A Time to Love Page 9

  Mrs Murphy ignored the menace in his voice and went on placatingly, ‘Jest ’old yer foot up, there’s a dear,’ as if he were a little boy.

  But to Ellie, he was huge and horrible, filling every inch of the room. And so unjust, abusing Ma for working. She only did it because he wouldn’t work himself. He was always full of talk about how he was ‘on the point of getting the best job that ever was’ and how they’d all be rich, but the child knew that all he ever actually did was to go round scrounging, and that he spent the money he cadged on drink and wouldn’t give them any for food. Ellie had no illusions about her father. He was a coarse, idle bully and she hated him with a terrified passionate intensity, and pitied her mother for all the dreadful dirty jobs she had to do because of him. Now Ellie sat in the darkness under the bed and aimed her resentment at his boots, brooding but alert, because she knew only too painfully how dangerous he could be when he was drunk. And as she brooded she noticed that a small pile of matchboxes still lay on the floorboards near the table. He’d be bound to see ’em, the minute he looked that way. She’d better make a grab for ’em quick, or there’d be hell to pay.

  She put out a tentative hand, and moved it slowly and very very carefully towards the pile, knowing that a sudden movement would attract his eye. But her caution was in vain. At the very moment her fingers touched the thin wood, her father let out a roar and before she could withdraw her hand he’d jumped up and stamped on her fingers with his one booted foot. The pain was so excruciating she let out a cry despite herself. ‘Have I not made mesself dear?’ he shouted, kicking the offending boxes into smithereens. ‘I will not have this clotter in my house. A man’s house is his castle, so it is. And another ting! I will have obedience in mine! Is that onderstood? Come out from onder that bed or I’ll skin you alive.’ The dogs leapt about his busy feet, barking with hysterical excitement, and Mrs Murphy picked up her babies, one under each arm, and moved out of harm’s way behind the table.

  ‘Oh come on, Paddy,’ she tried. ‘She didn’t mean no ’arm.’

  Ellie crawled from under the bed, still wincing, and stood before him, her injured hand under her armpit for a little warmth to ease it. She needed to cry but was afraid of his wrath. The dogs were barking like things demented and both the babies were screaming. Behind her father’s back, her mother was mouthing ‘Say sorry’ at her, but she was rigid with pride and pain and anger, and certainly wasn’t going to apologize.

  But luckily for her, this time there wasn’t any need to say or do anything. Paddy Murphy was already dizzy with beer, and his sudden activity had made him worse. He crashed back on the bed again and dosed his eyes, belching and groaning, ‘Onfasten me boot for the love of God.’ His wife took action quickly, setting Frankie on the floor and handing baby Teresa to her sister. The sooner he was asleep the better for all of them. She removed his boot, unbuttoned his waistcoat and hauled his legs into a more comfortable position, while he belched and farted and grumbled that she was lugging him about ‘like a sack a’ taters’. But within five minutes he was asleep and snoring, even though both babies were still grizzling, and both dogs yapping.

  They gave him another five minutes just to make perfectly sure he wouldn’t wake, and then they turned him on his side and went through his pockets. He had three pennies, a ha’penny and three farthings on him. It was enough. ‘Nip down the chip shop, there’s a good gel,’ Mrs Murphy said. ‘We’ll ’ave fish an’ a penn’orth, an’ see if you can get ’im ter throw in a pickled onion.’

  On her way to the fish and chip shop Ellie examined her aching hand. The flesh was scraped from all four knuckles and purple bruises were already beginning to darken her fingers. ‘I hate ’im!’ she said to herself. ‘Hate ’im! Hate ’im!’ When she was older she’d be revenged on him. She’d make him suffer. Just see if she wouldn’t. ‘I hate ’im!’ But just for the moment she’d use her bleeding knuckles to scrounge a few more chips. Old Stan in the fish shop had a soft heart, and if she put her hands on the counter while she waited he’d be sure to notice. Which was more than her mother had, or ever did.

  In Fashion Street David had the undivided attention of three adults, even though they were all very distressed and poor Aunty Dumpling was rocking in her seat, her apron in constant fluttering action. When he’d first come rushing home, breathless and dishevelled and bloodstained, there’d been instant concern and uproar. His mother and his aunt took one hand apiece and started treatment at once, scolding and shaking their heads.

  ‘Oy-oy! Davey, bubeleh, how you come to be in such a state? So he’ll be the death of me, Dumpling.’

  ‘Such a boy. Don’t I tell you, Rachel. Hold your little hand quite still, bubeleh.’

  To his great relief, they were too concerned to question him, closely. But when his hands had been cleaned to their satisfaction and sprinkled with boracic powder and bandaged in lint and strips of sheeting, his father came home, and then of course the whole story had to be told and even supper was held up until they’d ‘got to the bottom of it’. Now they waited while Emmanuel considered, tugging the sparse hairs of his long straggly beard and sighing.

  ‘Vhy you not tell me all this vhen it begin?’ he said at last, looking at his son. His face was very long and very stern and his eyes were solemn, but at least his voice was gentle.

  Slightly encouraged, David dared an answer. It had to be the truth, because nothing less would do for such a father and such a time. ‘Vhen it begin, I didn’t know …’ he stammered, and then stopped for he realized the words weren’t completely true. He had suspected, even at the start, but he hadn’t wanted to believe evil of his friend. He’d put such thoughts away from him, and now they’d caught up with him and he was ashamed and embarrassed. ‘It vas a good job. Good money …’

  ‘Money ain’t everything,’ Mama said, her face wrinkled with concern. ‘Money ve can live vithout. So vhere’s your pride?’

  ‘Ai-yi-yi,’ Aunty Dumpling wailed, covering her head with her apron again. ‘My liddle Davey!’ she mourned, muffled under the heavy linen. ‘Vorkin’ vid a shtunk!’

  ‘I am sorry!’ David said, looking from one to the other of them, mouth trembling. ‘I vish I hadn’t. I didn’t know it vas wrong. Not wrong like a cheat …’

  ‘Now you know,’ his father said solemnly.

  ‘Oh yes. Yes.’

  ‘Ve should be in the Buildin’s,’ his mother said and the look she gave her husband was like an accusation. ‘This never vould’ve happen, ve got a place in the Buildin’s. A nice Jewish community, plenty support, nice Jewish kids for him to play with. Never would’ve happen.’

  Why was she angry with Papa? David thought. What was she accusing him for? Oh dear, this was getting worse and worse, and it was all his fault.

  ‘You get a place some day, Rachel,’ Aunty Dumpling said soothingly, giving the little scowling nod that was a sign she was trying to encourage and cheer.

  ‘Some day!’ his mother said bitterly. ‘Alvays some day. Jerusalem next year! I shall be dead and buried before I’m in the Buildin’s. Vhy you don’t ask, Emmanuel, I simply don’t understand.’

  ‘Ve talk of this some other time,’ Emmanuel said, warning her with a quick glance at the child. ‘Ve got trouble enough vithout ve go looking for it.’

  ‘Ai-yi-yi!’ Aunt Dumpling wailed, disappearing under her apron again. ‘Poor liddle Davey! Ai-yi-yi!’

  ‘So vhat ve do about him, Emmanuel?’ his mother asked, her forehead corrugated with anxiety. ‘Vhat you think? You got to say, Emmanuel. This time you got to correct him. Ve should’ve correct him vhen he vas young. Don’t I know it! None a’ this happen then, you ask me. So you don’t ask me, I know, I know. Now you tell me.’ And she gave Emmanuel a long, hard, waiting look, and wouldn’t even glance at her son. And Aunty Dumpling emerged from her apron for the answer and didn’t look at him either.

  Emmanuel gave judgement. ‘It is summertime,’ he said. ‘He should be vid other childer, out a’ doors, at play. This he must
forfeit. A child who is too foolish to know vhich men to trust must stay vithin doors. You understand this, David? You shall go to shul, you shall walk on the Shabbas, you shall run errands. No more than this. No games, for they lead to temptation. This you accept, nu?’

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of conduct expected. But David agreed with it anyway. It was entirely just, and it felt like a protection. If he stayed indoors he wouldn’t have to face Mr Crusher and explain why he’d failed to turn up on Sunday. ‘Yes, Father,’ he said meekly. And his mother smiled at him at last.

  Nevertheless it was a hard punishment, for he enjoyed the street games so much and yearned to be out in the sunshine. He ran as many errands as he could, for his mother and the lady along the corridor and Aunty Dumpling and anyone else who asked, but he was always scrupulously careful to run all the way there and back and to stay no longer than absolutely necessary, because he was working out his punishment and it was a matter of pride to do it properly. But he missed his friends with an aching emptiness that made each day longer and longer, and after a week he took to sitting beside the window so that he could watch them in the street below.

  ‘We should let him out for an hour or two, now, maybe?’ Rachel urged, for the sight of his pale streaked face peering from the window made her yearn with pity for him. It was a long punishment for a child so young, and she felt worse about it because she’d urged it so strongly.

  But Emmanuel was adamant. ‘We make a decision, we stick to it,’ he said. ‘He must learn, Rachel. This time we must be cruel to be kind.’

  In the end Hymie the Brain found a solution for them all. Or to be more accurate, Hymie the Brain’s measles.

  Hyman Levy was the youngest in a large family, and his mother cared for him like a hothouse plant, fussing over his health and constantly anxious. After such a debilitating disease as the measles, there was no question of him being allowed out in the streets until at least three weeks had passed, and even then she would have to think about it most seriously. But she and Rachel saw nothing to prevent him from trotting next door and spending a few hours playing with David, ‘Now and then, and providing they are both quiet and sensible, nu?’

  Now and then rapidly became every afternoon, for the two boys were glad of each other’s company, and soon found that they had a lot in common. They went to the same shul, and had puzzled over the same passages from the Torah, and now they were both waiting for the Day of Atonement, for they both felt they’d offended their parents, one through disobedience which he was sure had led to illness, the other through foolishness which he was sure had led to crime. So they talked, and pondered the difficulty of life, and comforted one another, and their mothers were well pleased by their seriousness.

  On the third afternoon Hymie came to the house with a copy of the Daily Graphic, and the two boys read the news, which they decided was rather boring, and David discovered a cartoon. He’d never seen such a drawing before and found it intriguing.

  ‘Vhy they draw this man with such a big head?’ he asked his knowledgeable friend.

  ‘It’s what they do,’ Hymie explained ‘It’s ter make yer laugh, I think. They always draw the bodies littler an’ the ’eads bigger. Some things bigger’n they really are, some things smaller. It’s called a cartoon. That one’s got a big hooter. Look!’

  ‘I could do that,’ David said, studying the little drawing. ‘I’ll bet.’

  So they found pencil and brown paper.

  ‘So who you draw?’ Hymie asked, settling himself on the other side of the table.

  ‘Guess!’ David said, and he began with the straight lines of a small flat body, pin-tucked bodice, straight skirt, pointed feet The huge oval head took several attempts to get to the right shape, but he didn’t rub anything out because he was working so quickly, and presently the face began to emerge, with a small cottage-loaf bun right on top of the skull, and two black dots for eyes set in the centre of a pair of enormous spectacles, and an inverted crescent for a mouth, a very mean inverted crescent.

  ‘It’s the Killer!’ Hymie said. ‘That’s ever so good. Let me ’ave a go.’

  His Killer was a copy and rather a lopsided one, and while he was busy with it David went on to draw his father, striding legs like black v-shaped scissors, and a long body, stooping forward, and a long straggly beard composed of short wavy pencil lines, and a long nose like a sharp triangle poking out from under the brim of that familiar black hat.

  ‘They’re ever so good, your drawings,’ Hymie said, with genuine admiration.

  David shrugged, because it wouldn’t have done to appear proud. If he had a talent it was necessary to be modest about it. But then he smiled. And went on smiling until his face was glowing with the pleasure of praise and achievement. ‘We draw some more tomorrow, nu?’ he said.

  From then on they spent a part of each afternoon drawing cartoons: Aunty Dumpling, bosom like a bolster, two fat chins one under the other, button nose and round eyes; Mrs Finkleheim with that wart on her chin, hairs and all, and her untidy eyebrows, like the spines on a porcupine; Hymie himself, his short dark hair a series of straight pencil lines sticking up in the air, his nose curved like a beak, his brown eyes very close together in the inner curves of his round spectacles; the obvious features made bigger, the unremarkable ones ignored.

  ‘This holiday,’ Hymie remarked, admiring his portrait, ‘can go on as long as it likes.’

  But September was approaching fast, and soon they would be back at school and up in the big boys, and David would have to face his hero and explain why he hadn’t turned up that Sunday afternoon. Because he had given his word, and Alfie was his friend, and even if Mr Crusher was doing something illegal, that didn’t make Alfie a crook too. Did it? No, surely not. Alfie was one of the best boys in the school. But what could he possibly say about it all? How could he explain? His spirits quailed at the mere thought.

  ‘One thing,’ Hymie comforted, ‘we shan’t ’ave to ’ave nothink ter do with that Smelly Ellie now.’

  ‘Nor the Killer,’ David said.

  But they were wrong.

  Chapter Seven

  All through the long bug-bitten days of August while the streets of Whitechapel grew dirtier and more evil-smelling by the hour, Ellie had been looking forward to September and green gardens. Her dreams were sweet with the smell of hop fields, and after a supper of stolen bread and half-rotten fruit, she remembered meals in the open air, sausages tasting of charcoal, fried bread dripping fat, and cocoa made with that odd rich country milk. She would walk through the narrow alleys by Spitalfields Market and be cheered because she knew that in Kent the fields would be wide and the sky high above her head, and that soon she would be there.

  The Murphy family went hopping for three weeks every September, leaving their debts and their worries behind them, and for Ellie it was the best time of the whole year. Even when it rained and their makeshift tents let in water, and the adults all around her began the day cold and grumbling, she skipped off to the farm shop for their milk and bread and tea, singing to herself with pleasure. It was a good life out in the fields, sitting astride the bin frame as though it were a horse, and skimming the furry hops from the bines with both hands, quick, quick, oh so quick, and everybody saying what a fine picker she was.

  And her father was much better behaved out in the countryside too. He still drank a great deal and came roaring home from the local inn in the darkness, lurching from hedge to hedge, with his dogs yapping at his heels, and then pretended to get into the wrong bed once he was in the tent and made all the other women screech and giggle, but he was more likely to be affable than violent. And although it was annoying to hear him bragging about his country childhood when she knew very well he’d been born and bred in Belfast, she had to admit he worked hard once they sounded the hooter in the morning, even when he had a thick head. Her two brothers, Paddy and Seamus, were as lazy as ever, of course, but here at least they were expected to help and she was allowed t
o give ’em a whack if they were slacking. Which she did as often as she could and with enormous satisfaction, because they were a right pair a’ horrers, proper little toughs, and they needed knocking into shape.

  But that September was different, although it began well enough, with two days of warm sunshine and easy picking. Really good days. Too good to last, the old hands said. And although they were mocked for their pessimism, they were right. For many of the families scrambling from the train at Marden Station on that cheerful outward trek were unwittingly carrying an extra item of luggage with them that year, and the item was incubating.

  On the third morning, Seamus refused to get up. He lay in the straw bed he shared with Ellie and his two younger brothers and groaned. ‘Leave orf, Ellie. I’m poorly.’

  ‘I’ll give yer poorly,’ his sister said. ‘You ain’t gettin’ out a’ your share wiv a trick like that, an’ don’t you think it. Get up this minute or I’ll give yer whatfor.’

  But when she pulled him out from under the blanket, he lay on the floor where she’d dropped him, as though he’d lost the use of his legs, and at that Mr Murphy came lumbering across in the half-light to see what was the matter.

  ‘What’s op wid me boyoh?’ he asked, lifting the child onto his knee.

  ‘Me eyes hurt,’ Seamus said, rubbing them.

  All the other inhabitants of the tent came gathering round too, and Mrs Shaunnessy brought the kerosene lamp with her and held it over their heads so that the cone of its oily light would illuminate the bed, for it was six in the morning and there was precious little daylight inside the tent. ‘Sickenin’ for something,’ she said, feeling the child’s forehead with her rough palm. ‘Take my word fer it, Mrs Murphy.’

  ‘That’s all we need!’ Nell Murphy said, peering at his flushed face with concern. ‘Got a pain anywhere, ’ave yer, lovey?’

  ‘Course ’e ain’t,’ Ellie said scornfully. ‘There’s nothink the matter wiv ’im. ’E’s puttin’ it on.’