She's Leaving Home (6 page)

At the end of the room hung a horizontal pole laden with stiff pieces of cardboard turned yellow with age. The templates were as essential to the business as were his shears: had the premises been destroyed Daniel would have tried to replace these before anything else. He checked the details of the order, looked up the name in his notebook, chose several boards and began to arrange them on the cloth, ensuring that stripes matched exactly. The task took several minutes. When satisfied he began with swift sure strokes to draw a line around each in pink tailor’s chalk.

‘You draw with your left hand, but you use the shears with your right,’ she commented. She had not considered it before. ‘Are you left-handed, or ambidextrous?’

Her father rubbed his left shoulder. ‘Wish I were. No, I was taught to cut with my right hand. When I was younger than you.’ He did not elaborate.

Helen watched quietly. Her father was a craftsman, the finest level of achievement a working man could reach. Other men might be better paid, but they could not function with such grace and
pride
. His knowledge was such that men, and the handful of women customers he worked for, felt comfortable and looked smart in what he created. To watch him was a wondrous thing. Whatever she might attempt in the unclear future would never have this flowing elegance, this artless match of hand and eye. Daniel, a well-read man, had once remarked that the poet William Blake had been a craftsman and had never let his trade be derided. There was poetry here, too, and beauty, and manliness.

Yet he enjoyed discussing politics with her. That, too, was a tradition: the working man who took a close and learned interest in the world beyond his workshop. He might have made a politician himself, had the means been available. Helen blinked. Once more, she realised, her parents’ lives had been stymied years ago by their exclusion from mainstream society – by lack of money. Yet the options facing Helen were much wider. The problem might be to get her parents – Daniel and Annie both – to see that what had stopped them would no longer stop their daughter. As long as their imaginations had not been destroyed as well.

Daniel straightened. ‘This one’s a bit tricky, Helen. He’s a disabled man, not a standard fit. I’m going to have to concentrate. Sorry.’

A dismissal, again. It was as if a master surgeon had barred students or Michelangelo had told
a novice to leave him in peace. She could not help, only get in the way. The girl rose without demur, picked up her coat, and went out into the cold square, where shoppers laden with carrier-bags silently trudged past her.

Later, Helen returned to the workshop for the promised lift home. She was tired, more so than had the day been spent in class. Visits were paid to the out-workers, but mostly she stayed put in the car, declining invitations to cups of tea. Her father took a long time in some houses.

At last she snuggled down in the front passenger seat of the elderly Vauxhall as it pulled away from the kerb, turned left into congested Wavertree Road and headed for home. On the back seat was a tumbled heap of finished out-work: it comforted her, this reminder that the system functioned and brought honest cash into several households, and that the hand-made buttonholes with their small neat stitches, the exquisitely turned collars without a ruck or wrinkle, her father’s trademarks, would continue.

Ahead a green Crosville bus stopped to disgorge buttoned-up figures who scurried away with children. Street lights were coming on; it was nearly dark.

‘Mrs Quilter looked upset when she came out on to the step,’ Helen remarked, to start a conversation. ‘She usually asks me about school and whatnot and tells me about her Sandra, but not tonight.’

‘Her daughter’s the same age as you.’ Daniel had been regaled indoors with the story. ‘Bit of a minx, from what I hear. Left school last summer, then threw up her job at Littlewood’s Pools. Now she’s running around in town at all hours. Mrs Quilter’s worried sick.’

The quiet cosiness of the old car, the background chunter of its engine, her father’s concentration on overtaking the bus, made intimacy easier. During this brief journey undertaken about once a month Helen could broach subjects with her father which might have been awkward at the dining room table.

‘You glad I didn’t leave school like Sandra Quilter, Dad?’ Daniel looked in his mirror and adjusted his speed. His legs were aching; a calf muscle cramped. The quack called it atherosclerosis or some such and said he should cut down his smoking.

Helen was waiting.

‘Well: if it benefits you or your brother, we’ll find the necessary to keep you, if that’s what you mean.’

The girl tried again. ‘I have to start deciding what to do next. Miss Plumb wants me to try for university.’

Daniel grunted and changed gear so clumsily that the car protested. He worked the pedals with a muttered oath.

‘Sorry. Your mother and I are in two minds about your plans. You’ll need to persuade me. Why don’t you go to the College of Commerce and do shorthand and typing? You could earn a fair wage as a secretary. Or teacher training.’

‘I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a teacher, Dad. And I know I can do better than a shorthand typist.’

‘Now, don’t you go being snobby about typists. Mrs Quilter’d be delighted if her Sandra had a well-paid office job at the Royal Liver Insurance instead of – you know.’

‘I’m not being snobby, Dad. It isn’t snobbish to want to do the best you can, is it?’

She is as stubborn as I am, Daniel realised. Without reply he steered the car around the Clock Tower roundabout and turned into suburban Childwall Road. Not far now.

‘In some circumstances, it is,’ he answered quietly. ‘We’re born into a certain strata of society. We can dream, of course, of bettering ourselves. But often it’s wiser to stay close to what you know. Wiser and safer.’

‘Stratum,’ she corrected without thinking.

‘What?’

‘Stratum. One stratum of society, two strata. It’s Latin.’

‘Oh, it is, is it? You see what I mean. I never did Latin. Now you correct the way I talk. That’s snobbishness. And I don’t want a daughter of mine looking down on her parents.’ He was annoyed.

She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe an education would make me appreciate you more, not less. Oh, Dad, don’t hold me back. I asked Mum this morning whether if she’d had the chance of university she wouldn’t have wanted to seize it, but I don’t think she had a clue what I was talking about. She said we should be content with what we’ve got.’

‘It’s not a bad recipe for life, you know.’

Helen suddenly felt self-conscious. ‘It can become a recipe for – for ossification. And it’s hopeless if the world about us is changing. We have to adapt.’

‘Not if it means losing your grasp of what truly matters in life. A home, family. Roots. That’s especially important for you as a woman, and for us as Jews.’

She was silent for a moment. Then she stirred herself once more. ‘But you would sign the papers, wouldn’t you? For the entrance exams?’

How could he refuse her? He stole a quick glance at her then as quickly regretted it for he saw that she caught all the mixed emotions of affection, anxiety and distaste in his face. He was not a man to express his feelings, nor to analyse them, nor face them. But Helen could. She’d drive him hard as Annie did not, as Barry never would. She was a chip off the old block. Daniel shivered.

They stopped before the house. ‘Open the garage doors, there’s a good girl.’

Helen did not budge. ‘Will you sign? Please, Dad.’

Both hands on the wheel, Daniel stared sightlessly ahead. The residential street was quiet in the dusk. He bowed his head and listened as the engine idled.

‘We’ll see,’ was all he could offer, but she grinned and  squeezed his arm.

‘Thanks.’ The implication was that a deal had been done. As the girl opened the wooden doors and stood helpfully by, Daniel had the sense of being outpaced.

In the house the lights were on. A fire had been lit in the grate and carefully banked. Once the evening drew on and
shabbos
had commenced the humping of coals was not allowed. Strictly speaking, to carry anything was forbidden, especially if it smacked of work or labour. In the morning, should the family want a fire, they would have to ask their young neighbours John or Marie from next door to clear the grate, lay and light it: a dirty task nobody undertook willingly, a servant’s job. That required knocking while the young couple were still abed and enduring their vaguely hostile mutter. It was impossible to explain to such people why to break the sabbath was a sin. Only on a very cold day could Annie bring herself to put the request.

Helen took off her coat and hung it up with her father’s. The sudden rush of warmth after the chill air made her cheeks tingle. From the kitchen came a tantalising smell of roast chicken. As she entered the living room she bit her lip.

On the table was outspread a white linen tablecloth which had belonged to Annie’s mother. In the exact centre, on a mat to save the wax, stood two tall brass candlesticks, a wedding present, which Annie had polished as usual that afternoon. She was in the act of fixing securely the plain white candles while Barry watched idly from the sofa. Next to the candlesticks was a small silver tray with a bottle of ‘Palwin’ Israeli wine and four crystal glasses. A bowl of hyacinths on the window ledge gave off a heady perfume. The light of the fire flickered lovingly over brass and silver and cast a glow on a nearby dish of oranges and bananas, the weekend treat.

Daniel reached in the top drawer of the sideboard and took out two
yarmulkahs
, one black for himself, one silver, white and blue, embroidered, for his son. Lazily Barry came to his father’s side
and slouched, lop-sided. ‘Go on, Mother.’

Annie picked up a patterned headscarf and covered her head, tying it peasant style at the nape of her neck. Women too had to cover their heads. She, who had lived in a city since her birth, could not explain why she tied it this way; only that her mother had when she was a little girl, and her aunts, and every woman of her acquaintance. Helen knew she ought to do the same but retreated behind her father and deflected her mother’s glance.

Inside Helen something sighed. It was as if the room had been transformed into a place of worship, the ordinary table into an altar. Jews did not have churches or altars or incense. Nor priestesses. Yet the impression of a holy place, presided over by her mother, inviolable, matronly, was very powerful.

‘Ready?’

Husband and children gathered around.

Annie took a deep breath.
Erev shabbos
, the eve of the sabbath, was so precious. The sanctification of the candles, the Friday night meal when the whole family was present without fail was the high spot of each week, but more, of her very life. No guests tonight; ancient law said that any stranger of whom they were aware must be invited and made welcome. Jewish strangers only, of course, which meant they were probably not entirely unknown but distant relatives or contacts. To do so was a
mitzvah
, and thus a step forward on the path to heaven. It was a splendid custom. No Jew was ever without shelter or friends. A Jew always had family, somewhere.

And here, for a few moments, the woman stood supreme. This was her realm – hers and nobody else’s. Though men governed in all the great decisions, although in an orthodox synagogue men took charge and relegated females and children to the gallery upstairs, in a Jewish home the
mother
was the head. Especially on Friday night. Deference and respect were expected and freely given. For in the end the mother, not the father, held the key. Who was a Jew – how was that precious Jewish identity secured? Through the mother, not the father. As the rabbis pointed out, you could tell absolutely who a child’s mother was. You could not be certain of its paternity.

Daniel shifted impatiently. Annie picked up the match box, struck a light and put the flame to the candle wicks. It seemed to presage good luck that they caught immediately. The bright flames rose, swelled and settled.

She reached out her hands and passed them in a circular motion over the candles, three times, then covered her eyes. She paused as was traditional for a few seconds of private prayer. Then together the family spoke the blessing of the lights.

‘
Boruch atoh, Adenoi elohanu
…’

Blessed art thou, oh Lord our God, King of the Universe
…

Nellie McCauley opened one eye and peered out resentfully at the alarm clock. She reached an arm from under the covers to hang its top button and stop the noise, then groaned. It would be easy as pie to drift back to sleep, but she needed the job. Who didn’t?

Five o’clock in the morning! What kind of time was this to be woken up? And on a Sunday too. Not that there was anybody to keep her, no one to whisper insistence that she stay buried in the warm nest of blankets and pillows. With a grunt of resolution she swung her feet over the edge of the bed and felt for her slippers. The room was dark and freezing cold; her teeth chattered as she pulled on a robe and padded to the bathroom.

Sunday: the busiest day at Feinstein’s Famous Delicatessen. Between opening time at seven and lock-up soon after two in the afternoon takings would nearly equal those of the rest of the week put together. Mad busy, they’d be. And were she to be late Mr Feinstein would yell at her, and customers would be banging on the door and cursing her as a lazy
shikse
.

Damn Jews. Why couldn’t they treat Sunday as a day of rest like everybody else? They took Saturday off instead, they claimed. Nellie sniffed: many were the familiar faces she had seen in town laden with packages on a Saturday morning when they were supposed to be at prayer in their synagogue. If she were recognised she would be greeted with a curt nod; the guilty party would scurry away faster, usually in the direction of a car park. Not supposed to use their cars on the holy sabbath, either. She knew the laws. She’d worked for them long enough.

It had to be admitted that many of the locals patronised the shop. The big convent down the road was a prime source of business as people stopped on their way to or from Mass to collect fresh bread, smoked salmon, bagels, soft cheese or roll-mop herring. It was amazing how readily these savage tastes had been assimilated by wealthy Catholics who drove such a distance to hear the Sisters’ fine choir. The deputy Chief Constable and his lady, last year’s Lord Mayor, the city’s Medical Officer of Health:

Nellie knew them all, and their preferences in dill pickles or kosher garlic sausage. Their cars blocked the drives of neighbouring property and regularly caused complaints. Nothing could be done: word had gone round at the city’s most exclusive Masonic lodge that Feinstein’s was the place to go. Nellie checked the clock and began to speed up. On went lipstick, bright red, her trademark. Then dangly earrings, like a pub landlady’s. Not much point in gay clothes when a white overall covered everything, so a woolly sweater and trousers would suffice and gumboots with men’s socks down below – it was cold out in the yard. A quick tug of a hairbrush through jaded yellow hair: the dark roots were showing. Back to the peroxide bottle tomorrow night. If she were paid what she was truly worth she could’ve afforded to have it done properly at a salon in Bold Street.

The boss wasn’t mean by nature – far from it. But did he realise how much he depended on her? If the shop were clean – and as a food shop it had to be, spotless – it was because she harried the dull sloth of a cleaning woman, chased her to reach into every corner, to shift boxes and wipe lino and walls behind, to rub counter glass with vinegar and old newspaper until it sparkled. The big fridge in the back room she defrosted herself every Monday morning – a grotty job but it must be done. And if the shop’s reputation for high-quality fresh specialities were renowned that was to her credit too – she it was who dealt with the reps, insisted on the best, tried the samples, checked the deliveries, threw the rubbish back at them, and – if Mr Feinstein but knew it – haggled hard to get better prices than rivals in Manchester and Leeds. Yet he still saw her as a common shop assistant, only a cut above the
dim-witted
cleaner and the student who came in to help. It set her teeth on edge.

The customers, though. They knew her value. They would ask for her to serve them, would
stand patiently until she was free then ask for their ‘usual’, confident that Nellie had everybody’s habitual order secure in her head. She had, too: she could reel off the names and purchases of a hundred regulars and price their totals almost to the last penny. And she retained in the depths of her sharp memory who was to be trusted to pop in with a pound note later in the week and who wasn’t. Feinstein, the big soft dope, would have given everyone credit, then wondered why the shop was packed but making no money.

Feinstein wasn’t a bad boss. In his bumbling way he was kind and often put upon. He would accept her suggestions and allow her to do with the shop much as she saw fit. When he disagreed with her it was with a hesitant and apologetic manner. Her exasperation towards him was at its worst in the ghastly grey light of dawn but would dissipate later as they worked side by side. In truth she felt a little sorry for him, and treated his slapdash errors with affectionate respect. He was easier to cope with than most bosses she might have had. In all probability, that was why she stayed.

So much to do. The bread man would arrive at six with his first fragrant loaves and buns. It was a moment she adored. She would check and count, every time: the baker was an honest man but his delivery boys could be light-fingered. Sometimes she would pick out a damaged
cuchon
or slightly burned loaf, deduct it from the total and make the man sign for the number accepted – but the offending article tasted just as good for elevenses with salty Welsh butter, if she could grab a few minutes. Some customers, Sunday papers under their arms, would time their arrival to coincide with the second bread delivery about ten. Then would appear Danish pastries stuffed with almond paste and stewed apple or half an apricot, and cinnamon rolls and marbled cakes with their swirl of coffee and cream sponge, and best of all warm
chalahs
, the sweet milk loaves perfect for Sunday afternoon visitors, shaped like a plait of burnished brown hair, queenly and womanly; so much more tempting, in her view, than the masculine hardness of the pale bagels which had to be dunked in a cup of tea to make them chewable.

Five-forty. Not too bad. Time to pull the moped out of the shed and kick it into life – no buses at this hour. Still dark out, and would be for hours yet. But a bird could be heard somewhere down the park, singing sweetly if slightly desperately, totally alone. Bit like her own position in life: doing her best according to her lights, even if nobody took a scrap of notice.

Helen rose at seven. She could earn more if she arrived as the shop opened, but in truth her presence was not needed until the first rush. And Nellie was so irritable early on that it was wiser to keep out of her way. By eight-thirty the manageress, as Helen thought of her, was metamorphosing into a more human creature and could be expected to greet her cheerily, and slip her a knob of Cheddar for her breakfast.

She would see Mr Feinstein twice that day, for he would come to her house at night to play bridge with her father and other friends. Not that she would be around, of course: Sunday evenings were reserved for Harold House, the youth club.

The shop was close enough for her to walk to, though had it been wet she would have begged a lift from her father. As she arrived it seemed the cold bright weather had drawn more custom than usual, until she remembered that today was a Catholic feast of some kind and the convent would have laid on extra masses. From a hundred yards away she could hear the chatter inside.

Feinstein’s Famous Deli stood in the middle of a row of suburban shops, its double frontage proud and disordered all at once. To one side was a newsagent’s run by a recently arrived Pakistani, to the other a barber’s: all three were busy in these few hours. Painted in white on Mr Feinstein’s window were that week’s special offers – Canary Island bananas at l0d a pound, Norwegian salted fish at two shillings a quarter. Outside rickety trestles covered in green plastic carried boxes of fruit and vegetables, onions in three sizes and colours, potatoes and carrots and pale cabbage for sauerkraut. Labels on oranges and tangerines proudly proclaimed their Israeli origin. Mr Feinstein
would not buy from South Africa. His cousin in Jo’burg had recently seen a sign on a golf clubhouse door: ‘No coloureds, dogs or Jews’.

Helen pushed her way inside and hurried into the tiny back room where she hung up her coat and collected her overall. With a twinge of disgust she noticed it had not been washed since the previous week, though Mr Feinstein had promised. No sooner was she installed behind the counter than the calls started.

‘Oi! Young lady! I’ve been waiting ten minutes. You gonna serve me or not?’

He was a fat elderly man, red in the face, a large string hag in his outstretched hand. Nellie was absorbed with another customer with a long hand-written list. A brassy woman next to the shouting man poked him indignantly and announced that she was first. Some half-hearted pushing ensued. Helen ignored the fat man who was often at the centre of a fuss, as if it were a necessary adjunct to his shopping. Instead she addressed the woman: Sylvia Bloom, another regular, in a red coat, as stout and florid as a jar of jam. The racket in the shop was deafening as bodies shoved and shouted.

‘What can I get you, Mrs Bloom?’

‘A carton of smetana, a dozen bagels, and a quarter of smoked salmon.’

‘Bagels over there on the rack – help yourself. Big carton or small?’ The soured cream was a favourite over fruit, or eaten greedily by itself, sweetened with brown sugar.

‘My doctor says I shouldn’t – make it a small one. Full up, mind. And take the salmon from the centre, not the end – I don’t want any skin or brown bits.’

Mr Feinstein loomed close, stropping the thin blade of the salmon knife. ‘I’ll do this, Helen. Morning, Sylvia. How much did you say you wanted – half a pound?’

Sylvia, hands full of bagels, dimpled immediately. ‘Morry, you’re a card. You know I live by myself. For what would I be wanting half a pound of salmon?’

Feinstein grinned, half roguish, half shy. In the shop as proprietor he felt confident with women, could tease them and bask briefly in their admiration. It was a totally different matter away from his beloved almond biscuits and Rakusen’s Matzos. With any female he met outside he would become tongue-tied, would not know what to say, would shuffle his feet and stare at the ground, then flee back to the sanctuary of his solitary bed and sigh with relief at his deliverance.

There had been another time, of course. There had been Rosetta, as timid as himself; he had been a gawky youth, pushed into early marriage by his parents who wanted the joy, they said, of grandchildren, to see their seed sown. Rosetta and he had obliged though the whole exercise had been deeply embarrassing to both. The result was Jerry, who was supposed to come and help when the shop was busy but who frequently had better things to do. The degree to which the pregnancy and birth had weakened Rosetta’s already frail constitution had been apparent to nobody; when she had fainted one day after taking the boy to school it had been a shock for which neither was prepared. Heart disease, the doctor said. Must have had rheumatic fever as a child, though her mother stoutly denied it: for a girl with such a condition, had it been known, would not have been marriageable.

And so one cold winter day his wife had collapsed and been rushed to hospital, and with a husky whisper had slipped away from him a few days later.

Her death had come when the boy was about eight. The child’s grandparents had rallied round and the boy had been dragged up, one way or another, in the homes of various relatives nearby. In his teens Jerry had elected to live permanently with his father, more for the freedom that promised than through any excess of affection. Nevertheless Mr Feinstein was grateful. The boy’s presence gave him an excuse to love something, and the occasional glimpses in his son’s face of Rosetta, her wistful smile, her large dark eyes, bound him to his wilful offspring as nothing else could.

That Jerry lived at home in the flat over the shop gave his father another useful shield, this time against the army of unattached women who wanted to improve on his widower state. Sylvia was
one, a divorcée, and not at all to his taste. She claimed to be his age – fortyish – but had a daughter much older than Jerry, so that seemed unlikely. She simpered, she wriggled, she batted her eyelashes, but Mr Feinstein kept his eyes on the razor-sharp knife as it slid beneath his fingers over the pink oiliness of the salmon. He wished she would stop. Yet his shopkeeper mentality would keep pushing itself to the fore. Sylvia was a wealthy woman and would not miss a few shillings. If by a little harmless flirtation he could persuade her to spend more, particularly on the most expensive perishable items in the shop, then he would not hesitate. And it was part of her trade as a matchmaker, to get him into the mood. It was a game played out every occasion they met. In truth both enjoyed it, along with the flicker of hope it brought.

He weighed out six ounces until she began to protest. With a heavy sigh of regret he wrapped the delicacy carefully in greaseproof paper and wrote the price on a corner. He should count the bagels she had dropped into her bag, but she was a good customer. If she intended to eat the lot herself, nevertheless, it was no wonder she was so tubby. His Rosetta had been tiny. He should have guessed she was not robust, but her slimness had established his predilections from there on.

‘How’s Jerry – how’s your boy?’ Sylvia had not finished yet, though the protests behind her rose to an indignant crescendo.

‘Fine – still in bed, I think.’ Feinstein jerked his head in the direction of upstairs.

‘So idle, the younger generation,’ Sylvia commiserated loudly, ignoring Helen who counted her change into a beringed hand. ‘He should have a mother, poor boy –’ But her words were lost as the fat man succeeded in elbowing his way to the counter.

Helen worked hard and steadily until about eleven when there was a lull. As she stood brushing hair from her eyes the door opened. Her face broke into a smile: her favourite ‘uncle’, Simon Rotblatt, had entered the shop.