I’ll call in at Underwood Street an’ tell Mama Cheifitz and Aunty Dumpling on my way back from work, she decided. I can break it to them gently, so they don’t get a shock. And she realized that she was still suffering from shock herself, because her heart was beating in such an odd juddering way, and she was tempted to make herself a cup of tea to steady her nerves. But then she glanced at the tin clock on the mantelpiece and knew she’d be late if she didn’t leave the house at once, so that was that. She had to forgo the tea and get on with the day.
Rachel and Dumpling were finishing their work when she arrived at Underwood Street and the kitchen was full of steam from the irons, and the strong smell of the fish Dumpling was preparing for supper.
‘Vill you look who’s here,’ she said when she’d opened the door to Ellen. ‘Here’s our Ellen come to take you home, dolly.’
But Rachel took one look at her face and knew something was terribly wrong. ‘Vhat is it, bubeleh?’ she said.
Ellen suddenly found she was too near tears to speak. She handed the telegram to Aunty Dumpling without a word and the two women read it together holding on to one another for support.
‘Ai-yi!’ Rachel mourned. ‘My Davey!’ She sat weakly in the nearest chair, the tears rolling out of her eyes. But Dumpling didn’t cry. Not yet. She was watching Ellen, her eyes strained with tears and control.
‘’E ain’t dead,’ Ellen said, her face stubborn with grief.
‘’Course not, bubeleh,’ Dumpling said, patting her arm. ‘It ain’t the same. Missing.’
‘’E’ll turn up,’ Ellen said. ‘You’ll see.’
‘He vill, he vill.’
‘I just thought you’d better know, that’s all.’
‘So you’re a good girl, bubeleh.’
‘As long as that’s understood.’
‘Ve understand.’ Oh, how well she understood!
‘I’d better get ’ome then.’
‘I get my hat on, bubeleh,’ Rachel said. ‘I come vid you, nu.’
‘We won’t tell the kids yet awhile,’ Ellen said. ‘No point upsetting ’em for nothing.’
After they’d gone, Dumpling gave herself over to grief and wept until Fred came home. Davey was dead, there was no disguising it. Missing men very rarely turned up. It just meant they hadn’t found their bodies. And if they hadn’t found Davey’s body he must have been blown to pieces. Oy-oy-oy, how could she bear it?
When Ellen and Rachel got home they found a surprise awaiting them. The fire was lit and burning brightly, the table was set, Jack and Benny had had their faces scrubbed and she could smell a cottage pie cooking in the oven.
‘Oh Gracie!’ Ellen said. ‘You are a good girl!’
‘You got a letter,’ Gracie told her. ‘You sit down an’ read it, an’ I’ll get the pie.’
It was a letter from David, dated 20th September. ‘Well, there you are,’ she said when she’d read it, ‘that just shows what a lot of ol’ nonsense them telegrams are.’
‘What telegram, Ma?’ Gracie asked, fearful at once.
‘I ’ad a silly telegram this morning,’ Ellen admitted. ‘Yer Pa was supposed to ’ave gone missing on 20th September, an’ that’s the very day he writ this letter.’
‘What’s missing?’ Benny asked, his face solemn.
‘Means they don’t know where ’e is,’ Ellen explained. ‘’E’ll turn up, you’ll see. Now, who’s fer cottage pie?’
‘’E ain’t dead, is ‘e, Bubbe?’ Jack said.
‘Nu nu,’ Rachel comforted. ‘Missing ain’t dead, missing ain’t dead, dolly.’
‘No ’e ain’t,’ Ellen said furiously. ‘You ain’t even ter think it. ’E ain’t.’
So Benny and Jack didn’t even think it, and Rachel was careful not to let any of them know what she was thinking, and Gracie only thought it privately. But she noticed that her mother was afraid every time the post came, and that she went into the front room and looked at Pa’s drawings every single day.
The news quickly spread to the Buildings. Two days later, Rivke and Ben came to Underwood Street, to see if their support was needed.
‘Ve should sit vid Rachel and Ellen maybe,’ Rivke asked.
‘Nu-nu,’ Dumpling said. ‘Ellen don’t accept yet. She vants he ain’t dead.’
‘Poor voman!’ Rivke said.
‘She loves him,’ Dumpling said.
‘Ve all love him,’ Rivke said.
‘It’s a bad business,’ Fred said. ‘Poor girl.’
A week later, in the middle of a misty afternoon, when Rachel was out shopping, another packet of drawings arrived. But this time they came by special messenger, a shy skinny soldier with a long ugly face and anxious grey eyes.
‘Mrs Cheifitz?’ he asked when she opened the door to him. ‘I brought some drawin’s. From yer ‘usband. My name’s Clifford. We was tergether at the Messine Ridge.’
‘Oh come in, come in do,’ she said opening the door wide to him. Now she would know the truth. ‘How is ’e?’ she said, looking back at the soldier as she led the way into the kitchen.
He was shuffling his feet with embarrassment. ‘Well …’ he said, not meeting her eye, ‘I mean … Aintcher got … um …’
‘They sent me some daft telegram,’ she said briskly. ‘Supposed ter be missing.’
He scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully for some considerable time. Then he told her about the patrol, and how Evans had been killed and Cheifitz hadn’t come back. ‘That’s all I know, ma’am,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘’E was a good bloke, your ‘usband. Ever so good ter me. Stuck ter me through thick an’ thin, you might say.’ He hadn’t realized that bringing the drawings would be so awful.
‘’E ain’t dead,’ she said. And this time she was comforting him too.
‘No,’ he agreed, glad of the escape she’d offered. ‘’Course not.’ Poor woman.
‘Don’t look as though yer Pa’ll be back fer Christmas,’ she told the children later that day.
‘What’ll we do with ‘is presents,’ Gracie asked delicately. ‘If ’e’s missing, I mean.’ She’d been knitting him a balaclava helmet.
‘We’ll put ’em in the bottom drawer an’ save ’em, till we know where ’e is,’ Ellen said. ‘But we’ll just ’ave to ’ave Christmas without him. Same as we did last year.’
It wasn’t a bit the same as last year, although they all did their best to pretend it was, and Bubbe joined in the festivities and never said a word about it not being Jewish. But at least, Ellen thought, as she raked out the ashes on Boxing day, we ain’t ’ad the other letter. And that was really all that mattered.
The other letter arrived three days later, a neat typed form sent from the records office at Preston. ‘It is my painful duty to inform you that no further news having been received relative to David Cheifitz, 17th London Rifles, the Army Council have been regretfully constrained to conclude that he is dead, and that his death took place on September 20th 1917.’ Whatever she might or might not believe, she was now a war widow.
She showed Rachel the letter, and the children, but dismissed it. ‘It don’t make a bit a’ difference,’ she said. ‘It’s just what they think, that’s all. We know ’e ain’t dead, don’t we?’
But in fact it made a lot of difference, for a widow’s pension was considerably less than a soldier’s pay, and within a couple of weeks it was plain that the Cheifitz family were not going to be able to manage on the money they had coming in, not even with Rachel’s contribution.
‘It’s the rent, you see,’ Ellen explained to Dumpling. ‘Takes such a chunk out me wages.’
‘You should move to a smaller place, maybe?’ Dumpling suggested practically.
But the idea was rejected with furious tears. ‘How could I? We got ter keep it all fer Davey, cantcher see? Just as it was. We can’t leave.’
‘Nu-nu, bubeleh,’ Dumpling comforted. ‘So you don’t leave. Ve find some other vay, nu?’ But after two days thinking about it, she was still baffl
ed, and it took Fred’s quiet good sense to think of the solution.
When Dumpling came to visit the next Wednesday afternoon, she asked to see David’s drawings. ‘I could borrow some of them, maybe,’ she said. ‘Someone I know vould like to see them. I take great care.’
They picked out ten of the very best and folded them lovingly in tissue paper and put the whole bundle inside his folder and the folder inside a waterproof bag.
It’s Fred, I’ll bet, Ellen thought, and was touched by his interest. But it wasn’t just interest. He’d advised Dumpling to sell them.
Essex Street was awash that morning, the brickwork black with moisture, the cobbles steaming and two heady torrents snaking downhill beside the pavements. Dumpling’s umbrella dripped so much water before her eyes that she could hardly see where she was going, and when she arrived on the doorstep of the Essex Magazine and shook the dratted thing, it had to be done with such vigour it sounded like a whip cracking. She stomped into the office, damp, steaming and determined.
‘Mrs Morrison,’ she announced. ‘Come to see the boss of Mr David Cheifitz.’
The office boy, who was young and thin and apologetic, was thoroughly alarmed by her enormous presence. ‘First floor, missus,’ he squeaked, lifting startled eyebrows to the ceiling.
‘So lead the vay, vhy don’t you,’ she said, prodding in his direction with the furled umbrella.
She puffed after him up the narrow stairs, her wet skirts and sodden umbrella smearing a damp trail behind her all along the yellow anaglypta.
‘You’d better leave that ’ere,’ the office boy suggested, looking at the umbrella and pointing to an umbrella stand on the landing. ‘’E don’t like the wet. Don’t like it at all. Most particular about wet, ’e is.’
So Dumpling deposited the umbrella and hung up her hat and coat, dried her face on her handkerchief and followed the office boy towards her mission.
She liked Mr Palfreyman the minute she saw him, sitting so quietly behind his fine desk, with a grand fire in the grate and leatherbound books on the shelves behind him. A gentleman, she thought, admiring his polished fingernails, and his gold tie pin and the gold rims of his spectacles. A gentleman, talking into that telephone in his nice quiet gentleman’s voice.
He waved a hand towards a chair and, covering the mouthpiece, urged her, ‘Pray do sit down, dear lady. I shan’t be a moment.’
Be as long as you like, Dumpling thought, beaming at him, just so long as you give my Davey vhat I vant.
‘Now, dear lady,’ Mr Palfreyman said, when he’d finished his call, ‘what can I do for you?’
‘I come on behalf of Mr David Cheifitz. I am his aunt, Mrs Morrison.’
‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ Mr Palfreyman said, shaking her by the hand. ‘Yes, yes indeed. How is he?’
‘Missing, sir.’
‘Oh dear,’ he said, his round face changing shape under the impact of such bad news. ‘What a pity! What a very great pity! He had a wife too I believe, and children.’
‘So that’s vhy I come,’ Dumpling said, leaning forward eagerly. And she told him all about Ellen and how brave she was being, and what a good mother she was, and how she refused to accept his death, and how determined she was to keep the house going the same as always.
And Mr Palfreyman folded his white hands together in his lap and listened. ‘What can I do to help, Mrs Morrison?’ he asked when she finally stopped speaking because she was breathless with passion and exertion.
‘Vell,’ she puffed. ‘I bring you some of his drawings, vhat he sent from the var. You could buy them maybe?’
He took the waterproof bag and dried it most thoroughly on one of his dusters, and then he removed the folder and opened it to look at the pictures. He studied them for such a long time that Dumpling began to grow disheartened. They were no good maybe. They looked good to her, but then how could she tell? Nevertheless she decided to keep quiet and say nothing, because the gentleman was so obviously thinking.
‘My dear Mrs Morrison,’ he said at last, looking up at her with the most peculiar expression on his face. ‘But these are magnificent! Magnificent! Of course we will buy them. Yes, yes, indeed.’
‘Oy-oy!’ Dumpling said, clapping her hands with relief and delight. ‘So how much?’
The fee he offered took her breath away. ‘Shall we say a guinea each for the first six? Would that suit? Then we will see. How many more have you got?’
‘Hundreds,’ Dumpling said, hoping it wouldn’t put him off.
But he was delighted. ‘Such treasure,’ he said. ‘Such riches! My dear lady I can’t thank you enough for bringing them here.’
‘Strictly speaking they ain’t mine ter sell,’ she confessed. ‘They belong to Ellen by rights.’
‘Ask her to come and see me,’ he beamed.
‘You treat her gentle, nu?’ she said.
‘My dear Mrs Morrison, of course. I do know something of their history. They were very fond of one another. She must be feeling his loss most cruelly.’
‘Such a love you vouldn’t believe!’ Aunty Dumpling sighed.
‘Oh yes,’ he assured her, ‘I would. Yes, yes, indeed. There were times, you know, dear lady, when I quite envied your nephew his capacity for passion. He was so happy when they married, so full of life and vitality. We all noticed it. Now there is pain in equal measure, of course, but I often think, taken all in all, that his way of living would be preferable to mine. In fact, dear lady, if I had my life over again, I do believe I would try to live it his way.’
‘Von life ve get, von life ve got,’ Dumpling said, smiling at him. ‘So ve do good vhen ve can, nu?’
The drawings were published two weeks later. And they caused a sensation. Letters started to arrive at Essex Street the very next day, within three days sales of the magazine had doubled, and within two weeks they had quadrupled. David Cheifitz, war artist, ‘One of our heroes, missing on the Western Front’, had arrived.
Ellen was stunned by the speed of his fame. At the end of February, Mr Palfreyman wrote to tell her that the fee he could now offer was five guineas per picture, and wondered whether she would like to visit him at Essex Street to ‘talk things over’.
‘You are earning quite a lot of money these days, my dear,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it would be advisable for us to open a bank account. Unless you wish to purchase a house, of course, or to use the money for some other similar expenditure.’
No, she said, she had no intention of buying a house. ‘We got ter stay where we are for when ’e comes ’ome, you see, sir,’ she explained.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Mr Palfreyman said tenderly. ‘Then we will open an account for him. It will have to be in your name, I’m afraid, because officialdom, in its infinite folly, has decreed that you are a widow. You will pardon the word.’
And she did pardon the word, from such a very kind man.
‘’E ain’t dead,’ she said, but she spoke gently.
‘No. No. Of course,’ he said.
March began and new leaves put out their hesitant buds.
‘It’s been six months,’ Rachel said to Dumpling, ‘an’ she don’t give in yet.’
‘Ai!’ Dumpling sighed. ‘Poor Ellen!’
But Ellen was living in abeyance, taking one day at a time, and refusing to look into the future. The money meant nothing to her, beyond the fact that she could now afford the rent. David’s sudden fame meant nothing to her, beyond the fact that it would please him when he came home. She was waiting.
And then one day, early in the month, when a blustery wind was propelling her down the road towards the garage, she suddenly had the most vivid waking dream. David was standing in a ward full of injured soldiers, looking out of a tall window. For a few seconds she could see him quite clearly with all the blue uniforms milling about behind him and the white light from the window all around his head, then a gust of wind blew her violently forward and the vision was gone. But she’d seen him. Alive and well. Som
ewhere. She was so happy she ran the rest of the way to the garage.
The next dream began as she was washing her face early next morning. She stood quite still beside the washbasin, with the soap drying on her cheeks, listening to it with all her senses, willing it not to fade. He was walking among green trees towards a white wall of some kind, smiling. She could see the wall quite clearly, a white wall, tall with long windows. Then there were wounded soldiers again. She could sense their pain, but she knew it wasn’t his. He seemed to be walking into a ward, but the edges of the dream were blurring, she was losing it, it was going.
She realized, as she sponged the soap from her face, that she was panting as though she’d been running. But what did that matter? Now there was no doubt. She knew he was alive. Alive and in some hospital somewhere. A hospital with white walls. She folded the towel neatly and hung it over the rail. I’ll find him now, she thought. There can’t be all that many hospitals with white walls. Most of the ones around here are brick red or grey, and that one was very definitely white. I’ll start looking right away. The place was full of wounded soldiers. One of them was bound to know. I’ll ask every single one, she told herself as she carried the pail of dirty water downstairs. Every single one until I find him.
The wounded soldiers on her bus were all as helpful as they could be, but none of them that day could remember a hospital with white walls. ‘Grey?’ they offered. They knew plenty of grey ones. But not white.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Someone’ll know.’ She was abundantly cheerful. It was simply a matter of time.
Her ‘dreaming moments’ came with comforting regularity, and the walls were always as white as snow. Once she was part of the dream, standing beside a fireplace, with her arm pressed against the cool marble, then walking towards him, with two huge windows on her left and sunshine streaming through them in a square column full of swirling motes. And once they were walking together across a floor made of beautifully patterned tiles, blue and green and buff and white, and she felt sure she knew where she was, but when the dream faded she was torn by frustration because she simply couldn’t remember, no matter how hard she tried. But the walls of her dream house were always the same and always white, and that was a comfort and a hope.
A Time to Love Page 50
