The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  They could not manage it until March was moving into April and the Whitechapel streets were beginning to smell a little stronger as the warmer suns of Spring arrived. By that time it had become a matter of some urgency. Bloomah could not wait much longer. A six month baby she could perhaps persuade the yentas, the gossiping women of the shops, was just a very impatience premature one. Anything less than six months would announce to the whole of the shtetl that was Whitechapel that Bloomah, daughter of Lev the gambler, was an even bigger sinner than he was.

  They were married on a hot afternoon in the first week in April after Nathan had painfully managed to collect the seventy shillings for the rabbi’s fee, and enough to buy himself a black gabardine coat that was only third hand. He had allowed Alex to select it for him though he insisted on paying the proper price for it, which Alex thought was mad, but he made up for his brother’s lunacy by giving his new sister-in-law a handsome petticoat, two blouses and a set of copper saucepans, bought especially for her in the Lane on a Sunday when trade was bad and bargains were to be had for the bullying.

  It was not to be the last time that Alex was Bloomah’s friend and banker, Knowing he was there and could be trusted not to tell silly Nathan when she approached him, helped Bloomah a great deal in those early years of married life in Antcliff Street.

  For that was where the newly weds went to live. Alex, good to his word, got himself a house of his own in Sidney Street and ensconced his parents there, and fitted out a room for himself with such elegance that people came to admire it from several streets around. He put up curtains with cord ties and silk tassels a specially made wooden overmantel with two foot high blue lustre vases on it, and covered the floor not only with oil cloth but also with red carpet. He had polished wooden tables and chairs and a sofa upholstered in velvet and burned two scuttles full of coal a day. There was luxury for you, the neighbours told each other, and marvelled over the success of the young Lazar boy, and the good fortune of his parents to have such a son to look after them in their old age.

  No on envied Nathan and Bloomah. They did their best with the furniture they had in his parents' old home in Antcliff Street, adding a pine desk for Nathan’s work, and ornaments picked up from the Brick Lane stalls on rainy evenings when trade was slack and bargaining successful. Bloomah did the best she could with it, cleaning it lovingly each evening after coming home from Isaac’s workshop and each morning before leaving to start her stint of shoulder hunched stitching, and cooked busily late into the night even when she was so pregnant that she could hardly fit herself in front of the stove which stood on the landing outside their kitchen door in a tiny recess. Nathan blossomed under her care, putting back some of his lost flesh and looking sleek and content with his new happiness.

  For Bloomah, once married, displayed the same sexual fire he had warmed himself with that delicious afternoon in December.

  But it was different after the first baby was born. A boy, puny and ailing from birth, he died when he was a month old, and some of Bloomah died with him. She became pregnant again fast enough, and seemed to have recovered from her first loss, but it was to haunt her always. No other pregnancy was ever to mean as much as that first one, that failed one.

  The years slipped through their fingers, winter succeeding summer but noticed by the residents of Whitechapel only as an alternation of busy times when there was plenty of money because people were earnings, slack times when everyone went short, not only the workers but also the bagel sellers, the cafe keepers, the stall-holders in the Lane, and inevitably, Nathan the scribe. His income, little as it was, was as much subject to the vagaries of the tailoring trade as anyone else’s. Like everyone else, he did not notice whether the sky was blue or leaden, whether the air was fog laden or hot with the stink of melting asphalt from the over-heated streets, He knew only busy times and slack times.

  There were many times when he slipped away quietly from his home to Hanbury Street, to the ‘Schnorrers' Shop' as the settlement run by the Daughters of Sarah was called. He hated it there; hated the richly dressed women with their turned up noses and niminy-piminy voices and refusal to understand a single word of Yiddish. The mean sharpness with which they questioned petitioners for money made his throat tighten with fury. But what can a man do, he would ask himself, trudging the long way back, when times were so impossibly hard? How could any man do well in such circumstances?

  But Alex prospered. His one coffee stall became two and then three. His occasional successful boxing matches in narrow halls in side streets became regular bouts attended by half the neighbourhood and plenty of West End swells as well, held in the biggest main road venues. His dealing and selling in the Petticoat Lane market develop into a full scale supplies business for the stall holders. Whatever he did, he did successfully.

  By the time he was twenty he was able to abandon his act as a song and dance and joke man in the Yiddish theatre. He had enjoyed it, and been a tolerably good performer, but now he had better ways to spend his time, better ways to make money. By the time he was twenty-seven he had left the house in Sidney Street to his parents, who now lived very comfortably on an income drawn from taking in lodgers, and lived in a much smarter establishment in Victoria Park Road in the elegant purlieus of Hackney. It was a newly built house well decorated with cupolas and iron railings and red tiles, in which every room was furnished with the best of everything, from plush upholstered furniture to mahogany sideboards and gas lights.

  No one the family had done as well as Alex; not even Reuben, though he had managed to enlarge his workshop almost as much his family (he had seven children, did Reuben, which gave him and his exhausted Minnie a great deal to be proud of, of course) and now lived in a house set apart from the factory. Benjamin, who had married his Sarah on the understanding that the rabbi her father would take full responsibility for their keep, was content enough.

  Not so Nathan, however. Still doggedly trying to make ends meet with his effort as a letter writer, still begging sometimes from the Schnorrers' Shop, still dreaming his dreams of future recognition as the hero he was, he never forgave Reuben, or, to be honest his parent for what he regarded as the wicked way they had treated him. He never really forgave Alex either, for being so successful. Indeed; by the end of 1893, when he was twenty-eight years old, Nathan had lost much of the easy charm and good temper that had been so much a part of his young years. He was tired, resentful and bitterly angry at his own poverty. Only one of the many pregnancies his Bloomah hd plodded through had resulted in a living child, and that too filled him with fury. There was Reuben wtih seven healthy brats, and he had only this one, Jacob. Why was it? What had he done to God that God should treat him so?

  That was how it was on the foggy November evening in 1893 when Bloomah’s sixth pregnancy ended in a successful delivery. The old woman from Christian Street, who acted as neighbourhood midwife, held up the baby by her heels and laughed at her, peering shortsightedly at the child who was bawling loudly, her mouth splitting her face in half, and shook her head with elderly roguishness at Bloomah.

  ‘How come you made such a boobalah as this one, Bloomah? Maybe you gone a bit rusty, hey? Better have more babies after this, make ’em schwartzkopfs like you and your Nathan!’ And she laid the red headed creature in Bloomah’s arms, and laughed again.

  So did Hannah Lazar make her first entrance into her world.

  BOOK THREE

  GROWING

  20

  Hannah was dancing, light as a feather, drifting across the great sparking ballroom in her froth of a dress, made all of lace that looked liked beaten eggwhite and everyone, absolutely everyone, was watching her. Her eyes glittered with the brilliance that they had all come to expect of her, and her hair, her mouth, everything about here was perfect, as the handsome young man with the rather shadowy face in whose arms she was floating, thistledown soft, whispered over and over again into her ear.

  ‘Hannah?’

  She tried to dance harder, sque
ezing her eyes a little to hold onto the vision of herself in the great chandeliered ballroom, but the voice was too insistent, calling her name again, and the image shattered into glittering shards which curled and drifted way to die in the dust of the yard.

  ‘Hannah, how often have I told you? How often has your Momma told you? How often had everyone told you? It’s dangerous to sit up there, a little girl like you! You could slip, you could tear yourself on a slate, you could do terrible damage. Terrible!’

  Hannah peered down over the edge of the rood at Mrs Arbeiter, who was standing arms akimbo and staring up at her, her wig sliding slightly sideways as she craned her neck.

  ‘I’m all right here, Mrs Arbeiter. It’s easy, realty it is. I won’t slip.’

  ‘Then you’ll break the roof, and a nice thing that’ll be, people down in the you should excuse me the you-know-what and all of a sudden there’s a hole in the roof, people can look in, a nice state of affairs!’

  ‘But no one could look in from up here,’ Hannah said reasonably, ‘any anyway –’

  ‘Enough already! Down! You want I should tell your Momma, your poor sick Momma no harm should come to her? Is that what you want?’

  ‘No, Mrs Arbeiter,’ Hannah said, resigned to the inevitable, and scrambled over the tiles to climb in through the half open window to the landing, sliding down between the sink that was just under the window and the narrow cupboard alongside it which held the family’s dishes. Horrible Mrs Arbeiter! She thought. Horrible ugly stupid smelly Mrs Arbeiter. I hate her, I’ll cut her up in little pieces with a very sharp knife and cover the bits in salt and then wash them and feed them to the cats in Jubilee Street market and then she’ll be sorry!

  Thinking her wicket thoughts with great relish she gave one last regretful glance over her shoulder at the rooftop that overlooked the yard. It was the only private place she had in all the world, and as soon as it had stopped raining this morning she had crept out there to sit with her eyes slitted against the dull March sky and her thin arms wrapped around her knees to keep what little warmth there was in her safe inside, and dream. It was almost the only pleasure she had, and now Mrs Arbeiter had spoiled it again. Cut her into very small pieces and an extra sharp knife …

  She slipped into the room and looked across at Momma. She was proposed up in bed against the white pillows, her head to one side and her mouth slightly open as she dozed. Seeing her Momma look like that made Hannah feel bad. Scratchy and sharp inside and a little bit sick. Momma was always being ill, so Hannah often felt bad. And not knowing what it was made it worse.

  When Aunt Minnie had been ill with the pneumonia everyone had known what it was and talked and talked about it, and breathing and her heart and her crisis, please-God-soon-she-should-be-better. When Uncle Benjamin had broken his ankle and had to sit in a special wheelchair for weeks the whole family had sat around and talked for ever about his bones, and how God forbid a bit of the broken part might get back into his bloodstream (Hannah imagined a bloodstream looked rather like a gutter after the rain) and get to his heart and then pfft.

  But no one ever talked out loud about Bloomah’s illnesses. They just dropped their voices and whispered together and shook their heads and pursued their lips and said you shouldn’t know of such things.

  That it had to do with babies Hannah Knew. There had been so many babies over the years. Three brothers more than the ones she already had. Poppa had told her that and she could almost remember them being born. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have three more Jakes and Sollies and was glad she hadn’t. Not glad the other brothers died, exactly, just glad they were here. Jake and Solly were enough for anyone, though it would be quite nice if they were here now, to play with. Playing with them usually meant being bullied by Jake ad grizzled at by Solly but it would be better than being alone. She slipped across the room, moving quietly so as not to wake her mother and looked out of the window at the way the sodden London sky had lifted from slate to pearl as the rain at last stopped.

  The gutters were running noisily with muddy water and swirling with scraps of garbage and the cobbles shone greasily beneath the hooves of dray horses and van wheels. But there was life down there as well, interesting busy life. She could see the bouncing black curls on Rachel Levin’s plump neck as she lurched across the hopscotch squares scratched on the pavement in front of the corner shop, while the Stern boys, David and Sammy, watched eagle-eyed in case her toe went over the line. If Hannah went down there with them they’d jeer at her and tease in their usual silly fashion, making fun of her thinness and her carroty hair and her narrow blue eyes while Rachel preened and flashed her big round brown eyes that the Stern boys so obviously admired. All the same, it would be better than sitting here.

  Bloomah woke suddenly, her eyes snapping open. She stared at the window, her gaze seeming almost panic stricken and Hannah said quickly, ‘Do you want something, Momma?’

  Bloomah blinked and then, slowly, her staring eyes dulled a little and she looked like herself again.

  ‘No dolly, No. Nothing. Listen, why don’t you go down and play? It’s stopped raining. Go down, play with the children.’

  At once Hannah felt bad again. She’d been thinking how nice it would be to go down and play and wondering how she could get out, and now Momma said to go, she couldn’t. Not go and leave Momma all alone.

  ‘No thank you, Momma,’ she said and slid off the window sill. ‘The Stern boys are down there, though they ought to be at school, and it wouldn’t be proper to play with people who ought to be in school.’

  Bloomah smile and for a moment her face looked quite young and Hannah smiled back. ‘Such a good little girl.’

  The fire was beginning to die down and Hannah crouched in the grate, delicately picking at the ashes with the poker, the way Bloomah had showed her would made the fire last, and then, carefully, added a few pieces of coal She didn’t have to be told there wasn’t any more after this bucketful was gone. She’d brought it up herself from the cellar, scraping the last bit of dust from the corners of the cellar so as not to waste any. But it was cold and Momma was ill, and the fire had to be kept going.

  She heard the door slam below and lifted her chin and Bloomah did too, both of them looking oddly alike, although they were really so different, Bloomah with her round face and crinkly black hair and darks eyes and Hannah with her sharp bird-like looks.

  Nathan’s feet were heavy on the stairs, and Hannah knew at once it was bad. Really bad. It was the way his shoes slapped on the lino, the heavy thump of his hand on the rickety banister. It was bad.

  ‘Nothing doing, Nathan?’ Bloomah said, and pulled herself up against her pillows awkwardly. ‘Nothing doing.’ That time it wasn’t a question; just a statement. Nothing doing.

  ‘So why should there be?’ Nathan said. He threw his hat on the chair beside the fire. ‘Why should there be? Who needs a professional man when every tuppenny ha’penny schlemiel goes to school, makes with thee pen, thinks himself a scholar already? Who needs the work of a real professional when they all think they can do as good? And who needs me when the mumsers forget they got family anywhere except on their own doorsteps? Who cares any more about sending decent letters the people in the old shtetl can be proud they should get? Who needs …’

  Hannah, still crouching by the grate, felt worse then ever. When Poppa started like this, shouting question after question at them, at the ceiling, at the whole world things were extra bad. He’d gone out so happy too, so sure this time he’d find a lot of people ready to have letters to Warsaw and Lublin and Plotsk written in his beautiful copper plate handwriting, because hadn’t it been a good time in Whitechapel this past few weeks? Hadn’t big orders come into Uncle Reuben’s stick factory and Uncle Isaac’s tailor’s workshop down Commercial Road? ‘Sure there’ll be work,’ he’d promised Bloomah, cheerfully kissing her, setting his hat at a rakish angle. ‘There’ll be plenty. I’ll come home with bagels and cream cheese and coffee and we’ll hav
e such a nosh.’ So he had said this morning, and now he was shouting questions at them. Hannah wanted to cry.

  Instead, she stayed in front of the fire, a small crouching shape, and let her mind slide away, far away from the small crowded room and sick white-faced Bloomah and shouting angry Nathan,. She wasn’t always going to be the good little girl they all thought she was. One day she’d be rich. Like Uncle Alexander in his bright tweed suite and his sparkling tie pins. Richer than Uncle Alex. She’d never eat black bread and herrings and inions ever again. Only the best Dutch cheese and chollahs. She’d never wear Jake’s boots again, hard and rubbing her bare feet. They could go straight to Solly, because she’d have shoes and stockings of her very own, soft smooth stockings, like Rachel Levin’s mother and like Auntie Minnie. Not long now. Just another three years, that was all. Three more years until she was thirteen and could go to work in the theatre, like Uncle Alex used to, and wear marvelous clothes, like the one’s she drew on the blue paper bags the herrings from the corner shop came wrapped in. Oh, she’d show them! She’d have dresses in deep green taffeta and trim them with creamy lace and …

  The vision of a dress shaped itself in her mind’s eye and she stayed there, unmoving, near the grate. Nathan had to say her name twice before she heard him and scrambled to her feet.

  ‘Poppa?’

  ‘Go get your coat on. We got to go out.’

  ‘Out?’ She flicked her eyes at Bloomah, puzzled. ‘Who’s going out?’

  ‘Us! You and me! Go and put your coat on already. Don’t give me aggravation! Haven’t I got enough?’

  Obediently, she shrugged into her coat, a heavy black rep garment that had once belonged to Auntie Minnie’s youngest Ann, and which she hated for its lumpishness, for Ann was a solid square child, with legs like sturdy little tree trunks, and what had looked tolerable on her looked dreadful on skinny Hannah.