She's Leaving Home (37 page)

‘Oh yeah?’ Meg, sharp as ever, had worked it out. ‘And if you choose not to be a Jew, to marry out or whatever, what’ll happen then? But Colette can decide to be RC, and Brenda and I can go to church or not, and nobody’ll make a fuss. We matter for ourselves, see, not for what we were born.’

‘The RCs can be ferocious too, if you hope to marry in church. Have to promise the kids’ll be brought up RC, sign papers, the lot.’ Colette’s intervention was so quiet her companions had to strain to hear.

‘My Mum said she wouldn’t mind if I came home with a coal-black Hottentot, as long as I was happy.’ Brenda sat up. ‘But I reckon I’m bloody lucky with my family. They’re great.’

The other three could not counter with claims of their own. It was getting dark. The
Royal Daffodil
had returned to the calmer waters closer to the port. The night had become still and stuffy. Lights twinkled from windows along the harbour front. On the distant hill the half-finished Anglican cathedral was silhouetted blackly against the purple sky. A smell of vinegar wafted up to them from the winkle stall on the dockside.

‘I’ll take the bottles back and get the deposit,’ Helen offered. She picked up the tray and, stepping gingerly on the slippery floor, entered the bar.

It was packed, noisy and aggressive. No different to a thousand pubs in the city, Helen reminded herself, and she was used to those. Men drank in clusters, standing up, hands firmly around pint mugs; women and older couples sat squashed around tiny tables. Every surface was awash with stale liquor whose sour-sweet odour filled the low-ceilinged room.

At the bar she had to wait as a late customer was served. The barman jangled a small ship’s bell attached to a pillar. ‘Time, ladies and gentlemen, please. We berth in five minutes.’

The customer in front was female, tarty, in a tight red skirt and revealing top. Two cocktails slopped in her hands, a cherry on a stick in each. As the bouffant hairdo turned around Helen found herself gazing straight into the rouged and lipsticked face.

‘Hello. It’s Sandra Quilter, isn’t it?’ Helen said politely. Though she had not seen her father’s outworker or her daughter recently, she had met Sandra many times over the years.

The woman was drunk and swayed uneasily, but managed a grin that was close to a leer.
‘Yeah, thass me. Having a lovely time. Who’re you?’

‘Helen Majinsky. Your mother does some work for my father.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Sandra muttered vaguely. ‘Nice to see ya, love. Gotta get these down us. Bye.’

Helen handed over the bottles and collected the penny deposits. She watched Sandra slump next to a much older man who appeared as plastered as she was. The man took no notice of Helen, but with a start the girl realised she knew his identity also. He had come to school once or twice, making a fuss about some triviality. If she were not mistaken, it was Mr O’Brien: Colette’s father.

By the time Sandra was seated half the drink had been spilled and she and her escort were laughing hysterically. Helen was ignored.

Sandra was exactly the same age as herself. Helen decided not to mention the contact at home, nor to tell her friends what she had observed. The man’s wife had left him and so he had a right to companionship, but the sight had dismayed and disgusted her. Colette had given no hint that she knew her father was on board; Helen concluded that, with hundreds of jostling passengers on the cruise, she simply hadn’t seen him, nor he her. Back on deck, a little pensive, she rejoined her friends on the bench. Above their heads the funnel let out a smoky hoot of arrival.

Brenda put her arm around Helen’s shoulder and pulled Meg in the other side. ‘C’mon, Colette. You’ve been ever so quiet. ’S been a smashing evening, hasn’t it? Let’s promise that whatever we do, wherever we go, married, single, or divorced, even when we’re grandmothers, we’ll meet up on the ferry again. Every ten years, say – in 1973, and 1983.’

‘That’s assuming there’ll still be ferries across the Mersey,’ Meg pointed out irritably. Brenda and Helen looked at her, startled. No ferries? The idea was unthinkable.

‘That’s assuming we’ll all be here, too,’ whispered Colette, but nobody heard her.

Two women, had they but known it, came to Liverpool dockside at roughly the same moment early one morning a month later, but with different purposes.

One, Gertie Ahrens, of indeterminate age but lithe and fit, arrived at Prince’s landing stage with her baggage in tow to catch the
Sylvania
. She had left behind an entire suitcase of clothes and gifts. Whenever one of her female relatives admired an outfit or an accessory or sweater, Gertie made a mental note. At the end of her stay the items were wrapped in tissue paper and presented in an unrefusable flourish. Thus Annie’s wardrobe was to have an American flavour for a decade though the skirts had to be shortened, while Helen became the proud possessor of a real silk blouse, a cashmere sweater, several colourful scarves and a pile of costume jewellery that was much too old for her.

Gertie had shrugged with nonchalance as she was thanked. It was part of her triumph to pretend that these beautiful garments were insignificant since she could afford to buy more. That was not strictly true, but Joe would be as generous as he was able. She’d see to that.

Daniel and Annie came to see her off with Annie wedged in the back next to the trunk, which was now light enough for them to lift. The farewells were stilted and awkward. Gertie understood that Annie regretted her ill will. This had been but a short visit and no rivalry had been intended. The contrast between the two women’s lives and convictions had been impossible to hide; in some senses, Gertie guessed, their conflict had been inevitable, since each clung to attitudes which were in direct contradiction of the other’s.

It irritated Gertie that her sister-in-law should make such heavy weather of a woman’s lot. She herself had found it relatively easy to function both inside and outside the home at the same time: no sacrifice need result from holy matrimony. Sure, it wasn’t perpetual wedded bliss. The shine would
come off romance with the passage of years. But a wife wasn’t a slave, a kitchen wasn’t a prison cell. Gertie had used the word ‘martyr’ in an unguarded moment of frankness with her niece, but did not shrink from it. Maybe Helen would make a better fist of her opportunities than her mother.

Gertie kissed Annie and hugged her brother but felt uncomfortable with him too. She had barely known Daniel, who had been a small boy when she had quit Britain for good, as soon as it was safe to sail after the first war. Most of her acquaintance with him came from letters, and from the remarks of her younger cousins who had grown up alongside him. They had painted a picture of a thoughtful, vigorous man, alive to his surroundings, compassionate and politically aware, though illness had robbed his youth and poverty wrecked his chances. At least, that had been the family theory.

In many respects the visit had saddened her. Daniel was less than she had hoped. Perhaps it was merely that he was older: her personal picture of him had stuck in the groove of his twenties. Nor was he physically well, a fact obvious to a newcomer. Yet few of those unusual qualities which had made him an attractive, even magnetic, figure in his young days seemed to have survived. To be sure, he had taken them to the Rembrandt, a grandiloquent gesture, though Gertie had eventually paid. And he’d been as amused as she was at his daughter’s defiance, as if he reasoned that to ignore the rules of
kashrut
was, if one must, the least violent way to break with tradition. The spirit and good humour then exhibited, and the tactful way he had later soothed his wife, had endeared her to him. But as for anything more dramatic: it was as if he had begun to fade long before his time was due.

He did very little more, from what she could judge, than go to his workshop, come home, turn on the TV, and play an occasional game of bridge with the same bunch of pals year in and year out. He didn’t bother to watch his favourite football team in person as the crowd had become too rough. His attendance at synagogue was perfunctory – holy days and special celebrations only. He seemed to receive no joy from his Jewishness; instead he appeared to regard his faith as a chore and an imposition. That did not bode well.

He belonged to no boards, contributed to no charities. He was not a Freemason, though Simon Rotblatt had explained that many of Liverpool’s Jewish businessmen, denied membership by certain hostile Lodges, had formed one of their own. It had become virtually an obligation to join and take part in the ritual. Daniel had been pressed frequently. But when she had inquired, her brother had been scathing about those who performed their charitable functions in public and with their trouser legs rolled up. Yet nothing else took his fancy. There was nothing he cared about.

They had kept off politics but she had established that he felt no deep-seated loyalty to the state of Israel. The blue and white tin of the Jewish National Fund stood by his telephone as it did in most households, and he emptied his spare change into it on Friday evenings. But he claimed in all seriousness that that was because coins in a pocket tended to wear out the fabric, and he didn’t like being the kind of man who jingled coins when talking. It was as if the new country did not exist for him. It had no part to play in his life whatever.

You have to believe in something, Gertie had chided, but he had deflected her puzzled strictures with a wave of his hand about the room. ‘This is what I believe in – this is what I’ve got, what I’ve built. It’s sufficient.’ He meant his home, his family. He was a paterfamilias and had resolved at some point in the past to accept that limited role. But from everything she had heard Daniel had been capable of better things – or rather, of more than mere owner-occupation and fatherhood. Her cousins asserted that Daniel had had the capacity and vision to go much further. She wondered what had happened.

Maybe he had simply absorbed the deadly lassitude of his native city. She was amazed at how difficult it was to get a simple job done as promised and without additional trouble and expense. Look at the hassle of coming here today: no taxi was willing to come out at six a.m. to Childwall, at least nobody reliable. Every discussion was peppered with examples of somebody’s failure to perform and
the preposterous excuses, often in vivid language, which would follow. They had a terrific sense of humour, these Liverpudlians, and a way with words. What they didn’t have was a healthy respect for hard work and a sense of responsibility – a work ethic – the sort her own parents had drummed into their children. Daniel had summed it up neatly and cynically for her: ‘You’ll get fifty thousand cheering fans on the Kop for the game on the dot of two thirty Saturday afternoon. But can you get them to clock in at seven thirty Monday morning? Not a chance.’ He clearly took it as read. That depressed her mightily, the more so as he declared this state of affairs as immutable. He seemed to have given up, on this as on so much else.

Gertie found her cabin and was relieved to discover that she would not be required to share for the return voyage. She unpacked her toilet bag, then went back on deck. Daniel and Annie were still on the cobbles below, as if uncertain when it was polite to leave. She waved and yelled, aware that they could hear her only indistinctly. The ship’s hooter sounded loudly and made everyone jump.

Annie would be relieved to see her depart. Gertie felt genuinely sorry, but suspected her own emotions on the high seas would be the same as her sister-in-law’s. The son, Barry, was a bit of a
schlemiel
– a sly, narrow child who would survive perfectly well whatever befell him. Not her type of boy but no doubt he’d not cross his parents and would keep them happy. Gertie would not miss him.

The daughter, Helen, was a different matter. Gertie half wished the girl was on board with her, on her way to a new life in the States. There, released from the confines of the Old World and especially of its tattier elements, the girl would flourish. When the pettier restrictions were lifted, in an environment where originality was encouraged and ambition admired, the kid’s adherence to the more fundamental tenets of the faith could be re-secured. At the moment, Gertie sensed, the child was so frustrated by petty rules that she was in danger of throwing the whole thing over. That wasn’t an uncommon reaction amongst the young. She had recognised it in herself all those years ago. Fortunate, therefore, that Joe’s wisdom and calmness had been available to rescue her. Perhaps one of those American GIs, with a surname like Cohen, would perform the same trick for her niece.

From the deck Gertie Ahrens took one last look at the dilapidated warehouses and seedy litter of the quay, at the flotsam of unidentifiable rubbish jammed between the ship’s side and the brick dockwall, one last gaze at the stolid, blackened buildings on the waterfront. Then she went inside. She was glad to be going home.

The
Sylvania
’s hooter had also made Nellie McCauley start. She was two hundred yards away, where a much smaller cruise ship was bound for the Canary Isles. Pete had signed on as a leading hand, but intended to jump ship in Bilbao.

Nellie stared round the tiny cabin in the bowels of the vessel. ‘God, it’s not exactly the lap of luxury, is it?’ she remarked.

Here no effort was made to hide pipes or bulkheads as on the upper passenger decks. No panelled wood or veneers, no stainless steel or chrome had penetrated this far down. Doors, walls and fittings were of iron plates, the rivets standing proud, each surface covered in many layers of flaky green paint. A dribble of dank fluid seeped from a rusty weld. On one side of the tiny room were two bunks, one above the other. The third was below the porthole. Opposite was a minute sink and splashed mirror with razors and toothbrushes in a slimy mug, while the fourth wall held the door and a narrow floor-to-ceiling cupboard. Lino covered the metal floor, its edges curled up, and in front of the sink it had worn through to its jute back. A large pair of sea boots with thick socks still inside had been slung carelessly under one of the bunks; their ripeness soured the entire cabin.

‘It’ll do,’ said Pete gruffly. He opened the cupboards and stowed away a pair of trousers and a jacket. ‘If you’d been on board I’d have got us a double. They’re a bit better.’

‘When I come to Spain I’ll fly,’ Nellie replied with as much verve as she could muster. She smiled at him coyly. ‘Not made my mind up yet, anyway.’

‘Don’t take too long about it. I want to know I haven’t lost my touch.’ He turned and put his hands on her arms, squeezed, then gathered her close and kissed her.

When they relaxed, Nellie rested her head on Pete’s shoulder. There had been so much she had wanted to ask during his brief stay, but whenever she was home he had needed her either to cook or make love. She seized the moment. ‘What exactly would I do in Spain, anyway? Be a lady of leisure?’

‘No. I told you most of the money had gone. Christ, d’you think if I was a millionaire I’d be travelling like this? No, I’ve got a part share in a bar. You could work there.’

‘A barmaid?’

‘What’s wrong with that? You weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Nellie. It’s not a bad way to earn your keep.’

She disengaged, and smoothed her hands over his rough jersey. No doubt about it, nights with Pete had beaten sleeping solo hands down. He didn’t trouble her with much introspection and expected no finer cuisine than what she managed for herself, supplemented with fish and chips from the corner chippie. A life in the south, of Sangria and sand, of days off to sunbathe had its appeal, especially compared with the grotty streets of Liverpool. Nothing better loomed on the horizon. Her friends would die with envy. It was worth weighing up, very carefully.

‘Better clear off, Nellie, or you’ll be on the high seas whether you want to or not. Be good now.’ And he gave her one more cuddle, though it was a little peremptory compared with the first. He held open the door. ‘Out of here, turn left, up three flights and you’re there. Bye.’

It was a disconsolate Nellie who disembarked down the crew gangplank. She had been left with a choice: that at least was a vast improvement on a month before. What precisely that choice might be, and whether it was a bed she wished to make, let alone lie in, she was unsure. Perhaps events at the shop would help her make up her mind.

Helen turned over the examination paper and checked the clock. Three solid hours, four questions to complete, twenty minutes left. ‘Compare and contrast the properties of aldehydes and ketones’ had come up as she had hoped. ‘Describe the qualities of the benzene ring and discuss their value in modern life’ had been twice revised. ‘Explain the processes of making nylon’ was easy, to be honest: it demanded merely a good memory. She was not required to wax eloquent. The fourth question, her weakest, had been left to last. She did not find ethanol and its derivatives in the least entertaining and was aware she had not done the subject justice.

The mock A levels occurred in the spring as practice for the real thing in June. By then the entire syllabus would have been completed, they would have practised variants on the prescribed experiments, she would have memorised chunks of historical biography, on Semmelweiss and Mendel, on Pasteur and Marie Curie, in case a question popped up on the lines of ‘Which chemist or biochemist in recent history would you regard as making the greatest contribution to human wellbeing?’ The names inspired her; their struggles were leaven to the stodgy diet of everyday chemistry and physics. Their successes showed that the public view of science as brainwaves and sudden revelation was far from the truth. On the contrary: Helen marvelled how these scientists had slogged away in the face of hardship and disapproval. For the women the injustice was pervasive and blatant. When Pierre Curie was awarded his Nobel Prize his wife was ignored; it took a prolonged outcry for Marie to receive hers some years later and only after his death was her own genius recognised.

It was finished. She laid down her pen and read through the script. The marks would be included in confidential reports to universities. Helen had worked hard and had no fears. If her score were below seventy per cent she and her teachers would have been astonished.