A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  It was such a surprise it took David’s breath away. Fancy Mr Palfreyman, dry, quiet, contained, careful Mr Palfreyman saying things like that.

  ‘You would have to marry in a registry office, of course, for you would not be acceptable in a church, I believe, nor she in a synagogue. However, the form of the ceremony would be of very little consequence, I daresay, in the light of your present situation. If I were you, dear chap, I would go to the Town Hall in Commercial Street, and made inquiries. That should be your local office if I am any judge.’

  How easy he makes it sound, David thought, watching the man’s gentle face with stunned admiration. ‘We’d still have ter get our fathers’ consent,’ he said, ‘seein’ we’re both under age.’

  ‘That is true,’ Mr Palfreyman agreed mildly. ‘Yes, yes, indeed.’ And he gave thought to the problem, his white hands spread neatly before him on the polished mahogany of his desk. ‘You must be firm, my dear chap,’ he advised, ‘firm but polite, of course. Yes, yes indeed. Polite and firm. If I were you I think I should tell my father I intended to marry the lady with or without permission.’

  ‘But that would mean waiting three whole years!’ David realized.

  ‘Yes, indeed. An impressive apprenticeship, don’t you agree? Now then, my dear chap, you have a good father, you say. And I see every reason to believe you. Every reason. Would he not be impressed by such constancy?’

  Put like that, David had to admit it seemed more than likely. ‘But …’

  Mr Palfreyman waved him to silence. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I would also point out, politely but firmly, of course, that I would prefer to marry her at once and with my father’s consent’

  Excitement and hope ballooned inside David’s chest. Yes, yes, yes, this was how it could be done. Mr Palfreyman was right. Although he didn’t know it, his face was blazing with smiles. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ll do. Thank you very much, sir. Very very much.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, dear chap,’ Mr Palfreyman said, warm with beneficence. ‘Just cut off and give Mr Quinton a hand, eh?’

  So the next evening David and Ellen took a stroll down Commercial Street, and found that registering their intent to marry was simplicity itself, and seemed to be what the registrar expected. It was merely a matter of calmly filling forms, one to call the banns, which they both signed, and two others which were to be signed by their fathers ‘to indicate that they have given their consent’. It all sounded very reasonable and entirely probable.

  ‘Tomorrow is Shabbas,’ David said, tucking his form into the top pocket of his jacket as they walked back along Commercial Street. ‘I’ll ask him on the way back from the synagogue. Then he’ll know how serious I am.’ And besides, his mother and Aunt Rivke wouldn’t hear what they were saying if they talked in the street. They were so quick to bully these days. It didn’t give Papa a chance to think.

  ‘What’ll you say?’

  ‘What Mr Palfreyman said. Dontcher think so?’

  ‘You know ’im, I don’t,’ she said. ‘I tell yer what though, I know a trick worth two a’ that fer my ol’ man.’ But she wouldn’t tell him what it was. ‘You’ll see,’ she promised, and she folded her precious form into neat quarters and secreted it in her pocket. ‘I bet I get mine signed ‘fore yours.’

  ‘You’re on!’ he said, catching her excitement ‘Daring gamble by the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.’

  So that evening they went their separate ways, he to the synagogue, she to the pub.

  It took her quite a long time to hunt her father down, but eventually she ran him to earth in ‘The Bell’ on the corner of Goulston Street. He was in a splendidly muzzy state, surrounded by cronies, already lurching and staggering, and bellowing with drunken good humour. She stood just inside the door and waited until she could catch the eye of a passing pot-boy, who struggled through the mass of cheerfully steaming bodies to find out what she wanted.

  ‘I got a message fer me ol’ man,’ she said. ‘Paddy Murphy, ’im over there. Ask the gov’ner if I can come in an’ give it to ’im. ’E’ll never make it out ’ere.’

  That was true enough, as the governor was quick to appreciate, and as she looked a respectable girl in her neat shop clothes, he sent word back that she could come in ‘jest fer a tick, if she looked sharp about it’.

  Paddy was too far gone to feel surprise that his daughter was standing in the pub beside him and when she asked him, ‘How’s me darlin’ daddy?’ in the most blatantly flattering tones, he took the question as evidence of pure affection and threw his arms clumsily and exuberantly about her, calling on his friends to witness how much she loved him. ‘Me own darlin’ daughter, so she is, me own darlin’ daughter.’

  Those of his friends who could still focus their eyes were very taken with her, and declared they’d be jiggered, and wanted to know where he’d been hiding her all these years, and how he’d come to raise such a looker, old dog that he was. Those who were too drunk to see more than three inches in front of them pressed their blotchy faces as close to her as they could and offered to take her out the back an’ show her a thing or two, leering horribly and belching their stale breath straight into her mouth. This put her father in the most affable humour but it also meant that she had to wait while he received their admiration and drank their tributes. She stood quietly among them, smiling at them and hating them thinking what a mucky-mouthed lot they were. I wouldn’t stand ’em fer a second, she thought furiously, if it Wasn’t fer my Davey.

  ‘Old Johnno’s givin’ me one of his old looks,’ her father said, grinning at the publican. ‘Will ye look at that, Barney.’

  ‘’E don’t reckon your gel should be in ’ere, tha’s the truth of it,’ Barney explained.

  ‘Sure an’ can’t a man see his own daughter jost once in a while, fer the love of God?’ Paddy whined.

  ‘’Course yer can, Pa,’ Ellen said seizing her opportunity quickly. ‘An’ you can sign a little form for me an’ all. Who’s ter stop yer?’

  ‘Whashat?’ Paddy said, perplexed and squinting. ‘Wha’ form’s dat?

  ‘Won’t let me sign it,’ she explained, showing him the fold of paper. ‘It’s got ter be a man. Got ter be me father, so they said. I can’t see why, but that’s what they said.’

  ‘Quite right,’ he said beaming again. ‘’Tis business so it is, an’ no concern of yours. Quite right Don’t you worry your pretty head. Your old father’s the man fer business so he is.’ And manoeuvring his body until he was almost facing the bar, he called to the landlord in his most peremptory tones, ‘I’ll trouble ye for pen an’ ink, Johnno!’

  They made a ceremony of it, bringing two pens and an inkstand and even a blotter. And her father signed as though it was Magna Carta, beaming at his audience afterwards and nodding his head and boasting, ‘Paddy Murphy’s the man for business.’ But his daughter had folded the paper and shadowed out of the circle with it before any of them could notice, and was running north towards Hopkins and Peggs, rosy with triumph. Stupid old fool! she thought. He’d sign his own death warrant if you caught ’im when ’e was sozzled. Wonder how David’s gettin’ on.

  At that very moment David and Emmanuel were emerging from the Machzikei HaDath in Fournier Street a few hundred yards away. Rabbi Jaccoby had been preaching there, speaking most eloquently of the joys and sorrows of family life. ‘Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.’ The value of filial obedience had been stressed, but so had the more subtle rewards of tenderness and understanding, and he had ended with a plea for the exercise of ‘that most delicate and difficult of all the arts, the art of compromise’.

  So as they walked down Brick Lane towards the Buildings, David striding and his father stooping, what more natural than that they should hope for compromise and speak of marriage and the founding of families.

  ‘The von great vish of your moder’s life is to see you under the chuppah,’ Emmanuel sighed.

  ‘I will marry, Fath
er.’

  But that only provoked a sigh like a furnace. ‘Ai! If only she vere Jewish. Ai-yi! Your heart is set on it, nu?’

  ‘Yes, Father. Matter of fact, we’re …’

  ‘I should only live to see him under the chuppah,’ his father repeated. ‘So much it means to a moder.’ He didn’t look up at his son’s eagerness, only inward to his own aching bleakness. ‘For vhy this voman, David?’

  It’s a waste a’ time trying to tell him, David thought. We’ve been over all this time an’ time again an’ he still doesn’t understand. He put a hand on his father’s arm to gentle him to a halt. ‘We called the banns yesterday,’ he said, speaking quickly before he lost his courage. ‘We’re getting married in the Town Hall, soon as we can. A civil wedding. All we need is your consent.’

  His father stood quite still, gazing at him, his long face puckered with thought, but not angry. The soot-smeared houses stood on either side of them as flat and impervious as cliffs. Trams buzzed past them along the rails. Brick Lane went about its usual raucous business. The sky didn’t fall.

  ‘This is vhat you vant, nu?’ Emmanuel said at last, and David noticed that he was only fingering his beard, not tugging it.

  ‘Oh it is! It is, Father. More’n I’ve ever wanted anythink in all me life.’

  Such an open face, Emmanuel thought, and with such beauty. And he remembered the newborn David gazing at him with those same limpid eyes, and how powerfully love had risen in him, even then, at the very start of the child’s life. ‘Grandsons I vould like,’ he admitted.

  ‘Grandsons you shall have. I promise.’

  ‘But a shiksa, David.’

  David shrugged the word away. ‘Never mind shiksa, she’s the best girl in the world,’ he said. ‘A beauty. Well you know that. You seen the drawin’s. A good daughter. Looks after ’er Ma like nobody’s business. Eye fer a bargain. You should see ’er.’

  Maybe I should, Emmanuel thought, but he said nothing.

  ‘If you was ter meet ’er, I bet you’d love ’er an’ all,’ David insisted. ‘You would. Honest!’

  But still Emmanuel said nothing.

  ‘I shall marry ’er in the end,’ David said, offering his warning in the most respectful voice he could manage. ‘No matter what. The minute I’m twenty-one I shall marry ’er. I’d rather marry with your blessing, a’ course, but I shall marry ’er.’

  They stood facing each other in the middle of the busy pavement while the synagogue emptied and the Shabbas crowds argued and jostled around them. He is a man now, Emmanuel thought, looking at his son’s passionate eyes and the dark moustache, silky in the manner of virgin hair and curled so tenderly round the red curves of his mouth. His neck might still be slender as a girl’s but he has the hands of a worker and the face of a man already settled into a world he knows. And it occurred to him that this was a modern face and an English one, the yarmulke unobtrusive on the back of his head, a mere patch of cloth against his springing hair, his prayer shawl tucked under his waistcoat and not left dangling above his trousers for all the world to see. A new kind of Jew we breed in this city, he thought We ain’t the same. I who left the old country behind, he who has no knowledge of it. Jewish he may be, Polish he ain’t.

  But he was still child enough to plead. ‘Please, Papa!’

  ‘I think about it,’ Emmanuel promised. ‘Ve don’t say nothink to your moder, nu? I think about it I tell you Sunday, nu?’

  And oddly enough, although nothing had been decided, David felt satisfied.

  The next day, Emmanuel Cheifitz did something he had never done on the Sabbath in the whole of his life. He actually set foot inside a shop. Not to buy anything. Nu-nu, that would have been unthinkable. Nor to observe the goods on offer. He was extremely careful to avert his eyes from any such temptation. But to allow himself the possibility of a glimpse of Ellen White.

  He was profoundly uncomfortable in such a setting and knew, from the sudden image of himself that confronted him in one of the long mirrors, that he looked as incongruous as he felt. But it was a necessary penance, a chastening of the spirit before he made his decision. He lurked behind the rolls of fine cloth in his shabby gabardine, plucking his beard and trying to look inconspicuous, while the store’s elegant customers raised their elegant eyebrows at him, and signalled wordless amazement to one another that such a creature should have been allowed inside their store.

  Fortunately Ellen White was very easy to find. She was serving at the centre counter where Josh had said she’d be, and she was exactly like her pictures. Only prettier. He saw that at once. Much prettier. Even at this distance he could see how slender she was and what startling blue eyes she had, and note too that her hair was pinned into a modest bun at the back of her head, and that the collars and cuffs of her uniform were immaculately white. He watched as she flicked a heavy roll of cloth over and over between her hands, expertly unrolling the required length, and then stood back politely from the counter to give her customer a clear view, and he admired her skill and liked her discretion.

  The customer was being difficult. She had already examined four rolls of cloth and from the way she was pouting and puffing it didn’t look as though the fifth would satisfy her either. Sure enough, a sixth was called for as he watched, and had to be hauled down from the top shelf. But it was done with a smile, he noticed, even though the weight of it made the poor girl arch her spine, and that was a mark in her favour too. Oy-oy, he could see why David would love her.

  The customer had three children with her, two little girls who stood beside her in their dimity dresses stolidly enduring their boredom, and a baby boy, still in petticoats, who clung to her skirt and grizzled for attention. ‘Want to go home, Mama. Mama! Mama! Want to go home!’ When the seventh roll had been pouted aside and she still ignored him, he began to cry in earnest.

  His mother shook her skirt away from his tears and told him not to be a brat, but the girl leaned over the counter and, to Emmanuel’s delight, tried to coax him into a better humour. ‘Perhaps ’e’d be better behaved if we was to sit him on the counter, ma’am,’ she suggested.

  ‘Beastly creature,’ his doting parent said. ‘You may do as you please with him. It’s all one with me. Just so long as he don’t yell!’

  So the weeping boy was lifted onto the counter and had his face wiped on his pinafore, most expertly, as Emmanuel was quick to notice, and was given a price ticket to play with. And then the two patient little girls were noticed, and two chairs were found for them to stand on so that they could be part of the proceedings too.

  A good mother she will make, yet, Emmanuel thought, noticing how tactfully she was handling all three children. If only she were Jewish she would have all the virtues. But then he saw the floor walker moving rather too purposefully in his direction and knew it was time for him to leave.

  Whatever it was that had urged him to Hopkins and Peggs that morning, the need to do penance, the wish to act fairly, or simple curiosity, it left him in an even worse state than ever. Now that he’d seen her, his dilemma was as sharp as a razor. How could he deny his son, knowing the quality of the woman he’d chosen? But if he agreed to this marriage, how would he explain to Rachel? The inevitability of the pain he was bound to cause crushed him into anguished sighing as he stooped back home along Commercial Street.

  He wrestled with the problem all through Saturday night, quite unable to sleep but lying as still as he could and trying not to sigh too often so as not to disturb his family. By the morning, he was pale with fatigue but his mind was made up. When David left the flat and wheeled his bicycle out of the balcony and prepared to bump it down the stone stairs, Emmanuel mumbled an excuse to Rachel and followed him.

  They walked out of the courtyard together, and once they were safely out of sight of the windows and underneath the archway, he took the paper from beneath his belt and slid it gently into the top pocket of his son’s jacket.

  David’s look was inquiring but hopeful. Ellen had shown him her f
ather’s signature the night before and the sight of it had renewed his optimism.

  ‘Yes, my son,’ Emmanuel said, speaking calmly as though what they were saying was unimportant. ‘I have signed.’

  David found that his throat was so full he could hardly utter a word. ‘Thanks,’ he said huskily.

  Emmanuel put his hand on his son’s shoulder and patted it. ‘So ve don’t tell your moder just yet avile,’ he suggested. ‘Vhen you leave is time enough. Ain’t no cause before, nu?’

  ‘No,’ David agreed, recognizing with a pang that they were avoiding the moment when they would upset her. But then such happiness swelled and bloomed inside him that he forgot all about his mother. He wanted to run and jump and sing aloud. They had permission! Permission! They could marry. In three weeks they could be man and wife. His face glowing, he pushed the bike into speed and leaped upon it to cycle off down Flower and Dean Street with the reckless abandon of total happiness. Just wait till I tell her!

  Watching him go, Emmanuel felt deserted.

  It was a marvellous Sunday, with so many plans and so many rapturous kisses to share. They were like birds let out of their cage, full of energy and exuberance and chirruping high spirits. It didn’t take them long to choose a date for their wedding. It would be the Saturday before Bank Holiday Monday, which would mean marrying in their dinner hour, but would give them two whole days to themselves afterwards. What could be better? Ellen said there was no point in asking any of her family because they wouldn’t come. Her parents wouldn’t care, she said, and her brothers and sisters would be too far away and working. They decided to invite Aunty Dumpling of course, and David said he would tell his father, but apart from that it would be their secret. Theirs and their witnesses. Now it was simply a matter of finding their witnesses.