‘Perhaps. But I needed reminding. Who I am. What I am. I thought that there - ‘ she shrugged.
‘And what you got was a revelation telling you to marry me?’
She smiled then. ‘No. Not a revelation. I just realized that it’s all so - that it’s not important. What I do, why anyone does, it’s all so temporary, I might as well do what I want. Does that sound selfish?’
‘No, only sensible. Not very flattering to me, of course, but sensible.’
‘Then I'm being sensible.’ She laughed then, a little unsteadily. ‘Hell of a way to start a marriage.’
‘It doesn’t matter how it starts,’ he said, and moved towards her for the first time, putting out a hand to take hers. ‘It'll be how it goes on that will be important.’
They decided not to tell anyone yet of their plans. ‘Let Charles get well,’ she said. ‘Let me see how things are with him, and then we'll see where we are. Please?’ He agreed, content enough to do as she wanted. He seemed to be as he always was to outsiders, but she knew the difference in him. He was, she realized, incandescent with happiness. His calmness, his relaxed speech, everything about him bespoke a deeply happy man and she felt humble and almost afraid of her own power since she had made him so, and could destroy his happiness as easily as she had created it. She was still unsure of herself, still confused by her own feelings, still feared at a very deep level that somehow she would destroy him as she had destroyed two of his cousins, men she had loved dearly too. She tried to believe that this was mere superstition, that it had no basis in any reality, as he continually assured her. It wasn’t easy, but she managed it by letting go, by not trying, just as she had stopped trying that morning in the synagogue.
Charles came home at the end of the week, not long after the strike ended, looking much better with his swollen eye almost healed and his scratches almost gone, though his nose was still rather puffy. He was dejected because the strike had, he assured them, failed.
‘The bastards have won again,’ he said passionately that evening over dinner to which Marcus had come. ‘Those damned bosses have robbed the working man.’
‘Not quiet,’ Marcus said quietly, and launched himself into an account of the issues raised by the strike, as seen from the side of the owners. Charles lifted his head and listened and then, pushed his plate to one side, leaned both elbows on the table and began to harangue Marcus about the evil of his ways. Marcus listened and now and again, when he could, interpolated a comment of his own, or a rebuttal, while Hannah sat and listened and curiously, gloried in it. Her boy, her Charles, was able to listen and learn as well as to defend his views, confused though some of them were, though his speech was adorned with a good deal of the sort of political claptrap she had heard spouted at Speakers' Corner many times and had read in newspapers. He had clearly come to no intellectual harm from his conversion to religious and political fervour, and though it was equally clear there would always be anxieties about him, that he would never spend his life in quiet safe backwaters, still, she had reared him well. He was becoming a successful person in his own eyes and therefore in hers. He had, she suddenly, realized, watching him as he talked on and on in the light of that spring evening, almost finished his journey from childhood to manhood. The downiness on his cheeks was a sturdier growth; his voice was heavy with a new maturity and his body was as muscled and active as his mind. ‘I'm free,’ she thought. ‘I can do what I chhose. Marry as soon as I choose.’
Free except for Marie. She felt a pang of acute guilt as her daughter’s name came slipping into her mind. Since she went away, all she had felt was relief at her absence. She knew she should miss her, but she didn’t. And yet, in an odd way, she did.
‘Marcus,’ she said, when Charles, still tiring easily as convalescents do, had gone to bed early. ‘I don’t want to tell Marie our plans in a letter. I want to tell her myself.’
‘She'll be home for the holidays soon, though, won’t she? Tell her then?
Hannah shook her head. ‘She’s going to Berlin. To the Von Aachens. I can’t say no, really. They're her closer friends now.’
He sat silently for a while and then said, easily. ‘Then we'll go to Lausanne and tell her there. As soon as you feel happy about leaving Charles. We'll fly to Paris, shall we? And then take the Rome Express to Lausanne. And maybe, afterwards, go to Rome, just for a holiday. Would you like that, Hannah?’
She looked at him, facing her across the chrome and glass table in her white dining room, at the solidity of him and the sureness of him and felt the leap inside her that she had once been afraid of, even a little ashamed of, but now welcomed for its promise of joy to come.
‘Yes please,’ she said. ‘And I rather think I’d like to be married before we go, Marcus. Because I'm not sure I can wait much longer, and you won’t - you want me to make an honest man of you, don’t you? So, how soon can it be? I'm not asking Marie’s permission to marry you, you see. I'm just telling her.’
57
It really was a silly plan in some ways; they both agreed that, yet still they did it. They would have a civil marriage at a Registry Office first, of which no one but Bet and Florrie who were to be witnesses would have an inkling, and then after returning from their journey to Lausanne, a ‘proper wedding'. A synagogue wedding under a canopy, with all their friends and relations crowding round, and a noisy party afterwards. ‘I like it,’ Marcus said with relish. ‘Honeymoon first, God’s permission afterwards. It’s got style.’ Hannah laughed and accused him of being a hypocrite, since surely what they were doing made her as wicked in the eyes of religion as those women at the Rothschild’s party, an argument into which he refused to enter. ‘I have my standards,’ he said with a heavy imitation of a pompous professor. ‘And I don’t need to defend them.’
She laughed again. They laughed a lot during those weeks while they waited for the formalities to be sorted out, though they both worked hard too. She organized the Artillery Lane factory as tightly as she could, giving Cissie reams of instructions to keep her going during Hannah’s first holiday from the place, and at Buckingham Palace Gate arranged that there should be a close-down for most of the time she was away. It was the easiest way to do it, and had she needed virtue of making her clients even more eager to place orders for later in the year. Hannah had discovered that being captious and masterful with her customers, far from driving them into the arms of other couturiers, made them cling to her even more closely.
Marcus too was busy, sorting out his complex Lammeck Alley activities, for now that the old uncles had retired he ran the business almost single-handed, though the place was staffed as it always had been with Young Lammeck and Damont cousins and nephews. He had not had a holiday for a very long time, so there was much to be done. But he found time in the middle of it all to arrange for Charles to go away for a while.
‘You’ve had a rougher time that you realize, my boy,’ he said, when broaching his idea to Charles. ‘I think you need some time to catch your breath and the chance to learn a little more. We have an office in Amsterdam - it’s run by a sensible chap. Piet Damont. His son, I'm told, is a considerable Talmudic scholar, very involved with the community there, and a bit of an historian. You're so interested in Jewish matters now I thought you’d like to stay with him for a while, and learn as well as relax. The boy’s a couple of years older than you - Henk, they call him. I think you'll like him’
To Hannah’s relief, Charles agreed. She saw him off from Liverpool Street Station, on his way to Harwich and the boat from the Hook to Holland, with a warm hug and a supply of money which he tried to refuse, but which she insisted he take.
So, when the day came, in early June, for her civil wedding to Marcus, she was ready in every way she could be, or so she told herself. The factory and the workshop organized, Charles in Amsterdam, Marie safely in Lausanne where they would soon see her. She was ready.
Yet she sat at her dressing table that morning staring at herself in the mirror, trying to fi
ght down an acute desire to run out of the house and away, away to anywhere except Caxton Hall in Westminster where Marcus was waiting for her. She wanted to abandon everything, not only the thought of being married again, but work and children and house and relations. But why? It’s not that they're all that much of a burden, she told her reflection. Are they? Marie’s so far away, and Charles too, and even Jake and Solly, still in New York and apparently happy there, and Uncle Alex - what sort of a burden is Uncle Alex? It’s the reverse, surely - he regards me as someone he has to worry about. And the aunts and uncles and cousins in the East End, do I worry over them? Of course I don’t. So what am I on about, thinking them as a burden I want to abandon?
Her reflection stared back at her, blankly, and she examined her face slowly, feature by feature, until she managed to slip out of her own body and become someone else. It was as though she were not the red headed woman with the blue eyes sitting in front of the mirror, but a totally alien being who stood behind the red headed woman and looked at her, mocking her, disliking her.
Florrie came bustling in with a tray of tea, looking exceedingly smart in a grey silk dress and a matching hat with cockade up the side.
‘Oh, mum,’ she scolded. ‘There’s you sitting there and not half dressed and me and Bet ready this half hour. The car’s already here, and the chauffeur’s having his tea, so you get a move on do! I'll pour your tea - oh, I'm that excited, I can hardly breathe! Bet’s as white as your shirt, she’s so overtook by it all. You getting married, mum, it’s wonderful, and high time and you should a' done it long ago, but never mind. The best always come to them as waits, and Mr Lammeck he’s really the best, and isn’t it lovely you ain’t changing your name, mum? Now there’s your tea, and I'll just help you step into your costume, and it’s as nice a piece of silk as I’ve ever set eyes on and no mistake.’
She chattered on, and Hannah obeyed her urging, putting on her new lime green suit, and thinking, you too. You and Bet, I have to please you two as well. What about me? Where do I fit in. What about want I want? And then felt fury at her own stupidity for she did want Marcus, she wanted him very much indeed. He was offering her the first chance of simple uncomplicated happiness she had ever had. No one in the background to spoil it or be hurt (Marie? No, not even Marie). No echoes of Davida’s cruelty or Judith’s pain. Why be so uncertain?
It went on, all through the journey to Westminster in Marcus’s new car, a rakish Bentley in cream and chocolate with long sweeping mudguards and deep leather-upholstered seats in which she sank with a sense of great luxury, and even after she was climbing the steps, Bet and Florrie solemn-faced and rigid with excitement behind her.
Marcus was waiting and she looked at him consideringly, still the sharp-eyed mocking creature who had stared at her reflection in the mirror, not her own red headed, blue eyed self. Who was she? Who was he?
He did not smile, but took her hand gravely and that made it worse, somehow, for she was wearing gloves and he seemed remote through the thin fabric, a stranger. She took a deep breath and almost whispered it aloud. ‘I'm going to run. I can’t. Too many people to think about. I can’t run.’
What happened then she could never remember. She had walked up the steps and Marcus had been there and taken her hand then she had walked out, her hand tucked into his elbow and with a new ring on her finger and she was married, or so they told her, and she stood blinking in the sunshine as Florrie and Bet fluttered and giggled and wept, and she stared at them and thought, why? And did not know what she was questioning, let alone what the answer was.
They lunched at the Savoy, just the four of them, and idea of Marcus’s, for he had told Hannah this was not their real wedding day and it would be a treat for Florrie and Bet, and she had agreed, grateful to him for being as aware of their importance in her life as she was. But then Florrie, and Bet were in a taxi on their way back to Paultons Square, weeping happily and bidding her goodbye, and she and Marcus were driving out to Waddon to be flown to Paris. Once more strangeness swept in and she was lost in it. He seemed to understand, for he said little, holding her gloved hand lightly, and she was grateful. Time, she whispered in her head, give me time.
Paris, the drive from the airfield, the echoing steam filled railway station glowed in the dark of the evening like a miniature inferno. She shivered a little despite the warmth of the June night and he smiled briefly at her as the blue clad porters loaded their luggage into the train, and she tried to smile back. It was difficult.
They had their own first class wagon-lit, an elegant little compartment heavily panelled in walnut and full of chrome mirrors and little shelves and hooks and cupboards. They had their own adjoining bathroom too, for Marcus had used all Lammeck Alley’s influence to obtain the compartment usually reserved for directors of the railroad. She undressed in there, slowly, and yet not excited. I wanted this, she told herself. Didn’t I? I ached for him. I’ve wanted to go to bed with him for so, long, yet now, I don’t care. I'm tired. I just want to go to sleep. I'm numb. I don’t want to. I don’t want …
He was not in the sleeping compartment when she pushed open the little swinging doors, and she stood there as the train began to move to the accompaniment of a distant hiss of steam and the sound of the departure whistle and muffled shouts from the platform, feeling the train beneath her begin to pick up speed, standing in the swaying rattle listening, but all she could hear now was the wheels chattering over the rails as the train looped its stately way out though Paris suburbs, going south-east towards Lausanne; diddly dum, diddly dum, diddly dum, diddly dum. It echoed madly at her head and she shook it irritably, and moved towards the bed the wagon-lit attendant had made ready for them, a handsome double sized bunk with crisp linen sheets and plump pillows, and slid in between the covers.
Marcus came in from the corridor, and she looked at him questionably.
‘I was smoking,’ he said briefly and went into the bathroom, first turning off the light in the compartment, so that she lay in the darkness trying to relax, trying to pretend to herself she was eager and hungry and ready for him, but the line of light around the bathroom door mocked her in the blackness, and she could not untie the knots in her belly.
The train rattled on, noisily, sometimes, then more rhythmically for a while, and then chattered furiously again as a new tangle of points attacked the wheels and she tried not to listen because the interrupted rhythm irritated her, made her edgier than ever. Then the bathroom door opened and he came through suddenly it was quite dark, as he switched off that light too.
She felt him move across the small compartment and then sit down beside her on the bunk, and after a moment he said, ‘Shall I lie down, Hannah? Or would you be happier if I stretched out on the bench there on the other side? You're tired I think?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and breathed in sharply through her nose so that she made a small hissing sound. ‘Yes. Dreadfully tired.’
‘Shall I then?’
She was silent for a moment. ‘No, Marcus, of course not. Come to bed.We'll sleep, and I'll be better. I'm just tired, that’s all.’
‘I know,’ he said and she felt his hand on her cheek for a moment, as light as a breath. ‘I know.’
He lay there beside her very still, his hands hooked together behind his head, and she was filled with a great wash of gratitude to him, and then was more tense than ever because gratitude was not enough. What have I done, she shrieked silently into the blackness, what have I done? Why am I married? Marcus lay breathing quietly beside her and said nothing.
She must have dozed then for the rhythm of the train changed and the swaying seemed to increase and she was rocking, lightly and easily, and it was a good safe feeling, an exciting feeling. She was lying on a huge cloud of a cushion, a soft, silken cushion and she was being swayed from side to side so that there was a sweep of pleasure as she came down from one peak to the rocking, and then another as she rose again to the next and she was singing inside her head, and watching Mar
cus’s face somewhere in the blackness above her, a smiling happy face.
The rhythm changed, became noisy and uneven and suddenly she was wide awake in the darkness of a moving train in the middle of France with Marcus there beside her, and she needed him then with all the urgency she had been suppressing for so long. She lifted herself on one elbow and tried to see him in the darkness and couldn’t, and moved her head forward, searching, and felt his breath on her cheek.
‘Marcus,’ she said and felt his head turn towards her and find hers and she opened her mouth and reached for him with it, and found his cheek, and then, still searching, his mouth, and clung to him, pushing her tongue against his greedily. For a moment he lay there and then she felt the surge of response in him as she moved even closer, but he pulled his head away and said questionably, ‘Hannah? Are you are? Quite sure?’
She laughed then, a silly laugh, and put her hands on each side of his face and kissed him again and still he seemed uncertain, and she slid her hand down his neck and across his chest, and then on to his belly, pushing his silk pyjamas aside and then there was no doubt in either of them. They were rolling with the rhythm of the train, first against it and then with it, and the swaying of the bunk beneath them seemed to meld with the movements of their own bodies and them somehow, they were part of the train as well as of each other. The whole world was movement and excitement noise and great sweeping breathless drops and rises from peak to peak, and she laughed aloud again, a loud and breathless sound this time as at last the final doubts died, and with them the horrible mocking black creature who had dogged her all day. It was all right, at last. It could not be more right.
58
‘Now this,’ Uncle Alex said with huge satisfaction, ‘is what I call a wedding!’ He leaned back in his chair and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and grinned at her. ‘Real style, that’s what it is, real style.’
The Running Years Page 58
