A Time to Love Page 4

  David was completely baffled and very upset. He didn’t understand what she meant by that hard word ‘mocked’, for it wasn’t a word or an activity he’d ever come across. And he couldn’t understand the word ‘benefactor’ either so it was impossible for him to know what it was he’d done that was so terribly wrong. But he knew he was in serious trouble, for the class had sucked in its breath with anticipation, and he could feel anger tightening Miss Killip’s fingers like talons. ‘Please,’ he said, trying to wriggle his shoulder out of her grasp. ‘Please not to hurt me. You hold me too hard.’

  ‘I’ll hold you too hard, monster!’ she said, pinching him. ‘You just see if I don’t. I knew we’d have trouble with you the minute I clapped eyes on you. Spoiling your book with all this scribble. You’re a naughty naughty boy.’ She took a large India rubber from her pocket and plonked it down on the Reverend Jamieson’s upstretched arms. ‘Rub it all out,’ she said.

  ‘It is my drawing,’ he protested weakly, his eyes filling with tears at the injustice and humiliation of it. Although he couldn’t have put his feelings into words, he knew it was quite wrong to destroy the picture he’d created. His parents would never have asked him to do such a thing.

  ‘Rub it out!’

  Anger began to uncurl inside his chest. ‘I von’t,’ he said.

  Her nose was pinched with fury at such insubordination. ‘You will do as you’re told!’ she shouted. She seized the rubber, and forcing it roughly inside his fingers, began to scrub at the page.

  All his lovely drawing being smudged and ruined! It was dreadful. Horrible. He fought against the pressure of her hand, wriggling and squirming, but she continued remorselessly. ‘Rub it all out!’

  ‘I von’t!’ he said, red-faced with anger and struggle. ‘I von’t!’

  She stood behind him, forcing his face down towards the terrible thing she was making him do, rubbing his nose in it. He tried to claw at her hand to make her stop, but she went on, scrubbing the paper harder than ever. There was a hole in the middle of the window now. Just where the lovely red light had been. It was too much to be endured. With an anger so sudden and overwhelming that the whole room was red with it, he bent his head to that awful scrubbing hand and bit it as hard as he could.

  She let out one surprised scream. And the class hissed with astonishment. There was a long silence while the two of them looked at one another, eyes locked in hatred and disbelief. Then the teacher walked slowly back to her desk and picked up a long narrow cane and flexed it in her hands.

  ‘I don’t like caning boys on their first day at school,’ she said, and her voice was icy, ‘but you leave me no alternative. Stand over here.’

  He stood where she indicated, aware that his heart was knocking against his ribs and that the class was watching him with open-mouthed concentration. After the terror of what he’d done, he was frightened beyond feeling.

  She hit him with the stick three times on the tender flesh behind his knees. He offered no resistance at all. Nothing was real now except the pain. ‘Now sit down,’ she said, ‘and let that be an end of it.’

  When he got back to his seat, he began to cry, fat tears welling out of his eyes and wetting his cheeks. He was humiliated and hurt and afraid and there were red weals rising on his legs: What would his parents say when they saw them? How would he explain?

  ‘Ai!’ his father moaned, rocking in his chair. ‘Shame you bring upon this house, David. Your mother you dishonour. Me you dishonour. Vhat vill become of us? Ai-yi-yi!’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ David said humbly. There was a translucent innocence about this child when he was distressed. He looked like a cherub, his pale face a perfect oval, his cheeks flushed golden brown, his huge eyes luminous with tears, his mouth softer because it was trembling. He had told his father the truth, and now he had to witness the distress he’d caused. It was far more painful than the caning had been, for he loved his parents with the most profound passion. They were kind and patient and long-suffering and they loved him dearly and he knew he should never upset them. And now his mother was crying and his father rocking. And it was all his fault.

  ‘Ve spare the rod vid this child,’ Rachel reproached her husband. ‘Now see vhat ve got.’ She had always been sure the child should have been hit, even as a very little boy, but Emmanuel would have none of it ‘Never rule a child through fear,’ he’d said. ‘He must obey because he wishes to obey. The Lord will correct him. Whom the Lord loveth He correcteth.’ And even when David threw himself about in the most passionate temper tantrums he was held and soothed and never hit. ‘Now see vhat ve got,’ she said.

  ‘You doubt, Rachel,’ Emmanuel sighed. ‘Have faith, bubeleh. Ve did right by the boy. I know it.’ Then he turned his attention to David. ‘Always contain your anger, my son,’ he said gently. ‘Never strike out. Never ever bite. You vill promise this?’

  The promise was given and washed into his heart with hot shamed tears. But deep down inside him, deeper and firmer than the place in his chest where all these strong emotions were shaking him now, was the knowledge that it had all been unfair.

  Chapter Three

  When they’d eaten what they could of their midday meal, and he’d watched his father stooping back to Mr Goldman’s workshop, still pulling his beard with disappointment and worry, David felt worse than ever. He knew he had to go back to school that afternoon because everybody went to school once they were five, unless they were idiots like Moishe Little-head or that funny girl from the corner shop who dribbled all the time. But he wished he didn’t have to. What if he did something else that was naughty? Just thinking about it made him feel sick.

  He walked as slowly as he could, dragging his feet, and stopping twice to do up his bootlaces, but although his mother looked reproachful she didn’t scold and she didn’t tell him to hurry. He arrived in the playground just as a plump lady came out onto the top step and rang the bell.

  ‘You vill be a good boy, this time, bubeleh, and keep quiet and obey the teacher?’ his mother said anxiously. Worry lines puckered her forehead even though he nodded most earnestly to reassure them both.

  Miss Killip was wearing an ostentatious bandage and a very sour expression, but she made no reference to his behaviour and when she took the register and called his name, she didn’t even look up when he answered. So that was all right. The afternoon began with another scratching of slates, so he was able to keep his head down too, and when the room grew darker and darker he felt comfortably hidden in the shadows.

  At playtime he took his coat, cap and muffler from the peg in the cloakroom he now recognized as his own and crept into the playground, feeling tired and apprehensive. And to his great surprise he was greeted as a hero.

  ‘Was you the kid bit the Killer?’

  ‘Good fer you if yer did!’

  ‘Make ’er bleed, did yer? Serve ’er right!’

  Ruby Miller, the girl who sat behind him in class, put her arm round his neck as though they’d been friends for years. ‘She didden ’alf wop ’im,’ she said. ‘Nasty bit a’ work that Killer.’

  ‘Poor you! Did yer cry?’

  ‘No he never.’

  ‘Let’s ’ave a look-see.’

  His weals were examined with growls of hatred and sighs of sympathy, especially from the big girls, and for twenty rewarding minutes he was the centre of admiring attention, allowed to skip first and given a second turn when the rope tripped his legs, taught hopscotch and two dipping rhymes,’ and fed with shreds of liquorice stick and dips into sherbet dabs and a three-second suck of Ruby Miller’s gobstopper. When he filed back into the shadowy classroom, he was warm and comforted. His parents might be shocked and saddened by his behaviour but his new friends approved. Ruby Miller winked at him as they all sat down, and that made him feel at home somehow, as though he belonged.

  The room was very dark now, and when Miss Killip distributed a pile of dog-eared reading books, it was almost impossible to see the letters, even the big ones on th
e cover. He looked at her fierce face, glasses glinting in the half-light, and despite the approval of all his new friends, he was afraid again. Would she be cross with him if he couldn’t see? And worse, would she hit him? It was pleasant to be a hero, but he quailed at the memory of that cane.

  But before she could be cross with anybody, there was a polite knock at the door and the school keeper arrived in the room carrying a long hooked pole which seemed to be alight at one end, like a long thin candle taller than a man. Now David noticed that there were four huge gaslights suspended from the beams, and he watched, fascinated, as the man proceeded to light them. First he fixed the hook into one of the two chains that dangled from each light, and gave it a gentle tug downwards. Then gas hissed into the mantle and was lit with a plop by the wick at the end of the pole. It glowed faintly at first, like the light at the edge of a candle flame, pale and watery and rather blue, but then it began to swell, rounding out and becoming plump and yellow and filling the mande. A lovely colour, David thought, enjoying it, as the man moved on to the next And then the next, and then…

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re gaping at, David Cheifitz!’ the teacher said sternly.

  He dropped his eyes to his book at once, but as he moved his head he was aware that faces near him were grinning encouragement. And when the school keeper left the room, he looked straight down at him and winked! What a surprise! A grown-up winking like Ruby Miller! And a really friendly wink, almost as though he was showing approval too. What a surprise!

  So he found it was easy to settle into this new life after all. Especially now that he had friends to warn him of its dangers. He soon discovered that it was ‘cissy’ to be escorted to school by your mother, and after several gentle hints and the repeated assertion that he could find his way by himself now with no trouble, see if he couldn’t, Mama stayed at home and allowed him the freedom of the streets.

  And what a freedom it was! There was so much happening there, and so many games to play. You could swing from the lampposts on a long frayed rope that spun you out into the air as though you were flying; you could skip with all the others in the longest skipping rope in the world; you could play hopscotch and marbles, ‘it’ and French touch; and when you were just a little bit older and stronger there were all sorts of other games waiting for you, rough dangerous games like Releaso, and British Bulldog, and Jimmy Knacker, where your gang all piled on top of another gang against the playground wall, and you jumped onto the pile of bodies, whooping as you ran towards it and landing with a thud that made your heart leap, even if you were only watching.

  It was a new world, with its own rules, its own punishments and its own rewards. A secret world from which all adults, however kindly, were naturally and totally excluded. Within a week he had been absorbed into it and by it. He’d learned to cry ‘fainites’ when the game was too rough for him to bear, he’d run the gauntlet twice, and won a fine alley playing marbles with Ruby Miller, and even been allowed to ‘dip out’ for hide an’ seek. When the call went out at the beginning of playtime, ‘All-y all-y in!’ he was the first to run and join.

  He soon realized that to make life tolerable in the classroom all he had to do was sit up straight, keep very quiet and do everything he was told, as soon as he’d worked out what it was. He got into the habit of taking a quick glance round at Hymie the Brain, because he always knew what the teacher wanted, even when she gave the most incomprehensible orders.

  Drawing was much too dangerous to be done at school, of course. He knew that now. But it didn’t matter because he could draw at home. At school he copied leaves and heart shapes, squares and diamonds, working mechanically and almost without needing to think what he was doing. At home he tried to draw people and did his best to make his figures as realistic as he could, concentrating hard and watching his model for long long minutes, absorbed and happy and rewarded. He knew and accepted that they were two quite separate activities, like everything else in this new life he’d begun.

  School and home were separate. And so were the classroom and the playground. He behaved in quite a different way when he was in the playground with his friends, as if he were a different person. And of course he was a different person. At home he was quiet and well-behaved and contented, in the playground he was one of a rough, noisy, badly-behaved gang, and if he’d been asked he’d have been very hard put to it to say which of the lives he enjoyed most. At home he was glad to be quiet and loved, and felt it would be admirable to follow his father’s example into a life as long-suffering and patient and kindly. At school he enjoyed the racket and the sense of danger, the unexpectedness and excitement and confusion, and felt that what he really wanted to be was the leader of a gang like Alfie Miller.

  Alfie Miller was his hero. He was Ruby’s brother, and one of the biggest boys in the playground, tougher than anybody. He was eight years old and had his own gang. He walked with a broad-shouldered swagger, his fists thrust deep into the tattered pockets of his cut-down coat and his cap pushed carelessly to the back of his head so that his face could be clearly seen. He had very big feet and very big hands, and his knees and knuckles were perpetually adorned with scars, for he was a prodigious scrapper and never backed down from a fight, or called ‘fainites’, no matter how much blood was being shed. But it was his face that David admired most, for his face was a war mask, calculated to strike terror into the toughest and inspire total obedience in all his sworn followers. Every time he saw that face, tough and scowling, surveying its kingdom, David wished he could be one of the followers. Such a broad, tomcat face, with hard round eyes, as pale as green glass, and high brick-red cheek bones, a tight mouth to show how brave he was, and a shock of tangled brown hair covering his forehead like a mane.

  Spring finally melted the last of the ice ridges, and the tailoring trade picked up, ready for the summer season, and Miss Killip pronounced herself satisfied that David Cheifitz could read. ‘He’s done quite well for a Jewboy,’ she told her colleagues. But it still annoyed her that he had such a pretty face. She preferred her pupils to be rough and ignorant and to look it, bow-legged with rickets, or hollow-eyed with fatigue, or gawping with adenoids, ill shod, shaven headed, badly spoken. She could cope with children like that, and even, at the end of the year, feel a little sympathy for them. But this child had such an unsuitably soulful face with all that dark hair and those big eyes. He looked out of place in Whitechapel. A creature apart, who had to be made to conform. ‘You won’t like him,’ she said to Miss Andrews, who took the next class. ‘He’s an odd little thing.’

  Fortunately the odd little thing had no idea he was being given a bad name, for summer had brought another delight to the crowded pavements of Brick Lane. The first of the hurdy-gurdies had arrived.

  It was a splendid hurdy-gurdy, luridly painted, loud and tinny, worked by a young Italian in a high crowned hat, and it was waiting for them when they all came tumbling out of school one Monday afternoon. It could play all the liveliest songs from the music halls, ‘I’m ’Enery the Eighth, I am’, and ‘Any Old Iron’, and even ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’. So it wasn’t long before sufficient pennies and ha’pennies had been collected and the dancing could begin. And for the first rapturous time in his life, David could join in. He’d seen the hurdy-gurdies playing in the street below his window oh so often when he was little, but his mother had always kept him within doors. Now at last he was free to dance.

  ‘Come on, Davey, give us yer ’and,’ Ruby Miller said and off they went, jumping and leaping with the rest of the excited crowd, as the music throbbed and clamoured. Petticoats swirled and aprons bounced, hands clapped, arm linked with arm, and down on the dirty cobbles footwear of every kind kicked the dust into the air, boots highly polished, boots pink with brick dust, boots broken and split, boots without laces and boots without toes, and in amongst those crunching hobnails small bare feet, scarred and grey with long-established grime, but lifting and lilting with the best. By the end of the first dance, Dav
id was quite drunk with the sheer joy of it. It made him remember the words he’d recited in the heder last Thursday. ‘Serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song.’ Gladness! Gladness! How right it was! When the last tune had been played and the hurdy-gurdy moved on to bewitch another street, he was panting and dishevelled, but totally happy.

  And then Ruby added reward to rapture. ‘Me an’ Alfie an’ our Amy’s off up ter the Flowery ternight,’ she said. ‘Why dontcher come?’

  ‘I vould like,’ he said solemnly, hoping his mother would allow it.

  ‘Be outside yer door, five o’clock,’ she said as she skipped away.

  If only his mother would allow it! That morning they’d started pulling down the old houses on the north side of Flower and Dean Street. He’d heard the thumps and crashes as he dressed, and they sounded very exciting. It would be wonderful to go and see it.

  He ate his tea quietly, watching his mother and wondering if it was the right moment for him to open the subject, but she was hard at work, sitting beside the window basting a coat, her head bent low over the cloth and her right hand moving so quickly it looked quite blurred, and he knew from experience that she rarely allowed him out of the house when she was busy.

  ‘Soon you will finish, Mama?’ he said hopefully, but her answer wasn’t encouraging.

  ‘An hour, two maybe. Oy, so much vork!’ She pushed the hair out of her eyes and sighed, and tried to comfort herself. Tor vhat I complain, bubeleh? Vork means money, don’t I know it!’

  ‘You vould like an errand run, maybe?’ he tried. If she sent him to buy or borrow, he could go to the Flowery on the way back, and please her at the same time.