The Invisible Wall Read online

  It was getting difficult for my mother to speak, and she began fumbling for her handkerchief. I waited uncomfortably, my pen poised over the paper, and a large drop fell off the nib onto the last line I had written. I hastily blotted it, while my mother began to speak again, her voice slightly broken, at the same time dabbing at her eyes.

  “I don’t know how a man can be so cruel. I suppose he can’t help it. He has had such a hard life. I only hope that Lily will understand this someday. But right now she is in a bad way. He shouts at her a lot in the shop when she does something wrong, and she sits at the sewing machine crying, and everybody there feels sorry for her, and when she comes home at night so tired she can hardly eat her supper, my heart just breaks.”

  I had to wait again until my mother was able to proceed. It was not a happy letter. I thought too of my sister Lily and the situation she had fallen into. When I took the tea to the workshop I carried two cans, one for her and one for my father. As I entered the shop, I saw her from the distance bent over her machine, sewing, and I saw the misery on her face. She must have hated every moment of her life then.

  My arrival gave her a brief respite. A look of gladness came over her when she saw me, and she reached for the tea can greedily. My father, still bent over his machine, continuing to treadle, glowered, and said savagely without looking up, “Don’t take all day. This isn’t a Sunday picnic.”

  The workshops had never been so busy. They were making uniforms mostly for the soldiers, and the material was rough and heavy and hard to sew. When Lily came home at night, she walked very slowly, and it was just as my mother said, she was often too tired to eat. She went up to bed right away.

  She was there now, asleep, I suppose. My father had come home before her—the two never walked together, she always behind him, dragging herself home wearily. He was gone by now, off to his pub.

  But I had begun writing again.

  “I wish there was something I could do. But what can I do? I sometimes lie awake thinking of it, remembering the wonderful chance she had, and what a better life there could have been for her if only she had been allowed to go to the grammar school. I was in such agony I often wanted to speak to the rabbi about it, but he had his own sorrows, poor man. If this war was not on I would go down on my bended knees and ask you to send for her. Just her. Never mind us. But even if you were to say yes and send the ticket I would not let her go with the German submarines sinking so many ships these days.

  “In the meantime, she is going to suffer. If at least there were some nice Jewish boys around for her to meet, but they have all been taken by the army. Benny Mendelsohn went. Do you remember him? And of course Sam Harris, and a few others. They took the boys across the street too. Stanley Jackson and Johnny Melrose—his mother used to light your fires on Shabbos, remember?—and Arthur Forshaw. You know, the boy I once wrote you about, the one I was afraid Lily was taking a fancy to. He’s in the army too and is over in France. He writes to Lily sometimes, and she writes to him. I haven’t tried to stop that, though I don’t like it too much. But I don’t have the heart to say anything. After all, this is wartime, and he’s in France, and God knows what could happen to him there.”

  No sooner had she dictated this, and while my pen was still scratching, than a strange cry came from upstairs. The girls’ bedroom was directly above us, so it could only have come from Lily. My mother sprang to her feet in alarm, and I stopped writing, and then quickly soft footsteps came rushing down the stairs. She would have gone past us and straight through the lobby if my mother hadn’t stopped her, crying, “Lily!”

  Lily was wearing a thin wrap over her nightgown and had slippers on her feet. She was clutching the wrap to her to keep it from opening, and her face was very white, and her hair hung behind her in a wild, uncombed, unbrushed mass. Her eyes seemed very big and dark.

  “It’s Emily,” she said in a whisper.

  My mother was puzzled at first. “Emily?”

  “The telegram girl,” Lily said, almost impatiently, obviously anxious to get to the door. “I saw her from the window riding her bike on Brook Street coming toward us.”

  Now my mother understood. Emily Goff, a tiny girl whose parents ran a stationery shop on King Street, had been conspicuous at St. Peter’s because of her dwarflike figure. The headmaster had often made jokes about her, but in a kindly way, because he had liked her, as everyone else had. She was not a particularly bright girl, not too good at her lessons, but perennially cheerful and laughing, and she could whistle like a boy. She could whistle almost any song, sweetly and beautifully, and the headmaster often made her stand up in front of the school assemblage to perform for us. The canary, he used to call her.

  Emily still whistled merrily as she rode daily on her rounds, with the package of black-bordered envelopes sticking out of the leather pouch strapped to her waist. Since the war broke out, and since leaving St. Peter’s, she had become the telegram girl. Still very tiny, with feet that could barely reach the pedals of her bicycle, making her ride almost standing up, she went whistling from street to street, from door to door, delivering her messages from the War Office, seemingly unaware of their tragic content.

  It was the whistling that Lily must have heard to begin with and that had sent her flying out of bed to the window. It was the sound that always heralded the girl’s arrival and brought people to their doors with white faces and hands clutching hearts in dread. We heard it now as Lily was speaking, and we rushed to the door with her. The letter remained unfinished, forgotten on the table, with its several pages of ink-smeared scrawl.

  Yes, there she was, coming around our corner, standing up on her pedals, whistling brightly. A war song.

  “Mademoiselle from Armentiers…parlez vous…”

  It was one of those lovely, soft summer evenings. The sun had already set behind the square brick tower of the India mill, and streaks of violent red remained in the sky. The street, which had been ringing before with the shouts and cries of children at play, had suddenly grown quiet. Children had stopped in the midst of play to stare at Emily and to get ready to rush after her to whatever door she was going. Those who were sitting outside remained seated, glued to their chairs, their eyes fastened on the little dwarflike messenger girl. Others inside had come to the doors. Hands were on hearts. Whose house would it be? It had happened before on the street. It had become a guessing game, a terrible, terrorizing game.

  Certainly, she would not stop at our house. In fact, she rode right past it. My father had gone to Chester with other men to be examined by the army doctors, and had come home drunk, with a strange leer on his face, as if to say that he would not oblige us by going off to war and getting killed.

  We said nothing, though I know my mother cried with relief.

  Yes, Emily rode right past our house, the first one she came to, in fact, and then since the Forshaws’ house was almost directly opposite ours, she went past theirs too. The Forshaws had turned off their gramophone, and both of them had risen to their feet and had been watching the girl, and I noticed how Lily’s eyes remained fixed on her during this time, and when Emily had ridden on Lily gave a little sigh.

  It was quite audible, and my mother’s eyes went to her sharply and then across the street. You could almost hear the same sigh coming from the two over there. They didn’t settle back into their seats, however. Nor did the others whose houses Emily went past. Now they had to know whose house it would be. All the way to the top of the street she rode, whistling her song, and Mrs. Turnbull came out of her sweets shop to get ready. It had happened to her once already. The boarders gave her name as next of kin, and there had been this one casualty before.

  It hadn’t affected her too much and she wasn’t in any great fear now as she stood waiting for the telegram girl to stop at her place. But it was not there that Emily stopped and got off her bike with a slight nimble hop.

  I heard my mother let out a little gasp. All eyes on the street were rooted to the spot, necks crani
ng to see better. The next thing I remember was Mrs. Harris running out into the middle of the street, screaming and tearing at her clothes and face. Her wig fell off, revealing white hair that she tore at with both hands. Her husband had run after her and was struggling to restrain her, and his bowler hat fell off, showing the little black yarmulke beneath.

  Almost immediately people were running to the spot and I noticed a rather peculiar thing. They came from the Christian side too. Mrs. Humberstone had lumbered over there quickly, with other women, including even Mrs. Turnbull, who was generally the most distant and hostile of them all. Even in that bewildering, chaotic moment, as we all converged on the hysterical woman, it struck me as odd.

  My mother was there among them, and she fought to get to Mrs. Harris and halt what she was doing. The rending of the clothes was a ritual that the orthodox went through in mourning for the dead, but so great was the woman’s grief that she would have destroyed herself too had not my mother and these other women pinned her hands to her sides and dragged her back into her house, some of the Christian women entering along with my mother and other Jewish women, Mrs. Humberstone carrying Mrs. Harris’s wig in one hand and the bowler hat in the other.

  It was all over finally and people went back into their houses. A few children resumed playing, but most of us, Christian children as well as Jewish, hung around the Harrises’ house chatting excitedly over the event that had taken place and the knowledge that Sam had been killed.

  There was all sorts of wild speculation as to how it had happened and voices, high-pitched, yelled at one another.

  “He was blown to bits by a shell…”

  “No, ’e wasn’t. ’E got it in the ’ead with a bullet…”

  “Yer barmy idiot. A German stabbed ’im in th’ belly with a bayonet…”

  My mother remained inside the house with Mrs. Harris for some time, long after the other women had left, and with the group in front beginning to disperse, I went back to our own house and was startled to find Mrs. Forshaw there talking with Lily, and Lily’s face for once looked flushed and animated.

  Mrs. Forshaw smiled at me as I came up to them. “Hello, ’arry,” she said quietly.

  “Hello,” I mumbled and hung my head. I was not used to it yet, to seeing Christian women on our side, especially at our house.

  “Well, I must be getting back,” Mrs. Forshaw said to Lily. “I’ll let you know when I get another letter from Arthur and I’d appreciate it if you would let me know when you get one. That way we’ll be doubly sure he’s safe.”

  “Yes, it’s a very good idea,” Lily said. “I’ll be glad to do it.”

  “Thank you. Ta-ta then.”

  “Ta-ta.”

  “Ta-ta, ’arry.”

  I didn’t answer and continued to hang my head, and Lily said sharply, “Say ta-ta to Mrs. Forshaw, ’arry.”

  “Ta-ta,” I mumbled.

  Mrs. Forshaw smiled again and went back across the street, striding swiftly, her tall, slender body very erect. And Lily stood watching her, her eyes shining.

  “She came over to ask if I’d had a letter from Arthur lately,” she said, and I suppose she thought she had to explain why Mrs. Forshaw had been there talking to her, and I suppose too she was so happy over the event that she wanted to talk about it. But not to my mother.

  She must have thought about that as we went in, because she stopped abruptly and spoke to me over her shoulder. “You don’t have to tell Mam that I was talking to Mrs. Forshaw,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “She might not like it. You won’t tell, will you? Promise?”

  I nodded.

  It wouldn’t be the last time she’d ask me that, and most of the times I kept my word.

  WE WERE IN THE THIRD YEAR of the war then and things were going badly for us. The German Zeppelins were bombing London, and fear hung over us constantly. At night the streets were pitch-black, and no lights showed at windows, and in the houses we trembled at every little noise and waited tensely for the church bells that would warn us to rush down to our cellars.

  The women still gathered in my mother’s shop, even though it had dwindled to almost nothing. Food was being rationed, and even spoiled fruits and vegetables were hard to get. Nor was there any milk, so that my mother could no longer make sour milk for the women to refresh themselves with while they gossipped, but the talk was no longer the same, either. Very little time was wasted on the petty little goings-on of the street; now it was about the war, and they talked of retreats and advances and flank attacks, using the words as freely as though they had spoken them all their lives.

  Sometimes Little Thripenny Bit, our next-door neighbor, joined them too. This in itself was a remarkable change, for she had always disdained my mother’s shop, had turned her tiny nose up into the air as she went past, and said aloud for everyone to hear, “I don’t know what the street is coming to.” Or, “All these Russian Jews can think of is making money.”

  But now she had become part of the daily afternoon gathering in the shop, thrusting her way in, and dominating the conversation with her high-pitched voice to tell of her husband’s valor at the front. “He led the charge,” I remember hearing her say once. “He went over the top, first man with his bayonet fixed, and they all followed him. They captured two hundred and twenty-five Germans. My husband took charge of them, and the general clapped him on the back and said, ‘Well done, my man, well done.’”

  The women said nothing, but they winked at one another, and those in the back tapped their foreheads.

  At St. Peter’s, the headmaster paced constantly up and down in front of his desk, head bent, hands clasped behind his back, his large ears redder than ever, his long, bony features cast in gloom. Sometimes he would pause and whirl suddenly on the class, and shout, “What about the war loan?”

  A deathly silence followed. No one dared speak, and eventually he resumed his pacing. The war weighed heavily on him. Cocky had gone off to war to become an officer in the tank corps, but they had refused to take the headmaster. No one knew why. It was rumored on our street that he had an undescended testicle, and that this was the reason. Someone who had known him when he was a milkman claimed that the headmaster had confided it to him once.

  Regardless of that, the headmaster was a very troubled man. Every report of new casualties, surrenders, or retreats increased his disturbance, and he could no longer think about school matters. Sometimes he would halt his pacing and order the partitions pushed back and everybody on their feet to sing patriotic songs.

  “Rule Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves,

  Britons never, never shall be slaves…”

  How many times did we sing that song, and “God save our noble King” and others like them, with the headmaster roaring along with us, and the women teachers belting it out too in high sopranos, until our faces grew blue and our voices hoarse?

  Yet the battles raged on, and Emily was busier than ever on her bike, pedaling faster to keep up with the stack of black-bordered envelopes in her leather pouch, whistling as she rode. The wounded, the lucky ones, the blighties, were pouring in all over England, filling all the hospitals, filling the infirmary in our town until they were lined up in the corridors with no more ward space.

  More wounded were being brought in on stretchers, their bodies, their legs, their faces swathed in white bandages.

  One day even the corridors at the infirmary were filled, and there was no more space for them. The authorities took drastic action, and the swanks were turned out of their school up the park.

  IT WAS A GREAT DAY for us when we learned about it. We laughed and rejoiced. Now the swanks would have to go to St. Peter’s, where there was no rhododendron garden at the front, and no shiny floor in the hall, no hall at all, in fact, just one big room if you pushed the partitions back, and the toilets in the yards, one for the girls, one for the boys, were smelly.

  They would go in the afternoon, we in the morning. We grinned as we l
eft St. Peter’s and watched them come in disconsolately, afraid, suspicious, dressed in their short blue pants and bicycle stockings and little blue caps that bore the gold grammar school badge on the front just over the beak. They were as afraid of the ragamuffins of St. Peter’s as we had once been—no longer now, because the attention of the little batesemas was drawn from us to the newcomers.

  “Eh, look at the bloody little swanks,” they jeered as the fearsome little fellows came toward us with their books under their arms, neatly dressed, faces well washed and scrubbed, young bodies well filled with food. “That one there looks just like Lord Muck ’isself.”

  “That one,” a little fellow who might have been my own age, shrank back, and we all laughed. I laughed too, loudly, enjoying the torment and fear that had been transferred from us to them.

  Then my attention was drawn to the short, potbellied man wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella, striding with quick, short steps behind them. It was the headmaster of the Hollywood Park School, the one who had thrust my mother and myself out in such a humiliating fashion on what was supposed to have been my first day at school, about three years ago.

  I don’t know if he recognized me. He seemed to glare at me as he went by, and I couldn’t help feeling a moment’s fear. But then he glared at all the others too, hating them instantly, it seemed, simply for being poor, for wearing ragged clothes, for being dirty, and for looking starved. And for tormenting his pupils, and for occasionally tearing the blue caps off their heads and kicking them about like footballs.