Ellie Murphy was cross and upset too but, unlike David, she didn’t run home for comfort, because hers wasn’t the sort of home anybody would run to for anything. In fact she spent quite a lot of her time planning the day when she would run away from it. Now she walked towards it slowly and with dignity, her skirt swinging against her legs and the ostrich feathers on her black straw hat bouncing jauntily behind her.
She knew she was poor and dirty and that the other kids poked fun at her and despised her, but that was no reason to give in. She’d known all her short life that the only way to survive was to fight back, and if you couldn’t fight back openly and physically, you fought inside your head. One day, when she was grown up, she would fight her way out of Whitechapel, and right away from her parents too. When she was grown up and she’d ‘bettered herself. She wasn’t quite sure what you had to do to better yourself, but she knew she wanted to do it, whatever it was. For she’d seen girls who’d bettered themselves, and she knew that they dressed in stylish clothes and rode about in carriages and always had plenty to eat. Like Mrs Quinton’s daughter, who came back to Wentworth Street twice a year, like a lady. One day, she’d be just like that. No matter what happened to her, she wouldn’t let them grind her down. She’d fight her way out. Just see if she wouldn’t!
Now as she strode through the crowds in Commercial Street pushing past barrows and swaying her skinny body away from loaded baskets and crunching feet, she was thinking furiously. That Davey Cheifitz was a stupid great baby. The idea, calling her a thief! How else would she get fed if she didn’t nick things? It was all very well for boobies like him, with aunts to make cakes for ’em and meals all set out nice with a plate for everybody. Oh, she knew. She’d seen it at Ruby Miller’s house. All nice and easy for them it was. She had to make shift for herself, because it wasn’t like that in Dorset Street.
Dorset Street was a terrible place to live. Worse than the Flowery and that was bad enough. Jack the Ripper had killed two of his victims there, so Ma said, one at No 35 and the other in Miller’s Court, right next door to Mrs Fahey’s lodging house, where they’d all been for the last six months. And the cops had never caught him. He could start up again any time, Mrs Fahey said. It was enough to make yer flesh creep just thinking about it. She wished they’d hurry up and move on somewhere else. She knew they weren’t paying the rent. She’d heard Mrs Fahey asking her mother for it only yesterday. So they’d probably get kicked out pretty soon, or do a moonlight.
In the middle of Commercial Street Ellie had to stop and wait while three trams rattled past, their open top decks crowded with well-dressed passengers, bonnets nodding at bowlers and top hats like chimneys. Her anger faded as she waited, because she could see the corner of Dorset Street from where she stood and the mere sight of it was enough to bring her down from any emotion. By the time she reached the Britannia beerhouse on the corner, her shoulders were drooping with resignation.
Everything about this street was sordid and ugly. The buildings rose forbiddingly from pavements so broken and dirty they looked more like earth paths than paving stones, and a rank black earth at that, and there were kids everywhere, boys kicking and fighting, infants crawling and squalling, and skinny girls bent sideways by the weight of the huge babies they carried on their hips. ‘’Lo Ellie,’ they said as she passed. ‘Your Ma’s been lookin’ out fer you.’
She didn’t doubt it. Her Ma was always looking out for her, and always for the same reason. She wanted her to look after the babies, and clean their dirty bums, and lug them about with her, and joggle them to sleep when they grizzled. That was an older daughter’s lot in Dorset Street and although she did it, to help her mother who was always harassed, she hated it and resented it, especially when her father came home drunk and knocked them all about.
She dodged past the two slatternly women who were lolling against the doorpost, smoking their pipes, and ducked into Mrs Fahey’s greasy hall. There was another woman asleep on the stairs, sprawled on her back with her mouth wide open and her neck and cheeks a dull ugly red. Ellie recognized a drunk when she saw one, and stepped round her on tiptoe, careful not to touch her or disturb her in any way. She might not be very good at sums and reading but she knew exactly how to cope with life in Dorset Street
Her mother was making matchboxes, working with nervous speed and a great economy of movement, folding the fragile boxes with her left hand, flicking the glue brush to right and left, pinching the edges together for a sticky second between thumb and forefinger, fold, flick, pinch, fold, flick, pinch, like a machine. Her face was empty with concentration, and she was surrounded by flies which crawled up the window and the glue-splashed curtain, and circled her head and hands, avid for the paste. The bigger of her two current babies, two-year-old Frankie, was hammering her knees with his fists and screaming for attention, and the smaller, baby Teresa, who was seventeen months old, was busy eating the crushed remains of a box that hadn’t stuck properly, but her mother paid no attention to either of them, and didn’t even look up from her work when Ellie came in.
In her youth she’d been considered a beauty, a slim, long-legged creature, with thick dark hair, and fine blue eyes ‘set in with sooty fingers’. When she first married Paddy Murphy people said they made a really handsome couple, good Catholics both, he so broad-shouldered and wide of face, with a shock of thick brown hair and bland blue eyes and the look of boy, even though he was turned thirty-five, she so petite and feminine beside him. But now their beauty was gone. Drink had removed most of his teeth and thinned his hair and mottled his face with purple. Poverty and incessant pregnancy and the demands of too many children had ruined her. Although she was only twenty-six, her skin was sallow and her teeth bad and all her lissom shapeliness forgotten. Occasionally she would look at young Ellie and wonder if she would grow up to be a beauty too, but for most of her time she was too busy struggling for an existence to think about anything else. Tuppence a gross was the going rate for matchboxes and it took her the best part of a day to earn it.
‘Pick our Frankie up, Ellie, will yer?’ she said mildly. ‘See if you can find sommink ter pacify him. Sommink little fer ’im ter suck.’
It was easier said than done, for there wasn’t very much available in their squalid room. Only dirty cups and plates, and the two beds and a collection of orange boxes that served first as chairs and cupboards and then as firewood. And the sack full of matchboxes, of course. Ellie knew that what the kid wanted was something to eat, but there was no food for any of them yet. Food was bought in ha’p’orths and pinches when they could afford it, and only her mother’s meagre earnings were really dependable. When the matchboxes were finished she’d be sent to buy bread and marg and a pinch of tea. Until then she’d have to find something else.
Frankie didn’t make things easy for her. When she bent to pick him up he threw up his arms and arched his back against her, resisting with all his force, which was considerable, for he was a big boy with his father’s heavy bones. She held his stiff screaming body slung across her hip and rummaged about in the tin pail until she found a spoon for him to suck. His trousers were soaking wet and he was even grubbier than she was, but she had long grown immune to carrying damp smelly babies about. It was the natural condition of infants in the Murphy household, and at least it dried in time and didn’t have to be wiped off and burnt in the fire like shit.
‘On’y another dozen, then I done the gross,’ her mother said, flicking and sticking. ‘See if they’re stuck sufficient ter pack, there’s a good gel.’
Ellie set her spoon-sucking brother on the floor and sat on her haunches between him and the pile of finished boxes so that she could test them with her fingers, and he couldn’t touch them. Some of them were still quite tacky. ‘Not quite,’ she was saying when Mrs O’Leary came running in from the next room, wild hair flying.
‘Mrs Murphy!’ she yelled. ‘Look sharp an’ clear the room for the love of God. Here’s your Patrick out in the street. brawling so he is, an’ Amy says he’s broke her father’s head, an’ the pair o’ them drunk as lords. Saints preserve us! What’ll he say when he sees the state of this room?’
It was a rhetorical question for they all knew what he would say and, even worse, they’d all seen what he could do, particularly when he was roaring drunk. Ellie had the sack open at once. Tacky or not, the boxes had to be under the bed and out of sight before he got up the stairs.
They worked quickly and together, saying little and thinking fast. But the glue was still on the table and at least a dozen boxes still on the floor when they heard him crashing up the stairs and shouting at the drunken woman, ‘Shift your ogly carcase out uv me way, woman!’
Mrs O’Leary departed as swiftly as she’d arrived and Ellie crawled under the bed, scooping the sack and the remaining boxes after her.
‘Where are me darlin’ boyohs?’ he roared, lurching into the room, arms outstretched, and with his two filthy mongrels at his heels. ‘Let me see ’em. Patrick! Seamus! Come to your Dadda. A finer pair a’ boyohs the good Lord never did create. An’ I challenge onyone to call me a liar.’ Then as he couldn’t see his two favourites, despite the most determined effort to focus his eyes, his tone became truculent. ‘What’ve you done wid me boys, woman?’
Mrs Murphy slid the glue pot onto the recess shelf and brushed the table clear of matchbox splinters, her hands quick and nervous. ‘Don’t start all on at me,’ she said, and fear made her voice sharp. ‘They’ll be out street-rakin’ most like.’
‘No son of mine should be out in the street when his Dadda comes home,’ her husband roared and aimed a blow at his two howling infants, fortunately missing them both. ‘Hold your noise, will ye!’
The two dogs flung themselves down beside the stove, panting. The air in the room was more rank than ever, with the smell of their dirty fur and their master’s beer-laden sweat added to the stink of fish glue and stale piss. Frankie began to cry again. ‘Ma! Ma! Ma!’ in his incessant deafening way. Pick ’im up quick, Ellie thought, or it’ll put Pa in a paddy, sure as fate. But her father was already in a paddy because he’d seen the glue pot.
‘Woman!’ he roared. ‘Have I not told ye? Have I not made mesself abondantly clear in this matter? I will not tolerate clotter in me home. A man’s home is his castle, so it is. I’ve a right fer to be obeyed in me own home, and not to come in when I’m weary wi’ work and find fish glue all over me table. Clear it from me sight, d’ye hear. ’Tis an abhorrence to me.’
‘There you are! It’s all hidden away,’ her mother cajolled. ‘All nice an’ tidy. Now you jest sit on the bed an’ let me take yer boots off. You’ll feel all the better for yer boots off.’ She spoke placatingly as if he were a fractious child, and the wheedling note in her voice annoyed her daughter, crouched in her dusty sanctum under the bed.
‘An’ so I should think,’ her father growled, sitting on the bed so suddenly and violently that the springs sagged until they touched her shoulders. ‘How mony more times have I to tell ye? I can’t abide this work ye do. Can’t abide it, y’onderstand. Ye’ve ter stop it at once, or I shall know the reason why.’
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.