The taste of it was already in his mouth as he followed the two women through into the kitchen, with its remembered smells of baking and warm bread and pleasant spices.
The room was shadowy with twilight and they hadn’t lit the gas. But as he stepped inside and took his place at the head of the table, Ellen struck a match, and the little rasping sound made him look up at her and he saw that she was lighting candles, and he recognized his mother’s candlestick from the old days in the Buildings.
The candles bloomed one after the other, as yellow as roses, until they were a glowing bunch and he could feel their warmth on his face. He looked up at Ellen again, sitting at the other end of the table, to tell her how much he liked them, and he saw that she was wearing his mother’s shawl, the fine red shawl she always used to wear on Friday evenings at the Shabbas meal. And he looked from her to Jack, and the boy was wearing a yarmulke, and so was his brother, the round black caps settled on the crown of their heads in exactly the same way as he used to wear his. And all round the table the faces of his family glowed in the candlelight, eyes gleaming, smiling at him happily as though they were expecting something special to happen. And Ellen picked up the bread and broke it, and dipped one piece in the salt, in the old familiar way, and passed it across the table to him, her eyes shining. And he realized that this was a Shabbas meal, and knew in an instant how very much she was giving him as he took the bread from her hands. Ellen, who wasn’t Jewish, presiding over the most Jewish of meals.
And the words of the Proverbs came effortlessly into his mind and he spoke them lovingly, to all his family. But to Ellen above all.
‘Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also and he praiseth her: Many daughters have done virtuously but thou excellest them all.’
A Note on the Author
Beryl Kingston was born in Tooting in 1931. She was eight when the war began and spent the early years of her education in many different schools, depending on her latest evacuation. As an undergraduate she attended King’s College London, where she read English.
She married her childhood sweetheart when she was 19, with whom she has three children. Kingston was an English teacher before embarking on a career as a full-time writer in 1980.
Discover books by Beryl Kingston published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/BerylKingston
A Time to Love
Fourpenny Flyer
Sixpenny Stalls
Tuppenny Times
Two Silver Crosses
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1988 by St Martin’s Press
Copyright © 1993 Beryl Kingston
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448210367
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A Time to Love Page 53
