The Last Princess (61 page)

“Now you’ll rest. I’ve had a little supper prepared.”

They reminisced about their childhood and their youth, about papa, such a scholar, the challehs, the strudel and the mandelbrot which mama made. They laughed when they thought about her, that she was the envy of every woman in the village. They tried to speak about the good things and the happy things and then, as happens with shared memories, they could not avoid the bad things. But for Hannah this was all behind them now. It would be a better life, a new life, and above all for her, no longer the loneliness. Now she had Max.

After supper he said, “It’s getting late, my dearest, get some rest; we’ll talk tomorrow.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Sleep well, Hannah, my little sister, sleep well.”

He left, walked down the stairs, then along the hall. Opening the door to his room, he found Rosalind waiting for him, silhouetted against the fireplace. “How dare you defy me?” She raged, and rushed over to Max, standing so close to him that when she spoke he felt the fine spray of saliva on his face.
“I told you not to bring them into my house.”

Backing away from her—not out of fear but because he found her nearness repulsive—he said calmly, “I had no other choice but to bring them here. Besides, this is my house too. I believe I make my contribution toward bed and board.”

“Your house indeed, I want them out of here in the morning, do you hear me, in the morning! I have no intention of supporting three peasants!”

For the first time he laid hands on her, grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. He wanted to kill her. He wished he had the courage to match his anger. “Now you listen to me and listen very carefully. I will not send my sister and her child out into the streets. She will go when I find a suitable place for her.” He released her arm, sickened by her and by his own violence. “I don’t know how long that will take. She will go to work, so take heart, she won’t be in your debt. However, Katie will remain in this house until such a time as my sister can provide a decent home for herself and the child. Do you understand what I say? Or if not, the three of us will leave, and you, my dear, and Mr. Felix Block, my benefactor, and the Felix Block Company can drop dead with my best wishes.” Opening the door and waiting for her to exit, he added, “Do I make myself clear?”

She stood looking at him. This was a new Max, not the mild lamb she had led to the altar. Still—she wasn’t Felix Block’s daughter for nothing—she quickly pulled herself together. Her father was getting older and soon he would have to go into complete retirement. In fact, he had never recovered from the loss of Julian. She needed Max to run that business. He knew it now as well as Felix did. So she said to herself that this was not too much to negotiate for an employee as valuable as Max.

“All right, she can stay, on one condition: that she keep out of my sight and that I have no responsibilities toward her.” Not wanting to linger in her moment of relative defeat, she turned smartly and like a proud general momentarily unhorsed, strode from the room, slamming the door behind her.

Who better than Max understood the problems that confronted Hannah? She spoke not a word of English, only Yiddish. What was she qualified for? Nothing, really, except to be a servant, and for Max this was simply unacceptable. He wanted to support her, but she refused, grateful enough that Katie could remain. Max regretfully agreed there seemed to be no other answer. Hannah got a job as a cook for a lovely family in Kensington by the name of Goldsmith with four growing children who maintained a kosher kitchen and spoke Yiddish in a most delightful way, with traces of a cockney accent.

Katie lived from one Saturday to the other; being the sabbath, that was the only day her mother did not work. Impatiently she would wait downstairs at the side entrance. When Hannah approached, Katie would run to her, kissing and hugging her around the legs. Proud of the way she had dressed herself, she would look up and ask, “Do you like the way I look, Mama?”

“Yes, like the most beautiful Shabbas queen,” and off the two of them would go to synagogue.

Hannah was a very religious woman, but she realized how impossible it would be to adhere to the old ways. If she didn’t ride or spend money on the sabbath it would mean depriving Katie of the one, all too short day they spent together. She decided that the Lord would have to forgive her this one transgression.

After synagogue she would take Katie to lunch. On some Saturdays they would go to Hyde Park for a picnic, which Hannah brought with the compliments of the Goldsmiths; or to the cinema, which neither of them understood, but Katie loved the movies and she began to learn from them. When the day was over and Hannah brought her home, Katie would run up the back stairs to her room, take out the present she brought home each week—a lovely hair ribbon, a box of biscuits, a small doll, a coloring book—and then cry inconsolably.

Max spent an hour every evening with Katie, trying to teach her English. He would love to have indulged her, to have done great and wonderful things for her, but he was grateful that if this were not really a home, it was at least a roof over her head. From time to time he protested, but not too insistently, when she was not permitted to take her meals in the dining room with them, instead eating with the servants. It crushed Max, but this after all was Rosalind’s house. He despised the room on the third floor in the servants’ quarters where Katie slept when there were five bedrooms that were unused. The room had a large, round dormer window where the roof sloped and when the moon shone brightly it terrified Katie so that she slept with the covers over her head. In winter the rain pounded on the pane making sounds that frightened her so that she would lie shivering, holding tight to her doll.

With the purse strings held fast by Rosalind, what could Max really do for Katie? Knowing that he would not be able to endow her with anything, he decided the most he could do was provide her with a fine education. He enrolled her at Greycoats School for Girls, where eventually she learned not only impeccable English but French as well. Katie had expressed a great desire to play the piano, and Max found a teacher at whose home she could practice every day. When she played at her first recital he bought her a lovely dress appropriate for just such an occasion, a white starched organdy with a wide pink satin sash tied in the back with an enormous bow, long white cotton stockings, and black patent leather party pumps.

She sat at the piano playing a simple Chopin waltz, her black curls bouncing up and down as she arpeggioed back and forth. When Katie finished and curtsied, Hannah took Max’s hand in hers and looked at him. Her quiet eyes spoke what no lips could have said; no words were needed to speak of the pride and the gratitude she felt toward Max for making all this possible.

Ironically, Katie’s love of music was really due to Rosalind, without Rosalind’s realizing it. She had become a patron of the arts, introducing and encouraging young musicians. To fill the void in her life since her son’s death, she pursued this with as much fervor as she indulged her loathing for Max and now for Katie, who lived in her home that should have been for Julian.

On Sunday evenings she presided over soirées to which she would invite important people in the music world to listen to her newest protégé. The music and excitement would find its way to Katie’s room and she would listen, enchanted.

One evening, barefooted, she tip-toed down to the second floor and peeked between the banister railing, listening for a long time, then crept down the stairs, careful not to be noticed. When she got to the bottom she saw the beautifully gowned women and distinguished gentlemen sitting in their gilt chairs facing the pianist. Impulsively Katie walked quietly into the dining room. The sight enthralled her. The table was set with the gleaming Sheffield silver service which had belonged to Rosalind’s great-grandmother; there were deep red roses in a silver and crystal epergne that had belonged to her grandmother. The table was laden with small canapés, tiny petits-fours, and exquisitely frosted French pastries in different colors. She stood in wonder at the beauty of all she saw, and without thinking of the consequences, she reached for one. As she did so, one of Rosalind’s finest Minton plates came crashing to the floor, breaking into a dozen pieces. Terrified, she bent down to pick up the fragments. As she got up, Rosalind was standing there, the doors closed behind her so that no one could hear.

She pulled Katie to her feet and slapped her so hard across the face that Katie staggered. Rosalind’s face was fury itself, but Katie was too stunned to cry. Rosalind’s anger still not exhausted; she shook her again, this time harder. “I’ve told you never to come, into this room, you bad, bad girl! Now go upstairs. I’ll deal with you and your uncle about this in the morning.”

Katie ran hysterically from the room, through the kitchen, and out into the street in her bare feet. She had to find her mother or Aunt Rosalind would do something dreadful to her in the morning—she had said so. She ran for blocks, tears streaming down her face, her nose running, her feet bleeding, not knowing where she was going. Finally she went back to Rosalind’s house, crouched under the door stoop, cried until there were no more tears, and finally fell asleep.

The next morning Ellen, the cook, going out to gather up the morning paper and milk, found Katie feverish and half-conscious. Picking up the frozen girl in her arms, she carried her to her room, put her under the covers, and then went to summon Max. Frantic with grief, Max couldn’t understand what had happened. He had looked in at her last night when she had gone to bed at her regular bedtime, which was eight in the evening. Bewildered he called the doctor, who after he had examined Katie, told Max, “We have a very sick little girl on our hands. I’m afraid it’s pneumonia. I’ll make all the arrangements to have her put in the hospital.”

The next forty-eight hours were a nightmare. Unshaven, exhausted from lack of sleep. Max remained with his sister, consoling her, begging her to rest in the small room next to Katie’s that he had arranged for. He ordered meals to be brought to them, which neither of them touched, and they prayed as never before. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on Tuesday when the doctor said, “We have a great deal to be grateful for; our little lady has passed the crisis.”

The next two weeks were the happiest Katie had ever known. She was showered with loving attention from both her mother and uncle. Each day Uncle Max brought her a new toy, a box of chocolates, a coloring book; but best of all he brought her a bunch of pink baby roses in a pink-and-white container that looked like a precious lamb. She adored it and was sure she would keep it forever.

The Goldsmiths were very understanding when they learned about Hannah’s girl being ill. They insisted that she not work for the time that Katie was in the hospital. Mrs. Goldsmith sent a large tin of Danish cookies and some toys her children no longer played with.

When Katie finally was released from the hospital, Max spent as much time as he could with her, which of course brought on an outbreak of Rosalind’s hostility; but by now it mattered not at all to Max. When Hannah would have her holiday for one week away from the Goldsmiths, he would take Katie and her to Brighton.

On Katie’s sixteenth birthday they went to Rules in Maiden Lane near Covent Garden. It was a restaurant frequented by theatrical people; he had taken Katie there once before to see a Noël Coward play. Now he ordered a very special dinner and a birthday cake.

As he sat across from his niece he looked at her face, radiant and young, her voice full of the excitement of youth. The contrast with his sister was shocking—the dim candlelight made Hannah appear even more sallow; her cheeks were sunken, there were dark rings around her eyes, she was thinner than he had ever seen her. “How are you feeling, Hannala?”

“I’m fine, really.”

Max knew this was not so; she looked too ill. “You’re working too hard?” he demanded.

“No, Max, I don’t work hard at all. The Goldsmiths are such nice people, and besides, there really isn’t all that much to do.”

As he ate his dinner, he thought, if she were ill would she tell? Probably not, knowing Hannah. He promised himself one thing, that although he had to go abroad for a few days, when he came home he would insist that she either change her job and allow him to care for her, which up to now she had vehemently refused, or find a situation where she would not work so many days. The problem, of course, was the same; she had learned to speak very little English through all the years, even now knowing just enough to get by.

After dinner Max turned to Katie and said, “I’m going to Paris for a few days on business. If it’s all right with your mother, would you like to go?”

“Oh, Uncle, could I really? I would love nothing quite so much!”

“Then it’s settled. We go on Wednesday and we’ll be back on Monday.”

She clapped her hands in excitement and said, “I love you. Uncle, I love you.”

“I’m delighted that you do, but I’m really only taking you because I need an interpreter. Why else do you think I spent all that money on those French lessons?”

They laughed.

She wasn’t sure how someone felt when they’d had too much champagne, but knew it had to be very much the same kind of sensation she was feeling now, reeling with happy intoxication. Four glorious, exciting days of visiting the Louvre, of dining in some marvelous French restaurant where she ordered in French. She adored her room with the small gray marble fireplace, the entire room done in rough toile, the bedspread, draperies and the pair of petite chairs on either side of the mantel. But best of all was the diminutive balcony that looked out over the Seine. What girl had ever been so lucky? If nothing else ever happened in her life this memory would be sufficient to last her forever.

When they returned there was a message for Max from Mrs. Goldsmith to phone her immediately. He was told that his sister had become very ill on Friday evening and not knowing what to do since he was away, she had taken it upon herself to call her own doctor, who had advised that Hannah be put in a hospital as quickly as possible. She was now at St. Thomas’s. Mrs. Goldsmith gave Max the doctor’s name and telephone number. He called right away and Max was asked to come to the doctor’s office to discuss his sister’s case.