She stopped for a moment at the door where everyone could see her, ignoring the urging of her father’s hand on her arm, and the sound of the music lifted in ecstasy. Davida Damont, twenty years old, a distant cousin of the man she was about to marry, had enough self confidence to be able to do things her way rather than anyone else’s and her way was to give everyone plenty of opportunity to admire her gown of stamped white velvet, her headdress of the most priceless old Chantilly lace, and her cascade of magnolias entwined in silver ribbons. The decisions about the gown and the prolonged fittings and discussions had been such that the whole bridal ensemble deserved every scarp of attention and admiration it could get. And Miss Damont was determined it should get it.
And also that she should. That she looked enchanting she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt. Her eyes, wide and dark under the frosting of dark curls on her creamy forehead, her little pointed chin under the rosy parted lips (were they not rather particularly rosy? Susan whispered to Fay. Did dear Davida use rouge? Quelle Horreur!) her slender neck encased in its lacy collar, the great rope of huge pearls that hung almost to her waist (dear Papa, so generous) and the great sweep of her ten-foot-long Brussels lace veil, added up to total magnificence. Everyone who saw her must be overawed by her.
The wedding went beautifully. The handsomest of young men married the most beautiful of young girls in the presence of the best dressed and most affluent people in the whole of London on that November afternoon, and everyone congratulated everyone else afterwards, and wept a few happy tears and told each other what a delightful affair it all was.
And at the reception, as the guests, now wearing even more splendid clothes than they had at the synagogue, moved slowly past the great tables laden with the wedding gifts, admiring their own contributions (and feeling somewhat slighted if they were not positioned to advantage) and curling their lips a little at everyone else’s, the congratulating went on. This was a fine match a joy for the respective families, a credit to the thriving and well-thought-of community that belonged to the New West End Synagogue, an event to be great with satisfaction.
Fay escaped from the hubbub as soon as she could, managing to hide in a window embrasure of the great drawing room of the Lammeck house in Park Lane here the reception was held by slipping into the shadow of a curtain. She was tired and unhappy and it was vital that her formidable mother should remain totally unaware of both facts.
Mary found her there not because she was looking for her sister-in-law, but because she too was seeking somewhere to hide. Mary was just a year younger than Fay. She had been married to Fay’s brother Emmanuel for almost a year now, and the two women had much in common.
‘Oh, my dear, how glad I am it is you!’ Fay breathed as Mary put her hand on her arm. ‘For one dreadful moment I was afraid it was Mama - I mean, I thought it might be Mama. And I do so wish to rest a little - the flowers in the synagogue were so strong, where they not? They gave me the headache.’
‘Have you not told them yet? May was not usually so direct, but she was so concerned for Fay with her pale face and the blue shadows under her eyes growing larger every day that she could not be as circumspect as she usually was.
There was a little silence as Fay looked bleakly out at the milling crows of elegant people with their glasses of champagne in their hands and their bright eyes and their splendid gowns and monocled eyes and then she breathed in sharply through her nose.
‘No. Nor shall I ever, I don’t suppose.’
‘Then you will never be anything but miserable, my dear one, and surely you cannot believe your parents wish such a thing!’
‘Papa would not - he is most tender, truly he is. Dearest Papa.’ Fay’s sad face lifted for a moment. ‘But he would be bitterly distressed. As for Mama… . ’
Both girls fells silent, and Mary slipped one hand into her sister-in-law’s and squeezed hard. Quiet, with soft mouse coloured hair and green eyes, she had been more than amazed when the elegant Emmanuel Lammeck had come courting her, even though she knew that as a member of the Deyong family, he was considered a respectable match. But Emmanuel, he of the bright and rather insolent black eyes and full red mouth and quick wit? He and his father worked closely together in Lammeck Alley, and he had no need of Mary’s far from large dowry. Why had he chosen her?
Yet he had, and married her, and she had hoped to be happy with him, for she had found him exciting, if rather overwhelming. Now, just a year after her own wedding, with Emmanuel already showing his impatience with her and his interest in livelier company, she found all her comfort as a married woman in the company of her sister-in-law, Fay. She too had her problems, for Augusta Lammeck made no secret of the fact that she cared immeasurably for her sons and only incidentally for her daughter regarding her somewhat as she would a tiresome puppy.
Fay, who had inherited her father’s small build and quiet ways and none of her mother’s more fiery nature, knew she enjoyed little but maternal contempt. For her the best thing that had ever happened was her brother Emmanuel’s marriage, and not only because it took him out of the house where he had always teased and bullied her during her growing years. It was all because of her dear sister Mary.
‘We’ve got another one now,’ she said the, staring across the room to where Davida Damont, now Mrs Albert Lammeck, stood surrounded by admirers, her eyes glittering with excitement and her cheeks aflame with pride and joy.
Mary nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘But not like you and me, I think.’
‘No. Not like you and me,’ Fay said, and squeezed Mary’s hand affectionately.
‘So you will not tell them?’ Mary said after a while. ‘You will just go on as you are?’
‘What else can I do?’ Fay said almost helplessly. ‘They would never understand. That I should wish to marry at all would amaze Mama - but that I should wish to marry a Christian… ‘ She shook her head. ‘I cannot see how I can do it.’
‘Shall I help you, Fay? Would you come to stay with me in my house for a few weeks? I could tell them I needed you, because of my condition - they would let you come, I think. And then you and your Richard could make a plan to be wed. Once it was a fait accompli, surely they would accept it?’
Fay looked at her, her forehead creased a little. ‘Do you really think so? Do you think you could stand what would happen afterwards? They would torment you dreadfully, my dear, would they not? They would blame you, Mama would be … ‘ she shook her head. "I love you for the good heartedness of your plan, my dear one, but I cannot let you.’
‘After the baby is born, perhaps.’ May said uncertainly. She wished nothing but happiness for her sister-in-law, but of course Fay was right. Her redoubtable Mama-in-law would be … oh, it couldn’t be thought of. Even imagining Augusta’s rage that would ensue increased the sense of queasiness she had been feeling all day, and tightened the pain in her middle.
She longed suddenly for home and bed, even that stiff and over-furnished house in Green Street that Emmanuel had insisted they live in, and which was so unlike her own old comfortable home in St John’s Wood. But that home had gone, now that Papa was dead, and all she had was Emmanuel and Green Street and all these overpowering Lammecks and Damonts. Really, she did not feel at all well.
‘I cannot persuade you, my dear,’ she said now. ‘But remember, do, that I am your friend. Whatever you wish me to do for you, I will to the best of my ability.’
Fay kissed her gratefully, and then went away to behave as a daughter should and dance attendance on her Mama, and to try not to think of her beloved Richard, the son of the surgeon who had looked after her when she had had the whooping cough two years before, and whom she had adored ever since.
On the other wide of the room Emmanuel was leaning against the overmantel of the wide fireplace, warming his buttocks at the flames and talking to his cousin James Damont.
‘Something has to be done, there’s no doubt about that. I was told only last week by the captain of one of the cargo boat
s m'father called in from Holland, that they're coming out in thousands, if not tens of thousands. He had some on his own ship - a more superior class, he said, paid a decent rate for their passage, don’t you know, decently dressed small businessmen, as I understand it. But most aren’t that sort.’
‘I’ve seen them,’ James said, and took another glass of champagne from the tray of a passing footman. ‘Disgusting, really, quite disgusting. Women look like ragbags, children so underfed they're all eyes and mouths. Terrible business, terrible. They have a bad time of it.’
‘My dear chap,’ Emmanuel said strongly. ‘Never think I lag behind any others in my sympathy for hardship. These poor devils have had a dreadful time, I well know that. Those damned Russians and their pogroms - out to be put a stop to! But meanwhile, what good does it do them to come pouring in here this way? Jews have a good name in business here. Respected, don’t you know. And now all these riff raff, because let us not be sentimental about it, James, riff raff they are, Jews or not. In they come and make everyone else in the country very dubious. I mean, look how it was then the Irish came.’
‘I don’t remember that,’ James said, and gave a wolfish little grin. ‘Forty year ago m'boy. Before my time.’
‘Dammit, James, before my time too! But I’ve heard the way people talk, ordinary men, don’t you know, chaps one meets in one’s club, fellows who work for the firm. Irish navvies and trouble makers they call them. Blame them for everything, and then respectable Irish citizens find themselves tarred with the same brush. The same will happen to us, you mark my words, if we don’t do something about all these damned peasants coming pouring into London from Russia and Poland. They'll blame all of us, and then where will we be? People don’t always know the different between … well, differences!’
‘You may be right. But I can’t see what we can do about it. Poor devils come here they're here. Not much we can do then, is there?’
‘There’s a society being formed to do something very sensible - raising funds to help the poor devils. Most of them would gladly go back again, given enough to set themselves up in business. They haven’t all come to escape pogroms, you know! I know for a fact there’s plenty of them just with their eyes to the main chance.’
‘Good Jewish businessmen?’ James murmured.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, man! You know perfectly well what I mean! Don’t he, Alfred?’ Emmanuel’s brother had joined them, a cigar clamped comfortably between his teeth, and one thumb hooked into the armhole of his otherwise elegant waistcoat.
‘Are you talking about the Society for the Relief of Indigent Jews?’ Alfred jerked his chin at a footman to bring his champagne. ‘Good idea, that. They’ve sent letters already, seventeen of them, to the rabbis on those places.’
‘Letters?’ James asked.
‘Indeed. Warning them about the conditions here. These poor devils are living in the most appalling housing, appalling. I’ve given several hundred pounds myself to the Society. You ought to do the same. It’s going to be a bad lookout if the rush isn’t stopped. I warn you - very bad. Funds to send ‘em back, that’s what they need.’
‘You see?’ Emmanuel said triumphantly. ‘You see? I told you, James. What’s going on with those people in the East End is going to make trouble for every one of us in this community. We really do have to do something about it.’
14
Nathan was puzzled. He had not thought a great deal about what would happen when they arrived in London, but he had assumed that it would be much as it had been when he left Brody. There would be men in richly braided official uniform shouting and demanding to see papers, and herding them along from place to place; loud voices insisting on a constant perusal of lists and passports and an eternity of beady eyed questioning about place of original, destination, means of support.
Yet there was nothing. Just a wooden landing stage rising from the oily lapping waters of the river on rotting weed-encrusted posts. The ship sat there at her moorings further out, while small boat after small boat left her side, cluttered with people and bundles and screaming children, and made their way across the heaving waters to the stage. The people clambered out, and that was it. They had arrived. No one in uniform, braided or otherwise, stepped forward; no one seemed interested in the bundles of papers the immigrants clutched in their hands; no one official seemed to care at all.
There were people about, of course; against one wall overlooking the landing stage were a collection of men who laughed and shouted raucously together, throwing occasional stones at the bewildered new arrivals standing in huddles at the water’s edge, hangers-about with nothing better to do than stand and gawp at what was going on. There were children, barefoot and filthy, darting about in the crowds, pushing people out of the way and shrieking with excitement when they were sworn at, and there were other Jews, residents of London who had come to meet some of the arrivals.
Nathan looked at them eagerly. They were people who looked just like the old people, at home in the shtetl, with their round faces and dark eyes and heavy dark clothes. They spoke in the same tones, in the same loud Yiddish, and for a moment he felt a surprising pang of homesickness. After all, he had been away from the shtetl for three years, a soldier, a hero. He was used to being a traveller. How could he now feel like a frightened child longing for home and Momma this way?
Momma. Momma and Poppa. That was the trouble, of course. He had given little thought to what he would do to find his family once he arrived in London; he had used all his energies to get here. In his imagination, the moment of arrival had been a sun-glittering excitement bathes in a golden haze of delight. He had not realized how big London would be. He had supposed there was a place in it like the part of Lublin in which he had lived, clearly defined, well circumscribed by walls and gates and the types of houses where Jews like his family would live. Now he knew better.
He stood at the rail of the ship as she came slowly up the river, watching the buildings on each side pass interminably. The place seemed to go on for ever. Row after row of wharves and warehouses, row after row of houses and big buildings that looked like factories, and traffic, traffic, traffic.
On the river, first, big ships, great freighters that looked to Nathan like ocean going liners, so huge did they seem in his eyes, and small fussy boats with oars that rose and dipped in the filthy water so fat that Nathan felt his arms ache as he watched them.
On shore there was the same bustle. Horses and carts and carriages moved along the roads almost as far as the water’s edge. Nathan stared and marvelled and worried. How on earth was he to find any familiar face in such chaos?
He lifted his chin now and looked around him. High on his left rose a squat grey building with towers on each corner. It looked imposing and rather alarming, though its threat might have been due to the fact that someone on the boat had told him it was the Tower of London, a place for malefactors. He looked away quickly and searched with his eyes for somewhere he could stand for a while where he wouldn’t be pushed and jostled by the boatload after boatloads of arrivals, somewhere he could think, and decide what to do.
The short winter day was dwindling into darkness. Somewhere on the far side of the landing stage a gas light flared up and then another, nearer to him. He blinked and coughed as a swirl of fog moved up from the river and thickened in his throat. It made him want to cough and spit, but he knew better than to do that; a filthy habit, his mother had told him, and he had always shared her opinion. So he breathed through his mouth carefully, trying not to notice the way the chill sulphurous air grated on his throat, and trying above all to ignore the smell.
It was not as bad on the waterside as it had been on the ship. They had been huddled together below decks in bunks so close that he could feel the warmth of his neighbour’s body, and as the first night had passed the stench had become worse and worse. Unwashed people, clothes dank with the ever present moisture in the air which sent rivulets of condensed water trickling down every plank and str
ut in the hold, babies with an ammoniacal smell from their soiled napkins, which made his eyes water, and, as the weather got worse, the sour acid smell of sea sickness. There were no lavatories for all the scores of people in steerage, and in their desperation they eventually used the floor; what else could they do? By the second day at sea he could bear it no longer and had crept up on deck to find a corner there, icy though it was, to sit curled up and live the journey away as best he could. Anything better than that dreadful hold.
So here on the riverside the smell of sulphur laden fog and the state of soot in his mouth, were tolerable, almost familiar. Winter nights in Lublin had created similar weather conditions, and similar smell.
Someone shoved against him in the dimness, and he moved obligingly, but the push came, again. He turned on the huddled shape beside him and snapped in Russian. ‘Don’t push! You don’t have to push.’ A woman looked back at him with eyes red with fatigue and watering just like his own, and then shrugged and spat on the ground at his feet, and muttered something in a language he didn’t understand. He frowned and spoke again, this time in Yiddish. ‘There’s no need to push. You’ll get where you’re going soon enough.’
This time she smiled, a little down-turning of her lips that made her look happier for a moment and then she said in Yiddish, ‘It wasn’t me. The bitch behind – she shoved me.’
He looked over her shoulder at the woman beyond her and nodded. She was a big stout creature with one small child clutching her neck, and another on her crooked arm, and she was carrying a bundle in front of her. She could hardly help pushing for she was swaying with fatigue. ‘Well, she didn’t mean to, I dare say. Where are you from?’
The Running Years Page 14
