Now they felt a little agreeable company would be good for their patient, and Fay was ushered into the big front bedroom of the house in Green Street. She stood uncertainly at the foot of the bed, a great sheaf of white lilies on one arm.
Mary touched at the sight of her small pale face above the dark blue of her mantle and framed in a sober gable bonnet trimmed with pleated dark blue silk. Clearly Fay had tried to choose clothes that would show how distressed she was without actually going into mourning. One did not wear black for a baby who had been born dead, for it did not count as a person. Augusta had told Mary that when she had arrived in a handsome crimson gown over which she had worn an emerald green covert coat. Mary, who cared little about such matters, had yet wept to know that the baby did not even warrant the wearing of black. Now, seeing Fay in her sober blue, she was grateful to her, and held out her arms in welcome.
Fay dropped her flowers and ran to Mary’s side to kneel beside the bed and throw her arms across her and weep furiously. Mary stroked her hair and felt, for one brief moment, some comfort. Her own dear Fay, to care so much, so genuinely - she needed the warmth of Fay’s tears, and basked in them.
They talked, desultorily, easily, about silly things; about a shopping trip Fay had undertaken, and the difficulty of buying comfortable boots, about Fays’s visit to the Montefiores' for the weekend, of the family’s plans to spend the week between Christmas and the New Year with the Rothschilds at Mentmore, for although of course none of them observed Christmas as a festival, it was an inevitable hiatus in the business world, and anyway, the Jewish festival of Chanucah which coincided this year with Christmas, could be celebrated.
‘They make a great deal of fuss of Chanucah at Mentmore,’ Fay said, holding Mary’s hand tightly now between both of her own. ‘They have all those grandchildren and cousins to visit, and as they say, it is the children’s festival - oh, my darling! I am so sorry! I should have bitten my tongue out before saying such –’
‘Hush,’ May said. ‘You can’t pretend there are no children in the world, my love, just because I - just because of me. That would be foolish. Of course Chanucah is or children – all those candles and presents.’
‘I can’t bear it, Mary, really I can’t. That you should suffer so. You’ve done nothing to deserve it.’
‘Fay, listen to me.’ Mary struggled to sit up, pulling herself up against her pillows with so much energy that for a moment her pale face reddened a little. She leaned forward and put her hands on Fay’s shoulders. ‘Listen to me. Do you still want to wed your Richard? Have you said anything to Mama about him?’
‘Have I -' Fay drew back. ‘Of course I have said nothing! Why do you think of that now? You have more important things to think of, my love, like getting better and … ’
‘Fay, do please listen to me, before the nurse comes back and makes you go away - it really is important.’ She leaned back on her pillows again, suddenly fatigued.
‘Well, no, I haven’t said anything to Mama,’ Fay said. ‘And I never can. I must not - ‘ Fay shrugged and let her eyes slide away from Mary’s. ‘I must just bear it, must I not? I was a fool ever to let myself … I am a fool. I know that. I must just forget him.’ She managed a small smile. ‘I shall devote myself to good works and be a maiden aunt and oh, Mary! There I go again! How could I be so cruel!’ Her eyes filled with tears once more.
Mary pushed that aside. ‘Listen, my dear one. Please I - I love you too well to let you be unhappy. I know it will be difficult for you, but please, do as I say. Tell your Richard you will come to stay with me as soon as they will let you, to keep me company. And he must make arrangements to take you way and marry you. Yes, I know it will be difficult and wicked but he must contrive something. You shall have your husband and your children and be happy. You hear me?’
‘You're ill, Mary darling. Please don’t excite yourself. It really isn’t important enough and … ’
‘It is, it is,’ Mary said fretfully, and turned her head on the pillow. Her eyes were very bright now, and the colour had returned to her cheeks in high red patches, ‘It is. My little girl is dead and I shall never have another, but they shan’t take your life way from you. I shan’t let them. To live with a man you thought you loved and who … well, never mind that. I mean, to love a man and not be able to share your life with him. It must be like dying, a little. There’s been enough of dying here, you understand me, Fay? My little girl is dead, but you mustn’t be. You must have your Richard and the devil take them all. Please, Fay, will you? Will you be happy for me? I can’t be happy, but if you are… ‘ she shook her head, too weary to say more and Fay stared at her, and shook her head too and tried to argue, but there were no words she could think of. Mary seemed to be staring through her and beyond her to a world of misery she could not comprehend. She felt the urgency in her and for the first time allowed herself to think seriously of what Mary was suggesting.
It became a game between them, one they could play whenever they were together. After two weeks, when Mary was allowed to sit out of bed for an hour a day, and they permitted Fay to spend each afternoon with her (thus relieving Augusta of the need to come so often an opportunity she was glad to seize), they began to make more detailed plans. At first Fay played along with Mary to mollify her. It all seemed an impossible fantasy that Mary in her weakened state seemed to need. But as the weeks turned into a month and the Christmas and New Year visit to Mentmore punctuated Fay’s attendance at Green Street, it took stronger shape in her mind.
She could see what had happened; Mary, in losing her infant daughter had seized on this scheme to further Fay’s happiness as a way of atoning for her own guilt over her child’s death. That she blamed herself was clear to Fay, and in a way she shared Mary’s view of what had happened. Women were for having children; a woman who could not have children was pitiable, but also somehow culpable; to be so was to be like being a man who was incapable of earning a living. How could anyone fail to regard the barren woman otherwise as a failure? Loving her sister-in-law as she did, Fay wanted to help her assuage her guilt, and if the way she wanted to do it was by opening the door of Fay’s own private prison, who was Fay to argue with her?
So they plotted and planned, and Richard was brought in one Friday afternoon - when there was no risk of any of the family visiting, for the Sabbath came in early on these short winter days and they would be bustling about their synagogue affairs - to take his share of the organizing.
Fortunately for Mary’s peace of mind, he was enthusiastic. Genuinely in love with the rather quiet and mouselike Miss Lammeck, he had been sadly hampered in his courting of her not so much by her religion - as a student of a freethinking physician, religion had never played much part in his young life - as by her fortune. He had a comfortable competence of his own, enough on which to marry and run a simple home, as well as his future as a physician, but the Lammeck wealth had alarmed him. He had not believed he could possibly hope to marry her. Now, with Mary’s help, he could see a way that made it very possible, for clearly a runaway heiress ceased to be an heiress. She would come to him penniless, and to Richard Gough that was a very attractive prospect.
‘We can marry in a register office,’ he said. ‘None of your family nor your friends will notice the banns posted there and so will not stop us, and this way there can be no insult to anyone’s religion.’
‘Oh, they will consider me a bawd.’ Fay said as equably as she could. ‘Such a marriage will not be regarded by them as a marriage at all. But I don’t care. Except perhaps Papa … ’
She made a little face, but there was excitement and a certain hardness in her eyes. What had stared as a game to comfort an ailing sister-in-law had become the core of her life. She would marry her Richard, no matter what.
‘But he will have the boys, and of course his precious Davida. I sometimes think he believes the sun shines out of her mouth, he’s so besotted with her.’
The way the new Mrs Albert Lammeck had ingratiate
d herself with her father-in-law had rankled with Fay. She had returned from their short honeymoon in the Swiss lakes for Emmanuel had said strongly that the firm could not spare its junior partner for longer than a fortnight - to pass her days in a whirlwind of spending as she decorated and equipped her handsome new house in Mount Street, and her evening in the bosom of her husband’s family, talking breathlessly and listening flatteringly to every word Bartholomew uttered. The only member of her immediate family with whom Fay had ever felt any rapport seemed to have turned away from her to a more exciting and attractive rival. Why should she concern herself, therefore, with the effect of her departure to live her own life might have on him? She would not - and since in addition there was real pleasure to be found in contemplating what her mother’s rage would be, Fay’s resolve hardened. She would elope.
And elope she did, one February evening, walking calmly out of her sister-in-law’s house with her valise in her hand to clamber into a four wheeled cab and rattle away with her Richard to a life of her own. She wept a little at parting with Mary, but not a great deal. She had seen enough of her sister-in-law’s life at the hands of her husband during the weeks when she was staying at the house, ostensibly to help the ailing mistress of it to recover, to know what hell a loveless marriage could be. She wanted none of that chilly loneliness, that ever-present anxiety about the quality of her husband’s mood that so obviously filled Mary’s life. She felt some guilt at leaving her much loved sister-in-law to her dismal existence, when her own promised so much happiness, but since doing so meant that Mary felt better about the loss of her baby, that made it all right.
So Fay told herself, clutching Richard’s arm, and staring out at the rainwashed streets clattering by and thinking of the little house in Croydon, where they were to live, and where she would experience the full joy of being Mrs Gough, rather than Miss Lammeck.
Mary watched them go, standing at her drawing room window and peering out at the cab wheeling away, and wept as she had not since her baby had died, and then sat down calmly to wait for the storm to break over her head. She sat up till three in the morning when Emmanuel at last came home, and went clattering up the stairs past the drawing room door. She had left it half open, and now called his name as he went by.
He came in and peered in at her, staring in amazement at the sight of his wife fully dressed at this hour of the morning and snapped his brows down in a hard frown. He was very tired and in an evil mood. He had spent the evening at a card part at David Da Costa’s house, a man he had never liked too well but who included among his friends many of the Marlborough House set.
Emmanuel was ambitious and wanted to move in the highest social circles, which meant those adorned by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. And that meant assiduous attendance at the sort of costly entertainments the Prince so much enjoyed. Which also meant that sometimes losses were incurred, losses which Emmanuel much resented. To gamble in business was one thing; he did it all the time, weighing one risk against another and putting down hard money to back his decisions, but to gamble on the turn of a card or the energy of a horse running pointlessly along a grassy track was quite another. He disliked it intensely. He had not yet learned how not to lose, let alone how to win, and he hated waste.
Tonight had been one of the bad nights. He had lost seventeen guineas at the card table, and the Prince had not even attended, even though he had been expected. Now the sight of his wife, white faced and clearly still far from well, looking owlishly at him sharpened his temper.
‘What the devil are you doing there at this hour? Go to bed, Mary, for heavens sake!’
‘Fay has gone,’ she said, standing there with her hands clasped lightly in front of her and her face expressionless. Indeed, she looked better than she had for some time, for her gown of soft brown silk did not underline her pallor too cruelly an there was an expression on her face that made her look much more interesting, somehow. Usually she had a slightly worried crease between her brows when she looked at Emmanuel and a hangdog expression in her eyes that irritated him profoundly. Tonight, looking at her, she seemed to him, just for a moment, the sweet and charming girl she had been when he first met her, at a party at her father’s house. But then her father had died and her prolonged grief irritated him, and somehow she had become more of a burden to him than a source of marital pleasure.
He shook his head at his own confused thoughts and said sharply, ‘ What did you say?’
‘Fay has gone. Run away. Eloped.’
There was silence. Then he came into the room and stood there with his top hat in one hand and his overcoat hanging open and said blankly, ‘Fay has what?
‘Eloped. With Richard Gough. He is a Christian. Well, not precisely that - let’s say he is not a Jew. She is very happy.’
The first storm broke. His rage was monumental as he shouted and roared at her, demanding more information about where his sister had gone, what had been planned, her own part in the affair. Servants were wakened and came running and messages were sent to Park Lane to alert his father and mother, and to his brothers' houses to rouse them to action. By six a.m. they had all congregated at Emmanuel’s house and were sitting in the morning room in postures ranging from deeply dejected (Bartholomew) via puzzlement (Albert and his brother Alfred) and beady eyed relish (Davida and Susan) to total shock and outrage (Augusta and Emmanuel).
Mary sat quietly at the head of her own breakfast table pouring cups of coffee and letting them rant on and on, seemingly quite unmoved. She answered their questions as calmly as she poured coffee; no, she did know where they had gone, only Fay had left a letter saying she was to wed Richard Gough in a registry office and it was a waste of time for anyone to seek her, and no, she had had no inkling that any such scheme was afoot and yes, she did feel very sad indeed that her beloved Fay had thrown her life away. At which she lowered her lids and sipped her coffee, not wanting anyone to see how triumphant she felt when she contemplated the way Fay had ‘thrown away her life.’
It went on for days, with the brothers meeting and talking interminably. They could not decide how to handle it; should they send out detectives to search for their sister and bring her back? What would be the good of that? She was legally of age to marry, having passed her twenty-second birthday, and if a ceremony had been conducted at a registry office and the marriage was consummated they had no jurisdiction over her. To institute a search, they decided, would be to institute a scandal to no benefit, and yet … and yet, she was their sister.
It was Bartholomew who settled it. In the middle of Augusta’s tightlipped fury and the soothing words Davida poured over him in his suffering and his sons' rage he sat silent, until four days after Fay’s marriage. The he left the house, quietly, to go to Bevis Marks synagogue in the City.
He sat there in its cool, stark interior, staring at the wooden pews and the small light burning in front of the Ark, at the brass candle holders that hung across the centre of the quiet space, at the low railings that flanked the women’s balcony, and thought of his family, at home in Bombay.
He thought of his aunt, the strong, resourceful Sarah Hazzan Lammeck, who had died twelve years ago, and of his brothers and cousins and the whole of Lammecks that stretched from here in the City of London, to the Middle and Far East, as far as Shanghai and beyond.
He thought of the sufferings of his grandfather Abdul, when he had escaped from Baghdad, of his own hard work and loneliness in this damp, alien land, and last of all, of his daughter Fay who had turned her back on all of them.
And he went home and told them that she was dead. They would say prayers for the dead over her, and tear their clothes and then never speak of her again. Even masterful Augusta, looking at the way his face had hardened under the narrow dark eyes said nothing, but did as she was bid. She had not lived so happily with her Birdie for so long without knowing when to give way to him.
And Mary - Mary breathed deeply and attended the mourning prayers for her sister-in-law an
d for the first time since her own hope of happy life had died in a breath taken by a scrap of a red headed infant, she felt she could face existence again. She had paid the debt she owed her baby. She did not look at Emmanuel, however, as she thought this thought. Indeed she hardly ever looked at Emmanuel’s face at all, now.
17
Nathan sat facing his brother Alex in Curly’s café in Whitechapel Road, a buttered bagel on the plate in front of him and a cup of coffee beside it. It wasn’t easy to leave them lying there untasted, yet it was even harder to eat food for which his young brother had paid.
He looked at Alex under his lashes; the brother he had at last seen as a gawky fourteen year old was now very different. He had filled out physically, for a start. The bony cheeks were veiled in fat, and there was already a faint hint of double chin under the blueness of his morning shave. His shoulders were broad under a checked jacket - and that in itself was startling to Nathan, who had never worn anything but decent gaberdine of khaki uniform in his life - and his neck bulged a little over the edge of a very white shirt. His dark hair gleamed with oil, each ridged line of curls picking up the gaslight that hissed and popped overhead, and his hands looked well scrubbed and very large and capable as he pushed the last of his own bagel into his mouth and waved at Curly behind the counter at the back of the cafe to bring him another.
‘So, Nathan, you aren’t eating?’ Alex said cheerfully, and took a long draught of his coffee. ‘Believe me, you won’t get a better bagel anywhere.’
‘Speak Yiddish, for God’s sake,’ Nathan growled. You know I can’t understand English.’
‘And you never will if you don’t try. So I'll talk some English to you, and you'll learn, and you'll do well,’ Alex said, half in Yiddish, half in English.
The Running Years Page 17
