A Time to Love

by Beryl Kingston

  By this time the sound of urgent Yiddish had alerted the occupants of the other two rooms on the floor and the landing was full of people, all talking at once, and in a state of frantic agitation. ‘Hush! Hush!’ he said. ‘There are men on the floor above we must not wake.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ a fat woman said. ‘The Russians. We tell them too, nu?’

  ‘They are the ones the police have come for,’ David tried to explain above the hubbub. ‘Peter the Painter and some others, nu? You must leave them where they are.’

  ‘Peter the Painter?’ the woman said. ‘No. No one of that name, I assure you. Two young Russians, nice quiet young men. Anarchists. Wanted by the police in Russia they are, for opposing the Tsar-murderer, may the good Lord bless them. So to England they came for safety.’

  But then another woman took over, wailing, ‘I cannot leave my work. All these skins to finish. How shall I live if I leave the skins?’

  ‘Gather them. Take them with you,’ David urged. The noise they were making and their total lack of comprehension was making him feel panicky. ‘You have ten minutes,’ he said to them all. ‘That is all. I must tell the people downstairs.’ And he left them milling about on the landing, blundering in and out of their doors, weeping and arguing.

  As he turned to go down the broken stairs again he could hear furniture being dragged about on the floor above his head. They’ve woken the Russians, he thought, and was suddenly afraid, and wished he hadn’t volunteered for this impossible job. What if they really are murderers with guns? They could come out on the landing and blow us all to pieces. ‘Hurry!’ he yelled as he leaped down the stairs.

  The hall was full of people too, women in shawls, with small children clinging to the ragged edges of their skirts and men in peaked caps and fur hats, with bundles clutched to their chests. Pale hands reached up to grab at him as he reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘You must tell us, young man. Is it true they’ve come to arrest us? We have done nothing, you understand. We work well. We make no trouble. You must tell them.’

  ‘They do not come for you,’ he said, over and over again. ‘They come for the Russians who live at the top of the house. You must leave for the time being because it is dangerous for you to be here.’ He couldn’t understand why they were arguing. ‘You must leave.’

  ‘Tell them we have done nothing.’

  ‘Ai!’ he roared at them, raising his arms in exasperation. ‘Such fools you are. Stay and be killed, then. I can do no more than warn you. I have tried. If you are shot it will be your own foolishness.’

  ‘You are a good man,’ one of the women said, patting his shoulder. ‘We do as you say, nu?’

  But even with her help it was far more than ten minutes before the last of the tenants finally agreed to leave. David was on tenterhooks all the time in case the Russians appeared with their guns, but he couldn’t leave until they were all out, no matter how foolishly they were behaving.

  ‘That the lot?’ the sergeant said, when he walked back to the corner of the street where the police were gathered.

  ‘There’s two Russians on the top floor,’ David said. ‘That’s all. No one’s heard of Peter the Painter. They didn’t know what I was talking about.’

  But the policeman had other things on his mind now that the house was clear. ‘If I can just trouble you gentlemen to get right back,’ he said, urging them to retreat with sweeping movements of his outstretched hands. ‘Right down the end a’ the street, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Now what?’ Tin Ribs said, when they’d gathered at the comer of the Mile End Road and David had told them all his story.

  ‘Watch and wait,’ Quin said. ‘That’s about the size of it Watch and wait.’

  So they watched and waited, and David made a few quick sketches of his extraordinary evacuees, and the sky gradually lightened above the sooty brickwork of the tenements, smearing itself with dirty grey rags of cloud. When he looked up from his last sketch, he was surprised to see how much lighter it had become and how thoroughly the police had cleared the street.

  ‘I could use some breakfast,’ Tin Ribs was saying, when a huge pantechnicon, drawn by two horses, came rumbling round the corner. They watched as it was pulled to a halt in the middle of the empty road outside No. 100. Then there was a long pause, and David drew a sketch of the vehicle. A small crowd gathered at the end of the street, and four pigeons flew down into the road and strutted about beside the horses’ hooves hopefully.

  Then the back of the pantechnicon opened and a police sergeant dropped out, picked up a handful of pebbles, walked round to the front of the van and began to lob them at the windows. The street was so quiet they could hear them clattering against the glass. ‘Police!’ he called. ‘Come quietly! You’re surrounded.’

  The answer was immediate and brutal. The window at the top of the house was raised, the black barrel of a gun protruded, there was a spurt of red flame and the sergeant fell backwards clutching his chest.

  ‘Good God!’ Quin said. ‘They’ve shot him!’

  The horror of it made David’s legs shake. Then so many things happened so quickly, he didn’t have time to feel anything.

  Six or seven policemen tumbled out of the van and ran to their injured colleague. They improvised a stretcher with two cloaks and slung him inside it before any of the newsmen saw what they were doing. Then they were carrying him off, running across the road with their bundled burden swinging dangerously between them, straight through the open door of the house opposite. The pantechnicon drove off at great speed and then the landlord of the ‘Rising Sun’ was standing beside Mr Quinton offering them a ringside seat on the roof of his pub, ‘at a quid a time’.

  ‘You’re on!’ Quin said. ‘Come on, Cheify!’

  They had to run back along Sidney Street towards that gun, and the patch of dark blood on the cobbles. But no guns fired and soon they were safely inside the pub and climbing the stairs towards the roof. ‘We got a good stout parapet,’ the landlord said. ‘You’ll be as safe as ‘ouses up there.’

  It was a solid parapet, to David’s considerable relief, but it was also extremely cold. ‘Was ’e dead?’ he asked, as they sat themselves down on the chilly lead sheeting.

  ‘No,’ Tin Ribs said. ‘’E was still groanin’, poor beggar.’

  ‘They’ll bring the troops out now, sure as fate,’ Quin said. But even he wasn’t prepared for the number of troops they brought. The first batch arrived within half an hour. Scots Guards, armed with rifles, who took up positions against the walls to right and left of the house. By ten o’clock in the morning no more shots had been fired but the street was swarming with troops and policemen. Over a thousand, according to the knowledgeable estimate of the man from the Mail. And Tin Ribs returned from a foray downstairs with the news that the injured policeman was called Sergeant Leeson. He’d been taken to the London Hospital and operated on, and although he was in ‘a serious condition’ he was expected to live.

  I shall certainly ’ave something to tell Ellen when I get home tonight, David thought. I wonder if she’s heard what’s going on?

  But over in Mile End Place, Ellen wasn’t the least bit interested in guns and gunmen. She had problems enough of her own.

  Half an hour after David left, when the fire was just beginning to draw and the chill was lifting from the room, she had her first labour pain. It was surprisingly strong. And so was the second, which came twenty minutes later. Well, that’s a mercy, she thought. Perhaps this one’ll be quick. Jack had been ever so slow.

  As there was still warm water in the kettle she washed the breakfast things before she sat down and wrote a note to the midwife and a postcard to Aunty Dumpling. ‘It is today. Hope to see you later on. Love, Ellen.’ Then she rattled the back of the hearth with the poker to call Mrs Streete, who had promised to look after Gracie and Jack when the time came.

  And Hymie put his head round the kitchen door. ‘Could yer come up to the missus?’ he said, squinting at her in his anxiety
. ‘She’s ever so poorly.’

  Now what? Ellen thought. She’d had just about enough of Miriam and her illnesses. There’d hardly been a day in the last nine months when she hadn’t complained about something or other, indigestion, aching feet, constipation, piles, swollen ankles, and all suffered with the maximum noise and drama.

  ‘I’ve just give Mrs Streete a knock,’ she said. ‘Will it wait?’

  ‘She’s ever so bad,’ Hymie said, drooping in the doorway. ‘We been up most a’ the night.’

  ‘Oh all right,’ Ellen said wearily. ‘You stay here an’ let her in.’ And she toiled up the stairs to attend to her troublesome tenant.

  Miriam was mounded in the bed, huge-bellied as a whale. ‘Oy-oy-oy!’ she groaned as Ellen entered the room. ‘Such pains you vouldn’t believe!’ Her face was shiny with sweat despite the cold in the room.

  Not her an’ all, Ellen thought. That’ud be too much. ‘Whereabouts?’ she asked.

  ‘Vhereabouts vhat?’

  ‘The pain.’ Stupid woman!

  ‘All over,’ Miriam said, rolling her eyes. ‘All down me back, me legs, down there. All over, I tell you. Oy-oy-oy! D’yer think it’s the baby, Ellen? Oy-oy! It ain’t the baby, has vesholem. Such pains you wouldn’t believe, dolly.’

  Ellen had a pain of her own to contend with just at that moment, so she sat down on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes and let it ride. She could hear Hymie opening the door to Mrs Streete and was relieved to think that her signal had been heard.

  ‘Get up! Get up!’ Miriam shrieked, rolling her bulk away from the tilt of the mattress. ‘Cantcher see I’m in agony?’

  ‘No you ain’t,’ Ellen said, when her pain had faded, ‘you’re in labour.’

  ‘Ai-yi-yi-yi!’ Miriam yelled. ‘So get the midwife. Vhat you vaiting for?’

  ‘She’s on ’er way,’ Ellen said. ‘I’ve started an’ all.’

  ‘You can’t have!’ Miriam said, opening her eyes wide in disbelief. ‘Oy! You’re selfish! You never think of me! Who’ll look after me now?’

  ‘You’ll ’ave ter look after yerself fer once,’ Ellen said sharply. ‘Do yer good!’

  Miriam threw the covers over her head and howled like a baby.

  ‘An’ if you’re gonna make that noise, I’m off,’ Ellen said. ‘I got a lot ter do, if you ain’t.’

  ‘You’re heartless!’ Miriam said. ‘That’s vhat. You ain’t got a sympathetic bone in the whole a’ your body!’

  It was bitterly cold on the roof of the ‘Rising Sun’, but the newsmen were equal to it. As the lull continued, they took it in turns to retreat to the pub for hot pies, hotter spirits and any gossip that was going. Soon there was quite a party atmosphere up on the lead sheeting, for there was plenty to see and plenty to talk about. The curtains were still drawn across the attic window opposite, but the Scots Guards had been deployed at every vantage point. Guns bristled from the windows facing the beleaguered house and the doorways were thick with uniforms.

  The firing began without any warning. It was so loud and so sudden it made them all jump. ‘Get yer ‘eads down!’ Quin warned, ducking behind the parapet, for bullets were hitting the walls of No. 100 and hissing off at every angle. But David was determined to see what was going on, so although he crouched down he managed to keep watch through one of the decorative gaps in the parapet. It was a very long bombardment and it came from every side. There was even a detachment of Scots Guards lying on newspaper placards at the end of the road, firing from their bellies in true military style and providing him with an excellent picture. But it was the attic window that tugged most powerfully at his imagination.

  When Sergeant Leeson had been shot, he’d been horrified and afraid, viewing the nozzle of that black gun as utterly evil and threatening. Now, as the two Russians fought back against the barrage, their guns spitting red defiance at the hundreds below them he realized he was seeing them in quite a different way. His first sketch of the fighting showed a volley of smoke and flame all spurting in the same direction. His second was a quick line-drawing of those two isolated guns, and as his pencil hissed across the paper, he knew he was feeling a sneaking sympathy for them.

  After half an hour there was a halt in the barrage and a police inspector with a megaphone, keeping at a safe distance from the house, called on its occupants to surrender.

  ‘Fat lot a’ good that is,’ David said, ‘seein’ they don’t speak English.’

  ‘Ours not to reason why, old son,’ Quin said. ‘’Ave a gasper.’

  ‘They know they gotta surrender, don’t you worry,’ the man from the Mail remarked. ‘Bleedin’ anarchists! We should never a’ let ’em in the country in the first place.’

  ‘Didn’tcher say they was Russians, Cheify?’ Tin Ribs asked.

  ‘Well, there you are then!’ the Mail said contemptuously. ‘We all know what Russians are like.’

  ‘Nice quiet young men,’ David said, quoting the fat woman on the landing.

  ‘They’re the worst,’ the Mail said.

  But worst or best, they didn’t surrender and presently the barrage started up again.

  ‘I’m off fer a spot a’ dinner,’ Quin said. ‘You coming, Cheify? This could go on fer hours.’

  And he was right. It did. For two, three, four hours until the street stank of cordite and the cobbles were littered with spent cartridge cases. And still the Russians wouldn’t surrender.

  Just after one o’clock an important personage arrived, flanked by high-ranking officers bright with brass. They took shelter behind the dividing wall at the end of the terrace and watched events with great interest and obvious enjoyment.

  ‘Home Secretary, that is,’ Quin said. ‘Mr Winston Churchill. Bit of a card by all accounts. Wonder what he’s told them ter do. We’ll ’ave a sketch of him, Cheify.’

  So David sketched the Home Secretary, and the firing continued, and Tin Ribs said he wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they didn’t carry on all night.

  The end, when it came, was as sudden and dramatic as the start had been. A haze of grey smoke clouded out of the attic window, ‘Hello!’ Tin Ribs said. ‘Burning their papers, I’ll bet. Any sign of ’em coming out?’

  They craned over the parapet at the dark doorway, but it remained empty, even though the volume of firing had certainly decreased.

  ‘Must ’ave a lot a’ papers,’ the Mail said. ‘They’re kicking up a proper stink.’ So much smoke was billowing from the window it had already risen above the chimneys. And then there were yellow sparks spurting out of the chimneys and flames glowing red behind the curtains.

  ‘It’s on fire!’ David yelled. ‘That ain’t papers! That’s the room!’ And he remembered the furniture being dragged across the floor in that room, and wondered how the Russians would get out.

  They had very little time to do anything, for within ten minutes the top floor of the house was ablaze.

  Aunty Dumpling saw the smoke as she got off the tram at Mile End Place. Someone’s on fire, she thought, but she forgot about it as soon as she let herself into the house, for she could hear Ellen panting and groaning in the front bedroom, and the midwife urging her on. ‘Push, dearie! Push!’

  ‘You vant any help?’ she said, peering round the door.

  ‘Wore herself out running up an’ down stairs to that one,’ the midwife said, nodding towards the ceiling. ‘Now she ain’t got the strength.’

  ‘Miriam, is it?’ Dumpling said, listening to the high-pitched, continuous wailing above them.

  ‘Wants all my attention all the time,’ the midwife said. ‘She’s got a good long way to go yet. Not like Mrs Cheifitz. ‘Nother one, dearie? Let’s see if we can use it, shall we?’

  ‘Aunt,’ Ellen gasped, as the pain began to grip. ‘Make ’er – stop ’er-row-fer Gawd’s sake … Can’t-do nothink …’

  ‘So don’t you vorry, bubeleh,’ Dumpling said fiercely. ‘I see to her good.’ And she went lumbering up the stairs at once to put paid to the aggravatio
n.

  Miriam was sitting on the floor with the blankets round her shoulders. She’d cried so much her face was covered with red blotches, but when she saw Dumpling she sniffed to a halt.

  ‘Ai-yi! Vhat you doing down there?’ Dumpling demanded. ‘You catch your death a’ cold.’ And she put out a plump hand to haul Miriam to her feet.

  It took a lot of doing, for the pregnant Mrs Levy weighed considerably more than Dumpling did, and reluctance increased her weight even further. ‘Leave me be!’ Miriam wailed. ‘I might as well die on the floor as anywhere.’

  ‘So first you look after your health,’ Dumpling said sternly, lugging at her arms. ‘You can alvays die later.’

  And that made Miriam grimace, and lifted her spirits and her bulk for a few valuable seconds, so that Dumpling was able to lower her into the cane chair by the fire. ‘Cup of tea ve make,’ she said. ‘You ate today, nu?’

  ‘Ellen bought me sommink up dinner time.’

  I bet she did, Dumpling thought. You take advantage of my bubeleh. ‘I vonder your moder ain’t here,’ she said rather tetchily. ‘You need a moder, a time like this.’

  To her dismay Miriam’s face crumpled into tears again. But she didn’t howl. She cried quietly, letting her tears fall as though she didn’t notice them. ‘She don’t love me, Aunty Dumpling,’ she said.

  ‘Oy! Such a thing to say! ‘Course she love you. A moder!’

  ‘She don’t. Nobody loves me. She an’ Pa went off ter Salford the minute they’d married me off. That’s why they done it. First me big sister, then me little sister, then me. An’ off they went, them an’ me brother Izzie. Pleased ter see the back a’ me they was. They never loved me.’ She sighed and mopped her eyes with the cuff of her nightdress. ‘They don’t even write, an’ I send ’em a letter every week, reg’lar as clockwork. Nobody loves me. Hymie thinks I’m hideous. ’e said so. An’ ‘is Ma can’t bear me. She said I was ter get out the ‘ouse.’

  Despite herself, Dumpling felt sorry for her, so fat and ugly with no one to love her. ‘So ve get this baby born,’ she comforted, patting Miriam’s vast belly. ‘Then they love you, don’t I tell you.’