies filled the place with noxious fumes. Inside the room an elderly woman sat on an orange box by an empty stove weeping grey tears into her grimy hands, and two dirty children were huddled on a bed in the corner, greedily eating chips from a pile of greasy newspaper.
‘I brought ’em sommink,’ Tess explained proudly to Ellen. ‘Out me wages.’
‘Good gel,’ Ellen said automatically, as she looked anxiously at David’s shocked expression and wondered what was wrong with her family and where she ought to begin. There was no sign of their father, which was a blessing, although his dogs were in their usual place on the rag rug, biting their fleas and stinking the place out.
‘Hello, Ma,’ she said. ‘This is my friend David. Where’s Pa?’
‘Is that you, Ellie?’ her mother said, raising a tear-streaked face to peer at her. ‘They’ve took ’im, gel. ’E’s inside. In stir, pour soul. They give ’im a carpet. Three months. ’Ow we shall all make out, three months without the hope of a wage, I do not know!’
Oy oy! David thought, his heart sinking even further, a mother filthy dirty and a father in prison. What sort of family was this? But Ellen was delighted.
‘Never!’ she said. ‘What d’he do?’
‘Wen’ off ter some strike meetin’,’ Tess said, grinning. ‘Nothink ter do wiv ’im, it wasn’t. Dockers or some such. Anyway ’e got tight apparently, an’ started throwin’ ’is weight around, you know the way ’e does. Onny this time he bashed a copper. An’ they done ’im.’
‘Serve ’im right!’ Ellen said, and Maudie and little Johnnie looked up at her from their bundle of grease and nodded to show they agreed.
‘’Ow we shall all make out, I do not know,’ their mother said, weeping again.
‘Best thing that ever ’appened,’ Ellen said. ‘Chance of a lifetime, this is, Ma. I’ll tell you ’ow you’ll make out. You’ll make out lovely.’ Plans were marshalling themselves inside her busy brain. ‘First we’ll get you out a’ this bug-’utch. Then you can get a proper job. No more pullin’ fur an’ matchboxes. You can make ciggies up the factory in Worship Street. They pay good money, Florrie says. Then I’ll find you a nice clean room, somewhere right away. New school fer the kids. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’
‘Oh dear,’ her mother said, only marginally comforted. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ll see,’ Ellen promised and she looked at her mother’s bent head with loving pity. How grey and old she was, poor thing, with her cheeks quite caved in. Had she lost some more of her teeth? ‘You’re rid of ’im,’ she said. ‘Just think a’ that. You’re rid of ’im fer three whole months.’
And at that her mother looked up again and gave her a watery smile. ‘You’re a good gel, Ellie,’ she said. ‘Always said that, ain’t I? A good gel. She’s a good gel, mister.’
The good gel was frowning at the dogs. ‘They can go an’ all,’ she said. ‘I’ll take’em up Club Row, Sunday.’
‘Sell ’em, you mean?’
‘’Course.’
‘You can’t do that, gel. They’re yer fathers. What ’ud ’e say?’
Ellen gave her mother a devilish grin. ‘Don’t matter what ’e sez. ’E can’t do nothink about it, can ’e? Not where ’e is. Come on, Tess, come on, Davey, we got work ter do.’
‘Oh dear,’ their mother was saying as they sped off towards the door, ‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ But even in the half-light she looked relieved.
‘First things first,’ Ellen said as they cut through the back streets towards the Whitechapel Road. ‘We’ll get ’er right out of ’ere. Nice place down the Mile End Road. They got decent ’ouses down there. I seen ’em on me way out wiv the cycle club. She’s only got Maudie and young Johnnie ter look after now you an’ Frankie are away. They don’t eat much, an’ Maudie could get a little job Sat’days to ’elp out.’ Maudie was quite old enough to be bringing in some money.
She was so absorbed in her plans that David felt quite left out. ‘You don’t need me now, do yer?’ he asked stiffly.
But she didn’t even notice how he was feeling. ‘No!’ she said cheerfully. ‘Me an’ Tess can manage.’
‘All right then. I’ll go an’ see old Hymie.’
‘Good idea,’ she said, smiling at him briefly.
He left them at the tram stop and strode off to Hymie’s feeling disturbed and dejected. It was terrible to think that his lovely Ellen had come from such squalor. And it made him wonder what sort of a wife she would be. What if she didn’t realize how awful it was? What if she couldn’t keep their house clean? And that made him feel worse than ever, riddled with shame for betraying her with such a thought. This is prejudice, he scolded himself as he strode towards Brick Lane. But the idea stuck like a burr.
Ellen and Tess took a tram to the London Hospital, planning all the way. And the houses there were very nice, rows and rows of neat two-storey terraces with white lace curtains at the windows and a respectable white arc scrubbed in the middle of all the front doorsteps. Ellen was impressed.
‘One a’ these’ll do a treat,’ she said, scanning the advertisements in the nearest corner shop. ‘Cor! Look at that! Large bedrooms, scullery, use of copper and W.C., six bob a week. Didden I say she’d be better off ’ere? An’ there’s another. Two rooms, six and six.’
‘You don’t get sommink fer nothink, don’t you tell me,’ Tess said with the lugubrious solemnity of the thirteen-year-old. ‘There’ll be a snag, sure as fate.’
There was, as the two girls discovered when they read further. The flats were certainly cheap, but they all required key money, usually a guinea and payable in advance.
‘That’s torn it!’ Tess said.
‘No it ain’t.’
‘Oh give over, Ellie. Where’s she gonna get that sort a’ money? There ain’t a penny in the place.’
‘You an’ me an’ Frankie. ’E earns enough at that ol’ buildin’ site of ’is. It won’t ’urt ’im to cough up once in a while. An’ Paddy, soon as ’e gets back from Geordieland.’ Paddy was a deckhand on a collier that plied between Newcastle and the Thames.
‘’E ain’t due back till Monday next.’
That’ll do,’ Ellen said, rather absently, because she was doing sums in her head. ‘One guinea between three’s seven shillin’s, four’s only five an’ thrupence. We could all run ter that, surely.’
‘Well …’ Tess
said, doubting but tempted.
‘I’ll write ter Frankie the minute I get back. ‘E’ll chip in, I know ’e will. Come on, Tessie. We can do it.’
Her determination was so infectious Tess had to agree. ‘I shall be skint fer a fortnight, I’ll ’ave you know,’ she grumbled. ‘Still I s’pose it’s worth it.’
It took them nearly an hour to find exactly what they wanted, but when they did they were very pleased with it. Two nice clean rooms on the top floor of a house rented by a widow called Mrs Nym and her grown-up daughter Lisa. They gave the widow half a crown as a holding fee and promised to be back with the rest within two days. And the matter was concluded.
That Sunday she sold the dogs at Club Row and then went to Ilford to tell Frankie and persuade him to part with five shillings and thrupence.
Paddy came home from Newcastle the next Monday with his pockets bulging with cash. She and Tess took him off shopping before he could get to the pubs and spend it all, so their mother had two secondhand beds to start her new life with, one for her and one for the kids, which she declared to be the last word in luxury. ‘You’re so good ter me,’ she said tearfully as her six children met for the last time in her squalid basement to tell her how the move was to be arranged.
And it went well. She and the widow took to each other at once, just as Ellen had hoped; the boys moved the furniture and the girls scrubbed the floors; Frankie said he was a dab hand at fires and proved it by lighting a really splendid one; and they all had fish and chips together at their nice scrubbed table to finish off the day.
‘Best thing I’ve ever done in me life,’ Ellen said to David when they met the next evening for their trip to the theatre, and she told him all about it.
‘You’re a giddy marvel,’ he said, secretly relieved that she’d made such a good job of cleaning the flat. She did have all the virtues after all. ‘Where’d yer like to go?’
She chose the theatre but the theatre was shut and a placard outside informed the crowd that had gathered around it that the management apologized for any inconvenience to their customers during the industrial action currently being taken by ‘a few music hall artistes’ and suggested that they might care to attend ‘The Britannia’ where an alternative programme had been arranged.
A Time to Love Page 25
