‘You should a’ see your David at the fair,’ Rivke said to Rachel. ‘Don’t you never tell me he ain’t got an eye for the girls!’
‘I knew it!’ Dumpling said, pinning a frill deftly to the front of the blouse she was sewing. ‘Didden I say so, Rachel?’
Rachel said nothing, but her face was sour and she was tacking with quick angry stitches.
The three women were working together in Dumpling’s room, with lemon tea to sustain them and the window open wide to admit what little air there was. It was very hot and they were all tired and sticky and working harder than they should under the pressure of the orders they had to finish in that shortened week.
‘A boy so handsome vhat you expect?’ Dumpling said, fitting another row of pins between her lips. ‘Onny nat’rul.’
‘A pretty girl he took on the svings,’ Rivke informed them, slapping a skirt seam into position ready for machining. ‘Best looking girl in the shop, according to Josh. All the young fellers vant her, an’ off she valks vid your Davey. So vhat you think a’ that, bubeleh? Good taste in vomen, nu?’ She gave Rachel a lopsided grin to show she was half teasing, but her sister-in-law wouldn’t receive it.
‘I tell you vhat I think a’ that,’ Rachel said crossly, ‘idle gossip, that’s all it is. I vonder you ain’t got nothink better to occupy your mind.’
‘My Josh …’
‘Your Josh!’ Rachel interrupted. ‘Alvays first vith the gossip, your Josh. So ve don’t listen to your Josh.’
‘A better boy don’t tread shoe leather,’ Rivke said driving the material through the machine as though she was planing wood. ‘Good vorker, good son, don’t give himself airs, like some I could name. So you vatch your mouth, Rachel Cheifitz.’
‘A meshuganer!’ Rachel accused. ‘Nothing, he don’t know, if he says my David’s after the girls. My David’s a good Jewish boy. He don’t chase girls, I tell you.’
Dumpling removed the last pin from her mouth and mopped her forehead with her apron. ‘So they all chase girls, dolly,’ she said, giving Rachel a little placating nod. ‘All the young men they all chase girls. Come the spring, the fine weather, you know vhat they say.’
‘I don’t vanna hear,’ Rachel said stubbornly. ‘My Davey ain’t like all the others. My Davey’s an artist.’
‘Umph!’ Rivke snorted, and she and Dumpling exchanged a quick glance that expressed their disbelief, their annoyance and their pity for her pig-headed blindness.
‘I make more tea, maybe,’ Dumpling said bringing their uncomfortable topic to a halt. ‘Oy oy such heat!’
But later in the week when she and Rivke took their finished garments back to the sweat shop they told one another with considerable satisfaction that their sister-in-law was being a poor blind fool. ‘So vhat a shock she get vhen she know the truth,’ Rivke said. ‘My Davey’s an artist! Oy oy oy! Pride before a fall, Dumpling, don’t I tell you.’
‘Vhat the eye can’t see!’ Dumpling said wobbling her chins vehemently. ‘Ain’t no good ve tell her.’
‘Ve should talk to Manny maybe?’
‘Nu-nu! Time enough vhen it ain’t so hot. Oy, my back!’
But Emmanuel already knew and wished he didn’t. Rachel had come home incoherent with tears and distress that afternoon, vowing she would never work in Dumpling’s room again, and it had taken him more than an hour to comfort her into a better frame of mind.
‘They don’t mean it, bubeleh,’ he said drying her eyes.
‘They mean it,’ she sobbed. ‘So spiteful, just because he’s an artist, a cut above that Josh, may he be forgiven.’
‘So you forgive him, bubeleh, nu?’
‘My David’s a good Jewish boy. He ain’t got one impure thought in his head. Ve know that, Emmanuel?’
Emmanuel wasn’t at all sure he knew any such thing but he nodded and murmured as though he agreed, and comforted himself that David was kept so busy with his work and his classes that he really wouldn’t have very much time for courting even if he wanted to. And besides, he was young yet.
At that very moment, had he known it, David was at the Standard Theatre sitting as close as he could to his beautiful Ellen. It was a very good play, with a slim dark-haired hero beset on every side by unspeakable villainy, and winning through to fame and fortune in the spotlit ring of the National Sporting Club. And even though the actor who played this gullible innocent looked far too fragile to prevail in a boxing ring, they followed his progress with sighs and cheers, and when the villain was finally forced into the ring to confront him and was then instantly felled, they clapped and cheered and booed until the curtain fell too. When they emerged into the smoky evening, they were glowing with satisfaction because virtue had triumphed and they’d been sitting side by side for such a long delightful time.
They ambled, very slowly, along the few hundred yards that separated the Standard Theatre from the staff entrance of Hopkins and Peggs. And they told one another what a good play it was and how much they’d enjoyed it, and she thought he was much more handsome than the hero, but of course she didn’t say so, and he thought she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and that she was getting prettier by the minute and that he’d give anything to kiss her, but of course he kept his thoughts to himself.
They stood together in the doorway as the theatre-leaving crowds chattered past them along the pavement and a fleet of trams buzzed and rocked along the rails in the middle of the road. And they were so absorbed in each other they didn’t notice any of it, not even the noise.
She’s only about two inches shorter than I am, David thought, and only about three inches away. And it occurred to him that if they were just to sway towards one another, just a very very little, they would be mouth to mouth. And the thought made him weak at the knees.
‘What d’yer do of a Sunday?’ he asked, huskily.
‘We ’ave ter stay out all day,’ she said. ‘We’re supposed ter go ter church an’ visitin’ an’ such like. Ain’t allowed in till eight o’clock supper.’
‘D’you go ter church?’
‘No.’ She sounded surprised at the question, and he, remembering how secure he always felt at the synagogue on a Sabbath evening and how happy, was surprised at her surprise. The fact that she wasn’t religious registered somewhere at the back of his mind, but faintly, because there were other more important things to occupy him just at the moment.
‘I s’ppose you go visitin’ then,’ he said, hoping she didn’t. ‘Family an’ such.’
‘Some gels do. Not me though.’
‘Whatcher doin’ this Sunday?’
‘Nothin’ much really,’ she said, her eyes widening most beautifully as the same thought entered her mind.
‘We could go ter the country. Epping Forest. Take a train.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and now her voice was husky too. He was much encouraged by the sound, and was just beginning to think he might offer to kiss her after all when there was a scraping of locks behind the door, and at that she panicked and pushed the door open quickly, making excuses to the shadowy face behind it, and with two quick paces and a fleeting smile was gone.
He was so happy he skipped all the way to the tram stop.
He was the first customer to walk into Hopkins and Peggs at half past eight the next morning, looking very proper in his dark working suit and his cloth cap covering that thick dark hair. ‘Morning, Miss White,’ he said, touching his cap as he passed her counter. So they smiled at each other for a brief happy second before their working day began.
Miss Morton was charmed. ‘What a polite young man,’ she approved, and looked quizzically at her assistant for an explanation.
‘We was at school tergether,’ Ellen obliged. ‘’E’s an artist.’ And it was a great satisfaction to her that she could be claiming his friendship. An artist. It was a cut above a shop assistant, an’ no mistake.
The next morning he stopped beside the counter long enough to pass her a small much-folded note. And three aggravating customers followed him in and had to be served with chintzes, and curtaining, and took for ever to choose two perfectly ordinary dress lengths. Stupid women! It was more than twenty minutes before she could read what he’d said.
‘Dear Ellen, Don’t forget tomorrow. I shall be outside the main entrance eight thirty sharp. They say the fair is very good this year. Kind regards, David Cheifitz.’
Correct and formal though it was, it felt like a love letter. She tucked it inside her blouse and kept it there all day – when she wasn’t reading it again.
The next day they took a train to Chingford, along with several hundred others, and walked in a chattering crowd along the well-trodden path through the woods, among the grey-green columns of the beeches and the fluted boles of the famous hornbeams, their feet rustling the heaped copper leaves and their heads brushed by the low boughs of hideously pollarded trees, until they came to Queen Elizabeth’s hunting lodge and the fairground. Old women in feathered hats and old men in bowlers, costers with gaudy neckerchiefs under their dirty faces and their pockets crammed with bottled beer, misshapen mothers with tribes of skinny kids and various babes in arms, a gallimaufry of bonnets and baskets and trampling boots, all on their way to sample the delights of the countryside, donkey rides, swings, shies and roundabouts, ice cream and Indian toffee, cockles and whelks and winkles.
It was a friendly familiar place, much smaller than the Bank Holiday fair but every bit as good and splendidly noisy. They went on the donkeys and had two goes on the roundabout, and walked arm in arm through the crowds like a real courting couple, while the organ pipes fluted their tinny tunes and the drums and cymbals crashed their incessant rhythm and the showmen bellowed their wares. And presently they came to the flying trapeze, which by general agreement was reckoned to be the best and most dangerous thing at the fair.
It was a simple construction, consisting of a long metal frame from which hung a series of dangling ropes, each ending in a handle or a loop, and above them six wide metal hoops which served to give marginal support to the flyers as they swung from rope to rope along the frame. It was an irresistible challenge to the young men and their girls, and there was always a large crowd below them to mock or egg them on. When David and Ellen arrived, two girls were happily screaming their way along the ropes towards the point where their boys were eagerly waiting to catch them from their final leap.
‘Would yer like a go?’ he asked, watching the first girl as she squealed down through the air towards the welcoming chest of her escort.
‘If you go first,’ she said, and it struck him that she had two quite contradictory expressions on her face, her blue eyes bold but her mouth soft and vulnerable. And he was intrigued because he hadn’t thought of her as bold or vulnerable before that moment. Only as beautiful.
He’d only been on the trapeze once before, and that was last year, with Hymie, but he climbed up as though he was a veteran and swung with foolhardy audacity, jumping high into the air before he landed, so that the crowd would cheer and she could admire.
And then it was her turn. She tied her boater round her neck and set off, swinging like a lilac bell, her dark hair lifting on either side of her face like wings, and her boots treading the air. She didn’t scream like the other girls but swung steadily, hand over white hand, concentrating and purposeful, and as he watched her he realized that she was a little afraid and he called out to encourage her, ‘Nearly there! I’ll catch yer!’ And the crowd gave him a mocking cheer and some ribald advice. And at that he knew he’d made a mistake. He’d been so eager to hold her in his arms he’d forgotten how public all this was. It wasn’t the right time or the right place, and he was ashamed of the desire that had driven him to suggest it.
But she was already dangling from the last rope and there was nothing he could do to stop her. She dropped like a diver, her fists clenched on either side of her face and her eyes tight shut. Her fall was so precipitate and so swift that she knocked him off balance, and even though he caught her they fell backwards together and rolled over and over on the straw, laughing and gasping, with relief and desire and excitement. He could feel the full length of her lovely body against his, her breasts soft above the hard bones of her stays and her long legs rounded and warm, and the desire to kiss her was so strong it made him groan. But then they’d rolled to a halt and had to disentangle themselves, because the crowd was cat-calling and mocking again, ‘Go on boy, give ’er one!’ and he was ashamed because they were making a public spectacle of themselves, and the moment should have been private. She looked at him shyly as she scrambled to her feet, and he saw the flush on her cheeks and the moist gleam in her eyes and knew that he loved her.
‘Let’s have sommink to eat,’ he said.
They had beer and cheese in an old-fashioned pub just along the road. While they were eating it, there was a sudden rush of noise from the road below them, a rattle of wheels, and laughter and chattering voices. They stood up at once to see what it was. And a cycling club passed by on its way to one of the Riggs Retreats, the men in Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers, the women in tweed cycling dresses with their bonnets firmly netted underneath their chins.
Ellen watched them enviously. ‘We got a cycling club at ’Opkins,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t ’alf like ter join. I been savin’ up fer a bicycle, months an’ months.’
‘We could both join,’ he said, making up his mind about it at once. ‘Free ter ride wherever we like. Just the thing!’
She looked up at him with that odd mixture of confidence and uncertainty. ‘Take a bit a’ time,’ she warned. ‘Bicycles cost money.’
‘Secondhand’s cheaper,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘I’ll get ’em, shall I? Leave it ter me. I bet I could get two good ’uns in the Lane.’ The offer made him feel manly and responsible and protective, particularly as he still had some of his commission left.
And to his great delight she agreed. ‘Be fun,’ she said.
And fun it was. Greatly daring, she invested a week’s wages in a length of pale blue serge and paid Maudie’s mother to run her up one of the new bloomer suits. It was a stunning creation and she looked extremely pretty in it, as she knew because she’d crept down to the shop after lights out to get a full-length view of herself in the long mirrors in the dress department. The high puffed sleeves nipped in at the elbows and the full bloomers nipped in below the knee were high fashion and very feminine. With a broad red ribbon trimming her boater and a broad red cummerbund emphasizing her waist, and new black stockings and neat button boots to complete the outfit, she looked like one of the swells. And that pleased her because she wanted him to see her at her best. For all her initial doubts about him, she had to admit he was becoming more and more important to her.
When he came into the shop the next day he gave her a note to tell her he’d ‘bought the bicycles, real bargains. I will tell you about them Thursday at the Music Hall. It is Little Tich and Gus Elan to top the bill. You will come, won’t you? From David.’
‘I can’t wait fer Thursday,’ she said to Maudie when they went down to the canteen for their mutton and potatoes. ‘We’re going to the Music Hall, Little Tich an’ Gus Elan.’
‘An’ David Cheifitz an’ all!’ Maudie teased. ‘You was supposed ter be a man-hater!’
‘So I changed me mind.’
‘You can say that again!’
On Friday morning, after a riotous evening at the Music Hall, he delivered her bicycle, which cost her less than she’d already saved, and that Sunday they joined the Hopkins and Peggs Cycling Club and went off on their first jaunt across London Bridge, through Bermondsey, and into the Kent countryside. They were very decorous, riding carefully along beside each other because they had to concentrate on the difficult business of steering and keeping upright. When they got back to Hopkins and Peggs just before supper time, they both said what a nice day it had been but they were both secretely disappointed with it. The bicycles were all very exciting but they’d actually kept them apart. They hadn’t held hands once all day.
However, the next Sunday was an improvement, for the club went to Epping Forest and by now they’d mastered the art of riding their awkward steeds and felt rather less self-conscious among their new friends. They stopped for a meal at Riggs Retreat, and ate on the wooden veranda among the potted palms with all the others, still behaving properly, but when the tour continued they contrived to dawdle behind all the rest until they were on their own. And after a while they stopped cycling and dismounted to get their breath back.
‘I’d like to do a sketch of you in that bloomer suit,’ David said as they rested on the handlebars, admiring one another. ‘You look ever so pretty in that bloomer suit.’ And the compliment made him blush and delighted her.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said.
So they propped their bicycles against the hedge and walked into the woods to find a suitable setting. Because it was rough underfoot and the twisted roots of the beeches were half hidden by all those long dead leaves, he offered his arm like a gentleman, and she slipped her nice warm hand into the crook of his elbow, and they were touching again.
Presently they found a secluded corner among the hornbeams. She found a comfortable place to sit and he settled down to draw his first sketch from life.
She’d already seen several expressions on his face, all of them handsome and all of them young somehow. Now, watching him as he drew, she saw another side of his character. His face darkened and looked older, and he scowled and stared, or smiled an indrawn, private smile. It was a passionate foreign face. The face of a man apart. And she admired it, and was excited by it.
It was so quiet among the hornbeams she could hear the scratch of his pencil and her own heart beating. Sunshine filtered through the green leaves to dapple her new blue suit with pale discs of silver and somewhere in the branches above her head a bird was fluting ‘peeep-a peeep-a peeep-a’, over and over again with a joyous echoing insistence. I shall remember this moment all my life, she thought, because I think I love him.
Then the sketch was done and his expression changed and he came rustling through the dead beech leaves to show it to her, eager and shy and young again.
‘I shall make a painting a’ this,’ he said.
She stood up at once and took the sketch book into her hands. ‘It’s ever so good,’ she said. ‘Do I really look like that?’ He’d drawn her half asleep, with the blue costume draped over her figure in the most revealing Pre-Raphaelite curves. Perhaps I ought to ’ave sat up a bit more.
‘You do ter me,’ he said, and then he was afraid that the drawing might have shown her too much about how he was feeling, and he put the little book back into his hip pocket, quickly. But they were still standing within an inch of one another, and they were alone, and the scent of her lovely dappled flesh was making him feel quite lightheaded. ‘You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,’ he confessed.
They were so close together she could feel the breath of his words. ‘It’s a lovely drawrin’,’ she said, looking straight into his eyes. What a warm brown they were and so tender.
‘Lovely Ellen,’ he whispered, and her face was so meltingly beautiful he couldn’t resist any longer. He leaned towards her, ever so slightly, and put his mouth gently onto her parted lips. It was a moth’s kiss, the merest brush, soft and tentative and gentle, a signal that he meant no harm, a touch of adoration. But it made them both tremble.
‘I love you,’ he whispered, putting his arms round her, but gently so that she could move away from him if she wanted to.
She swayed towards him. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered. ‘Oh David, I really do.’
And at that he kissed her again, as though he was in a trance, moving his lips languidly against hers, sipping the most exquisite pleasure from her mouth, his heart drumming more violently than ever. And she put her arms round his neck and returned the kiss, following his movement and increasing its pressure until they were both panting. ‘Oh Davey! Davey!’ she said when they finally paused for breath.
‘I could stay ’ere for ever kissing you,’ he said. ‘I love you so much.’
And this time she kissed him.
‘You give us the slip this afternoon an’ no mistake,’ Fenny Jago said as she and Ellen and the other live-in girls were getting ready for bed that evening. Her voice was tart with disapproval. ‘Where’d yer get to, you an’ that David Cheifitz a’ yours? As if we didn’t know!’
The bare brown room was mellowed by gentle gaslight and langorous with the accumulated heat of the day and the relaxed fatigue of its occupants. It was full of girls in various states of cloud-white undress, pale arms lifted above tucked chemises, petticoats discarded in a froth of frills, nightgowns billowing, bare feet ambling, long hair tumbled from all those restricting pins, bellies rounding away from the rigidity of all those hard boned stays. A drowsy, easy room, drifting towards sleep. And until that moment, the conversation had been as gentle as the setting.
Now tousled heads turned towards the speaker, some shocked, some frowning, but all alerted by the unpleasantness of her innuendo.
‘’E drew another picture,’ Ellen said mildly. ‘I posed fer ’im an’ ’e drew.’
‘An’ the rest!’ Fenny mocked. ‘An’ the rest!’
It was a direct insult but Ellen shrugged it away. She was still warm and content, well loved, much kissed and proof against the unkindness of envy, almost as if his arms were still round her, containing and protective. She went on brushing the tangles from her hair, and spoke to the girls gathered round her bed. ‘’E’s gonna make a paintin’ a’ this one,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you when ’e’s finished.’
‘Paintin’, my eye!’ Fenny said, and she walked across to Ellen’s admiring circle and pushed through until her sharp face was inches away from her adversary. ‘All that carry-on wiv poor Jimmy Thatcher. I remember. Don’t you think I don’t! An’ I tell yer, you never fooled me! Not fer an instant. Ice white! Load a’ rubbish that was. Ice white! You’re no better’n the rest of us.’
‘Shut yer face, you!’ Maudie said, springing to her feet and the defence of her friend.
But Ellen was still calm, to everybody’s surprise, including her own. She put out a hand to restrain Maudie and spoke directly to Fenny’s fierce face. ‘Never said I was,’ she said. ‘I put ’im in ’is place, that was all. ’E shouldn’t a’ tried ’is luck. Was ’is own fault.’
Fenny was too angry to hear her. ‘All that carry-on,’ she continued. ‘Ice white, my eye! Jimmy Thatcher was my feller. We was walkin’ out till you came along, I’ll ’ave you know. Walkin’ out. You ’ad no business taking my feller away, Ellen White, and then pretendin’ you was snow white. Pure as the driven snow, my eye! Well, you’ll come to it in the end, same as all the rest of us, you mark my words. Down on yer back you’ll be, same as all the rest. If you ain’t been there al-a-ready.’
The insult was so crude it caused an outcry. Ellen’s circle of friends protested loudly. ‘Oh, what a rotten thing ter say! You oughter be ashamed, Fenny Jago. Wash yer mouth wiv soap an’ water!’ And they glanced anxiously at Ellen and were intrigued and angered and excited to see that she was blushing.
The insult had been like a blow to her stomach. She was remembering the tenderness of his kisses and her sense of being loved and protected, and she was so furious to hear him being compared to that coarse Jimmy Thatcher that her calm mood was ruptured and gone in the instant. Her hairbrush was still in her hand and she stood up and swung it into Fenny’s sneering face, suddenly, like a fierce spiked weapon.
‘You jest watch yer mouth, that’s all,’ she said, ‘unless you want a clip round the ear’ole. I never took your precious Jimmy Thatcher. You can ’ave ’im an’ welcome. Much good may ’e do yer.’ Her friends growled approval and Fenny put up a hand to defend her cheeks. But she didn’t retreat, even though they were standing almost toe to toe.
‘N’yer!’ she sneered. ‘True colours now we’re seein’, Ice White!’
‘I’m warnin’ yer,’ Ellen said. ‘Put a sock in it.’
‘Can’t take the truth!’
‘I’m warnin’ yer! We don’t like smutty talk, none of us.’ Another chorus of approval.
The golden air was quivering with bad temper and Ellen’s face was a blaze of anger, her blue eyes steel hard, her jaw set. She was a good head shorter than Fenny Jago and considerably slimmer but she looked as though she would wield that brush and knock her enemy to the ground. The girls waited breathlessly as she and Fenny glowered at one another.
‘N’yer!’
‘Pack it in!’
‘N’yer!’
Then there was a flutter of nightgowns near the door and feet pattering and a whispered warning. ‘Miss Elphinstone!’ The hostilities came to an abrupt and immediate halt. By the time that redoubtable lady made her entrance, all her girls were safely and properly beneath the covers, and the room seemed calm, if a little too hot.
The gas was turned down, polite goodnights were murmured, and Ellen was left alone with her thoughts.
And very uncomfortable they were. For there’d been an element of truth in Fenny’s venom, and now it expanded in her mind and poisoned her joy. To be loved so tenderly and so unexpectedly was a happiness past any she’d ever been able to imagine, something apart and something different from anything she’d seen or suspected in the rough world of her childhood. Most of the grasping males she’d met at work or out in the Lane had been brutally and unashamedly after one thing and one thing only. They were coarse and selfish and she disliked them instantly. But David was different. David was gentle and sensitive. He offered her love as she’d always dreamed it could be, not a squalid grabbing with no concern, but a protective enriching tenderness. And yet the horrid phrases stuck in her mind, ‘On yer back. Like the rest of us.’ Oh it mustn’t be like that! she thought. It mustn’t! That was dirty, smutty, horrible. Love was beautiful. And she remembered how very beautiful it had been. With David, she promised herself, things would be quite different. But ugly thoughts troubled her dreams.
Fortunately David was the very first person in the shop that morning and the sight of his handsome face, lifting and rounding into the most loving smile, restored her balance and her hope.
He had a letter in his hand, which he passed quietly across the counter so that their fingers touched, briefly but pleasurably. A faint familiar smell of leather and glue rose from the cloth of his working suit, and as he bowed his head towards her a swathe of dark hair fell from under his cap to lie softly across his forehead. His eyes were very dark and tender, but he remembered to be circumspect. ‘Good morning, Miss White.’
Outside the shop window the street was bright with sunlight. ‘Good morning,’ she said, ‘Mr Cheifitz.’ Dear Mr Cheifitz.
This time it really was a love letter although quite a short one. ‘Dear Ellen,’ he wrote, ‘I meant every word I said yesterday and I hope you did too. I am so happy I can’t believe it. You are the dearest girl in all the world. Will you come to the Tate Gallery with me tonight? There is a picture there I would very much like you to see. Only if you want to of course. With love from David, x x x.’
How could she refuse?
So after supper they took one of the new Underground trains to Westminster, and sat side by side beneath the new hard electric lights while their odd caterpillar of a train rocked them along. It was the first time Ellen had ever travelled by tube and that was an excitement in itself. When they emerged from the sulphurous darkness into the bustle of Parliament Square, the sun was beginning to set and the sky above St James’s Park was streaked with rich colour, lilac and orange and salmon pink.
‘I shall put a sky like that in my paintin’ of you,’ he said. ‘Behind yer head, so as ter show up yer hair.’
‘There was a tree behind me ’ead,’ she said. ‘Bet yer couldn’t even see the sky.’
‘You will in my paintin’,’ he promised.
‘That’s cheatin’.’
‘That’s artistic licence.’
‘Oh ’ark at you!’ she laughed, teasing him because she was very impressed and wasn’t sure yet that she wanted him to know it. ‘You an’ your artists!’
‘Wait till you see what I’m goin’ ter show yer.’
They walked along Millbank towards the gallery, arm in arm, beside a choppy sky-blue Thames, and as they walked, the spreading colour in the sky dappled the water with leaf-shaped patches of lilac and pink and gold. It was a magical evening.
Ellen was unprepared for the impact of the paintings she was about to see. They overwhelmed her.
‘They’re so big!’ she whispered, tiptoeing after David through the huge galleries.
‘Ain’t they jest!’ he said happily. ‘This is real art, you see, Ellen, real art. We’ll stop an’ see some a’ the others next time. Onny they close in half an hour, so we’ll ’ave ter look pretty sharp ternight.’ They had arrived at the entrance to the Pre-Raphaelite gallery. ‘Close yer eyes. Don’t open ’em till I tell yer.’
She smiled at him and closed her eyes, and he led her by the hand until they were both standing in front of the Lady of Shalott. There!’ he said. ‘Whatcher think a’ that?’
There was something about the quality of his voice that alerted her, a sense of strong emotions kept under control, and an anxiety she hadn’t expected. She looked at his face before she looked at the picture, and she didn’t really understand either of them, he so dark-eyed and strange, hopeful and bashful at the same time, the picture telling a story she didn’t know. She gazed at it for a long time, thinking carefully before she said anything, because there was no doubt that it was important to him.
‘It’s a lovely paintin’,’ she said at last, and then added practically, ‘Why’s she lookin’ so upset?’
So he told her the story of the poor bewitched lady, and how she’d been forced to view the world through a mirror, and how she was drifting to her death because she’d dared to disobey.
‘That accounts,’ Ellen said, looking at the anguished face again. ‘Why couldn’t someone’ve smashed the mirror for ’er when she was a kid? I know I would’ve.’
‘Oh Ellen,’ he said laughing with admiration and affection. ‘You’re priceless! Smash the mirror. I’ll bet you would’ve an’ all.’
‘’Course,’ she said, recognizing his admiration and basking in it.
He glanced from the beautiful face in the portrait to the even more beautiful face before him, and knew that the only emotion the portrait was stirring in him now was dulled and distant, a remembered pang of longing, no more. And he was suffused with happiness because he’d found his Ellen, his lovely, lively, practical, passionate Ellen. ‘Before I met you,’ he told her, holding both her hands and looking straight into her welcoming blue eyes, ‘I used ter think she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Now I know it’s you, my darling, darling Ellen.’ He wanted to kiss her, but was aware that the attendants were on the prowl because it was so near dosing time.
‘I ain’t a lady,’ she said feeling she ought to warn him a little. ‘I was born in the Nichol, ’fore they pulled it down. An’ yer know the sort a’ place that was.’
It didn’t seem to worry him. ‘I was born in Wilson Place,’ he said. ‘They pulled that down an’ all, ter make way fer the Buildin’s. I don’t reckon it matters where you was born. It’s what you do counts. You’ll always be a lady ter me, always, no matter where you was born.’
When she began her confession she’d had a vague hope that she had found the moment to tell him who she really was. Now she knew it couldn’t be done. Not then anyway. ‘I ain’t a lady though,’ she repeated sadly, and looked at the lady on the canvas.
‘Nor was she neither,’ he comforted. ‘She was only a model posing as a lady. So I tell you, if I was ter draw you an’ do a great paintin’ like that, you’d look like a lady. Every inch a lady. Just like her.’
‘Is that what you’d like ter do, a big paintin’?’ The eagerness in his voice was so touching she forgot her need for confession.
‘I used ter think so. Ain’t so sure now. Cost a precious lot a’ money a canvas that size. Ter say nothing of the paint. Oils, you see. Cost the earth. No, I reckon I’m better as I am. A draughtsman. I’m a good draughtsman, though I sez it as shouldn’t.’
‘If I was a lady I’d buy you all the paint and canvas you wanted,’ she said, and smiled so lovingly into his eyes that he simply had to put his arms round her.
‘None a’ that!’ the attendant said, sneaking up behind them. ‘Closin’ in ten minutes. Time you was on yer way out.’
That night, when the dormitory was still and all her friends were fast asleep, Ellen returned wakefully to the moment when she’d so nearly confessed. It was very flattering to be compared to a lady, especially that lady, who really was very gorgeous, but the comparison was a difficulty too. How could she tell him she was really Smelly Ellie Murphy, who’d nicked his cake and been the class joke, when he thought of her as a lady and told her it didn’t matter where you were born, only what you did? And then another even more alarming thought entered her busy brain. What if they were to meet Ruby Miller one evening and she were to let the cat out of the bag without knowing? Ruby was working as a lady’s maid for a family called Winstanley over in Bethnal Green. Ellen saw her nearly every Wednesday, or at least whenever they both had the afternoon off. And Ruby didn’t know anything about him. Well, nobody did yet. Except the people in the cycling club. And Maudie, of course. Perhaps she ought to warn Ruby. Just in case. Next Wednesday, she thought, as sleep finally sucked her away, I’ll tell her Wednesday.
Ruby was washing her hair in the sink when Ellen arrived that Wednesday afternoon. ‘Goin’ up West this evening,’ she explained, peeping at her friend from behind a swathe of wet hair. ‘They’re all off out ter some do, so we got the evening off. Bit of all right, eh? Why dontcher come wiv us?’
‘Well …’ Ellen said, trying to think of a tactful way of refusing. ‘It’s like this … I’ve promised.’
‘You’re walkin’ out wiv David Cheifitz, aintcher?’ Ruby said affably, returning to her tussle with the soap.
‘She seen yer, last Thursday, up the Standard,’ Mrs Miller explained, lifting a jug full of clean water from the draining board. ‘You ready fer this then, Rube?’
‘Not yet! Not yet!’ her daughter said, waving a wet hand wildly above her head.
‘Well, buck yer ideas up, do,’ Mrs Miller said cheerfully. ‘There’s all the washing up ter do. You ain’t got all day.’ She was warm and bustling and friendly, and there wasn’t a trace of unkindness in her voice at all. Not for the first time, Ellen envied her friend Ruby and wished she could have had a mother even half as loving.
‘We’re walkin’ out, me an’ David,’ she said. ‘I should a’ told yer before.’
‘Said so, didn’t I, Ma?’ Ruby said from under the soapsuds.
‘’E’s a good-lookin’ lad,’ Mrs Miller said. ‘What’s yer Ma think?’
‘Ain’t told ’em yet.’
‘No,’ Mrs Miller said and the word was an agreement. ‘You wouldn’t, would yer. Not really. Can’t say I blame yer, duckie.’
‘I go ’ome once a month,’ Ellen said, because she felt she ought to justify herself. ‘When the ol’ man ain’t there. Take ’em some food. Bits an’ bobs. No point givin’ ’em money. ’E’d only drink it.’
‘Quite right, duck,’ Mrs Miller said. ‘I’d do the same mesself.’ She was clearing the dirty dishes from the table onto a tray.
Ellen joined her beside the table and began to help her. ‘I think I love ’im,’ she said.
Mrs Miller held the teapot against her chest and expressed her approval by patting it, but Ruby rose from the sink like a naiad, streaming water and soapsuds, and threw her arms round Ellen’s neck and kissed her over and over again, rapturously and very wetly. ‘I think that’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Lovely! Oh Ellie, that’s lovely!’ until Ellen’s blouse was soaking wet and she had to beg her to stop.
‘Daft ha’p’orth,’ Mrs Miller said. ‘Put yer ’ead back in the sink, do, an’ let’s get the soap out of it, or we shall never ’ear the last. There’s a towel on the airer, Ellie love. Give yerself a rub-down. You’re soppin’ wet.’
‘Thing is,’ Ellen said, pulling the towel down from the drier and mopping the front of her blouse. ‘’E don’t know who I am really. ’E thinks I was born Ellen White. I ain’t told ’im I changed me name or nothink …’
‘No,’ Mrs Miller said mildly, pouring the clean water over her daughter’s soapy head. ‘You wouldn’t a’ done. ‘Course not. I can see that. Can’t you, Rube?’
‘I’ll tell ’im in the end,’ Ellen promised, glad that they were too busy to be looking at her face. ‘When it’s the right moment like. It’s not … I’m not bein’ deceitful. Not really. It’s just I’ve never ’ad the opportunity.’ And she realized that her excuses were making her blush, and knew that she was ashamed of them. She ought to have told him.
‘Don’t worry, duck,’ Ruby said from under the smother of falling water. ‘Your secret’s safe wiv me. I won’t say nothink, never fear.’
‘Ta,’ Ellen said, and busied herself with the towel again.
‘Sounds serious,’ Mrs Miller said, reaching for a second towel from the drier. ‘You wasn’t thinkin’ a’ gettin’ wed, was yer?’
‘Not jest yet-a-while,’ Ellen said, blushing again. ‘’Spect we will in the end though.’
‘’E’s a Jewboy, Ellie,’ Mrs Miller said, handing the towel to Ruby and turning to give her guest her full attention. ‘Jews marry Jews as a rule. You know that, dontcher?’
Oh yes, she knew it. She knew it so well she’d been steadfastly avoiding the knowledge ever since that first day at the fair. ‘’E’s different,’ she said, and she raised her head, eyes flashing and chin in the air.
‘Well, I ’ope so, fer your sake,’ Mrs Miller said, mildly. ‘What do ’is folks say?’
‘’E ain’t told ’em yet. We ain’t told no one yet. They’ll be all right. They’re nice.’ But she wasn’t sure and the expression on her face showed it.
‘Pot a’ tea,’ Mrs Miller decided, turning their conversation to easier matters. ‘Aintcher gaspin’ fer a pot a’ tea? I know I am.’
‘So vhere’s your Davey?’ Rivke asked her sister-in-law when they met on the stairs, some days later. ‘Sunday an’ he ain’t home again. Ve never see him these days.’
Rachel was flustered by her interest but she explained about the cycling club and hoped the explanation would satisfy. ‘So healthy, Rivke. Fresh air. Good healthy exercise. Just vhat he vant.’ They climbed the next flight together, panting a little in the heat of their exertions.
‘You vant ter vatch him,’ Rivke advised when they reached the second gallery. ‘Young man like that out all hours. That club could be just an excuse for chasing the girls. If I vas you I should think a’ gettin’ him married, maybe.’
Rachel snorted. Trust Rivke to say the one thing she shouldn’t. ‘Married! Such an idea! Vhat next?’ she said. ‘He’s a boy yet, Rivke. How many more times I got ter tell you? He don’t think a’ such things.’
‘They all think a’ such things,’ Rivke said. ‘How many more times I got ter tell you? He’s a grown man. He needs a wife.’
‘He ain’t!’ Rachel said stubbornly. ‘He don’t!’
‘For vhy you don’t see the truth about that boy of yours is more than I can comprehend,’ Rivke said, hooking her door key out of her skirt pocket by its long string. ‘He needs a vife, I tell you, bubeleh.’
‘He don’t!’ Rachel shouted, losing her temper suddenly. ‘You hear me, Rivke, he don’t, he don’t!’
‘So ve hear you all over the Buildin’s,’ Rivke said, taking care not to raise her voice because their neighbours down in the courtyard were obviously listening. ‘So don’t shout. You don’t change human nature shouting, bubeleh.’
‘My Davey’s a scholar,’ Rachel shouted. ‘He ain’t like any old meshuganer, crazy for women. An artist, I tell you. A good boy. A cut above …’
‘Yell all you like but don’t say I don’t varn you,’ Rivke said sternly, preparing to do battle with her key. Her black wig was over one eye, but she still looked fiercely disapproving. ‘Find him a vife, I should, dolly.’
‘You! Dumpling! Josh!’ Rachel yelled, too far beyond herself for caution. ‘All the same you are. Every one. Ain’t you got nothink better to do than criticize my Davey? He’s a good pure Jewish boy, I tell you.’ And then, seeing the faces avidly watching her in the courtyard, she yelled down, ‘So mind your own business, vhy don’t you!’
‘You yell, ve listen!’ Mrs Guldermann said, grinning malevolently up at her. And at that Rachel fell upon her door and after several tear-smudged attempts to get the key into the lock and turned she stumbled into the comparative sanctuary of her home. Oh what if they were right? Surely he couldn’t be chasing girls? Not her Davey. He wouldn’t do it.