She's Leaving Home (5 page)

Respectful of her delicacy the farmer reached into the basket and hauled the squawking bird out by the legs. With it held firmly in front of him as it struggled he marched straight over to the butcher and put the hen into his hands.

It was now the turn of the butcher to nod amiably to his customer. He was a fat but muscular man, in shirtsleeves despite the cold, his blue striped apron tied twice round his middle and streaked with gore. On his head was pinned a
yarmulkah
. Annie knew him to be a robustly religious man who would take no chances. He had to be so, to hold down the key job at the heart of the Jewish community.

‘Mrs Majinsky! A fine one here.’ So saying he quickly examined the hen thoroughly. Then in a swift movement he tucked the flapping bird under one beefy arm, bent back the neck and with his knife cut the head clean off in a single stroke.

Blood spurted from the wound. The thing continued to jerk about. As Helen watched in horror it suddenly leaped out of the butcher’s hands and jumped awkwardly around in the mess at his feet.
Other faces turned around at the commotion. The butcher, hands on hips, began to laugh heartily, then spotted the alarmed faces of the Majinsky women. Quickly he scooped the creature out of the mire, holding it firmly in both hands till suddenly it flopped. ‘Poor thing – I know just how it feels,’ he murmured, and stroked the quivering plumage.

Then the corpse, its golden feathers muddied, was turned upside down and unceremoniously dumped into one of the metal chimney pots to drain alongside half a dozen others.

Helen felt exhausted: by the stink, by the racket, by the savagery of the headless bird as it clung unknowingly to life. The butcher was already joking with a fresh lady customer who clutched another wriggling chicken by the legs as he deftly stropped his knife. But his hand shook slightly.

In the distance she could see the skinny, black-coated figure of the Rebbe. Head bowed, eyes restless he swung this way and that and muttered into his beard. His presence chilled her. His piety seemed to encompass not love but inhibition, ritual observance and denial, without room for compromise or compassion.

Two more tasks remained. Old Mrs Ginsberg rose, tugged the bird out of the pot with an audible
plop
and shook it so that a last few drops of blood spattered the floor. Then she settled it lovingly on her knees as if it were a baby about to be fed and plucked it thoroughly. Small
under-feathers
floated up in the air and made Helen sneeze. As the naked flesh emerged the hen was transformed into its oven-ready state. The pinkish yellow skin stretched over the rib cage and the fat curved thighs reminded her of the torsos of half-nude women she could sometimes glimpse on hidden magazines in the station bookshop. Such material was banned, of course, but merchant seamen brought it in from abroad; it was easy to find if you knew where to look.

The old woman finished her plucking with a last determined tug at a broken feather stub on a wing. ‘Clean it out for you?’ she offered. Annie assented gratefully. That was a task she did not care to do herself. Mrs Ginsberg carried the bird to a wooden block and eviscerated it with firm neat strokes. The slithery discards, still steaming, were dropped into an overflowing bucket at her feet. A smell of hot chicken faeces filled the air. Helen shut her eyes.

There was no point in being squeamish, she chided herself. As long as she ate meat and enjoyed it, the brutality of its preparation was unavoidable. Butchers! Horrible word. The men who ran the concentration camps were called butchers. Their victims were dispatched with similar attention to orderliness and rather more to record-keeping. Yet she knew she would eat the food, suitably cooked and trimmed, without a second thought, and wondered what hardness lay within her that made it possible.

The chicken, gutted and wholesome, was wrapped first in white paper then several layers of newspaper in case it leaked, and deposited in the carrier bag. Annie patted it in triumph and relief. It would make an excellent dinner.

Daniel Majinsky tweaked the worsted cloth across the broad shoulders. ‘That shoulder wound made you slightly lop-sided, did you realise?’ he commented, and pinched a fingerful of excess fabric by the right armhole. Instantly the overcoat sat better.

‘I never noticed, but you’re right.’ Captain Armitage turned sideways and breathed in his abdomen. He smoothed the material appreciatively. Only one sleeve had been pinned in for the session. The vacant armhole revealed layers of brown bindings and stiffener; on the front, white tacking stitches ran like tram lines down the chest. ‘Hand-stitched lapels, Danny, as usual. If I’m going to pay good money for a tailor-made Abercrombie I might as well let everybody know it.’

The tailor was as tall as the sea-captain. He inserted a pin, then deftly marked the neckline with white chalk. ‘You wouldn’t get a good coat cheaper in Owen Owen’s. Not one that would last.’

‘True.’ His client preened himself in the full-length mirror. ‘And it’ll have to. This next
voyage is the end of the line for me. Could be the last new coat I can afford.’

Daniel straightened up, measuring tape in hand. Although the garment was designed to last a decade or more, the loss of a good customer would be a blow. ‘But you’re not yet sixty!’

‘Yes, but the shipping company is beginning to reduce its British flagged fleet. Cheaper to get crews from Panama or Hong Kong. And even where captains are British I don’t fancy the life – sailing around the tropics with a crew you can’t talk to isn’t an old man’s game. They made me a fair offer and I’ll take it.’

‘But you don’t want to leave the sea, do you? It’s in your  blood. Four buttons or five?’

‘Four. That’s true, but it also makes sense to get out while the going is good. There’s change in the air. Look, Danny, the Red Book lists seventy-four shipping companies registered in Liverpool this year. Within twenty years there’ll be hardly a dozen. Men like me with maximum seniority are too expensive these days. Our seamen on union rates are ten times dearer than the Chinks who work harder and do what they’re told. The company has no option.’

‘Bloody unions.’

‘Couldn’t disagree with that, but our blokes couldn’t live on those wages, union or no. Can’t blame ’em: neither could I.’

The two men talked on. Daniel remembered the first time Armitage had climbed the stairs into the first-floor showroom. He was not likely to forget: the Captain had been one of the early patrons of the new business in the days when the tiniest piece of cloth had required reams of clothing coupons. Like many seafarers Armitage picked up his requirements overseas and had carried a mysterious bolt of Harris Tweed into the workshop with him.

The master mariner had spent the war years in convoys from the States dodging U-boats. Miraculously he had avoided trouble until the last few months of 1944 when a maverick destroyer, far from its wrecked Bremen home, had fired a few desperate salvos. The bridge of his vessel suffered serious damage and so did its master. But Daniel suspected that had the Captain emerged unscathed when so many brave Liverpool men had been lost in the merchant navy he would have felt guilty at his own good fortune.

Daniel stood back, brushed an imaginary hair from the sleeve and admired his own handiwork. ‘Buttons on the cuffs as usual?’

‘As usual. You know me, I don’t like change.’

It was only the third coat he had made for Armitage, who was also regular in his order of two suits every other year. Change nevertheless revealed itself in the slowly expanding measurements in that small notebook on the workbench. Not that Daniel Majinsky would have been so tactless as to mention it.

Steps could be heard. Daniel helped the Captain off with the precious half-finished coat. The two men turned as Helen hesitated at the door.

‘Have you met my daughter? Come here, Helen, and say hello.’

It did not occur to Daniel to name his customer to his daughter. The confidentiality of his clientele was vital, partly for business reasons, for such a list of names and addresses was worth real money, called goodwill, if ever he sold the firm; and partly through an innate sense of decency, for he had seen these men in their underclothes at moments of great vulnerability.

The girl approached, murmured ‘Good afternoon’, shook hands and withdrew quickly to the back workshop. She heard the two men laugh. Probably they referred to her, or young people in general, whose tastes in mass-produced garments were Daniel’s bane.

At last solid footsteps retreated down the stairs. The street door clicked. In a moment her father came in, a pack of sandwiches in hand. He indicated the gas ring in the corner. ‘Put the kettle on.’ He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘So: how was the abattoir?’

Helen grimaced.

‘I can’t stand the place either. Something else that’s about to disappear. Have a sandwich.’

She accepted and began to eat hungrily: the cold air and an early breakfast had left their gap. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t properly dressed, Dad. I didn’t know you’d have a customer.’ A tailor’s daughter should proudly wear his handiwork.

‘Oh, you youngsters! I shouldn’t complain, though. Look what walked in this morning.’

He pointed at the far corner. A large roll of green velvet rested upright, its edges wrapped in tissue paper. In the soft light through a grimy window its surface shimmered.

‘Ever heard of the Remo Four? They’re one of the groups Brian Epstein’s signed. He told ’em to smarten themselves up, so one of them went down the market and bought that. It’s lovely stuff, fine silk velour, and they want four suits out of it.’

Their eyes met and both giggled. ‘They’ll look like a bunch of frogs.’ Helen helped herself to another sandwich then started to make the tea.

‘Won’t they just. Exotic, but that’s the effect they want. One of them’s portly so I’ll put a couple of hidden elastic panels in his trousers. Sewing it is a bugger. Every needle mark shows in weave that fine – no room for mistakes. I’ll probably make a
toile
first to get it right. That’s an old dress-making technique – haven’t done it in years.’

As she poured tea from the chipped teapot and stirred in milk and sugar Helen saw that the musicians’ need of his highest talents delighted her father. He continued, ‘They’d have done better with curtain material – damask or whatever, which would have taken some wear. Those outfits won’t last five minutes, but they’re for a TV programme. I told ’em it’d cost. They just hooted and said Brian’d pay.’

‘Customer is always right.’

‘Absolutely.’ Daniel reached for the notebook and scribbled a reminder to himself. He would ring NEMS before he laid a finger on the fabric.

Helen bit into a small apple. The discussion at school came back to her. Brenda’s careless remark that it must be ‘horrid’ to be Jewish, reinforced by her mother’s demand for conformity to rules – rules that produced that disgusting slaughterhouse – plus an increasing necessity to establish herself and her family in some sort of context, led her on. ‘Did you always want to be a tailor, Dad?’

‘God, no. I dreamed of being a draughtsman. At Cammell Laird’s. But that apprenticeship cost money – you had to buy your own tools if you didn’t have your father’s – and tailoring didn’t. So here I am. But I’m not a
tailor
, child. The tailor is Mr Mannheim upstairs. A tailor sews. I’m a tailor’s cutter – much more skilled. And more important: if the tailor makes a wrong stitch he can unpick it. If the cutter makes a mistake he ruins a whole bolt of cloth.’

He accepted the mug of tea. On its side was a faded coat of arms flanked by the two Liver birds and the legend ‘1207–1957’ underneath, a relic of a civic celebration. ‘In the factories it’s done by machine now. The jeans your pals wear: they’re cut fifty at a time by automatic knives, each pair identical. Don’t need an apprenticeship to learn that.’ He paused moodily. ‘But there’ll always be customers who like a jacket that fits, a pair of trousers which sit well, and who’ll pay the extra. I hope.’

With a hint of weariness he rose and went out on to the landing. Helen could hear him use the tiny smelly toilet and wash his hands. Quickly she gathered up the remains of their lunch. The greaseproof paper was folded and could be used again.

She settled herself in a corner. ‘Can I watch?’

‘Sure.’ Daniel lit another cigarette and balanced it carefully next to the previous stub which had gone out. On principle he would not relight a cold butt; he declared that they tasted awful and that he was not yet reduced to such penury. The hot raw smoke caught his chest and he coughed. In the morning he would rise and torture the family with much clearing of mucus. Since that happened in most homes it excited no concern.

He whistled softly under his breath as he switched on the worklight, a large oblong contraption below head height. At once the bench was bathed in a golden glow, like a billiard table, while Daniel’s face remained in shadow.

The workbench was covered in linoleum and was some twenty feet long, roughly the length of a piece of fine wool fabric, sufficient to make a man’s suit, trousers, jacket, waistcoat. Daniel selected a roll of suiting to which was pinned a scrap of paper with his back-slanted scrawl. With a flourish he spread it out and matched the edges double, for each piece had to be cut with its mirror image, left to right, trouser to trouser, cuff to cuff. He ran his hand lovingly over the cloth, relishing its softness and fine weave. A flaw was checked and marked with chalk, to be avoided during the process of cutting out.

‘Pure wool, this, Helen. Here, let me show you.’

He pulled a single thread from the cut end, held it up and put the flame from his lighter to it. The thread twisted and sparkled but did not catch fire.

‘Pure wool smoulders. Cotton will burn. Terylene, now, and artificial fibres are another matter.’ He dropped the burned thread on the floor and stubbed it out with his toe, then rummaged under the bench and pulled out a scrap of blue. Again he lifted a thread high between finger and thumb and put the flame to it; this time it melted and he dropped it quickly.

He kicked the rubbish back under the bench. ‘These mixtures are the devil. I can get a fair payment for trimmings from wool – they’re shredded and used for cheaper cloth. But the offcuts from Terylene blends are practically worthless.’