Читать книгу Five Silver Daughters - Louis Golding - Страница 11

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But the capitalist order reckoned without Esther, the eldest of the Silver daughters.

Silver came home quite late that evening from Mr. Horowitz’s factory in Poulter Street. It was as if the contractors had become aware that the concern was passing into new hands. A whole hand-barrowful of extra bundles of work came in during the course of that day.

“What did I tell you?” gloated Mr. Horowitz. “And if I asked you five pounds extra for the business, would it be a sin?”

But he did not. Having at the Cricketer’s Arms fulfilled his obligation before his fellow-man, he now addressed himself to his Lord. He put on his frock-coat and silk-hat and strode off almost jauntily down the road to the Polish Synagogue a few corners away. It was no more than a weekday noontime service, but he stood there facing the Ark, swayed there, lifted his voice, as if this were one of the grand full-dress services of the New Year festivals.

“What has happened? Has he had a grandson from his daughter in Leeds?” the old men muttered to each other. He clasped his hands and shut his eyes in ecstasy like a lovesick youth who has at length heard the sweet incredible “Yes.”

So Silver came home late that evening. The family knew of his good fortune. Possibly May had told them. Quite possibly she had not. For fifty pounds, even fifty pounds, was the sort of thing May was quite capable of forgetting. But the family knew. Silver had left the letter of notification stuck behind a brass tray on the mantelpiece.

Mrs. Silver had already acted on the good news. It had happened to be the day on which the Burial Benevolent Society called for its weekly contribution of one penny. She had raised her subscription from one penny to threepence on the clear understanding that the Silver family coffins should be equipped with best handles of real brass instead of imitation brass and the wood was to be a better quality. “Three times as good!” she insisted. “We pay three times as much! Tell the Society!”

“Yes,” coughed the collector, “I will tell them. Real brass handles; it will look like the queen’s crown. Perhaps, if you pay more, they will make it oxidised copper. And instead of deal, why should it not be oak?” He coughed again—a nasty graveyard cough. The Society had chosen their collector not without careful thought.

“Come in at once from the fog,” requested Mrs. Silver. “I will make you some tea-with-lemon. And May will go for some glycerine to put inside. Are you wearing a chest-protector? My Sam he has an old one. You can have it.”

Sarah, too, seemed to have derived profit from her father’s prize, apart from the still problematic extra-special handles they might screw on to her coffin. She was nursing a baby. She had bought for the baby a quite extravagant rattle, laden with more bells than was good for it—a rattle much above the baby’s station in life.

Elsie was in the kitchen that night. She had been kicking her heels some time now waiting for a renewed engagement with Mr. Gleb Meyer, and the Oleander Street kitchen was as good a place as any to pass the time in. She was sporting a new pair of silk stockings. Susan was studying in the next room, making notes with a new fountain pen. May sat on a metal stool with a new poetry-book on her lap. Esther, the married daughter, was also there. There was a general air of well-being in the Silver family. But Esther looked almost radiant with good-will.

“Good evening, good evening!” said Silver as he entered the kitchen. There was a certain self-consciousness in his voice. Was there perhaps a faint tremor of guilt, too? He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Esther was there. For one panic moment he felt like turning tail and scuttling out of the house.

“Good evening, father!” said the Silver daughters.

“Good evening!” he replied weakly. “You too, Esther? What a pleasure!”

“Look,” said Mrs. Silver. “Look what Esther has made for you!” She lifted a soup-plate that acted as tureen-lid to another soup-plate. Silver sniffed the air.

“You are right,” said Esther. “Sweet-and-sour!” As a rule, there was no dish which so enchanted Silver as fish cooked in sweet-and-sour sauce.

“Ah!” said Silver. “You shouldn’t!”

“It’s nothing!” insisted Esther.

“Sit down to it at once!” requested Mrs. Silver. “The trouble she had getting it, you would think it was for a wedding!”

May put a chair to the table. She found him a knife and fork.

Silver thought it would be seemly to inquire what fish it might be, for its preparation completely disguised its specific nature from any but the acutest eye. “And this is halibut? How I like halibut!”

“Not for sweet-and-sour,” declared Esther. “It should be fresh-water fish.”

“The fishmonger,” narrated her mother, “he had cod, he had haddock, he had all the fish from all the sea. She turned her nose up at it like it might be stale kippers. It’s got to be from the river.”

“Yes,” admitted Esther. “I knew he had some carp behind the shop for himself. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t got any!’ I said. ‘Bring it out at once!’ ”

“She got it!” observed Elsie indolently, stroking her silk stockings.

“Then before she got the flavouring!” her mother pointed out. “What was it you had to get? She made Mrs. Poyser take down all she had on her shelves!”

“Oh, peppercorns. And bay-leaves. There should be little onions, of course. Well, who said it could be too much trouble for my father?”

“And this? What’s this?” asked Silver, prodding about with his fork. He knew what they were, but he thought he would feel a little more like eating the rich fish if he put it off a little. He wondered why he felt so sick. He had felt in grand shape all day.

“Raisins,” said Esther. “It would be nicer with raisins!”

“May stoned them,” Elsie pointed out. She was in a rather aggressive mood to-night.

Esther ignored her. “It’s nice with a pinch of lemon like I gave it,” Esther went on, like a pigeon cooing on a tree-top. “I made it a special gravy. With ginger-bread. You like it?”

“Go in and look what the scullery’s like!” said Elsie. “I wonder who’s going to wash it all up!”

“Be quiet, will you?” Esther rasped out. “Who’s asking you, you ... you ... !” She managed to bite back the word that trembled on the tip of her tongue.

Elsie leaned back and winked one large dark eye. “Tart, I think, is the word?” she suggested.

“Now, please, you girls!” Mrs. Silver implored.

“Please!” echoed Sam Silver. He looked round apprehensively towards his youngest daughter. But May sat silent and withdrawn on her metal stool, her poetry-book open on her knees. The ugly word affected her no more than a leaf that might flutter down on to her shoulders and flutter away again.

Esther swallowed hard. Then she switched round from the provocation of Elsie’s eye. The sweet smile came on to her face again, that almost too sweet smile.

“Such a good day, no evil eye!” she murmured. “You like the fish, yes?” She became aware that her father’s fork lay stranded in the plate. “But why don’t you eat?”

“Oh, Sam, whoever heard,” begged Mrs. Silver. “After all the trouble she’s taken, you say you don’t like it!”

“I didn’t!” said Silver. To prove he had not, he nearly choked himself with a lump as large as his fist.

“Please, please!” begged May. “If he wants to eat, let him eat!” In whatever visionary world her book took her wandering, among satyrs or heroes or nymphs or trolls, her father, too, was a denizen—Sam Silver, the waterproof-smearer.

Silver went on eating in silence for a minute or two. It was all a little uncomfortable, not merely because his stomach was uneasy. He knew what the sweet-and-sour fish was about. He wondered who would first have a word to say about the fifty pounds.

“Nice, nice!” murmured Sarah to her baby. She abstracted a morsel of fish between finger and thumb from the plate, sucked it a little, then gave it to her baby to suck, too. “Doodums nice now?”

“Even the baby liked it!” Silver jested weakly. His inside swung a little. “A housewife in a hundred! Your husband, Joe, he’s a lucky man, Esther!”

“What!” cried Esther. “You’ve heard already? Who told you?”

“Heard what?”

“You’ve not heard? Such a lucky day for us all!”

Sarah’s baby shook its rich rattle. Elsie stroked the silk ankles of her stockings.

“It has been so busy at Horowitz’s to-day,” observed Silver. “Winberg sent in some bundles of work to-day for the first time.”

“But you haven’t heard about Joe,” Esther insisted. “Wish us mazel tov, good luck! His boss has asked Joe to come in with him and be a partner!”

“I don’t think I will eat any more!” said Silver.

It didn’t now seem to worry Esther that her father wasn’t enjoying his sweet-and-sour fish as much as she hoped he might.

“Isn’t he lucky, eh?” she marvelled.

“Yes, he’s a good feller, Joe’s boss!”

“No,” said Esther, “what I mean is—he should offer him a partnership to-day, just when you win the fifty pounds!”

“But why—but what——” Silver stammered.

Esther laughed easily. “You wouldn’t think he would give him a partnership for a birthday present? He wanted seventy pounds. So Joe calls me round and I goes and sees him at dinner-time. ‘Seventy pounds?’ I says. ‘Has my father won seventy pounds? Where should we get the extra twenty pounds from?’ I said. So I argued and he argued, but it’s all right. It’s settled. Fifty pounds, not one penny more! Have I got money in the savings-bank?”

The words rang familiarly in Silver’s ears. Who had uttered those same words before, that day?

“You, too, father,” Esther added benevolently. “You will come in on it, too. You can be what they call a sleeping partner.”

“But I can’t,” said Silver, “I can’t!”

“What do you mean you can’t? You mustn’t worry about it. The business part of it—I will manage that for you, too. For my father and my husband, it’s just the same thing. After all, don’t you lay out the money?”

“I can’t,” said Silver. “You see——”

“I see what?”

“Perhaps he wants to get me an outfit for my new act,” suggested Elsie. “It’s about time I got a new tail-coat and top-hat. And I think a smart little malacca cane——”

Esther treated her like a fly buzzing on the pane. “I think you and me and Joe and Joe’s boss had all best have a meeting to-morrow night. Or why not to-night?”

“No!” said Silver.

“What do you mean? Why do you keep on saying no?”

“Because ...” He gulped. “Because ... Well I haven’t got no fifty pounds.”

“You haven’t got no fifty pounds? Are you mad, father? Is it a lie? Haven’t you won no lottery? Doesn’t this letter say—— What do you mean you haven’t got no fifty pounds?”

“I bought a business myself to-day! That’s why!” He turned to his wife, in a miserable attempt to change the conversation. “Hannah! Aren’t you going to make me no tea with my dinner to-night?”

“Listen!” said Esther grimly. “What shark has been after you? What do you mean you’ve bought a business? Without asking your wife and daughters? But you haven’t! It’s a madness!”

“I have!”

“Oh, have you? And will you please tell us what business?”

“Hi, who won the money?” Silver tried to bluster. “Did I or did you?”

“Please tell us what business!”

“If you want to know—it’s old Mr. Horowitz’s from Poulter Street, where I work.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed Esther scornfully. “You’ve bought a business from that lump of bones? You mean he gave it you with a tin of cocoa!”

“I’ve promised him fifty pounds!”

“You’ve promised him? Oh, that’s all right! You’ve promised him!”

“When I get the money I will pay it to him!”

“You will tell him to-morrow morning you’ve got other things to do with the money!”

“I’ve promised it him!”

She stopped. She strode up to him. “Look here! That old swindler hasn’t made you sign any paper?”

“If I broke my promise it would kill him! He has been trying for years to save up to buy his tickets for Palestine. If now——”

“Did you sign any paper?”

“No!”

“Then it’s all right. You’re tired to-day. Why should you go out? I’ll go and fetch Joe and Joe’s boss and we’ll fix it up to-night!”

“I’ve promised old Horowitz!”

No one spoke for a moment or two. The air crackled as if there were lightning about. The baby started whimpering. “Hush! Hush!” murmured Sarah, and snuggled him against her bosom. May turned a page and went on reading.

“I wish,” said Elsie, yawning, “a few men would turn up!”

“You will not buy that business!” said Esther.

“I will! I have!”

Then the storm broke. The air darkened as with a cloud of torn leaves. Twigs cracked like whips. Whole branches went careering through the air.

“So that is the way you treat your own born children! Your children who have always looked after you and worked themselves to the bone for you!” The woman roared and ravined. “Who for did Joe and me want to go into partnership for? For you! For your wife! For all the lot of us! So that we could live like decent people, and have houses with baths, like the Winbergs! Who said it was your money? It was our money, the whole family’s money! Then that old swindler comes along and he thinks he can rob us! But he can’t! He won’t! Where shall May get books to study with? And poor mother! Look at her! She should have a holiday! When she goes to the market she’s shivering blue with cold! Why shouldn’t she have a new coat? Do you know what managers are? How do you expect managers to give Elsie a try-out in the big theatres if she has a silk hat like an old-clothes man? You must have money in the bank these days, or what will you do with all these daughters? Do you think husbands grow on trees? Poor Sarah! All she wants is a little dowry and she’d have a baby of her own. Must she always go about borrowing babies? It’s a business like a dust-heap. So you give him fifty pounds! I make you fish cooked in sweet-and-sour sauce and you go and take your children’s money and throw it down the grid! It’s a shame, a scandal! God will not let such a thing happen! It’s against God and man!”

Minute after minute she continued so. There was little sense and no order in the things she brought out. It was her intention to prevail, as she had prevailed before, by the breath-expelling fury of her impact. She stood there on her hind legs and went on roaring.

Silver was a peace-loving man, even though his talk concerned itself so often with bombs and revolvers. He loved peace, but he loved honour more, for he loved it in the hidden roots of his being, bandying no words about it. He had given his word. He had given his word. The words went on drumming in his brain. “I have given my word. I have given my word. I have given my word.” The words pounded on and on, turned round and round like the wheels of a train. All meaning went out of them. “I have given my word. I have given my word.” He was tired. He was sick. He must have peace. He would give gold watches and diamond rings if only the noise would stop. Who could get on top of the storm, and pull, pull on the reins, till the storm hung dead in its traces and cold calm peace was in the sky, and in the meadows and in the railway-train that bumped, thumped, thundered along the tracks? There was a magician somewhere who would get astride that horse and whisper two words into his ear, and there would be no more, no more of these hideous trumpetings. What was his name? Sam Silver was his name. It was easy. All Sam Silver had to say was just this: “All right, Esther, all right. Am I arguing with you?”

Silver lifted his left hand. His mouth began to dither with words. The train’s bumpings slackened. “All right, Esther——” he began.

Then he felt an oblique pressure upon his eyeballs. It thrust them aslant till his vision lit upon the mouth of May, his youngest daughter, sitting upon her metal stool. It was a mouth fresh as a bud and firm as a fist. “No!” proclaimed the pursed-up lips, in a silence more imperious than all the shoddy thunders that had pommelled the kitchen walls for these twenty endless minutes. “No!” bade May. “You have given your word. You have given your word. You have given your word.”

“No!” screamed Silver. “No! Get out!” The smell of his sweet-and-sour fish suddenly struck odiously into his nostrils. He lifted the plate with both hands and flung it hurtling into the lobby. “I hate your fish!” he cried. “Take it with you!”