She's Leaving Home (26 page)

She was silent. He took the hint.

‘But Israel? Well, no. Several reasons. Firstly it didn’t exist in 1945. It was a romantic dream, touted since 1897 but with no result we could hold on to. America existed, Rolls-Royce existed. My Derby workmates pressed for my release once they heard I was alive. And there were – other problems.’

The old man looked sideways at her, but her earnest face willed him to continue. He spoke gravely as if examining afresh issues long shelved in his own mind.

‘When David ben Gurion came to Landsberg KZ – that is the concentration camp – he was heard to wonder how some of us had survived. He said we must have been hard and selfish. It’s true that certain inmates helped run the camps and had virtually become collaborators to save their own skins, though not myself. I feared that in Israel I would be a burden, or reviled. I didn’t have much affection for the place or the idea. And you might say I was sick of being a Jew. I had had enough.’

‘But you might have felt at ease in a country where our people were in the majority.’

The old man sensed that Helen was testing points put to her by others. ‘Not me. I was never religious. I felt comfortable on a test-site with other combustion physicists. To me the theory of relativity was more important than the Pentateuch. I needed nothing else, and no reminders of why I had been put in the KZ.’

‘Mr Mannheim,’ she asked slowly, ‘do you think, then, it’s possible to be a Jew and not accept most of what Jewish people believe in – or at least are supposed to believe in?’

He tilted his head like a scrawny bird. ‘Such as?’

‘Oh, the laws of
kashrut
. All the festivals like
Purim
and
Pesach
– changing the plates. Only going round with other Jewish kids. That sort of thing.’

‘These are superficial matters. You are a Jew if you feel a Jew. If your heart leaps when you hear of Jewish achievement, if you are in pain when a Jew is attacked. If you will run to their aid before anybody. If your door is always open to a fellow Jew. If that’s how you feel, then you are part of the tribe.’

That was no help at all. ‘But what if you don’t? What if you feel British, and part of a new world, and keen not to be dragged back by these superstitions and by the dead weight of centuries? And if you’ve those warm feelings towards everybody, not just a single section of humankind? What if – like you said –
Eretz Yisroel
really doesn’t feature in your plans? That try as you might, you don’t – can’t – care about it one jot?’

‘Aha. They want you to go to Israel, is that it?’

She bit her lip. ‘It comes up. Any time I suggest I might leave home. I don’t have to and nobody will make me. Only I don’t fancy it a bit. And
that
makes me feel –’ She paused, searching for the word, yet knowing it all the time.

‘Guilty?’

Helen nodded unhappily. Mannheim patted her on the shoulder with a sad smile.

‘So now, dear Helen, you have matriculated. You are truly a Jew. For centuries Jews have oozed guilt from every pore – about the burden of being God’s chosen people, mostly. It is the Almighty’s way to keep us in line. And do you know what?’

She shook her head, eyes brimming. He had not been much help yet she was glad she had tried.

‘The day you cease feeling guilty, you will have grown up. And that day you will also begin to cease feeling Jewish too.’

The words lingered in the dusty air. A sob rose in her throat: Helen could not reply.

Old Mr Mannheim put down his handiwork, slowly unfolded his legs and came down from the table. Then he picked up the new suit and began to wrap it, first in white tissue then in brown sheets of paper, which he tied with string in an elaborate parcel. He stood, bundle in both hands, as once he must have stood with his entire belongings clutched before him when he quit his homeland for ever. She took the parcel and fled.

Blindly she left the workshop and stumbled out into the street. At the bus stop she leaned against the shelter and prayed for the bus to come quickly. The parcel was held tightly to her bosom but she nearly forgot her satchel – another passenger had to nudge her to remember. Kindly faces murmured at her. They probably thought her misery was something simple like boyfriend trouble.

On the top deck in her usual spot it was some while before she could raise her eyes. The conductor had noted the uniform, muttered ‘Pass?’ at her and left her alone.

Nobody spoke much about the death camps, nor about what befell the survivors. Their stories were so horrible the human mind could not enfold what had taken place; the numbers so huge – millions dead, efficiently and systematically killed – that no sane person could comprehend their scale. It was as if there arose from the blood-stained earth a piercing unholy scream, a shriek which split the air in two and left it shivering, which never ceased, and from which normal people must cover their ears or go mad themselves. It was impossible to absorb, detail after detail: no wonder denial surfaced. To turn one’s back was a form of self-protection.

‘Yet if we forget, it could happen again,’ Helen whispered to herself. The moments in the graveyard with Michael returned to her with conscious irony. ‘But if we dwell on it, what does that do to us? That crushing weight: such grief is itself destructive. Not least it can turn to hatred.’

She felt lost. And, at the same time, overwhelmingly grateful to have been born after the war, in England. Faced with such persecution she doubted she could have performed bravely, and was glad her courage had never been put to the test.

The thought came to her that a Christian wouldn’t find it so hard to start afresh. To forgive, to turn the other cheek: a Christian would find pardon obligatory, however ghastly the events. But in Judaism the sole person who could exonerate a crime was the one against whom it had been committed. So a thief could gain forgiveness, or a slanderer or mugger; but murder lay forever unabsolved, whether the killers showed remorse or not.

Thank God it was a long journey. The bus was embroiled in a traffic jam at the corner of Smithdown Road, but rather than become fidgety Helen was relieved. At home all would be noise and chaos. Later that evening there would be time to herself, when she and Michael would slip away to the Cavern again. She patted the parcel on her lap and tried to smooth out the creases where it had been held too tight.

As the driver swung out once more past Nicander Road a new emotion was borne in on Helen – to her disgust, one of resentment. The Nazis had left a terrible legacy. Not just the smoking camps and the mountains of skeletal corpses, but the awareness that so few were left from a civilisation which had graced and enriched the whole of Europe. The survivors included herself as well as Mr Mannheim. And that conferred obligations to preserve the way of life which those monsters had sought to destroy. The duty lay not merely with her parents’ generation, those lucky enough to have escaped – it included her own as well.

Helen shifted miserably. Here was a role for which she felt utterly unready. No, more than that, quite unsuited. Like Christ in Gethsemane she did not feel strong enough to confront such a dilemma. To devote herself to preserving the traditions would be – what? emptiness: negation. An
abandonment of herself. It would mean an end to choice, an end to her dreams and hopes of a different life. Mentally at least, and probably physically as well, it would mean
staying put
.

Mr Mannheim had bid her: be angry. With that instruction, uncomfortable as it made her, she could concur. She left the bus, head reeling. The ache in her heart was close to fury, but suffused with fear.

The school was quiet. The caretaker had slipped away early, twittering glibly about investiture night at the Lodge. He was an Ulster-born Protestant of around fifty with sandy hair and erratic ways. Miss Plumb wondered to what invented office his cronies might elevate him, and how he would look in a black bowler hat and orange sash.

His absence meant she had to go round and lock up herself, a task she quite enjoyed. Conscientiously she checked radiators were off, windows shut tight and locked, doors closed. By the time her tour had brought her back towards her office her arms were laden with lost rulers, pencils, a blazer and two berets, and a forbidden glossy magazine with the Beatles on the cover.

It had been a fine school, Miss Plumb reflected as she paused in the hallway by the grand staircase. Under her guidance it would remain so, though the maintenance of quality was a battle royal. Above her hung half a dozen honours boards, the names of dozens of successful pupils since 1844 emblazoned in golden letters on varnished wood. One listed the headmistresses: only twelve in over a century. Such stability and commitment were rare these days. Her own was last: Miss E.M. Plumb, MA (Cantab), Cert Ed. 1955 –

Elizabeth Mary Plumb had gazed upwards at similar boards as a child in Kent and picked out numerous Plumbs, aunts, great-aunt, a cousin. Both mother and grandmother had attended the same ancient establishment but had never quite made it into the top two or three spots. Their relative failure had spurred Miss Plumb upwards and outwards, away from their complaints and self-pity.

A Victorian copy of Canova’s Three Graces adorned the hall. Their elegance and sweet faces drew the eyes to their nakedness: that took some explanations occasionally. When a Bishop made an official visit, pots of flowers would conceal bare toes, and strands of ivy would be draped artistically across breasts and buttocks. Miss Plumb was amused at the delicacy, and traced the curvaceous line of a thigh with her finger.

A noise behind made her jump. She turned and found herself face to face with Colette O’Brien.

‘Goodness! What are you doing here? It’s after five.’

‘Miss Plumb – sorry. I was finishing my homework in the Library.  Didn’t realise the time.’

The girl seemed weary. Miss Plumb observed her thoughtfully.

‘Nowhere suitable at home, is that it? You have been looking a bit peaky lately. Come into my office a moment, Colette.’

Miss Plumb observed the girl taking a chair. Dark circles were unmistakable under the eyes and the skin had an unattractive pallor. The body was thin and gawky. The teacher could recall the bright youngster who had skipped into school as an eleven-year-old; her mother had been around then. Although the child was small for her age, which hinted at a degree of undernourishment, her manner had been energetic and cheerful. A sea-change had happened since, mainly in the last year or so.

Miss Plumb reached in a cupboard and took out a jar of boiled sweets. She offered them apologetically.

‘I give these to the little ones, Colette. But I haven’t any other refreshment, I’m afraid, so help yourself.’

Colette half smiled and took a blackcurrant flavour. Miss Plumb switched her gaze to the window.

‘Colette, I do not interfere in the lives of my girls, but you do realise that you can speak to me? You are a very able young woman. For you – more than most, perhaps – education is a route to a far better world.’

The girl’s eyes flickered. Sucking the sweet gave her the excuse to weigh her words with care. ‘I know. You are good to all of us, Miss Plumb.’

‘Thank you, but I wasn’t searching for compliments.’

The girl bent her head. ‘I don’t know if you can help. I don’t think anybody can.’ She crunched the candy. Miss Plumb began to feel a flutter of impatience. Colette’s next remark startled her.

‘Were you ever married, Miss Plumb?’

‘No, indeed. I put my career first and never regretted it. It wasn’t allowed when I was young and – I am no longer so young. Why?’

Colette shook her head. ‘If you were married I might be able to ask. But not otherwise. It’s nothing to do with schoolwork.’

‘Ah,’ said Miss Plumb. She sat back. ‘It’s to do with – all that. Boyfriends and so on, is it? Then you’re probably right: I may not be the person to speak to. Your mother – no, that won’t do.’

Miss Plumb was uneasy. The girl had a distant air, as if she wasn’t concentrating on the conversation: as if she were not entirely connected. Miss Plumb knew that expression all too well. It manifested itself sooner or later on the faces of the majority of the pupils these days, usually at the juncture when they had decided that school wasn’t worth it any more. Without vigorous parental support the changed attitude was impossible to budge. If that was true in Colette’s case, it would be a very great pity.

Miss Plumb cast about worriedly. The discussion was drifting. If sex were the problem, she had certain duties. ‘Have you tried your doctor, Colette?’

‘Him? He’s Catholic.’ The tone was scornful.

Miss Plumb felt distinctly out of her depth. Colette raised her head and looked straight at her.

‘You ever had a lover, Miss Plumb? There are – things I’d like to talk about, but only if you’ve done it. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.’

Miss Plumb sensed herself blush to the roots of her hair. What was she to reply – were the two of them about to exchange sexual confidences? Her mind raced. The French count in Anjou – that ten-year liaison which flourished solely during the vacations when Madame could be packed off to the mountains – before him, the Deputy Principal at the teachers’ training college, also married, who had taught more than didactic skills?

Oh, dear. Spinsters in her position were supposed to be virgins – or virginal, at least. Any suggestion of impropriety could lose her her post. And she had not been trained, as a doctor or nurse would have been. Her usual approach to such topics was to call in the suitably qualified. And, naturally, to utter such injunctions as were proper to the time. She frowned at the young girl, but spoke quietly.

‘I’m not sure my personal life is an appropriate subject, Colette. Nor am I allowed to give you any kind of – medical information. All I can do is to remind you that at your age sexual intercourse is barely legal. It is moreover unwise, and it is terribly risky. If you need advice you must go to the people who can help.’

The young face hardened. Miss Plumb tried another tack.