Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  Bessie lifted her chin and stared at him. ‘You mean it?’ She’d been silent so long that her voice was husky. ‘You don’t want to take her away from me?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Dave said heartily. ‘It’s just that —’

  ‘I don’t make no promises,’ Fanny said loudly. ‘She’s my baby sister, bless her, I should let go just like that? What do you take me for, Dave? I make no promises!’

  ‘Phtt!’ Dave made a noise so filled with disgust that even the lugubrious Benny grinned. ‘What’s the matter with you, Fanny? Of course the child’s staying with Bessie! I got no intention we should take her away — and when I got no intention, then you got no intention. So shut up already. Listen, Bessie — the kid’s all right?’

  ‘She’s all right,’ Bessie said, and her voice was flat and toneless.

  ‘Then shoin fertig — I’m happy. It’s done, forget it. I’m going home. Fanny, Joe, Benny, home.’ And he got to his feet and set his hat on his head with great attention to its angle. ‘Bessie, I’m sorry it’s all turned out this way. A family argument no one enjoys and me least of all. I’m a man of peace but my Fannela, bless her, she’s a strong-minded woman, what can you do? As soon as you can, as soon as you’ve thought about it, do me a favour, you should come and see us, tell Fanny you’re friends again, bring Lexie to see her, so she feels happy in her mind the child’s all right, there’ll be no more problems. I promise you. Me, Dave Fox, I promise you. And what I promise gets done. I didn’t get to my stage of business with three stalls and a shop and seven people working for me and another opening next month, please God, breaking promises. But you be a sensible girl, bring the child to see us, it’ll be all over and forgotten.’

  Fanny too had got to her feet and was smoothing her kid gloves on to her hands. ‘But I tell you this, Dave,’ she said and her voice tinkled with frost. ‘Until she brings that child to see me, not a penny does she get from us. You hear me? The money stops. Poppa’s dead and I got no responsibility no more. She wants to be a gunsa macher, keep the child to herself? So let her! She can see how it is to live without our money to keep her warm on a cold night. She can go back to work in the sweat shops if anyone’ll have her after all this time. What experience has she got? None that’ll be any good — and see what sort of living she can earn. Believe me, she’ll come soon enough asking my pardon for her stupidity and her wickedness when she’s tried it a few weeks. All these years we’ve kept her in luxury, a real lady, nothing to do but sit around here all day on our furniture, in a place we pay the rent, and she behaves like this! You hear me, Dave? Not a penny! Come on —’ And she swept out of the flat, her heels slapping purposefully down the stairs, and the boys followed her, after a sheepish glance at Bessie sitting silent and very still in her low chair.

  ‘Well, there it is, Bessie, I did my best,’ Dave said. ‘You should stop being a foolish woman! Because you know how it is — Fanny says no money, then no money it’s got to be. She’s my book-keeper, you know that, and she knows every penny we spend to the last ha’penny. For my part, you can have it and welcome, but even for you, Bessie, I don’t have fights with Fanny. So come see us soon, bring Lexie, it’ll all be sorted out — I wish you long life,’ and he too went clattering down the stairs, leaving Bessie alone in her flat, contemplating a future without any money, with no means of support, and the dreaded task of finding some sort of job that would keep her and Lexie fed. And not only that, but Lexie’s lessons paid for.

  Because no matter what happened, Bessie promised herself, Lexie was going to go on dancing.

  6

  ‘So what are you askin’ me for?’ Alex Lazar said. ‘I mean, I remember the kid, lovely child, lovely! Thought she had a bit more talent than she — well, you understand. It’s like I said, I thought I’d do her a good turn and as it turned out — well, you win a few, lose a few, you know how it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and clutched her bag on her lap a little more tightly. He was a frightening man, this Alex Lazar with his expensive clothes and his tightly crinkled hair and his cigar-scented breath, sitting staring at her across a cluttered desk in the back room at the Paragon Palace of Varieties. It wasn’t that he was being anything but polite and nice to her; indeed, he’d been so polite and nice she’d been speechless at first, with his handshakings and careful offers of chairs to sit on; not treatment to which she was at all used. It was just that he seemed so busy, so important, with the telephone on his desk, and its urgent ringing noise that kept interrupting them, and people bustling in and out all the time. She wanted to get up and run, and then she remembered Lexie’s eager face when she chattered about her dancing lessons, and Fanny’s tight closed one when she had talked of taking Lexie away — and took a deep breath.

  ‘I thought — you’d seen my Lexie dance, saw what she could do, how lovely she is. I thought perhaps you’d see a way, could suggest a way, maybe find how she could go on having lessons. I started them, you see, with Madame Gansella, and she says she’s learning and all, but now my father’s died, I got to get a job and I can’t yet and — there’s no money for her lessons, and my sister Fanny says —’ And suddenly, to her own horror, her voice disappeared, drowned in the tide of tears that rose in her.

  Alex stared at her, his face almost comic in its expression of embarrassed distress, and after a moment he leaned forwards and patted her hand a little awkwardly. ‘There, m’dear, no need to fuss, now, is there? We’ll sort this out, some way or another. Let me understand, now. Your sister — Fanny, you said? What about her?’

  She rubbed her nose with her big handkerchief, grateful for his prompting. ‘Her and her husband, Dave, you know. Dave Fox — do you know them? Everyone does —’

  He leaned back in his chair again and stared at her, his head on one side and his eyes suddenly very bright above the cigar clamped firmly between his teeth. ‘Dave and Fanny Fox? Oh yes. I know them. Know ’em well. Your sister, is she? Well, well, who’d ’a’ thought it? Dave Fox’s sister-in-law, asking me for favours.’

  She reddened painfully. ‘No, not favours. Advice more. Well, maybe a favour — I mean, I thought you could ask Madame Gansella to go on with the classes, wait for the money for the lessons till I got a job. It’s the slack time, you see, so there aren’t many jobs around, and me, I’m not experienced no more. Been at home looking after Poppa all these years, and Lexie of course and — anyway, I thought if you asked Madame to wait a bit, she would for you more than she would for me. I’d pay it back, every penny, of course. I just need time, you see, and I’m scared to go and tell her so, to tell you the truth, in case she says no and I got to take Lexie away. If I do that Fanny’ll take her away from me — or so she says, though Dave doesn’t seem to — well, anyway, that’s what I thought —’

  He was grinning now, a self-satisfied little grin, as he looked down at the chewed end of his cigar, and she faltered and stopped, staring at him with her forehead creased.

  ‘So, tell me, why should you come and ask me to talk to Madame Gansella for you? Why not someone else?’

  She frowned. ‘Lexie told me — it was you told Joe she had talent. It was you said she was pretty and — she told me everything that happened here that Saturday. Did she get it wrong?’

  ‘No, she didn’t get it wrong.’ He looked up at her and grinned even more widely. ‘It was like she said. I did see her dancing for the queue and I thought she had real chein — not exactly beauty, you know —’ And he slowed, picking his words carefully, remembering the odd child with her dark straight hair in a thick curtain round her face and her huge eyes and her pointed little chin. Attractive, yes, pretty, never — but he couldn’t imagine saying as much to this devoted sister of hers. ‘Not exactly a beauty, but something much better. A real personality, you know? She certainly wasn’t quite as clever as I’d thought she was — and that takes personality. To fool Alex Lazar — believe me, that takes a lot of personality, a lot of talent. She’s one little nosh, that Lexie of yours. And she’s
Dave Fox’s sister-in-law, hmm? And he wants her to live with him and she doesn’t want to? Have I got it right?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Bessie said carefully, trying to identify the source of his sudden good humour and scared of spoiling it. Keep him this way and maybe she’d get the help she’d come to ask about. ‘It’s not exactly Dave that wants her, I think. It’s Fanny. She’d do anything to spite me —’ And again she reddened, her nose showing the colour most clearly in her pinched, anxious face.

  After a moment of staring hard at her Alex nodded. ‘Tell me, Miss Ascher — you got any special — um — you get on good with your sister Fanny?’

  ‘No,’ she said after a moment, and could not help but say it. To speak ill of your own relations was bad. In these closed and narrow streets people spoke as well as they could of their own. However many fights you might have inside the family, you didn’t go shouting your mouth off outside; that was the unwritten rule of the quarter. But she couldn’t manage to keep to it, seeing Fanny’s self-satisfied face in her mind’s eye, hearing Fanny’s loud, self-assured voice in her mind’s ear, feeling Fanny’s self-centred anger still burning in her belly. ‘No!’ She said it more loudly now, defiantly, and at once his grin spread even wider. He looked young suddenly, like a wicked child, and she found herself producing a watery grimace in return.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I’m not crazy about Dave Fox neither. He tried to do me dirty — me, Alex Lazar, been doin’ business around here since I was a boychik, fourteen, fifteen I was when I started. A boychik fresh from the haim, the old country, and never done no one dirty. Good businessman I may be, got my eye on the main chance and do the best for myself, but I don’t do no one dirty. If they’re fools, don’t know how to do business, that’s different. It’s their fault. But I don’t do no one down deliberate, you understand me? But Dave Fox, he cheated me. He sold me goods I saw, agreed a deal, and then he does the switch act, and there ain’t no way I can prove it. Nasty it was, nasty. I tell you, I haven’t spoken to the mumser from that day to this, and it’s — oh, it’s got to be five, six years now. And here you are, telling me that you want my help to stop him and his shprauncy madam of a wife gettin’ something they want! Rich, ain’t it? I tell you, the Talmud’s right. Everything comes to him who waits. And if it ain’t in the Talmud, it ought to be —’ and he laughed, his eyes crinkling even more, and she laughed too, uncertainly at first but then with a real note of humour in her thin voice. He was so fatly pleased with himself, sitting there with one hand on each plump knee and his cigar held fast between his teeth at a sharp angle, that it was impossible not to share his delight.

  ‘So, let’s get it clear. All you’re asking is I should hold the old — Madame Gansella — off for her money? Dolly, I can do better’n that —’

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘I don’t want anything else than that, Mr Lazar,’ she said a little sharply. ‘It’s me that’s going to pay for everything for Lexie. No one else, only me. She’s always goin’ to know it was her sister Bessie as did it all, no one else. Just hold her off till I get a job, get the money, that’s all — I don’t want you paying for her, if that was what you were thinking.’

  He nodded abstractedly. ‘Yeah, sure. Yeah. I see —’ And then he leaned back in his chair and took the cigar out of his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke in her general direction. It smelled good and she relaxed a little, beginning to allow real hope to move in her.

  ‘Tell me, Miss Ascher — can I call you Bessie? Ta, I’m a friendly type, you know, can’t be doin’ with airs and graces. So tell me, Bessie, what sort of job you looking for?’

  The little flame of pleasure that had lifted in her flickered and died and she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Whatever I can get,’ she said, and her voice sounded as flat as she felt. ‘I used to work with Isaac Ritter, the trouser maker over at Adelina Grove, you know? — till my mother died and then — well, not since then. Seven years it’s been. I was a felling hand, and I dare say I’ll learn again, soon enough. When the slack season’s over and I can get in somewhere. And I will.’ And her voice sparked a little. ‘I will, you’ll see, and then I’ll pay her back, every penny, you’ll see. You can trust me, I won’t let you down. You ask her for me, I really won’t.’

  ‘You any good with figures?’ he said abruptly.

  She stared. ‘Figures? What kind of figures?’

  ‘One, two, three, fourpence ha’penny and a farthing over, those kind of figures,’ he said tartly, and again the ready colour tipped her nose.

  ‘I used to be good at arithmetic when I was a kid. Went to school till I was twelve, used to come top in arithmetic often. I can count, if that’s what’s worrying you. I won’t forget what I owe her.’

  He shook his head irritably. ‘I’m not talking about Madame and her lessons. That’s the least of it right now. I’m talking about a job for you. If you can keep books straight, organize things.’

  She lifted her chin at him, her eyes brightening suddenly. ‘I can do that. I’ve been looking after Poppa and Lexie and me on tuppence all these years. Fanny and Dave go on about how much they gave me, but I’ll tell you, it was a struggle. If anyone understands about making money stretch, I do. And if that’s the sort of organizing you mean, I can do it.’

  He nodded, never taking his eyes from her. ‘And do you know what’s clean and what’s dirty in a kitchen —’

  She laughed aloud at that. ‘Me, clean, in a kitchen?’ And she laughed again, and he nodded, this time in satisfaction.

  ‘I’ll give you a try,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’ve got a couple of tea shops. Nice little places. One in Whitechapel Road down near the Yiddish theatre. Used to have a coffee stall there, I did, only now I got a tea shop. And then last year I started another in Mare Street, over at Hackney, and last month —’ And he seemed to swell a little with importance as he said it. ‘Last month I opened a third. Tottenham Court Road,’ and he said it with an air of such enormous casualness that she wanted to laugh. He wasn’t all that different from the street corner boasters, the great Mr Alex Lazar, after all. Except that he really had the things he boasted about, unlike the street corner variety.

  ‘That’s very smart,’ she said. ‘I went up the West End once. New Year’s Eve, it was. Poppa took me. Before Momma got ill, when he was all right —’

  ‘It’s the smartest damn’ tea shop you ever saw,’ he said, and laughed and slapped his knees with each hand in an excess of delight that was very appealing. ‘Marble everywhere, more glass’n the Crystal Palace ever had — a real class place. And I can’t get the right person to keep an eye on it, manage it, you know? Keep the books straight — nothing fancy, just daily accounts of how much comes in, how much goes out, the takings, all that. Keep an eye on the waitresses, they don’t cheat me, you know how it is. I got to have pretty girls as waitresses — all class places has pretty girls — but round the back, in the office, what I need is a bit of commonsense and someone I can rely on. I reckon I do you a favour with Madame Gansella for your Lexie, you turn into someone I can rely on, right? I’d hoped my own niece’d do the job for me but —’ His face clouded then. ‘You know my brother Nathan Lazar? The letter writer? His daughter Hannah, my niece, lovely girl, exceptionally well educated — ex-cepttionally — lives in Eaton Square in Belgravia you know, with Mrs Mary Damont, very high-class lady — no? Well, never mind. Anyway, she don’t seem able to take on the job, which is a pity. So I got to look around. And I got a hunch you could be right. I don’t make no promises, mind you, but if you’re good at it, play your cards right, this could turn out good for you.’

  He paused and looked at her, his eyebrows slightly raised. ‘What do you say?’

  She sat there turning her bag between her hands, her eyes down, staring at the rusty black of her dress, and the broken though carefully polished shoes beneath its hem. She, Bessie Ascher, a manageress in a fancy West End tea shop? It was crazy. She’d never worked in such a place, never imagined anything so gloriou
s could ever be possible. She remembered that one night in the West End of London all those years ago, before she’d had the tuberculosis that had twisted her spine and left her with her crooked shoulder and her ugliness, remembered dancing along the pavements beside Poppa, past the wonderful shops with their crystal and their bright lights and their cornucopias of beautiful objects and dresses and shoes and glittering jewellery in them. She remembered the white-painted front of the tea shop they had passed and how she and Poppa had stood outside on the dark pavement, staring in at the waitresses gliding about in their black dresses and beautiful lacy pinafores and caps with trays of cakes and lovely silver teapots and real china cups on them. She could almost remember the smell of tea and whipped cream and jam and warmth that had come wafting out of the doors as they swung to and fro to let in the wonderfully dressed people who were the tea shop’s unbelievably fortunate customers, could almost recall the way the hot sweet tea and raisin-filled bun Poppa had bought for her at a coffee stall had tasted, afterwards, when he had seen her eager face as she had watched the tea shop and told her he couldn’t afford that, but that there was somewhere else they could eat —

  She lifted her head now to look at Alex Lazar and shook her head. ‘Me?’ she said. ‘How could I go to a place like that? Not me.’ And she picked, almost unconsciously, at her rusty black skirt.

  He grinned again, the same cheerful grimace she was beginning to feel she’d known all her life. ‘Listen, doll, I ain’t stupid, you know! ’Course you’d have to have proper clothes. I buy the uniforms for my waitresses, so I buy office clothes for you! I got my own little business in the Lane for that sort of thing — no sweat. This I can fix easy. Part of the job. Pay you twenty-five bob a week and there you are — you don’t have to worry.’

  ‘Twenty-five —’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. She, who had been keeping herself and Lexie and Poppa on just fifteen shillings a week, to have so much. That would be enough not only for Lexie’s lessons but for new clothes for her as well — her face twisted as she stared at him.