What Was Promised (39 page)

‘Everything else has changed,’ Mary is saying, ‘around here, I mean. I’d heard, but it’s another thing to see it. I suppose it’s for the best. The Buildings were dreadful, weren’t they? Where are you living now?’

‘The Newling Estate,’ Dora says, and, pride making her unguarded, ‘We have a little garden.’

Mary smiles keenly down at her. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’

‘Oh yes,’ says Dora, ‘ever so.’

‘How did you swing that, with just the boy? Or did you have your own, later?’

‘No, none of our own. And you, Mary? Where do you live now?’ she asks, though she already knows.

‘Highbury, for our sins.’

You have no shame
, Dora thinks,
to speak in the same breath of your family’s sins and success
; but ‘You’ve done well for yourselves,’ is all she says.

‘We’ve worked for it. Well, that’s Michael, there’s never been any stopping him.’

‘You won’t come this way often, then?’

‘No . . . I was just passing,’ Mary says, and some of the air seems to go out of her, her gaze wandering across the winter-dressed mannequins and the clientele, who thumb Rantzen’s wools and furs as if they are still marketgoers, testing meat for tenderness. Mary frowns, as if puzzled to have ended up amongst them. ‘I had a call to make in Whitechapel. My son in-law, you know, he’s a surgeon at the London.’

‘Yes,’ Dora says, ‘I did hear that. You must be proud,’ she says to Mary, as she said to Iris four years ago; but what she thinks is,
Hospitals. That’s the smell, the one she hides.

‘Well,’ Mary says, fussing with her bag, ‘I suppose this is goodbye, then,’ and smiles with a sadness Dora never thought she could possess.

She’s old
, Dora thinks.
And sick. You wouldn’t know we’re almost of an age. Of course she has had children, too
: and then, the thought vindictive,
Michael must still love her very much
.

‘Goodbye Mary,’ she says.

She is herself still pretty, in her way. Solly says so. Other men, too, with their looks and words. Once that would have made her shy and it remains a surprise to her, a thrill, half-anticipated, half-disbelieving.

She is uncoarsened, unsatisfied. Still hungry, still slim and firm, her flesh filling her skin. There is still a glow to her. She walks with her chin up. She is happy with Solly, happier with him than with anyone. But there are other things than happiness.

She takes the long way home from Rantzen’s, enjoying the autumn sunshine. The estate children have come out to play. Dora calls their names and they run up, larking at her heels, breathlessly chattering. ‘There’s eels in Lee’s all in a bucket!’ cries Ria Isaacs. ‘We put our hands in them!’

‘Well, aren’t you brave?’ Dora says. She remembers Ria before she was born. The flutter and butt of a babe in the belly. The elder sister, Bessie, six years old and grimly determined, sitting out in the road with a handscrawled sign until her mother Sarah heard of it and hauled her in: FOR SALE, GIRL BABY, 2d.

Will we would we

Can we could we

Might we may we

Kiss the baby?

Dora, Dora, Solly always says, Why is it always not enough? I have far more better things to do with my time than watch my wife being sad. Watching her being happy – that would be a better thing. I could be listening to her singing. Why be sad, dearest? Nothing in life is perfect. Look at what we have.

What do we have? she will ask, and he will take her hand, press it, rub it between his own as if to kindle warmth in her.

‘We have us,’ he says.

But why can’t things be perfect? Some things almost are. The delight of infants. Music. There are Bach sonatas – those she dared play as a girl – which seem to Dora so transcendent, so unbridled in their brilliance, that only in performance are they anchored to the earth. A man made them. What man can make, cannot men live?

There is no residents’ meeting: she was invited to one once, but was too timid to attend. Not that Mary will ever know that. Dora walks through Newling’s titanic shadows, opens her front door, locks out the world behind her. She sees to her face and makes Solly his tea. Two rounds of salted dripping, the fat studded with scratchings; two of chopped liver. She cuts the crusts and lays them out: tomorrow they’ll be crumb for schnitzel. Sun floods the dusty windowpane, illuminates her nimble hands, the hatch, the piano’s treble end. It is October and still warmish, though the long days are drawing in and people stay outside, making the best of it, basking and brooding on winter. In Market Square, Jack Harrow’s Staff bitch lies on her back, nipples bared for all to see, and barks at the afternoon, on and on, like a silly girl with hiccoughs.
No dogs
, the Market Square signs say,
No ball games, No hawkers.

‘Solly?’ Dora calls, ‘dripping or liver?’

No reply. Dora makes up a plate. In passing, on her way, her hand reaches to touch the wall-turned picture on the piano, as if it were a talisman.

Solly is snoring in his deckchair – bought on impulse in the spring – the wireless beside him talking about Apollo and the dark side of the moon. Dora looms over it, picking at the sandwiches, then glances at her neighbours’ curtains, sets down the plate, turns off the wireless, kneels.

He’s a well-made man, her one. Not tall and not what you’d call handsome – not that she’s ever told him so – but stocky and hard-wearing, like a thing you’d be sensible to buy. He’ll be fifty-four this year, but he could be almost anything, thirty or seventy. His arms are big and freckled and sunburned from the elbows down. Under his string vest his chest is thick with red hair. When he sleeps he isn’t gentle, the way some are: the dozing Solly frowns. You can see the animal in him. He’s a bear, an ape . . . or what? An orangutang, that’s it.
The Times
is crushed protectively against one hairy armpit. From his free hand his pipe droops: his knuckles graze the lawn. As Dora bends to look, a single ant climbs up his thumb, pausing in the unruly hairs, rearing, sending messages:
we are entering unknown lands
.

She takes another bite of sandwich, then reaches out, weaves her fingers through the vest, into his hair, and grips him, waking him with a start.

‘We’re closed,’ he says, ‘no! Mmn, what? Oh. I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘You snore too loud,’ she says, and he catches her in one foreshank, swings her down onto him. ‘Don’t! Look, it’s tea time, I did you dripping.’

‘For dripping,’ Solly says, ‘a fellow would forgive you anything,’ and he leans down for the plate.

You’ll never guess who I saw
, she wants to say. But she shouldn’t. There is no good at all to be had from raking up the Lockharts.

‘Ah,’ he sighs, munching. ‘How do you always know what I want?’

‘I put my ear to your head,’ she says, ‘and listen to your dreams’; but Solly is starting to frown.

‘Wait. Don’t move.’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Look at that,’ he says, ‘will you? I’m telling you, these ants. They’re in for the high jump now, see, they’ve eaten half my sandwiches.’

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘
Solly
.’

Some dawns, as she wakes, she finds herself thinking,
I’d like to go home now, please, can I?

She doesn’t mean Shoreditch, nor the Buildings, though she does miss them. It’s Danzig she really wants. To start again, to have another run: that’s what Danzig would mean. But it’s no good, Danzig is gone. Even the name has been effaced. There is no going back, however much she yearns for it.

She is forty-eight, only forty-eight, and so often thinking of the past. She dwells on it. Dwells
in
it, almost, lingering over its attendant happinesses and unhappinesses. And its joys too, of course. Like this.

*

In the Columbia Buildings square the LCC men are talking. Each one steps up to say his piece, clambering onto the tailboard of a public information van which has been parked up for the purpose: his colleagues nod and tamp their pipes until they’re called upon. There are three of them, all younger than Dora, each with the oilskin confidence of local government. They’re not shy to raise their voices: they might as well be costers, with lungs on them like that. The second man totters as he gets down, one arm windmilling, and laughter eddies through the crowd . . . but the truth is it’s muted, with no proper malice to it. These days the Buildings can’t muster much in the way of a public gathering. Most got out years ago, all those who had the cash or chance for something, anything, elsewhere. It is March 1957, and the Buildings are being condemned.

‘A few of you,’ the third man says – he is the most senior of them – ‘a few of you may have heard rumours that portions of the Columbia Market Buildings would remain habitable for awhile. Let me hit such speculation on the head. You should all of you be making alternative living arrangements today, if you have not done so already, whether with us or through your own enterprises. By this time next year the tenements you see now will have been demolished in their entirety. In five years this land will be occupied by brand new homes, designed, as Mr Laing has told you, by the best architects, to the highest modern specifications, with conveniences and space to suit the needs of the twentieth century family, and with planned occupancy comfortably exceeding that afforded currently. I will be frank with you. You know as well as I do that your habitations here are damp, cramped, poorly ventilated, badly plumbed, inadequately lit . . . I could go on, and no doubt so could you. Our ambition is to make these slum defects things of the past –’

‘You won’t be touching
my
plumbing,’ Hullo Evans calls, to desultory hoots and applause, and he winks at Dora, who stands beside him with Solly’s hand gripped tightly in hers. Through his grasp she can feel her husband’s trembling, nervous ire. ‘What are you calling a slum?’ someone else shouts out – and there is a wider murmur, the first stirrings of a defense of the place they call their own; but the council man won’t be brooked.

‘The structures that surround us now put us all in danger. The war did them grave damage – you may not see it, sir, but I assure you it is there, in the retaining walls and in the foundations. Who will be responsible, if some part of your home falls and does a person harm tomorrow? Will you? No, you will not, because the council is your landlord. We take on ourselves that responsibility, and as responsible owners we have made the surveys that prove what we’ve all known for years – that these antique buildings are no longer fit for purpose. Our purpose, therefore, is to see them cleared and replaced with safe and proper dwellings.’

‘Where are we to go, then?’ someone asks. It’s John Remnant, Dora sees, the spindlemaker who has lived and worked in the Buildings longer than anyone remaining. John’s voice is mild with some faded country burr, but others take up his question; younger, more forceful tongues. The council man waits them out, leaning to chat with his colleagues, straightening, raising a hand.

‘Some of you, I’m sure, will want to return here – to new homes – when the estate is finished. You will be happy to hear that those who wish to put their names down on the housing list today, may do so. You will not be given special treatment, but you will be getting in “early doors”, as it were. I would urge you all to apply, the housing situation being what it is. In the interim, provision may be made for the elderly and for families with children who find themselves with no recourse elsewhere. The county council is able to relocate those in most need to prefabricated housing in East Ham, Catford and Epsom. Yes, Miss, Epsom is quite far. I would ask you all to remember that this is all in the short term. Our view is the longer one, and I am sure that you, too, once you have considered the issues fully, will come to see things the same way. It is your children you should think of. Well then. Are there any questions? No questions? Mr Laing, here beside me, will be taking names . . .’

‘
Catford
!’ Jack Harrow spits. ‘I wouldn’t walk my shittest dog down there. I’m down the Birdcage, who’s with me? Solly, you’ll have one.’

‘Oh,’ Solly says, cleaning his spectacles, peering around as the crowd trails off, ‘no, you wouldn’t want me, Jack. The taste in my mouth, you’ll end up carrying me back. I’ll save us both the trouble, head straight home with Dora, if you don’t mind.’

‘Right you are,’ Jack says. ‘Enjoy it while you can, won’t you?’ And off he heads towards the arch, his hounds skittering around him.

Half the night Solly paces, his footsteps starting up and stopping, kitchen to lounge to kitchen, like a timepiece he has taken apart and can’t see how to mend.

Dora, nightgowned, in the doorway. ‘Come to bed now,’ she whispers, and Solly stops in the dark and lifts his head.

‘I’m thinking,’ he says. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘What do you need to think about now? Think tomorrow.’

He isn’t having it. ‘Those jumped-up boys,’ he spits, ‘they should kit them out in jackboots.’

‘They’re doing what they think is best.’