‘A poor place, but mine own,’ he said, obviously very proud of it.
And David nodded and grinned at him because he was too overwhelmed to do anything else.
‘You’re next door,’ Mr Quinton informed him. ‘When d’you start?’
‘Soon as I can,’ David said. He’d have started that very minute if he’d been able to. ‘I got ter see my boss first, you see.’
‘I’d get cracking then, if I was you. Strike while the iron’s hot, eh?’
And it was hot. Scorching hot. Charging him with energy. He ran downhill to the Strand and jumped aboard a moving bus, full of daring and wellbeing. He was going to be an artist! A real artist! Working on a newspaper! Making his mark! It was too good to be true.
By the time he got to Aldgate pump, reason was beginning to cool him a little and he knew it would be difficult to break this news to Mr Woolnoth. But Aunty Dumpling would be as thrilled as he was, and as her home was only a short tram ride away and there was a tram waiting most providentially at the points all ready to take him there, he decided to tell her first.
‘Vhat a boy!’ she said, kissing him moistly over and over again. ‘Vhat I tell you? Great is our God and greatly to be praised for His loving kindness.’
David was smiling so widely his jaws ached. ‘Good, nu?’
‘Now you bring your young lady to supper, nu?’
Yes, yes, of course he would. ‘When, Aunty Dumpling?’
‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘So vhy not? Something ve got to celebrate.’
Everything was happening as he’d hoped it would. Great is our God, indeed.
‘Now I got ter see Mr Woolnoth,’ he said, putting on his cap.
‘Talk meek,’ she advised. ‘This he ain’t gonna like much.’
Which was an understatement. Mr Woolnoth was furious. To take three hours off work on a damp spring morning was bad enough, but to ask to be released from his apprenticeship! ‘The very idea!’ he said. ‘Five good years thrown away. A good trade lost. And all for what? A quick profit. The lure of the City. Sheer folly! What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?’
His anger made David stubborn. ‘I want to be an artist, Mr Woolnoth, sir,’ he said. He’d quite forgotten Aunty Dumpling’s sensible advice. His tone wasn’t meek and neither was his expression. He was all pride, hair bushy, moustache bristling, perky as a cock sparrow. ‘It’s the chance I’ve always wanted.’
‘Your fee is not returnable, I trust you understand.’
He understood and wasn’t the least deterred.
The other apprentices were most impressed. ‘Have yer really given in yer notice?’ they said.
‘I have!’ he bragged. ‘And I’m takin’ my girl home ternight.’
‘Some fellers ’ave all the luck!’ they envied.
And that was certainly how it seemed.
It was a charmed day. Even their timing was perfect. She came skipping out of the staff door just as he turned the bend in the road. And she knew what had happened at once, just from the sight of his face.
‘You got it! You got it!’ she sang, running towards him with that skimming, lilting movement he loved so much, arms outstretched. ‘Didden I tell yer?’ And then he caught her in his arms and lifted her off her feet in triumph and delight.
‘Best bib an’ tucker,’ he advised when the first news was told and they’d got their breath back. ‘You’re coming ter supper with my Aunty Dumpling.’
That was a sobering thought and required an immediate retreat to the dormitory for a clean blouse and neat curls and a great deal of cheerfully unnecessary advice from her excited friends.
When she emerged from the brown doors of the empty emporium half an hour later, David couldn’t see any difference in her but he’d learned enough by now not to say so. When she asked him, rather anxiously, how she looked, he kissed her and told her she was a ‘sight for sore eyes’. And they walked off arm in arm to their first meal with the family.
That was a great success too, despite an awkward start when they all got in one another’s way among the clutter of heavy furniture. But as soon as they were seated round the table and Aunty Dumpling’s famous chicken soup was steaming most succulently in the dishes before them, and Mr Morrison had declared that no one was ‘a patch on Mrs Esterman for cooking’, the meal became a party and a time for congratulation and approval. David’s new job was approved of as the best thing he’d ever done, and Ellen was approved of too. Not in so many words, of course. Aunty Dumpling was much too discreet for that. But by glance and smile and loving voice and agreement, and all the age-old implicit signs so long used and so subtly recognized between one generation and the next.
They stayed round the table, drinking tea and making companionable conversation, until nearly a quarter past ten. Ellen thought the tea was most peculiar, served with a slice of lemon. What a funny idea! And so sharp it made her lips shrink. But she drank it politely and even ventured a second cup, because David’s nice plump aunty was being such a dear.
Now, they told each other as they kissed a final goodnight in the empty porch of that familiar staff door, now there was nothing to stand in their way. He had a good job. She’d been accepted. Now they could plan their wedding. The form and style the ceremony would take were matters that simply didn’t enter their heads. In their present state of enraptured satisfaction it was enough that marriage was possible.
‘Soon you will be Mrs Cheifitz. Whatcher think a’ that?’ he asked, after what they’d promised themselves would be the very very last kiss of the evening.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she said and kissed him again.
It was nearly half past eleven before he got home to the Buildings, but his excitement was stronger than ever. For now he was running towards the last and happiest triumph of the day. The moment when he would tell his parents all his plans, about his new job and his lovely Ellen, the moment when they would rejoice in his success as a son and welcome Ellen into the family as a daughter. Just like Dumpling had done, only better.
He charged through the archway into the empty courtyard where the yellow gaslights bloomed one above the other like misty roses on the long square trellis of the windows, and the old men sat on the balconies smoking the last pipes of the day, and the courtyard echoed with the crooning Yiddish of late evening. And he knew how much he loved this building and what a reward it was to be part of it. And now he would be more than just part of it. He would be taking his place in the community, founding a family, raising children, bringing joy to his parents, an artist, admired and respected and honoured.
He ran up the stairs two at a time, and burst into the living room breathless with good news.
His parents were sitting on either side of the table, waiting. Their faces were composed and quiet and so massively angry they froze him where he stood. After all the noise and excitement of his day there seemed to be no sound in the room at all. Only the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece and a thrumming in his ears that he gradually recognized as the beating of his heart.
‘What is it?’ he asked, and his voice was gruff.
There was a letter lying on the table, stark white against the brown of the chenille cloth. A letter with familiar writing on it. His father picked it up with both hands and held it out before him, and David was appalled to see that the paper was trembling.
‘So this is the way I must hear bad news from my own son?’ Emmanuel said, speaking Yiddish and sighing from the most profound sadness. ‘A letter from his master. What have I done to deserve such unkindness? Do sons hide behind their masters now? Do sons lie to their fathers?’
‘No, Father, no. I do not lie!’ He was anguished by such a sudden terrible accusation. What did he mean? Surely he wasn’t talking about the job. Not his marvellous job.
‘You lie,’ Emmanuel said with the same terrible sadness. ‘You take another job. You leave a good apprenticeship. You tell me nothing. You lie.’
‘It is a good job, Father,’ David tried. ‘D
rawing for a newspaper. A good job. I swear it.’
‘To tell me nothing!’ his father mourned. ‘Your own father. Nothing. I hear it from a letter.’
‘I meant to give you a surprise,’ David said miserably. ‘It is a good job. Nu-nu, I will make a success, I promise you.’
‘We bred a schlemiel,’ his mother said bitterly. ‘A schlemiel. How the neighbours will pity us. Poor dumb fools, they will say, to breed a schlemiel. Has vesholem!’ Her face was pinched with fatigue and fury and disappointment. ‘For why you don’t say nothing?’
‘For why you don’t ask advice?’ his father wanted to know. ‘You ask me I could have told you, don’t do it.’
‘I did ask advice,’ David said earnestly. How could this be so terribly wrong? He’d been accepted as an artist, a man to be honoured, a man set apart by his calling. Surely his father should be proud. ‘I asked my teacher, Mr Eswyn Smith.’
‘Your teacher told you to accept this job?’ There was disbelief on his father’s face now, as well as that awful sadness. The two of them sighed lengthily, locked in incomprehension and hurt pride.
‘A shaygets he asks advice,’ his mother said sharply. ‘He don’t stay with his own kind. That’s the whole root of the trouble. May he be forgiven.’
I can hardly tell them about Ellen now, David thought. Not in this mood. Oh how did it happen? Why aren’t they pleased? ‘I’m going to be an artist,’ he said stubbornly, but the words sounded truculent.
‘What is done is done,’ Emmanuel said after another sighing silence. ‘What you have undertaken, you have undertaken. There is no more to be said.’ And he took Rachel by the hand and led her into the bedroom as though they were part of a most solemn procession.
Left on his own in the empty room David suddenly felt weak and deserted. His legs buckled beneath him as though he could no longer support his own weight and as he crumpled heavily onto his truckle bed he began to cry.
It was a most miserable night. He lay in his familiarly uncomfortable bed checking and re-checking the puzzle of his father’s response. And coming back time and time again to the same barrier to any understanding. He was going to be an artist, and surely his father ought to be as happy as he was about it. He simply couldn’t understand how his loving triumphant surprise could have been received as an insult. If he’d suddenly told them about Ellen, he could have understood their anger. He’d known all along that they would need a lot of persuading to accept a shiksa, but to react so angrily when he’d got a fine honourable job … After all, asking to be released from an apprenticeship was nothing nowadays. Lots of boys did it. And some of them with no excuse at all.
When the first streaks of grey sky released him, he got up and dressed as quietly as he could, and crept out of the flat, easing the door shut behind him without a sound. There was only one person he could turn to for advice at a time like this, and that was Aunty Dumpling. He was too distressed to wait till evening. Or even till the poor lady woke up.
Fortunately Raizel Esterman was a light sleeper, and his persistent tapping and rattling outside her door soon roused her. She wrapped herself in her old dressing gown and opened a chink in the door to see who it was. ‘Davey is it?’ she said, peering through the crack like an owl in a tree. Then she saw the tears glistening on his cheeks and threw the door wide and seized him at once into a bearhug of an embrace, imploring him to tell her what it was, and assuring him he was her own dear, dear Davey, and giving herself over to a torrent of companionable weeping so loud and so extravagant that all words were lost under the wailing of it. It was very comforting and just what he needed.
It took until seven o’clock to tell the story in enough tear-stained detail to satisfy them both. Then Aunty Dumpling settled her two plump hands on either side of her teacup and gave judgement ‘So you do good vid the paper, bubeleh,’ she said. ‘You vork hard. You do good. You don’t say nothing about your nice young lady yet. So maybe I get a chance to talk them round. Maybe not, Ve see, nu. In the meantime you vork, vork. Make a name. Manny ain’t a stern father. So. Sooner, later, you see vhat he says. So proud he’ll be yet.’
‘D’you think so, Dumpling? D’you really think so?’
‘Ain’t I just said? Vhat you vant, a testimonial?’
It was sound advice, he thought, trailing to Mr Woolnoth’s, Dumpling’s prune cake still sweetening his tongue. If only he could be certain she was right But then there was Ellen. He hadn’t said a word about Ellen and now she was waiting for him in the shop expecting good news. How could he possibly tell her what had happened? He hadn’t written her a letter and he didn’t know what to say.
She was stacking new rolls of cloth on the stands and looked up brightly when she heard his approach. The expression on his face told her the news at once, but there wasn’t time for more than a few snatched words. ‘Cheer up!’ she said. ‘We’ll manage, whatever it is.’
‘I love you,’ he mouthed, when Miss Morton was looking the other way. But it didn’t cheer either of them.
They were still cast down that evening, despite their most determined efforts to ‘look on the bright side’. They walked back to Hopkins and Peggs dolefully, even though they were arm in arm.
‘It all seems so bloomin’ daft,’ she said. ‘All this fuss ’cause you’ve give up an apprenticeship, an’ I’m not Jewish. I ask yer! I’m as good as they are any day a’ the week.’
‘Better!’ he said, meaning it. ‘Oh, why’s life so beastly difficult?’
‘Things’ll look up when you start at the Essex,’ she comforted. ‘You’ll see.’
And although he didn’t really believe her, she was proved right. It was fun working with Mr Quinton. He liked the man’s wry humour and his quick spidery handwriting, and the way he went rushing off after a story, leaping on and off moving trams as if that were the natural way to behave, or holding a snatched conversation with a man on top of a bus going in the opposite direction, or lurking behind pillars, taking notes, like an informer. He said he never knew what they were going to do from one day to the next, and didn’t want to. And after a few days in his company, David believed him. It was undeniably exciting. ‘Draw that chap by the lamppost,’ he would say. ‘What a titfer! And the old girl with her head in the bucket. Must ’ave her.’
Then they would set all the sketches out on the floor in Mr Quinton’s clobbered office and choose the best, and David would be sent away to polish them up for the print. He would make an elaborate etching of the chosen ones and the finished plates would be fed into the maw of the largest machine and presently reappear on the pages of the magazine, looking so handsome and professional he had to pinch himself to make sure it was all really happening.
Within two weeks he felt so at home in the place it was as if he’d never worked anywhere else. The weather improved, Ellen was as loving as ever, even though she knew they’d have to wait for quite a long time before they could think about marriage again. It was good to be alive after all.
Soon it would be the festival of the Passover, when the family would gather together for the ordered meal of the Seder, and they would eat the charoset with its apples and nuts and spices, and three matzos, those special loaves of unleavened bread, and the Song of Solomon would be sung in the synagogue to honour the new season. Surely they would forgive him then.
And in a way they seemed to have done, for the meal was eaten in the same affectionate way, and the four questions asked by the youngest member of the family, and the last piece of the middle matzo hidden for the children to find, and everything was exactly as it had always been. Except that nobody referred to his new job or said anything about it. Not even Dumpling, which was a terrible disappointment.
But the words of the Song of Solomon were as beautiful and moving as ever. Standing beside his father in the synagogue, David couldn’t help feeling that all was as it should be, no matter what might be thought and unspoken. ‘For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; t
he time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.’ Yes, he thought, God has given us a beautiful world, and he knew that his Ellen was part of the beauty and not to be denied. ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Old Aunty Dumpling knew what she was talking about. It was simply a matter of biding his time until just the right moment. Then they would agree. How could they do anything else when she was so beautiful and he loved her so much?
Actually Aunty Dumpling was finding it almost impossible to get her brother and sister-in-law to talk about their son at all. When he started work at the Essex Magazine they made no comment, although they did look at his drawings and noted, but privately of course, that they were being published in larger and larger numbers as the weeks went by. But she couldn’t persuade them to praise him. And as to talking about a young lady, that was totally impossible. Rachel was adamant. She wouldn’t hear of it, not even when Rivke and Dumpling arrived together one Thursday afternon to try and make her see sense.
‘Von mistake he make, that I grant you,’ she said. ‘Von mistake, ve chastize him, he make atonement. Von mistake. Now ve got our own good boy again. So you don’t talk dirty to me. He vant a vife. Maybe a girl he got. He don’t. He ain’t. I know. A boy so young he don’t even think such things.’ Her voice was shrill with impending hysteria. ‘So leave me alone, the both of you.’
Finally Dumpling lost patience. Soon she would be going to Salford to visit the Estermans, as she did every year at the beginning of June. This time, she told Rivke, she would leave David in charge of the canary.
‘I give him the key, nu? Then ve see how young he is.’
Rachel’s overbearing rigidity was too ridiculous for words, and she hadn’t forgotten how unnecessarily poor old Fred Morrison had been censured for keeping her company. ‘I give him the key.’ The decision pleased her although she couldn’t have explained why. She had a vague feeling that she was striking a blow for her nephew’s independence but otherwise her motives were muddled. It would be nice for Davey and his young lady to have a little privacy away from the critical eyes of his mother, particularly when his mother didn’t know it. And it would serve Rachel right for being so stiffnecked.
A Time to Love Page 27
