She's Leaving Home (32 page)

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

He stopped and rubbed an invisible mark in the dust with his toe, hands thrust deep into his pockets, head down.

‘That’s because I can’t. I don’t know which party to support any more. The ILP broke with the Labour party six years ago. It’d been mostly skilled men like myself. Keir Hardie was a wonderful leader – a man you could believe in. Ramsay Macdonald too, for a while, till he went wrong. Then they changed the name to the Socialist League and now it’s all bloody intellectuals.’

He peered at her and hesitated. ‘Look at the leaders of the left – all over the place. Ernie Bevin wanted to be chairman of the League but they wouldn’t have him. Lansbury is loved by everyone but he’s an impractical idealist and he’s old now. I was glad when he finished as party leader. He’s the sort who’d plead with the fascists and be the first they’d kick over the cliff. Attlee’s not much better – he’ll criticise every request for arms by Mr Chamberlain till after war starts, if it does. As for the hunger marchers, what good did they do? The National Unemployed Workers movement is in the hands of the Communists and I’ve no truck with those. They say capitalism has broken down but I don’t believe that. And Stalin’s as bad as the rest – worse, perhaps.’

‘So if you don’t know what or who to believe, why do you come down here and make –’ she was about to say ‘a spectacle of yourself’ but that would have been cruel, and his honesty was admirable, ‘– a fuss about politics?’

‘Somebody must. Silence – not shouting about it – would destroy us all. If anybody’d have me I’d stand for Parliament. Not much chance of that – no money, no connections. But first I have to clear my head. So many lies are told. When I get up on that soapbox it’s myself I’m trying to convince. I work my way through the issues to find the truth. Those blokes in the crowd who argue with me – or girls like yourself – are helping me, though they don’t realise it. I’m in marginally less of a muddle by Monday morning.’

They had arrived at the terminus shed. A tram stood ready. Annie stepped up; on its platform her face was suddenly on a level with his. She held out her hand. ‘This is mine – I must go. I am pleased to meet you.’ She hoped her expression was slightly mocking though without malice. This young man took himself and his agonies far too seriously.

He took her hand absent-mindedly and for the first time she looked directly into his eyes. They were brown, and deeply set, with long lashes which added to his melancholy demeanour. As they touched he seemed to shake himself back to the present.

‘I don’t know your name. Could we meet again? Will you be here next week?’

‘Probably, I can’t promise.’ Suddenly it did not seem a wise idea to make any kind of liaison with him. She twisted away and climbed on to the first step of the tram’s staircase, then relented. As flirtatiously as she could – it’d be good for him – she smiled.

‘I’m Annie,’ she said.

She would be home in time for the babies’ bath. Time for a long read before bed, perhaps – the latest Agatha Christie from Boots’ lending library lay under her pillow, if only her sister Becky would let her have some peace.

Annie’s preference was for romances. Margaret Kennedy’s
The Constant Nymph
had passed through her hands three times. She’d dropped strong hints about a copy of
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier for her birthday: both
Jamaica Inn
and
Frenchman’s Creek
had been terrific. Everyone at work was talking about the new book. The forbidden word ‘sexy’ had been whispered in the ladies’ toilet. A hardback novel read but once was an outrageous extravagance. She’d have to wait until Boots stocked it and put her name down in the queue.

The babies, now. Four little ones, ranging in age from Sammy aged eight through Rose, six, Ruth, nearly four and the toddler Abbie. They’d go into the tub one after the other, biggest first, with the girls together. They’d be flannelled all over and their faces scrubbed, and the backs of their necks, knees and behind their ears. Pear’s soap for them: amber clear and soft. She loved handling it and sniffing its clean fragrance.

Annie should by rights have been home already, but the task of supervision fell to Becky her older sister. It was the eldest girl’s job to be mother’s helper. Mother’s drudge, more like. The boys wouldn’t be involved other than by humping the big zinc tub and bringing in an extra scuttle of coal. Their bath-time was Friday,
erev shabbos
. Had the family been
frum
the boys would have gone to the
mikvah
, the ritual bath, but that would have meant time off work and money lost. The Feldmans tended in the modern way to put practicality before fervour. There was no need to apologise since most of their neighbours did the same.

A family of eight children, in total. Hardly unusual; a gap divided the older and younger groups when her father had gone down south searching for work and her mother had quietly miscarried through worry. Four of them with jobs – which was out of the ordinary. The Feldmans were grafters. They’d take whatever was offered, not turn up their noses, and were blessed as strong and healthy. They came, it was said, from sturdy stock.

Dad was a cabinet maker, the mainstay of a furniture workshop of some renown in the city. He had been shrewd. Jacob, her elder brother, he had decreed should become a kosher butcher.
‘People have to eat; a butcher never starves,’ he had stated. That had turned out sound common sense as the young man, made strapping by his trade, would march home in his bloody apron even in the hardest times, with a bagful of chicken legs and a fine piece of topside. Jack was secretly courting, however, and would soon be seeking his own home.

The next boy down, David, was a year Annie’s junior. He had been clever at school and had won a Central Class place at the age of eleven. Hours of agonised discussion and consultation had been expended: the parents, solid and earnest, had sat at the table over pot after pot of tea, scraps of paper in front of them on which they scribbled hierarchies of figures. Davy’s future was settled eventually on much the same principle as Jack’s, though the family would be deprived of a wage for far longer. He was sent to college for two years to qualify as a chemist. ‘You’ll never be out of a job. People will always need medicine – and they’ll come to you before they’ll trouble the quack,’ had been the father’s judgement. So now the young man was an assistant manager at Boots and wore his pharmacist badge with pride. It meant, however, that Davy worked Saturdays without fail, and was drifting unobserved away from his family.

Davy’s extended education had had implications for Annie. She had also won a Central Class place and had attended St Margaret’s in Anfield, not the Hebrew School. She could have continued after the age of fourteen like her brother – but the family could not afford both. With a fresh baby on the way her mother dared not take on a skivvy job, though it had been considered. Instead Annie left school the moment it was legal. She had not felt resentful: pleased, rather, to be independent and to help feed the growing number of mouths at home.

Seldom did she lament her lack of education, though she was conscious of it at moments like those on the Pier Head when her ignorance pushed her out of her depth. She could not help but feel awed by genuine seekers after enlightenment. Yet what would have been the point in carrying on? In any occupation where more certificates would have been useful, such as a private secretary or the civil service, she’d have had to finish on marriage or soon after. That was the rule and unchallenged. And most men would regard it as an insult if, after their own careers had been established, their wives continued at work. It would imply they didn’t earn enough and might be inadequate husbands. Anyway, girls weren’t supposed to be brainy – that was left for the male side of creation. Ladies should not usurp men’s role in life and should not hanker to be gentlemen. To do so was unnatural.

The year Annie left school aged fourteen was 1932, about as bad a time as could be remembered. The soup kitchens were full and dole queues drifted endless and without hope around corners, especially in a Liverpool desperate for a revival in world trade. To balance national budgets, jobs paid for out of taxes had been cut. Thus it had been a godsend when Auntie Ida Bernstein, owner of clothes shops in the poorer parts of the city, offered her a position as shop assistant at twelve shillings a week.

The memory of her first day made Annie giggle now, but then she had burned with shame and fear. Auntie Ida, it had to be said, was a ferocious personality who enjoyed instilling terror in her staff. That was why they didn’t stay; hence the vacancy.

The chosen establishment was in Tunnel Road. It had been new in 1926; its paint had soon peeled and turned grimy under the onslaught of city-bound traffic. The frontage grandly announced ‘Gents’ Outfitters’, but as was evident to the most cursory glance it was a hat and cap shop. Still, every man and boy had to wear one; it was not respectable to go out with the head uncovered, so a fair trade was possible though with little to spare for staff.

Ida Bernstein stood on the doorstep as Annie arrived at eight o’clock. She was of medium height but enormously heavy, her expanses engirthed in brocades and a fox fur stole. The furry snout was tucked greedily into the folds of her chins and the ruby button eyes glittered in the light. Ida wore make-up, with lipstick which detached itself and played on her teeth. Her thick legs were encased in lisle stockings, for she suffered from the family ailment of varicose veins; her feet disappeared into
small black shiny shoes which looked as if they pinched.

‘Twelve shillings a week and you’re not worth that,’ was her greeting. Annie did not know how to reply. Ida turned with a sniff, unlocked the street door then led her inside.

The interior smelled musty and chill. The tiny back room where Annie was told to hang her coat had green stains on the walls. Stock would have to be turned over quickly in such a place or it would go mouldy.

But the shop itself was a wonder. The girl fought down her delight as she began to familiarise herself with its contents under Ida’s suspicious gaze. Hats and flat caps everywhere, mostly the latter: brown and blue and beige, tweed and corduroy and cheap cotton for summer, workmen’s navy blue, old men’s in smaller sizes, tam o’shanters in dark green and red tartan with pompoms on top, boys’ caps for local schools, striped larger versions for young swells: drawers floor to ceiling were crammed with them, the more expensive models wrapped in tissue paper. More were kept in sliding trays under the glass-topped counter, folded to keep their shape, alongside handkerchiefs in spotted red or plain white cotton or (for best) Irish linen. Ties and cravats in tasteful styles and colours were folded lengthwise to show off their designs. Scarves and mufflers did good business. And gloves! Not that a man must have gloves, but a lady should not be seen out of doors without. Big leather driving gloves had made their appearance, and knitted versions and some without fingers or with leather palms. Leather patches for elbows could also be obtained, and invisible tape for frayed cuffs, and a multitude of collars in stiff white with collar studs – boxes of them, mostly in cheap metal which snapped if handled carelessly.

The window display was reserved for proper hats: a handsome bowler, the type which might be worn to work by a railway station-master or the gaffer of a small factory. A Homburg, which might appear at
shabbos
service when a man was called up. Two brown trilbies in slightly different styles, their brims turned rakishly, for the man who refused to wear a cloth cap, whatever his social calling. A deerstalker with a pheasant’s feather stitched to the ribbon. And, magnificently, a top hat, which was in fact Ida’s father’s second best and not for sale, but which splendidly announced the shop’s nature and pretensions.

The topper sat elegantly on a pedestal with a white silk scarf arranged cunningly around its brim, as if its wearer had deposited it briefly before going in to dine at the Adelphi. Ida had toyed with perching an embossed invitation next to it but had reluctantly concluded that such display would incur not respect but guffaws.

The proprietor hauled her small new assistant outside. ‘You’ll take everything out of the window once a week to dust, then put it back
exactly
where you found it, do you hear?’

Annie nodded, eyes huge. The idea of handling that top hat with its silky sheen and the sweep of its brim thrilled her to the core.

Ida smirked and folded her hands across her bosom. ‘Nice, isn’t it? Real rabbit fur, that one. Silk lined with the maker’s name inside in gold – you’ll see. Cost five guineas new. They used to dress ’em with mercury to make ’em shine. That’s a poison so the workers would end up going doolally. Mad hatters – that’s where the saying comes from.’

As she spoke Ida licked a finger and wiped it over a spot on the window, then examined her dirty fingertip with an exclamation of annoyance. ‘Filthy! What a lazy minx that girl was – the one you’re replacing. Well, my lass, you have your first task. You’ll find a stepladder in the back and a bucket and rags. I want this whole window cleaned, at once. And I expect it done properly whenever it needs, which is probably once a week. Off with you.’

Thus it was that twenty minutes later Annie, all six stone of her, found herself clinging precariously to the top of the ladder as she tried to reach the upper expanses of the plate glass. To her horror it trembled whenever she touched it and so did she. From her vantage point she could see that the putty was frail and brittle, and absent altogether for inches at a stretch. Were she to lean on the
glass, or put one hand out to steady herself, the whole window could cave in.

‘I will not let myself be frightened – I will not,’ she muttered under her breath. Her hands were becoming sore and chapped and her dress down the front was sodden. She forced into her mind images of the new baby, of her careworn mother, of other members of the family who worked unstintingly without complaint. They would expect her not to give up at the first hint of adversity. She was nearly finished; Auntie Ida in her finery would not risk a climb up the ladder to check. With teeth gritted she rubbed gingerly at the stain left by a seagull.