A Kid for Two Farthings (3 page)

As he ran his hand over the unicorn, Mr Kandinsky sang:

Shmule looked around. ‘That’s what I say,’ he said. ‘A kid.’

‘What harm will it do, Shmule,’ asked Mr Kandinsky, ‘if we make it a unicorn? Oy,’ he added, ‘he really is crippled.’ Sadly beating his fist on the bench Mr Kandinsky sang:

Shmule’s low voice joined Mr Kandinsky’s cracked one in the chorus. Together they finished the song.

3

All the excitement about the unicorn was one thing, but Shmule had his own troubles. Second, there was the dreaded Python Macklin, but first there was Sonia.

Sonia was the daughter of Hoffman the butcher, and maybe plenty of meat was the reason why she was the strongest girl between Bow Church and the Aldgate Pump. She was four inches taller than Shmule, and she had only three muscles less than him, and those muscles anyway it didn’t suit a girl to have. She could lift Shmule as easily as he could lift Joe, and though she had squinty eyes and a bad temper, she had a very good figure. One day, Mrs Levenson, the corsetière, who did a bit of match-making on the side, got him over to Hoffman’s for Friday night supper, and in no time Shmule found himself engaged to Hoffman’s daughter Sonia. That was his number one trouble, for although a promise is all very well in its way, what is the use of being engaged if you haven’t got a ring to prove it? And Sonia hadn’t a ring.

That ring. Sonia didn’t forget it for a minute. In the evenings or at week-ends when they practised weight-lifting together and catch-as-catch-can, she never forgot. Shmule might say, ‘I pulled a muscle’ that’s all. Just ‘I pulled a muscle.’ –

‘You got a muscle?’ Sonia would ask, insinuating. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Shmule would tell her, ‘I got enough muscles.’

‘I forget,’ Sonia would answer, lifting up the heavy bar; ‘it’s diamonds you are a bit short of just now.’ Always on for a ring.

Because of that ring Shmule went in for the wrestling. Before that, he took three pound seventeen he saved in a slate club the baker ran, and bought a gold ring with a little tiny diamond in it. Shmule went into fourteen shops until he found a ring for that money, because everyone knows nothing but diamonds is right for engagements. But he could have saved himself the trouble. He went round to Sonia that night, pleased as punch, and when they were sitting in the front room just as Sonia was about to start nagging him, he jumped up, ran round the room, and shouted, ‘Say no more – you got yourself a ring.’ He gave her the ring and held his face forward for a kiss.

Who can satisfy women? A fine kiss that Sonia gave him. With the back of her hand she gave him a slap on the cheek and burst out crying.

‘Two years I’ve waited you should make me respectable with a ring, and what do you give me in the end? A little tiny bit of rubbish, I wouldn’t be seen dead in it. Why did I ever say yes to you? Why am I such a fool? Why did I let you take me to Epping Forest that time?’ Because that was something else she never let Shmule forget, although there had been no trouble.

To cut a long story short, Shmule explained to Mr Kandinsky, Sonia couldn’t wear that ring because such a small diamond after such a long time would make her look ridiculous. The other girls might say, insinuating, ‘For such a small ring you must wait two years?’ And that was why, answering Mr Kandinsky’s question, ‘Why be a wrestler?’ Shmule took up wrestling. Wrestling he could win enough money to buy Sonia a large ring, and then perhaps she would stop nagging him.

‘Why don’t you just marry the girl straightaway, and save yourself trouble?’ Mr Kandinsky asked. ‘Surely this is a practical solution?’

‘You think I haven’t tried?’ said Shmule. ‘She won’t let me come near her until she gets that ring.’

‘Why don’t you marry someone who’s got a ring already?’ asked Joe.

‘What can you know about these things?’ asked Shmule.

‘My mother hasn’t got a diamond ring,’ Joe said.

‘Do me a favour,’ Shmule replied, dismissing the whole matter. ‘I got enough worries. This dreaded Python Macklin I got to fight soon is no joke.’

But although Shmule had worries of his own, he helped Joe to build a house for the unicorn. They got four orange-boxes and a hammer and some nails, and while Shmule knocked them together he told Joe what he would do if he didn’t have to develop his muscles to fight the dreaded Python Macklin. Because wrestling kills you for perfect efficiency, Shmule said. Take Fred Hercules, for instance; no use as a wrestler at all, but still the best developed man in the world. And if you could win a title like Mr World, or Mr Universe, or just plain Mr Europe, you were made. That’s what Shmule might have been if he didn’t ruin himself becoming a good wrestler. Mr Universe. That was something to be. Mr World. You could sign adverts: I grew my muscles on Brymaweet, signed Shmule; I always use a Rolls-Royce car, signed Shmule. It was a gold-mine, and he had to give it up. ‘Turn all that in, my future, Hollywood even, because plenty of Mr Worlds have finished up big stars, just because Hoffman’s daughter Sonia must have a bigger ring than any other machinist in Gay-day Blouses.’ And Shmule gave one of the orange-boxes such a bang with the hammer the side caved in and they had to repair it before going on.

After the house was finished, while Shmule filled up a few cracks in it with canvas, Joe went back into the workshop.

‘So, how is the unicorn’s house coming along, Joe?’ asked Mr Kandinsky, peering through the steam from pressing, and wrinkling his nose, because after all these years he still didn’t like the smell.

‘Shmule is worried about that Sonia,’ answered Joe. ‘She wants him to turn in his future, and not have a Rolls-Royce car.’

‘Women,’ said Mr Kandinsky. ‘But we can’t do without ’em.’

‘You do,’ said Joe.

‘I’m old,’ replied Mr Kandinsky. ‘I have had my share of trouble.’

‘Did you want to be Mr World, Mr Kandinsky?’ asked Joe.

‘Mr Kandinsky is already enough for Mr Kandinsky,’ said Mr Kandinsky, pressing hard with his iron and making a great cloud of steam. ‘The only thing I could do with, because all this bending over ironing gives me a creak in my back, is a Superheat Patent Steam Presser.’ Mr Kandinsky leaned back from the bench. ‘You know, Joe, with this patent steam presser all you got to do is open it – so. You put in your trousers – so. Close it – so. Press a handle. Pouf. Up comes the steam. Open. There is your trousers pressed. No smell, no consumption. Not like this: hot up the irons, press a bit, they get cold, wet the cloth, press a bit more, hot up the iron again, breaking your back, your heart, day after day.’

Whenever he thought of it, Mr Kandinsky ran on about the Superheat Steam Presser. Once he took Joe to see one working at a factory in Commercial Road. They watched a boy open and close it while another boy put the trousers in and took them out, and Mr Kandinsky looked sad when they left.

‘If a man has to be a trousers-maker,’ he said, ‘it’s a pity he shouldn’t have a Superheat Steam Presser.’ On the way home he took Joe into a restaurant and they had sweet lemon tea and biscuits.

Usually when Mr Kandinsky mentioned how he would like a patent presser, Joe spent some time suggesting ways for them to save up for one. But now all he said was, ‘Maybe my father will send you one from Africa for your birthday,’ because his mind was too busy thinking about the unicorn. Until the unicorn’s own house was finished, he lived in the workshop under a shelf, in a nest made up from odd pieces of material. Joe fed him morning and evening, leaving a bowl of water and milk for him to drink should he feel so inclined. Joe talked to the unicorn between meals so that he shouldn’t feel lonely, but though he would make quite a good breakfast, he didn’t care much about anything. He just looked at Joe with sad eyes and slowly folded another lettuce leaf into his mouth with a long pink tongue.

‘I think,’ Joe told Mr Kandinsky, ‘that this unicorn is missing his mother and father, but what can you do?’

‘What can you do?’ agreed Mr Kandinsky.

‘But where are they?’ asked Joe.

‘In Africa, no doubt,’ said Mr Kandinsky.

‘But how did the baby get here?’ asked Joe.

‘Who can say? Maybe he was left here when the unicorns left.’

‘But by now he should be grown up,’ Joe said after a while.

Mr Kandinsky put down his iron.

‘There, Joe,’ he said, ‘you have a problem. That unicorn should be grown up.’

‘But he’s not,’ Joe said; ‘he’s no bigger than a dog, not a big dog either.’

Mr Kandinsky thought for a while.

‘He is not grown up,’ he said at last, ‘and you know why? Because unicorns can’t grow up on their own. They have to be told how by grown-up unicorns. Same as you have to be told by me, otherwise how will you grow up? Same thing with unicorns, which are, after all, only human.’

He took up his iron again, turned the flat of it towards his face, and spat lightly on it. There was no fizz. ‘These blankety irons,’ he said. ‘What I need is a Superheat Patent Presser.’

That evening when Joe’s mother came home from work, she asked first and foremost how the unicorn was. Joe said the house was nearly finished, but the unicorn didn’t seem to care, and he told her what Mr Kandinsky said about why the unicorn happened to be there at all.

When Joe was in bed his mother kissed him and said goodnight, and was about to leave when he sat up.

‘You know,’ Joe said, ‘Mr Kandinsky wants a Superheat Patent Presser, and Shmule wants to be Mr World, and Sonia, that’s Shmule’s girl, wants the biggest ring in Gay-day Blouses, and that unicorn wants its mother and father.’

‘And what do you want?’ Joe’s mother asked.

‘I’m thinking what,’ Joe said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Whatever you want,’ Joe’s mother answered. Then she said goodnight again; the whole thing all over again; a cuddle with kisses, a cuddle without kisses, one big kiss, and a few little kisses as she had done since he was young.

4

They called the unicorn Africana, because Mr Kandinsky said that was the name for everything to do with Africa. Straightaway the unicorn began to look a little better. Everybody needs a name, otherwise how can they know who they are? You couldn’t call a unicorn Charlie or Hymie, or Kandinsky even, so they called him Africana.

Every morning when he had finished his breakfast, Joe took Africana for a walk up Fashion Street, then across the road and back again past the shirt factory. Africana wore a tartan lead and collar which had belonged to the baker’s dog Nicolai, named after the Tsar of Russia, both of whom were dead. The shirt factory was dead, too. It was set back a little from the road, and the whole of the front was covered with torn posters. The big door of the factory was painted a sort of purple which flaked off all the time, and had initials carved on it by the boys in the street. Above the height to which the boys could reach was still part of a large coloured poster which showed a magician in a top hat taking a blue rabbit, two blue pigeons and a large bunch of blue flowers out of another top hat. The roof of the shirt factory had small roofs on it and Mr Kandinsky called it the Kremlin. Beside the door there was a faded board which still said, ‘Wanted: Machinists’, but no one ever went into the factory and the door had a large iron padlock chained on to it.

The two corners where the pavement curved round to meet the far walls of the factory were sheltered from the wind. In one or other of them there often sat one or other of the old men and women who wandered about the East End wrapped up in rags and carrying sacks, with feathers in their hats and crusts of bread sticking out of their pockets. They only talked to themselves, mumbling all the time, sometimes having arguments alone, and once in a while shouting out so that crumbs of bread flew from their toothless mouths. They were wanderers, wandering through the small back streets, poking into dustbins and hiding empty bottles and rags in their sacks, begging stale loaves from the baker shops, and sleeping under the arches or in the sheltered corners of the shirt factory. No one knew them, or where they came from, or where they went. They had always been there. They were very old. On Africana’s morning walks Joe introduced him to the neighbours. Their first call was the baker, who gave them a coconut biscuit each and remarked on how Africana was growing.

‘Do you really think he’s growing?’ Joe asked, because it seemed to him that Africana was no bigger than before.

‘Growing?’ said the baker, ‘I should say so. And he’s walking better into the bargain. Fashion Street agrees with him. You want another biscuit?’

‘No, thank you,’ Joe replied. But Africana said nothing. He didn’t even finish his biscuit.

Whenever it wasn’t raining, even in the winter, Mrs Abramowitz, who had a small fancy-button shop, used to sit by the open door on a bentwood chair watching people pass. Joe knew that Mrs Abramowitz meant no harm, but he wished she wouldn’t pinch his cheek like a hen’s bottom, because it made him feel as if he was going to be cooked, and also it hurt. Whenever she called out, ‘So, my Joe, how is your Mummy?’ so that Joe would have to stop and talk to her, he tried to keep his cheeks out of her way. But it was difficult to talk to people without turning your cheeks towards them, and Mrs Abramowitz was very cunning. While he was busy and off his guard telling her something, a bony hand suddenly jumped up and two bony fingers caught one of his cheeks. ‘What a boychick!’ Mrs Abramowitz said, licking her lips as if she was tasting him. She smelt of wintergreen ointment and camphor balls, and wore a cardigan with fancy buttons on it.

Another cheek-pincher was the man with the twisted mouth who had the confectionery and tobacconist. He wore a black Homburg hat all the year round, and tried to cover his twisted mouth by growing a bushy moustache which, although his hair was grey, came out red. But you could still see it was twisted. Everyone got their sweets and tobacco from him, but he was not well-liked, being as he was a fence and an informer, a friend to the police. No one trusted him because he got the street a bad name, although he was very pious and quoted Gems at you when you went to buy a bar of milk chocolate or some Polish fruit bonbons. His favourite Gem was ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise,’ which he said all the time to his daughter, who also had a twisted mouth, although she couldn’t grow a moustache so well to hide it. To Joe he would say, ‘There is a time for all things; please don’t bring the animal into the shop.’ Then when he took the money, ‘Two and a half to make you laugh.’ Joe never laughed because suddenly, if you got too near, the fingers crawling over the polished counter quick as spiders, jumped up and bit your cheek, harder than Mrs Abramowitz. But it was the only shop which sold Polish bon-bons, Mr Kandinsky’s favourite, so what could you do? The only one in Fashion Street Joe discussed Africana frankly with was Mavis from the greengrocery. Mavis had a money-box in her shop for Our Dumb Friends, although she agreed with Joe that animals talk to one another. She was always helpful with hints and suggestions, so Joe let her into the secret that Africana was a unicorn. He let her feel the one horn bud which was still very small, and asked her if it was rubbed with wintergreen would it grow faster. Mavis didn’t think it would, but she showed Joe how to brush Africana’s coat, and always saved the best left-over greens for him and didn’t charge. She said she was sorry she couldn’t do anything about the limp, except ask Her Holy Mother to help. Mr Kandinsky thought it was nice of Mavis and Her Holy Mother to go to the trouble, and besides, it might do some good. The unicorn did get a bit better at walking, so thanks were due to Mavis and Her Holy Mother, although Shmule helped as well.

Shmule studied Africana carefully. One day he said to Joe, ‘Remediable exercise is the thing for that limp. Oliver at the gym told me. Works wonders.’ And he massaged Africana every night for a week with a little white oil. But even with Mavis and Shmule both working, you couldn’t honestly say that Africana was growing much.

‘Why should you worry if he grows or not, Joe?’ asked Mr Kandinsky. ‘Take everything for what it is; don’t try to improve it, Joe. A chicken is a chicken. A man is a man. A little unicorn is a little unicorn. It’s enough.’ Mr Kandinsky thought Joe expected too much sometimes.

Joe didn’t answer. He could see Mr Kandinsky wasn’t in the mood to talk about things. He and Shmule were finishing off a big order. They had to work overtime to make it pay, and there was hardly enough time to eat. So naturally something had to be sacrificed, and of course, it was talking, especially as Shmule had his fight coming off soon, and never talked much in a period of intensive training, not even to Sonia. Joe was very lucky then to have Africana’s company. When the weather was dry they played in the yard together, Joe in a muffler and overcoat and Africana in a woollen coat Mavis knitted him.

Joe’s favourite game was called Africa. In it he and Africana explored a jungle looking for a lost city. Africana was very big and strong with an enormous solid ivory horn with silver bells on it. Joe was tall and very brown and carried a rifle and two pistols. He rode Africana through the jungle where they fought a lion, two tigers, a rogue elephant, a dreaded python two hundred feet long, and a cannibal king who looked like one of the wanderers. They beat them all. Joe wrestled the cannibal king and caught him in the dreaded scissors grip, so that his back cracked like the chair Shmule broke that time. The cannibal king was stuffed full of bits of stale bread and rags which fell out because he had wanted to steal Africana’s horn and sell it. Africana defeated the elephant, and speared one of the tigers, and Joe shot the rest. Then they stopped under a big tree for a picnic dinner, and Africana had some greens while Joe brought his meat and potatoes into the yard to eat. After dinner they went on through the jungle. It was a long trek, but down by the lavatory they suddenly came upon the lost city.

In the distance it looked like the shirt factory, with hundreds of cupolas all made of gold shining in the sun. In the city, which smelt of Keating’s Powder, everything shone with big diamonds. Joe put one in his pocket to take back for Shmule to give his girl Sonia. The city was empty, although everything was neat and tidy as if his mother had just cleaned through. In one of the treasure vaults they found a large brand-new Superheat Patent Steam Presser which Joe put on one side for Mr Kandinsky.

Joe and Africana walked down a long road paved with silver cobbles. All the way along were stalls with singing birds and hens and hokey-pokey ice-cream and fritters and jellied eels and Polish bonbons, and you could take whatever you wanted. At the end of the road there was a huge palace like the Roxy Cinema in Whitechapel Road, shining with coloured lights.

As they walked up to the palace there was suddenly a great thunder of hoofs, and hundreds and hundreds of unicorns came galloping towards them. At the head of them there was an enormous unicorn, his great golden horn studded with diamonds, and beside him a milk-white lady unicorn with a very kind face. Africana shouted out to them, and they ran up to him and licked him all over, because they were his father and mother. On Africana’s father’s back – and this was the best of all – rode Joe’s own father, who lifted Joe up on to his knee.

Then Joe and his father and Africana and his mother and father packed the diamond for Shmule and the Superheat Patent Steam Presser for Mr Kandinsky, and went back through Africa with all the unicorns following them, back, back, all the way back to Fashion Street. That was how Joe brought the unicorns back from Africa where they were lost for all those years.

The afternoon Mr Kandinsky and Shmule went to deliver the rush job it was raining, and Joe and Africana played the game called Africa in the workshop.

Joe was wrestling with a chair which was the cannibal king. He was having a hard time because the cannibal king was becoming a better wrestler all the time because of all the practice. Joe was twisting round into a better position to put the old scissors on him, when he saw a very old torn pair of boots stuffed with rags standing near his head. He looked up. It was one of the wanderers. The wanderer had an old cloth cap with tickets in it, a big red nose, and a dirty beard all over his face. He held a sack in his hand, and a bottle stuck out of a pocket in one of his two overcoats. His little pink misty eyes peered all round the workshop. He asked Joe, ‘Is the old guvner in?’ although he could see that he wasn’t.

Joe knew at once who it was. He watched him carefully, clenching his fists, but when he walked over to Africana he nearly screamed. It was the cannibal king all right. Joe had no rifle and no pistols and couldn’t wrestle and it was real. He stared up from the floor as the cannibal king came closer and closer to Africana.

Then, thank God, Joe heard clattering on the steps and Shmule’s voice say he was wet through. He jumped to his feet and ran out of the room. ‘Quick, quick,’ he shouted, the tears running down his face, ‘quick, quick, quick.’ They rushed into the room while Joe, biting his lip, followed behind.

The wanderer looked up, squinting his misty eyes at them. ‘Ow are ye, guvner?’ he said. ‘Got any old bits of clorth terday?’

Mr Kandinsky sighed.

‘You frightened the boy,’ he said. ‘Shmule, give him some of the bits and pieces. It’s all right, Joe,’ he said; ‘nothing to worry for, Joe.’

Joe didn’t answer. He watched the wanderer fill up his sack. All the time he looked secretly at Africana, with a look like Mrs Abramowitz when she was giving a pinch.

When the wanderer went, Joe saw him stop on the steps. Before turning out into the driving rain he pulled the bottle from his pocket and took a long drink from it. Afterwards, Joe went slowly up the stairs and looked out into the street. The cannibal king was stumbling against the wind, the sack over his back. There was a smell of methylated spirit in the passageway.