by Beth Miller
‘Are you OK? You look a bit overwhelmed.’
‘I’m fine. It’s just – all this.’ I waved my hand at the whole world. There was so much of it, so many new things.
Alex pulled me past the pub.
‘You know what we need?’ he said. ‘We need a ring.’ He held up my left hand. ‘Look at this. Naked, so it is.’
I giggled, embarrassed, at the word ‘naked’. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. I felt better now we were out of his flat, and the tone of my father’s voice had faded a little from my head.
‘If we can’t get married for another two weeks, we can at least get engaged.’ A few yards on, he said, ‘Oh look, we happen to be at a jewellers.’
We were outside an old-fashioned shop, with dusty velvet boxes in the window, and a Jewish name over the door. I guessed Alex had chosen it because he thought it would be familiar, comforting.
‘I know it’s not Hatton Garden,’ he said, ‘but there’s some nice ones here.’
The mention of Hatton Garden, where my father worked, made me wince. Then I looked in the window and winced again, this time at the prices.
‘You’re a secret millionaire and you’ve waited till now to tell me, Alex!’ I said. ‘Seriously, do you have loads of money?’
‘Well, not loads, no.’
‘I don’t want a ring like this. I’d like something with no weight, no pedigree, something I don’t have to worry about.’
‘Something cheap?’
‘Something very cheap.’
‘You become my perfect woman even more with every moment.’
I suggested a shop nearby called Accessorize, which had all sorts of pretty things in the window. There was a display of beautiful sparkly rings at the counter, and I knew as soon as I saw them that I wanted one. I chose a delicate filigree silver ring with a large crystal in the centre.
‘It’s a classic,’ Alex said. He slipped it on to my finger and we stood quietly for a moment, both suddenly aware of the significance of the act.
‘Ahh, so romantic,’ sighed the shop-girl, who had what looked to me to be half the shop’s stock pierced through her face.
‘Fourteen quid,’ Alex said. ‘With this cheap crap, I pledge myself to thee.’
I smiled up at him. The shop assistant raised her metalled eyebrows, and the woman in the queue behind us coughed.
Alex handed over his card. ‘D’you want a bag?’ the assistant asked.
‘I’ll wear it now,’ I said.
We walked on, and when Alex took my hand, I automatically started to pull away, then squeezed his hand instead. We smiled at each other. Hand in hand, we strolled through Brockwell Park.
‘The final part of today’s guided tour is our local green space,’ Alex intoned.
‘It’s lovely.’
‘So are you.’
‘Alex?’ I felt that I had to ask him, even though I dreaded the answer. ‘When we were outside my house earlier, and I told Uri we were getting married, you looked shocked.’
‘I’m so stupid. It hadn’t occurred to me that you would want that. It’s not what most women I’ve met want. But of course you do, and I’m completely on board.’
‘I bet you wish I was more like other women.’
He laughed. ‘Let me tell you about the first time I saw you.’
We sat on a bench underneath a large beech tree, and he put his arm round me.
‘You walked in that room. It was the end of a long, tiring day. And then I saw you, and I felt wide awake.’
‘You did?’
‘I never saw a more beautiful woman. Stunningly, gorgeously, unlike any other woman. Tall and elegant, in your long dark skirt and high-necked jumper, all covered up, completely intriguing. Your hair, black as night, coiled at the base of your neck, your huge dark eyes with long spidery lashes like Bambi’s, your lips red as Snow White’s.’
I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘And then you wouldn’t shake hands! And you said that cool thing to the group about not touching men, so of course I wanted to touch you more than I’d ever wanted anything ever before.’
‘You’re making me blush.’
‘And I knew you liked me too, because you waited at the end till everyone had gone.’
‘Only to be polite.’
‘Liar.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And I had no idea what I was going to say, but I knew you couldn’t leave without me saying something.’
‘My heart was beating so fast. I wanted you to say something, but I was also terrified you wouldn’t. You said, “Miss Bloom. Errr…” Then you had a little coughing fit.’
‘Oh my god. I’m never tongue-tied usually. I said, “It would be great to get you to come and speak again. Could we meet tomorrow?” And there was the world’s longest pause, and I thought I’d totally misread the situation. Your face was completely blank.’
‘I was trying to think what to do.’
‘I thought you might storm out. Then you said, “Yes, that would be fine,” and it was the best thing anyone had ever said to me. You were blushing your head off.’
I covered my face. ‘I know!’
‘You wrote your number down in my diary. I watched you, and do you know what I thought?’
‘What?’
‘I thought, “I could watch that face for the rest of my life.”’
‘Oh, Alex.’
‘Well, Miss Bloom, we’ve gone and done it now.’
I was half-crying, half-laughing, when he kissed me on the lips, only our second ever kiss. This time I didn’t push him away.
After a while, Alex got off the bench, and got down on one knee. ‘Aliza Bloom, will you marry me, even though I have mud on my knee?’
‘I will, on one condition.’ I smiled, so he knew it wasn’t anything alarming.
‘Name it.’
‘Funnily enough, it is about names. You know how when we first met, you called me “Eliza”?’
‘Yes, sorry about that, I’d never heard the name Aliza before, and it sounds so like it.’
‘Actually, I’d like you to call me Eliza from now on.’
‘You would?’
I nodded. ‘It’s a different version of myself. The name of someone new. I like the thought of that, of being Eliza out here.’
‘Wow, that’s rather profound, Miss Eliza Bloom. It suits you.’
‘It sounds exactly the same, the way you say it.’
‘Eeee-liza. Better?’
‘Better.’
‘Well, Eliza, I have to get up, my knee’s gone to sleep. So I now pronounce us engaged.’ Alex stood up, and pulled me to my feet. ‘Are you quite sure that’s not enough to legitimise some hanky-panky tonight?’
‘If that means what I think it means, then no,’ I said firmly. ‘Not until we’re married.’
‘Ah well,’ Alex said, and linked my arm through his. ‘I guess I’ve waited thirty years for you. I can wait another two weeks.’
17 December 1999
Dear Deborah
Well, as my fiancé says, ‘Miss Bloom, we’ve gone and done it now.’
I’m really sorry.
I can’t even begin to imagine the mess that greeted you when you turned up at our house to help me dress. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.
You’ve every right to be furious with me. Not least because I told you it was over. But I didn’t lie to you. I thought it was. I was ready to marry Nathan.
And yet. Every night since I said yes, I’d wake, maybe two or three in the morning, and all I could think was, I am making a terrible mistake. And of course that was worse after I met Alex.
You saw Michael, and you just knew. Remember you telling me that, and remember you saying that I would just know?
You didn’t tell me what I should do if the person I just knew was a different man to the one I’d agreed to marry.
I didn’t lie to you. I was ready to marry Nathan, right up until the day be
fore. That morning, I couldn’t stop crying. Gila sat on my bed and cuddled me, and Becca said, ‘You’re sick with love, that’s all.’ She thought she was talking about Nathan, but I knew I was sick with love for someone else. And when everyone was out, I phoned that someone else, and now here I am, out in the Real World, adrift, away from everyone and everything I know and love.
Away from everyone, except the man who, when I saw him, I just knew.
I miss you so much, Deb. I hope one day you can forgive me.
Dad told me I was dead to you all. So please send this message from beyond the grave to Mum, Zaida, Dov, Becca and Gila. I love them so much, and miss them, and I’m sorry.
But I didn’t want to marry a man I didn’t love.
Love,
Your Friend Who Ran Away But is Still Your Friend,
Aliza xxx
Seven
23 December 1999
Me: ‘It’s too short.’
Him: ‘It barely shows anything.’
Me: ‘I’ll freeze to death.’
Him: ‘Wear tights with it.’
Me: ‘You can see my knees!’
Him: ‘Charming knees like yours should be seen. The whole world should be worshipping these knees.’ Alex lifted up the skirt a little higher, and I pushed his hand away.
‘Stop it! People are looking.’
‘That’s the point.’ He turned around and addressed the shop at large. ‘Roll up everyone, step this way, come and see the greatest knees in London. Possibly the whole of the UK. Kept under wraps for twenty-three years, I kid you not, and only now revealed to the world.’
Though utterly embarrassed, I couldn’t help laughing. One or two women smiled vaguely in our direction, but otherwise the shoppers remained indifferent, and continued about their own business. The shop was very busy and loud, and everyone seemed to be moving quickly. A woman grabbed an armful of soft blue scarves from a table next to Alex and hurried off with them. I saw a man holding a pack of ladies’ pants, and looked away.
It was two days till Christmas, and the shelves were decorated with sparkly ribbons in beautiful colours: silver, red, green and blue.
‘Tinsel,’ Alex told me, and I rolled the unfamiliar word round my mouth. Tinsel.
‘So, shall we buy it?’ Alex said.
‘No. I’ll try on one of the others.’ I darted back into the changing room and took off the skirt. It was a gorgeous colour, a light sunshiny blue, but I couldn’t imagine ever feeling comfortable in something so revealing. As I stood in the little cubicle in my top and pants, measuring the lengths of the eight other skirts against each other, Alex stuck his head round the curtain.
‘Hey!’ I held the skirts up against me to hide my bare legs.
‘It’s only me,’ he said, ‘your beloved fiancé. Soon to be your husband, remember?’
He was, indeed, going to be my husband. He’d been my fiancé for one week. In nine days’ time, he’d be my husband. Fiancé was a romantic-sounding word. Husband was much more down-to-earth. I wondered if it was made up from two words, ‘hus’ and ‘band’, and if so, what a hus was. Hus Band. A band around my hus. He was certainly banned, anyway, as far as my family were concerned.
Anyway, even when he was my husband, I wouldn’t want him seeing my legs in a public place. I waited till he’d gone, then resumed my task of comparing skirt lengths. Even the longest one only came halfway down my calf, though. I zipped it up and stepped out of the changing room.
‘Nice,’ Alex said, ‘but a bit unfashionable.’
‘Where I come from,’ I said, ‘men don’t give women fashion advice.’
‘Where you come from,’ he said, ‘it is painfully apparent that no one gives women fashion advice.’
Alex jokingly referred to my usual clothes as, ‘your burqas’. They were nothing like as exotic or full-coverage as burqas, but I could see that they looked odd out here. I’d never thought much about them before.
‘I am aware of fashion,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t walk round Stoke Newington with my eyes closed.’
‘You only had one small bag when you fled the shtetl. You had to leave your smart clothes behind.’
I smiled. I didn’t mind him teasing me. It took the sting out of our elopement, somehow. Made it seem more light-hearted. It was true that I’d brought only one small bag when I left, but most of my clothes fitted in it. I didn’t own many. Four long skirts: two black, one navy, one dark green. Five long-sleeved blouses, four white and one blue. Three dark high-necked sweaters. In the morning I was accustomed to putting on whatever was clean. It was different out here, in what Deborah used to call, sarcastically ‘The Real World’. Women here wore such a wide variety of things, all much more tight or bare than I would wear. And trousers, too, of course. I’d brought a pair of trousers into the changing room to try. But they felt much too strange and I took them off right away. I looked like a man in them, a man with a large backside. The last time I wore trousers was when I was seven years old and put on Joel’s clothes. I got into trouble for that.
Alex bought the longer skirt that I liked and, against my protestations, the shorter blue one too. ‘You might come round to it,’ he said. He also bought several of the shirts and tops I’d tried, some of which had short sleeves. Then we went to get some tights. There were so many different types. Not simply black, but ‘barely black’ and ‘nearly black’. What was the difference between tan, cocoa, nutmeg, dark caramel and sunset? They all looked brown to me. Then there was the thickness, or rather, thinness: twenty denier, fifteen, even ten. Some were called ‘sheer’. The only tights I’d owned till now were made of thick wool.
On our way out we passed a rack of shiny dresses. ‘For Christmas Day?’ Alex said, holding one up. They had no sleeves, the necks were what Deborah would call ‘way down low’, and they were covered in what looked like… tinsel. Sequins, Alex called them.
‘The Real World contains a lot of sparkling materials,’ I said.
‘It’s not always like this, it’s just Christmas.’ Alex held the twinkling dress up against himself and made a kissing face at me. I shook my head and turned to go, but couldn’t remember which direction the door was in. The shop was enormous and there were racks of clothes and people everywhere. I turned back to Alex, he took my arm, and I jumped out of my skin, as I always did when he touched me. Which he did all the time, so I was jumping out of my skin all the time.
Back at his flat I took a pair of tights out of its packet. Fifteen denier, dark caramel. I stroked the tights against my cheek, amazed by their silkiness. Alex laughed and said I was like a GI bride with her first pair of silk stockings. I sort of understood what he meant, though I didn’t know what a GI bride was. He saw that I didn’t, and said, ‘You know what we should do?’ He got all excited, ran into his bedroom and returned with a notebook. He sat next to me, and as our bodies touched, I did the skin jump again. I apologised, but he put his arm round me, slowly, so I was prepared for it, and said, ‘You leaping in shock at my touch will never get old, Eliza.’
On the first page of the notebook, he wrote, ‘FILMS’.
I raised my eyebrows.
‘Remember the other day, when I said your eyelashes were as long as Bambi’s?’
I nodded, embarrassed.
‘You’ve never heard of Bambi, have you?’
I shook my head, relieved. ‘And you said my lips were as red as Snow White’s and I had no idea what you meant.’
‘You don’t have to pretend with me, Eliza,’ he said. ‘I know there are lots of things you haven’t encountered yet.’ Then he looked embarrassed, and we grinned at each other, me blushing, knowing we were both thinking about some of the interesting night-time things we hadn’t yet encountered together.
‘OK, so, this notebook can be a kind of cultural “to do” list. We’ll put in here some things that you’ve missed out on, and work through them together.’ He wrote ‘Bambi’ and ‘Snow White’ under the heading, then turned to the next page, and wrote
‘RECENT HISTORY’, adding ‘GI Brides’ underneath it.
‘I’ve missed twenty-three years’ worth of stuff, Alex,’ I said faintly.
‘We need a page on books,’ he said, ‘and TV, and music – oh god, there’s loads of things.’ He turned back to the film page. ‘Citizen Kane, of course. Oh, Apocalypse Now. Singin’ in the Rain, you’ll love that.’
He’d been playing me some of his favourite music, and his CDs were spread over the floor. My eye had earlier been drawn to an ochre-coloured disc, with an ink drawing of a black woman’s face. Her hair was wilder than mine, but her eyebrows, eyes and mouth were rather like my own. Her CD was called ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’. I liked the rhythm of that word, miseducation. I took the notebook and pen from Alex, and on the front cover, I wrote, ‘The Re-education of Eliza Bloom’.
‘Is this a bad idea?’ Alex said. ‘I think maybe I’m being patronising. I’m really sorry.’ He chucked the notebook on the floor.
‘No,’ I said, and meant it. This was part of why I was here, after all. I picked up the book and handed it to him. ‘I want to know what you like.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘What have I missed? I want to know everything.’
‘It’ll be fun,’ he said, his eyes shining. ‘There’s loads of things I can’t wait to share with you.’
‘What do I bring?’ I asked. ‘It sounds a bit one-way.’
‘Oh no! Not at all. You bring your own history, the things you have learned along the way, and your beautiful self. Let’s start your lists for me in the back of the book.’
He leant over and kissed me full on my Snow White lips, which made me tremble. Literally tremble, as though I was freezing, but the opposite was true. I was boiling hot. I felt sorry for that other girl, Aliza, the shadow self I left behind, left to marry Nathan, milk-and-meat, duty and rules. Sure, Aliza still had her friends and family around her, her reputation, but she didn’t have this. I pulled Alex’s head back towards me, so he could kiss me again. This was all I wanted, all I needed.
Films
Bambi. His eyelashes are not as long as yours, Eliza. This always makes me cry, by the way – don’t tell anyone.
