Winter Is Past

by Ruth Axtell Morren

“No, I promise to accept as sincere what you tell me.”

  She looked for skepticism in his face, but found only curiosity. “Very well.” She finished tucking in the sheets and turned to take the coverlet off the chair. She faced him, her arms full. “For love.” She smiled, expecting mockery.

  Instead he gave a slight shake of his head. “I don’t think such love exists.”

  He turned his attention back to his daughter.

  “It’s a pity your show will come after Purim.”

  Rebecca’s eyes widened. “That’s Esther’s feast, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “How would you like to go to Grandmama’s for the Shabbat meal tomorrow afternoon?”

  Rebecca clapped her hands. “Oh, yes! That means tonight she lights the candles, doesn’t she? Oh, can’t we go tonight, too? Please!”

  Simon laughed and squatted down by his daughter’s chair. “Not tonight. It’s too late for you to be out. I want you good and strong for tomorrow. It will be a long day.” He turned back to Althea. “Please be ready to accompany Rebecca tomorrow. We shall leave at noon.”

  Althea straightened from the bed. “You want me at your family’s gathering?”

  His tone was curt. “Rebecca might need you.”

  “Oh, yes, Althea, you must come! We have so much fun at Grandmama’s. You’ll meet all my family. There shall be singing and dancing afterward.”

  Althea found it hard to imagine what it would be like in a Jewish household on their Sabbath. She knew so little of them. They were always pictured in caricature in anything she had ever read about them. There was an old synagogue near the mission, and those who attended kept to themselves, scurrying in and out of it as if afraid of attracting notice.

  Simon stood and went towards the bellpull, rubbing his hands. “Good, that is settled, then. Let’s have some supper.”

  Chapter Eight

  The following noon, Althea descended the Aguilar coach across town in Bloomsbury Square, in front of an imposing white stucco mansion. Although many of the residences were just as grand as in Mayfair, this quarter was not considered fashionable, being known as an area for those whose fortunes had been made in trade.

  One of Simon’s brothers arrived just as they were entering. He came in with his wife and children, creating quite a crowd at the entrance and giving Althea a chance to observe without being given more than a passing notice as Rebecca’s nurse. She recognized Simon’s mother and his two sisters from times when they had visited Rebecca. Everyone embraced, and she heard many shaloms and shalom aleichems, as well as other phrases in a foreign tongue.

  Just as Althea turned from handing her hat and cloak to a maidservant, Simon beckoned her.

  “Mother, you have already met Rebecca’s nurse, Miss Althea Breton.” He motioned Althea forward.

  Suddenly she found herself the object of a dozen eyes.

  “Althea, you haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting my father. Father, Miss Breton.” He presented her before an elegantly dressed gentleman, stockier than Simon, with iron-gray hair and dark, piercing eyes. “Leon Aguilar,” Simon told her. Immediately she was being introduced to Simon’s three brothers, Daniel, David and Nathan, all resembling the elder Aguilar in some fashion.

  Dozens of children were running around, and the women were all talking together as if they had not seen each other in months.

  “I’ll present you to the patriarch, my grandfather,” whispered Simon, leading her by the elbow to the drawing room, to a frail-looking elderly man with a beard who was seated as if he had been placed there out of harm’s way. As Simon made the introductions, his grandfather smoothed his beard, regarding her.

  “You are Rebecca’s nurse?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied as she rose from her curtsy.

  He patted her hand. “You take good care of her.” With that he looked away from her, addressing someone in a fast string that sounded to Althea’s ears like Italian.

  The rest of the company was assembling in the spacious, well-appointed room. Simon found her a seat before rejoining his brothers. Althea looked around the room in wonder. If not for the strange language and more boisterous behavior of the company present, Althea would have said she was in a fashionable drawing room of any upper-class English household. The room was tastefully furnished in the latest fashion, pale green walls and white wainscoting, delicate white friezes and marble busts in curved niches, and elaborate drape festoons above the long windows overlooking the square below.

  The women seated around her chattered in a mix of English and the foreign language. Just as at the dinner party, they ignored Althea, but she expected it here, realizing she was no more than Rebecca’s nurse to them. She sat quietly, watching Rebecca. But Rebecca forgot her, being too taken up with her cousins. Laughing and shrieking could be heard from their corner of the room. Althea smiled, thanking God that Rebecca seemed to be getting stronger and could enjoy a day with healthy children her own age.

  They were soon called in to dinner. There wasn’t the formality of the English dinner party. Here mothers gathered up their children and, like hens, directed them toward the dining room. The men followed leisurely behind them, more interested in their conversation than in the enticing smells emanating from the table.

  Althea followed last of all, smiling at two of the children that had stayed to play with their toys on the floor. She extended a hand. “Come along, I think there is a wonderful dessert for the children who come to the table.”

  The two boys looked up at that and scrambled to their feet. Disdaining to take her hand, they hurried ahead of her. She smiled and continued behind the rest. Most of the family was seated, while a few mothers were still tying napkins around their children’s necks.

  Simon’s mother was just coming around to the end of the table when she spotted Althea. She stopped short at the sight of her. Althea smiled, wondering what was wrong when the woman didn’t smile back but looked almost frightened. Instead of addressing her, Mrs. Aguilar called sharply to Simon.

  He was still standing by a chair conversing with one of his brothers when he looked up. When he saw Althea in front of his mother, he quickly came over.

  “What is it, Mother?”

  “Es una ajena?”

  “If you mean, is she a Gentile, yes, Mother, Miss Breton is ajena.”

  She said something else rapidly in that strange tongue.

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll take the consequences. Remember I’m an apostate already, with enough sins to burn in hell for all eternity.” He smiled at Althea as he spoke the words. “This is merely a small blotch on my already tarnished soul.” As he spoke he propelled his mother to her chair and seated her. “If it will make you feel any better, I will put an extra offering in the poor box next Shabbat.”

  He came back for Althea. “Come, let’s find you a place.”

  Shaken by his words and his mother’s fearful look, Althea hung back. “It’s quite all right, Mr. Aguilar. I can eat elsewhere—in the kitchen—if they’d prefer. I don’t mind.”

  His pressure increased on her arm as he led her forward just as he had his mother. “Nonsense, you are here for Rebecca’s sake.” He glanced around looking for his daughter, and seeing her smiling face between two cousins, he led Althea to them. “Come, Isaac—” he spoke to a boy beside Rebecca “—allow Miss Breton your place and you move down there.”

  The boy obeyed his uncle at once, looking curiously at Althea. She was thankful that most of the company, too involved in their own conversations, hadn’t noticed anything.

  Although the food had a foreign quality to it, Althea enjoyed it very much. The central dish was a one-pot stew rich with meat, vegetables and white beans. The food tasted spicier than she was accustomed to, with the flavors of garlic and lemon and allspice permeating it. There was also more rice and olives and other things she considered exotic. She found the braided loaf of bread deliciously moist. At the end of the meal they were served lots of fresh fruit, which Alth
ea marveled at in winter. A thick, sweet coffee and almond marzipan followed.

  The men dominated the conversation, but everyone spoke, the women amongst themselves or to their children. Althea slowly sorted out the members of Simon’s family: his two oldest brothers, with their wives and children, were seated toward the head of the table next to the father, as befitted their position of prominence. The grandfather sat next to Simon’s father, eating little. Every once in a while Simon’s father would look at his plate and chide him about eating. “What are you doing, Abba? Are you going to eat us out of house and home? What, is the food not good enough for you? I got these figs all the way from the Holy Land and you turn your nose up at them?”

  She noticed that Simon’s father conversed mainly in English, as did his brothers, while the women spoke in the strange tongue. She wondered whether it was due to the men’s being involved in the business world. Despite their fashionable attire, all of the men wore dark skullcaps, which gave them a foreign appearance. Even Simon had donned one. Gone was the English gentleman, member of the House of Commons and the Church of England. Amidst this dark-haired, gesticulating family group, the small round cap flattening the top of his curls, Simon could have been sitting in a Jerusalem synagogue.

  Farther down the table sat Simon’s married sister with her husband and children, then his youngest sister, who was unmarried, although betrothed to the young man sitting next to her. Beside the older children sat a young man who looked very much like Simon, but who was rosy cheeked and laughing wholeheartedly with the children. He had none of Simon’s cynicism in his features. It was Nathan, Simon’s youngest brother, who was only eighteen. She imagined Simon must have looked like him when her brother, Tertius, had known him.

  There were several others at the table. Simon had warned her on the way over not to be surprised at the number of people. In addition to one’s family, it was traditional at the Sabbath meal to invite any impoverished family or members of the synagogue, the children’s tutors, students of the Torah far from their own homes, and any other needy people. Looking at the long table, Althea was reminded of the noisy meals at the mission in Whitechapel.

  In a brief lull, she heard Simon’s oldest brother, Daniel, say, “I heard you gave a speech in the House this week. If I hadn’t known who was telling me, I would scarcely have believed it.”

  “Why is that?” answered Simon, looking steadily at his brother as if knowing what was coming.

  “Wanting to reinstate the Elizabethan labor laws that we managed to repeal during the war? You want the courts to fix a worker’s minimum wage? What will you ask next—that we guarantee them holidays and pay them when they stay home?”

  Simon looked into the glass he was holding. “You cannot expect men, women and children to work efficiently at the starvation wages some of them are earning now.”

  David, the banker and second eldest brother, added, “And you cannot expect men to invest capital into new enterprises if they are not going to receive back an adequate return on their investment.”

  Simon countered immediately. “If an owner wants to see his mills burned to the ground and more looting and rioting, he will continue his greedy way of wringing out the last shilling he’s invested. The Spa Fields Riots we saw in December were no isolated incident—”

  David’s voice rose. “We will not permit a revolution in this country. Your talk, Simon, is dangerously Jacobin. You’re in Parliament to safeguard our interests, not to work against us.”

  Althea saw Simon’s face darken at that remark. Before he could answer, his father entered the discussion. “If we pander to the ignorant mass of workers, we’ll soon be making no money at all. Now is the time to advance. Everyone is clamoring for capital, and thanks to the gains we made during the war years, we are among the few who can offer it. You cannot undercut what we have taken a decade to build—”

  “I’m not undercutting anything.” Simon raised his voice to be heard over the others. “If Parliament doesn’t act soon, this country will be on the verge of another civil war, except this time it will not be about religion, it will be between those on the brink of starvation demanding their due from the moneyed classes. If you don’t want a Reign of Terror as we saw across the Channel—”

  “Oh, come,” said Daniel, who oversaw the family’s various commercial enterprises, “the English would never behave like the French.”

  “There is a powerful sentiment building up against the Regent,” Simon said more quietly. “I know, I’ve heard the clamor of the loom worker, the weaver, the miner. Don’t you hear the Jeremy Benthams and Will Cobbetts stirring them up?” Suddenly he turned to Althea, gesturing toward her with his glass. “Ask Miss Breton, who runs a charity in the East End. She sees the results of our indifference to the laborer. What are the products our factories produce besides cloth and machinery? Tell them, Miss Breton.”

  Suddenly Althea had the attention of all those present. She looked around at the eyes fixed on her, the women staring blankly and the men in utter disbelief. Was it because she was a woman, or a Gentile? she wondered. She met Simon’s gaze, for once not mocking or challenging, but strangely encouraging. He gave a slight nod, probably only seen by her.

  She cleared her throat. “Since the growth of the mills, we have seen more and more people leave the land and come to the towns and cities seeking work. There is inadequate housing for them. Mothers and their small children spend hours crowded over dusty looms in dim light and inadequate ventilation. There are terrible accidents sometimes. But that is not the worst of it. What is happening since the end of the war is that as orders have fallen off, workers are dismissed without a thought to their well-being, and they have nowhere to go. They used to live off the land and hold a variety of jobs. Now, when there is no job at the mill, the man and his family starve.” She saw she had her audience captive now, and she leaned forward, looking directly into their eyes, knowing these were the people who could effect change. “Many children end up on the street. This is no exaggeration. At our mission we manage to feed all those who come to us, but I know it’s only a fraction of all the poor in London. If you go farther, our cities to the north abound in mills—Birmingham, Manchester, York….”

  As she fell silent, feeling her heart pounding at what she’d had the temerity to say, her gaze fell upon Simon’s father at the head of the table. Leon Aguilar gave her a withering look before turning to Simon and addressing him exclusively.

  “In my day a woman thought only of marrying and providing her husband with children.”

  Althea’s face burned and she dared not look at anyone. She kept her face bent over her coffee cup. The verse came to her: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

  Simon and his father continued their discussion, and she only managed to catch the tail end of his father’s remark.

  “…I paid enough to get you a seat in Parliament. It would seem the least we can expect is that you defend the interests of business and stop befriending the factory worker.”

  Althea’s eyes lifted as she looked quickly across to Simon. She could see the anger and shame at the remark, but just as quickly he parried his father’s thrust.

  “If it weren’t for those like me who are working to repeal the Corn Laws and do away with some of the tariffs, you wouldn’t be able to operate at all.”

  All the brothers and the father laughed at that. As she watched Simon’s laughter joining the others, Althea was reminded of what Tertius had told her about the torment Simon had endured during his schooldays. Bloody but never bowed. She knew the debates in Parliament were by no means friendly, and she wondered if he enjoyed the swordplay with words. She shuddered inwardly, unable to imagine enduring it daily.

  At the end of the meal Althea saw a different side to Simon’s father. He stood over the table, the fringe of his prayer shawl visible beneath his coat, and closed with a blessing. He didn’t s
hut his eyes to recite the prayer, and at one point his gaze crossed hers. As his deep voice intoned the words in Hebrew, Althea could imagine Moses or Jacob speaking such a blessing over the people.

  After the meal, the family gathered once again in the drawing room. Whereas the men had dominated the dinner conversation, the women gained in prominence after dinner as those with musical ability began to sing. Although she didn’t understand the words, Althea was captivated by the haunting melodies. Nathan played a mandolin to accompany his sisters.

  “They’re singing in a form of Spanish called Ladino.” Simon spoke quietly into Althea’s ear as he took a seat beside her.

  She nodded her head, keeping her gaze on Simon’s two sisters and the elder girls singing together.

  “These are traditional Sabbath melodies which have been sung for centuries.”

  “Is that the language they were speaking earlier?” she whispered back.

  “Yes.”

  “Your family still speaks this form of Spanish, even after so many years out of Spain?” she inquired.

  “Yes, it’s a form of Spanish, mixed with Hebrew. My generation and the next—” he nodded towards his nieces and nephews “—barely speak it, though we understand it well enough.”

  The tone of the songs changed. “It sounds like Gypsy music.”

  “It’s from the same part of the world. Andalusia, or as we say in Ladino, Sepharad.”

  She nodded in comprehension. “Hence Sephardic?”

  “Yes. For us it simply means ‘Spain.’ You’ll find a reference to Sepharad in Obadiah.”

  He was amused at the look of surprise she cast him. “I thought you didn’t read the Bible.”

  “Oh, I’ve read my share. I had the traditional scholarly upbringing for a male Jew until I was thirteen. Every family must have its scholar, you see.” His glance strayed to Nathan. “Now perhaps the mantle will pass to my younger brother’s shoulders.”

  “How so? I should think your present profession involves quite some scholarship… I mean, all those pamphlets you’ve published.”