The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  She came back to the Imperial with him that night as though it was the most natural thing in the world, and followed him into his room. Even before he had time to take off his jacket she had slipped out of the cheongsam and precious silk stockings which were her only garments. Her face remained unreadable; no hint of a smile in those marble smooth cheeks, no expression in those narrow black eyes. Just a small perfect body, with breasts that looked like apples, so neat and round were they, and a sprig of hips over a round belly above a neat triangle of dark hair that he could not but stare at. He stood there an said loudly,’ Hannah,’ at the girl who nodded, quite uncomprehending, and then came towards him and with the same neat, methodical movements with which she had removed her own clothes began to remove his.

  ‘Hannah,’ he said again. ‘Damn it, she’s having a baby. It’s really not … ‘ But she went on, carefully unbottoning his shirt and he stood there feeling his senses move in him and remembered all too dismally the lonely nights at sea and since his arrival. ‘Dammit,’ he thought, his gin-fuzzed mind slipping its cogs as he tried to concentrate. ‘A man needs a woman. Can’t go on just playing on his own, can he?’

  He said is aloud then. ‘Can’t go on playing on my own, can I?’

  By some quirk of coincidence she used one of her only two English words, and used the right one, responding to the question in his voice or perhaps to the hopelessness in him. ‘No,’ she said prettily and for the first time smiled, and lifted her face to his and kissed him, her tongue flickering expertly into his mouth.

  There seemed no reason to stop once that first time was behind him. It was more than a fortnight before he learned her name was Yü Soo, that she was seventeen years old and that she came from Korea, information he gathered from Jimmy, whose own girl, Soo-Niang Pei, had learned to speak some English and translated for her friend. By that time it was all such such a fait accompli that she she moved into his own bungalow, now ready at last in the northern part of the International Settlement, she moved in with him.

  Somehow he managed not to think about Hannah, in all this, When he ran his hands over Yü Soo’s satin smooth jasmine scented body, and she began to work her skills on him - and heaven knew she was an expert at her craft, with hands and hips and tongue that could arouse a man so fast that he could hardly catch his breath, and then bring him to another climax almost immediately after his first - he shut out of his memory entirely the way Hannah’s body had felt, the way she had loved him with an uncalculating passion that was as unlike Yü Soo’s attentions as Lammeck Alley was so unlike the office on the Bund. He also stopped writing full letters to Hannah. How could he pour out all his misery about what was happening at the office when he had Yu Soo to fill his nights? How could he offer more than scrappy comments on the weather, and his own vague 'busyness' when he was living the way he was? The short, widely spaced letters and the refusal to think about Hannah and home became the only way he could go on coping with days that became more and more complex, and loneliness that had begun to make him feel as though life no longer had any savour.

  The office situation became worse and worse; there was the day when a major order was lost to them, an order which would have emptied their biggest spice godown at a greater profit, because the necessary paper work was missing. It was found tucked into his own private ledger, where he could have sworn it had not been when last he had used it, but there was nothing he could do. It was his ledger, and the missing order was there, and he could not remember when he had last seen it. It must have been his fault. And why do on and on about it, when the damage was done? And then there was the day when he or someone unidentified - had entered a wrong date into his desk diary and therefore he failed to keep an appointment with a senior official from Shantung Province who could have brought them enormous trade in silk, and so caused that self important mandarin such huge offence that he took his business down the street, to Mocatta’s There were messages that somehow never reached their destination, plans that went horribly astray, sums of money that did not add up as they should. He knew that it was not his own oversights that had caused the errors that Ling Ho and Kim Ching Wong were somehow involved, but they were so polite, so full of neat explanations, so commiserating in his anger, so careful not to make it seem they were blaming him, that he could do noting but shout in impotent rage to which they listened with impassive courtesy and with no sign of the disapproval he knew was warranted. After such days, going home to his bleak bungalow was only made possible by the fact that Yü Soo was waiting there, smooth and silky and always ready to comfort him. That the comfort she gave him was merely the exhaustion that came after their extended bouts of sometimes savage lovemaking did not matter. It was comfort of a sort. He would settle for that.

  When the cable came telling him of his daughter’s birth it was brought to him when he was lying in bed, with Yü Soo asleep beside him.

  39

  Hannah was sitting up in bed with her knees spread wide to make a hollow in the bedclothes in which the baby could lie, just looking at her when the door opened and he was, standing awkwardly and twisting a large brimmed hat between his hands. He was wearing an ill fitting suit of flecked tweeds and was sweating slightly and looking very uncomfortable.

  ‘Solly!’ she said joyously and held out both hands to him. ‘I'm so glad you came!’ She smiled at him. Already, only three days after Mary Bloomah’s birth she was looking herself again, with her pallor lifted faintly and her hair, washed and brushed, lying richly on her shoulders. ‘I sent a message for Poppa but - well, never mind. You’ve come and I'm so glad.’

  ‘It wasn’t that we didn’t want to come sooner, Hannah,’ Solly said earnestly. ‘Honestly. I mean, maybe Poppa would’ve come, what with it being a telegram. I mean, he’s funny sometimes you can get him if you makes things important, you know what I mean?’

  She smiled at that. He may be only fifteen, she thought, but he’s got a very shrewd awareness of Poppa’s sense of the dramatic. ‘I know.’

  ‘But there was the siege an ‘all, and there was Mr Churchill standin' there with our cups and saucers in his hand and staring out at the soldiers from our window, and Poppa thinkin' any minute the shot'll come in and …’

  She stared at him in bewilderment. ‘What on earth are you taking about?’

  ‘The siege! The siege at Sidney Street! And Peter the Painter and all! Haven’t you hear? About how they brought in the Scots Guards an' all, all togged up for battle, after that there Sergeant Leeson the copper, you know - after he got shot an' - you must’ve heard!’

  She shook her head, bemused. ‘I’ve heard nothing.’

  ‘Papers were full of it. Monday it was, an' the whole street in an uproar, believe me it was a real gunsah megilla. And Poppa so busy on account our house was right opposite, wasn’t it? That’s why Mr Churchill wanted to come up and watch from there - and Poppa told him all about how he was in the army and got a medal an' all in Siberia.’

  She almost laughed then. ‘I can imagine. But why was he there? And Scots ~Guards and guns - I don’t understand.’

  ‘Anarchists?’ said Solly triumphantly, greatly enjoying being in a position to impart such momentous news. ‘I thought you’d have heard about them! The papers’ve been on and on about it - ‘ His face lengthened for a moment. ‘Some of the street kids, the goyim, you know? they been lying waiting for us, the Yiddisher boys, wanting to beat us up, saying we're anarchists like Peter the Painter, and the ones that got burned - whatsits, Svaas and Marks. I’ve had a couple o' good fights over it, I can tell you - so’s Jake. But what can you do! The fellas that was in the siege was anarchist, no arguing that, and they was Yidden too. So, what can you expect? Uncle Benjamin, he worries about it. He says one of these days the goyim'll turn against us and make big trouble in the East End. He says hey hate us because we're Jews, but I don’t know - it’s only when we make a bob or two they get bothered. They'll hate Uncle Alex more'n they'll hate us, seeing we ain’t got fivepence to rattle b
etween us.’

  ‘And you say that all this was why Poppa didn’t come to see me?’ she said. Anarchists and Jew baiting outbreaks in the East End were important of course, but not as important as her own feelings at the moment. ‘Will he come now it’s all over? It is all over, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s over.’ Solly sounded disappointed. ‘They burned the house down, you see and Mrs Gershon - it’s her house, they’d taken lodgings with her, and she got suspicious, told the coppers round at Arbour Square and there you were, they all turned out with guns she’d gone to stay with Mrs Cohen, Joey Cohen’s mother, your remember her? No? Well, he’s a mate of mine - anyway, they said they'll fix her house for her, the police and all since she was so helpful, and she’s going back. Peter the Painter - he was the leader of the three of them - he got away. So unless he comes back, it’s over - ’

  ‘Will Poppa come now to see me? And his granddaughter?’ She looked down at Mary Bloomah sleeping comfortably between her knees in her hollow of sheets. Solly peered at the baby with a fifteen-year-old’s uninterest and after a moment shook his head.

  ‘I asked him. I'm sorry, Hannah, but he really - he’s got this notion, you see, that you ran out on him. Goes on and on about people abandoning people, and if we say anything, me and Jake, he gets nasty, so we don’t say nothing. But Jake said I should come to see you and I asked Uncle Alex to give me the time, and he said fine.’

  He stood up. ‘And I’d better be going, I got things to do.’

  ‘Back to Uncle Alex?’ she said, and he looked a little shamefaced.

  ‘Well, later on I will. But I thought, now I'm here, up West, I’d have a bit of a look around.’

  She lectured him with all the authority of the big sister, insisting he go straight back to his job and he made a face, but said he would and then kissed her awkwardly and promised to come again. Jake would come as soon as he could, on Sunday, probably.

  ‘And don’t worry about Poppa,’ he said at the door. ‘We'll look after him, silly old … well we'll look after him.’

  Judith came often during those first days, finally bringing her own baby with her ‘to introduce them, for they are relatives, after all!’ and then sat and gossiped cheerfully for the rest of the afternoon as Charles, a large and very active child, crawled about the floor and pulled over everything on which he could get his hands. Hannah, primed to be interested in babies by her own new motherhood, was fascinated by him and thought his singularly handsome with his dark curls and large serious dark eyes rather turned down at the corners, which gave him a mournful look which disappeared entirely when he laughed, which was often, at which point his eyes seemed to disappear altogether into delighted slits.

  Judith explained to her about the drama in the East End about which Solly had spoken and which had so confused her, but which he had in essence got right. There had been a hunt on for some time for ‘anarchists'. politically active people, many of them Jews, who were, it was said, trying to inflame the workers of the East End in order to bring about the end of the British Government. Three known anarchists had hidden themselves in Sidney Street and been flushed out violently.

  ‘It’s all nonsense, of course,’ Judith said airily. ‘Those people in the East End are altogether too feeble to do anything! I mean they had strikes years ago because the sweat shops were so bad, and yet nothing came of it! They didn’t get involved with anarchists then and I doubt they will now. They're still as pathetic as ever they were.’

  ‘Not precisely pathetic,’ Hannah said quietly. ‘Very hard put to it to be anything but what they are, I would say. It’s not easy to be so poor that you can’t buy food, or pay your rent. And when you get a job, you do it, however bad it is, because it’s better than having nothing. If most of the people in the factory I worked in met anarchists, they’d pay no attention, but it wouldn’t be because they were feeble. It would be because they were practical.’

  ‘Oh, dear Hannah, I'm so sorry! I quite forgot that you - I mean that you came from the East End. It must be quite dreadful. And I have no right to speak of it at all, for what do I know! Only what I’ve heard the olds say, my parents-in-law you know, and Uncle Albert and Aunt Davida. They said the poor Jews who're coming in ought to be sent back to where they came from. It sounds very cruel to me.’

  ‘It is,’ Hannah said shortly, and picked up her baby and held her close. ‘I'm glad my Mary B wasn’t born there as I was I'm one of the lucky ones, and so shall she be.’

  ‘Is that what you're going t call her?’ Judith cried in delight, glad to be able to escape from what was proving to be dangerous conversation. ‘How delicious. Mary B. Shall you spell it as a word - I mean, Mary Bee - that makes her sound like a lovely bundle of fuzz who makes things which are sweet. It’s lovely!’

  ‘I’ve never written it down,’ Hannah said, and laughed. ‘Mary Bee, like a honey bee? Yes, that what I'll call her, always. I like it.’

  At that moment Charles pulled over the fire irons with a great clatter and broke into a wail of alarm. His mother pounced on him to hug him close and make soothing noises and then bore him off to his nurse, who was sitting cosily downstairs gossiping over kitchen tea, and went off to go to the Opera with her darling Peter leaving Hannah feeling once more along and lonely. Judith was full of affection and genuine concern and they were friends, but the gulf that yawned between their different experiences of life was almost uncrossable. She, Hannah, could understand Judith and her life and past, but never would Judith understand hers. Hannah inhabited a different world from everyone else, and she felt bleak in it.

  Until Uncle Alex came to visit, with hampers full of food and armfuls of flowers and great piles of assorted toys and baby clothes. he had enjoyed himself hugely going from so to shop all along Regent Street and had brought her the spoils of a most lavish afternoon. Her bed was piled high with it all, and Bet an Florrie giggled with delight as they bore it all away.

  ‘You know you're the first to do it don’t you? The first child in this generation you’ve provided. Your father must be a unatic, a real meshugganer not to want come rushing he and take the credit that’s due to the first grandfather among us. But him, all of a sudden he’s the leading expert on radical politics, on account he had Winston Churchill drink his tea in front of his window and listen to him rabbiting on about anarchists, much he knows, the shlemiel! It makes you sick to listen to him, believe me, sounding like he’s more of a politician than bloody Asquith you should excuse the expression and about politics he won’t know nothin' as long he’s got a tochus to sit on - Hannah dolly, you look marvellous, your baby looks marvellous, I could bust a kishka, I'm that proud of you.’

  And indeed he looked it, his round face creased with pleasure and his hair standing up in a great aureole. Hannah relaxed and smiled back at him.

  ‘So, have you heard from your young husband, already? Does he know that he’s a poppa?’

  She looked down at the baby on her lap so that she didn’t have to look at him. ‘Of course he knows,’ se said. ‘A cable was sent as soon as she was born.’ 'Have you heard from him already? He’s sent a cable back?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Not yet? For God’s sake, what’s the matter with he boy? Here’s you sitting all on your own and he ain’t sent no able saying at least thank you for your trouble? What sort of man is this, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Uncle Alex, please don’t!’ She looked up at him and shook her head. ‘A cable will come, of course it will.’

  It was the first time she had admitted to anyone that Daniel had not responded to the news. No one knew either how scrappy and short his letters had become, how little contact she felt with him when she seized the heavy envelopes as soon as they arrived, and studied them with an eager hope that was always flattened as she scanned the lines scrawled so swiftly. It was bad enough knowing that the best part of two months lay between the time of their writing and her reading of them; to feel the emptiness in them was even worse.

 
; Now she looked at Uncle Alex, and said again, ‘Please don’t fuss,’ and then stopped as once more the door opened and Florrie let in another caller.

  ‘Oh!’ she said blankly. ‘Mr Lammeck. How good of you to come! I didn’t expect you again so soon.’

  Albert had come the day after Mary’s Bee’s birth, and stayed a few minutes and then, putting many more five pound notes than usual into the japanned black box and had gone off, silent and preoccupied. She had not felt he was particularly delighted with the sight of his new granddaughter and had felt a chill as she watched him go. And now he was back, barely a week later. ‘Have you meet my Uncle? Uncle Alex, Mr Albert Lammeck. Mr Lammeck, this is Mr Alexander Lazar.’

  Uncle Alex stood up and sketched a sort of bow. As Hannah looked at the two men she felt a little surge of extra affection for her uncle. He was dressed, as usual, in an extreme of fashion, his suit a particularly strong shade of light chocolate, and was wearing a wide cravat with a diamond headed stick pin in it. He had elastic sided brown boots, and on both hands wore large gold rings, one with a positively massive diamond in it, the other with a tiger’s eye, very large and very rich looking. Her father-in-law, on the other hand, looked sober and morose in his eternal black coat over sponge bag trousers, the City dress that he always wore, and the expression on his face was sour, not at all like Uncle Alex’s cheerful grin.

  ‘How d’do,’ he said gruffly and then turned towards Hannah. ‘I thought to find you alone, m’dear,’ he said. ‘Thought we could talk a little.’