The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  ‘I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to be unkind,’ she said, a little dully. ‘I only wanted to explain to you that I don’t feel able to marry you. I’d be afraid. I’ve done enough harm to your cousins. To hurt you too would be … I can’t bear it.’

  She struggled with the car door for a moment and then managed to get it open and tumbled out, and ran up the steps to the house, fumbling blindly in her bag for her key as she went.

  He didn’t follow her. And a long after she was inside, sitting curled up in her new white armchair and staring blindly at the curtained window she heard the engine purr into life and the car go whispering away through the sound of the wind blown trees.

  It could not be the same of course. It was not that he stayed away from her. He phoned her and told her there was a private viewing at a gallery of Sonia Delaunay’s newest work from Paris, and could she come, and sent her flowers and saw to it that she was invited to the same dinner parties as he was; most London hostesses were fond of him, and wiling to oblige him, even if they had their eyes on him for their own nieces or daughters. He invited her to theatres, to films, to concerts, just as he always had.

  But it wasn’t the same. The intimacy was gone, and she missed it dreadfully. Her sense of loss was not helped by her own anger at herself. She would like in bed night after night unable to sleep, asking herself, why was I so stupid? Why didn’t I say I’d marry him? Who do I think I am, that I'm afraid I'll hurt him if I marry him? He’s not stupid; he can look after himself, and I want him! And he’s right about the old feuds. They don’t matter any more. It’s him I want, not families, not revenge …

  And she would turn and bury her face in her pillow, trying to ignore the hunger that now bit so slyly at her whenever her guard was down. It had been a long time indeed since she had been so aware of her own sexuality, and it was not an awareness she enjoyed at all.

  Marie came home for Christmas in a flurry of excitement, bringing with her a French girl and a German one, whom she introduced as her dearest chums in all the world. They spent the four weeks of the vacation rushing about London shops and hotel thé dansants, and gossiping and giggling. Hannah was delighted to see Marie looking so happy, and was pleased she had such close friends to share her holiday with, but she felt a little bereft as well, for somehow there was no time for any talk between them at all. Marie was always fast asleep when Hannah left for Buckingham Palace Gate each morning and when Hannah came home at night she had already gone bustling off with her friends.

  At first Hannah was anxious about the people the girls met, remembering all too painfully Marie’s involvement with Marcus’s sister, but the she discovered that the German girl, Mercedes von Aachen, had relatives at the German Embassy, who were entertaining the three girls a greal deal.

  ‘They are cousins of my father,’ she told Hannah in her prettily accented voice. ‘And when they heard that Papa and Mama had to be away from Berlin during my holiday, they agreed that they would ensure I should be content here in London, which of course I am, with you, Gnädige Frau. I have also been told by my aunt, Baroness von Aachen, that I must meet some of her relatives here, since she is English, you know.

  ‘Oh?’ Hannah said politely.

  ‘Indeed. She was Fraulein Leontine Damont, of an excellent family, he I am told. She says to me I must visit some of her relations and she had given me some addresses.’ Mercedes began to leaf through her notebook to show Hannah the people on who she was to call.

  Hanna said nothing, making no comment about the fact that she knew the names of all the people listed and was grateful that the French girl, Henriette de la Tour, also had London connections and was more clamorous about visiting them, so that the trio did not in fact visit Leontine’s friends as much as they might have done.

  ‘No that it makes any difference to me,’ Hannah would tell herself. ‘Why should it? It’s all so long ago now. It doesn’t matter. And I'm glad Leontine married and is happy. I'm glad.’ But it was difficult to believe herself.

  Charles had chosen to go away for the Christmas holiday. He told Hannah bluntly that he could not bear the fuss that was made of it, with Florrie and Bet decorating a tree for themselves in the kitchen and insisting on distributing presents which of course Hannah reciprocated.

  ‘It’s all so wrong,’ he told her earnestly. ‘We're Jews, and anyway, it’s a pagan fertility rite. I don’t believe in God, you know - no, I know it sounds complicated but it isn’t. The longer I study Talmud and Hebrew the more I realize that what matters is the Jewish people, not the God they invented for themselves, and it’s people I care about. And because I do, I can’t stand this Christmas rubbish. I'm going to go and stay with David in the East End. Please, Aunt Hannah. they’ve asked me, and it’s what I want.’

  She did not argue, but insisted he take a kosher food hamper with him as a Chanukah present ('While they'll value if you don’t,’ she told him sharply) and made the best of the holiday that she could. She was, to her own distress, actually relieved when the four weeks were over and Marie returned cheerfully to Lausanne, leaving her with a casual kiss and never a backward look as she ran for her train at Victoria.

  The year turned slowly through a biting winter to a chilly spring, and she worked harder and harder, and went out less and less. Marcus still telephoned occasionally, but she had made up her mind that the must wean herself from even his friendship. When she saw him she felt that sickening leap of physical excitement and need, still had to bottle up her feelings behind a bland glass-smooth exterior. He called less frequently now, as the labour crisis had deepened and strikes began to loom on the horizon. Lammecks owned large blocks of shares in several coal mines as well as steel mills, and other factory interests, and as labour unrest bubbled and heaved all through that dull spring of 1926, Marcus became busy as mediator and spokesman for several of the owners. She read about him in The Times and listened to Florrie exclaiming over the things she had heard about him on the kitchen wireless and said nothing. She had set herself the task of forgetting Marcus Lammeck, and the best way to begin was never to talk to anyone about him.

  When, on May 4, a General Strike was declared she decided to go on working and that any of her workers who could not get in because of the lack of buses and trains would still be paid. Cissie told her roundly that she was a fool, that most of the workers would take advantage of her goodwill, but she was stubborn.

  And her stubbornness was justified. Many of them did struggle in, some walking the long grey miles from Hackney and Whitechapel to Buckingham Palace Gate as well as to the Artillery Lane factory, and Hannah felt a glow of pride. Other workers might be complaining bitterly of exploitation and bosses' greed, but hers saw the business as she did, as a cooperative venture that mattered to all of them, and supported her in spite of exhortations from pickets and street shouters to come out and stay out.

  When the call came early on Saturday morning she was at Artillery Lane, supervising the loading of a lorry she’d managed to borrow from Uncle Alex to deliver garments waiting for urgent dispatch to Birmingham which couldn’t go by train, as they usually did. The boy came lurching into the back yard of the factory looked drunk at first and then she saw that in fact he was exhausted. His face was dirty and bloodstained, and he’d obviously been in a fight. She took him by the shoulder when she heard him asking one of the men loading the lorry for ‘Charlie’s Auntie Hannah.’

  ‘What is it?’ she said urgently with a sudden spurt of fear. ‘Is Charles hurt? Is he ill?’

  ‘He’s bin beat up,’ the boy said, and pulled away from her, and turned to go lurching on his way again. ‘Made me promise I’d tell yer, so I did. In the London ‘Ospital under police guard. Got took there from the docks. Said I was to tell yer.’

  55

  The ward they sent her into was long and cluttered, with fireplaces at end end in which big coal fires burned, for it was a cold May. Nurses in blue print dresses and frilled lace caps and stiff starched aprons bustled by, rustling with
very movement, and ignored her as she stood hovering between the big double doors. The rank of beds on each side ran away to the far end in diminishing red blanketed oblongs, and the faces that lay on the pillows all looked the same, drawn and blank and ageless, hollow simulacra of men. The place smelled of soap and cold air and carbolic and a thicker ominous sweetness that stirred fear in her belly, and because she was afraid she lost her temper, and marched up to one of the nurses and took her by the elbow.

  The girl reared back, offended by er touch, and stared at her frostily.

  ‘I want to see Charles Lammeck,’ Hannah said sharply. ‘Immediately.’

  ‘Visiting time this afternoon, two o'clock,’ the nurse said. ‘You'll have to come back then.'

  ‘I want sent for, to see my son, my ward,' Hannah said. 'I was told he was injured. I insist on seeing him at once.'

  ‘Insist?' the nurse said, and looked at her with a blank face. 'You can't insist. It's up to the doctor.'

  ‘To hell with the doctor,' Hannah said. She turned and marched into the ward, looking from side to side at the beds she passed. The men in them stared back at her incuriously, as though she wasn't actually there. The nurse followed her, expostulating, but Hannah ignored her and marched on. As she reached the middle of the ward someone who was sitting beside one of the beds stood up and she stared and realized he was a policeman, though he looked odd, for he had his helmet in one hand so that his head looked naked and vulnerable.

  ‘The young man say's it's him you're looking for,' he said in a hoarse whisper, then reddened as the nurse stated at him with an icy glare, and hannah thought absurdly, 'He's very young, scared.'

  She came to stand at the foot of the bed and stared down at it, and at first she could not see anything but the glow of the red blanket and the whiteness of the pillow and then, slowly, she was able to focus more closely.

  He was almost unrecognizable. One eye was completely closed and the tissues around it had swollen to such proportions that the skin seemed to be stretched as tight as the skin of a rubber balloon. It was almost as brightly coloured as a balloon, too, a blur of purple and red and blue, and the discolouraton stretched right down one side of his face. His lips were blackened and cracked, and there was a streak of blood running from one corner of his mouth. His nose was swollen, looking as broad as a baby's, and she could see that it was blocked with cotton wool. One arm was encased in plaster, and lay awkwardly on the bed beside him as though it was not part of him at all.

  ‘Oh, my God.' Her voice sounded loud in the quiet ward. She felt rather than saw some of the men in the other bed turn to stare at her. 'Oh, my God. What happened?'

  ‘Can't say, madam.' The young policeman sounded embarrassed. 'They sent me to stay with him till he could give me a statement, like, and they could charge him and all, they said, but they never said what the charges were. I only just got sent here, after the worst of the fight was over.' He looked down at the bed.

  ‘Charles?' Hannah moved round the bed and crouched beside it so that her head was on a level with his. 'Charles, darling, what happened to you?'

  He swivelled his one good eye towards her and his cracked lips seemed to lift a little. She felt tears rise in her. He was clearly trying to smile, though obviously it hurt him for he winced. Still he went on trying.

  ‘I'll see the doctor, darling, find out what happened,' she said, and he took a sharp little breath and said in a cracked voice, 'No, he's mad at me. Don't ask him . . . mad at me.'

  ‘Mad at - what do you mean? A doctor looks after people. I'll find him and he can tell me. Oh, darling, I'm so - ' She bent her head and kissed his cheek, delicately, terrified of hurting him, but needing to have some sort of physical contact.

  The nurse came back with a white coated man in tow. Hannah stood and stared at him with all the anger she had in her lifting her chin and said sharply, 'You are the doctor looking after my ward?'

  ‘I am indeed,' he said and his voice was loud and heavy at the same time. 'And you have no right to come pushing your way here in this manner.'

  ‘What has happened to him? I insist you tell me at once. He is under the age of twenty-one, and as his legal guardian, I insist on my right to be told all that pertains to his welfare.'

  ‘Under twenty-one, is he?' the doctor said contemptuously. 'Then you, madam, should take better care of what he gets up to. The state he is in he frankly deserves to be in and I'm not afraid to tell you so! To come down here to the slums and try to meddle in matters that's don't concern him, and then to fight with public spirited citizens who have come to try to keep this country going whilst those damned strikers try to destroy it! You should be ashamed to have a ward who behaves in so appalling a manner.

  An odd little sound came from the bed behind her. After a moment she realized that Charles was laughing.

  ‘I told you he was mad at me,' Charles said in that rough hoarse little voice. 'I told you. Capitalist pig that he is.'

  ‘Pah' the doctor said, and suddenly Hannah wanted to laugh too for he looked so pompous and absurd in his white white coat and with his face set in a scowl of disapproval. But she did not laugh, and looked instead at the policeman.

  ‘Can I take him away from here to get proper medical care elsewhere?' she said. 'You mentioned charges - what charges?'

  ‘Can't say, madam. Just charges in connection with an affray down the docks is all I know. And probably speaking out of turn to say that much.' He looked at her wretchedly, his smooth young face suffused with patchy red.

  She turned to look at the doctor. 'You will tell me the extent of his injuries, please. I will not discuss with you the manner in which they were sustained. I want only the medical information, so that I can arrange to have him cared for by my own physician.'

  The doctor glared at her with his face reddening too, so that he was an older stouter parody of the young policeman, and she stared back at him, her eyes wide, using all the will she had to outface him. After a moment he said loudly, 'Fractured radius, three cracked ribs, superficial soft tissue injuries to the face, fractured nose, possible fractured skull. You move him at your own risk.' He flashed a contemptuous glance at Charles as though to say that for his part he could not care less what risk he was exposed to.

  ‘Thank you. And the name of your superior? The specialist who is in charge of the case?'

  The doctor reddened even more. Opened his mouth as though to speak, then turned away, and said to the nurse sharply. 'If arrangements are made to remove this patient without my consent, see to it that this policeman's sergeant is called. He is not to be removed until I say so.' He went marching away down the avenue of beds with the nurse scurrying importantly behind him.

  ‘Nice piece of work he is,' the policeman said in a low voice. 'Would you are to sit down here, madam? I can move away a bit - I mean, as long as I keep him in sight it'll be all right. I don't see why that doctor had to be so hard, that I don 't. There was lots o' these public school boys came down the docks to do some work. Why pick on him like that?'

  ‘Because he didn't come to strike break,' Hannah said, and looked ruefully at Charles. 'Did you, my love? He came to stand with the pickets, I imagine.' Charles looked at her with his only available eye gleaming, and again tried to smile.

  ‘Oh,' the policeman said blankly. 'Oh. Educated boy like that? Standing with the pickets? That's a funny way to go on.'

  ‘Not funny.' Hannah said. 'Just angry.' She looked at Charles again and felt a surge of pride. A fighter. Not a whiner who only talked and complained but a fighter too. Her Charles. Wrong headed perhaps - and she wasn't sure of that, to be honest - but a fighter.

  ‘I'll be back,' she said to Charles and smiled briefly at the policeman. 'I'll make arrangements, darling. Get it all sorted out. Try to rest.' Again she kissed his cheek and turned and went, hurrying back down the ward and feeling the eyes of the men in the beds on her back, and curiously, a wave of approval, she thought, 'They don't like that doctor either. They're glad I a
rgued with him.' She smiled as one of the men she passed grinned at her and made a thumbs-up signal.

  She managed to find a sweetshop with a little sign outside proclaiming, 'You may telephone from here,' and started to try to arrange Charles's care. She began with her own family doctor, in the King's Road, but he was away for the weekend, she was told, and his housekeeper suggested another. She called him only to be told that he was unable to involve himself in a hospital case. 'And if the injuries are as you say, he's better off where he is than at home,' the little voice clacked in her ear. 'Not a case I can accept responsibility for.' She called the factory in Artillery Lane, but Cissie had gone, and she realized with a shock how late it was, after eleven, and she had told Cissie she could close the factory once the orders had been loaded and the lorries despatched. She tried Alex next, but he was in Liverpool trying to sort out the unloading of some of his more urgent tea supplies. David? Perhaps David could help, she thought briefly though she knew she was being absurd. What she needed was someone who would scoop her Charles out of that horrible huge ward full of hollow faced men away from that pompous doctor, away from the police, away from all the trouble he was in. And David couldn't do that.

  She held the phone in her hand, her forefinger hooked over the rest of the earpiece held against her chest, trying to understand why she was so unwilling to do what she knew was the only answer to her dilemma. The shop owner peered at her curiously over the piles of dummy boxes of chocolates and dusty toffee tins that cluttered the counter and sniffed mournfully at her. Hannah stared back and then released the rest. When the operator's voice answered she gave Marcus's number wearily. What else could she do? And why shouldn't she? Why be so upset at the idea? He would want to help, she knew that; indeed he would be bitterly distressed if he thought she had not sought his aid.

  He was not at Lammeck Alley, but they found his secretary for her, a sensible young man she had talked to before, and she found herself spilling it all out. Charles was hurt, being badly cared for in the London Hospital, there was some problem with the police; 'He was involved with a picket line,' she said mendaciously, knowing the young man would assume as everyone else did that a well-off young man like Charles would inevitably be a strike-breaker rather than a supporter. At once the secretary was all concern: Mr Lammeck was at the airport at Waddon overseeing the delivery of gold bullion which had to be flown in because of the strike. The secretary would see to it that he met her at the hospital as soon as he returned. Three hours, he said apologetically, no more than that. She was to wait.