Family Chorus Read online

  There was a wailing cry from the bedroom and she stared down at the street just once more, watching the small red figure running and hopping along, her damp hair bobbing on her shoulders, and then she slammed the window shut and went to see to Shmuel who was probably wet — or even worse — again. It’s something that Lexie’s happy, she told herself miserably, even if I’m not. And if she loves Fanny more than me, what can I do? Just what I’m doing, looking after her and loving her. Which is more than Fanny could ever do.

  A little contented by that thought, she picked up clean sheets from the cupboard in the corner and went into the big bedroom to take care of her father.

  2

  There was something new again at Arbour Square and Lexie stood in breathless admiration in front of it, not knowing what it was for, but greatly impressed by it. A curtain made of brightly striped canvas hung in front of the door, with big brass rings attaching it to a wooden rail above. It flapped gently in the light breeze, showing that the door behind it was open, and Lexie sighed with delight at the lovely way the tantalizing glimpses of the inner hall were given to her, and looked around to see if anyone else was about to see it. It would be lovely if horrible Sammy or Barney were to walk past to see the riches that lay within Number Seven Arbour Square, behind the handsome curtain, and above all to see her walk in, so nonchalantly, because wasn’t she one of the family?

  But there was no one there to watch her — just a few birds scratching desultorily in the dust and a couple of old people sitting beneath the sooty shrubs in the centre of the square behind the high railings, and she made a little grimace; that was the only thing she didn’t think was as good about Arbour Square as it was about Sidney Street. In the Street everyone was outside as much as inside; they sat in their doorways, they ran in and out of each other’s houses and there was always something to watch and someone to listen to; but here in the Square all was genteel silence. People remained inside their own houses, keeping themselves properly to themselves, and although Lexie quite understood that they preferred their houses inside, for if they were only half as beautiful as Auntie Fanny’s house they were too beautiful to leave, all the same she regretted the lack of passers by. To be watched going into Auntie Fanny’s was something that gave her great pleasure.

  She pushed aside the heavy calico curtain, enjoying its roughness against her fingers, and stood in the hallway, cool and dim in the shadows thrown by the curtain, and took a deep breath of its familiar smells. None of the queasy mix of fried fish and heavy yellow soap and Poppa that was so much a part of home, but the faint scent of fresh coffee and cheesecake and wax furniture polish and dried lavender in big china bowls and, above all, fresh flowers. No one had fresh flowers in Sidney Street, unless someone was very ill, but Auntie Fanny always did, and also oranges in a silver bowl. That too was something you only had in Sidney Street if people were ill.

  There was something else special about this house; the quietness. Auntie Fanny had the whole house, all to herself, just for her own family. No upstairs neighbours, no downstairs neighbours, just themselves. Not only did she and Uncle Dave have a private bedroom; so did Joe, and so did Benny, and so, incredibly, did Monty. Only nine years old and a room all of his own! This was even more rich than the polished furniture and the fresh flowers and the silver bowls. All that quiet space, all to themselves. To be Auntie Fanny and Uncle Dave — how magical! To be Monty, how incredible! And to be so close a relation as Lexie may not be quite as good, but still was very special, under the circumstances.

  Lexie had never asked herself why it was that she addressed one of her sisters as Bessie, by her first name, and why the other, Fanny, had to be given the prefix Auntie, but there it was; so it had been ordained by Auntie Fanny and so it was. She accepted it, just as she tended to accept the way Auntie Fanny told everyone what they ought to do and then made sure they did it. She knew, because she’d heard so much talk about it, that Auntie Fanny and Uncle Dave were extremely clever and extremely successful. They had three stalls in Petticoat Lane as well as a neat shop in the Mile End Road with a big window and a grating over the front door that was locked with a padlock every night at nine o’clock. She knew that a great many people worked for them, and that often meant they didn’t have to go out to their businesses if they felt like staying at home. She knew that the whole world revolved around Auntie Fanny — who of course was really the one who made it all work properly — and so she never questioned what Auntie Fanny said. That was the way Auntie Fanny was, and something Lexie would have to put up with. If she didn’t, if she argued with her as much as she argued with Bessie, she knew what the result would be. She wouldn’t be allowed to visit Arbour Square any more and she wouldn’t be allowed to see Joe. And that would be unthinkable.

  She hovered now at the foot of the stairs, her head cocked, listening. There was a murmur of voices coming from the parlour and she concentrated hard, trying to discover who it was, and then relaxed. Auntie Fanny going on and on as usual, and Uncle Dave grunting sometimes, also as usual. No sound of Joe or Benny; they must be upstairs, and moving softly she went up, tiptoeing on the strip of carpet that so elegantly covered the central few inches of each tread, biting her tongue for fear of being heard and called by that imperious voice from the parlour. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Auntie Fanny, so much as she did want to see Joe. And Auntie Fanny might stop her.

  Joe was there, sprawled on his bed beside the window, and she stood in the doorway peeping round at him, just wanting to look at him for a little while before he saw her. He was wearing just a shirt and trousers, with his best red-and-blue braces showing off the shirt’s crisp whiteness very stylishly, and he was carefully combing his hair as he stared at his reflection in the small shaving mirror he kept on his windowsill. There was never a mirror very far away from where Joe was.

  ‘It looks better with the curls,’ she said after a moment, and he flicked his eyes sideways to stare at her, and then combed the curls out to make rows of neat waves. ‘From where should you know?’ he said. ‘Are you Vesta Tilley, suddenly, you know everything there is to know about how men should look?’

  She giggled and came slipping into the room to curl up at the foot of his bed, never taking her eyes from his face. ‘I know what makes you look best,’ she said. ‘You look best in curls, I heard Rachel Abrahams say so.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ he said and looked at her again, and she stared back with her eyes wide and said nothing, and after a moment he made a face at her and began to comb the curls back into existence as she watched him unblinkingly.

  ‘She know you’re here?’

  ‘No. I just came up. Where’s Benny?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a short silence, broken only by the sound of Joe’s comb moving through his crisp hair, and then she said carefully, ‘You goin’ out?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Another short silence and then she said, even more carefully, ‘You goin’ anywhere nice?’

  ‘Might be.’

  ‘Dancing?’

  ‘P’raps.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She held out as long as she could, but it wasn’t long. ‘Goin’ to meet anyone?’

  ‘Haven’t decided yet.’ He set his head on one side and narrowed his eyes as he stared at the mirror. ‘Might.’

  ‘Go to the Paragon.’ She said it then, letting it all come out in a rush. ‘Go to the Paragon and take me, and don’t bother with anyone else, just me and you, like last time. Eh, Joe? Please, Joe? Eh?’ And she couldn’t help reaching forward and tugging at his shirt sleeve.

  ‘No,’ he said, and got off the bed and went over to the wardrobe in the corner where his jacket waited ready on a hanger, and began to brush it. ‘Got better things to do than go with a kid like you —’

  ‘Please, Joe! I won’t be no trouble, not a bit of trouble. And I’ll go to the lavvy before it starts and I won’t say nothing about anyth
ing, honestly, Joe! Please take me, like last time!’

  ‘I must have been out of my bleedin’ mind last time,’ he said and shrugged on his jacket, carefully fastening just the centre button of the three front ones. ‘How’d I look?’

  ‘Oh, Joe, you look wonderful, Joe! And I could look all right too, if I took off my pinny and tied up my hair like Rachel does and —’

  ‘Bloody hell, kid! Seven years old and trying to look like Rachel Abrahams? The Chief Rabbi’ll be a pig farmer first. Do me a favour, dolly, shut up already. I got better things to do than take out kids. Go home to Bessie, you’re gettin’ to be a nuisance.’ He set his straw hat over one eye, carefully perching it on his elegant curls.

  She sat very still, staring at him, willing it to happen. It wasn’t difficult; all she had to do was think of her eyes, all big and round, and imagine the great fat tears creeping up inside them. It wasn’t like real crying, which hurt like needles and which, when it happened, made her face crumple up and look funny. This was her own special crying, the sort that made Bessie look so frightened and sometimes even made Auntie Fanny relent over something after she had said no, and which always, always, worked with Joe.

  It did this time. He stood and looked at her uncertainly, and saw the tears slide down her cheeks, after hovering delicately on her lower lashes for a moment or so, saw the way her lower lip shook and her cheeks flushed with distress, and swore softly.

  ‘Listen, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take you, buy your seat, see you in, okay? But then I go on my own, right? You go right home after, no hangin’ around and no tellin’ Bessie where you’ve been, or I’ll have her after me, and then you’ll be in it as much as I will. You understand?’

  She was off the bed at once, tugging at her pinafore, but he pulled on her arm roughly, and shook his head. ‘You don’t have to go fancying up for me, believe me. If we’re going, come on. Be quiet, for Gawd’s sake —’

  They went down the stairs as quietly as wraiths, listening at the way Fanny’s voice was still coming from the parlour, and slid out through the curtained doorway just as her voice stopped and she came clattering out into the hall.

  ‘Joe?’ she called, and Lexie, running as fast as she could out of the door and towards the corner after Joe’s lanky figure, already several yards in front of her, wanted to laugh out loud, and would have done if she hadn’t been so breathless. To cheat Auntie Fanny and go to the Paragon with Joe, all on the same evening! It was wonderful!

  All the way there, up Arbour Street on the far side of the Square, across Pattinson Street into Jamaica Street, past all the tight little houses and the street corner shops on into Hannibal Street and at last into Mile End Road, she was hard put to it to keep up with him because he walked so fast, his long legs and the malacca cane he carried twinkling along like clockwork, and he paid no attention at all to her at his heels. But she didn’t mind. He was taking her, as he had on that one magic evening in April, to the Paragon. She was going to have a wonderful time, and Bessie couldn’t stop her and tell her how vulgar it all was. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful —

  It wasn’t until they reached the edge of the pavement in Mile End Road that he slowed down and gave her a chance to catch her breath, and they stood there, waiting for a chance to get through the mêlée of vans and horses and buses and brewers’ drays and even occasional cabs, and she crept as close beside him as she could, staring over the road to the heavenly, splendid, awe-inspiring place that awaited them.

  ‘The Paragon Theatre of Varieties!’ announced the great placard on the front of the building. ‘Every day a matinee! Every day a tip-top show!’ She shivered with delight as she picked out the words carefully, struggling a little over ‘matinee’ but not caring that she didn’t quite understand. The whole place just looked so exciting that every aspect of it was perfect for her. The bright red and blue and green glass panels across the front, the huge pictures outside on the boards of Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley, George Robey and Harry Lauder, the even bigger pictures of jugglers and acrobats and conjurors, the decoration all over the front picked out in gold and red paint — it was all heaven on earth to Lexie. She could almost smell the scent that would greet them as they went into the vast red plush and gilt interior, of dust and oranges and Jeyes fluid and sticky chocolate and of course beer, and she felt almost sick with the excitement of it all.

  They got over the road at last, and now Joe was not hurrying, but walking with a marked swagger, swinging his cane with an exaggerated air that Lexie admired greatly, and she scuttled along beside him, looking all around her for people staring at her beautiful Joe.

  But very few were, because the attention of the many passers by, as well as the long lines of people queuing for the early doors, was fixed on the small square of pavement in front of the tightly closed entrance to the theatre. There a man with a barrel organ was standing, with a monkey capering over his one-legged instrument and over him with equal celerity, grinding out the tinkling tunes that had to struggle to be heard above the din of the passing traffic.

  As Joe and Lexie joined the line for the sixpenny scats — ‘It’s all right, I’m flush this week,’ he said in a lordly fashion as Lexie opened her eyes wide at his extravagance — the tune of the organ changed, became the lilting ‘The Naughty Little Bird on Nellie’s Hat’, and she seized Joe’s hand with great excitement and began to caper, much as the monkey was.

  ‘I know that one — I know that one —’ she cried at the top of her voice. ‘It’s the one Maidie Scott sang last time we was here — oh, Joe, do you remember? —’ And she began to sing in her high young voice, ‘For you don’t know Nellie like I do, said the naughty little bird on Nellie’s hat —’

  ‘Go on, ducky, give us a turn!’ The old woman standing in front of them in the line looked over her shoulder at them and then called as Lexie, looking alarmed, slid behind Joe’s protective back, ‘Garn, you don’t ’ave to look like that — no one’s goin’ to eat yer, yer soppy little maid! Yer got a nice little voice, you ’ave. Go on, gi’s a turn while we’re waitin’, and I’ll give yer a penny —’ And she plunged her hand down into the recesses of the many layers of rusty black fabric which wrapped her round and produced a penny. ‘There y’are, ducks. Proves I mean it, don’t it?’

  Lexie stared up at the old woman, now leering at her with her mouth wide open to reveal a few stumps of blackened teeth, and shook her head vigorously, but suddenly Joe reached forwards and took the penny from the old woman’s hand and gave Lexie a sharp little shove in the small of her back.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he hissed at her. ‘What you waitin’ for? Sing it, an’ dance a bit — go on! Then you can have a bit o’ pie in the interval —’

  She thought about that for a moment. A bit of pie. He’d given her a piece last time she’d come, a strange confection of meat and onions and heavy pastry, as unlike Bessie’s careful cooking as anything she could imagine, but she had liked its strange taste and laughed obediently when Joe had watched her and then roared a great guffaw and said, ‘How’s that for a bit of kosher nosh, eh, love? Oh, what Bessie’d say if she only knew!’ and he’d laughed again.

  She looked at him and at the penny in his hand and then at the old woman, now nodding encouragingly at her, with her mouth, glory be, closed in a grin and therefore less disagreeable to see, as the barrel organ again changed its tune and broke into the song she had heard Harry Champion sing last time she had come here with Joe. The words stirred in her memory and as Joe gave her another little shove, so that she found herself on the patch of pavement right beside the man with the barrel organ, she opened her mouth and let the words come by themselves.

  Any old iron, any old iron,

  Any, any, any old iron —

  You look sweet, you look a treat,

  You look dapper from your napper to your feet —

  Someone from the queue for the fourpenny balcony shouted then, and it lifted her spirits for it was a cheerful friendly shou
t. ‘Come on, ducks, show us what you’re made of!’ the voice roared, and then someone else shouted too, and she was suddenly filled with excitement, and twirled on her heels so that her red serge skirts and her white pinafore flew up and her black boots rattled on the paving stones.

  The barrel organist grinned at her and nodded his head in time with his music and then began to speed it up and she twirled again, and this time others shouted out and now she began to dance. Not that she knew how to dance, not that she had ever been told what dancing was; it was just something that happened as the tinny little tune, jerky and repetitive though it was, seemed to move into her thin black legs and make them move of their own volition. She began to sing again, too, as she capered.

  All in style,

  Brand new tile,

  With your father’s old green tie on.

  Oh, I wouldn’t give you tuppence for your old watch and chain,

  Old iron, old iron!

  Now the queue was singing, too, and the organist, quick to see which side his bread was buttered on, rewound his organ so that it repeated the tune, and soon everyone was bellowing it lustily as Lexie went on with her leaping and twirling, now holding out her skirt on each side with a vague memory of having seen someone do that on the stage here at the Paragon last time Joe had brought her here, and tossing her head excitedly from side to side.

  It seemed to go on for a very long time indeed, the singing and the excitement of the dancing, and her legs were hurting and her breath was hurting too, for it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe and sing and dance all at the same time, and she stopped and turned to find the comforting figure of Joe. But she couldn’t see him and for a moment she panicked as the doors of the theatre began to open with a rattling sound so that the cheaper queues immediately stopped singing and began to surge forwards. She felt herself jostled as the man with the barrel organ pushed her aside to rush along the queue with his hat held out to collect his just dues and for a moment she was very frightened indeed, and felt the tears — the sort she hated — come pushing up behind her eyes. But then they died as she saw Joe at last.