The Singing Fire (7 page)

“Not me,” Sally said. When she wasn’t working, she wore a brimmed bonnet that half hid her face. “What would I want with a garden? I’ll have a wig made from real human hair. And a dollhouse with ten rooms and three staircases, and that’s not all because I’d have a little desk, too.”

“Why do you want a desk?” Fay asked. “You can’t write.”

“For the drawers,” Sally said, taking a swallow of gin. She had to stand on a box to reach the counter. “For the secret drawers.”

The barmaid put a jug on the counter for a thickset man who used to be a stonecutter and still wore the leather cap, though no one had wanted stone cut by hand for years. “What about you, Nell?” she asked. “If your horse places.”

Nehama looked up from her calculations. “If I had a winning horse,” she said, “I’d go to the seaside. I’d take us all to the theater on the pier, and we’d have silk fans to flap like this.” She picked up the Christian tract and fanned herself like a lady. She was making an extra bit from rolling men, and she figured she could buy her freedom in—she multiplied and divided like her oldest sister had taught her—seventeen months. “If only I didn’t have to pay for the entrance fee,” she muttered. “You know what it’s like, Fay. A stone around your neck.”

“What are you talking?” Fay asked.

“The entrance fee for foreigners to get their papers to stay in London.” Nehama went over the numbers again, hoping she’d made a mistake.

“There’s no entrance fee. Why do you think they call it the free land?”

“I mean the ten pounds the Squire paid for me,” Nehama said.

Fay laughed, all her good teeth showing and a couple of the bad ones. She wore a black straw hat that flapped as she laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. It went to Mr. Blink.” She waved her hand, and the barmaid poured another glass of gin. “It’s a finder’s fee, that’s all. He’s good at finding, he is.”

“No entrance fee,” Nehama repeated. Then there wasn’t any Newcomers’ Committee and Mr. Blink had tricked her from the start. She’d been the fool. A bloody fool, and for that the world requires a usurious rate of interest.

“What difference does it make?” Fay asked. “You have to make it up just the same and pay for your lovely dress, too.”

“I’m not hungry.” Her hands were cold and her belly hot. She pushed her plate of sheep’s trotters toward Sally. “Here, you have the rest.”

“And me?” Fay lit her short pipe. “I’m a mother’s child, too. What’s the matter with you? Doesn’t a
landsmann
come first?”

Nehama didn’t answer. The Squire was waiting, and she had to make her way to the back of the pub between the rough-hewn tables of men drinking and playing draughts while they boasted of how much they’d got from coshing and rolling. The Squire smiled. He always smiled when he was annoyed.

“Well?” he asked. His table was round, just big enough for three to sit and talk while they drank, heads close together. He was knitting another scarf, this one of gold and silver. The other one had been found on a customs agent, ankles and wrists tied together, his jaw broken.

She handed the Squire a pile of money, and he let the coins drop through his fingers, clattering on the table. One fell onto the floor. He didn’t move to pick it up. He was drinking with his old friend who smuggled tobacco and the customs agent they were bribing, the smuggler wearing his greatcoat and the customs agent his uniform. The two men were eyeing her as if they could get her cheap, being the ponce’s friends. It was the same word in Yiddish and in English:
ponce
. Where did it come from first?

“That’s all?” the Squire asked.

Nehama nodded. She’d given Sally half her take this morning. The younger girl’s cough had kept her from earning what would be expected.

“It’s not enough,” the Squire said.

There were two kinds of criminals, liars and thieves. Mr. Blink was one and she was the other, so she shrugged, and then she spoke in a voice that didn’t seem to belong to her but said cheerfully, “There’s not many customers about. It’s too cold.”

“How much do you owe me now?” the Squire asked. There was another crack in the glass that covered the map of London on the wall, but the door marked
PRIVAT
was just the same. He sometimes took a girl there for rough pleasure after time was called and the pub emptied. “You’re the best of my girls, Nell.” The Squire looked at her fondly. There was so little fondness in this street.

“This is everything,” she said, and hated herself because she wondered if his lips were as soft as they seemed. His hands were never chapped, nor his lips. He made up some kind of grease for his skin that he’d learned about in his sailing days.

“Are you quite all right, then?” he asked. The customs agent stoked his pipe. “Perhaps you want a doctor.”

She flinched. How did he know that she still had bad dreams about the examination in the hospital? “I’m very well, thank you,” she said.

“I ought to bring you to the infirmary. You might have a disease.” The Squire drummed his fingers on the table. Nehama couldn’t keep her eyes off his hands. Whenever he slapped her, he moved so fast she couldn’t steel herself for it. He lifted his hand, and when she winced, he stroked her cheek.

“I’ve ordered warm weather from Him upstairs,” she said. “Sunny as Spain it’s going to be, and the customers will queue up for miles. You think I should warn the girls to get ready?”

The Squire laughed. “Right. I’ll want more than this tomorrow.” He scooped up the coins. “Or I’ll have the rest in trade.” He hardly ever took his own whores to bed. People said he was so rough, he couldn’t make any money from them afterward. His hand was warm, the skin smooth, his eyes fixed on hers, his face like wood pitted by water, and Nehama wished that she could part from her body.

It must have been near her eighteenth birthday. She wasn’t sure because she was born on the full moon, and the nights were too foggy to see the sky. But she’d be eighteen soon, and she was pregnant. The sponge doused in vinegar had failed, and the Squire would get her an abortion as soon as he found out. If she died, he’d be furious. But if she lived she’d owe him the money for the abortion plus interest. And she wanted the baby. She’d never wanted anything more.

Her sisters had told her about the time that a neighbor’s boy was
khapped
. Snatched away to serve in the draft and make up the kidnappers’ quota of new recruits.
Khapping
was a common tragedy when Mama was a young wife with a couple of babies and the czar passed a law that Jewish children must serve for ten years before they began the regular army draft. Mama was sewing the trimming on a gown when the neighbor came running in from the courtyard and Grandma Nehama listened to the story, a baby in each arm. It was a tragedy, but what could anyone do? A bribe they didn’t have. Grandma Nehama found out where the kidnappers were staying, and out she went, taking
with her a hatchet. Her daughter and son-in-law pleaded with her. Murder wasn’t going to solve a thing. She would die too, there would be more
khappers
, and the boy would be lost anyway. Mama cried till she didn’t have any breath left. You think I’m going to let a Jewish child be taken away? Grandma Nehama asked. You think there aren’t enough graves already? It was spring, and her skirts were muddy when she arrived at the place where the kidnappers were staying, and for some reason, the mud smelled of wine. Maybe because it was just after Purim, and when people got tipsy to celebrate the holiday, they weren’t too steady with a bottle. Grandma Nehama gave the innkeeper a few
groschen
to keep the
khappers
drunk. Then she went upstairs with her hatchet and she chopped off the boy’s smallest two toes from his right foot. He was seven years old. Back to his mother he went, and he grew up to be nothing special, just a man who limped and made custom shoes for people with unusual feet. His wife visited Grandma Nehama’s grave at every festival. She was the best friend of Nehama’s oldest sister and told her what was said to the boy that night. Put up your foot. Remember that as long as you can preserve life, there’s hope.

Whitechapel Road

It was a Saturday night, and the street was lit by a few flickering lamps, the courts and alleys off it by none. But those that knew this place could see that the clump of shadows on the stairs was women talking, hands folded under their aprons. That small patch of darkness in the passage was a baby sleeping, and the grayness over there by the archway was only boys tossing stones. The faint rustling was rats. The shadows that lay too still in pools of deeper darkness was somebody else’s business and you ought mind your own. Nehama had learned to see well in the night, and she made her way easily, walking with Sally to the high road, where everything was bright.

In Whitechapel Road the darkness was layered with torches and the stalls with everything edible. There were gin palaces and public houses, clubs and shooting galleries, music halls and preachers saving souls, and every store that sold books or bread or hats was open till midnight. Nehama fed Sally hot pies and cider until she looked like a healthy girl. They watched the stilt walkers dance, and the puppet
Punch beat up his wife, Judy, and the contortionist put his legs around his neck as he walked on his hands, jumping out of the way of the donkey pulling a barrow of cabbages. And their laughter made them happy girls clapping along with the crowd. Then Nehama took Sally into a pub she knew that was in an alley off the high road. One that was quiet and dimly lit and as old as the first king. The men that came here didn’t sing or play darts. Their wage packets were thick, and they meant to spend it all.

Nehama slid next to a man who had a glass and a bottle that was nearly empty. “Have you ever had two girls, mister?” she asked in a voice as hushed as the darkness. “And one never been with a man?”

The man slowly turned to look at Sally. “How old are you, girl?” he asked.

Sally only smiled. “She’s my little sister, mister,” Nehama said.

The man drank the rest of his bottle. “How much?”

“I daresay more than you’ve got.”

“That what you think?” He grabbed her arm. But she just smiled. And Sally smiled, and her cheeks were the red of a Spanish child.

“It’s all right, sister,” Sally said in her high voice.

And the man never knew how well she picked his pocket clean while they lay with him in the back room of the pub.

By morning, Sally had picked the pockets of five men. She was very pleased with her work in the high road. “The Squire’s going to be fond of me today,” she said as they were walking back.

“I’m not giving mine to him.” The wind was whistling through the cracks in the dawn, and it was singing her grandmother’s song.

“You’re having me on, Nell.”

“Keep your share, but don’t say you got it with me. I’m putting it aside for something.”

She wouldn’t have the baby in Dorset Street. It would be by the sea in a nice boardinghouse where she’d have a room to herself. After the baby was born, she’d carry it outside to the good sea air, walking along the pier and listening to the music of minstrels and bands. At the end of the pier would be the theater where she’d see the new plays, nursing the baby to sleep. Her baby would have fair hair like her sisters, and when the golden curls touched its shoulders, the baby would be
dressed in a white cap and a white dress and she would have a picture taken of her baby sitting on a donkey. The photograph would be sent home, and everyone would see the beauty of her child.

Dock Street

Nehama hid the money from that night. The railway station was just a fifteen-minute walk straight down from Dorset Street, and she didn’t see anyone follow her as she took a roundabout route through alleys and courts. She hadn’t even said good-bye to Sally but slipped away in the afternoon, when everyone was just rising from sleep. Now she waited alone on the track while the red locomotives came in puffing smoke under the iron ribs and glass roof of the train station, looking here and there for someone who might have followed her, but she didn’t see anyone she knew. There were so many people standing on the platform, holding third-class tickets. There was nothing to worry about. No reason for her hands to sweat. She was just another person who’d got soaked on the way to the train station. The woman next to her was asking, “Is this the train for Brighton, then?” Nehama could feel the heat of the train as it rushed into the station. She was nodding, about to say, “Are you having a holiday?” when she saw Lizzie standing over there by the clock tower, her thin hair falling over her face. And then the Squire was pushing between two men carrying fighting cocks in a crate. In front of her the train had stopped, around her the crowd was waiting for the doors to open, there was nowhere for her to go when he grabbed her arm.

He walked with her behind a pile of rubbish in the train yard, holding her tightly against him, so tightly that she stumbled like a drunk and nobody took notice. The rain had stopped and the fog come up. It hid the river and the Tower, it softened the rattle of trains. But the Squire was larger than the fog and the whistle of his walking stick louder than church bells as they reached the back of the rubbish heap. She didn’t see the first blow; the stick swung behind her legs, knocking the breath out of her as she fell against a broken wheelbarrow, covering her head with her arms and curling her legs as she tumbled into the mud. He struck again, and she screamed loud to please him so that he wouldn’t kill her as she fought for breath. She couldn’t faint, she had to think of the baby.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, half sitting, her back against the rubbish heap. In the distance ordinary people were boarding the train. Porters pushed carts loaded with trunks. “I won’t do it again.”

“I don’t give chances. Not to them as runs away. It’s a matter of what’s mine,” he said, lifting the walking stick. It was made of blackthorn, a cane for warding off vicious dogs. The top was curved, the stick burred with thorns. “Did I pay for you? Was you worth it?”

“Yes,” she said, arms crossed over her belly. “I mean no. Don’t hurt me.”