19

Tales from the Purple Handbag
The Rabbi’s Tale
1965

Right. So old Stavros found me in bed with the insurance man, and threw me and Patrick out on our ears. In half a day I went from a comfortable old cottage, to a miserable basement flat in Jericho. These days Jericho is a very fancy place to live, but in those days it was a tight knit community of old families and proud working-class values. The reputation of young Maureen O’Dowd came before me and I found I was far from welcome. Just a teenage slut in a mess, far too fickle to be part of the young wives circle, and I had a funny looking kid to boot. So for the next five years, I grubbed my way from hand to mouth, determined to prove my worth as a mother. I impressed no one, but they were the most precious five years of my life, having Patrick to share it with me; an angel of a child who I adored. A kind, chattering and companionable little boy who accepted the poor limitations of his lot without complaint.

The Social Services turned up from time to time, snapping at my heels like Jack Russells, slamming their supremacy in my face and poking their noses into what they called ‘Patrick’s welfare.’ Callous spinsters with poker faces and tweed suits who had no idea what it was to be a woman, let alone a mother. I was honest enough to admit that his life wasn’t ideal, but they never managed to dig up enough, or invent enough, to take him away. They must have seen that I was devoted to him and did my best for him, however inadequate I was. He made my life. He was my life.

Eventually my mother grudgingly accepted me back, but it was only a surface tolerance. She remained what she’d always been: a bitter, disappointed woman. She ignored Patrick’s presence completely, and I can never remember an occasion when she actually spoke to him directly. Just referred to him as ‘that little bastard.’ She dropped me the odd quid when I was desperate, but it was given with a lip-curling grudge and a lecture to remind me what a loathsome disappointment I was. I had to take it all on the chin, though – I needed the quid – but that was small change compared to what I really had to do to survive. Courage, Marina! Out with it! Forget the nausea that’s rising in your throat. Press that pen down and release your disgust.

No matter how hard I tried I could never make ends meet. I was so young. So foolish. So trapped. Forever vain. Forever a spendthrift. I scrubbed floors and pulled pints and got a pittance from the social, but I was so useless at managing I was always in debt. I kept thinking that next week I’d try and put a bit by, but I never could. In the end the debt was so massive I had no hope of ever getting straight.

Mordechai Weisenbluth, the local Rabbi, was also my landlord. Every Thursday night, on the dot of six o’clock, he knocked on the door.

‘Good evening, Miss O’Dowd.’

‘Good evening, Rabbi. Please, come in.’ He was in. The door was shut and he produced the rent book. We then began the ritual that precluded our business arrangement.

‘The rent of three pounds is due today.’

‘I’ve only two pounds, four and six, Rabbi.’

‘Can I assume you still don’t have the arrears of thirty-eight pounds, plus nine pounds, three and fourpence, for the gas and electricity?’

‘I’m so sorry, but I haven’t. I’ve tried to economise this week, but I’ve had some expenses.’

‘Like new shoes, Miss O’Dowd?’

‘Like new shoes. My old ones were leaking.’

‘And, of course, you had to have your roots bleached.’

‘I did. I can’t go around looking like a tramp, can I? I’m sneered at for looking up to myself, but I’d be sneered at all the more for looking a mess.’

‘So it’s fish and chips again for Patrick?’

‘It is. Patrick, darlin’. You’ve to run straight up to the chip shop, and don’t talk to strangers. Stay in the warm and tell them you’re waiting for your mammy. I won’t be long.’ Patrick left, and no more words were exchanged between the Rabbi and me.

He removed his hat and his black jacket. The putrid smell of dried perspiration wafted towards me. He moved nearer and his face leered up close to mine. His long, grey beard was encrusted with particles of food, his teeth were coated and decaying, and his breath so foul my throat retched. My blouse was unbuttoned, my breasts exposed and slobbered over. I closed my eyes as he fumbled with the buckle of his trouser belt. I gritted my teeth and retched again, as the stench of the farmyard puffed up in my face. He guided my hand to excite him, but then he suddenly turned me around, banged my head hard down on the kitchen table and threw my skirt over my head. A searing dagger of pain, one hand pinching my inner thigh, the other gaining purchase with my hair. I was forced to hold in my cries and silently beg for his end.

It was consensual rape, I suppose. He had no need to be so bestial and cruel, but it was an underlining of his contempt for me and his hypocritical un-Godliness.

‘Until next week, Miss O’Dowd,’ he said to the back of my head. ‘Perhaps you might have found the arrears by then.’

‘Until next week, Rabbi,’ I said without moving. ‘Thank you so much for your understanding.’

When he’d gone I sank down on the floor, quietly sobbing. I didn’t just think I was filth. I was filth. When I’d cleansed myself I went up to the chip shop to find Patrick, and he always knew I’d been crying. His little arms would reach out and beg me to pick him up so he could cuddle me. ‘Beardie Vicebloof stinky, fat, bad man,’ he’d say, but I’d just laugh, and tickle him and tease him and sit him up on the counter so he could choose his own piece of fish.

What Rabbi Weisenbluth did to me was a hideous violation that sickened me with shame. Was it prostitution? I don’t know. You tell me. The dictionary says ‘a woman who engages in sexual activity for payment,’ but I didn’t do it for money in my pocket. If I’d done that I could have really gone on the game and cleared my debts in a week or two, but I could never have sold myself. I wanted the thrill of love – I’ve already told you how generous I was with my favours – but allowing men to buy my body was abhorrent, even to my own pathetic standards. The only whoring I ever did was to buy a roof over our heads. Eviction meant the hovering vultures would swoop and grab Patrick, so I had to do what I had to do.

Here endeth the Rabbi’s tale.