She's Leaving Home (8 page)

‘Cut for partners.’

Danny liked to do everything properly. The four men bent over the spread pack. Each withdrew a card and turned it up.

‘Two of hearts.’ Maurice Feinstein.

‘Jack of hearts.’ Mr Mannheim, with a wintry grin.

‘Four of diamonds.’ A shrug from Simon.

‘Queen of spades.’ Daniel. Highest card, highest suit.

‘Fix!’ laughed Simon, and the men arranged themselves around the small table, Simon at west opposite Maurice, Mannheim at north with his back to the window, facing Daniel. Their host poured whisky for the two drinkers, Maurice and Simon. He and the old man would wait for refreshments. That the cards had deemed them partners meant they would probably win.

Daniel dealt. He noted pleasurably that he held a moderately strong hand with an ace, a king, two queens and three jacks spread around the suits. Mannheim opposite also looked pleased – that meant at least a second ace, possibly more. When movement ceased Daniel started the bidding.

‘One no trump.’ Safe: and ‘no trump’ would beat any suit.

‘Two of spades,’ Simon followed. He had noticed the quick glance between his opponents, their comfortable demeanour.

‘Two no trump.’ Mannheim was curt, cool. The raise was the lowest possible: so his hand was not brilliant.

‘No bid.’ It might not be that Morrie Feinstein had such poor cards, Daniel reflected. It was more likely that he could not work out what to bid.

How Daniel adored his bridge. It was the one moment in his life when his mental agility made him supreme. All week his livelihood came through his fingers; though he had to concentrate on the line of a jacket, the jib of a lapel, yet half his brain was not engaged and would niggle in its inactivity. In his youth he had been an avid reader, mostly of works with a strongly political theme. Before he was twenty he could quote passages of Robert Tressell’s
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
, much of it learned during a long illness. Tressell was buried in a pauper’s grave in Walton. Blake was another favourite. Had it not been for the war he might have aspired to a political life, but fate had not dealt him the best hand. Nor could he have easily campaigned for a pacifist Labour Party with that idiot Lansbury in charge, a man who forswore resistance despite those terrible stories which filtered from Germany. As for Churchill –

Under the table Mannheim kicked him gently. Daniel jerked upright. He was in danger of forgetting his task. He bent his head to the cards. In a moment South (himself) had won the contract at Three no trump – a bit risky, for it meant a promise to take nine out of the thirteen tricks – and was declarer. Mannheim as partner laid down his hand, face up: the dummy. Splendid – that added two aces and a king to the arsenal.

Simon led with a low spade and his partner, delighted, threw down the ace of spades. Aha, thought Daniel, that’s where it was. Nice to get it out of the way so soon. Feinstein took the trick with a flourish, laid it face down and tossed in the nine of spades. Daniel offered his Jack, and took the trick. One each.

Then Daniel took a chance and switched to diamonds, playing the Queen. But Feinstein gurgled happily and threw down the King. Daniel had been right – the chap held a hand whose value he could only grasp once in play. Fool: far more spectacular results could be obtained by thinking ahead. A grocer didn’t need to, a craftsman did. Yet Feinstein’s impulsiveness was part of his rather feckless charm.

Simon took the next trick with a King: they must’ve had one each. Then Simon threw down his ten of spades and took the trick with competent satisfaction. Four tricks to one. 110 points’ worth to only 30. They’d have to play every single card to the bitter end. The air was vibrant with effort.

The balance shifted back. The next three tricks were Daniel’s with more high diamonds. Four each. But to match his bid he had to take all five which remained. He could call on the two aces, two Kings and Jack in his combined hand – that made another four. In a moment they’d be down to one card each, with eight tricks to four on the table. The question was, should he take a chance by leaving himself the Jack of Clubs? The last trick would depend on clubs. Who had the Queen?

Simon was staring at the ceiling, forehead furrowed. No clue there. But Feinstein was shifting about, mouth a-twitch. Daniel looked at Mannheim who flicked his eyes in Feinstein’s direction: so he too reckoned the grocer must hold it. That meant Daniel should hang on to his best card. He could feel himself sweat as he played steadily, competitively. Then, to his delight, suddenly he had it: one card remained in his hand, the King of Clubs.

He paused, then threw it down with a flourish. Feinstein tossed in the Queen with an oath.

‘You bloody did it! Amazing,’ the shopkeeper congratulated.

‘Close run thing.’ Daniel grinned in relief.

‘I wanted to keep a good card to the end.’

The winner chuckled. ‘Yes, we could see that. Written all over your face. Good job you don’t play poker, Morrie.’

The evening continued. The air became pungent with blue smoke as Simon lit a cigar. The heavy ashtray began to fill with curls of ash. It was an absorbed four that eventually greeted Annie as she cautiously brought in the tea. Feinstein went to the bathroom; Simon drew out a large handkerchief and blew his nose. Under its cover he watched Annie’s movements wistfully but did not speak as she put down the tray, poured tea and handed it out, left the room and closed the door behind her.

‘She’s a wonderful woman, your Annie,’ Simon remarked at last. ‘She puts up with all this’ – he indicated the littered table, the fuggy air – ‘with not a murmur of complaint. I live alone, like Morrie, so I can do what I want in my own house, but my daily cleaner moans at me like a fishwife. And when I go to my sister’s – oy! It’s “Don’t put your feet there”, and “Pick your newspaper up”. She makes my life a misery.’

Maurice grunted. ‘Most important, she puts up with him.’ He jerked a thumb in Daniel’s direction. ‘You’re such a stubborn bugger there must be moments. Don’t you ever fight, eh? Doesn’t she ever chuck a plate at you? Or is it all domestic harmony?’

Simon continued the teasing as Mr Mannheim added sub-totals. ‘Got her under control, Danny, is that it? But beware of hidden depths. Mind she doesn’t end up like my sister. When my brother-in-law was alive,
olvershalom
, his wife once got so mad at him she tipped a whole pan of hot chicken soup over him. He had a lot of explaining to do down the Royal Infirmary.’

‘He deserved it,’ Maurice defended stoutly. ‘He’d been playing around with a
shikse
at work and she found out. She should have finished him off.’

‘Yeah, but he wasn’t insured. She’d found that out too,’ the devoted brother revealed. The men laughed contentedly. ‘Funnily enough, she did make him take out insurance after that, so when he died of his heart attack a year later he left her
very
comfortable.’

‘Got a good business head, your sister. Ever thought of taking her into the firm?’ This from Daniel as he stubbed out a cigarette. Rotblatt’s made jeans and men’s trousers for Marks and Spencer. The company was a substantial commercial success, which explained the gleaming three-litre car strewn across the path.

In answer Simon placed a palm on each side of his head as if in pain and rocked to and fro. ‘My life! The very idea. It’s bad enough eating
shabbos
dinner there. I wouldn’t wish her on my worst enemy.’

The play continued for a further hour with the more able pair, Daniel and Mr Mannheim, steadily amassing a huge lead in points. That much of the exercise was a mystery to Maurice Feinstein was repeatedly evident. When within a few minutes of the start of one rubber Mannheim calmly claimed ten tricks before he had played anything Feinstein threw down his hand in disgust.

‘I don’t get it. How do you
know
? You haven’t played ’em yet. How can you be so sure?’

Mannheim said nothing but looked up quizzically at Daniel. It was understood that the old German, who could converse with rapidity and elegance in Yiddish and his native language and several others, and who, it was believed, had once been a physicist with Werner von Braun, did not feel at ease in English.

Daniel started the cut for the next deal.

‘Look: it’s all logical. In this hand, Mr Mannheim won the contract, so I as his partner had to lay down my hand face up as the dummy. Then he plays with both, see? That means he also knows which cards you two hold. He can make an intelligent guess at the split. Your bids earlier demonstrated where you’re strong – say, a run of five cards in a suit – and where you’re weak. It doesn’t take a genius to work it out.’

Feinstein grumbled cheerfully but Daniel allowed a tinge of impatience to enter his voice. ‘The trouble with you, Morrie, is you won’t concentrate. You’d prefer to have a conversation.’

Feinstein leaned forward and pointed his lighted cigarette at his host. Three whiskies had loosened his tongue. It had been a long day. ‘And the trouble with you, Danny, is you like winning. You’re really aggressive at the table, you know that?’

The atmosphere turned cool. Mannheim began to deal, clucking softly between his teeth. The intrusive sound obliged the others to return to the cards.

Daniel did not want Feinstein to have the last word. ‘No, I’m not aggressive. I’m an ordinary bloke. Why, if that were true – if I’d been a hard man in business – I’d be rich as Croesus like Simon here, and could afford a Bentley and have my name inscribed in the book of donors at the
schul
.’ But he laughed as he said it, and Simon took the remark as a compliment.

Soon it was nearly midnight and long past the point at which the children had been heard to return home and Annie had trudged upstairs. To restore harmony Daniel had allowed Feinstein to win a rubber; the man had bragged happily as a child as he had loudly reckoned his total. Humiliation had been avoided. Simon Rotblatt, who did not think deeply about his play but had a natural aptitude and a good memory, had instantly spotted the courtesy and liked it. Only Mannheim had frowned but his host’s quickly shaken head had deflected any rebuke.

At last they rose and stretched. Glasses and cups were drained and the last slice of cake nibbled as the friends prepared to depart. Mr Mannheim collected tea plates and tried ineffectually to stack them. His hands were not strong and the pile suddenly tottered. Before anyone could reach it the large dish with its floral pattern slipped and broke. Crumbs scattered on the rug.

The old man mumbled disjointed pleas as Daniel bent to retrieve the pieces. He had seen a fleeting look of terror in the watery eyes, as if some nightmare had returned. He laid a reassuring hand
on the thin arm.

‘Your wife is so good and she will be upset,’ Mannheim persisted.
She vil pee oopset
.

Daniel murmured, ‘No, don’t worry. Not the best china,’ though Annie would rant a little. Their stock of crockery was not so extensive that such a loss could be ignored.

‘You don’t understand women, Mannheim,’ Feinstein joked gruffly. ‘When you’re not a married man –’

‘I was a married man.’

The sibilant
vass
startled his listeners. It had long been assumed that Mannheim who had fled from Berlin in his twenties had been single. Whenever the wedded state of Daniel as the only one of the four was aired, Mannheim had never demurred.

Daniel straightened, the broken dish in his hands. He spoke slowly. ‘What happened to her?’

‘Ach! She went up in smoke, like the rest of them. Buchenwald. After she broke a dish. She worked in the kitchens –’ Mannheim stopped.

All eyes swivelled as one to his right arm as if to pierce through the fabric to the parched skin, to the tattoo which now each of his friends was certain was there. His other hand moved protectively as if to hide the mark, but in so doing answered their unasked question. He grimaced and turned away.

We will never get away from it, thought Daniel moodily, as he let his companions out into the night and shut the door. The
shoa
, which others call the Holocaust. The Final Solution. Genocide: the determined attempt to rid the world of the Jews, to cleanse it of my blood.

His eyes caught a photograph on the wall, of himself and Annie dressed in their finery at somebody’s wedding, a showy orchid corsage on her tailored suit, the children at her feet.

Yet my flesh and blood do not know any of this. Ah, yes, they are taught at
schul
and
cheder
, but they do not
know
. How can they know? They are not touched by the horror. It is not they that cannot shake off the memory, that pay the price: it is my generation, who will never be free of it.

By the waters of Babylon Rachel sat down and wept: yeah, Rachel wept for her children.
 

Across the city another front door opened and then banged closed. Booted steps could be heard along the uncarpeted passage, dragging and irregular: two sets, her father and a brother, or perhaps one of them with a drinking mate. The rancid waft of fish and chips entered with them. In the kitchen a plate was banged on a table. Somebody clouted a shoulder hard on a door jamb and muttered a curse. So thin were the partitions which passed for walls that the jarring could be felt throughout the flat. On her dressing table a dish rattled.

The bedroom was in blackness. Street noises came up to it fitfully – a youth shouted and was answered by a raucous female, a lone bus ground its way up the hill. The little room was, for once, not cold. Heat came from a single-bar electric fire plugged into the wall. That cost money, but for the moment the meter had been successfully by-passed so the power was freely squandered.

At the window the curtains were thin and ragged. Through their open weave and holes a neon street lamp flickered. At midnight it would be extinguished. Then he would come.

Colette shrank under the bed covers and drew her knees up to her chin. Her thin arms pulled the nightie down over her legs, then wrapped themselves around her limbs like a parcel. Despite the warmth her teeth began to chatter.

She made herself think of school in the morning. Double physics followed by maths: God, what a grind. She would have to force her mind to it with the utmost dedication. Those subjects did not permit guesswork, however tired she might be. She had to know the procedures and get them right. Accuracy was all. How she envied the girls in the arts classes. It didn’t matter if they couldn’t produce quotations absolutely spot on – what counted was to present a convincing argument. Not that she was confident she could do that, either. What if there were several opinions about an extract, apparently of equal value? Some of the better students could judge for themselves which was right.
Teachers declared those girls had natural taste and judgement. Faced with competing passages of English, however, Colette was frequently stumped. She could grasp their sense: she could join in a discussion about their quality. But left to her own devices, without guidance or hints, she could make little headway in picking out which was ‘best’. In that sense, therefore, the rigid certainties of science were much easier for her. Its rules created a known territory which she could memorise in detail. The way it was taught for A level meant no debates. Only one line was correct, and it was a straightforward matter to learn –