News travelled fast in Strangeways, there were so many meeting places. Work and shul, the grocers, the butcher’s and the barber’s, and every street corner. David and Miriam’s broken romance was a nine-day wonder, but it did not take nine days for Bessie Salaman to make up her mind. She had stopped mooning over David openly a long time ago, adult propriety demanded it, but she had loved him as long as she could remember and still did.
Most people, including David himself, thought she had got over it and her father had never been aware of how she felt. Even in the days when she had tried to woo David with food and dogged his footsteps in the factory, Salaman had been too full of his own frustrations to notice his daughter’s and was taken by surprise when she told him what he must do.
“Come downstairs, David. I want a word with you,” said one morning.
Their employer’s presence among them intrigued the workers, it had been some months since he last showed his face. He smiled at them benignly and this was rare, too.
David was no less puzzled than the rest of the staff as he followed him into the kitchen.
“Sit down my boy.” Salaman gestured to the leather wing chair which was reserved for his own exclusive use and David’s perplexity increased. “Help yourself to a cigar.”
“I don’t smoke, Mr. Salaman.”
“So you’ll have one anyway.” He thrust a box of Havanas under David’s nose, compelling him to take one and remained standing with his hooded eyes fixed upon him.
It’s like being scrutinised by an eagle, David thought. There was something predatory in Salaman’s expression.
“You’ve become like a son to me,” his employer sighed averting his gaze.
A moment of silence followed and David could feel Saul’s presence in the room.
Salaman blew his nose and dabbed at a tear which had trickled down his podgy cheek. “I don’t have to tell you how I’ve suffered. But I still have my Bessie, bless her.”
“I’m sure she’s a comfort to you,” David said stiffly, unable to summon up sympathy for the man he despised.
“Please God I’ll also have a grandson some day,” he added with a watery smile.
David ran his finger along the inside of his collar, which felt as if it was glued by sweat to his neck. Salaman kept a fire blazing in the grate even in warm weather. How much longer must he sit here? He knew Abraham had always been the recipient of their boss’s confidences. Was the honour now to be his, too? He hoped not.
“And the factory will be his,” Salaman continued. “Me, I don’t care anymore. But first he must have a father.” He lit his cigar, which he had not yet done, and puffed out an acrid cloud. “You’ll learn to enjoy cigar smoke, with what I’m going to offer you,” he promised when David coughed. “So why’re we beating about the bush?” He stationed himself in front of the fireplace, his demeanour suddenly brisk, and offered David a half share in his business.
David felt almost too weak to climb upstairs. His mind was in a daze. He would have gone directly to tell Abraham, the unlit cigar still in his hand, but the underpresser was there. It was not until he reached the workroom and saw the curious glances of the machiners that he came down to earth and realized that the offer included Bessie.
Bessie spent the day in town deciding what she would choose for her trousseau. Shorter skirts were now in fashion, but she had not yet worn one. The Spring clothes in the shop windows were a froth of delicate colours and fabrics, but were all in the new style and the way this would reveal her dumpy legs was worrying her.
She pushed the anxiety away. Some of the dresses had pointed hems falling gracefully in folds, like a handkerchief clutched by its middle. She would have one like that for her wedding gown. What she would do if David refused the offer she did not allow her mind to dwell upon. She had come to town to avoid being there when her father spoke to him. The next time she saw David the uncertainty would be over, everything would be settled.
A small child passing by with a lady smiled at her and it reminded her of how her own mother had taken her shopping on Bury New Road and people had remarked on the way little Bessie was always laughing. Until my mam got ill, she thought. And then she died. Since then, what had there been to laugh about? She recalled starting school just before her mother’s death and nobody wanting to sit beside her because her pinafore was dirty. But who had been there to wash it for her? And after a while she’d found out how to get her own back on the other children and stopped caring. They’d been sick with envy when they saw all the things she had and remembering it still gave her a triumphant feeling. My dad would have given me the world to make up for having no mam, she reflected as a fur coat all by itself in a shop window caught her eye. He still would.
There were only two things which Salaman’s money had not been able to buy for his daughter. One was a new face and figure. The other was David, who was now within her grasp.
Salaman’s proposition was not a bombshell to anyone in the family except David, but nobody tried to influence him either way.
Sarah wanted to tell him what a wonderful thing it would be for his father and Sammy, having him for their boss, but kept her lips sealed and Sammy had to bite his tongue to stop himself from asking how David could consider marrying Bessie Salaman, when all he need do was make it up with Miriam and she would be his girl again.
Because he knew how much material success mattered to his son, Abraham wanted him to have the half share in the business, but the prospect of Bessie being his daughter-in-law filled him with dismay. Nathan, who even at the age of twelve was a romantic, thought only of Miriam’s beauty and Bessie’s ugliness. But Esther, whose similar quandary was now happily resolved, felt like telling David to do the practical thing.
“Let him make his own mind up, like Esther did,” Ben said.
“Nobody’s trying to do it for him,” Sarah pointed out, avoiding her daughter’s eye.
Supper had been finished an hour ago, but the dishes were still on the table. The matter had been discussed from end to end, without David receiving the guidance he had hoped for from his family. Didn’t his mother always know what was best? Tonight she appeared not to and nor did anyone else. He felt let down and jittery. “I’m going for a walk,” he told them and slammed out of the house.
“Tell him not to do it, Mother!” Nathan implored the moment he had gone.
“He doesn’t love her,” Sammy declaimed. For him that was all that mattered.
Love, Sarah reflected, doesn’t always bring contentment, nor does it feed and clothe people. She glanced at Esther’s placid expression which a year ago had been passionate with conviction that she couldn’t live without Carl Moritz.
Esther read her mind. “You were right, Mother.”
“What about?” Ben quizzed, but received no reply.
What’s right for one is maybe not right for another, Abraham thought. “You think David should say yes to Salaman, Sarah?”
“I think he should do what’s best for him,” she answered ambiguously.
David found himself on Bury Old Road, without having consciously headed in that direction. How many times had he traversed this route with Miriam, making the long trek from Strangeways to Heaton Park? Memories of summer days they’d spent together in the green haven which was so different from their own environment rose to taunt him. Miriam a little girl in a frilly pinafore, sitting in the long grass making daisy chains. Miriam watching the graceful motion of the swans on the lake, wearing her first grown-up dress. Miriam breathless with delight, absorbing the perfumed beauty of the rose gardens the last time they visited the park. Was this what she’d meant when she said she was excited by different things from those which excited him? Daisy chains, swans and roses? Miriam. How he loved her. He reached the park gates, but could not enter, they were locked for the night. And he would never walk by the lake and through the rose gardens with her again.
On the way back, he succumbed to an impulse and went to look at the Moritzes’ house. He stood in the night stillness, his heart heavy with longing, staring up at the window of the room Miriam shared with Helga. If she had appeared at the window he would have hammered the door down and asked her to marry him tomorrow. Salaman’s offer had been temporarily erased from his mind.
When he reached home the dilemma returned in its entirety. It was not just a question of whether or not to seek a reconciliation with Miriam, but of what he would have to forego if he did not marry Bessie. He eyed his weary reflection in the kitchen mirror and laughed because it was still the only one the Sandbergs possessed.
Sarah came in from the scullery and surveyed him. “Something’s funny, David?” His expression belied the merriment she had just heard.
“I was thinking if I marry Bessie I’ll be able to buy mirrors for every room in the house.”
He’s been walking the streets for hours and it’s still only an “if,” Sarah thought. But at least he was now considering it. She put the kettle on the fire, raking aside the cinders with which she had banked it up to keep the room cosy for David’s return.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked her. It was after midnight.
At a time like this would his mother go to sleep and leave him alone with his worries? She gave him a reproachful glance and got out a cup and saucer for each of them, then went to fetch a jug of milk from the food-safe with the wire mesh door which was kept in the cool scullery. Except after meat meals, when the dietary laws forbade milk, the Sandbergs now took their tea English style.
“Tell me what to do, Mother,” David pleaded.
“You want me to have that on my head, too?”
He knew she was thinking of the time she had told him he must leave school. “That’s water under the bridge now,” he said without bitterness.
“This will be also.”
“But while it’s flowing it carries you with it and all you can do is sink or swim.”
“To sink isn’t in your nature, David. Sammy, yes. Nat too, perhaps. Even your father, maybe. But you? Never!”
David smiled. “You know us all inside out, don’t you?”
“You I know best of all, because you’re like me.”
It’s true, David reflected. Whenever life knocked him down he always picked himself up again and went on battling, no matter how much it hurt. And his mother did the same. She wasn’t the kind to sink, either. He went to sit at the table with her and stirred his tea, thoughtfully.
Sarah put a cube of sugar into her mouth, even English style tea she still drank the Russian way. “We’re the strong ones in the family, David,” she said when she had taken the first scalding sip. “Did I make an agreement with your father he should leave everything on my shoulders? But that’s the way it is. Wages he brings home, decisions he doesn’t make.”
David knew she was not denigrating his father, but simply stating a fact.
“But to whom do I come when I have a difficulty? To David. The others also. What did you think would happen at supper tonight? That everyone would rush to advise you? Who would dare, when you are the big adviser in this family? Perhaps they’d like to, but nobody would have the courage.”
“Except you,” David said looking her in the eye.
“Courage I’ve got,” she replied holding his gaze. “More since I know you don’t hold the past against me.” She reached across the table and gripped his hand. “For that I thank God, David. Everyone should have a son like you. A brother also.”
David averted his eyes from hers. He had not known his mother held him in such esteem and the revelation affected him deeply.
“So,” she said giving his fingers a final affectionate squeeze, then becoming her prosaic self again. “Arranged marriages are no disgrace. Without them Strangeways would be half empty. I myself would not have been born. Your grandparents came from two different villages and only met three times before their wedding.”
David knew now what she wanted him to do. It was the sensible course of action as all his mother’s advice was, but his gorge rose at the idea of it. This was 1922 in England, not fifty years ago in Russia. His mind wandered irrelevantly to Jim Forrest. Maybe Jim was married by now. To a lovely refined girl whom he had chosen himself, money wouldn’t have entered into it. It wouldn’t have to. He checked the flood of envy before it had time to overwhelm him. Money didn’t have to enter into his own choice of a wife. It was up to him. Know thyself, a small inner voice said to him. Money was what he wanted—and the things it could buy. “You think I should tell Salaman yes, don’t you, Mother?” he said finally.
Sarah did not give him a direct answer. “Life is full of sacrifices, David. So let them be for something.”