The section of North Manchester in which the family lived was a cultural and rustic fantasy. Ruskin, Wordsworth and Haydn lent their names to avenues of cramped terraced houses. Thirlmere and Crummuck Streets conjured up Lakeland vistas the residents had never seen and humble thoroughfares where no trees grew had leafy namesakes ranging from Maple to Birch.
Miriam’s home was back to back with Esther’s, enabling them to pop in and out of each other’s kitchens trough the yard doors. At the rear of the houses was a cobblestone passage known as “the entry.” Here, Mr. Cohen the fishmonger and Tom the rag-and-bone man would come with their donkeys and carts, providing a door-to-door service. Jewish and Gentile children played whip and top side by side while their mothers gossiped together as if being of different religions was of no account and the new school on the main road was attended by both denominations.
The beginning of the Jews’ integration into the general community was a natural consequence. Esther cautioned little Harry not to make a noise when he played in the entry on Sundays because it was the Christian Shabbos and the Gentile neighbours showed the same respect for Saturdays. It was no longer necessary to engage a Shabbos goy to stoke up the fires, people offered to do so as a gesture of goodwill.
The proximity of their homes engendered a closer relationship between the Kleins and the Sammy Sandbergs than might otherwise have been the case. Ben sometimes said Marianne had been born into the wrong branch of the family, she so obviously preferred Martin to her brothers.
As soon as she was old enough to crawl she began scuttling across the entry to visit him, or he would do the same to visit her. In the warm summer months, when back doors were left ajar, Miriam or Esther would suddenly find two babies on the kitchen rug when a moment ago there had only been one.
Miriam gradually came to rely upon her sensible sister-in-law and a warm friendship developed between them. Once, when Martin gagged whilst eating a chicken wing, she rushed with him in her arms to Esther. Her middle-aged next-door neighbour was leaning on the fireguard chatting to her when it happened and chased after her.
“Pull thiself tergether, Miriam! Bang ’im on t’back, luv, appen ’e’ll cough it oop!”
“I’m no good in an emergency, Mrs. Hardcastle,” Miriam said as she fled across the entry.
“Tha’ll ’ave ter learn ter be!”
Esther calmly hooked her little finger in Martin’s throat and dislodged the bit of gristle which had caught there. “He’s right as rain now, aren’t you, pet?”
Mrs. Hardcastle pushed her hairnet higher on her forehead and scratched the red groove the elastic had made. “Is mam isn’t!” She folded her scraggy arms across her floral-overalled chest and smiled at Miriam’s tense expression.
“I can’t help it,” Miriam apologised. “Would you’ve kept your head and known what to do if it’d been one of your kids, Esther?”
“Well, I wouldn’t’ve sent for you! Look at you!”
“Like as not a nice cup o’ tea’d set ’er reet, Esther,” their neighbour suggested.
“I was just going to make her one.” Esther wrinkled her nose. “Something’s burning somewhere.”
“Lawks! I left t’bubble’n squeak on t’stove when I popped inter Miriam’s fer a minute!” Mrs. Hardcastle dashed back across the entry.
“Mrs. Hardcastle’s minutes are like other people’s half-hours,” Esther giggled. “She once came in here when I was making holeshkies. ‘Wrapping minced beef up in cabbage leaves as though it were a parcel? I never heard the like of it, Esther luv,’ she said. ‘You have now,’ I told her, ‘just like I’d never heard of frying cabbage up with bacon and calling it bubble and squeak, till I came to live round here.’ ‘Well you’d never heard of bacon, had you?’ she answered back! She’s a good sort, Mrs. Hardcastle.”
Miriam tried to smile as she sipped her tea.
“If you’re going to fall to bits whenever some little thing happens to Martin, you’ll end up a bag of nerves, love,” Esther said to her kindly. “You can’t bring up kids without having a crisis every now and then.”
“He’s the only one I’ve got and I’m not likely to have any more.” Miriam picked up her son and cuddled him, but he wriggled away to play with Marianne.
Esther looked shocked. “Who says you’re not?”
“Doctor Smolensky sent me to a specialist because I took so long to get over Martin’s birth. I was like a wet week for ages afterwards.”
“I remember.”
“You should, seeing it was you who ran my home as well as your own till I picked up.”
“I thought it was just because you’d had a very long labour.” Esther sounded upset. “Why didn’t you tell us, Miriam?” It was taken for granted that matters of health and welfare were the whole family’s concern.
“I’ve kept meaning to. But with Mother getting worse all the time, I didn’t want to upset everyone more.” Esther was studying her anxiously. “He said I’m all right in every other way, so don’t worry. But it was a miracle I conceived Martin.”
Esther looked at her nephew who might not have been born and knelt down to kiss his cheek. “God’s good, Miriam.”
Miriam smiled. “You sound more like your mother every day! You won’t tell Bessie about this, will you?” She averted her eyes when Esther glanced at her sharply. “It’s not because of David, in case you think it is. All that’s over and done with, the way it is with you and Carl.”
“With me and Carl it was never like it was with you and David.”
“I’m happy with Sammy.”
“Why shouldn’t you be? Our Sammy’s a diamond.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.” Nobody could have a better husband, even though they didn’t love him, Miriam reflected warmly. “But about the other, well I just don’t want Bessie to know.”
Was it because Bessie was pregnant again? Esther wondered.
“I don’t want her pitying me,” Miriam said quietly.
They’d always have it in for each other, deep down, that was it. “I won’t say a word,” Esther promised with a smile. So long as it stayed deep down nobody would get hurt.
Though David’s home was barely five-minutes’ walk away, Miriam and Esther rarely saw Bessie during the week. What she did with herself they never inquired, but Esther thought she just sat eating toffees and listening to the wireless. Nobody else in the family had one, but the others were not surprised that David and Bessie did. Though they were not really wealthy, they were considered the rich relations and the aura this carried with it set them apart. By the time they were toddlers Shirley’s cousins had set her apart, too.
Esther and Miriam sometimes took their children to Bellott Street park in the afternoons, before collecting Harry from school and they would knock on Bessie’s door. Miriam never wanted to, but Esther insisted they could not just walk by. Bessie always gave them tea and showed them new treasures she had acquired for her home.
“How can you afford to buy things, the way business is just now?” Esther inquired one day.
“My dad’s got nobody to spend it on but me,” Bessie reminded her. “He gives me a present every week, Shirley as well.” Shirley’s teething ring with the silver bell attached to it had been a gift from Salaman, who made sure there was nothing his granddaughter lacked.
“Doesn’t he ever give David a present?” The words slipped out before Miriam could stop them.
Bessie’s eyes narrowed. “Are you being sarcastic, Miriam?”
“Don’t be daft, love. She’s joking!” Esther said hastily and the awkward moment passed.
Shirley was playing on the rug with an assortment of dolls. Marianne, who only possessed the wooden one her Uncle Sammy had made for her, was trying to play with them, too.
“Mine! Mine!” Shirley screamed hitting her.
Marianne did not return the blow, but Martin did it for her.
“Say you’re sorry to Cousin Shirley,” Miriam instructed him.
“No.”
“You must. It’s naughty to hit someone.”
“Martin not sorry,” he informed her.
“He reminds me of your father,” Esther laughed.
He sometimes reminded Miriam of him, too, and she slapped his hand because she did not want him to grow up with Sigmund’s stubbornness. His face puckered, but he did not cry.
“Auntie Miriam’s naughty for hitting Martin,” Marianne said reproachfully and kissed him better.
“Trust our Marianne to turn your own words on you,” Esther said. Her tiny daughter’s intelligence sometimes bothered her. “They’ll have to put her in the top class the day she starts school!”
Shirley continued playing with her dolls. Martin and Marianne sat quietly watching her. There was never a happy atmosphere when these three were together.
Bessie always entertained in the parlour. David had had a gas fire installed so it could be heated quickly in the winter, if anyone called unexpectedly. There was barely space to move between the many pieces of furniture and the rest of the family secretly called the room the Crystal Palace, because every inch of surface was bedecked with cut glass vases and bowls.
The moment the children entered the house they became noticeably subdued and Arnold would stay perched on the edge of a chair throughout the visit, swinging his legs nervously. When their aunt gave them cakes they watched her warily whilst they ate them, trying not to scatter crumbs on the carpet. Yet Bessie was never less than kind to them.
“There’s something about David’s house that gives me the willies!” Esther exclaimed after they had left.
“Bessie,” Miriam declared.
They laughed. Like the children, they were always relieved when the visit was over.
“Heaven help Shirley when she starts school,” Miriam said.
“What do you mean?”
Miriam’s brow was puckered in thought. “I don’t really know, it’s just a feeling. I don’t get the willies there, Esther. I get stifled.”
“The window was open today.”
“I don’t mean that kind of stifled. I mean it’s like being in a sort of cocoon.”
Esther shrieked with mirth. “Are you calling our sister-in-law a caterpillar, just because she looks like one at the moment? Don’t be catty!”
“Well that’s how she lives, doesn’t she? All nicely padded with her expensive things, as if having them keeps her warm and safe.”
“She’s got David to keep her warm and safe.”
“I told you that’s over and done with!” Miriam flashed. “Why do you keep giving me digs about it?”
“It was the last thing on my mind, Miriam. And I don’t think I ever have done. Why should I?”
They walked along in silence for a moment, pushing their heavy prams. Esther had Arnold as well as Marianne in hers.
“I’m sorry, Esther, it’s just that…” Miriam hesitated. “Well in a way that’s how David looks at life and it reminded me. We’d’ve been miserable as sin together, he was right to finish with me. Bessie’s the right kind of wife for him, but I think it’s sad.”
“What is?”
“The way neither of them can help being how they are.”