Sarah stood at the scullery sink, scrubbing the frayed collar of the lodger’s shirt. Tonight she would have to tell Abraham, it could not be put off any longer. She tried to occupy her mind with other things, to set the new anxiety aside. Salaman was now paying Abraham fifteen shillings a week and thought it was a fortune. But older children ate larger portions than little ones and the Friday night chicken was no longer sufficient for Saturday also. Dinner on Shabbos these days was just tsimmes and gravy. Thank God for David’s job with Radinsky. Next year he’d be earning money instead of the greengrocer’s throw-outs. But it was not yet next year. Why wouldn’t Abraham leave Salaman and go where the pay was better? She knew he had had offers and turned them down.
She rinsed the shirt and sighed. Lodgers, what could you do with them? They expected to be waited on hand and foot for the little they paid you. She put the laundry into the zinc tub which the family took turns to bathe in, once a week. Her lodgers she made go to the public baths, they could take it or leave it, though in other ways she tried to treat them like one of the family. Some she’d had in the past were pleasant fellows, but Manny Zelnik, her present one, was a churlish, middle-aged man and she wished she could afford to tell him to go. Soon, she’d have to, there wouldn’t be space to accommodate him. After David’s Bar Mitzvah he would be a man and Esther must be moved into a separate room.
What would David say when he learned his mother was pregnant? Boys of his age knew how babies were made. Would he be shocked to think of his parents that way? But first she must tell Abraham. When he knew there would be another mouth to feed, perhaps he would leave Salaman. The pregnancy was not welcome, but maybe it would do some good.
She was hanging the washing on a clothes horse in front of the fire when Sigmund walked in. In Strangeways, doors were left on the latch during the day and it was not unusual for someone to pop in for a neighbourly chat. But it was only women who did so.
“Something’s wrong?” she greeted him. The last time he had paid her a morning visit it had concerned David and she felt apprehensive. What was going on with her high-school-boy son now? “Tell me already!”
Sigmund shrugged, which meant there was something. Then he smiled, so maybe it wasn’t anything bad?
“First I want to tell you David’s Bar Mitzvah suit is ready for a fitting.”
“And second?”
He removed his pince-nez and studied them, then replaced them on his nose. “He has it in his head to be a solicitor.”
Mr. Forrest’s offer to article him had been relayed to David after they met at the party. Jim had not wanted to build up his hopes until it was definite. As usual, David had consulted his mentor Sigmund.
“It’s not such a terrible thing to be,” Sigmund chuckled when Sarah looked at him uncertainly.
Sarah sat down on the nearest chair, which fortunately was right behind her. Her legs felt weak and the room was spinning round. Don’t get any big ideas, she’d said to him. And now this!
“He’ll make plenty of money,” Sigmund informed her.
“And you have to be a millionaire before you can be one.” She picked up the poker and gave the fire an angry stir. “Remember when he cut off his hair? So here is another result of it.”
Sigmund remained silent, but his eyes were twinkling roguishly.
“From one thing comes another,” Sarah said accusingly. “Why d’you think I blamed you when he went on a train on Shabbos? Because it was you who came here to make peace between David and me after he cut the hair. If you hadn’t talked me out of it, I’d have made him grow it again. He wants to look like all the other boys at the new school, you said. Don’t make things harder for him, you said. And I let you persuade me you were right. Never before have I compromised on our religious teachings and the first time I do, look what comes of it. I shouldn’t have listened to you, the next thing he’ll want to cut off his nose so he shouldn’t look Jewish!”
“A nose he can’t live without. And who says he doesn’t want to look Jewish? So he wants to look English also, what’s the harm? Here is not Russia or Austria. In this country a Jew can also be an Englishman. But this has nothing to do with him studying law.”
“Except that you encourage him to think everything he sets his heart on he can have.”
“If you don’t want your son to be a solicitor, all right,” Sigmund shrugged.
Sarah took David’s patched undervest from the clothes horse and turned it over to dry the other side. Sigmund must be meshugah, out of his mind encouraging the boy to aim so high. “What has wanting to do with it?” she asked him bitterly. All the things she wanted for her family rose like a mirage before her eyes and drifted away. For the unborn child in her womb, who knew what the future might bring? But for David, now? Impossible.
After Sigmund had left, Sarah could not settle to her usual Monday routine and went to dust the parlour, though it did not need dusting. It was the best furnished parlour in the street and, not for the first time, she mused on how and why she had acquired it. Everything in it had come from Salaman. First, he had sent the sofa on which his wife had lain dying, though Sarah was not aware of this. The china cabinet and a pedestal with an aspidistra to stand upon it had followed, then he had brought the hearthrug and a small, octagonal table to stand in the middle of the room. Sarah had not wanted to accept any of them, but Abraham had insisted, and she had grown accustomed to having them.
For Abraham they were a constant reminder of his first day at the factory. Giving things away did not tally with his employer’s penny-pinching nature and it was as if he had wanted to clear his home of everything that made him think of his dead wife. Abraham could not look at the sofa without seeing the picture which had engraved itself on his mind that morning and it deepened his compassion for Salaman, for whom the removal of these mementoes of his married life had done nothing to lessen his painful recollections.
It was in the parlour that Abraham learned Sarah was pregnant. The grumpy lodger had not yet returned from his day’s stint shmearing waterproofs, but the children were in the kitchen and she beckoned her husband into the front room when he arrived home from work, unable to contain her secret a moment longer.
“Sit down, you look tired,” she said scanning his face.
Abraham could feel the chill of the room striking his lungs and began to cough, wondering in a distant part of his mind if the steam from the pressing irons had begun to affect his chest. They never used the parlour, why had she brought him in here? What was so wrong it couldn’t be told in the children’s presence, or wait until they had gone to bed? He remained standing, his back to the window. He could never bring himself to sit on the sofa because of its associations.
Sarah had lit the gas mantle and he was silhouetted against the darkness outside. His shoulders seemed more hunched than they used to be. Bending over his cobbler’s bench had made its mark on his posture while he was still a youth, but wielding the heavy irons in the factory had added to this. Love for him welled over her, concern too. How hard he worked to provide for them. And now she must tell him his burden was to be increased. But was it not love which had brought this about? Hers for him and his for her? The knowledge strengthened her. It was the only solid, unchanging thing in their lives.
“There’s going to be another Sandberg in the Spring,” she said simply.
Abraham’s expression lit with relief. “I thought it was bad news.”
“And who could blame you for thinking it isn’t good news either?”
He was by her side in two strides, gathering her close. Then he held her away from him and smiled into her eyes. “A child is a blessing, Sorrel. God is good to us.”
Salaman came into the pressing room and sat down on a stool. “How goes it with you, Abie?” he asked morosely.
We’re going to have another child, we don’t have to struggle enough, Abraham wanted to say. His joy at the news had not blinded him to what it meant. And next week is David’s Bar Mitzvah, he felt like telling Salaman. We’ll have to provide cakes and wine for the whole congregation, or how will we hold up our heads? So it isn’t a big congregation, even a small one is too large for our purse. He smiled and said nothing. By now he knew his employer came to him to pour out his own troubles, not to listen to his. And who else did the poor fellow have to talk to? His relatives had lost patience with him because he had not yet remarried and the loneliness was his own choice.
“The matchmakers have found me a widow. Like Venus de Milo she looks,” Salaman confided.
Abraham spat on his finger and dabbed the iron to test the heat. “She can cook also?”
“Last night I had potato latkes at her house to melt in the mouth,” Salaman drooled ecstatically.
“I’m very pleased for you.”
“There’s only one thing, Abie.”
Abraham knew what it was without being told.
“My Bessie, bless her, she doesn’t like her.” Salaman sighed heavily and lit one of the cigarettes he chain-smoked to pacify himself.
Ladies of all shapes and sizes had been presented for his selection since the death of his wife. Several had taken his fancy, but none had taken Bessie’s. Everyone but Salaman himself was aware that Bessie had no intention of having a stepmother. Her father introduced each new candidate to her with hope in his heart, but she found fault with all of them.
“If a man doesn’t listen to his own flesh and blood, Abie, there’d only be trouble afterwards.” Salaman heaved himself off the stool and began pacing restlessly, weaving his way between the piles of unpressed garments which littered the floor, as if the movement might help him get whatever was ailing him out of his system.
“It’s me my daughter’s thinking of!” he declaimed halting by the ironing board, his fierce gaze challenging Abraham to deny this.
The underpresser had been sent on an errand, which always meant Salaman wanted to talk to Abraham alone. After he had unburdened himself, he would waddle back to the workroom with his feelings temporarily relieved, but would return to repeat the process a few days later, when his inner turmoil was ready to erupt again.
Abraham would not have dreamed of denying his employer’s interpretation of Bessie’s motives, though he was sure it was incorrect. Salaman must be allowed to believe somebody loved him.
“Like her brother she isn’t,” the unhappy man said sourly. “I could get run over by a tram and Saul wouldn’t care.” He blew his nose as emotions overcame him. “Such a life I’ve got, Abie. So what can you do?”
Abraham thought there was plenty he could do about Bessie, who was now eleven and not a pleasant girl. Spoiled children were hard to find in Strangeways, but Bessie was a notable exception. He recalled how after her mother’s death she had been petted by everybody, but had been quick to take advantage of the kindness showered upon her. Sympathy does not last forever and people came to realise she had been over-indulged all her life. How could a man as shrewd as Salaman be putty in her hands? Abraham had often asked himself when Bessie flounced into the factory as if she, not he, owned it and was rude to the workers. But Salaman would just pat her pudgy cheeks and beam with pride. And his meanness did not extend to her, there was nothing she could not have if she sat on his lap and asked for it, Abraham had seen her do this many times.
God help him when she grows up, he thought. As yet her wants were limited to having more of everything than her schoolmates had. The other little girls only had one Sabbath outfit and were glad to have that, but Bessie had two.
“You’ve seen my little princess in her new coat, Abie?” Salaman asked. “She fancied one like Miriam Moritz’s so I asked your friend the tailor to make it for her.”
Abraham started guiltily. It was as though Salaman had been reading his thoughts! “Sigmund told me, he said it fitted her like a glove.”
“It shouldn’t? With what I paid him for it?”
Abraham had not seen Bessie in the coat, but his children had told him she looked dreadful in it, because it was green, like Miriam’s, and made her skin look the same colour. He tried to discourage them from disliking Bessie, but could well understand why they did. She never offered her sweets, though she was the only one who ever had money to buy any and he had once seen her wave a liquorice stick, tauntingly, under Esther’s envious nose.
“Saul? He could stand on his head and I wouldn’t have a new coat made for him,” Salaman suddenly flared. “The old raincoat he has from the factory is more than he deserves, the way he treats me!” he added as he went back to the workroom.
But Abraham knew that Saul never asked his father for anything. He was the direct opposite of Bessie and would have given his last farthing to anyone in need. Eli the cutter had once told him Mrs. Salaman had been like that and it had made trouble for her with her husband.
Saul had left school recently and was working in the factory, but spent his days watching the clock until he could go to see Helga. When his father returned from talking with Abraham, he treadled his sewing machine faster. Salaman had that effect on everyone.
“Remember, a boy who will one day own a business must be able to do every job properly himself,” Salaman said inspecting the garment in Saul’s machine and frowning at a crooked seam. “If I let you do the cutting, the garments would only be fit for humpbacks!” he exclaimed wrathfully.
Saul was to be taught every aspect of the trade, but his apathy was plain to see. If only he was like David Sandberg, Salaman thought as his son returned his gaze sullenly. A boy with a head on him. Ambitious. Who respects his father. The last thought was like gall in his throat. He was wealthier than anyone realised and it might seem strange that a man in his position should envy a presser earning a pittance. But Salaman did.
David rose on the morning of his Bar Mitzvah with all a young boy’s excitement at the dawning of a great day. A January frost had powdered the rooftops and the pavements whilst he slept and he scraped the soles of his new shoes with Sammy’s penknife so he would not slip whilst walking to shul, hoping God would forgive him for doing this on Shabbos.
His mother had laid out the blue serge suit and the pristine white shirt he was to wear with it in the parlour. He tiptoed downstairs and dressed there, in the biting cold, before anyone else was up.
The kitchen clock said 6:30 and the service would not begin until eight. How was he to pass the hour and a half which stretched between? He took down the mirror from the wall and balanced it against a chair, to admire his long trousers. Having his legs covered meant nobody would notice his knees knocking when he got up to read his portion of the Torah. Perhaps that was why boys had their first pair of long trousers for their Bar Mitzvah? Would the suit still fit him in five years’ time, so he could wear it for university when he went there to study law? When Jim had first told him about his father’s offer to article him, he couldn’t believe his good fortune. Now, it was just the goal he must aim for. Sometimes, he daydreamed about sitting at a big desk opposite Jim, with legal documents spread all around them. But most of the time he kept his mind on his studies, which was the way to make the dream come true. He had to pass his matriculation exam, but did not doubt he would do so.
He was still gazing at his trousers in the mirror, deliberately thinking of everything but his Bar Mitzvah, when the rest of the family trooped in and roared with laughter. His mother served breakfast, when Mrs. Moritz arrived to help her prepare the food for those who would come home with them after the service.
Cakes and wine for the congregation had been taken to the synagogue yesterday. Everything was under control, except David’s nerves. His teeth began to chatter when they left the house and he said it was because he was cold, but nobody believed him.
Sitting on his hard, wooden chair, with his father and Sammy on one side of him and Sigmund on the other, he calmed down. The shul was full of men and being Bar Mitzvah had happened to all of them. He wished he could see his mother and Miriam, but they were hidden behind the brown-cloth screen. Isaac Salaman arrived with Saul and shook his hand solemnly. Then Rabbi Lensky took his place in the pulpit and he knew nothing could stop it from happening. Soon, Mr. Rubens the beadle would beckon to him and he would have to stand up before the congregation.
When the moment came, he was not scared at all. His father was already standing beside the rabbi, waiting to receive him. The scrolls on which the Torah was inscribed had been taken from the holy Ark and their rich, velvet and gold covers removed. The one from which he was to read was open on the lectern, ready for him to begin.
At first, hearing his own voice chanting in the thick silence unnerved him, but he kept his eyes glued to the rabbi’s silver pointer moving swiftly along the lines of Hebrew words and soon was conscious of nothing but being a Jewish boy on his Bar Mitzvah day, as the timelessness of the occasion washed over him.
His mother’s face glowed with pride when she kissed him after the service. But first his hand was wrung by so many people it ached and the word Mazeltov! deafened his ears. The party at home was the happiest time he could remember. Except that Bessie Salaman was there and kept gazing at him like a sick cow, which embarrassed him.
Because it was Shabbos, the Berkowitzes had not been able to travel from Leeds, but had sent David a beautiful tallith bag. Isaac Salaman had given him a tie-pin and Mr. Moritz’s present was two books instead of the usual one, to mark the special occasion; Treasure Island and Kidnapped, which he couldn’t wait to read. Most of the other guests had bought him prayer books, he had enough to fill a whole shelf of his orange-box bookcase. But the most significant gift was from his parents, a grown-up tallith, and a set of tephillin to lay upon his arm and his head every morning except the Sabbath and Holy Days for the rest of his life.
His mother had invited the three families who had travelled to England with them, which meant his friend Lazar Lensky was there as well as Saul. If only Jim could be here, too, he thought, but he had not dared suggest it to his parents. “A goy in shul?” They would have said in shocked voices. And perhaps Jim wouldn’t have been comfortable in a cramped little house, at a party where all the adults spoke a mixture of English and Yiddish. His Gentile friend’s absence emphasised the difference between their two worlds, but he brushed his regret aside and enjoyed himself.
“So, David!” his mother said with satisfaction that night.
They were alone in the kitchen and she had just finished clearing up. It had taken her a long time, today they had used the parlour, too. The rest of the family were in bed, but David was too elated to feel tired.
“I don’t have to worry about my Bar Mitzvah anymore,” he laughed contentedly.
“Before it you don’t have other worries,” she said stirring the dying coals into a last blaze. “But now you’re not a child anymore.”
David knew the Bar Mitzvah ceremony traditionally admits a boy to manhood, but he did not feel any different from how he had felt before it and smiled at his mother’s literal interpretation.
“How is the school work going?” she asked him.
“How’s yours going?” he joked. “I still can’t believe you’re going to night school, even though you are!”
“I know my ABC already,” she said proudly.
David grinned.
“But you didn’t answer my question.”
He told her he was doing well. But she knew this, he always got good reports. Why was she asking?
“I wish it would be possible for you to stay there longer, David.”
He felt his stomach lurch. What did she mean?
“Next year you’ll be fourteen. It’s necessary for a boy of that age to be an earner, with people like us.”
People like us. The words reverberated in the room. His mother had spoken them once before, when they first came to England and he asked her why his father couldn’t find work. Mr. Moritz had said by the time David grew up he would have learned what she meant, that it was best to find out for himself. And now he understood. She meant people who weren’t like the Forrests. Who had to try harder than others to achieve exactly the same thing and ought not to expect to achieve it. “You want me to leave school,” he said flatly.
“It’s not what I want, David, but the way it has to be.”
His mother looked pale and drawn and her knuckles gleamed white as she gripped the brass rail on the fireguard.
“Why?” he flung at her. “So we’re not wealthy, but I work, don’t I? All the fruit and veg we have I bring home from Mr. Radinsky’s!”
“But this is not enough.”
“Enough for what?”
She gazed into the fire for a moment, then turned to look at him again. “For a family where there’s going to be another mouth to feed. I’m expecting a baby, David.”
He had not noticed her thickened waistline, but now he did. He brushed the shock aside. Sigmund Moritz had advised him to say nothing about Mr. Forrest’s offer for the present. But if he told her it might change her mind. It did not occur to him that she already knew.
“What’s so special you want to be a solicitor?” she asked after she had listened to him enthuse about it.
“A professional man’s somebody. You should see how the Forrests live, Mother, then you wouldn’t have to ask. If I don’t get a good education, I’ll end up like Father.”
“Your father is a bad person to end up like?”
“It isn’t the sort of person he is, it’s what he’s done with his life.”
“To bring up a boy to be Bar Mitzvah is nothing? Going without many a time, so he should have!”
“Achievement isn’t just what you do for your family.”
“For your father and me nothing is more important.”
“Then why’re you making me leave school?”
“I am not doing it. Life is doing it.”
The dream of himself and Jim together at the big desk crumbled to dust. He felt the hope ebb out of him and buried his face in his hands. When he looked up his mother was fingering her brooch and gazing at him pleadingly.
“So you’ll be something else,” she told him.
“What for instance?” he asked dully.
“Who knows? You’ll still have your brains even without an education. Maybe you’ll be a businessman one day, like Salaman.”
David thought of how Salaman spent his days and felt suddenly sick.
“When the time comes for the new baby’s education, if God gives me another son, perhaps the family will be able to afford it,” his mother said quietly. “But for you such big ideas are too soon. Didn’t I warn you, David.”