A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Time enough fer them later on,’ Ellen said, patting her work of art. ‘Feel how soft that bit a’ velvet is.’ She had no desire to see either of her parents, then or later.

  But as it happened, she saw them both sooner than she intended.

  It was Wednesday evening and outside their living room the sky was heavy with purple cloud and rain was rattling the windows. She was feeling specially pleased with herself that evening. She’d cooked fish for supper, inside their little gas oven what’s more, and to her surprise it had turned out quite tasty, although she wasn’t sure whether David had liked it or not. He never said anything about the food they ate, and she wished he would. Now they were sitting on either side of the fire, working on the next rug, he cutting cloth into strips, she hooking strips into sacking.

  And suddenly, without any warning at all, she knew that her mother was in trouble. The knowledge drained all colour from her face. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’

  He recognized one of her ‘moments’ and put his scissors down at once. ‘What is it, bubeleh?’

  ‘It’s Ma,’ she said, and her eyes weren’t looking at him, but inwards to some vague unfocused centre. ‘She’s hurt. Not bad, I don’t think. I can hear ’er cryin’. It’ll be the ol’ man, I’ll bet any money. Poor Ma.’

  ‘Whatcher want ter do?’

  She went on watching her inner world for several seconds, her face perplexed, and her hands fumbling the cloth, and when she finally lifted her head and looked at him he had to repeat his question, because it was plain she hadn’t heard him the first time.

  ‘I’ll ’ave ter go over,’ she said.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said at once. And when she looked worried, ‘I won’t come in. I’ll wait round the corner. Be there if you need me, nu?’

  ‘You’re a love,’ she said, already putting on her coat and hat. ‘It’s daft really, but I know she’s in trouble.’

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ he said, putting on his own coat. ‘Come on.’

  It was a cold journey to Russell Street and they were both shivering by the time they got off the tram at the London Hospital.

  ‘You wait in the porch out the wet,’ Ellen said, glancing at the hospital entrance. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘You know where I am if you need me.’

  The rain was running off the brim of her hat onto her shoulders. ‘Course,’ she said. ‘I can ’andle ’em, you know. I’ve ’ad years a’ practice.’

  But he worried about her all the time she was gone, and she seemed to be gone a very long time.

  When she came back she was scowling with anger. ‘’E’s give ’er a black eye,’ she said. ‘I dunno why she sticks it.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Up the pub, spendin’ ’er wages. Come on quick, there’s our tram.’

  As the tram rattled them back along the Whitechapel Road, past the sodden plane trees and the fine houses she’d admired so much when she first came there to find the flat, she told him the rest of the story. Her mother had refused to hand over her earnings, pleading that some of it, ‘on’y some, gel!’ should be set aside for food, and after a row he’d lost his temper and beaten her.

  ‘She ’ad a letter from her cousin too. She showed me. Ever such a nice letter. Said to come to Liverpool an’ take the kids an’ live there with ’er, an’ the silly fool writ back an’ said no. I ask yer! To ’ave a chance like that an’ turn it down. I’d a’ gone like a shot out’ve a gun.’ She looked so splendidly fierce, he wanted to kiss her.

  ‘She loves him maybe?’

  ‘She couldn’t. ’E’s a brute.’

  They travelled on in silence for a little, while she scowled and he admired. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘I promised ter go an’ see ’er again next Wednesday. She’s on early shift. Shan’t need an escort. ’E’ll be at the brewery.’

  ‘Better news then maybe,’ he hoped.

  It wasn’t just better. It was extraordinary.

  When Ellen arrived late that afternoon the door to her mother’s room was wide open, and the floorboards were damp. Nell was on her knees scrubbing out the last corner. ‘Nearly done,’ she said. ‘Step over the wet, there’s a good gel.’ The two kids were sitting on the table surrounded by bundles.

  ‘Whatcher doin’, Ma?’ Surely she wasn’t leaving the flat. Not after all the good work she’d done to get it her in the first place.

  ‘Movin’ out,’ her mother said, and she sounded proud, which was most unlike her. ‘Should a’ done it years ago. Movin’ out.’

  The pride started a new idea. ‘Leavin’ ’im d’yer mean?’

  ‘That’s right. We’re off ter Liverpool. I got the tickets. Jest a matter a’ finishin’ up ’ere, that’s all. I want ter leave it nice fer Mrs Nym. She’s been ever so good to us.’

  ‘Well, good fer you, Ma,’ Ellen said. ‘’Ere, give us that bucket. I’ll empty it for yer.’

  ‘Ta,’ her mother said, lifting herself from her knees, gradually and one foot at a time, as she always did when her back was aching. Poor Ma, Ellen thought, recognizing what the careful movement revealed, she’s ’ad a rotten life of it. She carried the heavy pail out onto the landing, wondering how her mother had found the energy to escape after all those awful years. ‘What’s brought this about, Ma?’ she called over her shoulder.

  Her mother was hanging up the net curtains. They’d been washed too and as they were still wet, they took a bit of arranging. ‘Oh I dunno, gel,’ she said. ‘One thing an’ another. ’E said some beastly things ter Mrs Nym. No call fer it, there wasn’t. I’ve left ’er the curtains. Make amends, sort a’ thing.’

  ‘’E sicked up on them curtains,’ Maudie said. ‘Two nights runnin’.’

  ‘Well, they’re all washed lovely now,’ Nell said, giving them a last shake. ‘Whatcher think, Ellie?’

  ‘Best thing you’ve ever done,’ her daughter approved, hugging her. ‘Should a’ done it years ago.’ Even though she knew they were saying goodbye, and recognized, in a vague way, that they’d be very unlikely ever to see one another again, she was warm with pleasure at her mother’s decision.

  ‘You’ll be all right, wontcher, gel?’ her mother said: ‘You got a good job, aintcher? You can look after yerself?’

  She needs reassuring, Ellen thought, looking at her mother’s anxious face, and her pleasure increased at the knowledge of how easily it could be done. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, superbly casual. ‘I got married last month.’

  ‘Oh Ellie!’ her mother said, turning away from the curtains to look at her wearily and with immense pity. ‘An’ you said you’d never. Who is it?’

  ‘David Cheifitz. An’ ’fore you start, you might as well know ’e’s a Jew.’

  ‘I never said nothink,’ Nell protested weakly. There’s no call ter go jumpin’ down me froat like that, gel. Is ’e good to yer?’

  ‘Yes, ’e is. Good as gold.’

  ‘Well, I s’pose that’s all right then. There, I’ve packed all I can. D’yer think young Maudie’ll be able ter carry all this lot.’

  ‘’Course,’ Maudie said. And she climbed down from the table and slung her bundle over her shoulder, trying not to buckle under the weight of it. ‘There’s yours, Johnnie.’

  ‘We’re off then,’ Nell said. ‘Look after yerself, duck.’

  ‘Send me a postcard.’

  ‘Um,’ her mother said vaguely. ‘You ’old yer brother’s ’and, Maudie, there’s a good gel.’

  They bumped their bundles down Mrs Nym’s brown staircase, blinking in the darkness. It was an odd way to be saying goodbye, Ellen thought, and realized that she was growing sadder with every descending step.

  ‘Give you a bit of advice,’ Nell said abruptly to her eldest daughter as they stood on the doorstep together for the last time.

  ‘What?’ Ellen said, lifted by an equally sudden delight. Her mother loved her
after all. Advice! Who’d a’ thought it?

  ‘If you ’ave curtains at yer windows, always see they ’ang straight. Nothink looks worse’n twisted curtains. You take my word fer it. Ah well, ta-ta, gel.’ And she was gone, drooping under the weight of her bundles with a burdened child on either side of her.

  For a second, Ellen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Then she saw the funny side and began to giggle. She was still laughing when she got back to Quaker Street, and by then her laughter was entire and infectious. David had just come home from work and she told him what had happened between gasps of mirth she couldn’t suppress. Soon he was laughing too, and she had tears streaming down her cheeks.

  But secretly he knew he was glad that her awful mother and those dirty children had taken themselves out of her life. Now if only his mother would accept her …

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Just before Christmas, when David was busy drawing shop windows full of toys, and boxes of garish crackers and over-burdened Christmas trees, and wondering why he was squandering his art on such trivial nonsense, a letter arrived at the Essex Magazine. It had been forwarded by Mr Eswyn Smith and was a request from Mrs Fulmington for a second portrait of her ‘dear Fifi.’

  ‘What a bit a’ luck!’ Ellen said. ‘Just think, we could buy ourselves a dresser.’ She’d had her heart set on a dresser ever since they got married. It was such a respectable piece of furniture. ‘A nice dresser with hooks fer the cups an’ everything. I could keep it lovely.’ If she could furnish this room really well it wouldn’t be quite such an ordeal to invite his parents to tea, which was something she knew he wanted.

  ‘So we trade the fat Fifi for a nice respectable dresser,’ he promised.

  It was done within the week. Mrs Fulmington greeted him like an old friend and said she’d be more than happy to pay the six guineas he suggested, and Fifi, who had grown fatter than ever, was also a good deal more amenable and sat still long enough for him to catch a likeness on the first afternoon.

  The dresser was a triumph. Even though they only had two cups to hang on it. ‘I’ll get another commission, maybe,’ David hoped, ‘then we’ll buy a tea set, nu?’

  He got three, within two days of each other, as his gushing patron spread the word and displayed his talent. ‘If this goes on,’ he said happily, ‘we can have a chest a’ drawers an’ a new bed an’ all.’

  The second commission was a Christmas portrait of a husband and wife, the third was another awkward child, the fourth was Mrs Hiram B. Stellenbosch. ‘A friend of my dear husband’s,’ Mrs Fulmington wrote. ‘An American, but a great lady nonetheless, I do assure you.’

  She was certainly rich and had a huge house in Tredegar Square to prove it. An ostentatious house, crammed with large expensive furniture and so many objets d’art it made his head spin to look at them. The hall contained two full-length gilt mirrors, a gilt table heaped with hothouse plants, three mounted animal heads, a suit of armour, and an aspidistra in a jardinière considerably bigger than he was. And the drawing room was even more impressive.

  It was thickly carpeted and full of massive sofas and overstuffed armchairs, upholstered in heavy dark blue velvet to match the curtains which were looped and ruched and draped like bustles. The mantelpiece was green marble and the fireplace, which was surrounded by huge red, blue and green tiles, contained a fire mounded halfway up the chimney. There were lustres everywhere, glittering in the firelight, on the mantelpiece among vases and statuettes and ormolu clocks, on side tables among more hothouse flowers, even on their own gilt stands in front of the two circular wall mirrors. And the walls themselves were hung with the most elaborate wallpaper, all exotic plants and badly drawn peacocks on a dark green ground. It probably cost the earth, David thought It seemed rather a waste because so little of it was actually on display, since the walls were crowded with sentimental pictures, of winsome little girls with impossibly large eyes, and clean, soulful dogs, and improbably thin ladies draped in blue gauze and looking tragically into the middle distance. I hope she won’t want all this in the background, David thought, it’d be ever such a job. Nevertheless such ostentation was more than enough excuse to up the fee. By the time Mrs Stellenbosch gushed into the room on a cloud of potent perfume, it had reached double figures. But his first sight of her very nearly made him forget it.

  She was a small fat woman, and she was wearing full evening dress, a white satin gown with a long awkward train, and a very low décolletage which revealed far too much of her far too ample bosom. The front of the gown was decorated with strips of ruched ribbon set with pearls, but it was pulled so tightly over her corsets that all the material above and round her waist was ridged and distorted. Her face was heavily powdered and she was wearing a dusky pink rouge on her cheeks and a similar colouring on her lips. What hair she had was dyed red, but as there was so little of it she had augmented it with artificial curls, which weren’t quite the same colour. The whole concoction was drawn up on top of her head in a tortoiseshell mound and topped with a frond of milk-white feathers. She had a triple choker of pearls round her neck and so many rings on her fat fingers he couldn’t count them. He had never seen anyone so grotesque.

  ‘Ma dear Mr Cheifitz,’ she said, gliding towards him, hands outstretched, ‘so good of you. I know everything about you. Ma dear friend Chah-lotte gave me the most in-tie-mate description. Pray do sit down.’ At close quarters, her perfume was so strong it made his eyes sting.

  He backed away from her and sat on the edge of one of her dark blue chairs while she told him how she wanted ‘an in-tie-mate portrait for ma dear Hiram. He thinks the world of me, Mr Cheifitz. The whole wi-ide world. So any little thing ah can do for him …’

  The flow continued for quite a long time, which was just as well for it gave David a chance to get his breath back and remember his fee. Ten guineas didn’t worry the lady at all. ‘When ah know I’m buyin’ a work of real art, Mr Cheifitz.’

  So the work of real art was begun, and two pencil sketches completed which the lady declared ‘real charming!’ and David escaped into the fresh air of Tredegar Square, where a flurry of snow finally cooled his embarrassment.

  ‘She was awful!’ he said to Ellen later that evening when he’d finished describing the lady.

  ‘Never mind,’ she comforted, smiling at him. ‘Think a’ the fee. We can buy all sorts a’ things with ten guineas.’ It was a fortune, and it had come just at the right time.

  He worked on the portrait that night, painting in some of the background detail and getting Ellen to model for the lady’s hair so that he could get it to look natural. ‘I’m earning this money by tellin’ lies,’ he said sadly. ‘It ain’t right, bubeleh.’

  ‘Artistic licence,’ she said, smiling. ‘That ain’t lies. You said so yerself.’

  But there was something so false and gushing and horrible about this lady and her portrait, he wasn’t at all sure, and made up his mind to paint as much of it at home as he possibly could. By the time he returned for the second sitting, the background was very nearly finished and so was Ellen’s hair, and he’d pencilled in the lines of her lovely slender figure inside that dreadful gown.

  Mrs Stellenbosch said he made her look perfectly charming. ‘You see more in me, mah dear, than even mah own dear Hiram. It takes an artist to see to the soul of a woman, ah’ve always said so.’ And she arranged herself on the blue sofa, leaning forward slightly so that he could see her bosom as well as her soul. ‘We have so much in common, don’t you think so, Mr Cheifitz?’

  What on earth could he say in answer to that? He stood at his easel and painted with the speed of panic, hoping she didn’t mean what she seemed to be saying. He was so close to the fire the heat was making him sweat but he didn’t dare move, for moving would have taken precious time and, what was worse, might give her an excuse to get up from the sofa. He knew, instinctively, that the one thing he shouldn’t do was to allow her to move any closer to him than she already was. All the dire wa
rnings he’d ever heard against evil women rang in his mind, ‘For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, but her end is bitter as wormwood.’ ‘A man should never be alone with a strange woman.’ ‘Avoid the lure of the painted woman.’ And his mother’s voice, ‘So keep your eyes down, my son. Vhat you don’t see don’t hurt you.’

  But how could he paint her without looking at her? He glanced up quickly, to check the line of her nose, and was more alarmed than ever. She was giving him the eye, has vesholem. It wasn’t his imagination. Oy oy! How could he discourage her without making her angry? ‘Would you like Mr Stellanbosch to see how it’s gettin’ on?’ he suggested. A chaperone would make everything much easier.

  ‘I’m sure he would just love to, Mr Cheifitz, but just at this present mo-ment he is right on the other side of the Atlantic, in little ol’ New Orleans. I have this great house all to mahself, mah dear. Now don’t you give mah Hiram a thought!’

  Worse and worse, David thought, painting the nose very badly, and glancing at the ormolu clock to see how much longer he had to endure. The eyes weren’t right, but he daren’t look at them. I’ll do the rest of the face, he thought, and finish the eyes when I get home. But even glancing at her face seemed dangerous now. He worked in silence, scowling at the paper, keeping his head down.

  ‘It is a fact, is it not, Mr Cheifitz,’ the lady went on, ‘that the artist has the most ex-quisite sensibilities, the most ex-quisite.’ He mumbled agreement but she didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Take the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for instance. Mah dear, the things they did! But of course, you would know far more about the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood than little ol’ me. They do say Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a mistress who took poison, but that I don’t believe. What do you think, Mr Cheifitz?’

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ he said, blushing at the indelicacy of the topic. ‘You could turn your head to the side just a little maybe. Thank you.’ Anything to get her to stop talking like this.