One evening I was sitting down to my favourite dish—rice-pudding with a blob of jam—when there was a knock on the door, and in came Mrs Kamenetz-Podolsk.
‘Your wife is out?’ she said.
‘Are you asking me or telling me?’ I said.
‘Half asking half telling, because as a matter of fact I know she’s out, but I want to know when she’s coming back,’ and as she spoke I could see by the look on her face that she knew that too. ‘Berl,’ she said, her voice full of complaint, ‘I’ve been a friend to you and your wife ever since you came here, haven’t I?’
‘You have, Mrs K-P.’
‘And I’ve never kept a secret from you, have I?’
‘No, Mrs K-P, you’ve always told us everything about yourself.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if your wife’s run off with a mamzer of a gardener, why are you afraid to tell me?’
‘Because if I make too much fuss, she might come back.’
But there was another reason. My wife was the housekeeper and I the warden of the Eastleigh Jewish Old Age Home, and if they discovered that I had no wife, I would soon have no job either. Not that it was the most marvellous job in the world. I spent most of my time helping old crocks out of their beds and into their beds, into their chairs and out of their chairs, into their baths and out of their baths, on to the toilets and off the toilets, so that on Wednesdays, when I had my half-day, I would go into town just for the pleasure of seeing people move about on their own steam.
There were complaints about my work. As often as not I would help some old boy out of his bed and into his trousers and find he’d been dead for some twelve hours or more. But it’s difficult to tell, and I always said to myself, better to feed a dead man than starve a living one. There were also people not being continental, as the orderlies put it, and if we didn’t have enough orderlies, as we usually didn’t, I would have to follow them around with a brush and pan like a cleaner behind a cavalry regiment. Still, it was bread and butter, and sometimes a bit of jam, and if the jam came together with rice-pudding, you couldn’t have found a happier man in the country.
I suppose I would have been happier still if I could have got on with my wife. I met her when I was in my late twenties. Her father kept a second-hand book shop, and also sold antiques. His daughter was the antique he was most anxious to dispose of, and as I used to spend half the week rummaging around in his shop he and I became friendly. Sometimes he would give me a book, sometimes a chipped vase or a dented helmet, and one day—although I was never certain that I had ever asked—he gave me his daughter. We had a wedding, not a big one, and then went off on a honeymoon to Belfast.
You may never have heard of Belfast as a honeymoon centre, and to be honest, neither had I, but she had an aunt there, with a large house, so if nothing else, it was economic.
Well, I thought I had known some unhappy times before, but they were paradise compared to those weeks in Belfast.
‘Honeymoon’s are hell,’ said her aunt, ‘but they’re meant to be. If you can get over your honeymoon, you can get over anything. Wait till the children come, that’s when the pleasure starts.’
But the children didn’t come, which was surprising. A few weeks before the wedding my prospective father-in-law had taken me aside, given me an immense glass of whisky and a huge cigar, and said:
‘There’s something I think I should tell you, but take some whisky first. It’s very good, twelve years old.’
I took a long sip.
‘We’re living in modern times,’ he said. ‘I’m a liberal man, and you’re a liberal man, no? A man who reads as much as you do must be a liberal man.’
‘I am a liberal man,’ I assured him.
‘And broad-minded?’
‘And broad-minded.’
‘Take another sip of whisky.’
I took another sip.
‘Now what I’m telling you is in confidence. After all, I look upon you like my own son, and I think you have a right to share my secrets. No?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take another sip of whisky.’
I took another sip.
‘Now my daughter, as you know, is a popular young girl.’
I said nothing.
‘Well, popular she certainly is, and one day, or at least one night, she did a foolish thing. Take another sip of whisky.’
I took another sip.
‘She did a silly thing, and to cut a long story short, she’s pregnant—but only a little bit.’
The bit was not all that little, and her changing contour had already struck my attention, but then, as her father put it, what woman is perfect? She was good-looking, at least not bad-looking, with money and from a good family. Me, I had no family—I don’t mean, heaven forbid, a bad family—I mean no mother, no father, no nothing. And I wasn’t rich either. As for looks, well that’s a matter of opinion, though I should tell you that I’m a few inches over five feet tall, about the same size broad, and with so little neck that if I was sentenced to the gallows they would have had to hang me by the waist. And in the end the children didn’t come, not even the one that was, or seemed to be, on the way. My wife was taken ill one day and moved to hospital. When she came out a few weeks later she was a different person, not only in shape, but way of talking. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened, and if she didn’t want to talk I didn’t want to press her.
We began as shopkeepers. My wife kept the shop and she also kept me. Not that I wasn’t willing to help, but she thought that I would frighten away customers, and I stayed at the back of the shop. Luckily her father had presented me with a sizeable collection of books and I was able to continue my education. In fact, I was beginning to think life was good, which I knew was an ill omen, and it was. We went bankrupt, which was not surprising. The shop was a men’s outfitters, and what man will go into a shop to buy underwear and other private particulars with a woman behind the counter—especially a woman like my wife? So we closed shop and moved.
We moved to an orphanage. My wife, like most nasty women, was a good cook, and she was appointed cook and I odd-job man. I suppose I was about the oddest odd-job man that ever there was, but it was a job, and the children liked me, and our room was comfortable, and the food was good and the scenery excellent. One night, as I was going to bed, I reflected on my good fortune, and at once got down my case and packed. What I expected followed the next morning. My wife lost her temper with one of the boys and hit him on the head with a frying pan. She ruined the pan, and didn’t do the boy much good either, and we moved the next day.
We then went back to her aunt in Belfast. I don’t know what that poor woman did to deserve us, and neither, I’m sure, did she.
She once took me aside and said:
‘There’s really a very great deal of good in your wife, but it may not come out until she’s had children. I hope you are doing your best.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ I said.
‘But while there’s hope you won’t give up, will you?’
‘I’m always willing to try,’ I said.
‘I’m glad. And if you ever want any help please don’t hesitate to ask me.’
About three weeks after we moved in, she was going up the stairs when she suddenly complained of a pain in her chest. I went to help her, and almost carried her up the stairs, but by the time I got her to bed, she was dead.
She left us her house and a few hundred pounds and my wife used the money to convert the house into two flats. We lived in the lower one, and the top one we rented out to a Mrs Raffety and her seven children. One day my wife left for London saying that she had to see some solicitors. She did not say what about, but it must have been a long consultation, for she remained away eleven months. I suppose I would have been all right in Belfast, but for the fact that after about three weeks Mrs Raffety found that she couldn’t pay the rent.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ she explained, ‘but you see there was Pat sending me money from Liverpool. Well, he’s out of work now.’
Pat, who was her husband, appeared on the scene about a week later. He was a small, bent, wispy man, and one evening he came knocking at my door.
‘You shouldn’t be letting me disturb you,’ he said, ‘but I’m thinking I might have a chance to return the favours you’ve been doing us.’
‘Don’t let it worry you,’ I said. ‘It’s not worrying me.’
‘Ah, but it’s easier to give favours than to receive them. The burden of gratitude can be a very grievous one, but I think I may have a chance to reduce it—if only I had some money.’
‘That’s a problem we all have, Mr Raffety.’
‘No, but if I only had a little, I have ways of getting a lot. There’s a friend of mine works in a stable, and he’s tipped me three certs—not one, not two, but three. Three certs he’s tipped me and they’re all running at the Curragh next week. But sure he might as well have promised me the moon for I haven’t even the bus fare to get there.’
I was not quite able to follow his meaning, so he explained that if I could lend him two pounds he would come back a few days later with two hundred, a proposition which no man with two pounds to his name could reasonably refuse. It so happened that I had two pounds to my name, and I lent it to him.
I don’t know whether he won or lost. I rather fancy he won, for I never saw him again, and neither did Mrs Raffety.
Several months later I was walking by the water’s edge wondering whether to jump in or not, when I saw my wife coming off the boat and I decided to jump in, but it was a cold morning and the water was filthy, so I had second thoughts.
My wife looked as if she had been sparring with a heavyweight boxer for the past few weeks, for she was black and blue all over, with a few teeth missing, and one of her ears a little torn away from the head. She had either been quarrelling with whoever she had been with, or had been indulging in too much love-play, but I asked no questions, and she told me no lies, and we began again.
It took my wife about five minutes to clear Mrs Raffety and her brood out. We then decided to sell the house, but although we lowered the price from week to week, we could find no buyers, and after about three months we moved out, which was about the same time as the roof fell in.
It was then that we came to Eastleigh and my wife became the housekeeper and I the warden of the old age home, and we were there for eleven years, till my wife ran away with the gardener—which brings me to the time I was enjoying my rice-pudding and jam, and the entry of Mrs Kamenetz-Podolsk.