The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  Then, one morning, she woke to the drumming sound of rain on her window and looked about her and was puzzled. The fire was burning low and the room smelled odd, sulphurous and heavy, and there was an armchair beside the table with woman asleep in it. She blinked and looked and said, ‘Judith?’ in a puzzled way and was surprised because her voice came out in a small croak.

  Judith woke at once and came to the bedside and peered down at her and set her hand on her forehead and then smiled, her face lifting from thin tiredness to relief.

  ‘Oh, he was right, thank God, he was right. The doctor said you’d be all right his morning. The crisis was last night and we were so frantic about you darling, you’ve been so ill. I'm so glad you're better.’

  Hannah blinked and tried to sit up. Her muscles felt like cotton wool and she could hardly move, but blessedly they did not hurt; it was just an all pervading weakness.

  ‘Ill?’ Her voice was a little stronger, but still husky. ‘I - I remember, I think. Florrie said it was influenza.’

  Judith was busy now, fetching the washbowl from the marble topped washstand in the window, and bathing her face with cool water. It felt marvellous and Hannah was grateful, suddenly aware of how sourly she smelled, of illness and sweat and fever.

  ‘It’s been awful,’ Judith said. ‘Quite awful. You’d got pneumonia, you see, on top of the influenza and the doctor said it was very grave, but there was no help he could get us for you because all the nurses are so busy. We sent the children away, of course.’

  ‘Away?’ Hannah peered up at her, suddenly feeling tearful. ‘Away? Mary Bee? Where is Mary Bee?’

  ‘Now, don’t fret,’ Judith said soothingly. ‘It’s all right. It was just that we were so worried about you, and you’ve been ill for almost two weeks, you know, darling, and the doctor said we should get the children somewhere safe because the epidemic is spreading quite dreadfully. Bet had it and - ’

  ‘Bet?’ Hannah closed her eyes weakly, and now tears did run down her cheeks and she could not stop them.

  ‘The children have gone to Bet’s sister Jessie, the one who lives at Thorpe Bay. She’s got a seaside lodging house there, you remember? And with all her summer people gone she’s got room. They're better there, I promise you. Charles writes the most delicious letters every day, I'll show you.’

  Judith was helping her into a fresh nightgown now, and Hannah said in a muffled voice, ‘Bet?’

  Judith laughed at that. ‘She’s as tough as they come, our Bet. She was over it and up and about in a couple of days. Doctor says she had it very mildly.’

  ‘And Florrie? And you?’ Hannah was lying back on her pillows now, feeling much more comfortable. She coughed a little, trying to clear her voice, but it remained stubbornly husky. ‘Are you all right? You look so tired. Have you been here with me all the time?’

  Judith laughed lightly. ‘I was bored on my own,’ she said, but Hannah stared at her, and felt the ready tears of the invalid come bubbling up again. Judith looked pale and very tired. Her hair was dragged up to a rough knot on the top of her head and looked thin and lifeless, and her cheeks were shadowed deeply, as were the hollows of her throat. ‘Florrie’s fine. She’s helped marvellously.’

  ‘Please don’t get ill, Judith,’ Hannah said weakly and made no attempt to dry her tears. ‘I couldn’t bear it. Please be well, Judith.’

  ‘Of course I'm all right,’ Judith said, and then shook her head suddenly and almost as though the words spoke themselves, said ‘It’s because I’d rather not be that I am.’

  ‘Rather not be?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, my darling. I'm going to fetch you some breakfast. Sleep a little, and when I come back I'll bring you up the children’s letters.’

  It was to be a long time before they came home again. Although Hannah improved steadily from that morning on, recovering more and more of her strength each day, the pestilence reached out and touched them again.

  By the middle of October, the papers told them, the death rate from the infection was up to three thousand a week in England alone, the toll more than taking the place of the casualty lists that had been so much a part of the newspapers' daily offerings for so long. No on was exempt. When Florrie showed the too familiar early symptoms and Bet rushed to fetch the doctor to her, they were told the doctor had died himself of the ‘flu the day before, worn out by weeks of incessant night calls. There was no other doctor they could find to help, and anyway there seemed little a doctor could do. Everyone knew the only answer was bed and hope, though they tried various nostrums. The chemists' shops everywhere did a brisk trade in sulphur candles, used in pathetic attempts to keep the infection at bay, and cough mixtures and steam kettles for the pneumonia cases, and tonics to restore the tissues of those left weak and miserable as the tide of the disease receded and left them behind.

  Fortunately Florre, who like Bet and Hannah herself had been reared in the crowded infection-ridden streets of London, seemed to have the same sort of resilience Bet had. She recovered within a few days, and by the end of the week was creeping about the house again, weak but determined to do her usual days' work. But Judith was quite a different order. When the ‘flu touched her at last, its hot, greedy fingers probed deeply.

  Hannah thought sometimes, as she sat in the same armchair that Judith had used to watch over her own fever-filled delirious days, that Judith had by sheer effort of will refused to succumb while Hannah had needed her. Now she lay against the white pillows her face looking like that of a painted Dutch doll, the skin white and pinched around the high spots of colour in each cheek and with her eyes half open so that the whites showed, sickeningly, and with her breathing rasping in her taut throat. She seemed to Hannah to have gone somewhere far, far away. Hannah would call to her sometimes, when in the dark early morning hours her own residue of weakness built fear in her, calling her name urgently and tugging on her damp, hot hands, and after a while Judith would open her eyes unwillingly and stare, unfocused, at her and then close them again, wordless, untouched by Hannah’s urgency, or by her love and fear and tears. It was as though had she had already died.

  So that when she did die quietly, one dark afternoon when the first of the winter fogs had come drifting stealthily over the roof tops, her skin almost mauve with lack of oxygen, it came as no shock. It was to Hannah as though it was something Judith had wanted, something she had planned from the very day that the telegram had come telling her that her life was over, lost in the mud of Verdun. All through the succeeding weeks, as she tried to pick up the pieces of life yet again, once or having to contemplate the pattern of bereavement, she comforted herself that way. She told herself that Judith was happy now. That she had been loaned to Hannah for just a little while, to help her make her own life livable, and now, her self-appointed task done, had thankfully gone home.

  Usually Hannah would not have thought so confusedly, so sentimentally, for later, much later, when she was free of the deadening depression her own ‘flu had left behind in her and had recovered from the shock of all the other losses that she was to sustain, she realized that she had been sentimental and foolish. But it helped her when she most needed help, and she was grateful for that.

  For not only Judith died. Less than a fortnight after Judith’s death the message came from Solly, garbled and frantic but clear enough. Nathan was in the London Hospital, in the adjoining ward to the one in which Bloomah had died a decade before him, delirious and ranting hoarsely as the pneumonia that followed the influenza virus into his racked lungs consumed him.

  She stood and stared at the telegram in her hand and knew that this was the end. If the disease had killed Judith, how could it fail to collect Nathan too, a man so much older, so much less able to withstand the strain of illness after his long suffering years? Though she had know he could not survive, might already be dead by the time she got there, she set out for the hospital, greatly to Florrie and Bet’s despair, for she was till weak and fragile. She travelled there in a c
old rattling cab behind a wheezing old horse for she could not find a motor cab to take her, so desperately hit were the drivers by the same virus that was killing everyone else. It was a long and tedious and miserable journey through grey wintry streets and all the way she tried to think of Nathan as she had known and loved him when she was small, not as the bad tempered worn out sick old man he had become and whom she was afraid to see again, But she need not have distressed herself so through the long ride, for by the time she reached the ward he was dead and his body long since removed.

  She stood at the ward door as the sister told her shortly, for she was too rushed to be anything but perfunctory, that Bed Seventeen’s son had removed him, and no, sister did not have any idea where the body had been taken.

  Hannah went back to Paultons Square, huddled in the corner of the cold cab, trying as hard as she could to remember her father with some sort of feeling, but she could not. He was dead, and somewhere inside herself she felt dead, too. No Judith, no Nathan, not much for herself; and what did any of it matter anyway? Her ‘flu-born depression settled over her like a thick wet blanket.

  Worse was to come. Uncle Isaac, Bloomah’s only brother and his tired wife, thin Sarah, joined Nathan in the cemetery, though their children managed to emerge alive and shaken from their attacks of the infection. Davida and Ezra and Margaret Lammeck died too, and many more. Spanish influenza had shown no special signs of favour to the rich well-fed and well-cared-for. If the thousands died in the East End slums, hundreds died in West End mansions. When the end of it all had come, when Armistice night and its frenetic celebrations and fireworks and tears were over, when the third and final wave of the influenza spluttered out in the spring of 1919 and the totals were counted, they found that more people had died as a result of that invisible virus than had succumbed to all the soldiers' bullets ad shells in muddy squalor of France.

  Not that Hannah cared about comparisons. Her two Apocalyptic horsemen, war and pestilence, had taken from her a mere handful of people, not millions, but she was to mourn them bitterly for a very long time. She was not left without comfort, for she had her Mary Bee, and also Charles. The Lammeck relations argued and shouted and sent lawyers to work, but there was nothing they could do. Judith had left a watertight will, appointing Hannah as Charles’s legal guardian with full control of all his finances and his education and his life. Judith, in dying, had given Peter’s son to be Hannah’s own as surely as if she had borne him of her own body.

  And so another child moved from one side to the other of the family descended from Susannah and Tamar of Jerusalem.

  BOOK FIVE

  FIGHTING

  49

  ‘My God, just look at them, will you? honestly, Mother, they're - ’

  ‘Mary Bee, if you say another word, I'll - ’

  ‘And if you call me that, I'll just walk out, I swear I will. You promised me you wouldn’t.’

  ‘All right, all right. Marie, then. If you say another word about what anyone else does or is wearing or said, then not a penny of next month’s allowance do you get, you hear me?’

  ‘I don’t care; I shall go to Gramps and tell him. He'll give it to me.’

  ‘Oh, no, you won’t, young lady! And you'll find out what happens if you try such a trick. Now be quiet and behave. For heaven’s sake, child, it’s only for a few hours! Is it so difficult to be polite to a few people just for a little while? To please me? I know you only came to do me a favour, but don’t ruin it, darling, please!’

  I'm doing it again, Hannah thought, staring at Mary Bee’s sulky little face. I try to be firm and I end up cajoling. Oh, damn, damn, damn. And she looks so lovely and can be so sweet when she wants to be, I want them all to see her at her best, not sulking like this.

  ‘Darling, listen,’ she said then. ‘Just be sweet and charming to everyone for an hour or two, and then as soon as I can I'll cry off with a headache or something and we can go home. How will that be?’

  ‘Can we go to a nightclub afterwards, then? On the way home?’ Mary Bee’s chin lifted and her lips curved so that the dimple that punctuated one corner of her mouth showed very clearly. Hannah closed her eyes in exasperation and said, ‘No! Are you mad! You're fifteen years old, and people of fifteen do not go to nightclubs. So stop this nonsense and behave yourself.’

  The music changed, swinging into the newest Charleston rhythm, and Charles, on Hannah’s other side, got to his feet.

  ‘Come on, fish face,’ he said. ‘Come and show ‘em how it ought to be done.’ He took Mary Bee’s hand and pulled her onto the dance floor, winking briefly at Hannah over her shoulder, and Hannah smiled her gratitude at him and leaned back in the little gilt chair, acing to kick off he shows but knowing it would hurt more to put them back on again.

  It had been an exhausting day. When the invitation to Sally Lazar’s wedding had come, a massive creation of thick imitation deckle-edged vellum and semi-opaque paper and gilt print and white satin ribbons, her own heart had sunk at the prospect. She had looked at the invitation and then at Mary Bee and said as brightly as she could, ‘Darling! Such fun. One of our cousins is getting married.

  Mary Bee looked up from her breakfast and said hopefully, A Lameck cousin! Or one of the Damonts?’

  ‘No,’ Hannah had said, her smile brighter than ever. ‘My cousin Leon Lazar’s daughter Sally.’

  ‘Oh, God, Mother, not one of those awful East End crew! You can’t be serious. You're not going, are you?’

  ‘Not going? Not going? How come, not going?’ Jake looked up from his own breakfast, a sizeable plateful of bagels which he bought in the East End, since no King’s Road Baker had ever heard of such things. ‘Whoever don’t go to weddings?’

  Mary Bee ignored him, as she usually did ignore her uncles. They had lived in her mother’s house for six years, but she had steadfastly refused to treat them with anything but the coolest of disdain.

  ‘It’s up you, I suppose, Mother,’ she said, returning to her oranges. ‘They're your family, I suppose.’

  ‘The invitation is to all of us. You and Charles as well as me and your uncles.’

  ‘Me? Are you mad?’ Mary Bee stared at her. ‘Me, go to that sort of vulgar brawl? I remember the last one you dragged me to, and I swore I’d never go to such a thing again as long as live.’

  ‘Pitchi putchi!’ Jake said cheerfully. ‘So what’s so terrible about it? You’d go soon enough if it was madam the Earl’s missus inviting you, so why not for Sally, the presser’s daughter, hey?’ He laughed fatly at his own wit and started on another bagel.

  Mary Bee threw him a withering look. ‘Earls' wives are called countesses,’ she said coldly, unable to resist answering this time. ‘And if Daphne asked me to something it wouldn’t be a vulgar brawl.’

  Hannah stared at her, her brows tight. ‘What do you mean, Daphne? How long have you been on first name terms with her?’

  Mary Bee reddened a little. Her very white skin showed the changes in her emotions more clearly than she liked, for it made it difficult to hide all she wanted to hide, especially from her mother.

  ‘Oh, we met at a party,’ she said with a fine nonchalance. ‘At the Ritz - oh, don’t stare at me like that, Ma! I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t. It was the one Charles took me to, his friend David Gubbay’s party for his twenty-first. You said I could go, and she was there and she talked to me, and was very nice, and why shouldn’t I call her by her first name? She’s my cousin, isn’t she? Even though if you had your way I’d never see any of my really nice relatives.’

  ‘I’ve never stopped you from seeing anyone you want to, or who wants to see you,’ Hannah said, wearily. This was an old argument. ‘I’ve told you that over and over, so don’t, please, launch on that again, Mary Bee.’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’ She jumped to her feet and glared at Hannah across the table. ‘I'm not our trade mark! I'm not going around like an advertisement for your wretched dresses! I want to be called Marie, and you said yo
u would.’ She began to wail, and then turned and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘The sooner your Charles comes home for the holidays the better.’ Florrie, who had just come in with a fresh pot of tea slapped it down in front of Hannah. ‘He’s the only one can get her to behave proper these days. Honestly, fifteen!’

  The row over Sally Lazar’s wedding was indeed settled by Charles when he came home. Only when Charles was home from school for the holidays did the house seem to pull together. It was not that he pushed himself in away way, not that he actually tried to smooth the turbulent waters. He was just his own quiet self smiling and friendly, with his dark hair brushed cruelly hard to his head in an attempt to control the curl, but, fortunately, quite failing, and his eyes that smiled easily. And what was enough. Just because he was there, people around him relaxed. Hannah accepted the invitation for them all, praying that Mary Bee - no, Marie, damn it - would come round, and said no more about it.

  Charles cheerfully dressed himself up in his best morning coat, and set out his white tie and tails ready for the midday change that was an inevitable part of the proceedings, and to Hannah’s intense relief Marie followed suit. She had chosen one of the best of her mother’s designs for the morning and came downstairs a vision in being knitted silk jersey, her long legs resplendent in beige silk stockings, and with a beige cloche hat, neatly trimmed with a hint of chocolate, pulled down over her nose. Her shoes and gloves were beige too and she had carefully masked her face with beige poudre Tokay and smelled faintly of Chanel’s latest perfume.

  Hannah stared at her and for a moment wanted to send her upstairs to wash her face and put on something more suitable for her age, like the charming navy and white sailor dress she had made for her last year. Wisely, she bit her tongue and was glad she had when Charles said easily, ‘Dear Marie! Feelin' a touch off, are you? Never mind. I'll walk you slowly to the car. That'll bring the colour back into your poor little face.’ Marie pouted at him, but rubbed off some of the powder.