A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Davey bubeleh,’ she moaned. ‘Your poor fader!’

  The sound of her recalled Emmanuel from his half-sleep. ‘Davey!’ he said, but even that one word was an effort.

  ‘I think you should see the doctor, Papa,’ David said. ‘Just to be on the safe side, nu?’

  ‘Is he bad, Davey?’ Rachel asked. She seemed listless, unable to decide anything for herself, and her face was drawn and more deeply lined than he’d ever seen it, as if she’d aged since yesterday.

  But she must know how bad he is, David thought, pitying her. ‘You agree, Papa, nu?’ he asked.

  Emmanuel had closed his eyes and seemed to be drifting again. It was too serious to wait for his agreement. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he promised his mother and tiptoed from the room.

  Dr Turiansky lived in Osborn Street at the other end of Brick Lane, and when David arrived outside his premises he was sitting in his consulting room reading by the globed light of an amber table lamp. He listened patiently while David described his father’s symptoms, then he set his book aside and rang for his servant.

  ‘Pony and trap, if you please,’ he said when the man answered the bell. When the servant had gone he took his familiar high hat from the hat stand and brushed the rim thoughtfully with his fingertips. ‘I shall be there before you,’ he said.

  And he was. But his visit brought little real comfort to any of them. He stitched the gashes on Emmanuel’s fingers, and shone light into his eyes and examined his chest and his spine, and required him to sit up and lie flat and turn on his side until Emmanuel was panting with suppressed pain and exhaustion. Dr Turiansky’s eventual diagnosis was cheerful, but it didn’t seem to have any relevance to the hunched man suffering so stoically in the bed below him. ‘No bones broken,’ he said. ‘No concussion. Extensive bruising, of course. Some laceration. You have cracked a rib or two, but there’s not a lot I can do for that. Your stomach is tender which is why you feel sick. Light diet, Mrs Cheifitz. I shall return on Monday if you need me. If he hasn’t improved by then, I will bind him up. Otherwise send him down to the surgery in a fortnight to have those stitches out.’

  When David paid his half-crown fee, and escorted him politely from the premises, he felt demoralized with disappointment. He knew instinctively and unreasonably that his father was far more seriously ill than this kindly medical man was telling them.

  His mother felt it too and so did Dumpling, and even though Aunt Rivke said, ‘Not so bad, nu?’ her expression belied her hopeful words. And when Emmanuel struggled to eat a little noodle soup, and then vomited it up again almost immediately and very painfully, they were torn with anxiety all over again.

  That weekend was an unnatural limbo, a mixture of anxious labour for Emmanuel’s three self-appointed nurses, and long periods of enforced waiting for the rest of the family. David visited him night and morning and was more upset by every visit. But Ellen and the children stayed at home. And that distressed them all, for Emmanuel asked after their health continually, and was so obviously missing the sight of his ‘little chickens’ that by Sunday evening David was tempted to bring them to the flat and at least let him see them from a distance.

  ‘They could stand in the bedroom door maybe?’ he said to Dumpling.

  But she wouldn’t hear of it. ‘The very idea!’ she said. ‘Nu-nu. You let them stay at home vid Ellen. You think your fader vant them to catch the sickness? Nu-nu! Don’t you vorry, bubeleh. Ve look after him good.’

  The three women took it in turns to sit beside Emmanuel’s bed in a room that steadily became more claustrophobic and sour-smelling. His breathing grew more laboured and eating was impossible. From time to time they tried to coax him to take a little sustenance. But it wasn’t any good. They tried kugel, and chicken soup with barley, they even tried egg beaten up with a precious spoonful of brandy, but he couldn’t keep anything down, no matter how mild or how lovingly prepared. It was a terrible trial to him brought up to be long-suffering and considerate and never to give offence to anybody, and soon he was reduced to tears by the treachery of a body he couldn’t control. The smell of his vomit distressed him even more than the terrible retching that accompanied it. After a bout of sickness he would feebly turn his head away from the mess he’d made and try to apologize. ‘I am so sorry, Rachel bubeleh. Such vork I make for you.’

  And she, dabbing his burning forehead with the utmost gentleness, would croon at him as though he were a baby. ‘Hush bubeleh! Don’t you fret yourself, dolly. It don’t matter. You can’t help it, bubeleh.’

  He slept fitfully, tossing and moaning, but when he was awake and fully conscious he used all his energy to control himself, keeping his lips tight together and making no noise even though his eyes were shaken with the pain that racked him with every breath. The family were torn by his suffering and on Monday they sent for the doctor again.

  This time he agreed with them that his patient was rather more ill than he had thought at first. ‘He should have been improving by now,’ he said. ‘His breathing is rather too irregular. The result of those cracked ribs, I daresay. We will give him till Friday, Mrs Cheifitz. If he is no better by then I’m afraid he may have to go to hospital.’ He gave them aspirin for the pain and left them to struggle on for a little longer, knowing how desperately they all wanted to avoid the hospital if they could.

  On Wednesday Emmanuel seemed to be rallying. He ate a little soup and managed to keep it down. But on Thursday he was worse again, struggling for breath and obviously in pain. And when David came to see him on his way to work on Friday, he was shocked to tears by how ill and frail his father looked. His hands were transparent, like bony fishes, and his skin was wrinkled and yellow like parchment. Because he’d lost what little flesh he had, his chin and nose seemed enormous in his shrunken face, and his grey hair stuck out from his skull like a wig that didn’t belong to him. But his expression was calm and he was making a great effort to speak clearly, for what he had to say to his son, now, was important.

  ‘You get Rabbi Jaccoby, nu?’

  ‘Now, Papa?’

  ‘Now.’ There was a peaceful finality about the word.

  He’s giving in, David thought, looking at the oddly composed expression on his father’s raddled face. He’s going to die and we both know it. And he was surprised that he felt no sorrow and no alarm.

  He still felt no emotion as he strode through the Buildings to fetch the Rabbi. It was as if he was an actor in some strange play.

  ‘You will send one of the family to your workplace to make your excuses,’ Rabbi Jaccoby said. ‘We shall stay with him now. You and I and his wife. It is the time.’ But even those ominous words provoked no reaction. David waited beside the bed, silently holding his mother’s cold hand, as his father slept with his mouth fallen wide open and his bruised chest visibly pulling in air in a series of high-pitched screaming snores. Nobody spoke, for what could any of them say?

  Around midday Emmanuel stirred from sleep and put out a hand feebly towards the chair where David was sitting. Every breath was raspingly audible, the air dragging into his lungs slowly and painfully, but he struggled to form words. ‘Hear O Israel …’

  David caught at the hand and held it and Rachel knelt by the bed and gathered his other hand and lifted it against her face, and Rabbi Jaccoby began to pray. ‘I acknowledge unto thee, O Lord my God and God of my fathers, that both my cure and my death are in thy hands …’

  This must be death, David thought, but he was still calm, noticing the play of sunlight dappling the bedhead, and the white glint of his father’s eyes before those papery lids creased down to cover them. ‘O may my death be an atonement for all the sins, iniquities and transgressions of which I have been guilty against thee …’ A slight breeze was curling the edge of the curtain, whorling it back on itself in a fat curved shape like a snail shell. ‘Bestow upon me the abounding happiness that is stored up for the righteous. Make known unto me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy �
�’ The glint of eyes again, his mother’s grey hair silver in the sunlight. And that awful screaming snore as the slack mouth shuddered soundlessly towards the last words of the prayer. Then they were all speaking the words together. ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.’

  And in the total silence that followed when the prayer was finished he knew that his father was dead.

  Nevertheless Rabbi Jaccoby felt for his father’s pulse, standing for an endless time beside the bed, head bowed. And David and Rachel stood too, fearful and resigned.

  ‘Cover the mirrors, my daughter,’ Rabbi Jaccoby said tenderly. ‘They should not witness our misfortune.’ And the words released their sorrow, so that she began to wail and he to sob aloud. But she went off to fetch the cloths from the dresser, obedient as a child, and David closed his father’s eyes and straightened his poor thin arms and shut his mouth very very gently, because that was the last duty of a son towards his father.

  He carried out all his other duties too, telling the family, consoling his aunts, coaxing his mother to eat, and finally arranging the funeral. But he was numb, and although he wept, his tears brought no relief.

  It wasn’t until the day was over and he was back in Mile End Place with Ellen and the children that the full force of his sorrow drenched down upon him. Then he wept and raged, ‘He can’t be dead, Ellen. I can’t bear it. He’s always been there, all my life, always. A chawchem, Ellen, a righteous man, everybody said so. Why should he die?’ There was no one left to turn to now this good man was dead. Who would advise him and talk to him and joke with him and stand beside him in the synagogue? There was no one. His mind battered itself against the empty space this death had left. ‘Oh, why did it have ter be him? The street was full of people, hundreds of ’em. Why him? I can’t bear it, Ellen.’

  And she held him and stroked his hair and wept with him. And they were both bleak with loss.

  The next day he went to work unshaven and with his hair uncombed, and that upset her even more than his grief had done, even though old Mrs Brunewald assured that that was the way Jews always went on. ‘They call it the shiva,’ she said. ‘Seven days of mourning, the shiva. They don’t shave or do their hair or nothing like that. Some of ‘em don’t even wash. They’ll have the funeral ever so quick too. You see if they don’t. It’s their way you see, dear.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The funeral was on Monday and, rather to her relief, Ellen discovered that another Jewish custom was to restrict attendance to the men in the family. ‘I shall watch it from the archway,’ she promised. The route to the Jewish Cemetery was straight up the Mile End Road, so the cortege would pass the end of their street. ‘That’ud be all right, wouldn’t it? I could sort a’ pay me respects that way.’

  He agreed, but vaguely, his assent being more of a grunt than a word, and his eyes looking elsewhere. It was as though his senses had been disconnected, she thought, watching him with aching sympathy. He was so clumsy all of a sudden, walking into chairs, breaking pencils, spilling his tea. Yesterday he’d burnt his hand on the stove and he hadn’t even noticed. Poor old love, she thought, as he walked bleakly out of the house, we shall ’ave to be ever so gentle with him when ’e comes back.

  In the meantime there was the funeral to be got through. She washed her two children very thoroughly and dressed them in their best clothes, and took them down to the archway into the Mile End Road to see their grandfather’s passing. And just before the procession arrived she was joined by Hymie’s fat wife, Miriam.

  ‘You don’t mind if I watch with you, do yer?’ she asked. ‘Mrs Levy’s gone ter keep old Mrs Cheifitz company, so I’m all on me own.’

  Ellen said she didn’t mind. But there wouldn’t have been time for her to object anyway, for the black hearse was in sight. They watched as it passed, and Ellen was surprised and pleased by the size of the crowd that followed it, relations, of course, she’d expected them, but there were neighbours from the Buildings too, and another group that Miriam said were his workmates from Mr Goldman’s. It was very impressive.

  ‘That’s the way of funerals, dolly,’ Miriam said. ‘Make a feast, make an enemy; make a funeral, make friends.’

  ‘You goin’ to the Buildin’s now?’ Ellen asked hopefully. She was finding this huge woman’s presence rather overpowering in the enclosed heat under the archway, and Jack was really quite heavy to hold for any length of time.

  ‘Nu-nu,’ Miriam said. ‘Hymie wouldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t hear of it. In case of “the baby”.’

  What an odd way to talk of it, Ellen thought, noticing the curious inflection. ‘In the family way, are yer?’ she asked.

  ‘Well …’ Miriam said, looking archly at her new friend. ‘You can never be quite sure, can yer?’

  Ellen agreed with her politely, even though she’d always been quite sure when she was expecting, and almost from the first day. The long line of men was still walking past them, and Jack was half asleep.

  ‘I’ve never enjoyed good health in that respect,’ Miriam went on. ‘So if your Hymie wants me to give him sons he’ll just have to wrap me in cotton wool for nine months, that’s all.’

  The thought of this huge fat woman wrapped in cotton wool gave Ellen a sudden attack of the giggles. She had to turn her head aside and busy herself unnecessarily with little Jack’s bonnet. How dreadful to be wanting to laugh at a time like this! But the next thing Miriam said froze her back to gravity at once.

  ‘I suppose Mrs Cheifitz’ll move in with you when shiva’s over.’ It wasn’t even a question, she was so sure of the answer.

  ‘Why would she do that?’ Ellen asked, glad that her voice sounded casual despite her alarm.

  ‘Well now, dolly, she couldn’t live alone, could she?’ Miriam said. ‘Jewish women never live alone. It ain’t proper.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be alone,’ Ellen said. ‘Not in the Buildin’s. There’s hundreds a’ Jews in the Buildin’s.’

  ‘You got the room though, aintcher?’ Miriam said, dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief.

  They had, Ellen thought. They’d got a darn sight too much room. They could hardly say no to the woman if she made an issue of it. And in that instant she had an overpowering sense of what it would be like to be forced to live with her mother-in-law. And she knew she couldn’t bear it. It was bad enough being disliked from a distance, but to have to see it day in and day out, and without old Papa Cheifitz to temper the unpleasantness. No, no! Something would have to be done to forestall her. And done quickly. She turned away from the tail end of the procession and looked Miriam Levy straight in the small dark eye.

  ‘We was thinkin’ a’ taking a lodger,’ she said. ‘Matter a’ fact, it’s almost fixed.’ She was fixing it in her mind as she spoke, so she wasn’t really telling a lie.

  ‘Oh!’ Miriam said. ‘You ain’t!’ And her fat face crumpled like a balloon deflating. ‘I wish you’d said. We’d ‘a loved it.’ And she burst into tears.

  It was surprising and embarrassing, but even while she was feeling both those emotions fairly keenly, Ellen’s brain was busily testing a possible solution to her immediate problem.

  ‘Come into the ‘ouse,’ she invited. ‘Tell me all about it.’

  So they went back into Ellen’s nice brown kitchen and the baby was put in his cot to sleep and Gracie was given two wooden spoons to play with. And Ellen poured tea and Miriam poured out her troubles.

  ‘We ain’t ‘ad a minute’s peace since we got married,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s no joke ‘avin’ ter share with yer in-laws, I can tell yer. She treats me like a skivvy. It’s do this, do that, every minute a’ the day. She won’t let me get the water of a mornin’ ‘till Mr Levy’s gone down to the shop. I call that cruel …’ The catalogue of grievances went on and on, the most recent washday being detailed splash by quarrelsome splash, and Ellen made murmuring noises of encouragement and appeared to listen. But really she was plotting.

  After the second cup of tea and the
umpteenth complaint, Miriam paused for breath ‘What’s ter become of us?’ she implored.

  ‘Tell yer what,’ Ellen said. ‘This lodger I was tellin’ you about ’asn’t made ’is mind up yet. You could come ’ere if yer liked. On’y you’d ’ave ter look sharp about it.’

  ‘Dolly!’ Miriam shrieked. ‘We could move in terday.’

  ‘Come round ternight, when David’s ’ome,’ Ellen said quickly. ‘See what ’e says about it, eh?’ She could hardly have them installed before he knew.

  ‘Oh we will, we will,’ Miriam promised, effusively grateful. ‘You jest can’t begin ter know what this means ter me!’

  Gracie hurled her spoons into the corner. ‘G’acie firsty,’ she said.

  After her new friend had gone puffing off home, Ellen had second thoughts about her offer. It was underhand and she knew it. She ought to have talked it over with David first. But if she’d done that he’d’ve told his mother to come and live with them, and then where would they have been? No, she decided, it was a dreadful thing to have done, but she didn’t have much choice. ‘You got ter be cruel to be kind sometimes, aintcher, my lovey,’ she said to her sleeping baby. And Gracie lifted her head out of her mug of water and said, ‘Yes.’

  Her doubts returned in most uncomfortable strength when David finally got home that evening, for he was grey with fatigue, and almost incapable of speech. But she fed him, and made him tea with lemon, and set a chair in the garden for him, and was ashamed to realize that she was doing these things as much to assuage her conscience as to care for him. But it would all be for the best in the long run, she consoled herself. And it had to be done. She didn’t say anything about Hymie and Miriam until they knocked at the door. Then she went out into the garden to explain quickly. ‘That’ll be Hymie. ’E’s got sommink ’e wants to ask yer. I said you wouldn’t mind ’im comin’.’